The Thorniest of Roses (Thistle)

A forest had appeared suddenly, seemingly overnight on the outskirts of New York. In the day and age of the modern metahuman, odd occurrences had almost become the norm. But the sudden growth of an incredibly diverse and viable forest was still quite unique. Stranger still were the disappearances. Men and women from all walks of life, the curious traveler, baffled scientist, misguided child, over 20 people had been lost to the confines of this bizarre new phenomenon. Even stranger still were the reports coming from those who had not been lost to the forest. They spoke of alien plant-life whose forms seemed to shift to the whim of some unknown force. If ever an unnatural occurrence had peaked Dr. Dressler's interest, it was this. As soon as he heard of the alien forest he had dropped his work in a nearby den and set out to discover just what exactly he could find.

Life.
They said only the gods could create it - and if that was the case, She must have been one. The goddess held a brown, fading rose bud in her palm. Her incredibly green orbs glanced across the barren, empty ground. She reached down and touched it. It was nothing but dead rock and wasted potential. It could not continue to exist in such an embarassing state. She'd taken a break after her last few battles had left her worse for wear - but she was back, and ready to fight the fight once again. Standing up from the ground, Thistle's blood red hair blew through the heavy wind and she inhaled. The sunlight pierced through the clouds and soaked into her skin. Even when surrounded by death, she could feel the potential for life beating through the ground. She cupped the dying rose to her chest, before extending her hand and letting it go. The wind creeped around the rose and carried it through the air, before it settled on the ground. Thistle walked over to the rose and closed her fingers into a fist. Thrusting her hand downwards, she pushed the embers of life from the rose into the ground - it's petals withering and turning black. Knowing that it's sacrifice would not be in vain, Thistle raised both her arms once more before she pulsed them towards the ground.

The rose's lifeforce sprayed downwards, forming unseen roots which splintered their way through the stone. Raising her arms again, she thrust them down, audibly crying out. The life force multiplied, spreading the roots further and causing grass to manifest in a small patch around the rose. She threw her hands into the air a final time and shouting, slamminh her palms against the her womb, the earth. The grass rapidly spread, covering several meters in a matter of seconds, flowers blooming here and there. The roots beneath the ground spread even further, tapping into water reserves beneath the surface. The goddess could feel lifeblood flowing through her children once more. She let out a sigh of relief. The hard part, was over...

The grass continued to creep across the ground and the goddess rose to her feet. Her gaze fell upon her sacrifice, before she twirled her finger, flicking it upwards. From it's withered body, a rose grew at incredible speed. Laughing, she kept lifting her hand through the air, the rose growing larger and larger, before it bloomed into gigantic throne like construct, it's stem branching off and forming several twisting and churning limbs which were bathed in thorns. She approached her throne, running a finger along the petal, before planting herself firmly in the centre. Her eyes began to glow an emissive green and it seemed as if nature around her began to accelerate. Trees, flowers, bushes and brambles all maturing and spreading at a supernatural pace. Their advance was merciless and unprejudiced - anything in their way was entangled and lost within the forest. A nearby car, and it's occupants, found themselves impaled by a rapidly spreading tree's branches. A camping park drowned in vines, the tent-dwellers strangled. Thistle began to laugh, watching events unfold through her rapidly spreading children - she hadn't made any move against mankind in what felt like years. She forgot how good it made ger feel. It took nearly an hour, but eventually her forest had reached a considerable size - 10 miles in any direction, with it's Matriarch at the core.



Just because it had reached optimal size didn't mean her forest was finished. It was still ungoing rapid evolution, the vines on the trees acting more akin to serpents, fangs and venom included. Petals blew through the air like swarms of scarabs, lacerating the flesh of any fauna they encountered with their barbed edges, before drinking their blood. Luminiscent flowers bloomed and faded within seconds, as if they were Will'o'Wisps. The trees seemed impossibly tall, and if one looked hard enough they'd be able to see that they were moving - slowly - but they were. However, don't stare at them overlong as you wont notice their roots attempting to entrap your feet and pull you into the dirt. It seemed the longer the forest persisted, the more perverted, or correct depending on your views, the natural orders became - Flora was dominating Fauna... and Thistle loved it. She'd created Gardens of Eden before but this one felt special. However, as was typical of their kind - the humans couldn't leave well enough alone. Can a goddess not plot their demise in peace?

A group of scientists, along with their two military escorts, ran through the woods, their faces dripping with a mixture of tears, snot and sweat. They'd come to get samples and were almost clever about navigating the shifting woods - they brought a ball of yarn and tangled it around a branch before they entered. They didn't notice the trees had been moving around them until they found the branch they tied the string around again - in the middle of the forest. Hopelessly lost, Thistle's children had been picking them off one by one, enjoying the feast... and the hunt.

"We're done for!" One of the scientists cried, taking a moment to catch his breath. He took off his glasses and began wiping his eyes, unaware of a tiny flower that had attached itself to his hand.

"Don't say that! We can get out of here!" A red haired doctor cried, she'd wore a skirt and had several lacerations over her legs - venom was pumping through her veins and she'd succumb at any moment.

