“Oh. Hey, yeah. Where… where are… oh, this isn’t good, is it?” Layla cast about, searching the tree line for signs of other life.

“Noooooooo,” Rory drew his answer out as he stared up at the temple. “Definitely not.”

“Yeaaahhhh. This is a bad sign,” Erin pulled her helm off and wiped a sweat-soaked strand of hair away from her face.

“So, we’re unanimously of the opinion that the creepy blood vines wrapped around the ominous sandstone temple in the middle of the freakshow dungeon are a serious problem, right?” Layla turned to the others and pointed over her shoulder at the temple.

“Yeah. Yep. Agreed,” they replied.

“I refuse to check, because I already know the fucking answer, but just to make sure my narrative sense of our impending fucking doom is on point, Jack, which way is the shrine from here?” she grimaced and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Yeah, on point. It’s inside the temple. Underground,” his face scrunched up as he replied.

“Because fucking, of course it is,” Layla threw her hands into the air.

As they dithered and procrastinated, a flock of surprisingly normal-looking, wide-winged coastal birds flew overhead. A handful of them dipped lower as they drifted over the temple, gracefully riding the currents of sea air overhead.

Atop the temple, a mound of twisted vines slowly unfurled, revealing a massive pale flower with sharply tapered petals. From the ground, though only Jack would immediately recognize the material, the flower’s visceral fronds had almost exactly the consistency and coloration of stomach lining. As the undulating flesh-blossom gaped open, it lashed out with a thirty-foot barbed tongue, impaling one of the gulls and reeling the struggling bird into the flower’s clutches. As the bird was drawn into the petals, the entire flower irised closed, smothering the bird’s desperate cries.

“We don’t… really need this shrine, right?” Rory watched the macabre scene unfold.

“I… I’m not as sure as I was a few minutes ago,” Jack replied.

“So, we burn it all, yeah? Before going in?” Layla stood next to the boys, staring as the beach-ball sized flower wriggled with the gull’s struggles.

“Yeah. We burn it all,” Erin’s disgusted whisper replied.

-----

The four sat halfway between the edge of the clearing and the north side of the temple, watching the conflagration as the vines wreathing the temple fueled the inferno Layla had created, the wind blowing the smoke toward the East.

“That took some doin,” she huffed. “Those things did not wanna catch.”

“Yeah, big red there wasn’t a fan of us starting those fires either,” Erin watched as one of the gastric flowers popped and shriveled under the intense heat.

“Oh sure, but… fuck fighting that thing, right?” Layla wheezed.

“Absolutely,” Rory replied around a mouthful of dried fruit.

“Can you imagine actually trying to walk up to that temple and go inside with that bullshit on top of it?” Layla snorted.

“Didn’t they make some kinda movie like that? Some tourists or something and some killer plant on top of a temple?” Erin asked.

“Oh, yeah, I think I remember that. I like our movie better,” she grinned at the towering blaze.

“We at all worried about this spreading?” Rory asked.

“Nah. We’ve got nearly a hundred-yard fire break here, and the trees outside the clearing are as much flesh as bark,” Jack finally pitched in, giving an involuntary shudder at the mention of the writhing plant life of the inner mantle.

“So, what do we think? Let it all burn down, then hop in and grab the shrine?” Layla tore up a handful of grass and let it blow away in the breeze.

“Yeah. It’ll probably burn for a while, at least a couple hours. Then it probably won’t be safe to be in there for y’all for a while after,” Jack replied.

“Why for ‘y’all’ there, Tex?” Layla laughed.

“Because I don’t have to breathe,” he stuck his tongue out at her.

From Layla’s perspective, invisible to the other three, an unintrusive green bar appeared half a foot in front of her left shoulder at the edge of her vision, indicating her panel had new messages. She flicked a finger at the bar and the panel opened, a pane of green light now visible to the other chosen.

She began to laugh, a wide-eyed giggle at first, then an uncontrolled chuckle, finally progressing to a nearly hysterical belly laugh that left tears rolling down her face. The others wore confused expressions but smiled at whatever in-joke had paralyzed their succubus. She finally wrangled some control over herself and tapped the edge of the panel, changing its angle slightly, but revealing the text therein. The others’ eyes slowly widened at roughly the same pace that their mouths dropped open.

[Titanic] Carnalis Bloom (Level 39 Guardian) has been afflicted by Burn.

Burn has upgraded to Blaze.

[Titanic] Carnalis Bloom (Level 39 Guardian) has suffered Wounded (Scorched).

Blaze has upgraded to Inferno.

[Titanic] Carnalis Bloom (Level 39 Guardian) has suffered Wounded (Charred).

