Legereal contentedly turned his face up to the sun. The warmth of high summer was reaching its daily peak. The drone and buzz of myriad insects was music to his ears, and the vines surrounding him writhed and twisted as if moving to a rhythm even he could not perceive. Nodellendil stood a good distance away with his arms crossed and a bland look on his face. He was a stalwart companion and in touch with the land in his own way, but even he would not be safe among the assassin vines.
There were four of them growing in this remote dell. Each had a main vine that was thicker than his wrist and almost twenty feet long, with several smaller vines sprouting off from the main, ending in dark green leaves that were vaguely hand shaped. The fragrant white flowers had recently faded, and the berries were just showing now. It would be a couple of weeks before they fully ripened into a tart, dark purple fruit. Well, more sweet than tart this year. Legereal had been carefully tending these with that goal in mind.
He turned his face from the sky and checked the fertilizer. The vines had stopped moving now, having finished choking the life from the pair of humans he and Nodellendil had captured. The bodies were drawn to the vine’s roots, where they would provide the sustenance the mindless plants needed. Oh, how the humans gibbered and begged for their short little lives. Pathetic, transient creatures who exceeded only in destruction. They could murder those of the Fair Race who were centuries old. They could hew trees older than their grandsires for no better reason than to burn meat. And now they could become useful and be given back to nature, returned to the Land that surely hated them and thirsted for their blood.
The assassin vines that were best fed yielded the sweetest fruit, and these vines had been well fed, indeed. Bones and decomposing corpses littered the dell, the smell rich and cloying in the heat. Humans and hobgoblins, mostly. They’d had to feed them a deer once when the hunt was unsuccessful, but for the most part nurturing these vines had been a successful endeavor.
Legereal turned to leave, giving one of the vines an almost loving caress as he passed. Not even his fellow druids had often attained such a bond, and he was grateful for the gift that was the power of the primordial coursing through his veins. Soon he would have his harvest, and such a unique reagent would soon bear even greater fruit. Nodellendil picked up his stone tipped spear and followed. Together they disappeared into the brush and resumed the hunt.