Valen never woke up to know that someone was inside him.
Kaelen floated through another slow deep breath from the chest cavity of his unconscious vessel, feeling the subtle shift of muscle as it twitched in a nightmare or some other pleasant diversion for a soldier used to the hunt more than the dream.
Inside the folds of this vessel there was something no eye could see save maybe the most gifted of mages, where veins and tissue and sinew all joined together in a glowing thread of neon-cyan light.
An entire nervous network, all bright electric color running rampant through every square inch of the man Kaelen had inhabited for weeks, and he was barely alive.
I don’t feel this anymore.
A simple thought not of lamentation, but of medical interest from the corner of his consciousness.
Selene’s magic is still settling.
Perhaps I’m running out of time.
[Ding!
evolution window remaining: 4 minutes]
[select path: void gazer microbe OR soul-eating thread OR reality-phasing amoeba.]
He had weeks of knowledge weighing on him now, a grim expertise he knew he only had moments for as the sound of Selene’s voice filtered through the canvas of the tent.
He could hear the pause in her spell as it settled on Valen like a shroud, and the telltale signs had set in long enough.
I need to begin now and end it soon.
[selection confirmed: void gazer microbe] [initiating cosmic metamorphosis…]
The process of change was relatively painless, a slow melting of every bit of tissue his fragile, living prison and watching the thread of him unspool and re-form in places finer things than mere matter were meant to stand.
Kaelen only felt moments of confusion as each change wove together and he could feel himself growing thinner in places, but only where the threads of magic couldn’t grasp him.
[Ding!
baseline species mutation: void gazer microbe]
[new passive trait: void weaving thread core]
[effect: cellular structure partially phases into raw mana state.
physical presence can nest within host tissue shadow-space, evading standard scan resolution.]
Kaelen floated free inside this strange body again, his senses stretching outward to things in this tent he had not realized were there.
He felt a strange hollowness growing from the man, a space outside the man his existence almost nested into, and it occurred to him distantly that this was one of the few times since his transmigration that he felt drunk on power and life.
“metamorphosis complete,” Nix announced with a tone almost approaching reverence.
“you are no longer a foreign biological signature layered atop native tissue.
you are no longer a host.
you are now a shadow the tissue casts.
standard diagnostic magic is not designed to interrogate shadows.”
I know, Kaelen thought.
because he felt one now creeping up along the edges of the sleeping man’s senses.
“Diagnostic spell resolution complete,” the System intoned.
“External scan result: no anomalies detected.”
Kaelen almost felt proud.
She found nothing.
It’s like I’m invisible to her.
The victory was short lived.
[warning: metamorphosis byproduct detected]
[host sweat composition: altered] [presence of…]
he smelled something wrong moments before any of them had, a thick rich scent of blood mixing with some acrid green note of rotting vegetation.
A sheen of glistening black liquid had spread over the sleeping soldier’s body and his pores oozed the stuff thick enough to coat his hands wherever he might brush them against the canvas of the tent wall.
That doesn’t belong in me.
Is it even mine?
“cosmic metamorphosis at your current level of progress,” the System informed him.
“produces cellular waste incompatible with human excretory systems.
you’ve transformed yourself in ways your vessel’s biology cannot comprehend or sustain.
the ichor is an unfortunate byproduct of the process.”
Ichor.
Kaelen wanted to laugh at that thought.
I wonder of what?
Valen groaned in his sleep, barely stirring at first, and swiped at the dampness on his brow before his eyes even opened.
The black sludge smeared his skin where he wiped at his brow and he smelled it then too, thick and rich and wrong.
Kaelen felt the first tendrils of the man’s waking awareness twist and turn in his presence.
He’s going to wake up in this, Kaelen realized.
and everyone else is going to be right there with him.
how am I going to explain away a knight-commander’s sweat?
“you don’t need to explain anything to anyone,” Kaelen heard himself say.
“He does,” Nix reminded him.
“he will have more questions now that this has happened.”
So will everyone else.
if they think something is wrong with him, I lose this place before I’ve done anything worth keeping with this vessel.
If something is wrong with him in a way they notice…
The young commander mumbled aloud, still half-asleep, still lost in the haze of his dreams.
“Sweat…
no this isn’t, what is this?”
He didn’t hear his own question.
Something shook, just once but hard enough to throw the weight of the whole tent and the bodies inside off balance, and the sound of the tent’s lantern swaying from the ceiling beam above.
The groans from the stone around them sounded like the dungeon itself was screaming in warning as Kaelen caught himself against the canvas wall.
A distant but powerful vibration rolled through the earth and the fabric of the world around them.
[WARNING: seismic event detected]
[origin: deep dungeon core: structural seal integrity failure]
Outside, voices in confusion and fear carried through the fabric of the tent.
A second tremor hit and bits of the stone ceiling showered down in small clouds.
One of the knights’ voices called out some nonsense question that was promptly lost when a third quake nearly took off an entire camp crate across the campsite.
[system alert: TRUE DUNGEON BOSS — CONTAINMENT SEAL COMPROMISED]
[warning: structural collapse imminent across all primary exit routes]
Valen’s sword was already in his hands, slick black filth still clinging to his skin as he stood, his eyes half open and unfocused as he saw where the noise was coming from.
Behind him the canvas of the tent tore free of the stakes holding it to the ground and through this Kaelen saw the edge of the chamber wall falling away to reveal…
something.
Something large and dark and terrible that the survey reports had not accounted for.
Something that should have been accounted for a full three weeks before anyone’s scheduled arrival date.
“what in the NAME OF THE ORDER IS THAT!”