The commotion died as quickly as it had begun. 

All six of us… and Prince… were pinned down by the over-weighted rocks just staring at us as we struggled.

They didn’t continue to attack. They didn’t even move.

Just what was their plan here?

“Get off of me! Get off of me so that I can kill you all!” Blaze hissed from the ground, wiggling whatever body parts he could to show his anger. I could see the glistening of his sword still in his hand. Even through all of this, he refused to drop it.

“Sir Krystal, lady?” Pip squeaked in a mumble, because nearly his entire head was buried under the gnomes. “If this is that ore-some thing you were talking about, I don’t think I like it.”

“No, Pip. This is definitely not awesome,” I said and tried to move around but it was hopeless. Every part of my body except my neck was held flat to the dirt.

“I don’t know. There is a lot of ore here,” Pip said. “Really mean ore.”

Leo, who managed to shake his head despite two gnomes holding it down, disagreed. “No. No. This is just a game they are playing. These gnomes are my friends.”

“Sir Leo, I do not know the gnomes as well as you, but I can guarantee these ones are not your friends,” Vincent said from somewhere I couldn’t see. 

“That can’t be. They’ve always been my friends everywhere I’ve gone,” Leo answered, clearly not ready to give up.

Sir Zantar attempted to say something in a different direction, but it only came out as muffled echoes. He must’ve been covered from head to toe.

Among all this, the gnomes on top of us still never moved. 

A few others rolled around, clunking and banging together as they surrounded us tighter and tighter, certainly working on doing… something. But for the life of me, I couldn’t see anything useful. 

“Let’s stay positive!” Leo said with a lightness returning to his voice. “It’s a beautiful day to be pinned to the forest floor by rock gnomes. At least that storm never hit.”

“If Sir Krystal had been right, and the storm had hit, we wouldn’t be in this position,” said Vincent with a hint of frustration in his tone.

Ouch. 

That hurt, but I didn’t have any excuses. Well, not any I could use. Saying, ‘The prophetic book told me there would be one, and by the way, you’re all fictive characters!’ wouldn’t help my case at all.

But actually, why wasn’t the storm here yet?

I got over the jab and attempted to struggle under my bonds to twist my neck toward the sound of Vincent’s voice. I couldn’t get my eyes all the way to his, but I craned around awkwardly until I was, at least, facing him… sort of.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

Vincent sighed. “Rock gnomes’ greatest weakness is water. If we’d entered the forest while it was storming, we likely would have found the well and the key piece without any trouble at all.”

You’ve got to be fucking shitting me.

Really? This was my fault?

I fucked this up again?

In the book they had entered the forest while it was raining. How was I supposed to know those details made all the difference?!

Why couldn’t I do anything right, here?

I wanted to scream, but I wouldn’t have been able to with the gnomes on my chest stealing half the capacity of my lungs.

“Fucking hell! Get off of me!” I managed to choke out as loudly as I could and struggle some more under their hold. Even with all my strength, I couldn’t budge an inch.

Useless.

There was no escape, and it was all my fault.

Again.

A rock gnome walked on top of the ones holding me down. This one was particularly ugly-looking, with a long, twisted vine in its hands. 

 The vine was dark, murky green with thorns of blood red jetting out in all directions. I couldn’t see where it came from, just that it ran off past my field of view and into the forest. But, as I looked around, I noticed that there was a gnome with one of these vines standing on top of each of us.

Was that a smile beaming on the gnome’s face too? It seemed really pleased with what was about to happen.

“What’s this? What are you going to do with us?” I asked out of a need for something to make sense here.

And then… the rock gnomes covering my body started to shake… no, not shake, sounds came from them in a horrendous harmony, almost like they were… laughing?

“Fertilizer. Fertilizer. New fertilizer, lovely fertilizer! Great fertilizer. Fresh fertilizer!” They sang in tiny ugly voices, harmonizing with each other from not only me, but from Prince, Leo, Pip and the rest.

“Fer—fertilizer?” I repeated. “What?”

The gnome with the vine on top of me leaned down closer to my face and held it close to my vision so I could see its sharp-as-shit thorns in all their glory.

It looked like a slimy substance was seeping out of the vines and onto the thorns.

“You. One with earth. You. Make pretty flowers grow,” the gnome said as the other rocks continued their chant.

“Vine. Stop you. Vine. Hold you. Earth. Take you.” The gnome’s rocky smile grew before it added, “Slow.”

“Oh… that’s Red Thorny No-Touch Vine,” Leo said, but not in that happy-go-lucky way he had described all the other plants. “I’ve never seen them before, but I’ve heard of them.”

The gnomes giggled. “Yes! Know plants. Share plants. Love plants.”

The Red Thorny… what now?

Something in that name told me I didn’t want the gnome touching me with it.