[Titanic] Carnalis Bloom (Level 39 Guardian) has suffered Wounded (Incinerated).

[Titanic] Carnalis Bloom (Level 39 Guardian) has died.

[Titanic] Carnalis Bloom (Level 39 Guardian) has been completely destroyed. No corpse rewards available.

Your Mark of the Chosen has absorbed additional experience from [Titanic] Carnalis Bloom (Level 39 Guardian). Additional experience has been assigned to Flame magica.

“That fucking thing was the guardian!?” Erin gawked at Layla’s screen before quickly pulling her own up. “Holy hell, I got xp too. That oversized flesh fruit was the dungeon boss!”

“This has to be the most anticlimactic boss fight in history,” Rory stared at his own panel.

Jack looked up at the column of flame atop the temple, “I’m good with that, personally.”

“Yeah, same mate,” Rory replied.

“So, we camp here for the night and explore the ashes tomorrow morning?” Layla’s mood had improved by leaps and bounds in the last few minutes.

“Yep. All else fails, I roll in and step on the shrine and hope we all get credit,” Jack continued to stare at the flames.

“Ya know, it’s too bad we can’t do this with every dungeon boss,” Layla snapped off a bite of jerky.

“I think ‘immobile meat-plant’ will likely be a long shot for guardians in the future,” Rory laughed.

-----

The Chosen once against split up into shifts, with Jack remaining vigilant for the night. He baited out one of the larger chimera into the clearing and after the four did the dirty work, Jack raised the monstrosity as a zombie. Finally, they set another square of campfires, though they weren’t necessary for light, as the monstrous plant continued to burn through the night.

It became apparent through the night that the chimera of the Writhing Wood had come to regard entering the temple’s clearing as an inventive form of suicide. The night was considerably less trying than the previous, and when dawn came, they were better rested than expected.

“I’m gonna take a quick peek inside and see what’s what. If it’s safe, and the air seems ok, I’ll come back up and get y’all,” Jack finished his preparations and head up the ashen steps.

“Don’t be a hero, Jackson,” Erin called after him.

“I’ll do my best,” he replied as he walked toward the steps.

They watched him walk across the clearing, half expecting something to reach out and snatch him from the odd, squelching grass beneath their feet. Nothing so dramatic occurred. Instead, the nightbringer reached the temple steps and began climbing.

Jack shot one last glance at the others before he stepped into the dark corridor leading into the temple. The passage was choked with charred vines, most as thin as his finger, but some as thick as his arm. The crumbling matter had the color and consistency of spent charcoal, and a prod from his longsword caused a bulky vine that ran across the channel to collapse into ash.

Jack: Damn, Layla. This place looks like the inside of a barbeque pit.

Layla: What can I say, I’m hot.

Erin: kicked SuccubusGurl69 from the chat.

Layla: Hey! You can’t… oh, I see what you did there.

Jack chuckled and continued down the corridor, whispering an invocation to activate Night Eye. The hallway emptied out into what could reasonably be described as a ritual chamber, though every inch of the giant room was covered in vines… and the bones of the guardian’s previous meals. In the center of the chamber, a raised dais was inscribed with the seal of a massive tree, similar to the mark of fate that now rested on Toben and Enora’s chests.

Unlike those marks, this one was covered in a complicated arrangement of twisted metal and the burnt root body of the guardian. The metal remnants seemed to be a combination of a ritual array, set with various cracked and burned crystals, and a vine trellis, onto which the foot-thick core roots of the carnalis bloom had grown. In the center of the ruined contraption, defiling the world tree’s shrine, was the ashen remains of the guardian’s nucleus, what was once a complex set of bizarre organs roughly the size of a compact car, but was instead now the crumbling embers of a tableau of charcoaled plant matter and carbonized flesh. In the center of the tumorous chunk of ash, the dungeon heart pulsed with a shivering tessellation of verdant green and sapphire blue mana, stirring and mingling into the hybrid element of mutation.

Someone had created this abomination.

Jack took a deep breath, noting the ashen taste, but also, something else. Somewhere in this temple, through another passageway or some type of vents, fresh air was circulating into this chamber. It would be hard to breathe, but the others could survive a brief trip into the chamber if claiming the shrine didn’t share the seal.

He stepped onto the dais and felt the rush of power as the seal filled him.

You have discovered the Seal of the First Fruit. You have been awarded the trait World Tree’s Harvest: Once per day, you may sacrifice a portion of your Health to manifest the First Fruit. Eating the First Fruit satisfies all hunger and thirst and grants the benefits of a Mark of Fate until it is completely digested.

“Wow,” he whispered.

Jack: I got the seal. Any luck?

Rory: No.

Layla: Fuck.