"Look, it's Raph!"
"Yeah, a little TOO Raph."
- Donatello and Michelangelo, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze
Ignis's advice to go into a monster-infested forest collecting rare supplies for a new vegan dish on the Hammerhead menu didn't seem like such a brilliant idea now. After fighting through the garden variety of flans, tonberries, and cactuars, they found a flower-filled meadow in the heart of the forest where only the most peaceful creatures seemed to dwell. The plants growing here teemed with more organic life than any other part of the forest, providing Noctis and his party with what seemed to be a free goldmine of ingredients.
That's when they came face to face with the dryad.
While the party was busy cutting down every swollen cucumber and seed-packed tomato they could find, something started to rattle above the forest floor. The sound came from a short and vivaciously stout tree in the center of the clearing. Where it should have had branches, it was flowering a single enormous lily bulb from a knothole in its spiral trunk.
The petals shook open to reveal the botanical likeness of a beautiful woman.
From her hips upward, she almost could have passed for a human in elaborate makeup. She had long, parsley green hair, viridian eyes with a pattern resembling sunflower petals, and a sensuous, almost bare body made of porous and lightly colored plant flesh; smooth emerald curves draped in a thin veil of leaves and petals. But below her waist, her anatomy split into an incomprehensible mess of thorny vines and plant stems descending through the trunk of the tree.
The dryad quickly made it known she felt threatened. She stretched her veiny palm toward the men, signaling an army of sentient weeds to charge at them. Behind the party, crackling oak walls rose up to block any attempt at retreat. The very forest seemed to close in on them like a living prison.
The battle raged on. Every time they slashed through more of her endless vines, the creature appeared more like she was heartbroken than in any sort of pain. While they spent their energy fighting the hostile plant life and cutting through the dryad's multiplying defenses, they never managed to move an inch closer to her.
"What fine little saplings you are," the dryad murmured to her attackers from her safe loft, her voice like gentle wind whistling against damp leaves. "I've never seen such strong and healthy bell sprouts. You'll come to love me once I strain you out of your ugly human artifices and help you mature into real living beings."
The party pressed forward in battle, undeterred by her cryptic threat. When they were finally close enough to confront the dryad herself, the mob of weeds flailing around them were joined by every flower in the clearing rising up on its roots. Dozens of angry blossoms opened their petals at once, dousing the forest in dense pink clouds of pollen.
An overwhelming floral scent burned through Noctis's nostrils and sent his mind into a daze. He could hear his allies in a storm of muted coughing as his ears rang deafeningly. He swung his sword toward the dryad one more time, only striking her smiling blurred illusion as his eyes saw double.
Then he toppled into darkness.
Noctis awoke to a swelling tickling sensation instantly followed by a feeling of deep, longing emptiness. He was sprawled on the forest floor like his body had turned to solid iron. Tiredly gazing to his sides, he saw Ignis and Prompto were in the same unfortunate position as him. They were covered up to their waists in a solid swarm of vines, with their coats ripped open and nets of smaller plants stretched across their broad chests. The plants tangled around their hips were gently rising and falling in a distinct rhythm. At first, Noctis thought this motion meant the plants were simply breathing.
Gladiolus was still putting up a losing struggle with the dryad looming over them all, but his time quickly came to an end. His great sword slipped from his fingers as he was finally overtaken by the plant beauty's tendrils. They shot up his legs and wrapped around his navel, tingly poison ivy vines brushing rock hard abs. Then came the violent sounds of tearing leather and a metal zipper being ripped apart at the seam. Gladiolus lost his footing and crashed over backwards.
With the fighting done, they were laid out at the dryad's base like the four poles on a compass, sedated under a heavy blanket of plant pheromones. They were kept only a few yards apart from each other in the same basic position, sprawled flat on their backs with moist cotton plants propped under their heads. The dryad's roots spread across their vulnerable bodies, weaving their chiseled muscles into her soft, quivering circulatory system.
Noctis flinched as he felt a tiny thistle caress him at his core. He began to realize the weeds pinning down his waist weren't just breathing on top of him.
