"I miss the hallow."

Miles swung the handle of the Whammer out, flaming wire slicing through thick vines that blocked his path.

"I miss the silence." Cosmo's foul retort came not a moment later as the dryad trudged after him.

"Well I miss sensible footwear." He snapped back, hurling the hammer end out to smash through the body of a giant wasp twice his size. A second tug of the wire tore the insect's flaming abdomen in half, blazing chunks fizzling out in the soft mud. "And cake. This thing would go great with some cake."

He pulled out the infinity slice and took an experimental bite of the heart shaped golden fruit before chasing it with a mouthful of the sugary confection.

"Perfection." He mused in a spray of crumbs as a warm glow diffused across his body that hopefully wasn't him.

Cosmo rolled her eyes.

They'd entered this subterranean swampland a few hours ago, at least by his admittedly rough estimations. Apparently the local fauna had some resilience to corruption, or at least hallow brand corruption, and equally apparently the local flora was perfectly able to photosynthesise and grow in the complete absence of light, though Miles had provided plenty of that with his arrival, softly radiating from his fur or the distinctly non-local fauna growing behind him.

"You sure you're okay walking back there? I feel kinda bad."

"Bad enough to remove such foolish attire?" The dryad frowned at him, picking her way between glowing flowers that blazed in fiery colours, sending flickering light to dance off the plant encrusted walls of the the cave.

Miles glanced at his feet with a frown.

"I could go back to the way they were originally?"

"Nevermind." The dryad sighed, running her fingers across a burning flower. "This is fine."

After the loss of his leg to the rain, he'd been fairly excited to find a pair of boots discarded in an otherwise empty chest - something that hinted someone, probably the chosen, had passed through that way before. Less excited when he discovered that they looked awful, but happy enough not to be stepping on pointy rocks, even holy pointy rocks.

Until he'd tried walking in them. His footprints had ignited behind him, a constant hazard for Cosmo trying to follow. Even when they had arrived in the muddy, damp, generally vile region they were now struggling through, the moisture had proved no impediment to the boots, while trying to actually do anything against the ridiculously hostile local critters with them had very nearly lost him another foot. Things had appeared to be looking up when he'd found a fresh pair of boots in the bottom of a giant subterranean tree, except they had been even uglier than the first pair, and just as impractical, providing a thick carpet of vegetation wherever he stepped. So he'd settled down to play cobbler, combining material from both pairs until he had something that looked less like they'd been vomited up by a punk rock garden gnome and his hippy wife, and rather than breaking their functions as he'd hoped, they'd simply combined into their current form, sprouting this thick carpet of luminous orange "lava plants" wherever he walked.

At least he didn't have to worry about getting turned around in here.

"You could walk next to me if you'd rather. Or in front?"

"I would sooner remain a healthy distance from both that weapon of yours and the denizens that seek you in this restless place." Cosmo shook her head, releasing a cloud of glowing cinders from the fiery plant with a faint smile. "As I said, Miles Prower, flowers do not bother me."

"I guess they'd take away your dryad license if they did." Miles slipped his clockwork gun out of hammerspace, sending a spray of improvised metal slugs into the skull of a massive tortoise. The wounds erupted into flame a moment later as superheated slime ignited across its flesh. It slumped to the wet dirt moments later, crumbling into chunks of keratin.

"You have no idea what you are doing, do you?"

"Rude." Miles shot the dryad a frown.

"Not that." She shook her head, illuminated by blazing petals as she walked closer. "The things you do in this place, the tools you employ in your ignorance-"

"Rude." Miles said again. Cosmo ignored him.

"All knowledge for the Chosen comes from the guide, Miles Prower. You fumble with powers beyond your comprehension-" A burning leaf slapped across Miles' mouth as he went to speak up again. "Yet you succeed."

"Well-" Miles pulled the leaf from his mouth, pearlescent fur sizzling slightly from the heat. "I just try things until they work, I guess?" He rubbed the back of his head with a grin.

"And burn your fingers like a wayward sprout half the time, no doubt."

Miles stuck his tongue out at her, but the dryad's expression lacked its usual vitriol.

"Keep struggling, my villain." She smiled, extending her hand to the floor. Her bare toes pushed into the earth. The cavern rumbled around them. "Understand this place."

"Whoa!" Miles grabbed the dryad for support as a world rending shriek rumbled through his bones. "Cosmo, what are you doing?!"

"I am hurting you, Miles Prower." Cosmo's smile turned radiant indeed as a vine thicker than Miles was tall slammed into the wall beside them through the ceiling above. She swept burning petals up in a beautiful kaleidoscope around her with a sweep of her hand. "Let us suffer my mistress's wrath together."

A seed as big as Miles slammed down from the ceiling, punching straight through the earth as he barely slipped to one side.

