This short story is based on the ttrpg HEDGE by A Couple of Drakes.
“Help!” cried a woman’s voice. “Someone please help!”
A few people glanced toward the dark alley, but most just looked ahead as they quickened their pace, ignoring things that did not concern them.
One man stopped and looked down the alley as a shriek of pain split the air. As he stepped into the alley, he pulled a handgun from under his shirt. No one spared him even a glance.
Quickly, he disappeared into the darkness, gun held out in front of him, barrel pointed at the ground a few feet ahead.
A crack, like a baseball bat hitting a ball, broke the air, and the man’s body flew out of the alley, slamming into the building across the street, where it fell, broken, limbs askew, blood tricking from his mouth.
The few people still around took off at a run, never looking back, never thinking to help. It wasn’t their problem, and they had just seen what happened to someone that interfered where he shouldn’t.
The empty street left no one to witness the vines breaking through the sidewalk’s concrete. The vines wound around the man’s broken limbs, straightening them. More grew out of the ground, wrapping around the man like so many snakes around their prey.
The vines lifted him until he was standing. Some fell away, while others still spread out across his body, transforming, some covering him in ebony bark, others turning into lethal looking spikes. Where his eyes and mouth were, the amber flicking of fire now danced.
Silence fell over the city as the man took a step. Each footstep sounded like a giant oak breaking. One by one, the remaining vines released their grasp on him, retreating into the earth’s embrace under the concrete and asphalt shroud of the city.
The man disappeared back into the dark alley, and a moment later a crack, like an iceberg calving, filled the air. A different body flew out of the alley and slammed into the building across the street.
The vine and bark covered man came back out of the alley and stood over the twitching body on the ground. If it was human, it was a human out of someone’s nightmares. Its face was too angular and long, its mouth full of needle sharp fangs, the limbs were half again as long as they should be, the fingers tipped in black talons.
“Die.” the bark covered man hissed as he held out his hand.
Vines again erupted from the earth, wrapping around the fallen attacker, turning into a cocoon of dried brambles. The creature inside the cocoon cried out as the brambles erupted in flames hot enough to consume both the brambles and their captive in a matter of moments.
Once the fire died out, the bark covered man turned and walked away. His armor of vines, bark, and thorns crumbled to dust and fell away from him as he went.