2 Fully Clothed, but Still Afraid!

"….ana....R....a.....aa…."

"Oper...shlo...fa...Earth....nd....line....gent.....sis.."

She woke up, feeling like something important had just slipped away. Sliding her fingers across the interior of the wardrobe, she thought about her situation a little more calmly.

"Whether this is real or not doesn't matter if I can't do anything to change it. I know that I am not from here, and that Earth might be the name of my home. But I don't know what or where that is, or even where here is. If I want to go home to Earth or get my memories back, I need to focus on essentials so I can live longer!... But what do I need to survive?... Water was good, maybe that's it?.. Security too!! I need to make sure I live long enough to figure out where I am and where Earth is....."

She decided to try and adapt to life in her new cavern home, at least until she could get her shit together and try to find out more information about her location and Earth. This seemed relatively easy to the girl, since she didn't seem to experience hunger at all, nor did she remember sunlight or inherit a fear of caves...

Unaware of her alarming strangeness, the girl decided to investigate the passageway from yesterday. Though the plants seemed dangerous, the girl wanted to scour the nearby areas for any clues she could find that relate to her current location, and this was the closest place she hadn't checked. Plus, she had an underlying desire to move some of those spike plants to create a defensive barrier for her security, in the name of getting her shit together, that is.

So, she returned to the spike plant cavern and edged around the menacing clumps as she delved deeper. The cavern was quite long, and the areas between the patches of the glowing spike plants were getting smaller and smaller. While she was beginning to consider turning back, the cavern suddenly opened up into a very large chamber which was almost completely covered in the glowing plants.

Although the chamber was full of an etherial and beautiful jade light, the girl was focused on the gruesome tableau at the heart of the room. In the center were countless gigantic skeletons and bones, many completely covered in the green leaflets. Here and there she could see tatters of clothing and leather armor, though there was only a single piece of metal to be seen.

At the final edge of rock before the verdant remainder of the room encroached on the ground, there rested a sword hilt. More important, however, were the pair of leather shoes next to it! After readying herself, the girl decided to go get the shoes, as she hadn't seen any other footwear so far.

After reaching the shoes and pulling them on, the girl realized they were a little too large for her. She tried to tear off some of her robes to stuff and line the shoes, but found that she couldn't even make the fabric budge! She looked over at the hilt she saw earlier. It shone with the gleam of polished stainless steel inlaid with malachite and mother-of-pearl in the design of jasmine vines. In the handgrip, the metal seemed to have been shaped as a bundle of three vines growing together, over which a fine green leather was fastened. The girl repeatedly checked the handle for plant spikelets before deciding to try and use the blade of this weapon to cut her robes.

She wrapped her hands around the handle and pulled with all her strength. After some wiggling and a few good tugs, the hilt suddenly came up and she flopped backwards.

The blade in her hands was relatively short compared to its width, and relatively light. Shockingly, however, the blade itself was mostly coated in a clump of the glowing spike plant. The wisps on the blade emitted a light that was more cyan than jade, and the leaflets were longer by a half than usual. Being pierced with these spikes would be considerably unpleasant!

With the blade in hand, the girl slowly made her way back through the cavern to the earlier chamber with the small spring to try and cut her robes in a safer place. She tried dipping the blade in water to remove the glowing spike plant, but even scraping the blade against the rock edge of the pool had no effect. Moreover, dipping the spike plant in the spring water seemed to make it grow healthier, as the waving of the wispy leaflets increased and the cyan glow became brighter; this little bugger was stuck on there for good! The remaining metal portion of the blade was too short for her to really cut her robes without triggering the spike plant. Seeing this, she gave sighed dejectedly and left the sword by the water while she got ready to sleep.

***

The next day, she shuffled out of the rags, arranged her robes, and went to the spring to wash up. The sword was still sitting there, emitting a gentle cyan light that weakly illuminated half the chamber. The girl rested by the edge of the spring's pool and began to wash her hair. As she was washing, a few strands of her hair accidentally fell upon the the glowing spike plant along the blade—

—with a yelp, those pieces of her hair were ripped out of her head and seemingly eaten by the plant on the blade!

