Three days.

Three days since that distant explosion.

Three days since their body had been twisted.

Three days since that man had arrived to the crash site.

Three days…

And yet, it's still…

They shook those burgeoning thoughts out of their head.

Dwelling on it now wouldn't help anything, and besides, they were about to do something far more tangible than worrying over errant thoughts.

Taylor crept steadily, silently, through the misty fogbanks, far past out where even the foraging party those three days prior had dared venture off to.

The med student's hairs stood on end, the thickening humidity of the mist wetting their clothes to the point of being as drenched as their shoes and lower pants. The grime against their skin was irritating, the waters cold and damp, leaving a sticky residue reminiscent of spilled juice. The only thing to be thankful for was the lack of buzzing pests - only big game inhabiting the treacherous murky lands the plane crash survivors had touched down into.

Taylor's breathing was steady, shallow, mechanically paced. Their heart rate beating at a similar rhythm. The youth's eyes darted every which way, straining to pick up any sign of stirring creatures.

So far, so good.

Despite the occasional dizzy spell, and some flickering distortions of focus, everything was going smoothly. It almost scared the aspiring artist how well their body obeyed them, like a marionette that had changed hands to a defter puppeteer.

A change of pace proven by their continued survival.

Something shot out at Taylor from above, a large winged thing the size of an eagle, with terrible rending mandibles, many spike-ended arms and a lashing bladed tail. The bug eyed pest made a whistling noise as it zoomed forwards at a speed which would've left Taylor a goner a scant three days ago.

Taylor bent their knees and leapt backwards, gritting their teeth as a chunk of their shoulder was raked out by the murderous pest.

Better a sliced shoulder than a shredded head, they thought as they sailed across the swamp muck back-first, the slushing chill grime washing over the whole of their body.

Taylor could still feel, and move, their left arm, though the responsivity was shot. The pain was manageable, their nerves had dulled since being fed Jonah's magic-miracle painkillers, and they'd been immersed in far worse beforehand anyways.

Need to act.

They pushed off the ground with their right arm with enough force to go from lying flat to standing up, their meat and bones shaking from the exertion. The creature was hiding in the mist, yet, from the lack of follow-up, it was a simple conclusion that it hadn't turned all the way around yet.

And now it doesn't have surprise on its side

The youth took note of the direction it had attacked from before, turned the opposite direction, and grabbed a fistfull of swamp-stuff with their metallic arm. Clenching as hard as they could, their once-rigid bladed fingers overlapped with one another. Being able to go from soft as flesh to hard as metal, or switch from cutting edges to blunted claws, were quirks of their body's new features that the youth was exceedingly grateful for. Otherwise, a trick like this wouldn't work.

They threw the compacted fistful of earth with the force of a catapult, the chalky handful sailing in the flying bugger's general direction with speed and force that exceeded anything organic flesh alone could accomplish.

It struck the creature. Obviously not hard enough to kill it, that wasn't Taylor's plan. Fighting smarter was as important as fighting harder, a lesson they'd paid for in blood. If something had eyes, it needed to see. And if it was blended, at that speed, it'd make dodging all the easier.

So Taylor grinned as it missed, mind already racing for the next step in this latest impromptu hunt.

How do I catch it? How do I kill it?

The answer to that riddle of the moment would never come.

A whistling crack split the air, and something fast and shimmering green slammed into the flying monster, before arcing in the air to run it through again, and again, and again. By the time the coin-sized projectile was done the beast was reduced to floating bits of chitich, meat, and pulped innards.

"So, you followed me. Tsk tsk tsk…"

Taylor's true target stepped out of the mists, which were being cleared and dissipated by the green bit in his general direction, flurrying around with a manic energy to lessen the obstructing thickness of the fog.

"...if you had just asked for a word when next I stopped by the crash site, I'd have been happy to acquiesce."

He put his gun to center of mask, somehow managing to blow away the smoke from his shot. With his free hand, he plucked his green-tinged shot out of the air, shaking it a bit. The green glow simmered down, and Taylor was able to spy a thorny looking, carved wooden thing with some esoteric shapes carved around its cylindrical center.

