Unprepared Castaway Chapter 5 (Patreon)

Greg woke up in the sort of bleary-eyed way that might make the phrase 'came around' more accurate. Maybe even 'regained consciousness', although that implied a totality that wasn't present. There was still plenty more consciousness left to regain.

"Urkkk..." he moaned, then threw up.

It took many minutes more before he managed to crawl out of bed, find some Earth water—which was reassuringly transparent and not glowing at all—and sip enough of it to take the taste of vomit away. It took some minutes more to stagger outdoors, where the pair of blue moons had once again risen. Quite a while ago, too, judging by how far they'd already travelled across the sky.

"How long was I asleep...?"

He paused for a moment, realising that upon waking he'd unscrewed the lid of a water bottle without thinking too much of it. Normally, that wouldn't be an incident worthy of consideration, except that last he remembered, his right arm had been paralysed. Not to mention blue.

"I... recovered?"

Inspection revealed a few blisters still present, but most were gone. Likewise, his skin was correctly skin coloured. Nothing whatsoever was glowing, either blue or any other colour.

"I bloody well don't feel like I've recovered," he muttered, then threw up again. "Probably best I don't go exploring today... Let's just rest."

Grabbing a few more water bottles, he returned to his garage, trying to clean up his mess without adding to it. He thus failed to hear the quiet creaking approaching from all around.

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On the continent of Umbra, there was a realm known as Regnum Ligno. Despite spanning the entire southern side of the landmass—reaching as far north as Lacum Lucis—counting the permanent sapient residents wouldn't require a human to take their socks off. It wouldn't even require them to remove their mittens, although even if not required, they probably should. The opposite side of the world from where Lumen Glaciei shone down from its frozen mountaintop, the realm was far too warm for mittens.

The undisputed sovereign of the realm angrily surveyed its domain, pulling in whatever information it could from its autonomous nodes, scanning for anything out of place. It didn't need the display of the arrogant unguibus at Crepusculum Concilio to take the situation seriously. It had already lost two nodes, after all, and it had been many pulses since it last lost a node. Hundreds since it lost more than one at once. Even the colossal behemoths that grazed the area had learnt that to approach one was death.

Its quick scan found a dozen anomalies within its domain, and there were probably more as yet undiscovered. After all, it wasn't like every anomaly had opened up right on top of a behemoth. One of them had resulted in nothing more than a fine coating of sand over a small section of grassy plain, and was there not a node nearby, it would never have been noticed. How many more were around, with effects even more subtle? How many of the small furry creatures had come through?

How many of the large, grey ones, that could destroy a node simply by stepping on it? Yes, their size was nothing compared to a behemoth, but they gave no indication of even noticing the defensive poisons. Poisons which infected a body's intrinsic mana, corrupting and twisting it. If the darts had been blocked or dodged, it would be understandable, but ignored? How could anything survive it, however alien? It would be like surviving having one's sap torn from their trunk and replaced with acid.

The unguibus had claimed the creature it caught was without mana, but the concept of a manaless creature was far too insane for the sovereign to pay it any thought. How could life function without mana? It would be like declaring a lake contained no water, or a mountain contained no stone. Mana was how life worked. Perhaps they had endured the poison due to a lack of mana, but if so, it still wouldn't be correct to say they'd survived it. After all, if the things had no mana, they were not alive in the first place. It was as simple as that. If they moved around, it was for the same reason clouds drifted or rain fell: simple and easily explicable physical processes. The sovereign was not the sort of existence to bemoan an inability to poison a cloud.

Of course, rain might be harmless, but a hurricane certainly wasn't. Just because something wasn't really alive didn't mean it did any less damage when it stepped on a node. The angry sovereign had attempted to weave a web to catch the larger creature, but it had simply walked through it, leaving the sovereign even more irate.

Thankfully, the other creature—the one responsible for the destruction of the second node—was not only smaller, but also seemed far more sedentary, barely straying from the location of the anomaly that had brought it. For that strange thing with the external teeth and exchangeable hide, there would be no escape.

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Greg's eyes snapped open, alerted to wakefulness by a soft creaking right next to his ear.

Jerking upright, standing in the middle of his bed, he grabbed his phone and desperately held in the power button, ruing his decision to leave it turned off, or at least the fact that he was yet to salvage a proper torch. The moment the screen lit up, he pointed it at his pillow, finding a vine where his head had just been.

Greg said a rude word, then aimed the screen around the rest of the garage. He picked a few more choice rude words in response to the scene, vines having forced their way in through both doorways, warping the doors, and then headed straight for the bed.

"It's a bloody plant! Plants aren't supposed to take revenge!" he complained as he carefully stepped down from the bed, keeping his distance from the vines. It would be nice to think it was nothing to do with him, but for what other reason would the plant have grown up here while ignoring the feast right beneath them?

Thankfully, they didn't move all that fast. The phone now fully booted, he switched on the torch and attempted to make his escape. Alas, the damage done by the vines meant that the doors wouldn't open.

And the vines were still visibly growing, the tips twisting to point towards him.

"Why in the hells did I leave my chainsaw outside?" muttered Greg, desperately searching around for a way out, in case the garage happened to have developed a new exit overnight. Of course, it hadn't been so considerate. Trying to force his way through the metal, car-sized door seemed ill-advised, leaving him to desperately kick the smaller of the two exits.

