The last room in the basement had been hidden behind more layers of spells, likely ones to prevent it from being noticed, but those were ripped to shreds now, leaving just more ambient death magic in the air. The concentration of it worried Riordan. It wasn’t approaching the levels once contained in the killing tree ritual, but to have this much lingering affinity energy in the air would have side effects.

Given it was death magic energy, the hall was going to end up cursed or haunted or something if they didn’t get it cleaned up. This sleepy corner of Michigan did not need a new legendary haunted location, cursed from the dark death cult once residing there, no matter how much or little truth might be in that statement.

Riordan’s respect for the importance of Quinn’s job ratcheted up again. He wondered if the Department spared their death mage to deal with haunted sites or if there were too many active threats to handle instead.

It didn’t help that Quinn was a limited use resource. Riordan hated that. The man was quickly becoming someone Riordan liked. Someone who mattered to him. And given Quinn was on a timer with an unknown countdown before his rapidly approaching death, that hurt.

This wasn’t the time or place to tackle those feelings, nor the pressure Riordan felt to try and save Quinn before it was too late.

Riordan opened the door and surveyed the room. It was clearly a magical workroom, though not matching any tradition of mage he recognized. Or rather, he saw elements from too many traditions, placed alongside each other casually without respect for any individual paradigm.

Because these death mages hadn’t learned to make a foundation for their own personal paradigm. They’d learned someone else’s spells and then backtracked to a paradigm by picking their favorites for regular use. Had that instability contributed to the dissociative madness he’d seen in Phenalope? She’d almost been sane sometimes, just with this casual lack of empathy, and then sometimes she was literally raving about becoming a god and spreading bloody vengeance upon the world.

It had never occurred to Riordan that some death mages had managed to be corrupted but not mad to the point of lacking self-preservation. Some death mages were smart in their hungry quest for power. Those were the ones who made horrible things like those zombies in the first place.

No wonder the Department didn’t want to risk Quinn going full corrupted-crazy. He struck Riordan as someone who would be smart and efficient about becoming unstoppably powerful.

The lack of foundation, general levels of insanity, and the fact that this was the workroom of three different mages was clear in the layout. Unlike the offices, this room wasn’t damaged, though the ambient magical energy still clogged the air in there. An altar took up the side of the room directly opposite the door, full of religious and spiritual items and iconography, which contrasted more sharply with the work tables along the other two walls. Those looked more like crafting tables with a mix of jewelry and bullet presses.

In the middle of the room was a space on the floor set up for magic circles or other such workings. It still had blood smears in a few places. The altar had more, plus some bowls and cups filled with rotting blood.

Dried blood smears were bad enough. Congealed, rotting blood was always worse, like it was somehow more of a waste.

Ingrid poked ahead a bit, as she had been doing so far, acting as their magical forward scout. The little girl paused just inside the door, sweeping blind eyes around the room.

“This place is full of icky,” she stated. “It feels hungry. The roots almost reach here.”

“The roots?” Quinn asked.

“I showed them to you outside. The tree is stretching to reach here. It’s difficult and slow because it’s far on the physical realm, but it’s a tree. It’s not in a hurry.” Ingrid said all of that like it was the most natural thing. Nothing seemed to shake the little girl’s good cheer and curiosity, which was better than traumatizing her every time Quinn showed her another death mage’s handiwork. Still…

“What’s she talking about, Quinn?” Riordan asked.

“It sounds like the tree spirit has been trying to establish a full connection with this place. Ingrid pointed it out during our one scouting run, which meant it started it before becoming a greater spirit. You’d think that the power boost would have let it finish.” Quinn explained.

Riordan grimaced. “Maybe it felt less rushed to finish afterwards. We’d dealt with the death mages bothering it by then.”

Ahlgren grew grimmer than usual. “We’ll need to report its presence. Active spirits are troubling. Active greater spirits are the acts of gods.”

“What’s it trying to do here?” Maudy asked, peering past Riordan into the room. She couldn’t see ghosts and Riordan had no idea how well trained the young shifter’s skill for magic sensing was. She had to be feeling something, given the sheer cold press of death magic filling the air, but even Riordan couldn’t sense much detail below that mess.

Though… as Riordan thought about it, he felt a familiar presence brush his senses. Yeah, that was the tree spirit nearby, though he couldn’t have pinpointed a physical location or direction.

“I’m not sure,” Quinn said, pausing to consult with Ingrid as to where she specifically felt the spirit’s roots.

