Tidelands: III-Five (44)

Techno-Jungle.

Tidelands is a weekly sci-fi & fantasy serial that publishes every Friday, emailed straight to your inbox. Part 1 is free to read, but you can keep up with the story by signing up for exclusive access, or buying ebook or paperback editions of the collected instalments as they appear.

Another meeting, another place.

[You wanted to see where we live.]

And which would haunt his mind from that day forward, both waking and asleep.

Still not the silver city – which Caulden was beginning to fear he would never see – but somewhere more “natural” (a word that had lately become problematic). And indeed, it was at first glance very like a rainforest: a canopy of dark fronds overlapping above him, a thick carpeting of roots and vines interweaving underfoot. But closer inspection belied this initial impression, revealing leaves that were not leaves, roots and vines that were something else entirely, and the whole thing not organic at all – or at least, not solely so. It was the colours, he decided. They were just … well, wrong: arterial reds, electroluminescent blues, and other jarring hues where vibrant yellows and salubrious greens should be, all marbling through a substratum as black as charred flesh.