I huff and reach into another basket, shoving a handful of what look like in-shell walnuts into my mouth, but tastes like sweaty gym socks and feel like dry sponges. I recoil in disgust, unbanking the Black Blood Wine and taking a drink before scooping out a bowl to drink and banking the jar. Gotta make this last until I get production going.

I try to reach for a basket of dried berries and the air resounds with a loud snap as Sis smacks my knuckles with her closed fan. Lacquered wood is resilient and I actually felt that. Fack! Forgot that I’m dealing with real cultivators. I narrow my eyes at her and watch as she watches blankly before processing what she just did. I slowly reach for the basket and she looks at my hand, then away, but doesn’t stop me this time.

“Mm-mm,” I frown, shaking my head as I chew up wood chips that taste like cedar wood smells. “No,” I say after swallowing, rinsing my mouth out with a quick sip of wine.

“You really are a bug,” Slimy Smile mutters out loud, rubbing at his chin with one hand, the other crossed over his chest. I filter to read his thoughts as he thinks about killing me off with pesticides.

“I won’t die, they just taste bad,” I scoff, reaching into another basket.

“Nn!” Sis whines at me, feet dancing as she watches me.

I laugh, just a quick “ha!”, stopping my snack session.

“How do I rank up in the clan? Wait. Is this a clan or a sect?” I think one is like a cult school and the other is a family cult.

“Our Red Silk Clan controls the Red Spider Sect,” Sis tells me, patting my arm with her barehand. She sidles up to me, hissing to get my attention and gesturing with her head for me to come closer. “So the glitter is your scales? Can you shed some for me?”

“I think you can do essence contamination to achieve the same results,” I whisper back.

“But gathering essence is expensive,” she whines loudly, stomping her feet and bouncing in place with her fists down at her sides.

“I’ll see what I can do since Sis had them show me where they keep the food,” I say indulgently. “If you can find me tastier things, I’ll definitely get you a pot!”

“Where’s the Ancestral Blood Poison?” Fashion Disaster says immediately, pointing a trippy mandela painted fan in the spot where Sis pulled the jar.

“Ah, right,” I nod my head. I lean towards Sis hoping Fashion Disaster doesn’t hear. “I definitely owe you for that. I’ll see if I can’t get you some essences.”

“You,” Fashion Disaster notices me and Sis, eyes scanning Green Grass who keeps trying to hide from me, and figures that his information isn’t right. Come again. “Informants tell me that you’re responsible for Eager Heart growing. That you are Rainbow During the Full Eclipse?”

“I was named Eclipsed Rainbow so I wouldn’t get in trouble for entering the Golden Sun Empire,” I shrug. They’re a poison sect hiding from their own people, I doubt they’ll be able to turn me in without being destroyed.

“Brother, this is Kisandera the Hungry Void!” Sis bounces, hand on my arm. She’s totally trying to knock scales loose, cheeky bish.

“Tch! Keep giving me names,” I snort while sniffing at the baskets for something that actually smells good.

“Kisandera isn’t a hunan cultivator,” Fashion Disaster says while slowly stalking closer. He’s pissed. He’s on team Slimy Smile, regarding me as a cheat, despite my proficiency with poisons.

“Hunan form, mutated wimble,” I turn my head to exaggeratedly waggle my buggy inner mouth bits at him. “Void Moth Queen. Shattered. Male and Female. I spawned the triplets, who lived, and Persephone, who hasn’t gotten half the recognition she deserves--. Ooh.”

I found something that smells like strawberry lemonade candy. It looks like coarse salt crystals until I look closer, then I can see there’s just one black dot on each cluster. I pluck one and crunch on it and it legit tastes like strawberry lemonade rock candy. But better.

“Mm! This is good! What is it?” I bank a handful and eat another piece.

“That’s not supposed to be in here,” Fashion Disaster says casually but someone pisses themselves and he wonders if he can get his slacker sister away fast enough.

They’re larva. The crystals are a seed coating that they shatter releasing shrapnel. Anyone hit with this shrapnel is affected if it sticks or pierces them, their flesh, bone, and blood slowly forming more crystal. The larva will feed on the crystal, mature, then lay more eggs in the crystallized remains. The remains will be carried off by something that looks like the mantis locust soldier form the triplets preferred, shattering and hopefully taking seeds with it, although the mantis carrier would be ‘sploded, and then the cycle continues until a proper queen is born.

“I can bank these if necessary.” Gimme da candy! Accept my “selfless sacrifice”!

“We’ll need to know who moved it here and put it in the baskets, but you would earn merit with our Red Silk Clan --,” YOINK! “-- for your assistance,” he says carefully.

