“Stop bringing people into the canyon,” El said, eyes watching the vines slowly lifting themselves off the walls and canyon floor. “Some kind of… thorny plant is moving in all kinds of ways a plant shouldn’t.”

  Almost like they were prehensile tentacles—and not wrist-thick plants—the vines twisted in the air, kind of like an earthworm writhing in a puddle. The tips of the vines, each with their own purple flower near the end, snaked into the centre of the passage, then weaved through the air in small circles. Then, as if they all noticed El at the same time, they turned in her direction. What had been the tip of the plants split into four leaf-like pieces, each with dozens more small, hooked barbs within.

  “Mouths. The plants have mouths,” El said, lifting one sword horizonal to point towards the vine-mouths in front of her, while she carefully twisted her head to look behind. Yup, the way she’d come in was also blocked by a web of the criss-crossed vines. A glance up showed her a pretty clear path out of the canyon if she needed it, but that wasn’t something the refugees could do. Getting rid of the creepy plants here and now was definitely in order.

  “Purple flowers?” Laze asked.

  “Uh… yes. How’d you guess that?”

  “Tas said it sounds like something called a bramble-devil,” Laze explained. “The flowers have a smell that lures prey in and makes them sleepy, then the vines latch on, saw the victim apart, and suck the insides out. If you see one of the flowers, be very careful.”

  “What about if I see thirty of the flowers?” El asked in return, the vines weaving closer to her. They hadn’t made an obviously aggressive move yet, but she could feel the tension in the air growing with every passing second. Many of the vines had started to vibrate, their thorns sawing up and down along their lengths, and the winged flowers felt like they were staring right at her.

  “Tas says there’s no way you could see thirty. That would be an infestation that could threaten this whole area,” Laze explained, then continued more quietly. “Do you really see thirty?”

  “Could be twenty-nine,” El admitted. She could still vaguely smell the sweet scent, but she definitely wasn’t feeling drowsy, which meant her frost armor was protecting her for the time being. “Tas know any easy way of killing all this? There are a lot of vines. Sure, I can just start chopping…”

  “Hold on,” Laze said, then went silent for a moment. “Okay, Tas went a little pale when I told him you really did see that many flowers. About fighting them, whatever you do…”

  One of the mouthy vines suddenly snapped in El’s direction, so fast it was like a lunging snake. But, not nearly as fast as her brother when they sparred. A flick of El’s wrist brought her sword up in a hooking parry that caught the vine just behind the purple flower. From there, the terrible blue flame did its work, instantly freezing the plant matter to the point it was so brittle the continued motion of the sword cut cleanly through it.

  Splat, the severed mouth landed on the ground in front of El, while the rest of the vine retreated in pain, and Laze finished her sentence.

  “… don’t separate the purple flower from the rest of the vine.”

  El fought back a groan as the severed vine recoiled and then began to vibrate more fiercely. “If I were to do that, hypothetically speaking of course, what would happen?”

  “According to Tas, it would send an individual plant into a frenzy. If there really are thirty of them there, he thinks it would cause a chain reaction, making them all go berserk. In the confines of a canyon, it’d make the whole area a deathtrap of whipping saws.”

  “Yup, seems pretty accurate,” El said, every single vine around her ripping itself free from the wall and flailing with vibrating thorns in every direction. The mouths in front of the remaining purple flowers spread wide as if screaming in rage, and then they all came at El.

  Twisting to the side, she dodged the first lunging vine, then whipped her sword up to cleave through the extended plant. El continued both motions, turning on her lead foot to bring the sword up, over, and down in an arc trailing blue fire. Two more vines fell to pieces, their frozen, severed ends recoiling as if in pain. No time to celebrate drawing first blood—if plants even bleed—El wove a net of parries in front of her with her other sword.

  One, two, three more lancing vine-mouths fell dead to the ground around her, but they were barely a drop in the bucket compared to what was left in the canyon. A burst of blue flame shot her a dozen feet into the air just as a whole host of vines swept around to catch her legs, and she grew her wings to their normal eight-foot lengths. A twist and a swing cut apart another vine ahead of her, while the wings behind her swept across more of the plants reaching for her back.

  Though the billowing flames of her wings didn’t sever the vines as they met, flickers of blue fire caught on the plants, turning them blue and brittle. With their own motions shattering them before they even reached El, she focused on her swords as she continued to twist and turn in the air. Blue flashed whenever she wasn’t fast enough, her frost armor turning aside sawing attacks that slipped past her defense.

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  “How exactly do I kill these?” El asked. Her carnage had already left the ground beneath her carpeted in fibrous stalks, but the air around her was only growing thicker with whipping vines. She slashed down, mercilessly cutting apart two vines, but a third trailed just behind, delayed like it was learning her timing. Out and around the vine looped, twisting around her wrist in noose-like efficiency.

  Vibrating madly, the thorns sawed back and forth, blue flames sparking off her frost armor. El flexed her arm, the kinetic conversion of her armor freezing the plant even as it tried to cut her hand off, and the vine shattered. Blue chunks fell to join the others on the ground, but the single plant had delayed and distracted her, another lassoing up to catch her arm again. And it wasn’t the only one. A second vine snagged one of her ankles, while another particularly ambitious one curled around her waist.

