Chapter One-Hundred-and-Fifteen
Adam’s feet landed on something soft that felt like grass. He looked down at his feet and saw that it was not a normal kind of grass but instead made of long flexible spikes, like the quills on a porcupine, and they were red like freshly-spilled blood.
He lifted his eyes from his feet, seeing that the needle grass extended out in every direction around him, following the curvature of whatever thing he was standing upon. It was like the carpet on the outer layer of some vessel, though it had to be massive in size, given the gentle slope of the curve on either side of him. It ran down with the horizon, intermittently interrupted by bushes, trees, and various plants that were all made from some variation of spikes, thorns, needles, or a combination of all three. All were dyed red in various hues and minute differences that were somehow enough to make them stand apart rather than meld together into one.
In front and behind him, the landscape stretched far into the distance, none of the gentle slope of what he saw to his sides. Towers of woven and spiralling thorns rose high from the carpet of quills, rising up towards a ceiling that was like a thin membrane protecting the thorny garden from the void of space beyond. The sight immediately reminded him of the strange walls they’d found in Alepheria’s Tower on the laboratorium floor. It was unmistakeably made of skin.
Despite the inherent hostility of thorns, Adam didn’t find the place to be inhospitable, and as he wandered around aimlessly for a bit, he saw a certain beauty in it, albeit an absurd one.
Compared to the arboretum within the Fleshcrafter’s Abode, the Garden of Thorns felt organic and real, rather than artificial and purpose-made. It was like an artwork, though he didn’t fancy meeting the artist behind it, though it was surely an inevitability.
Suddenly the needle grass bristled, a wave rolling towards him from the horizon, raising every needle into the air briefly, before they fell down on the other side. It was a mesmerising sight, and he watched in awe as the quills flipped themselves in a synchronised pattern, the wave coming right at him. Even the hedges, trees, and towers underwent a change, with their thorns, needles, and spikes shifting positions.
When the wave reached Adam, the spikes he stood upon did not attempt to lift him, but all around him the quills flipped.
It’s like I’m standing on the back of a living creature.
He stepped off the patch of needles he’d prevented from flipping, and the moment his weight was off they rearranged themselves too.