Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 121146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121146 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
“Fire flowers,” Hold murmured, nodding down at them. But what Celia was looking at wasn’t the flowers themselves but the wall they were heaped again.
“Madre de Dios,” she whispered, taking a step forward. “Are those…faces carved into the wall?”
That was what it looked like—and not just faces, there were whole bodies which looked like they had been carved into the enormous wooden wall. Some of them seemed to be yelling or reaching out, as though begging for help. What it reminded Celia of was that scene in Star Wars where Han Solo gets put into a Carbonite mold—that was the look of the carvings. But instead of just one figure, it was a whole row of them.
“There are rows and rows of them!” Hold remarked, walking further down the line and voicing her thought out loud. “This whole room is filled with them!”
“What in the Seven Hells?” Fierce muttered. “What the hell kind of carvings are these? They’re fucking creepy!”
Celia thought so too. Tentatively, she reached out to touch the wall beside one of the carvings. She didn’t want to touch the carving itself—it just looked too real.
But the moment she put her hand flat on the Mother Tree’s surface, it began to sink in—it was as though the wall was made of some kind of soft clay instead of wood.
“Hey!” Celia yanked her hand away—or tried to anyway. The wall didn’t want to let her go. “Guys? Help!” she exclaimed, yanking harder. “Hurry, please—it’s eating me!”
“What the fuck?” Fierce was suddenly at her side. He wrapped both big hands around her wrist and forearm and started pulling backwards. But even though Celia felt her hand give a little, it wouldn’t completely come free of the tree.
“It won’t let me go!” she gasped. “Dios—get it off me!”
“Brother, come grab her around the waist!” Fierce ordered as Hold hurried over. “And then pull for fuck’s sake!”
“We don’t want to break our lady’s arm—be careful, Fierce!” Hold exclaimed, even as he put both arms around Celia’s waist and began to pull along with his brother.
“I’d rather have a broken arm than be eaten by a tree!” Celia exclaimed. Panic was climbing up her throat and choking her with fear. “Hurry! Get me loose—please!”
It took the strength of both big warriors but at last her hand came free with a sharp, tearing pain and all three of them tumbled backwards.
“Ow! Madre de Dios!” Ceila looked down at her palm, which was stippled with tiny droplets of blood. “That really hurts.”
She was trying not to cry but the close call of almost being eaten by the Mother Tree, plus the sharp pain in her hand meant tears were pricking at her eyelids despite her best efforts to keep them back.
“Let me see.” Hold examined her hand, making sure the wrist and elbow joints were intact and then looked over her palm. “It looks like you put your hand down on a bundle of thorn canes,” he remarked at last. “I imagine it stings, but I don’t think there’s any permanent damage done. I still have my smallest medical kit with me—I managed to save it when they took our clothes and weapons. So I can treat this for you once we get back to the dormitory.”
“No permanent damage except to Celia’s nerves, you mean!” Fierce growled. “Look at her, Brother—she’s trembling.” He put one long arm around her shoulders and squeezed comfortingly. “It’s all right, lelka—you’re safe now.”
“It…it almost ate me!” Celia wished her voice wouldn’t shake so much. “I barely touched it and it started to suck me in!”
“This must be what La’ver’na means when she talks about “feeding” the Mother Tree,” Hold said grimly. He put an arm around Celia’s waist from the other side and gave her a comforting squeeze. With Fierce on the other side, she felt surrounded by the two big warriors. “Which means that all these carvings…” he gestured to the wall.
“Aren’t carvings at all,” Celia whispered. “They’re actual people. Madre de Dios—these are people that the Mother Tree ate.”
“And it looks like it’s still fucking digesting them,” Fierce said. “Shit, this is fucking bad!”
“We have to get out of here!” Celia tried to blink back the tears of fear and pain that wanted to fall but a few slipped down her cheeks despite her best efforts. “This isn’t just some harmless sex cult—they’re fucking monsters here, feeding people to this…this horrible tree!” she said in a choked voice.
“We can’t leave yet—not until the ship is fixed,” Fierce said grimly. “Without it we’re stuck on JoCosta Twelve and the Sisterhood of Peace owns the whole damn planet. So as much as I fucking hate it, we’re going to have to wait it out.”
“And in the meantime, we’re going to have to play along with them and do what they want, I’m afraid,” Hold murmured. “Which means doing our best to turn your nipples blue, my lady,” he said to Celia.