  “Burning stupid plants,” El grimaced. “Laze? Need to kill these!” She worked at chopping through the grasping vines, but for every one she cut, the delay allowed two more to grasp her. Within three slashes of her sword, she had half-a-dozen new vines coiling around her—with one even slithering around her throat.

  Blue sparks spat in constant streams where her armor protected her, but she was starting to feel a squeeze beneath where the plants held her. The frost armor was powerful, but not indestructible—the plants were going to get through, and soon.

  “Laze?” she asked again. “Oh, burn this!” Ripping one arm free, the vines shattering where they were frozen, El dipped her shoulder and flared her wings. Blue flames gushed out in a powerful wave that spun her on the spot like a top. The sheer torque of it ripped her free of the grasping plants, and bathed everything within fifteen feet of her in freezing flames.

  A high-pitched keening joined the buzz of vibrating thorns as the mass of burning plants recoiled. Burning…? Licks of blue fire consumed the closest vines, while also spreading down their lengths, leaving everything frozen as it passed. That was new, but El didn’t have time to dwell on it, more vines that’d managed to avoid her flare already snaking in to try and catch her again.

  “The bramble-devils have a heart,” Laze said.

  “Bet they love long walks on the beach too,” El replied dryly, joining the hilts of her swords together to form a flaming, double-bladed lance. Twirling the weapon around her with both hands, she cut apart the closest vines, then flared her wings and shot through the opening. More of the plants withered away as they froze or caught on fire, but it still wasn’t enough.

  “No, I mean a heart—like a core—that you need to find. Hit that and the plant should die. Tas says they usually start where the seeds were, so probably underground,” Laze said.

  “This is all solid rock,” El said.

  “In small cracks between the stones, then,” Laze answered.

  “I’ll help you look,” Nidina said, a second before a leg-sized arrow of flame shot down ahead of El. The orange fire tore through the plants like they were dry wheat, and then Nidina was in the canyon with her. The woman tore at the vines with a vengeance, dancing embers quickly filling the space as she cut and burned her way through the plants with brutal efficiency.

  While El’s flames certainly hurt the plants, Nidina’s seemed to terrify them. None of the vines tried to strike at the new addition to the fray, and all focus turned to escaping the orange flames engulfing anything that got close.

  Vibrating vines rushed at El in a mass of frenzied sawing, but they lacked the coordination that had allowed them to catch her before, and she spun her spear in front of her. So concerned with fleeing Nidina, the vines practically threw themselves on El’s blades. Frozen plant matter rained around her to join the burning sections from Nidina’s onslaught, and then they were past. Nidina followed a second later, continuing her pursuit like a shark circling a school of fish. Everywhere she got close, the vines moved away as a group, but… but… El’s eyes followed the stalks to where they anchored in the ground.

  There, she drew her arm back then hurled her spear at a crack in the ground. WHAAM, the solid, blue flames smashed through the stone as it simultaneously froze, contracted, and shattered it. Chipped rock exploded outward from the force, the canyon wall shook, and most importantly, the attached vines stiffened and then suddenly dropped lifeless to the ground.

  “One down,” El said. “Nidina, keep doing what you’re doing, but watch for the anchor points. Hit those when you can.”

  “Got it,” Nidina said, cutting apart two more vines, then jetting to the side to drive both swords into a crevice in the wall. Like El’s earlier strike, the vines stemming from the space spasmed and then went still. “That’s two.”

  No longer accosted by the plants, El ignited a bow of blue flames in her hands and drew back an arrow. Her eyes traced another set of vines back to their origin, and she released the shot. WHAM—the vines went dead. One after another, she fired arrow after arrow into the canyon wall. Sometimes it only took one shot to reach the heart, while others took two or even three arrows. Somehow, even though she was dealing with solid stone, her blue flames were surprisingly effective.

  Every contact with her new magic almost seemed to make the rock simultaneously contract, split, and become extremely brittle. Almost like her fire was separating it into some kind of really small component parts, often leaving little more than a fine powder in its place. Whatever, as long as it worked.

  Arrow after arrow rained down while Nidina cut, stabbed, and lunged her way after the vines. Finally, several minutes after the other Firestorm had joined El in the canyon—and lived up to the name—the passage was still. The last vestiges of the plants still smoldered on the ground, but nothing else moved. Both the keening and buzzing of the sawing vines had gone silent.

  “You think that’s it?” Nidina asked.

  “Seems like it,” El answered. “Laze, can you keep an eye above while the people move through? Nidina should stay here in case anything is playing dead when the people pass. I want to check further ahead to make sure there aren’t more of these.”

  “Will do,” Laze said. “The top of the canyon looks free of monkeys for the most part.”

  “Not surprising,” El said. “Dayne, how’s it looking in the back there?”

  “Few monkeys showed up, but it’s starting to look like they think we aren’t worth the trouble. I’ve got two glaring at me, but they aren’t moving any closer,” Dayne said in his methodical way.

  “Keep an eye on them until everybody’s inside,” El said. “Let’s get people moving, though. Who knows what else we’ll have to deal with today.”