Gilded Ashes-Chapter 274: Thorny Arsenal

The fog and rain made the ground feel smaller than it really was.

Down here, under Ukai’s main tree and the roots that spread like a web, everything looked the same - wet bark, slick stone, dark soil, and pale mist that swallowed distance. Sounds came in pieces. A shout. A beast’s roar. A sharp crack of wood. Then silence again, like the fog ate the rest.

Enya reached the open area first, helmet down, raincoat abandoned somewhere behind her. The armor looked too heavy to move in. Dark plates completely covered her arms and legs. Sharp edges caught faint light as water ran off it in quick lines.

Yet, she didn’t move like she wore weight heavier than her.

The fight stretched wide across a clearing where roots rose out of the ground like ribs. Ukaians stood scattered behind the front, hands forward, eyes focused, guiding beasts with steady motions. There were no spears. No blades. No luminite weapons.

Just people - and creatures.

The beasts were the frontline. A scaled deer shoved into a dog-looking Nyx, its horns shining with small lights that weren’t natural. Wolves tore in coordinated bursts, their bodies wrong in subtle ways - extra eyes that tracked movement through fog, fangs too long, coats that shimmered like they held moisture differently. Huge birds flew in swarms, their wings cutting through the rain, firing stings that hit Nyx bodies.

Ukai held the line, but it held it painfully slowly.

It was the kind of fight where you lasted, not the kind where you won.

Enya watched all of it for half a second, then she made the battlefield hers. She snapped her arm forward. A vine shot from the ground like it waited for her signal. It wrapped around a root, tightened, and turned into a tension line.

Enya stepped into it and let it throw her. She cut through fog like a stone through water. For a moment, her armor vanished into mist.

Then she landed inside the Nyx swarm.

The first Nyx turned toward her, shaped like a hunched animal with reinforced tendons. It reached, clawing at her chest.

Enya didn’t dodge. A branch erupted from the ground between them, thick as a man’s torso, and drove upward with brutal speed. It speared straight through the Nyx’s center and pinned it against a root.

The Nyx writhed. It tried to re-form around the wood.

The wood grew again. Thicker. Harder. Faster.

The Nyx split into two. The black mass tore apart and then collapsed into glowing ash like it couldn’t hold itself together anymore.

Enya didn’t look at it twice. She was already moving. A second vine snapped up under her boots, lifting her like an elevator, then flinging her sideways. Rain whipped off her armor, and fog swirled around her, every time she whipped it with her plants: Every time she swung, every time she launched herself, vines cut air so fast they pushed the mist away. A circle of clear air opened around her, ten meters wide at first, then fifteen. Fog peeled back like it got scared of staying close.

People noticed. A tamer on a raised platform stared down through the clearing and froze mid-gesture. Two beasts nearly collided because their handler stopped guiding them for a breath.

What in the world is that!?" someone shouted, voice cracking.

"Keep fighting!" another snapped back, but the command came too late. Too many eyes turned towards the armored figure.

Enya landed on a vine she grew in midair, her boots hitting it like it was solid wood, a long curve that formed under her feet and carried her forward like a track.

She leaned into it like on a surfboard, body low, balanced perfectly, and shot toward the thickest cluster of Nyxes.

The vine ended, stretching too much.

But Enya was far from done. She flicked her fingers and threw three seeds, pulled from she knows where. They looked like small green pebbles in the rain. They should’ve bounced off the mud, but they didn’t even reach the ground. The seeds shone slightly, then bloomed mid-flight. Thin green lines exploded outward into thick, whipping vines that anchored into roots, stone, even into each other. Enya caught one with her arm, swung, released, and caught the next without losing speed.

She used the battlefield like it was in her small hands.

A Nyx lunged upward, shaped like a tall, snapping thing with a split jaw. Enya swung her leg out. A trunk erupted from the ground where her heel pointed, rising like a pillar, slamming into the Nyx mid-leap. It crushed the creature against another Nyx behind it, the impact tearing both into pieces.

