In a mere instant, the forest changed. The leaves of the trees withered and died, falling from the branches like snow. The tall and bare tree trunks started withering and hardening as well, losing their life-like quality and decaying away to dry husks. It was then that the branches of the trees began to move on their own, seeking the warm bodies of the people that stood on the forest floor. Alongside this, the flat and easy to traverse terrain began to give way to a rough and rocky ground under the layers of fallen leaves.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold"><div style="text-align: center;">Travis</div></span><br/>Travis leapt to his feet in alarm when he heard the Russian man cry out. He turned around to find the man’s arm trapped in a writhing mess of branches. In fact, to his horror, all the trees around him were shedding their leaves and transforming into the same grasping clump of decaying wood as the one currently that held the man.<br/><br/>If this were a dream, Travis would have simply lifted his arms and disintegrated the trees. But by now, he knew for a fact that he wasn’t dreaming. Everything that should have happened within a dream had failed, and there was only one place that that occurred: reality. As ridiculous as it seemed, Travis was now convinced that somehow this was real in some way, which meant that those carnivorous trees were a real threat.<br/><br/>“Run!” he called out to the others. He still didn’t exactly know if<span style="font-style: italic">they</span>were real, but it was better not to take any chances. Travis ran over to the Russian man, stumbling over the now rocky ground. He lifted his foot and gave the writing mass of branches a solid kick, hoping that it would loosen the grip on the man.<br/><br/>But that was the extent of Travis’ courage, as he didn’t stick around to see if it worked, and instead started running through the increasingly hostile forest.