Chapter Thirty-Six: The Belly of the Bone-Spider
The transition from the solid granite of the Iron Peaks to the interior of the Harvester needle-ship was not a journey; it was a violent displacement of reality. Roric felt his atoms stretch and snap back together, a sensation like being pulled through a keyhole while the universe screamed in his ears. When his boots finally hit a solid surface, he wasn't standing on stone. He was standing on a floor that felt like sun-bleached bone warm, slightly pliant, and pulsing with a slow, biological rhythm that suggested the ship itself was breathing beneath him.
He staggered, the gauntlet on his arm pulsing with a frantic, violet light. The amethyst eye in his palm was wide open, darting around the room as if searching for a predator. He was in a space that defied human architecture a long, vaulted corridor where the walls weren't flat, but ribbed with thousands of tiny, calcified tubes that moved in a rhythmic, peristaltic wave.
