Chapter 39 — Flesh Monger
Wiggling her fingers was such a simple thing, but seeing the motion with her magesight, Rína found that she couldn’t look away. Her aunt had shown her countless aura renderings of different bits of human anatomy, many of which were of whatever issue a patient was having, but none of them ever had the feel of what she saw now.
Aura renderings were essentially just woodblock prints made of aura that were pressed into the aura of another person. They were certainly useful, but it was difficult for the person making the render to properly convey motion or different materials. And whenever her aunt ran up against this during their lessons, she usually made a small model out of living wood or tweaked the chromocytes of the wagon’s interior walls to display pictures—both approaches worked to a degree, but they were still somewhat lacking.
Ultimately none of what Rína saw was new. She knew that beneath the layers of skin there was a layer of fat, she knew that ligaments and tendons created a spider’s weave connecting the bones to muscles, and she knew that those same muscles were like bundles of rope that could be tensioned at a moment’s notice. She knew all of these things were true of The human body, but to see them played out in real time inside Her body was something else.
Rína snapped her fingers, clicked one fingernail beneath another, and made every other hand movement she could think of. She saw how each motion arose from a dozen smaller ones, all working together in perfect concert and without her direct awareness. It was mesmerizing, but amidst it all something between a thought and feeling began to bubble up from the back of her mind.
It stemmed from the simple fact that her fingers were being puppeted. Instead of moving on their own, each finger was strung with a pair of flexor-extensor tendons that ran up the front and back of the hand, through the base of the wrist, and up to where they were pulled on by muscles in the forearm. Intellectually she knew that all of her body was essentially being puppeted by her nervous system, but even though she could see most of her nerves, it wasn’t like she could actually see them firing. To her sight, her muscles and bones seemed to move on their own as if by magic. It was only her fingers that were obviously being controlled by something else, pulled this way and that by a puppeteer’s strings.
And if these strings could control a hand, couldn’t they just as easily control a claw, or a tentacle, or anything else? Couldn’t any Weaver just pop her hand off, replace it with whatever, restring the tendons, and have it work fine? Obviously it’d be more work than that—growing the replacement in the first place and then getting the skin, bones, nerves, and blood vessels to all connect properly, and it wasn’t like there weren’t also muscles in her hand that helped define its movements—but the more Rína thought about it, the more her hand felt less like herself, and more like a default attachment she happened to be born with, like some kind of grasper tool stuck to the end of her forearm.
She’d heard plenty of people say that this thing or that felt like an extension of their hand, but Rína would have never thought that the same feeling could ever go in the opposite direction, that her hand could feel like just an extension of her forearm that might be tweaked or replaced.
Rína could feel a kind of instinctual revulsion and panic at the idea, like a more potent version of the revulsion she sometimes got treating a nasty wound. Though of course in this case all the gore was still neatly arranged in its original packaging and no one was in danger of bleeding out.
Still, the deprecated cavewoman part of her mind was getting unnerved just by looking at her hand, so Rína did her best to squash the feeling, just as she did whenever she stitched up a patient.
It was a little ironic that simply looking at her hand had evoked such a feeling. And hells, that’s all she had been doing for the last minute, just silently staring at her own palm with the wooden cube set down and forgotten. But that did beg the question of what the rest of her body looked like with her magesight. And while she was vaguely aware that she and her aunt were on a schedule, Rína couldn’t help but move her magesight up her arm.
As she did, she got a good look at her radius and ulna—the bones slowly crossing and uncrossing each other as Rína rotated her wrist. The fact that it could do so without the need of a ball joint was something Rína always thought was a nice design, but as her magesight went up her arm, Rína’s opinion of her body only went down.
At her elbow she saw her ulnar nerve—her funny bone—strung around her medial epicondyle—an elbow nub—as if it was just asking to get banged into something. And further up was her brachial artery and vein combo that, now that she looked at them, were distressingly close to the surface of her skin for how much blood they were carrying. And then there was her glenoid fossa—her shoulder socket—though it was barely deep enough to actually warrant being called a socket. It was no wonder a dislocated shoulder was such a common injury seeing as the only things keeping the joint in place were the handful of ligaments bridging her arm and torso—like a tentpole kept upright by ropes instead of an actually stable anchor.