When they notice the basket is gone they immediately relax, exhaling, Sis panting, and I get to read that they don’t know how I didn’t trigger the larva. Apparently it just takes one breath to cause a reaction.

“Decorative?” I point at my noise. I can breathe through it, but I think I actually breathe through the mouth tats… I don’t have my spiracles, do I?

I hard exhale not through my mouth or nose and feel air moving. Nope, not my mouth tats. I sniff, through my nose, and turn back to the baskets before I remember I was confused about my current status.

“Am I part of the Clan or the Sect?” I ask Fashion Disaster. He knows more even if Sis is high ranked for her deadly familiar.

“We can adopt her!” Sis says excitedly bouncing and biting her bottom lip as she dances in place.

“If he’s part of our Clan he’ll have to help with the Sect,” Fashion Disaster says to her while turning to me.

What ensues isn’t an argument about whether or not I should start in the Sect or work my way up to the Clan, or if I should join the Clan and be put to work in the Sect immediately. No. Sis wants to argue that I’m a girl while Fashion Disaster argues that he won’t tolerate such nonsense. I move around sniffing for more goods, finding two more baskets of candy, which I bank immediately. One looks like a leaf wrapped cocoon and tastes like soft caramel, and the other is a harder, crunchier version that tastes like coffee hard candy.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

I bank my robes and keep sniffing while raising my arms and doing a spin.

“Oy!” I shout, and they double take when they see I’m naked. “I’m male,” I waggle my hips, then move Little Sandy out of the way, “and female. Both sexes. Not just tits and dick. Call me brother, call me sister, both work, both are true.”

I pop something that smells like cherries and tastes like salty snot. Not a fan. I jump as Sis slaps me on the back with her fan, turning to look at her in disbelief as she glares at me. She shouts at me to get dressed, that no one wants to see my baked buns, -- which makes me laugh, gods bless me. I’m trying to be angry! -- but the logs say she’s very unhappy that my breasts are out. The others, men, are concerned about the size of my penis and glad that the sect doesn’t have many women. No one will ever know? Oh! Apparently they’re the size of my pinky, although Slimy Smile tends to boast and describe Noisy Dog’s penis when trying to bed women.

Why does he know --? Oh! Baths. Ooh! Baths!

“I should probably wash up,” I turn to Sis still naked until she takes a swing at my dick with her fan. “Oy!”

I sing that I’m not supposed to run around naked while wearing the robes Persephone made me long ago, having to leave them open since they were made for a slimmer me. Am I getting fat or just maturing? I think I’m taller. That balances out, right?

“Big Sister! Stop eating or your butt will get bigger!” Sis snaps at me.

I was so busy reading my logs after I got dressed that I didn’t realize I was trying to snack while I read. What all happened while I wasn’t paying attention? I get pulled away from my Logs when Sis wraps her arms around mine and starts hauling ass to the Clan Bath. A single bath that they all dip in. And just add water to. I think I’m going to be sick.

I think they’re going on the basis that the poisons mixing will kill anything so it’s like scrubbing down with bleach and alcohol and soap all at the same time. By sharing the same butt juice.

Gods, help me. I know I’m gonna drink it. Like part of it is me knowing very little affects me, and part of it is a need to find new foods. Kinda don’t want to hope it tastes like what it is. She drags me down tunnels that lead deeper into the mountain’s roots, people are better fed and wearing their own clothing versus a uniform of pseudo black, and there’s red on almost everything.

I let her guide me as I go back through my logs to see what was going on with the different people in the lab. The general consensus is that I’m crazy, harmless, and that I have excellent sleight of hand, because there’s no way anyone could survive what I did. For proof? The crystals didn’t explode when I was eating them, so surely there was a trick involved. Another general consensus is that I’m fat, -- fuck you, -- but I have nice breasts, and that bedding me might be nice as long as I didn’t try to make any of them my bed wife.

What the fuck is a bed wife?

“So you better not try to eat my Green Grass or I’ll cry,” Sis pouts.

She strips down and hops into something that looks like oily milk, sighing in annoyance before stomping back out. Apparently the bath is cold. We’re in a room with carved stone shelves on one side, baskets of dried herbs on another wall, and then a raised carved tub. There’s no wood other than the baskets, but I’m not sure if they’re made of leaves instead of wood. She throws on her underrobes and sulks as she leaves the room, telling me to stay while she gets someone to heat the bath.