"Three days worth of seeds is all I should need from each of you," the dryad announced from the top of her trunk. "Three days to grow your proper vessels from your most potent genes, and then I'll be able to give your corrupt human husks back to the earth."
The weeds around Ignis grew tense and still. He let out a groan that conveyed a combination of intense pain and extreme relaxation. The unyielding shrubbery covering his lower half restricted his legs from pulling away. The bright green capillaries trailing off of Ignis turned dark as they were filled with thick liquid. The flow moved away from the human fighter and toward the dryad.
"Aw, my desert hibiscus drained his berries again. You'll need more fertilizer," the dryad said with a delighted chuckle.
The needle of a rose stem snuck below Ignis's waist and made him chirp in sharp excitement. He rolled his head back in exhaustion as the weeds resumed their slow pumping motions.
Prompto gasped in his corner of the humid greenhouse. His threw his head back in agonizing bliss as his entire body rocked lightly on the ground. Then he grew calm, panting for his breath.
"Oh, look, my marigold is in bloom as well," the dryad said toward Prompto.
Gladiolus grunted sharply in defeat. Gnashing his teeth, the lower half of his body spasmed briefly under the under the dense weeds tangled around his waist. His hands clenched into fists as his reflexes pulled against the vines that shackled his arms.
"How nice. My arctic gladiolus is already starting to shine," said the dryad.
She took a moment to simply look over her captives, admiring them as they struggled under her charms, melting under her omnipresent touch.
"Don't hold yourselves back, boys," she spoke over their weak, guttural complaints. "Let's get you nice and juicy so the seeds come spilling out of you."
Something enormous and bulbous was keeping Noctis in the shade. When he looked up, he saw glistening pectorals.
Through the clear green membrane of the massive seed pod hanging from a branch ten feet above him, Noctis could see a perfect mirror image of himself. The sleeping figure was completely nude in the chamber and appeared like all of its muscular features had been molded from reeds of tightly wound grass. Noctis looked across the forest canopy and saw similar pods hovered ominously over Ignis, Prompto, and Gladiolus, each preserving a vegetative twin of their own in different exotic stages of growth.
Noctis traced the path of the veins growing from the pod above him. They descended down the tree, intersected with the dryad somewhere within her dense foliage, and came back out as the same weeds that were mounted thick and tight over his broken belt buckle. Suddenly, he shuddered from the sensation of a daffodil stalk gracing his buried lower regions. At the very same moment, the straw man stirred lightly in its pod.
"So my clever royal orchid is beginning to understand," the dryad mused, her dark green nails stroking the giant petals at her waist. She turned in her pistil, raising her tone so she addressed all four of her captives at once.
"Now that you've all been planted, it's about time you to know what your futures hold," she announced cheerfully. "I'm helping you evolve into the beings nature always intended you to be: As my delectable mandragora sprouts. Your seeds are passing through me so they'll germinate into your rightful bodies, grown from your most primal elements and filtered of all of their human flaws. Your souls will pass through me when they're ready to leave their temporary shells and be bound to their fully grown permanent forms. You'll be so enriched by my soil that you won't even remember how fragile and incomplete you used to be as humans."
"You're turning us into monsters!" Noctis shouted in rebellion.
"I'm extracting the essence trapped in your polluted human bodies so you can revive as your true selves," the dryad said in a comforting voice. "It's no different from a sturdy, handsome tree losing his leaves and shriveling up for the fall only so he can blossom stronger than ever when spring arrives."
"Let us go, you disgusting witch!" Prompto screamed.
"My king, I've failed you…" Gladiolus muttered tragically.
"Guess I'm going to have to get used to this," Ignis said with viperine connotations.
The roots pulled the dryad down from her trunk so she slowly descended on Noctis. Swooning over him and lacing her gentle arms around his wide brick shoulders, her cool plant flesh slipped against his hot-blooded muscle. Her lush green bosom aligned with his mouth.
The leaves at her chest rustled apart, providing access to the two small nubs that grew from the front of her melons. In some ways, they were both the most human and the most plant-like things about her.
