you wouldn't be the first renegade to need somebody
"—not that I’m stupid enough to come alone," Flora says, her voice a low echo against the damp, pulsing walls. Her curls are swept up in a braid, frizzing around her ears despite the chill, and her sweater—cream knit with threads of gold—catches the violet glow in strange, ghostly ways. "But I had to see what’s down here, especially after everything the Family put me through, y'know?"
Her boots crunch over a crust of crystallized fungus, brittle and bleeding light beneath the tread. The air tastes metallic and wrong, heavy with something that clings to her tongue like a threat. She doesn’t lean on the walls, doesn’t touch anything, just threads carefully between a ribcage big enough to belong to a whale and something much smaller, all of it rotting sweet and sharp.
"Anyway," she adds lightly, glancing over her shoulder atCallum with a grin that’s too bright for the gloom, "thanks for being my +1 to hell’s terrarium."
Her boots crunch over a crust of crystallized fungus, brittle and bleeding light beneath the tread. The air tastes metallic and wrong, heavy with something that clings to her tongue like a threat. She doesn’t lean on the walls, doesn’t touch anything, just threads carefully between a ribcage big enough to belong to a whale and something much smaller, all of it rotting sweet and sharp.
"Anyway," she adds lightly, glancing over her shoulder at
