Chapter 6: Novelty

20XX, London, England

Her foot landed smack dab in one of the denser bits of this new city. Dozens of those tall and shining buildings she saw in her scrying crumbled beneath her fern-green sole. She sighed, for her first step into this new universe was a fun one indeed.

The other foot followed.

“Oh my, such density. And I thought things were overcrowded in my world.”

Behind the mile tall form of clover loomed that gaping portal. She mulled over the difficult decision of whether to close it or not. As things currently were, she assumed the entire planet she left behind would be infected by her dandelion zombies. They’d find their way onto a ship at some point.

Still, some people from there could perhaps run in here, or some people in here could run back to her home universe. Maybe the connection would destabilized both universes? She couldn’t get stuck in some sort of malformed space without the power to break free, could she?

She decided to close it; it was as easy as zipping a coat. She could always reopen that rift later to collect the harvest of souls she reaped.

Her attention shifted back to the city.

“What amazing sights!” she said. The flower-dressed colossus raised her plant-green hand to her red bangs and looked around. Back home, few buildings crested her ankles, yet here plenty did. Metal contraptions soared through the sky as birds. No carriages to be seen, just wheeled metal constructs. She simply had to know all about this.

As luck would have it, a mass of people cowered by her feet. People were everywhere! She could smell them: there were millions. Millions of souls ripe for the taking. She’d only need one to gleam its memories and knowledge. Just now the causalities from her first steps reached her soul gut, and she was flooded with information.

At her home, no one knew anything of use to her. She assimilated enough gossip that’d Angelica would seethe with envy, sure, but she was the only real witch back in her London. Fashion tricks and business secrets served her little then and now.

In this London, however, the average citizen knew many things. They held advancements in mathematics and science to get her caught up a bit. Of course, they had some history knowledge as well. She learned that the current year here was more than one hundred ahead of her older London. In a flash, they taught her more than the best tour guide ever could.

From these ‘modern’ souls she learned that those metal birds were called planes and they were rife with people. Trains were around, though underground at times. Most buildings were made like the ones she stepped on: tall and rectangular as it was efficient for space. She learned a great many things indeed. People rode trains underground now. There were all sorts of newfangled weapons. Women could vote!

Most surprising to her about this new world was how people dressed. Squinting, she saw how the women and men wore such few garbs. It was spring here as it was at home: blue skies and warm weather. Many of the woman wore trousers--trousers. Some didn’t even wear that! They had trousers cut above the thighs--they were fittingly called ‘shorts’. Others wore skirts still, but very short.

Clover found herself liking this new carefree style.

“My my, what a scandalous future. I quite like it! Give me a moment and I’ll change to better fit in~”

Clover twirled. A bit of residual pollen fell to the winds. At the same time, her dress rose up till the hem came mid thigh. No longer hooped, the thin petal-like ‘garb’ rested loosely against her green skin like a short half-slip. Her legs were almost completely bare now.

The upper piece of her floral ‘outfit’ of plant-flesh also shifted. Her sleeves shrunk to the point of disappearing. She dissolved the cellulose-matter coating her stomach region, and her taut green tummy basked in the glow of the sun. She tried out one of these ‘spaghetti tops’, letting straps of vine coil about her shoulders to hold the red-petaled top over her bosom.

She spun again: no more pollen spreading, for now. Her body now consisted of this new petal skirt and top with red-green vines twisting and shifting around her limbs. She looked much like some sort of nature god; if only those poor folks knew how far she was from ‘natural’. The witch had so many wonderfully horrific ideas on how to level this new city.

But first, it was time to grow.

Clover clapped her hands together. “Oh you can’t imagine what a day this has been so far, or how jubilant I am to meet you all. Such a big a bustling city this London has become.”

She sighed, then pentupled her height without warning.

Green toes now loomed over all but the tallest structures. They grew out with the rest of her feet to bulldoze the blocks around her entrance. As before, her body grew in proportion, and she treated much of London to the visually arresting sight of a near-naked, growing plant-woman.

Theories abounded as to who she was. Some agent of nature to punish their sins? Did they disrespect of mother earth with their overindulgence of plastic-bottled sodas? She gleamed much of these conjectures from the fresh souls flowing into her. They amused her.

“I’m sure you are all rife with questions. I will answer all in one fell swoop.”

She walked forward, her bare feet cleaving through and settling atop dozens of skyscrapers at a time. Blue outlines of humans--souls--flew up into her ankles. A snap of her fingers and it was visible here too: the barrier between the dead spirits and the living was thinner than paper and 10 times weaker to her will.

“You are all going to be granted eternity within me. It’s so easy! Just throw yourself at my feet. There’s no need to wait~”

She chuckled.

“Or stay where you are, or run, or hide. It matters not.”

The tentacular vines around her legs and arms began to stir.

“I’ll root you out wherever you are.”

The appendages grew sharp rotating teeth at their tips just before they hit the earth. Spinning like drill bits, the pointed pseudo-bones easily tore up the city’s foundation. The vines split and spread as they burrowed. Entire blocks rumbled as the appendages stirred beneath foundation before bursting out in a shower of rubble and red-green plant-flesh.