"Listen - you need to stay calm, if we stay calm we can get out of here. Tell them Davidson." The military escort turned to his companion and looked him in the eye. Davidson did not look back. His eyes were staring dead ahead. His mouth opening a closing gently, before blood began spilling from it. Looking down, Davidson slowly wrapped his fingers around the incredibly thin branch that had pierced straight through his mid rift.

His breathing shuttered, the end of the branch slowly spreading outwards, leaves and thicker branches spurting. Davidson choked back tears before the branch violently yanked him backwards. He screamed before his body was pushed into the base of a tree, which rapidly grew a mouth and opened, clamping the solider in jaws of bark. The scientists and the soldier screamed before they began running as fast as they could, abandoning him. Mid-sprint, the venom's effects finally kicked in and the red head fell to her hands and knees. She kept trying to move but her vision was blurring. She could make out black tentacles slowly curling around her hands and ankles. When she realised that they were vines, she began trying to fight back, but the venom left her too tired to resist - her still conscious body being pulled into a gigantic Drosera Capensis which coiled around her body like an octopus tentacle.

The solider grabbed the last scientist by the arm and screamed for him to leave her - they began frantically running again. Thistle had watched the events unfold and was honestly growing bored of humanity trapsing where it wasn't wanted. She stood from her throne, down the thorny steps and looked to the sky. Her body seeped into the ever shifting ground of the forest, flowers blooming where she'd once stood. Her figure emerged from the green, aggressive ground right infront of the fleeing duo, petals swirling around her body. They skidded to a halt, looking at the woman who stood before her - clad in plant life instead of clothes, blood red hair twisting as Ivy vines weaved through it. "What the fuck?" The soldier shouted, raising his gun and instinctively firing at the woman.

Thistle looked to the side, raising a hand - bullets hitting against her skin and stopping. "Humans and their constructs." She walked towards the pair, causing the incredibly diverse amount of plant life growing on the floor to trip them up. She grabbed the solider by the hair and lifted him. The goddess created a stone podium beneath herself and used it to elevate herself several feet in the air, dangling the solider above the ground. The man flailed and screamed before she turned her hand into a ginormous wooden spike, piercing it straight through his heart. She kept the stake through his chest for a few seconds before throwing the man to the side - the forest quickly claiming his corpse as it's own. Stone steps rose from the floor, allowing her to descend from her podium and she approached the final man, who was being held against the floor by various brightly coloured flowers and vines. With an upward motion of her finger, the plants elongated and suspended the man before her.

He wanted to speak but he was too choked up on tears. Thistle approached him, placing her hand against his chin and looking him in his muscus filled, slimey, tear drowned eyes. "You are not the first to trespass here..." She began, aggressively turning his head to the side. "And I doubt you will be the last of your kind to feed the forest." She pulled him closer, causing the man to snivel. "I will make you a deal, human - I will let you live, provided you warn the rest of your kind to stay out of my kingdom." She leaned in close, until her nose was almost touching his. "Do we have a deal?" The scientist silently nodded, a cry croaking from his throat. [color=olive]"Good." She held a finger in the air before tapping it against the side of his head. The tiny flower he'd rubbed into his eye rapidly grew, causing his eye to explode - plant life spewing out of the socket, coated in eye slime.

His screams grew fainter as he was violently dragged from the woods, before he was thrown onto the ground, directly infront of Dressler, blood and pollen spilling from his eye. The vines slithered backwards, back into their domain, and the main held his face, crying and screaming to stay out of the woods.

Thistle - watching through the plant that was growing from the man's socket - observed the new comer. And found a sigh escaping her lips when he failed to heed the warning.

Dressler's mouth fell agape as he stared at the man sent screaming out of the alien forest. His eyes scanned over the man, quickly finding the small plant living in his eye socket. Yes, living, Dressler could see that the tiny flower was living parasitically off of the man's nutrients. From its genes he could see the potential in the small thing and knelt down to the doctor, resting his elbows on his knees, a wicked smile on his face. Reaching out, he'd hold the confused man's head down. With the other hand he'd touch the flower, taking in more of its genetic information. A sadistic laugh escaped him as he realized the full purpose of the growing organism. Without another word, he rose to his feet and stepped over the man to enter the beautiful convulsing forest.

Immediately his sense were assaulted by the various new lifeforms contained within. Every single plant within was twisted and mutated well beyond its regular capabilities. Some were even entirely new species, completely unfamiliar to the well versed Dr. Dressler. It was a paradise teeming with new life. And as his eyes lay on each new organism, his body morphed and molded, taking on bits of the plant-life, trying it on like a new shoes before returning to his own genetic structure. It was marvelous, such bizarre overaggressive life. This, he thought, was the sort of untamed and terrible wilderness that he hoped would one day blanket the earth of his design. Such aggressive plant life would force adaptation in the fauna as well, pushing them to new heights and ever feeding the cycle of natural selection. He simply had to find the being responsible for such unchecked and glorious growth. And so deeper into the forest he ventured, noting the discarded skeletons and still digesting meals of the alien fauna with a certain level of catharsis. They did just as his children would do.