The Devourer’s reaction to my baby now having a poison bite was instant.
It convulsed hard enough that the entire chamber jumped around it as if reacting to its pain and fear. Its wet bellow of outrage tore through the earth and slamd into the walls while the teeth around my leg stuttered.
Don’t get wrong, the teeth didn’t stop griding on my flesh, the rings simply lost their rhythm, grinding unevenly as black veins shot outward from the bite mark in branching lines.
It almost made the pain worse, truth be told.
The flesh around the spot that my baby vine had bitten the creature changed color. The gray-white skin turned black as the sli that covered it curdled around the wound in thick clumps that looked like a cross between a witch’s cauldron and puss. The veins underneath the Devourer’s skin swelled to the point that they had no choice but to burst, leaking dark fluid that stead in protest when it hit the ground.
The sll changed too. It still slled like rot and blood mixed with hot wet garbage left under a sumr sun, but now there was sothing sharp underneath it.
Poison.
Mine.
My vine’s.
I stared at the blackening wound for half a second too long, my mind still refusing to catch up to what my eyes were telling it. I was probably going to have to warn Lingyun not to tease my vine... not now that he could actually die from its bite.
Even as my mind started to wander back to the guys, my body no longer reacting the way that I needed it to, the gods still proved that I was their favorite.
The Devourer spat out like I was a rotten piece of sushi that didn’t taste right.
There was no better word for it.
The teeth reversed, the mouth heaved, and my leg ca free in a spray of blood, sli, and strips of skin that had no business leaving my body. I hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath out of , and for a second all I could do was lie there with my fingers digging into the mud while my leg scread louder than anything in the room.
The Devourer dropped back underground to lick his wounds, and the chamber shook as it moved beneath again.
I tried to stand, to get to my feet to prepare for the next hit, but my leg refused to obey.
I looked down once and imdiately decided that was enough of that.
My calf was a ss of blood, exposed muscle, and ragged skin. The lower half of my leg sat at an angle that made no practical sense unless soone was planning to fold for storage.
For the first ti in a very long ti, sothing cold crawled up through my stomach.
It wasn’t the fear of pain.
Pain was pain. It happened. It passed. Or it killed you, and then it wasn’t your problem anymore.
This was different.
This was the sudden, ugly understanding that if that mouth ca up under again before I could move, it might actually finish the job.
I could and would die here.
The thought landed so hard that everything inside went quiet.
Then I got angry.
No.
No, that was not happening.
I had not survived one apocalypse, woken up in another one, collected a mansion, trained a vine with biting issues, gathered several emotionally unstable n, and built myself a perfectly respectable couch-centered lifestyle just to be eaten by a basent maggot with delusions of ownership.
Death could wait its fucking turn until I gave it permission.
I forced my palms flat against the ground and vines tore from my hands and wrists, thick and wooden. They wrapped themselves around my injured leg in tight overlapping bands. They weren’t able to straighten the break, they just put enough pressure on it that they were supporting instead of my own muscle and bone.
The pressure made see white for a second, but I got over it. I had no choice.
Another bulge moved through the floor, closer than I wanted to admit given the fact that I was still lying in a puddle of my own flesh and blood.
I pulled myself up with the vines, one ugly inch at a ti, well aware that the survivors watched from the wall like I was their weekly drama.
I grinned through clenched teeth as I snarled at them. "You’re really committed to the whole dinner-and-a-show thing, huh?"
Nobody answered, not like I had expected them to. But before I could get my next breath, the Devourer burst out beneath again.
But I didn’t need to breathe to fight.
I slamd both hands forward, and wooden spears exploded from my palms straight into its open throat. Not one. Not two. A dozen thick sharpened spikes punched past the rotating teeth and drove deep into the wet at beyond.
The Devourer’s scream shook dirt from the ceiling.
The teeth spun harder, chewing through several spears, but more grew behind them, forcing deeper, spreading wider, tearing into the throat from the inside. Blackened lines from the vine bite were still crawling across its mouth, poisoning flesh as they spread.
For one second, the thing stopped pulling.
I used that second and yanked the spears sideways.
The Devourer’s throat tore open as hot black fluid sprayed across the chamber while the creature convulsed, and the entire floor heaved under once again.
I lost my balance, hit the ground on one knee, and nearly blacked out from the pain in my leg.
Nearly.
The Devourer dropped back underground with a broken wet roar and the chamber shook harder than before.
Cracks raced across the floor in every direction, and several roots snapped overhead, crashing down into the sli. The survivors finally scread, but they still didn’t run. They just dropped lower against the wall like that would make them less available for whatever ca next.
I pushed myself back up using the vines wrapped around my leg and the spears still growing from my palms.
My whole body shook as blood ran freely down into my boot.
I knew that it hadn’t left, that the Devourer was still circling beneath the ground, waiting.
Learning.
I could feel it moving now, not clearly, but enough to know it had not given up.
Good.
Neither had I.
I dragged in one breath through my teeth and smiled toward the trembling floor.
"You want ?" I called. "Co and get ."
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