Elesh Norn - Rips limbs out of stone

"Heresy," Norn breathed and yanked the weed viciously upward. It broke loose, far larger than anticipated, the flagstone rupturing at the force of its dislodging. But no roots were hanging from the small intruder. Instead, a human forearm dangled, disproportionately large, half-rotten, bone swinging like the clapper of a cracked bell in the dislocated slop. Its limp fingers were splayed wide as if still reaching toward the very soil she had plucked it from.

"Abomination." Norn lifted the offensive thing to study it, her head cocked.

***

Norn strode across the courtyard, ripping another weed from the marble. It was the remnants of a human lung, a rootless, sagging lump, the upper lobe wrapped around what should have been the plant's stalk. She crushed it in her hand. It could not have come directly from the Mirran's body. The vat priests had dissected her corpse and found nothing abnormal, save those roots, and no reason for them to have sprouted from her human body in the first place.

The tightness in her stomach grew.

One after another, Norn ripped the abominations from the ground. She unearthed a thick, dismembered thigh, sinew shredding between her long fingers as she ripped it in two. A heart, arteries drooping away from it. A bulging strand of spongey intestine. A single kidney. An ear. A dozen teeth impossibly strung together like jagged pearls. Again and again, she pulled them up, faster and faster, determined to purge the Basilica of impurities. And with every discovery, she felt something inside her tighten and sour.

***

A GARDEN OF FLESH