"That looks more like a toothpick than a bullet. How'd you turn that thing to salsa with it?"

Stowing away his pistol into its holster, Arawn raised his now-free hand and wagged a finger at Taylor.

"Secrets. Understanding. Part and parcel of my life's work which, I must say, I am not eager to divulge flippantly. Now, tell me why you've ventured so far from safety? I told you all how dangerous the region beyond the crash site is, so, there must be a good reason?"

Taylor narrowed their eyes. Arawn pocketed their projectile.

"My good fellow, if mistrust is the sole provocation for this dalliance then, as I said, we could have struck up a conversation upon my planned midday visitation."

"Florence"

"...oh… did the other one put you up to this?"

"I put myself up to it," Taylor yelled, taking a few testing steps forwards.

That pistol's a one-shot wonder. He holstered it. He doesn't have anything else on him.

It was a bit of a spur of the moment decision…

…however…

...Taylor just couldn't fight the urge to rip the spook to shreds.

"Cocky little metamorph, aren't you?" Arawn mused as, wide eyed, Taylor sprinted over to him, before falling face first into the muck as something tackled them from behind.

"Cait, careful not to cut yourself on them."

Taylor strained to listen, only one ear poking above the water's surface. Their head was dunked all the way in and, try as they might to break free, the grip of whatever was pinning them down was too much.

"Of course, master."

The voice wasn't human. Though, not uncomfortable. It was light pitched, rolling and enunciated with inflections more befitting some animal mimickry of human speech patterns. As if a pet had learned to talk, and kept a vestigial accent from its unintelligible native tongue.

"Now, I know you must think my having a companion is a sign that some paranoid musings of yours have been thusly vindicated. Perish the thought," he remarked, standing there as Taylor struggled impotently, the air in their lungs growing scarcer and scarcer.

"It is simply as I said before - I am not keep on laying out my hand unceremoniously. Not without reason, be it necessity, or to pay a price. You've forced my hand out of necessity, and now, I think, I will have you pay a price."

The air in their lungs ran dry.

It was all Taylor could do to keep their mouth shut, desperately keeping their instincts in check, lest they start desperately chugging down swamp-slop in the vain hope of catching their breath.

"You'll pay me back for this inconvenience. Count yourself fortunate that I consider some part of this a failure on my end. Poor communication and whatnot."

Arawn made a clicking sound beneath his mast, and Cait let up on their tackle just enough for the youth to pop their head above water and catch some desperate, raggedy breaths.

"Bastard."

Arawn laughed.

"I'm not the one who stalked, then attempted to eviscerate, a hapless helping hand."

"I just wanted-"

"Yes, Florence, I heard. Yet, you also were ready to leap to violence, weren't you? I trust you've been overindulging in hunting trips?"

Taylor answered with silence.

"As I said before, you are fortunate that I consider this something of a failure on my part as well. I would have hoped the Marshal or that old chap would've kept a better leash on such an unruly creature. Let me demonstrate."

Arawn whistles, and the creature holding Taylor down now moved to wrestle them up, keeping the youth in a vicelike grip tiger than the damn snake's had been.

"Good girl."

"Thank you, master."

"Now release the metamorph."

Cait did just that, Taylor turning to face them, staring at… a…

…

..cat?

It was a cat.

Humanoid, granted. Wearing clothes, even. Some tribalistic dress. Yet, they were, by every measure of the word, with every movement sound and vibe they gave off… a cat.

"Come now, did you think only humans were subject to your… condition?"

"I…"

Taylor stepped back, the shock of the sight clearing their head somewhat.

…I was ready to…

Taylor doubled over, then puked out the last meal they'd had. A dinner of roast spider they Jonah and the Air Marshal had worked hard to scrounge up. Cooked to perfection by a host of culinarily inclined folks Blake managed to scrounge up from the passengers.

…why…

Taylor looked down at their shaking hands.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Again, the fault partially lay with me. You, for some providence forsaken reason, saw me as a target. Then, your subconscious jumped to conclusions, and your desires ran wild."

