Chapter 004 The Digestion of Denim
The rat stew stayed down, which was more than I expected.
Thalren didn't give me time to compliment the chef. He hauled me up by the elbow, his grip tight enough to bruise, and marched me toward a structure that looked less like a tent and more like a glowing ribcage draped in translucent skin.
"Inside," he said.
"You have terrible manners," I muttered, stumbling over a root that seemed to grab at my sneaker.
"I'm not a host. I'm a handler."
He shoved me through the flap. The interior smelled like ozone and crushed mint. It was bigger on the inside-because of course it was-lit by veins of bioluminescent blue moss pulsing along the structural supports. It felt like standing inside a giant, breathing lung.
The rest of the "crew" filtered in behind us, sucking up all the available oxygen.
Up close, in the confined light, they were a catalogue of nightmares. Vorn, the rock-skinned giant, had to duck to fit, his shoulders scraping the ceiling. Zephyran, the silver-haired swordswoman, leaned against a support pole, watching me like I was a particularly interesting fungus. Vahr, the guy made of shifting mist and copper gears, hovered near the back, ticking softly.
And Xyl.
The insectoid clicked toward me. His compound eyes were the size of dinner plates, fracturing my reflection into a thousand terrified fragments. He leaned down, mandibles twitching. He sniffed.
"Human," he clicked. The sound was wet, like stepping in mud. "You smell like Earth. Like... what is that? Carbonated sugar water?"
I blinked, pressing my back against a table made of dark, polished wood. "Dr Pepper."
"Pepper," Xyl repeated, tasting the word. "The one with the twenty-three flavors. Fascinating."
"How do you know about soda?"
"Garbage rifts," Zephyran cut in, her voice bored. "Things fall through. Xyl reads the labels."
"Sit," Thalren ordered.
He pointed to a cot covered in furs. I sat. My legs felt like jelly. Adrenaline was a hell of a drug, but the crash was coming, and it was going to be ugly.
"Sylith," Thalren said. "Check the investment."
Sylith drifted forward. She didn't walk; she existed in a perpetual state of hovering, her feet dangling six inches off the ground. She was pale, almost translucent, with hair that moved as if she were underwater.
She reached for me. I flinched.
"Hold still," she whispered. Her voice sounded like wind whistling through a crack in a window.
She placed a hand on my collarbone. It felt cold. Ice burn cold.
"Ouch."
"Constructs usually inflict trauma when summoned by a novice," she said professionally. "Your energy channels are fried."
She traced the golden vines etched into my skin. The marks were throbbing, a dull, rhythmic ache that synced with my heartbeat. They had moved since the clearing. The gold leaf pattern had spread past my shoulder, curling down my bicep like ivy claiming a trellis.
Sylith frowned. The air around her ripples, smelling of fresh rain.
"Thalren," she said.
He was sharpening a dagger in the corner, suspiciously normal behavior for a guy whose veins were turning black. "What?"
"This isn't a Root pattern."
Thalren stopped. He looked up, eyes silver and flat. "Explain."
"Root magic is chaotic. Overgrowth. Entropy," Sylith murmured, her fingers hovering over a particularly intricate spiral near my neck. "This... this is ordered. It's geometric. It's older than Root."
The tent went quiet. even Vahr stopped ticking.
"Older implies stable," Thalren said. "Can we move her?"
"Physically? Yes." Sylith pulled her hand back. The pain in my shoulder faded, replaced by a numb tingling sensation. "But the signal she's broadcasting is going to attract everything within fifty miles. She's a beacon."
"Great," I said. "I've always wanted to be a lighthouse for monsters."
"Not a lighthouse," Vorn rumbled. His voice vibrated in the floorboards. "Bait."
Thalren sheathed the dagger. "She's the package. We move at dawn." He looked at Zephyran. "Get her the clothes."
