They all moved with the efficiency of people who’d worked together for years. The healer—Eltrien—approached me slowly, hands visible, like I was a spooked animal.
“May I?” he asked, gesturing to a cut on my arm I hadn’t noticed was bleeding.
I nodded, not trusting my voice. His touch was cool, clinical, but gentle. The runes on his arms glowed brighter, and I felt a tingling sensation where his fingers traced the wound. The pain faded, replaced by a weird itch as the skin began knitting itself back together.
“Healer,” I said, not really a question.
“Among other things.” He moved to the next wound with the same careful efficiency. “The marks on your collarbone—may I examine them?”
“Why?”
“Because they’re spreading faster than they should. And that concerns me.”
I glanced at Kaelren, who was conferring with the mist one—Nimor—in low tones. He caught my look and something flickered across his face. Notconcern. Never concern. More like… calculation.
“Fine,” I said to Eltrien. “But if you try anything weird—”
“Define weird in a realm where normalcy doesn’t exist,” the one with the pollen—Vashael—said, pulling clothing from a pack that definitely violated several laws of physics with how much it held. “These should fit.”
She held up what looked like armor made of leaves and leather, with accompanying pants that seemed to be woven from spider silk and boots that might have been carved from bark.
“I’m not wearing tree cosplay,” I said.
“Cos… play?” she said, the unfamiliar word awkward in her mouth. ‘It’s not play. Your human clothing won’t survive another day here. The realm itself will eat through it.”
“The realm eats clothing?”
“The realm eats everything, eventually,” Bryx said cheerfully. “But it starts with the foreign stuff. Like you!”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“Wasn’t meant to be. Honesty is more useful than comfort here.”
Eltrien’s fingers paused on my collarbone, right where the mark was spreading. “Interesting,” he murmured.
“What’s interesting?” Kaelren was suddenly there, looming over Eltrien’s shoulder. His carved marks were pulsing with that silver-black light, reaching toward my golden ones like magnets.
“The pattern. It’s not following the usual progression.” Eltrien traced the air above my skin, not quite touching. “Look—here, where it branches. That’s not Root pattern. That’s something older.”
“Older than Root?” Nimor asked, his voice barely audible. “That’s not possible.”
“Many impossible things are proving possible lately,” Eltrien said, stepping back. “She needs rest. Real rest, not the half-unconscious stumbling she’s been doing.”
“I’m right here,” I said. “And I’m fine.”
“You’ve said that several times,” Kaelren observed. “You’ve been wrong every time.”
“Well, excuse me for not having a perfect grasp on my wellbeing in bizarro world.”
“Bizarro world?” Bryx perked up. “Is that what you call it? I like it!”
“We need to move at dawn,” Kaelren said, ignoring the enthusiasm. “The Crown’s scouts will have found our trail by now. We head to Vyn Hollow.”
“How far is that?” I asked.
“Three days on foot through terrain where everything wants to kill you,” Bryx said cheerfully. “Or half a day if we fly.”
“Fly on what exactly?’ I couldn’t quite picture what he meant..