It was almost annoying seeing the weird design decisions evolution had made all while ignoring some pretty straightforward improvements. Obviously, evolution wasn’t consciously designing anything, which was kind of the problem. If it was up to her, she’d at least have some hard cartilage sheathing her funny bone. Ideally it’d be covered with actual bone, but that might cause some pinching problems… Well, regardless, that was a problem for another day—
Rína paused. It really was a problem for another day. As in, a problem that she would be able to solve for herself some day in the future once she became a proper Flesh Weaver. So often she’d heard others talk about the human body as if it was some pinnacle of biology, but it wasn’t; it was just a starting point and all the grievances she had with it she could jot down on a to-do list.
Rína sat with that idea for a minute, but with nothing she could do about it at the moment, she eventually moved on with her self guided tour of herself, stopping next at her torso.
From her aunt’s anatomy lessons, Rína was used to seeing the organs of the various bodily systems drawn out separately, but seeing them all piled on top of each other set her inner cavewoman off again. Like the first time, Rína suppressed the visceral unease from her viscera and she began experimentally moving her torso around through its motions, twisting at the waist, sucking in her stomach, and anything else that came to mind.
She had to admit that seeing her internal organs essentially sloshing around her chest and abdominal cavities wasn’t pleasant. And while each organ was indisputably a biochemical marvel, her magesight unfortunately didn’t have the resolution to see them as anything more than chunks of meat interlaced with blood vessels.
The two things that did catch Rína’s attention, however, weren’t in her chest, but were stuck to it. Breasts were either the biggest symbol of a woman's body, the petite-est, or somewhere in between, and looking at her own, Rína couldn’t help but feel a certain kind of disconnect.
Her actual mammary glands looked like a bunch of shriveled grapes still stuck to vines that sprouted from the underside of her nipple. The glands themselves were buried inside a mound of fat, capped with the aforementioned nipple, and of course covered in regular skin—and that was it. Those were the things that so many people were constantly sexualizing, either by flaunting or ogling them.
Even under ideal circumstances Rína had trouble imagining a person being so into someone that they’d want that someone in them. But how in the hells the two lumps of mostly fat were supposed to play into that, Rína had no idea. And just like whenever she had these kinds of thoughts, she could only chalk it all up to the mass hallucination that was human sexuality.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Not wanting to dwell on it, Rína continued on her way up, wandering up her own neck. Along the way she noted that her jugular was practically asking to get punctured with how little protection it had and she mentally added it to her to-do list. But it wasn’t long before she came face to face with her face.
Like with her hand and torso, Rína went through a gamut of facial expressions and again her inner cavewoman made her objections, but this time Rína was a bit more sympathetic.
Horror of horrors, Rína saw that behind her eyes was the skull of a dead woman. She felt kind of foolish framing it like that, but it was hard to see the mass of bone sitting atop her spine as anything other than a death’s head—a symbol of the grave to be interred likewise, not adorned with strips of bloody muscle that puppeted the sheet of skin that was her face.
And worse yet, Rína saw the lump of spongy matter that was her brain. That in itself wasn’t unnerving, but what she could see attached to it was.
Ever since she had gotten her soulsight, Rína had seen the tips of her soul’s roots tangled around an empty spot in the Astral. But now overlaid with her magesight, she could clearly see how those roots were truly rooted into her brain.
At that moment the divide between her perceptions of her soul and her body were bridged and she could see for herself that her soul truly was puppeting her brain, which was puppeting her muscles that were puppeting her face that was—
“Rína?” Came her aunt’s voice.
“Huh?” Rína startled, “Sorry, I was just…”
“Engaging in literal introspection?” Yvette suggested with a smirk.
Rína stifled a snort as she pulled her magesight away from her body, “Yeah, something like that…” Rína said as she tried to collect herself, “Hey aunty, do most people…? Is it normal to be kinda…?”
“Unsettled by one’s own internals?” Yvette asked.
“Yeah,” Rína nodded, “Well, I mean, not all of it, just… bits and pieces, you know?”
Yvette moved closer to Rína, putting a comforting arm around her, “It is perfectly normal, among both Weavers and other mages who can turn their magics towards introspective ends. As such you have nothing to be embarrassed about.”
Rína frowned as she leaned into the half hug, “I never said I was embarrassed about it.”
“No you certainly did not.” Her aunt replied evenly.
Rína huffed but didn’t press the issue, “I don’t suppose there’s an easy way to get comfortable with it?”
Yvette shook her head, “Repeated exposure is the only true avenue, however… I would suggest trying to keep in mind that this,” Yvette said, pressing a finger to Rína’s sternum, “is simply a thing, made of flesh and bone, and nothing more; whereas this,” Yvette’s aura brushed against Rína’s soul, “is my niece, made of hopes and dreams, and everything more.”
