It is sent end over end, chattering unhappily at this state of affairs. Half a dozen feet away, it lands, righting itself. The small bits of fluff floof themselves out more, and it looks affronted.

There's a moment of hesitation, then the creature tentatively hops another foot forward. It chitters again, giving him what could be interpreted as a concerned look. Concerned chitter?

He glares at it, then ignores it in favour of the slow process of standing up without falling over again.

It hops closer, again. Hop. Hop. Hop.

When it's about two feet from him, it stops, and chitters again. It tilts its head.

Then it screams, and the front of its head bursts apart faster than blinking, revealing a tangle of threads the same color as the fluff. A hundred little fishline-thin tendrils flare out from where its mouth should be and slice through the air towards, and then through Siran.

- he calls fire, instinctively, just wanting to destroy it as quickly and thoroughly as possible -

The magic spins out of his control almost immediately. He wanted fire? It gives him fire. The resulting explosion levels buildings for thirty feet in all directions in the few seconds before he manages to rein it in. The ice he called earlier is vaporized. Sand fuses to glass.

Siran himself is only slightly singed, but the air around him is so burned out that he spends an uncomfortable few seconds coughing and choking amid the rising steam, unable to draw a useful breath. And the creature is almost completely gone, not even a fleck of ash remaning to show where it once stood - but where its threads intersected him, they were spared just as he was. So now he's full of severed threads, stretching and sliding whenever he moves, cutting him if he strains them too badly. It doesn't even hurt that much, but it's horrible. And his shudders of revulsion just make it worse.

The crater around him is silent. If there was anything horrible in the radius of the explosion, they're either dead, trapped, or very quiet. Most of the street mold has been burned away, and some of the pavement, for good measure. The thorns are easily visible from between the cracks in the cobblestone, unharmed from the blast.

He's earned himself a reprieve, but he maybe shouldn't bet money on nothing having noticed that.

Yeah unfortunately he's a little busy right now.

If he sits very still and waits a while, his healing will figure out how to fix this, but he does not especially feel like waiting on that, so he very carefully summons some magic and uses it to pull the threads out one by one, wincing slightly every time. If he tried, he's sure he could destroy them in place somehow, but it would take more power and he might not be able to get them all before the magic started to go, which is exactly the sort of situation where he might be tempted to push it past the safety margin and end up with more magic than he asked for. Pulling too much fire usually causes explosions, which are at least straightforward; he has no idea what pulling too much pinpoint destruction would do and isn't keen to find out.

There are a lot of floof bug threads. He might not have time to pick out every single thread before -

He hears a faint hissing sound. Is that a horde of the mud creatures with the spined teeth? Because it sure looks like a horde of the mud creatures with the spined teeth. There are about five times as many, this time, and they are heading right for him, in a huge wave of seething brown.

Destroying the nearby buildings cleared the skyline, so he can also see what looks like more floof bugs flying towards him.

On the one hand, it's probably a bad idea to start messing with more complicated magic and its less predictable side effects right now. On the other hand, he really fucking hates those floof bugs.

Every floof bug in sight simultaneously turns into water.

Then he goes back to pulling out threads, because honestly right now he cares more about that than about being devoured by a pack of mud creatures.

Sploosh, go the floof bugs.

He has another few seconds of undisturbed thread removal before the pack crashes into him like a tidal wave. The pack of mud creatures do their absolute best to devour him.

He and the pack of mud creatures are all struck by lightning. It passes through him harmlessly. The mud creatures are not so lucky.

They definitely aren't!

There are a few stragglers that are outside of the radius of the lightning. They throw themselves at Siran in a suicidal fashion. It will probably not work out for them; mud creatures don't seem to be very smart.

He is at this point annoyed enough to crush them to death with his bare hands, despite the obvious riskiness of this method.

They have very long, very thin, very sharp teeth, and they are faster than he might expect.

Unfortunately for them, these are about the only positive traits that can be assigned to their physical abilities. Crushing them to death with his bare hands is easy; their bones snap like a bird's would.

He ends up with some nasty creature-bites, which he ignores, because pulling out the last few threads is so much more important.

Okay. There. Now he can get up and keep walking.

It's much easier to see the silver thorns, now. He can just avoid stepping on them, if he's careful. There's not even any ice to slip on anymore, though there is otherwise a bit of a mess.

A few floof bugs fly towards him. Otherwise, he seems to be free to walk.

He - carefully, and individually, and with minimal power - sets all of those floof bugs on fire.

They make a delightful popping sound as they burst into flames! Seems they're pretty flammable.

Good for them. Onward.

Onward!

He's exiting the outskirts of the city and entering the city proper, now. It's getting more and more claustrophobic, with narrow moldy streets and tall buildings in a terrible state of disrepair. He'll have to start watching his step again soon, but he reaches a bridge before the mold reasserts itself in force.

The canal the bridge offers passage over has probably seen better days. The water is dark and murky, polluted with refuse and debris from the nearby buildings. Glittering swirls of a pale blue and white substance coat the otherwise swamp-like surface, like droplets of oil floating in water. Some plants have taken root near the edges of the canal, including more of the silver thorns, but nothing else looks recognizable. To his left is a path that leads down to the water itself, meant to be some kind of dock. There are boats, or what probably used to be boats, before they were overgrown and rotted over.

If he watches his step, he can probably make it over the bridge safely. The thorns seem to have had trouble taking root in it, and while the bridge is half-buried in rubble, it looks sturdy enough.

Fine. Bridge.

The bridge does not collapse under his weight immediately.

Did that bit of rubble just move?

He has his sword out before he has time to wonder if he's being silly. And, knowing this place, he's not being silly.

He is not being silly!

Something like a frog's tongue darts out of the rubble and towards Siran.

It encounters his sword on the way.

The appendage vaporizes accordingly, and something in the rubble screeches in agony.

A bit of the rubble detaches itself and attempts to scurry away, the mottled colors of its skin shifting to match a different part of the bridge.