Ulya didn’t let out the breath lodged in her throat until the man’s footsteps faded into the darkness. It wasn’t like he’d actually done anything that dangerous. His magic hadn’t been that out of ordinary. Sure, it had been fairly strong, but not by any degree greater than Vermil’s.

There was something else about the man that screamed danger, and it wasn’t any of his techniques or abilities. It was the way he carried himself, as if success was inevitable and there was absolutely nothing either she or Will could have done against him.

It was almost like he put so little importance on our abilities that we might as well have not even been fighting back. The only people that don’t give even the slightest amount of respect to an opponent’s abilities are the ones too stupid to realize they can die or the ones that know without a shadow of a doubt that they can’t lose.

“Damn that asshole,” Will muttered, rubbing his arm and brushing the dust and rubble from his clothes. “Arrogant prick.”

“Was he telling the truth?” Ulya asked. “Did you really go after Magus Moxie like that? We’re not meant to be making enemies here, Will. What were you thinking?”

“You can’t tell me you believed that guy. He clearly just had it out for me!” Will exclaimed as he let his hand drop and sent an affronted glare at Ulya. “Aren’t you supposed to be on my side? We’re working together!”

“And Vermil will be soon as well. They all passed the tests,” Ulya pointed out. “I don’t think that man was lying about Vermil either. I fought him, and he’s not the kind of person to hold punches. We don’t need to be making enemies for no reason.”

Will scoffed and shook his head, turning back to his house. “Coward. If you want to bend over and kiss his shoes, that’s your prerogative. I didn’t do anything that odd. I was just testing them. That’s all.”

What in the Damned Plains is up with Will? I swear he was never this argumentative before. He’s always been a bit arrogant, but this is ridiculous. He never would have gotten into the advanced track if he always acted like this.

“Is everything alright?” Ulya asked. “Nothing odd happened, did it?”

“Someone just broke into my house and tried to murder me,” Will snapped. “Of course something happened!”

He ducked to step through the hole in the wall, and a small frown crossed Ulya’s lips. There was a small green nub at the base of Will’s neck, just above his spine. She only saw it for an instant before he stepped out of sight.

“Hold on,” Ulya said, following after Will. “You’ve got something on your back still. Let me get it for you.”

Will, midway through shifting some stones off his desk, glanced over to Ulya. “Yeah, I know. Dust. And rock. A lot of it. Did you miss the part where my wall got smashed in? Or was it the part where I got thrown into the wall?”

“Oh stop whining and turn around,” Ulya said irritably. She stepped around Will, pulling the collar of his shirt down with one hand.

The green nub she’d seen still stuck out of the back of Will’s neck – not a piece of plant debris like she’d originally thought, but thoroughly worked into the back of his neck. It wasn’t stuck to him. It was inside him. The flesh around it had been twisted and sewn shut, but several small stitches had torn apart in the fight, allowing the green substance to push its way out.

“What in the Damned Plains?” Ulya asked, staring in disbelief.

“What is it?” Will asked, twisting to look back at Ulya. “Is something wrong?”

“Turn back around. You’ve got–”

A bladed vine erupted from the side of Will’s chest, ripping through his clothes and snapping out for Ulya. She threw herself back to the ground, hitting it with a pained grunt and sending a mental command to her puppet.

It snapped to life, disappearing in a sparkle of Space magic and reforming before Ulya as she scrambled to her feet and backed up.

“What’s wrong with you?” Ulya demanded, retreating another step. “Are you insane?”

Will’s body bucked. His muscles writhed beneath his clothes, bulging and shifting unnaturally. Thin seams formed all along his skin, growing taut and ripping apart with loud snaps as plants writhed out from within him.The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“It seems I must apologize,” a scratchy, warped voice that definitely wasn’t Will’s said as his body distorted even more. His skin ripped apart and fell to the ground as lurching plant matter pushed out of him. “I got sloppy. Didn’t realize the puppet was damaged. I hope you’ll forgive me, but I can’t have you telling anyone.”

Magic roiled out from the disgusting, squirming mass, and Ulya didn’t bother saying another word. The creature in front of her wasn’t Will. She threw her hands up and her puppet launched itself – not toward Will, but toward her.

It grabbed Ulya, but there was a loud crunch before they could teleport. A series of loud pops within her mind announced all the Imbuements within it shattering at once. Ulya staggered as her puppet was ripped away from her by a swathe of sharp-thorned vines. Half a dozen of them had driven into the back of the puppet in a split instant, completely destroying it.

