Chapter 222: Geez
Two Days
The second trial began an hour later, and this time Ariana didn't bother with the pretense of casual conversation first.
"Higher dose," she said, laying out three vials on the desk in ascending shades of yellow. "Same protocol as yesterday. I monitor, you report, anything feels wrong we stop. No negotiating the threshold once we're inside it."
"Understood."
"I mean it, Aaron. Two days doesn't mean two days of cutting corners to rush results. It means two days of doing this properly, just without the luxury of taking it slow." She selected the middle vial, drawing the dose with the same careful precision as before. "If anything, I need you more honest about what you're feeling, not less, since we have less room to course-correct."
Aaron nodded and offered his arm.
The second dose hit differently than the first — the warmth spreading faster, the alertness sharper, less like waking up and more like a held breath about to be released. His shoulders tightened almost immediately, the pressure behind them building with none of yesterday's polite knocking. This felt more like the door actually straining.
"Heart rate's climbing faster than yesterday's equivalent point," Ariana reported, watching the device with her brow furrowed in concentration. "Mana resonance is spiking, not climbing steadily this time. That's a different pattern."
"Spiking is bad, you said."
"Spiking is something to watch closely. Talk to me. What do you feel?"
"Pressure." Aaron's jaw tightened slightly, the sensation building behind his shoulder blades into something that genuinely ached now, not just a vague warmth. "More than yesterday. It wants out."
"How badly?"
"Badly enough that I don't think it's asking anymore."
Ariana's hand moved toward the neutralizing syringe immediately, no hesitation in the motion at all. "Ending the trial. Don't fight it, just let the suppressant—"
The fabric of Aaron's shirt tore audibly across his back.
Both of them froze.
The wings didn't fully unfold — there wasn't room, and some instinct deeper than conscious thought seemed to recognize that and hold them back — but they pushed visibly against his shoulder blades, the silhouette unmistakable now even through torn fabric, dark and membranous and considerably larger than the modest "lump" Ariana had first measured.
"Hold still," Ariana said, voice gone flat and urgent, administering the suppressant in one smooth motion.
The relief came almost immediately, the pressure receding like a tide pulling back from shore, the ache in his shoulders fading into something manageable within a minute. Aaron exhaled slowly, feeling the residual warmth drain out of his system, leaving behind a faint, exhausted hum where the urgency had been.
"That," Ariana said, setting the syringe down with a hand that wasn't entirely steady, "was significantly more reactive than I expected from a mid-range dose."
"You think?"
"Don't be smug, I'm allowed one moment of being wrong about a margin." She pulled her notes toward her, writing quickly, her usual composure visibly working to reassert itself. "This confirms something important, though. Your threshold is lower than I estimated. Whatever's still developing in you is closer to the surface than the timeline suggested."
Aaron rubbed his shoulder through the torn fabric, the dull ache already fading to nothing. "Closer to the surface meaning what, exactly?"
"Meaning I think we have considerably less than two days before this starts happening without a controlled trigger at all." Ariana looked up at him, and the urgency in her expression had nothing performative left in it. "Your body isn't waiting for permission anymore, brother. It's accelerating toward something on its own timeline, and my trials may have just nudged that timeline forward instead of mapping it safely."
They didn't run a third trial that day.
Ariana spent the remaining hours instead cross-referencing data, occasionally muttering to herself in a way that had stopped being charming sometime around the fourth consecutive hour, and Aaron sat through most of it in restless silence, his mind circling back, again and again, to the conversation he'd had with her that morning.
Two days.
It had felt, at the time, like a reasonable compromise. Now, watching her work through page after page of notes with a tightness in her shoulders that hadn't been there yesterday, it felt like a number she'd pulled out of optimism rather than certainty.
"Ariana."
"Mm."
"If this is accelerating faster than you thought, two days might not get us anywhere useful."
She set her pen down and looked at him properly, something tired and honest in her expression that hadn't shown through the sunglasses until just now, when she finally pushed them up onto her forehead to rub at her eyes.
Her eyes, Aaron noted distantly, were the same shade of brown as his own had been, once, before they'd changed into something else entirely.
"I know," she admitted. "But I also know you have people waiting for you, and I'm not in the business of breaking promises I just made an hour ago because the data got inconvenient." She slid the sunglasses back down, the brief vulnerability folding away with the motion. "So here's what we do. I authorize the portal tonight, as agreed. You go back to your people. And you come back here in three days for a follow-up, voluntarily, because you understand now exactly how dangerous it is to let this develop unsupervised."