Arawn gestured with his hand, and began walking through the cleared fog, Cait taking Taylor's hand and leading the trembling youth through.

"I'll give you some answers. Though, I expect you to pay a price for them…"

***

Arawn's campsite was a quaint thing. A few chests suspended off of one of the withered mangrove trees, a sleeping bag suspended in the same manner, a rack of tools and gizmos nailed into the same tree, and Florence sat on something resembling an operating table.

"Make yourself comfortable. Hospitality is a virtue, and while I can' spare rations for the whole of your waylaid people, feeding one guest is more than within my power."

Cait walked over to one of the hanging chests, opening it up and pulling out a pair of wax-paper bundles tied with thick reeds. Handing one to Arawn, she unsheathed a single claw and sliced the expertly done knot off, letting the binding fall to the ground, after which Arawn unwrapped and bit into some crustless sandwiches with a strong fishy smell.

"M… uuuuwwww… mrow… are you a 'Mister' or a 'Miss'?"

Taylor couldn't be mad at the wide eyed, stupid confused cat stare Cait was giving them.

"I'm me. That's all."

"Oh… ah, mew! That's great! Here you go then, 'Me'!"

She offered up the paper-wrapped sandwich with a wide, Cheshire smile and narrowed, pleased eyes. Taylor used one of their own bladed fingers to slice the wrapping open, and took a bite of what was definitely a salmon sandwich with mayonnaise, onion, and some green leafy vegetable that didn't remind the youth of anything they'd ever had before.

The taste was indescribable.

Taylor wolfed it down greedily, without a hint of care towards whatever Arawn or his lackey might've thought of the frenzied act.

Real food…

When it was all down the hatch, Taylor was shuddering, panting, breathless at the sensation.

"I would've thought your excessive hunting habits would've improved your current eating habits. Tell me, have you been following the rationing guide I set for the lot of you, or have you in particular been skimping meals?"

"Just me," Taylor answered thoughtlessly, still taken by the aftershock of the civilized food hitting home.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"Duly noted. I must say, starving yourself in your condition won't do any good, less good than if a normal human had been doing it."

"Why?"

"One thing at a time. Cait, if you could be a dear and doff my garments…. Actually, no, help our guest out of those muddy clothes, then, rustle up a blanket for them."

Arawn then, quite dramatically, turned around. Walking over to Florence, picking up a small weathered booklet and pen before jotting down what the med student assumed to be notes of some sort.

Cait made startlingly quick work of getting Taylor out of their clothes, at least initially. Shirt and pants were easy enough to slide off with the sort of force that the humanoid thing could exert, though the feeling chaffed against Taylor's skin.

Throwing a nice, woolly, hydrophobic blanket over the aspiring artist, Cait lurched downwards and tried to get their shoes off with a few tugs. A puzzled expression overtaking her feline face when, after a few ginger tugs, the shoes failed to slide off.

"Mrow…. Master…"

"I what you Cait. One second."

Book still in hand, Arawn waltzed over, head turned downwards towards Taylor's feet.

"When was the last time you took your shoes off?"

"Days. No real point. I'm out skulking around the swamp so much… hold on… are you trying to do a check-up on me? What, you couldn't have done this at the plane? Actually, no, wait, you couldn't have even asked me then?"

"It wasn't pertinent then, and you didn't bring anything of the sort up to my attention in my past visits. Cait, pull up a chair and sit our guest down."

Cait complied, moving nimbly to get Taylor seated and comfortable.

"Be sure to keep proper notations, Cait. Now, as for you, I assume you know what trench foot is?"

Taylor nodded.

"I'm a med student. I know what you're getting at - immersion foot syndrome."

"Oh ho ho… well then, why allow yourself to reach the Hyperaemic phase?"

"I was too busy. I didn't have time to waste on keeping my feet clean, and going barefoot would've been worse."

"I suppose you wish you could've gone barefoot. Save even more time. Pondered the how's of it?"

What is he getting at?

