Bird + Staff

To make matters worse, two more brood appeared at that instant. One was the bone-headed variety the other, floating. As Nissa watched they both began moving toward her at an alarming speed. The floating brood tucked its tentacles close to its body, and charged.

Nissa had only a moment. She channeled what little mana she could and formed an image in her mind of an eeka bird a large, pest bird with a long beak. Nissa brought the bird to her and sent it hurling, beak-first at the brood.

The eeka flew straight and buried its beak deep in the brood's mass of concentrated tentacles. The brood stopped its charge and used one tentacle to find the bird and throw it aside. By that time Nissa had drawn her stem sword as rigid as a spike and was charging forward. She pushed off from a boulder and jumped high into the air where she executed a flip and hurled downwards. She plunged the spike into the center of the mass of squirming tentacles, burying it all the way to her fists. Nissa knew that once inside a body, the stem would put out rhizomes and use the blood vessels and arteries to travel through the body. Eventually the roots would fill it.

***

The blackness was taking over Nissa's view when she felt something on her hands and ankles and neck the tickle of the rhizomes peeking out from the tentacles. An instant later the brood's hold loosened, and Nissa fell to the rock, gasping.

***

In the Teeth of Akoum, Chapter 20