Evolving to live in cave systems afforded a few natural advantages to Tengmaa plants. The rocky cliffs sheltered its delicate bulb from the brunt of Brissekh’s unforgiving weather cycles, and providing a safe place to grow. 

The channels of water had also carved downward slopes and collection points over millennia, allowing the use of gravity to deliver its prey. The steep slide down into the basin chamber which Aegis team was still traversing was testament to that. Many creatures found it difficult to get back up.

Crucially though, the studious Tengmaa had realised these cramped tunnels leading to the basin provided an ideal oesophagus to force food into its stomach. It expended a lot of energy, but often resulted in the target plopping into the water, where the dense mat of cilia quickly trapped and drowned it.

Realising it had something with searing weapons in its throat, the Tengmaa activated its oesophagus mostly out of desperation. Aegis team may have noticed this first as a rumbling and rattling back up at the top of the cave system. Thick vines underneath the parked Spectres flexed and warped, sending the vehicles crashing against each other.

This tension moved down quickly down the throat, with vines on all rock surfaces bowing outwards to push everything towards the bulb. In a couple of seconds, this wall of matter would smash into Aegis’s rearguard like a truck, most of whom were yet to find space on the narrow platform above the bulb chamber.

With both a Sangheili and a mechanical Spartan pulling against the determined vines, Tar hissed from the pain in her arms and down her sides. For a moment, she thought her arms would break, but just before they did, those vines relented their grip and she flew back up onto the platform.

Toxic vapour from the pool and the cut vines was filling the air, so Tar could scarcely breathe without coughing when she tried to breathe through bruised lungs. “Fire! Fire!” She wheezed, barely audible over the general chaos of the chamber.