Book Three: Chapter 25

“Last week. Got in a fight with a witch. She lost.”

“Does that have anything to do with the full pod? I noticed that one of them seemed swollen. Normally, when the Mandragora feeds, it drops morsels of foods into those pods, but I’ve never seen one sealed shut before.” Zel was frantically scribbling. “It wasn’t a standard digestion either. One morning, I saw that the pod had been absorbed by the main plant, and the colors on the bud had changed.”

“I think it transformed the witch.” Mike reached into his pocket, pulling out the necklace. “The plant was wearing this.”

“Of course, it makes sense. The Mandragora was struggling to survive and couldn’t be bothered to develop a fully mature body for incubation. Therefore, rather than completely digest its food, it used the skeletal structure of its previous prey as a base to build off of.” Her pencil was scribbling frantically. “Amazing. The plant is already capable of low-level human intelligence, which means, in some as