"Kinda. I mean, I didn't feel any pain down there. I figured that any damage was being healed over, reinforced, like my arm. Besides, the muck made my feet too sticky, tried taking them off a day ago and gave up after a couple of minutes."

Arawn nodded, pulling a sheathed blade from the assortment of stuff hanging from the tree, then unsheathing it slowly.

"I'm going to have to slice the shoes off. Will that be a problem?"

"Knock yourself out. They're ruined anyways."

Arawn pulled the whole of the blade out and started slicing into the shoe, slowly, carefully.

"Osteoporosis, Cellulitis, amputations, etcetera. Trench foot's been a headache since we first coined the term. You should be more careful, just because your body is no longer 'natural' does not make you immune to the rigors of this equally 'unnatural' land."

As Arawn cut, Taylor began to feel a throbbing pain in the foot he was attending to.

"How has your arm been feeling? You know the one."

"Fine. Normal in every way. Even better, if anything."

"Interesting. Not everyone is so lucky. Being unbound happens in a smattering of different ways, the one that you happened upon rarely goes so smoothly, and even more rarely stays that way."

Arawn finished cutting a cross into the shoe, top to bottom, then one fully around, taking care not to slice into the afflicted foot beneath.

"Take Cait for example. She was born the way she is. And whatever talents I have were learned, harnessed, yet never unleashed upon my flesh and blood. Unlike you…"

"You're being awfully informative, aren't you? I thought-"

"Firstly, as you likely know, an administrator of medicine is well served keeping the patient's mind preoccupied while they tend to them. Secondly… consider the information part of a fair exchange for allowing me to study your particular metamorphosis."

Arawn centered his blade smack dab at the center of Taylor's shoe sole. Cait clamped down on their arms, keeping them in-chair, unable to react in time. Taylor felt the tip of his blade jap into the bottom of their foot, the entirety of the limb exploding in pain.

"It didn't go through?" Arawn wondered aloud as Taylor kicked him square in the chest, sending the surprised stranger doubling over, a pained wheeze escaping his mask.

"That… could have gone better… however… fruits harvested at some pain is fruit gained nonetheless. Observe, student of medicine, and perhaps you'll begin to understand why recklessness is ill suited to these lands."

Taylor would've gone off on him if the flames flickering from Florence weren't actively glinting off of their toes in a blinding display. Angling them away, the youth took shallow breaths as the throbbing, molten pain of their foot began to dissipate, cooling quickly as could be.

"You required a limb that suited your needs, you had the knowledge and understanding to scaffold that adjustment to your body, you held the desire for a change of being that better suited your current activities, and through being unbound that potentiality was made manifest. That is the simplified nature of metamorphosis... that is all you need know of it. Any more, and I'll have said too much."

Cait let go, and Taylor hopped out of their chair, bouncing a bit as the force exerted by their freed foot sent them up a few inches into the air, before landing gently back down. Their toes dug into the swamp much in stable fashion, the outer skin uncaring for its coldness, nor blemished by the grit and grime.

Balancing against the mangrove, and pulling the foot upwards, Taylor felt their heart race as they saw something raptor-like, a segmented wireframe foot with flattened blades where the skeleton ought to have been, as if they'd been turned to metal and hammered into their current shapes by an expert blacksmith. Or Taylor themself if they happened to be in a particularly edgy mood.

"It seems like the wires are connecting and intersecting into your flesh. Tell me, the other day, did you notice silvered veins when you were fiddling around with your shoes?"

"Yeah… I… I just thought…"

They looked to the silvery scarred scabbing upon their left hand, remembering well what'd happened after touching Jonah's eyeless scarred face.

"Though, assumed, in any case you weren't bothered by it. If anything, there was a convenience to the lack of care that you must have found... convenient…. Hrmph, 'convenience'. That's the devil in the details if I were asked. The bad apple that spoils the bunch. Now, your other foot?"

Taylor let Arawn work his blade, and again, from beneath exploded a new foot, powerful and deadly. Totally at home with the savage, surreal swamp that the youth was currently calling home.

"Joints are exquisitely made, the design of the digits and skeletal structure is effective… the material seems versatile. I'd hazard a guess that it possesses qualities of a particularly malleable shape-metal alloy?"