The blackness tried to re-form, but Enya didn’t give it time. She threw her hand forward and the trunk split into four branches like spears. They punched through the Nyxes, pinning them separately in different directions. The fog around her shimmered with the light of gold.

It looked like a light show. It sounded like war. It felt... Scary.

The Ukai beasts fought hard, but they were suddenly fighting on a battlefield that changed every second. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

A wolf leapt for a Nyx’s throat - and a root rose at the same time, accidentally piercing a wolf through its back, then tore down through the black mass.

A bear charged - and vines wrapped around its torso, turning it into a living battering ram.

The tamers didn’t understand what was happening. A man that looked like a commander shouted from somewhere behind a knot of roots. "Who is that? Which unit is that?"

No answer came. Nobody knew. The armored figure didn’t wear Ukai markings. Didn’t wear Neoshima metal either. Didn’t carry a banner or a beast. She had no tamer with her. No support line.

She was alone. And she was single-handedly dismantling the whole swarm.

Enya slid under a whipping Nyx arm, rain spraying off her helmet, and rolled once on mud that should’ve made her fall. Her roll suddenly turned into a launch. A vine hooked her waist and flung her upward. She rotated in the air, body twisting with unnatural control, and as she rose she planted her hand against a root, splitting it open into a cluster of thorned whips. They shot forward in a wide arc and wrapped around five Nyxes at once. The thorns didn’t just pierce. They dug in, they grew deeper, completely immobilizing them. q

Enya yanked her arm back, and the whips pulled the Nyxes into a single point. Then a thick log drove through the center and shattered the cluster.

Golden ash burst outward like a soft explosion.

The fog tried to rush in again.

Enya’s vines tore it apart.

Her speed made the air around her move differently. Rain didn’t fall straight near her anymore. It bent and scattered, pushed aside by the speed of her motion. Leaves near the clearing shook as if wind hit them, even though the rest of the forest stayed still.

Some of the Ukaians stopped shouting commands entirely, and just stared. A tamer with the panther whispered something.

"That’s... Not plant manipulation" someone else said. "That’s not how it works."

The Nyxes didn’t agree with that. They just kept coming, in worse and worse shapes. The swarm shifted its targert now. It stopped spreading out, towards the summoners. They surged toward Enya like they sensed the center of the threat.

Enya let them. She dropped to the ground and pressed her palm into the soil. Vines erupted in a circle around her, forming a wall that rose fast, interwoven and thick, a living barricade. Nyxes hit it and splattered across it like waves.

The vines didn’t break. If anything, they just grew stronger.

Enya stepped onto the wall and ran along the top as if it was a simple walkway. Her boots splashed through rainwater pooled on wood.

She jumped off the wall and landed on another vine she grew midair, then used it to swing in a wide curve. Nyxes moved where she was. They gathered where her traps waited. They backed into roots that rose behind them, cutting off retreat. They lunged - and collided with branches that appeared in their path. Enya reached into a pouch at her hip, pulled a handful of seeds, and scattered them like she tossed dust.

The seeds hit the mud and disappeared. For half a second, nothing happened. Then the ground opened. Not with vines or small trees, like she did up until now.

With jaws. Three massive plants rose from the soil. They looked like flowers only in the way a weapon looks like a tool. Thick stems, heavy petals, and wooden mouths that opened sideways. Inside those mouths were rows of pale teeth-like ridges that weren’t bone or wood. Just hardened plant structure shaped specifically to bite.

The carnivore towers turned toward the Nyxes.

One of them, looking like a fierce lion lunged, only to be swallowed whole.

The darkness inside writhed, trying to re-form, trying to claw its way out.

The plant tightened.

The Nyx’s body collapsed into glowing particles inside its throat. The plant shuddered once, like it had eaten something really pleasant, then steadied.

Another plant snapped its jaws shut on two Nyxes at once.

Raizen looked at all of this, stunned. He couldn’t take of Enya, even if he wanted to. But this – This was scary.

She didn’t only have a few tricks up her sleeve. She had an entire deadly arsenal.