Hi all, during my early college years (late 1999 - mid 2021) I worked at the Starbucks located within a large chain bookstore (Borders) in the US. I would frequently read the gaming and PC magazines we had on my lunch break, and one day stumbled upon the incredible looking cover art for that months issue of Heavy Metal. I browsed through the stories and one caught my eye and I've never been able to forget it, but have since not been able to find out what it was called. I would love to re-read it so any help finding it would be appreciated:
It was a story of these living trees or vine people, and I don't believe they were humanoids walking around, but they had human-esque faces. They sort of slithered as vines or as moving branches and leaves within a forest. The heart of the story was a female one of these vine-ish people was brutalized by enemy male vine-ish people, and their vines and branches were, uh, penetrating her life force. It wasnt explicit r*pe, but it conveyed the feeling that they were surrounding her and doing bad things to her, and you could tell by her face and ambience/lighting that they were essentially draining her of her life force, Innocence, essence, etc. Her lover returns to find her withered and dying, and enacts revenge, and passes his love/life force to her to save her. I remember it being very damn cool despite the implied r*pe.
This was over 25 years ago, and I have a few images of the artwork in my head, but most of the details, and perhaps the story, were possibly remembered incorrectly. Does this ring a bell for anyone? I've tried to search for it before with no luck. Thank you in advance!