A grin itched at the corner of Rína’s mouth, “So ‘See the soul, not the flesh’?”
“Precisely,” Yvette replied with a warm smile, “Now I am afraid we really must be on our way,” she said, rising to her feet.
Rína nodded and tried to follow, but was quickly reminded of the joints in her lower body still being in open revolt.
“Hey aunty,” Rína grimaced, “Do you mind giving me a hand?”
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The walk back from the tower was initially a quiet one shrouded in a pre-morning overcast, and Rína took the opportunity to have another go with her magesight, this time staying clear of her head and torso. Free of the more overt gore and existential symbolism, Rína let herself be engrossed in the biomechanics of a simple stroll, watching her legs’ tendons act like springs, cushioning impacts and refunding spent energy in equal measure.
However as the sun rose the city streets became quickly awash in both daylight and the shambling throngs of people, making it far more difficult to split her attention between walking and the mechanics therein. And after accidentally sweeping her magesight through a person that brushed past her—and seeing some personal biology that she definitely should not have—Rína decided to hold off on her magesight until they got back to the wagon.
And speaking of, it should have been just around the—
“Oh dear…” Yvette grimaced as her eyes locked onto something through the crowd.
“What’s wr—” Rína began before the foot traffic ahead of her parted, “Oh no.”
There was the wagon, parked where they had left it on the side of the street with the oxen puppets feigning sleep beside it. But immediately around the wagon was what could only have been described as a mob. Twenty or thirty people surrounded it, clogging the already narrow street. Each person there bore the telltale signs of anxious energy, like wolves circling their prey, except they clearly had no order, no unifying leadership. They were all there of their own accord, lying in wait to fall upon a certain something, or perhaps certain someones.
“I suppose this was only a matter of time,” Yvette said, leveling her gaze upon the crowd.
“Yeah, but I didn’t think it’d be this soon…”
“The timeline was never truly under our control. Regardless, at this moment we will need to move quickly.” Yvette intoned.
Rína gave a resolute nod and followed her aunt towards the crowd. They walked as quickly as they could without drawing undue attention, though in the final meters before the wagon’s door, the mob finally seemed to take notice of their presence. In a moment, dozens of eyes fell on the two women, but there was only one thing either of them could do.
They closed the distance to the wagon’s door before the mob could truly react. They were inside in a moment and by silent agreement the two women split off from each other; Yvette assembling the necessary steel and iron equipment she had prepared for such an eventuality and Rína raiding their supplies.
Rína tried to remain focused, but her mind couldn’t help but wander, thinking of all the decisions that led them to where they now were.
It had started days ago when it became clear that their stay in Westreach would not be a short one. That in and of itself was not a problem, but the lack of easily accessible calories certainly was.
Simply buying foodstuffs or firewood or leaving and then returning to the city after a bit of clandestine deforestation were both good options except for the fact that they required money; money that they certainly didn’t have.
Yvette had mentioned before that selling things like rare spices, dyes, or silks was a reliable source of income for most Weavers, and while that was certainly still true in most situations, Westreach was somewhat of an exception. The reason was that the city was a port of entry into the Serric Highlands, and any expensive, exotic goods that Yvette might have sold usually only entered the city through bulk imports funded by large mercantile enterprises. The goods were then typically sold in one of the auction houses and shipped off into the rest of the Highlands. A consequence of this was that there just weren’t any easily accessible markets an anonymous trader like Yvette could use to sell a small amount of luxury goods, and quickly growing any bulk goods like wheat, rice, or lumber would take far more calories than they could ever be traded for.
Yvette had discovered the broad strokes of the situation during her first venture into Westreach’s commercial district, and after a day of fruitless searching, she was about to just grab a bolt of silk and start knocking on the doors of seamstresses. However, it was then Rína had suggested a less out of place alternative that Yvette eventually agreed to.
To Rína’s credit, her idea had certainly worked as a small business venture, it was just that it had clearly garnered attention due to the fact that it could be… unsavory at times… and at other times it could be quite savory indeed.
After looking over their inventory and quickly confirming with her aunt, Rína unlatched the wagon’s most recent modification: a panel of wall that could swing vertically outward, turning into an exterior counter.
Doing so, Rína immediately met the eyes of the ravenous horde arrayed in front of the wagon.
“Sorry for the wait, everyone,” Rína said, quickly scribbling the day’s menu on a small chalkboard that she then hung on the wagon’s exterior, “Today’s special is smoked habanero chicken over pinto bean rice with a side of fried plantains. So… who’s first?”