With the damage done by the vines having already torn it from one hinge, it quickly gave way to his feet, but escaping the garage turned out to not be a huge improvement. More vines ran down the street, one poking into each intact doorway and window. None tried to invade the rubble, though. The sight just rubbed in the fact that the damn things were specifically looking for him.

And to make things even worse, one of those tree-things had sprouted in the middle of his salvaged food stash. Not the full height of the one he'd felled, but still recognisably the same sort of structure.

Thankfully, the chainsaw was exactly where he'd left it, and was blissfully vine free.

"Okay, I have two options. One; clear out this damn plant, and try to barricade it out or prune it every few hours. Two, grab what supplies I can and run for it."

With his earlier fever, he wasn't quite sure how long he'd been sleeping, but it was certainly longer than normal. The plant wasn't that fast growing. Nevertheless, trying to defend the area indefinitely—or at least until he finally died of some sort of horrible disease or got eaten by faster moving wildlife—seemed inadvisable. If he ran, there was little chance of finding food and water, but sticking here forever had zero chance, unless the planet had occasional marshmallow storms or similar. He still hadn't seen any regular rain, never mind an edible variety.

"Option two it is, then. I should get rid of that big thing, since it'll probably needle me again otherwise when I try to pack away some food."

It was the work of a few more minutes to don his biker gear and approach the structure. This time, the chainsaw was operated without any sort of grin, nor was Greg surprised when the tree didn't mess around, peppering him with needles the moment he stepped into range. With the aid of the torchlight, he could even see where they came from, the glistening tips poking slightly out of the surface all over.

The giant one came as a surprise, though. Three inches long, it thudded straight into his shoulder, piercing through his jacket. The shock caused him to drop the chainsaw, which bit into the spongy ground with an unhealthy squelching noise. Viscous blue liquid sprayed into the air, but Greg didn't notice.

Greg was too busy screaming.

Unlike the first time, this time the venom had an overwhelming effect, leaving his whole body burning. But what it was doing to the rest of his body was nothing compared to his right arm, for which no words existed to express the sensations. 'Burning' was a reasonable start, but so was 'freezing'. You'd also need words like 'agony'. Unthinking, he desperately tore at his makeshift armour, pulling off his glove.

Beneath it, veins flickered blue, irregularly shifting between eye-searingly bright and almost imperceptibly dull multiple times a second. And then they flashed a blinding white, and the screaming cut out as Greg collapsed to the floor. And then his arm exploded.

The resulting burst of blue flame was visible across half of Regnum Ligno.

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The sovereign of Regnum Ligno was confused. It had definitely inflicted the creature with its poison before, yet it had no effect. It was likewise expecting no effect this time. Instead, it had adapted the autonomous nodes defences, growing larger, more powerful needles, intending to take the creature down with simple physical damage. It had launched a few regular, smaller needles to lull the creature into a false sense of security, intending to launch the larger once it got closer, to maximise the impact force. But the very first one had... done something.

The sovereign wasn't quite sure what the 'something' was, but it had resulted in a mana burst so large that it took out a dozen autonomous nodes. The radius of the explosion had been ridiculous. The entire behemoth corpse was a lost cause, and that was a great misfortune, given how rarely they died. The surrounding stretches of land suffered mana poisoning that would take half a pulse to dissipate. Four springs fed directly from Lacum Lucis had been lost. A small dent in its total mana supply, but still annoying. How had the creature absorbed so much mana?

The thought of the springs sent the sovereign's thoughts down another track. The creature had lots of water, stored in little containers. Biological life being dependent on water was as obvious as the way all life was dependent on mana, but unlike mana, what sort of creature couldn't produce its own water?

The sort of faux life that didn't have mana.

The creature had attacked a node that sat above a spring. What if the creature had been looking for a water supply? What if the creature had drunk directly of the waters of Lacum Lucis? Doing so would be fatal to any life. There was no way anything alive could handle the mana density. But something that wasn't really alive? The mana would just sit there, just like it did in the pure water.

An interesting theory, for sure, but in the end, not one that mattered. The damage was done, but the creature wouldn't have survived the explosion.

And then the sovereign remembered the other creature. The grey one. The one that looked well over an order of magnitude heavier than the dead one. Just how much water would it need to drink if it couldn't produce its own? The node it squished was positioned over another spring, harvesting the mana the water radiated. How much had it already drunk?

And it was heading north. Straight towards Lacum Lucis. How much more would it drink?

Never mind Regnum Ligno; if it lost control, the resulting explosion could take out half of Umbra. The others needed to be warned.

Back in Crepusculum Concilio, a silver cube creaked. Few of the others were occupied, but the silhouettes that were present looked around in interest. Or at least, those that had ranges of perception narrow enough to need to look around.

Over the next few minutes, more attendees filtered in, their silhouettes materialising above their respective cubes. One clicked impatiently. The sovereign creaked back. A cacophony of noises started up, but the responses conveyed little more than disbelief and mirth.

Not the unguibus, though. Their delegate remained silent, and looked—to anyone who could read their facial expressions—far more thoughtful. After all, their territory extended to the northern shore of Lacum Lucis. The walking mana bomb was heading directly towards them.

And the foolish stuck-up plant was going to just let them have such a ridiculous weapon.