“This is fascinating,” I had to admit, watching as the latest experiment Luna and I had conducted together was getting just a tiny bit out of hand. Given that it was spring and thus the season of, well, reproduction, we decided to get in on the ground floor and see what might happen if we altered the seed of some plants just a little. Or maybe more than a little, as we could now see after we had spread those altered seeds across a small mountain valley the day before. Now, within a little over twenty-four hours, the seeds had started to sprout and done so with an unholy vengeance, filling the small valley with a number of plants that seemed to outstrip the number of seeds we had originally altered.
“We could call them Windchimes; it’s a nice name, don’t you think?” Luna asked, listening to the fascinating sounds our creations made. The seeds had originally come from sunflowers, simply because getting those seeds was fairly simple, and from there, we had added just a bit of elemental manipulation, alongside a good boost with Life Magic from Luna and a bit of, well, chaos, courtesy of my Darkness Magic. Adaptability was a wonderful thing, though the entire combination might have overdone it just a little bit.
The plants now looked like a cross between a leek and a reed, a single, long and green leaf, sticking straight up, almost a metre in height, with a tiny flowering bulb sitting roughly in the middle, making them just a little odd. These singular leaves were part of the plants’ magical organ, allowing them to use Wind Magic and chime with a fairly pleasant sound. Maybe a little too pleasant.
Somehow, the seeds had taken the Chaos and Life as their foundation and built a sturdy magical function from there, using the Wind Magic we had included to improve their propagation to make something entirely new and unexpected. Namely, a plant able to make sounds and use those sounds to lure and possibly kill, though we had yet to observe that, its prey. It was quite ingenious, though I began to wonder just why so many plants went in a carnivorous direction, trying to lure and kill their prey instead of allowing some poor herbivore to eat the plant and regrow at a later point, possibly using the nutrients said herbivore excreted later to start anew. If the plants continued as they seemed to be inclined to, herbivore behaviour would change as the normally fairly harmless plants became just as much, if not a bigger, of a danger than the predators normally hunting them.
It was just a little bit disconcerting, though also incredibly fascinating to observe, and it gave me more than a few ideas. Individually, the magic these plants used wasn’t all that sophisticated, at least not according to my current understanding, but when some five-hundred-odd plants layered the same beguiling effect, things got quite potent fairly fast. Even now, despite knowing of the effect and having a fairly strong and resilient mind, I could feel a small temptation to go down there and check the plants out up close. Only, I wasn’t sure if that idea was a natural one, born from my incessant curiosity, which had caused me to stumble into danger more than once or if it was induced by the soft, chiming noises the numerous plants made as they caused a soft breeze to swirl in the valley.
“It’s a nice name, yes, though we might want to see if the system has already named them; otherwise, trying to give them a different name would be just silly. We should also try to find out how these plants go about killing their prey once they managed to lure it in, just so we know if it is something we should include in the name,” I suggested, letting my eyes drift across the lower valley, where the noise was likely the loudest.
As we were watching, a curious deer of some sort must have wandered just a little bit too close to the lower valley, falling into the thrall of the as-of-yet unnamed plants. It started to make its way closer, moving slowly and with a lot less caution than I would expect from a wild animal, but that might be due to the enthralling effect of the chimes. Whatever the reason, it didn’t take all that long for it to come close to the chimes and once it stepped past a somewhat arbitrary line, the entire situation shifted in moments.
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Suddenly, the air was filled with the chiming noises, and I could faintly see the wind in the valley below pick up, blowing past the entire field of wind chimes and, once I activated my magical sight, I could see the wind carry a fairly sizable load of magically charged objects. Immediately, I began to worry if Luna and I had accidentally created something like the Withered Fungus we had encountered back home but the elements didn’t match what I would have expected for one, nor did it give me the same overall impression. Plus, there was the lack of a hivemind here, which had been the greatest danger from the Withered Fungi, their collective power, not the way an individual mushroom could control something.
Then, the small particles covered the briefly confused and stunned deer, only for the thing to bolt moments later, running down the valley, its coat covered in seeds.
“It might be a strategy to spread their seed around,” I mused before pushing myself into the air so I could keep an eye on the bolting deer, just to make sure the thing wasn’t infected with some horrifying magical disease. If it was only a case of the plants using other animals to carry their seed, I wasn’t too bothered by it; that had always been a fairly usual adaption for them. If it was something more sinister, I might have to make sure Luna and I hadn’t accidentally created something that could threaten the world if it wasn’t nipped in the literal bud.
While the deer was quite adept at fleeing on land, it wasn’t really able to escape from aerial pursuit, at least not in an open area as the valley was. Once it was further down the mountain, it could disappear into the forest, but up here, without any cover, the silly thing was fairly screwed. Luckily for it, I wasn’t a raptor looking for a snack; I was just interested in observing. As it ran, I focused my sight on it, trying to determine if the seeds it was covered in were digging in and infecting it in some fashion or if they were just hanging on until they would eventually drop and try to germinate in a new area.
By the looks of it, this was a case of merely hanging on; the silly deer wasn’t suffering any ill effects I could see, though, after a few moments of contemplation, I decided to make sure and knocked the thing out with a somewhat gentle burst of Mind Magic. It shouldn’t cause permanent harm, and I even timed it right so the stupid animal wouldn’t hurt itself as it crumbled.
Once it was down, I let myself drop, carefully shielding myself from the seeds with a layer of Wind and Death Magic, just in case these seeds had some fancy way of jumping from host to host. It didn’t look like it, but I wasn’t about to be completely careless, even just getting close enough to examine the deer with my Blood Magic was a risk but a calculated one.
But also, as it turned out, a needless one, the seeds were just that, seeds, and what we had seen wasn’t an attempt to kill some sort of prey or turn it into a zombified monster to spread some sort of disease, it was just akin to a bee getting covered in pollen or a bird swallowing the seeds as it ate some berries, which would be excreted at a later time. These plants were just a little more proactive by the looks of it.
Shaking my head, I decided to heal the silly deer back up, making sure that no damage had come from its tumble while also adding a small service and curing it of a few small problems it had. These were just the usual ailments that could crop up in wild animals, but I felt generous.
Then, I rose back up into the air, erasing any trace of my passing, just in case the thing got paranoid or something, before checking myself again, just in case I had missed something while treating the deer.
But no, I was just as unaffected by any potential contamination as I had been minutes before and soon, I returned to Luna, who had continued to watch the field with Silva. Only now, there was a dead goat lying near the plants, making me wonder just how that had happened.