Zephyran pushed off the pole and tossed a bundle of dark green fabric at my head. I caught it by reflex. It felt weird-slick and warm, like leather that hadn't quite finished being an animal.
"Change," Thalren said. "Everyone out."
"My clothes are fine," I protested, clutching the bundle.
"Look at your knee," Xyl suggested nicely.
I looked down. My jeans, my favorite pair of busted-knee Levi's, were dissolving. Not tearing-dissolving. The denim was unraveling into grey dust where the air touched it, the threads unspooling like smoke. The hem of Julian's t-shirt was doing the same thing, retreating up my stomach.
"The realm eats everything eventually," Xyl clicked, ushering Vorn out of the flap. "But it starts with the foreign stuff. Synthetic fibers are... an appetizer."
"If you don't change," Zephyran added, pausing at the exit, "you'll be naked in twenty minutes. Xyl doesn't mind, but the gnats bite."
She smirked and vanished.
Thalren lingered for a second. His gaze swept over me-clinical, detached. Checking for structural integrity.
"Don't take too long," he said.
Then he was gone.
I was alone. Well, almost.
Glimm, the glowing beetle who had been riding in my pocket, crawled out onto the fur blanket. He shook himself, his carapace flashing a grumpy iridescent green.
"Rude," Glimm said. "He didn't even ask if I needed a tiny beetle-sized change of clothes."
"Do you?" I asked, shaking out the bundle.
"I'm naked as the day I was hatched, darling. It's liberating."
I stood up and started peeling off the remains of my life. The jeans came apart in my hands, crumbling into ash. It was terrifying. It was like the world was actively digesting my history. I kicked the sneakers off-the rubber soles were turning into black sludge-and pulled on the clothes Zephyran had given me.
Trousers made of something fibrous and tough, like woven bark but flexible. A tunic that smelled of spider silk and sage. Boots that laced up to the knee and felt like a second skin.
There was no bra. I decided not to think about it.
"They're scared of you," Glimm said.
I froze, tying the laces. "Who? The bug monster and the rock giant?"
"They're constructs of the Bloom and the Root. Hybrids. Outcasts." Glimm scuttled in a circle. "They know what magic smells like. And you smell like the beginning of the world."
"I smell like rat stew."
"The bond helps," Glimm mused. "Or hurts. Depending on your perspective."
I sat back down on the cot. "What bond?"
"You and Grumpy," Glimm said. "Thalren. His corruption-that nasty silver rot eating his soul? It reaches for your Root magic like... well, like magnets. You're connected now. If he gets hurt, you'll feel a pinch. If you die, he... well, he probably just gets a headache, but still."
"Comforting."
"I went insane centuries ago," Glimm added conversationally. "It's not so bad. You get used to the screaming."
The tent flap opened. Thalren ducked back in.
He scanned me. The new clothes fit perfectly, which was suspicious.
"Acceptable," he said. "We fly to Vyn Hollow at first light. It's barely a half-day by air, three days on foot. We aren't walking."
"Fly on what?" I asked.
He ignored the question. He walked over to the table and blew out the lantern. The bioluminescent veins in the tent walls dimmed to a low, soothing pulse.
"Sleep."
He sat down near the entrance, back against a crate, one leg stretched out. He didn't close his eyes. He just stared at the flap, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword.
I lay down on the furs. They were soft but smelled wild.
"Thalren?"
"What."
"Are you going to kill me?"
"Not tonight."
"That's not a no."
"I'm not a healer, Aria. I'm a killer who happens to be keeping you alive."
I rolled over, facing the wall. I could feel him. Not hear him-feel him. A cold, static buzz at the back of my neck. Cold fury wrapped around pain. His shoulder must be agony, but he hadn't made a sound.
My own shoulder, where the vines were growing, itched.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember what my bedroom in Arkansas looked like. The poster of the band I didn't listen to anymore. The pile of laundry. The window that stuck.
But all I could see was the gold light under my skin, waiting to eat me alive.