Logs? She got the spirit beast as a cursed gift? I slowly strip down and she reassures me that I’m allowed to get naked now, encouraging me to hurry and climb into the pool. What the fuck? She’s hoping I’ll shed scales in the tub. Um… Found it, it was supposed to kill her, she’s lucky with poison, bound it, went home to find her parents in pitched combat. Her brother, -- this was 10 years ago, and he was already strangely colored, -- had to wrap her in robes to carry her away.

So their parents are dead, the person who killed them wasn’t trying to take over the sect, they were trying to destroy it, and Green Grass is a reminder of that day. Fuck. Why didn’t they kill and eat it? Or at least kill it. It was an enemy trap, and she kept it?

Why do I taste marshmallow crème? I look down to see milky, oily tub water in my cupped hands as I soak, and I am very unhappy. I finish the “water” I have in my hands.

Why is the tub steaming? I look around in concern as the water starts clearing, looking like clear gel as Sis comes back into the room. She doesn’t say a word. She stares at me with alarming intensity, strips down, hops into the tub, then shrieks as she hops back out.

Am I supposed to get out? Nothing’s happening to me… Why didn’t I try to sample the baskets while she was gone? Most of them smell like perfume, but taste doesn’t necessarily match smell.

A woman with a white face and tiny half circles on her lips to make it look like she has a dot for a mouth shuffles in wearing red robes with pink dots and gold lines. I think it’s supposed to be a red robe with pink blossoms on budding twigs pattern. She’s trying to check on Sis who screams at her, looking like she’s badly white washed. Missing spots. Both women notice at the same time and Sis starts screaming at her to leave. Logs? Holy shit, the bath is helping her absorb her poisons. She’s getting “cured”.

Another scoop, -- this time of thick water, -- and it still tastes like marshmallow. Well, vanilla-flavored marshmallow vs standard marshmallow…

Sis forces herself into the bath, mentally screaming that she’s not going to be useless to the clan as she bares her teeth. She threatened the lesser clansman in an attempt to hide that this bath, -- there are more? Not sure how I feel about that, -- is now purified. But it’s not. I think I’m stabilizing the poisons. I think if Silent Howl knew about this he’d lose his shit.

She dunks herself and screams under the “water”, staying down for as long as she can before sitting up, skin flushed pink, eyebrows the same color as her hair, nails clear, and her teeth still black. She looks at her clear skin, and starts to cry. I panic, cupping my hands and catching the streaked thick water as it drips off her face. She sees the change in my hands and panics, climbing out of the tub. I drink the silver streaked thick water before following her, gagging as my mouth fills with the taste of super sweet syrup.

I take another mouthful of vanilla-mallow before dunking myself. When in Clan, hope the poison bath kills dirt? I get out and watch as Sis grabs her her fan, holding it on her left palm, hand flat, the right hand going into a sword or wand form. Then she starts tapping it. I go to my Logs but they just say she’s started centering herself, which is the first step to meditating, but she’s actively moving and junk. Well, I guess some people have forms that help them center to do a technique, but I don’t know what she’s doing or why she’s kneeling on the ground nekkid.

I make a jar, banking the “water” off of me, bank it, make a much larger jar and scoop some from the bath, bank that, then stand patiently as she performs her post bath ritual. Eventually she starts “imbuing” her fan with the Soak, the liquid running across her skin towards her hand before soaking into the material. Guess this is how they imbue stuff with poison? But she’s doing it with the soak.

I sit, back against the wall and head back to my logs, interested in what the bears are doing. A deep breath reminds me that I haven’t sampled the baskets yet. I race over, knowing she can’t stop ritual, and start scooping with one hand, sipping from my tea bowl in the other. One tastes like what the flowers smell like, lightly floral, lightly sweet. Boring.

I look for a different smelling flower. No dice. All the baskets are filled with the same flowers at different levels of hydration. The fuck is the point? Silent Howl posits that it’s how they keep the soak from killing weaker cultivators, attracting the poison mist from the bath to the baskets, imbuing them with poison to be used for other things. Clever.

Wait, is Silent Howl awake? I thought I was sifting through his memories and drawing conclusions from his experiences. Did he honestly wake up and just keep working. I ignore the feelings of positive responses, and wonder if he’s just been spying on people through me or --. He’s offended that I think he cares about lesser clans and peasant guilds. Good to know. Even though he’s low-born and only mid-ranking. A flood of thoughts and images on how he’s building something, -- me, -- and how things are going to get better for him when we finally bond, and I tune him out.

He’s alive. We’re linked. I can him the way he can me, so now the intrusive thoughts go both ways. He’s got pica, is part of a poison clan that doesn’t use their bodies as weapons, and he’s probably going to be bed ridden for the rest of his shortened life.

I’m a terrible influence? You’ve gotten me killed, asshole!