Noctis stared vacantly at dark green circle pointed in front of him, then looked up at the dryad's eyes. A look of dread filled his face.
"This is only until your new vessel is ready," the dryad said. "My fertilizer will keep your human stamen in constant bloom for the next three days, but the rest of your body still needs sustenance. You have to share my nectar long enough to keep your current shell alive."
His look of horror intensified at her words.
"What's wrong, human?" she asked quietly "You and your friends came all the way here to defile my roots and collect samples of me. This is your chance to take my nourishment." Her lips curled into a supportive smile. Her eyes flashed in a small twist of justice.
She stoked his cheek with the tip of her malachite nail. When he tried to turn his head away, a petal opened from a low hanging vine and sprayed a strong patch of pheromones in his face. His pupils rapidly expanded and contracted as he succumbed to a sensory overload. When he gazed back at the dryad's nub innocently on display only an inch away from him, he felt himself being drawn toward it like a bee with its sights on a bright yellow flower.
He resisted the urge for another second before his lips slowly parted. The dryad's nectar trickled out at the touch, filling his mouth with an intoxicating blend of spearmint, citrus, and vanilla, and pushing him further into a dreamlike existence. The dryad curved her neck back and sighed as Noctis relieved her of her pressure.
The dryad's fruit slipped from Noctis's lips. The vines rustled under her hips, quietly pulling her away from Noctis and bringing her over Prompto next. Behind heavy eyelids, Noctis watched as she nestled down with the blonde warrior, whispered something to him, and goaded him into absorbing some nutrients from one of her jiggling bulbs.
One by one, for seemingly hours on end, she took turns nurturing each party member and making sure they were always evenly hydrated. She was like a watchful gardener delicately tending to all of her different flowers.
Just as the dryad had promised, it took three days to complete the harvest. By the end of the third day, the four members of the doomed expedition were little more than pale shriveled up prunes, They lingered on the verge of death as they were mercifully kept asleep with a powerful blend of toxins.
Once the men had given all the vitality that was necessary and finally breathed their last, the dryad coiled her expansive roots so they formed a trench around herself and her four prey. Poison sacks in the dryad's trunk began secreting steaming venom and filled the trench.
Skin, hair, and muscle melted away in an instant. Extra powerful acid was needed to chew away all of the leather. Soon Noctis and his three allies were nothing more than a group of skeletons with vines swarming over their hollow pelvises. The bones sizzled, popped, and rapidly dissolved into mulch.
Most of the party's liquefied remains sank straight into the ground, but a small amount was absorbed into the winding roots to provide the last bit of protein required for the fresh mandrakes to grow ripe.
Hot chlorophyll spilled across the forest floor as the first of the four seed pods began to split open.
The imperial city was destroyed in a natural disaster. Titanic trees burst up from the elegant stone streets, collapsing half of the buildings in the market district within seconds. A tower of weeds swept over the castle and flattened it to the ground. Feeble mortals fled for their lives as sharpened tree branches sprouted from the ground in every direction, impaling anyone caught in their path on wooden stakes. The few who were brave enough to fight the out-of-control vegetation found no combination of slicing, chopping, or incinerating could save them.
Leading the invasion were the dryad's spawn, four nigh-invincible and brutally intelligent mandragoras. Their vibrant green bodies were displays of masculine perfection carved from inhumanly sturdy stalks, and they each wore only a sparse collection of leaves to guard their loins. They put down any survivors they could find, hacking through their sworn human enemies with weapons forged from amber. The trees around them grew thousands of miles wide until the entire country was blanketed in lush green darkness.
And so, Noctis renounced his Lucian heritage and assumed a different throne… as king of the plant kingdom.
[BAD END]
Author's note: I was originally thinking about writing a sequel to Fun Times with the Fungi but I ended up weeding out a lot of those ideas.
Author's note 2: Go tell Aunt Rhody this might be the last fanfic update I make for a while because I'll be busy watching a certain Cristina Vee reimagining of the 90s Sailor Moon dub and playing Gravity Rush 2 and Resident Evil 7.