The descent into the mile-wide sinkhole was not a fall through planetary bedrock. It was a completely frictionless drop down the localized esophagus of a terrestrial god.
As Ren plummeted through the massive, glowing violet throat of the European continent, the walls around them actively pulsed. The thick, fleshy fungal plating was heavily laced with millions of massive, glowing green bioluminescent veins. They weren't pumping magma or subterranean water; they were pumping raw, Category-Four terrestrial mana directly from the assimilated surface down into the deep crust.
Chloe stood perfectly anchored within the ten-foot, zero-point vacuum bubble trailing exactly ten paces behind Ren's descending silhouette.
She looked at the walls blurring past them in the dim, toxic light.
"Ren," Chloe whispered, her unmutated voice trembling violently in the perfectly sterile air of the slipstream. "The walls... they aren't just vines."