As the last shimmer of her silver locks disappeared into the miniature thicket on the blade, the leaflets of the satiated plant suddenly stopped moving and stood on end. The leaflets seemed to fold and unfold in a quivering, trembling manner, and their color began to change little by little. After a few minutes, the leaflets relaxed limply as if tired. The spike plant that covered the blade now shone with a brighter silvery light and the little leaflets now blushed with the same color as her hair.

A few of the tendrils nearest to the pool were reaching for the water, so the girl hesitantly gave the sword a dunk while she gingerly felt scalp by her ear where a small bit of hair had been yanked out. Once in the spring water, the plant began to deeply drink and produce more leaflets in spiky rosettes.

After the sword's plant was lively and her feet were clean, the girl decided to try going down the rest of the stairs to the settlement below. After all, she now had a terrifying weapon, so anything that got too close would be obliterated! She put on her new leather shoes, grabbed the sword, and made her way out of the spring cavern and back to the stairs. As she descended towards the settlement, she realized it was actually a very grand ruin in its own right.

Large stone buildings several stories tall and elevated walkways filled the area around the feet of her gigantic ziggurat. Here and there, the flora of the underground forest had taken over and run rampant, crumbling the buildings and rearranging blocks of architecture into dense canopy. Something on the steps in front of her suddenly snapped her out of her gawking—

—it looked like a weak cone of translucent purple jelly about a meter tall and two meters wide at the base. Its rather formless, wet-looking body tapered to a point, from which a single tendril extended a large, purple eye towards her. Slowly, the purple quivering mass oozed towards her, its every movement up the steps causing the accumulated dust on the stone to sizzle as if fried by acid.

Frantically, the girl retreated up the steps (while incoherently gasping and yelping) just as the cone of jelly began to visibly deform, shooting spikes quickly out to strike her previous location. Violently alarmed, the girl took her spiky sword in hand, and jumped. She shot directly in front of the jelly just as the eyestalk was turning to face her new position, and hacked down with all her strength as she screamed in utter terror and defiance of death!

*shaaaak*

Her sword spikelets cut the eyestalk off of the purple monster almost instantly, and the sword body continued slicing and obliterating the jelly beast with the momentum of her arm, until the spike plant was deeply embedded in the base of the jelly monster. The spike plant on the blade seemed to suddenly go stiff, and then began whipping its tendrils more chaotically than ever before, as if in a frenzy.

The blade within the jelly hummed with the ferocity of the spike plant's piercing motions, and large amounts of the jelly were being broken down. Shockingly, spike plant inhaled and consumed the jelly, rapidly hauling purple chunks to maw-like openings in each rosette, like corals and anemones on fast-forward.

As the plant gorged on the slime monster's body, its wispy leaflets became sturdier and sharper. Among the many silvery leaflets, new purple spines slowly began to sprout, and some mature leaflets began to turn a purple-tinted pewter color.

With a predatory flair, the spike plant sent out a long and lightning-fast tendril to snatch up the severed eyestalk. The spikelets pierced it to gelatinous bits, and pulled it into the depths of the blade!

Within 30 seconds, more than 40% of the purple jelly was gone, along with its eyestalk. Although it had tried to attack with its jelly spikes again, they were directionless and now feeble.

Decisively, the girl pulled the sword back from the base of the jelly and brought it down on the remaining mass with a rough chop. The spike plant immediately continued its hungry frenzy, chewing through huge tracts of jelly, until the purple jelly monster was reduced to a few gently quivering chunks.

Thin tendrils emerged from the depths of the spike plant and brought these errant jelly blobs directly to the depths of the plant for a final snack. Seeing this lethal and predatory display, the girl didn't know whether to laugh or cry. In the end, she just sighed roughly and headed back upstairs as fast as possible, sword (gingerly) in hand.