Any poor fools who survived the eruptions got tangled in all the new plants around them. Each one was a danger. Thin vines choked life out of them. Home-sized blossoms sprayed acidic nectar down as rain. Growths like pitcher plants, tall as skyscrapers, leaned forward to engulf mobs of people.

Clover closed her eyes and savored it. She felt it: all of it. Her vines where connected to these rooted patches of colors and green. She directed them and controlled them. Her presence had extended beyond her main body. Even when she cut her own vines to move more freely, she still felt them. They didn’t feed her main body this way unfortunately, but these ‘gardens’ of hers fed themselves nonetheless and spread. Besides, long as the souls all flew to her, it didn’t matter.

Oh how the souls flowed. She was unstoppable. A megalith. Her feet smothered dozens of blocks at once. They marshaled an army against her. It had tanks and snipers and rockets and all sorts of wonderful things she just learned about. All of them snuffed out beneath her steps.

The jets were trickier. That’s what they called the fast war planes. They flew at her and pelted her with bullets and missiles. Unlike the cannonball from before, these did nothing. Her magics had advanced to a point where she could enchant herself from harm. Even if she couldn’t, the softness of her green flesh belied its toughness. She was simply insurmountable.

Still, such effrontery was not to be tolerated. She opened her mouth as the jets passed by and sucked several in. They grew wise to that, and kept more of a distance. She adapted by opening her mouth wide and tall and lashing at them with the building-thick tendrillic vines resting within. They were coated with sticky nectar and brought the bounties into her mouth where a swallow handled the rest.

Very soon, they stopped sending planes at her.

She continued her stroll, taking in the sights as a curious tourist. It was one thing to learn of this world through the thousands of souls her body lapped up and stuffed aside: to see it in person was another matter.

She spoke, her voice a natural boom.

“Such splendor. And to think, you all live down there, groveling at my feet and foliage. The view up here is much better up here. If I didn’t know better, it’s as if you designed this sight just for me. It’s mine nevertheless, of course.”

She spotted Big Ben again and the fanciful hall it was attached to. Seems this universe’s version remained intact. Made sense, as it hadn’t run into her: until now.

Before she needed her whole foot to flatten the clocktower: here a toe would suffice. She set its soft plush pad at the steepled top. Another booming chuckle rang out. Clover could not help herself. It was brittle as sand. Everything here was. Her power was lovely, but absurd in its own way.

The steeple crumbled at a slight touch. She pressed down, twisted, and thus smeared the tower to naught. A slam of her foot and the attached hall crumbled under the rest of her sole.

She sighed.

“Lovely~”

Just across the river Thames she spotted a new wonder: some giant latticed wheel. It was that London Eye the souls knew about. They hadn’t invented this yet where she came from. She wanted a closer look.

She dipped her toe in the river. It was cold and shallow, and hardly wide enough for one toe let alone two. Her body lapped up a bit of the water. Rather than cross the river, she instead reached out towards the great big Ferris wheel with a vine sprouting from around her waist. The great big red-green limb burst through the constructs center. Ringed around the vine, she brought the wheel to her mouth for a closer look.

Her eyes studied it and, with a finger, she gave it a twirl. A few poor sods were stuck on the thing, and didn’t survive the centrifugal force she kicked up with that casual flick.

“Neat~” she said, before sliding her vine into her gob and swallowing the attraction down whole.

Souls flooded into her from her latest deeds, and even more were on the way. She had learned from them and earlier ones of a dangerous type of weapon: nuclear warheads.

She thought nothing of it. By the time they’d think to use it, it’d be too late. Already her gardens were spreading. They grew even more grisly as they crept over block after block. The color tones shifted to those of flesh: from green to red and fair-tones. The plants grew sharper teeth. Her presence was infecting the planet.

She also sent out seeds like samaras--those winged ‘copter’ seeds which spin down from maple trees. Once landed, they could sprout gardens farther than she cared to make her vines reach.

In her ‘gardens’, many stalks grew puffs like the dandelion-beings from her original London. These were more aerodynamic and modeled after the planes Clover saw. The slightest gust could carry them hundreds of miles. Several flew far, far south over the English channel to France. Altogether, they took root and sprouted more gardens, which in turn sprouted more of these pappi creations and so on and so on.

What would the humans do? Nuke the entire planet? By the time they’d agree to that, her vines would be crawling up their noses. Her presence was already too pervasive. Even if they scorched the surface, her growths lingered underground.

To be on the safe side though, she set a hex throughout a several hundred mile radius. It was a simple spell at this point. She spoke the words and waggled her fingers and nothing could fly within that invisible sphere but her and her minions.

It was a broad incantation, and dozens of planes filled with evacuees tumbled to their doom. Unlike the birds, they couldn’t exactly glide down to safety. They were much too heavy.

With all that business taking care of, Clover decided to allow herself a few more bits of enjoyment before rending this city to dust. She had learned from the absorbed souls of a most fantastic building called a ‘stadium’. Like a roman coliseum, but for safer sports! How fanciful and indulgent. She set her eyes on such a building now and walked towards it.

She knew from all these new souls that it was considered a ‘shelter’ during this time. How foolish of people to gravitate there. How foolish of them to gravitate anywhere with her around.