"You are a very weird girl, you know that?" Miles grabbed the dryad by the waist, forcibly uprooting her as an enormous pink flower, bigger than a house, swung like a wrecking ball down towards them from the ceiling.

Cosmo just grinned, light dancing in her eyes as she hurled burning leaves into the monster plant in a mighty wave.

Miles leapt, burning petals raising from his feet as he skated across mud, providing Cosmo with fresh material to work with even as he dodged a pair of snapping plant jaws.

The massive plant creature shrieked once more, firing one massive seed after the other in rapid succession as Miles focused entirely on evasion. The whole cave seemed to be burning within the dryad's scorching whirlwind, a giant green spider he hadn't even noticed igniting as it climbed the wall down to where they raced by. It never even reached the floor before it crumbled in on itself, legs smoking.

The only downside was that he was running out of places to run. The plantastrophe was big enough with its vines and bulb to make squeezing past its bulk a risky proposition, especially with his grinning passenger, and only a nearly blind descent deeper into the caves remained as an alternative.

The bulb convulsed, expectorating a giant ball of burning thorns towards them that bounced unerringly towards them off every wall. Miles leapt, swinging Cosmo out in one hand as a counterweight to his hammer in the other, slamming it into the ball hard enough to send it crashing back into the giant flower with enough force to tear an enormous petal free. A thorny maw gaped within.

"Well done." Cosmo gasped as he pulled her back into his grip, body glistening with perspiration from the heat. "You have angered her greatly."

"She wasn't already angry?!"

The monstrous plant opened its jaws wide, tearing its remaining petals to shreds as it revealed a gaping pit of writhing pink tentacles within. Fresh vines with snapping jaws soared towards them, flakes of ash peeling from their surface as they weathered the firestorm. Miles leapt down to a subterranean pool, skimming backwards across the surface like a hydrofoil as huge fangs fish lunged up through the surface behind them. Another thornball bounced towards them, reflecting off a tree branch to tear through a curtain of choking vines. With no flowers growing while he skimmed across water, they soon slipped away from the light, leaving only Miles' soft pink glow and the flames of his spinning tails as Cosmo's fiery assault came to an end.

And then a fish bit Miles' tail.

It only lasted a moment, a brief interruption to his momentum before his tails shredded the creature as surely as if it had bitten a boat propeller, but it was enough for physics to rear its ugly head. Miles barely managed to yell in surprise before he dropped into the water like a stone. The dryad flew from his grip to hurtle out of sight. By the time he'd managed to drag his waterproof greenflame torch from his hammerspace Miles' world was already a flurry of gnashing teeth and flashing scales. Hinged jaws shrieked dully against metal, seeking gaps in his armour while he sought to find purchase on the body of fish more than twice his newly increased size, his lungs already starting to strain.

Where was the megaplant?

Keep fighting. He shoved his torch into the gullet of one crocofish, shoving back against a second as it ignited, tails coiling around to crush the life from a third. Shoving his armoured hand into the survivor's mouth he clamped his grip down on its tongue, hurling a grapnel into a nearby wall with the other. He emerged in a rush of water, swinging the fish in his grast up into the wall with an exhausted grunt, dangling a moment from the ceiling, panting for breath.

Where was the megaplant?

Miles grabbed another torch, sticking it against the ceiling with a globule of slime jelly as he peered around the eerily silent cavern, the deflowered subterranean swamp lay dark and still.

"... Cosmo?" Miles swung himself towards the edge of the blood tinted pool - at least some of which was his own. He sunk up to his knees in the soft earth. "...Have you fallen and can't get up?"

He dragged his boots free from the muck with a wet squelch, fiery petals blooming from the hole as he stumbled towards the ledge, where a thin stream of water drained from the pool into the darkness below.

"It is not your fault, Harbinger." Cosmo's voice echoed from the dark.

Miles jumped back as a massive claw clamped down around the spot he'd been standing. He caught his feet against a tree trunk and latched onto its branch, staring down at the plantastrophe dragging itself back from the depths.

"You did not destroy my flower."

Blazing petals struck him from behind, erupting into burning flashes of heat that clung to his armour. Miles quickly threw himself back into the water, armour hissing on contact with the surface before grapnelling free once more. Water dripped from him as he split his gaze between the obvious threat of the plantastrophe and the hidden threat of the dryad's leaves.

The massive thorned head dragged itself over the edge, seeds slicing through the air past him as he dropped from the wall, tails spinning. The plant monster opened its thorned mouth to release another ear splitting shriek - and reveal Cosmo in its centre, tentacles coiled around each limb.

The dryad stared at him with empty eyes, a whirlwind of leaves forming around the monster.

"So you will be eaten gently."

Cosmo's face split into a broad grin as the plantastrophe surged forward.