“Leo, please tell me it’s related to the Deadly Purple Poison Plant or whatever it was,” I said with pleading in my voice for an answer I knew I would not get.

Especially not while watching the thorns held in front of my face drip a suspicious liquid. 

“Nope. Not even close,” Leo answered, “If the thorns of these vines pierce your skin, you will be forever paralyzed. There is no known antidote.”

The gnomes only shook, and chanted, and giggled faster.

“Yes. Yes. Tell. Tell. Plants good. Plants grow!”

“Once our ability to move is sufficiently negated, they will tie us to the ground until we decompose into the dirt. This will happen slowly as we are unable to move and starve to death. Or, so the stories say,” Vincent added, like it wasn’t the most horrific thing I’d ever heard.

I’m sorry. What?

What the actual fuck were these things?

They were going to stab us with a permanent sedative, tie us to the forest floor, and slowly let us rot into fertilizer for their garden? 

Alive?

Holy fucking shit that was dark!

What kind of book was this?!

“Stick them! Stick them! Hold them! Hold them!” The gnomes chanted. “Make pretty flowers grow!”

A loud clamor of rocks clanking together rose among us, and I saw Pip’s head freed down to the neck, along with Leo and Vincent. 

“Perhaps, this wasn’t the best course of action for us after all,” Sir Zantar’s voice finally joined us, and I could only assume it was because the gnomes had freed his head as well.

“I think we figured that out already, thanks,” I said and wiggled harder, faster, stronger.

Still no use.

“I think you were right, Sir Krystal, lady,” Pip squeaked. “This is not ore-some.”

“Once I am out of here, I will crush you all into dust!” Blaze hissed and snarled. He never took a break, did he?

Even Prince was screaming from somewhere. 

Okay, no. They could hurt me. They could hurt these random story book characters.

But they were not going to hurt my horse!

As I thought that, a low rumbling rose in the far distance. At first, I thought it might be the sound of more rocks clunking, or perhaps the wind.

Then it happened again, and I knew in an instant what it was.

Thunder.

The storm was finally coming, just like it had in the book. 

And water was their weakness.

The gnomes with the vines on top of all of us—or at least those of us I could see—leaned in and held the vine right to our throats. I could feel the sharp tip of the plant rest against my skin, a small move away from piercing me and dooming me to the worst fate I could think of.

“W–wait!” I said and to my surprise, the vine backed off a touch. 

Okay. So they could be reasoned with… sort of. 

Time was the enemy here. But also, potentially our ally. All we needed was more of it, and we could survive this.

I had to stall, any way I could, to stop them from poking any of us with their evil sleep juice.

But what? How?

I didn’t know much about them other than they were ugly, mean, and liked flowers. I mean, pretty flowers.

They had seemed really happy when Leo was talking about the Evil Red Vines or whatever they were.

Maybe that was the key.

At least, it was better than nothing.

“I—If I’m going to be stuck here to ro—rot for potential weeks of puuuuure torture, I’d at least like to know about the pretty flowers of your garden first.”

The gnome with the vine twisted its rocky head to the side and backed off a little bit more.

“Knowledge. Good. Flowers. Good,” chanted a few of the gnomes.

I saw one back off from Leo’s neck as well. He looked un-pricked.

“H—hey Leo… what are those, uhm, pink ones over there?”

Leo looked at me with eyes of confusion, but answered anyway. “Those are Pink Sweetie Pies. They secrete a sugar-like substance that also heals wounds quickly.”

“Good. Learn. Now, still!” The gnome with the vine said. The vine-bearing gnomes all leaned back in to wrap the vine around our throats.

“What about the yellow ones?” I said loudly, pushing my head into the dirt to get as far away from the vine as possible.

Once again, the gnomes stalled and turned to Leo, waiting for an answer.

“Oh. I don’t know those ones—” Leo said and all the gnome’s faces grew angry. The vine-gnomes leaned in again, and it must’ve clicked in Leo’s head what I was trying to do because he spoke up, much louder, “B-but those pink ones over there! I know those ones!”

Everything halted once more.

“Uh… those are Fuschia—” but Leo’s definition got cut off by a loud, rumbling crack as a flash of bright white light lit up the entire garden for a split second.

The gnomes all looked up in horror as dark clouds rolled in and covered the blue sky within seconds.

The first raindrop fell right onto the nose of the gnome with the vine on my chest. It sizzled against its skin.

Shrieks of panic erupted from all the gnomes covering the garden as they panicked and leapt off of us like fleas. 

As the rain began pouring harder, the gnomes rolled faster, into the forest, likely to find cover, freeing each of us.

When we all stood, soaking wet and covered in dirt, the garden was empty of anything but flowers, trees, and the sad armor of the rock gnomes’ past victims. 

For once, I might’ve done something right.