"I guess… I'm not really knowledgeable in metallurgy."

"I see. I actually think that's one of my strong suits, personally speaking. More so than biology in any case. I have to say, I'm impressed. If I didn't know better, I'd have guessed you were working with some form of pre-existent phenomenological basis. As is, it seems you just so happen to be exceedingly gifted at body-sculpting."

"Oh. Thanks. I… I don't think anyone's ever praised my art."

"Art, and medicinal skills. Specializing in anatomical renditions I assume. So, that's the mix then. How potent! Now I'm excited to see what you'll become. By the end, you might even retain your mind, if you can keep the quality consistent and adapt steadily enough."

"What did you just say?"

"Ah... errr, perhaps I got ahead of myself. Best not to dwell too much on-"

"No. No, what did you say? What did you mean!? What's my condition, what's metamorphosis, what's happening to my body!"

"Calm down. No good would come of offloading all need-to-know information at once. As a universal rule of thumb, rushing immersion in the supernatural causes problems."

"I don't need to hear some half-hearted lecture from a worthless cryptic surveyor! Tell me! What's happening to my body!!!"

Before raised voices could turn to violence, a hissing moan like the crackle of a fireplace came from Florence. Evaporating the high tensions, and drawing all heads to her stirring body.

"Impossible," Arawn said, rushing over to her, "one in a hundred, a thousand, a million. Nobody could just…"

Arawn turned back to Taylor.

"You're a student of modern medicine, correct? Perhaps I've overlooked something. Tell me your prognosis."

Taylor scoffed.

"What would I even look for?"

"Act on instinct. Now, if you would help… or do I need remind you that it is no friend of mine who resembles a charred corpse."

"She isn't really my friend either… but… okay?"

Taylor walked over, slowly and carefully, wary of their new feet betraying them.

"Let's see…"

Taylor started with the obvious, putting a hand atop her head.

"Feverish."

They then moved down to her neck.

"Irregular pulse, though, stabilizing."

The med student then checked her chest, which was rising and falling at a shallow rate.

"Short of breath…. Wait, don't tell me…"

Eyeballing her, Taylor saw a bevvy of other symptoms for a particular prognosis that was formulating in their mind. Clammy skin. Bulging neck veins. Loss of consciousness.

"Cardiogenic shock? What? That's what's wrong with her!?"

"That's… a heart attack? That can't be, she was showing clear symptoms of… of…"

Arawn paused, cleared his throat, then turned to Cait sharply.

"I should have known better. My dear friend, I need you to go on a messenger run,' he said, closing his booklet and tossing it Cait's way, "as for you, 'med student', what do you think is the culprit to her malady?"

"Chest injury, blood clots in the lung, heart failure. Drug overdose can be a cause, but she wouldn't have access to substances and the Air Marshal never mentioned her being poisoned while out foraging. In any case, she isn't circulating enough blood. Likely hasn't been for days now. You haven't been doing anything magical to keep her alive, have you?"

"No. She's been in this state unfailingly. I believed it to be related to a matter tangential to her metamorphosis. It seems that I, somehow, was wrong."

"Why? How? Don't you have ways to check your prognoses?"

The empty black eyes of his masked face looked into Taylor's own, shifting shadows within those empty pits roiling something fierce.

"Prior to crash landing, would you check to see if someone undergoing a heart attack was ill due to a hex curse? That is the brand of incredulousness that has caught me off guard. I'm sure, all things considered, you can relate."

"So, this is out of your norm as well?"

He nodded, rushing over to his things to pull out all manner of tinctures, trinkets, and knickknacks.

"This Eden, I think, is out of everyone's norms. Save those who live within it. If even."

"Hold on, people live here? And you didn't tell us!"

Taylor didn't wait for explanation, didn't even wait for Florence to awaken.

They just turned and ran back towards the plane, feet carrying them quicker than a kangaroo on speed.

If people lived here, then the others had to know, before any of them ran into the locals.

After all, wild animals were dangerous, but people?

Only people could be murderous.