Rosario drove away from the clearing, undoing the path they had followed the day before.

During the Great Collapse, some twenty years earlier, green areas were the first ones affected when plant species began mutating all around the world. This had been the reality of this part of the country, once known for its beautiful forest-covered mountains and green valleys. It also meant the area had been abandoned for longer and the roads were, in the best case, covered by a layer of soil, grass, and small plants.

The tunnel and the road that led up to it were once the primary access to the Valley of the Simme. Before the construction of the tunnel, however, the road followed the river through a narrow ravine, the only natural access point to the valley. Rosario hoped the old road was still more or less usable. According to the old maps and tourist guides she had read the days preceding the trip, there should be a road branching off as soon as she made it downhill.

The loose terrain over the road made for a dangerous drive, but Rosario still managed to reach the flat terrain below. Not too far from there, she recognized an old traffic sign pointing towards the side road, which was surrounded by large shrubs and a few regular tall trees.

As she inspected the status of the road, she frowned when noticing tire marks in the mud, clearly heading in the same direction she intended to go. It had been a rainy season, which didn’t help in keeping the marks intact, but she thought the tracks were at least a few days old.

It wasn’t an alarming sight, but it made her wonder who it could be. Fellow crystal hunters, perhaps? She had chosen this place because it was far away from any major human settlement in the area, and did not expect to see anyone else during this trip. Rosario knew there was a town called Spiez nearby, and she had planned to make it their first stop after getting their hands on some raw crystals. Perhaps the townspeople were exploring the area.

Regardless, she preferred not being around people, yet with no other option she began driving, with the branches of the shrubs scratching on the sides of the vehicle.

When the forest surrounding the road suddenly cleared, she saw the vertical sides of the ravine towering above her. Gigantic behemoth oaks grew on each side of the river, which on its way out of the valley was contained by a dam, forming a lake into which the trees dipped their roots. The dam was large enough to form a waterfall that plummeted deep inside the original bed of the ravine, crashing over rocks and causing a plume of mist. A wide bridge had been built to cross over the ravine just before the waterfall, and the constant humidity had made a forest of shrubs and ferns grow over it. Between the bridge and the first oak on her right was an open space, where a pickup truck was parked next to a blocky one-story building that Rosario recognized as a small power plant.

The mossy building was old, clearly pre-collapse, except for a wooden shack built on its side; construction material lay near it, carefully covered in tarp. Putting the pieces together, it looked like the townspeople were trying to repair the old power plant.

Rosario parked as far away as possible from the building and rolled down the window: other than the sound of the water, birds and insects, the place was silent. She then looked for the road into the valley, which should have been close to the power plant, but it had long disappeared under rockslides, and behemoths occupied all the terrain between the side of the mountain and the edge of the reservoir. She’d have to walk from here.

Rosario opened a small compartment in the van’s panel to her right and revealed what looked like a large old battery. She removed it and put it in her coat; it was unlikely someone would try to get close to a crystal hunter’s vehicle, but one could never be sure enough. Without its power source, the vehicle was useless. She next readied her backpack and rifle and hopped down from the van.

As she approached the power plant, she placed her hands around her face and yelled towards it. “Is there anyone there?” She called. “I’m a crystal hunter, I’m just passing by.”

Silence.

The sun neared the summit, yet a faint trace of black smoke lingered over the forest ahead. Hoping that Stefan and Franziska would still be in the same location, she took out a smoke bomb and smashed it. She never noticed the stowaway lizard that now climbed over the panel on the driver’s side, watching her go. The little lizard then clicked its tongue several times, a sound that Rosario couldn’t tell apart from the other sounds coming from the surrounding forest.

*****

Deep inside the ravine, Franziska and Stefan finally descended from the gigantic oak tree.

“Look! It’s another smoke signal!” the girl was jumping in excitement.

“It must be Rosario’s. Let’s hurry!”