Ulya coughed, blood trickling from her lips as the backlash of the damage to her Runes echoed through her body. She staggered against the wall, wiping her mouth with the back of a wrist.

“Who are you? What did you do to Will?”

“What was your name again?” the monster that had once been Will asked. “Ulya, was it? Do you have a convenient diary I could read? I’m going to need to polish up on what you should know for when I replace you.”

Ulya turned and sprinted, mentally cursing her decision to work with puppets and put all her power into Imbuements, leaving none for herself to work with. Her nearest puppet was nowhere in the area. She risked a glance over her shoulder and immediately regretted it.

Vines were racing down the alley, digging through the stone and rising up behind her like the maw of a malevolent dragon. Ulya threw herself into an alley, hitting the wall in her haste and knocking the breath from her lungs.

She choked on her own blood as she ran, but didn’t dare let up. Whatever magic was chasing her was more than what her meagre domain could ever hope to resist, which meant the only hope was finding someone else to help her fight.

A spike of pain raced up her leg and Ulya felt it get yanked out from beneath her. She cried out, throwing her hands in front of her a moment before she hit the ground. A vine had wound around her ankle.

She grabbed it, ignoring the jagged thorns as they ripped into her palms as she tried to rip it free, but it felt like she was trying to cut iron. Rocks scraped against Ulya’s legs and back as she was dragged back toward the teeming mass.

“Help!” Ulya screamed, kicking desperately at the vines. She tried to reach her Runes, but every single one of them was still reeling from the damage and she could barely muster even the slightest amount of magic.

The vines rose up above Ulya, blocking out the moonlight and casting her into pitch darkness. She let out one last scream, drawing on the last of her magic in an attempt to do anything.

There was a faint flicker of purple energy.

The vines crashed down, and then there was only silence.

***

Wizen lowered his hand, the last of the magic fading from his construct. Hidden within the whorls of swirling wood that made up a mask covering his face, his lips pursed.

“How displeasing.”

He stood in the center of a dark cave, his hand resting on a massive dirt orb. Five more of them surrounded him. Each was easily seven feet tall and half as wide, sticking halfway out of the ground like the bulb of a flower waiting to sprout.

One of them had shattered, its top completely destroyed. Fragments of its shell laid on the ground around it.

“Perhaps more than displeasing. What a waste of a perfectly good construct,” Wizen said as he took his hand off the bulb. The flow of power that had been running out of it and into his body faded, and the Plant Runes contained within it faded back into dormancy. “I took so much care to avoid blowing my cover, but I did promise you that I’d show just how badly you’d played your hand, didn’t I? Never let it be said that I don’t keep my promises.”

He crossed his arms behind his back and sighed. It wasn’t like he’d lost his only construct. There were more, and he’d learned a fair amount from this one. It had done it’s job.

“To think I lost it purely because that bumbling idiot smashed the fool’s head into a wall and damaged the housing,” Wizen said, a flicker of anger passing through his posture as his hands tightened at his sides. The anger faded as quickly as it had arrived and he shook his head, patting the dirt bulb with one hand.

He could feel power roiling within it, desperately trying to find its way out from the cage he’d built. A small smile stretched across his lips and he chuckled.

“Is something wrong?” Wizen asked the orb. “This was our deal, was it not? A way to escape the games you were trapped in so you could focus on growing more powerful. A way in which you could truly comprehend the magic that you’ve sought to master for all these years. Do you not feel more in contact with the Earth than you ever had before? Soon, you will bloom into a beautiful flower. Your Runes will be consumed and made part of something far greater than you ever could have been.”

More emotion roiled within the orb, causing the smile on Wizen’s lips to grow even wider. “Perhaps you are displeased that the woman you thought to have outplayed was actually the one that outplayed you. That seems to be happening a fair amount as of late. Losing to a mere Rank 3 as a Rank 6. Pathetic, really. I suppose it only makes sense. You were so determined to reach power that you have not earned that you lost your diligence. You fell at the hands of your own family, trying to avoid drawing too much magic and risk severing our connection. I suppose you succeeded – you clung onto life and I brought you here, just as I said I would. And, just like I assured you, you were reborn. And now, just as you begged me, your new form will have power. It will be power. You just won’t be the one to wield it, Evergreen.”