Then the roots moved.
All of them at once.
Not the roots near him or the roots near the Snake but every root structure within fifty metres activating simultaneously, every formation, every position, every carefully arranged geometric configuration abandoning its stillness and rising and extending and weaving with the speed of something that had been waiting for this specific moment to use this specific deployment.
Not a cage.
A net.
A three-dimensional net filling the entire volume of air he was elevated in from every direction at once, the root structures closing from above and from the sides and from below with the coordinated comprehensiveness of something that had been placed in its pre-deployment configuration specifically for this.
He dissolved again.
The roots passed through the mist of his dissolved form without finding purchase.
