The doors burst, and within minutes the plant infested half of the building.

Archaeologists believe the ancient paintings of people around the plant in heat, wrapped in its roots, making love, in some cases ingesting the roots—these are an indication that the extinct plant was used as an aphrodisiac, often used to bring large orgies into a frenzy.

They’re wrong. Those paintings were a warning.

Everyone in the building the plant got a root around soon found their thoughts disappearing, pretty bubbles popping around them, and they were soon brought to the bulb, standing like an altar in the center of a pink sea, to be entranced into the glorious ecstasy of hypno heat.

What archaeologists believe to be a celebratory orgy is instead a warning not to go near the plants. They did not harvest the plants, they did not ingest them to enter a heat so hypnotic that nothing else mattered.

The plants harvested the people. The plants ingested their thoughts. When the plants hypnotized the people into delirious hypno heat, it would feed off that lust, growing bigger the more thoughts and minds it consumed and the more this predatory plant fucked its prey.

By the time the entire building was infested, a warning had gone out. Evacuations started, but still the plant spread and grabbed as many as it could. Any stubborn enough to stand their ground disappeared. Any foolhardy enough to search for survivors disappeared.

Any enticed into curiosity enough by the moans echoing from the university buildings disappeared.

Tales of this hypno heat plant spread across the lands. Travelers returning home or seeking a stop on their journey, discovering an entire village in ruins, thick with heavy pink roots entwined throughout the buildings, the few human bodies that could be located empty husks, still moaning in ecstasy when alive.

The lucky ones would find the plants having exhausted its food source, and no longer responsive.

The town was soon swallowed up by the hypno heat plant. The bulb outgrew its room, outgrew its building, and anyone left in the town could see it and be drawn into its hypno heat.

Soon they didn’t have to. New bulbs sprouted throughout the town, small centers to take its prey in hypno heat to keep them in hypno heat and feed off them.

Of course, even with these warnings, horny teens find a way. Wouldn’t it be radical to be lost in the ecstasy of hypno heat? Surely the dangers are overblown. They would go searching for a sprout of the plant, and those who found it would take it home, unwittingly feed themselves to the plant, and the rest of their village would soon follow.

It was only a concerted effort to eradicate the plant that ended the danger it posed to people once and for all.

All things must have an end. The plant will eventually feed its prey dry, leave them as husks, and come to its end as its ancient predecessors did.

. . . Wait, what’s this?

The plant is feeding its prey? Nourishing them with water? It understands how to keep its prey sustained for a long term?

It seems that magic may have brought it more than back from extinction. Perhaps this plant has gained intelligence.

Perhaps this plant intends to remain as long as it can . . .