"Voluntarily."
"Voluntarily," she confirmed. "I'm not threatening you this time, brother. I think the data's done enough threatening on its own."
Aaron studied her for a long moment, weighing the offer the same way he had that morning, except this time there was no flicker of doubt about her sincerity. Whatever else Ariana was — chaotic, invasive, occasionally unbearable — the fear in her face when his wings had torn through his shirt had been entirely real.
"Three days," he agreed. "I'll come back."
"I'll hold you to that. Mostly because I genuinely don't want to find out what happens if you don't, and not entirely for scientific reasons."
The portal room looked different at night with proper authorization behind it — the same blue inscription, but now humming with quiet readiness rather than flat refusal.
"Liam," Ariana said, standing beside Aaron with a small device in her hand, "authorize transport for guest profile, destination: the ruins, surface coordinates as previously logged. Authorization: Ariana, primary account holder."
"Authorization confirmed," the smooth, inflectionless voice answered. "Destination set."
Alyssa stood beside Aaron, considerably more awake than she'd been overnight, fully briefed on the plan and visibly delighted at the prospect of seeing Eva and Claire again — though Aaron suspected at least part of that delight came from anticipating their reaction to her new size.
"Will they recognize me?" she asked, for what was probably the fifth time that evening.
"They'll recognize you," Aaron said. "You're still you. Just taller."
"Just taller," Alyssa repeated, satisfied, settling the matter in her own mind for the fifth time as well.
Ariana crouched slightly to meet her eyes properly, an easy warmth in the gesture that had nothing performative behind it. "Take care of him, will you? He has a tendency toward stubbornness that I think you're better positioned to manage than I am."
"I will take very good care of Sir Aaron!" Alyssa promised, with the same fierce sincerity she brought to most declarations.
"Good. I'm trusting you with that, mushroom or not."
Aaron looked at his sister, the strange mix of irritation and reluctant respect he'd built up over two days settling into something he didn't entirely have a word for yet.
"Three days," he said again.
"Three days," Ariana confirmed. "And brother — try not to get into any fights that push you past what we measured today. I'd rather not find out what happens if those wings finish what they started without me there to pull you back from it."
"I'll do my best."
"That's not actually reassuring, but I'll take it."
The mana began gathering around the circle, the same precise, swirling motion Aaron remembered from his arrival, the air thickening with anticipation as the inscriptions brightened beneath his feet. He felt the familiar discomfort, brief and sharp, and then—
The metal walls were gone.
In their place: open air, the distant ruins, the faint orange glow of the original transport circle beneath his feet, and beyond it, the unmistakable shape of the inn rising against a darkening sky, lights flickering warmly in its windows.
Alyssa let out a small, delighted gasp beside him.
"Home," she said.
Aaron looked at the inn, at the warm light spilling from its windows, and felt something in his chest loosen for the first time in two days.
He didn't waste time standing still.
He crossed the distance quickly, Alyssa hurrying to keep pace with her newly long legs, and pushed through the inn's door without bothering to knock.
Eva looked up first, halfway through setting down a cup of tea, her expression shifting from mild curiosity to open shock in the span of a heartbeat.
"Aaron?" She was on her feet immediately. "You're back early, we thought—"
She stopped, her eyes catching on the figure beside him, on the golden mushroom cap now sitting considerably higher than it had two days ago, on the unmistakable shape of a face that was both entirely new and entirely familiar.
"Alyssa?" Eva's voice climbed half an octave. "What in the world happened to you?"
From the doorway leading to the kitchen, Claire appeared as well, drawn by the commotion, her gaze sweeping from Aaron's torn shirt to Alyssa's transformed frame with an expression caught somewhere between alarm and disbelief.
"I grew!" Alyssa announced proudly, spinning in a small circle to show off the full effect, nearly knocking over a side table in the process. "Sir Aaron let me sit in a magic bucket!"
Claire's eyes shot to Aaron. "A magic bucket."
"It's a longer story than that," Aaron said, already feeling the exhaustion of the last two days settle into his bones now that he was finally, properly home. "But I promise to explain everything. Right now, I just—"
He didn't finish the sentence.
Eva crossed the room and wrapped her arms around him before he could, and Claire followed a half-step behind, and for a long moment, none of the explanations mattered nearly as much as simply being back where he belonged.