If there was any advantage to the dense monstrous forest, it was that the shadow it cast was so impenetrable that hardly any vegetation covered the ground, making it easier for the sibling to swiftly walk over the uneven terrain.

At this point, the river still flew wild over a rock bed, creating turbulences and rapids. These soon disappeared as the mass of water widened and turned into the reservoir. The soil became mud, and the only stable stepping points were roots and rocks, all covered in moss and algae, making them too slippery to step on safely.

Their nervousness didn’t help either, especially after the screeching they just heard from the forest behind.

*****

On the other end of the reservoir, Rosario slipped for the second time and fell sideways into the mud. She felt the wind pick up and heard another distant thunder: the storm was approaching, and staying in a ravine during a violent storm was less than ideal. It was impossible to advance in that swampy terrain, but she had to. Just what could she do?

As she tried to push herself up, the branch she was holding on to broke, making her fall again and slide down towards the lake. Swearing, she looked up and noticed for the first time a short pier behind the power plant, where a rowboat was tied to a handrail. Finally, some luck on her side. Maybe she could still make it to the other side of the lake on time.

She called repeatedly as she approached the building, but again, no one responded, not even after she knocked on the sturdy metallic door several times. She then tried opening it, but it was locked, and this was not the kind of door she could brute force.

The power plant was also surrounded by a tall fence, and with no one opening the door for her, the only way to reach the boat was by going over the roof or climbing the fence.

After looking around in the storage shed, she found a ladder that she used to climb up to the roof. Decomposing leaves and moss covered the corrugated metal panels, and as she walked carefully towards the back, she began noticing a repulsive odor in the air. It was undoubtedly the stench of rotting meat.

Standing at the edge of the roof, she saw a short path leading from the building’s back door to the pier, where the boat was tied. Everything looked clear, so the smell had to come from inside the building. Was that why no one had responded to her calls? Did something happen to the people working there? Crystal sickness? A monster, perhaps?

She tried her best to cover her mouth and nose, yet the stench was too strong, and she was sure it would get worse when she jumped down, which it did.

The nauseating odor numbed her senses. She turned around and found the back door open; there was enough light coming in from the windows to illuminate a rectangular concrete hall with three turbines arranged side by side, and a series of other pieces of equipment whose function she didn’t know. It was clear that, at some point not too long ago, someone had taken the time to scrape and remove the dirt off the walls and machinery. There were even some lamps installed, although neither the lamps nor the turbines were working.

And there, nested between two of the turbines, lay a tall and bulbous creature.

It was of a dark green color with some lighter specks, which made it difficult to distinguish it in the semi-darkness. Its lower outer skin, if it could be called like that, didn’t seem strong enough to keep its form, giving the bottom end the impression of an amorphous water balloon. The creature’s size tapered upwards, where it was covered in scales as big as a hand, and while Rosario was on high alert, a small cynical corner of her mind pointed out the thing seemed more like a grotesque half rotten artichoke. She cursed her imagination for the distasteful comparison.

Rosario didn’t even realize when she readied her rifle and aimed at the creature, but a few seconds passed and nothing happened; it seemed the disgusting artichoke didn’t move.

Only then did she understand the rotting smell didn’t come from the plant itself but from the corpse of what seemed to have been a deer, lying close to the bottom of the plant and covered in thin projections that came from the monster.

How on earth did that deer end up in the machine room? Certainly not from where she came. Having a deer climb a building or a fence seemed unlikely. Could it be that the people working here left the door open at some point? Maybe for a longer time, so a monster plant took root inside and somehow a deer found its way too. Then, when workers returned, they found the monster and locked it away. It sounded complicated but somewhat plausible, but when Rosario looked closer at the wounds on the animal’s chest, her eyes went wide: those were the injuries caused by a hunting rifle.

She took back her previous thoughts. It was clear now that people had been feeding that creature.

Still in shock at the thought of a human being purposely feeding a monster, she heard a rustling sound coming from behind the turbines. Was someone else there?

*****