Riordan took a moment to let his senses expand. Or perhaps his soul or his presence. Something that was intrinsically him anyway. He let that brush of presence against presence turn into a whisper of spirit communication. As soon as contact was made, his stomach lurched and Riordan staggered.

In the spirit realm, such communication was natural. All was spirit there, on some level, making the communion fluid. On the physical realm, he had a body to deal with while trying to hold a conversation that felt like being grabbed by his guts, lifted, and shaken. He had no control when talking to something that far beyond him and it was only its own lack of malice and the care it had learned to take with fragile humans that kept Riordan from being spiritually flayed open. Again.

“It wants this place gone. It itches.” Riordan choked out, realizing he’d fallen to his knees.

Quinn knelt next to him, panic fading back down to worry. “What the hell? Itches? What does that mean?”

Riordan snorted, taking deep breaths to settle his stomach. “That’s a paraphrase. I don’t have words for the actual sensation it used. But something about this place continually makes its existence known to the tree spirit and it is annoyed by that. It doesn’t understand human magic enough to explain why. Or it doesn’t realize it should bother to explain. Talking with that thing can sometimes be like being yelled at by a deaf elder.”

Quinn straightened, looking into the workroom. He glanced over at Ingrid, who was poking her nose further and further into the room. “Is there an active spell her--”

Black tendrils unwound from the circle on the floor, whipping outwards towards Ingrid. In a flash, Zeren was there, grabbing their smaller companion and flinging her backwards right through the wall. The tendrils latched onto the arm they’d raised to shield themself and began to pull them in.

Worse, the tendrils grew tiny sharp-toothed mouths and bit down on Zeren everywhere it wrapped around them.

Even worse yet, the rest of the tendrils kept going, latching onto their little team of mages clustered by the door.

Tendrils wrapped around Riordan, clutching his arms and waist and neck, wherever they could get purchase on his body. Just as eagerly, they began biting at him.

Long years of training made maintaining a partial shift easier. Riordan hadn’t consciously thought about maintaining his toughened skin, but it still persisted. More shockingly, his thick hide resisted those ravaging maws and his loose skin allowed him to yank his arms free, though not his torso yet.

His companions fared less well.

Maudy freaked the fuck out. She went full moose, which made her too large to being the doorway and shoved her further into the work room. She was larger and tougher, making it harder for the teeth to latch on through her fur, but she was also in the heart of it now and the tendrils began to cocoon her, making up for the failures of individual mouths with sheer volume.

That took up most of the tendrils, but not all of them. Quinn’s arms were both wrapped in shadow and dripping blood from the bites. His eyes went glassy and Riordan didn’t think it was just from shock. Zeren ignored their own bites, wrapped in far fewer tendrils than the living members of the group, to rush to their master’s side and begin shielding him from further harm.

And Alhgren…

Ahlgren was yanking hard on the tendril crawling up his legs. His suit pants weren’t as effective as shifter toughness at stopping the bites from piercing. Though the blood didn’t show against the black material, Riordan could smell it.

He was also pale and shaking, but not in the way that Quinn had gone all weird. This felt like recognition and anger and fear. Riordan turned, grabbing onto the tendrils on Ahlgren and managing to pry a few off. More kept coming, lapping up the spilled blood.

“Riordan,” Ahlgren gritted out, fighting the tendrils even if he was slowly losing. “Break the spell. Fast. It’s trying to drain our affinities.”

“What?”

“Forbidden…magic… Eats… affinities.”

Ahlgren was clearly in no state to explain further than that. He stopped tugging, though he clung to the tendrils and breathed slowly even as that glassy look slipped over his face. Zeren’s efforts on Quinn kept the death mage from being fully overwhelmed, but he barely managed shaking blinks and twitches as he fought the drain.

Even Maudy was slowing, despite her physical resistance. Moose were tough, but they weren’t designed to resist bites like a honey badger.

Fuck, Riordan wasn’t designed to resist bites like a honey badger either, not even with the partial shift. He needed to fix this before he got more than just nicked and scratched. Once Maudy went still, he would be swarmed too.

It was a gamble, but Riordan looked inside himself. He felt his connection to his badger, made stronger by his partial shift, but he couldn’t reach out and pull it forward. With his magic, he called for it instead, begging that side of him to take over. They were all one creature, despite the two souls, so it wasn’t as if the badger was far from him or even really in a specific place inside him.

Riordan was the badger and the badger was him.