“The Captain is slightly displeased with my latest act of mild insubordination and reckless crew endangerment. He’s managing my test subject — dismembering it to be specific — and told me that I follow, and that I should prepare to embody the Spider of Shame. I reminded him that I created said contraption and that the correct name for it is Artificial Core Carrier Unit, or ACCU. Sir, let me finish this note and you can maul me too. Just — I needed that, Parvov.”
—Doratev, in the recording that concludes with the sound of bent and cracking metal and Parvov’s finest insults.
Once there were roses where glistening drops of dew gathered. A world ago the snappers swam in oceans turbulent and wondrous. Gone were the days of rusty stones weathering under the summer rain. It was whispered that a tear acted as a prism to cast a rainbow over a freckle.
And despite this rich story between red and water, Lyssav considered it her nemesis. “Lightning. I want lightning to obliterate you, curtain of misery.” Trembling from emotion she addressed the chains and the vials hanging from them. This incarceration wouldn’t last. Her wings wanted to fly into the sea and allow her to drink it all. Her siblings feared and even respected the ocean above them. She didn’t. They were weak, scared kittens. She was a tigress. And with her paws she would subjugate the nature of their world, crush it underfoot until it begged for mercy. No matter what inhabited the sea, it would vow before her.
Calling for power, she let a wave of violence ripple out from her core. It wasn’t light that spilled from it. It was a heart blowing up in vapors of arterial blood; it was the essence of the rose, the snapper, the rust and the freckle. It seared though the chains, heated metal and glass up a couple degrees, and then dispersed, letting the curtain shake and leaving Lyssav cringing against her throne.
Her stare stabbed one of the vials as it threatened to come loose and fall to the ground. What had she done? Water would spill. It could besprinkle its cursed contents over her virginal flesh, scales, or claws. Maybe she could stand and catch the vial, to then… throw it away. No. No. The best she could do was stay still and hope the thing wouldn’t come unbound.
She cackled in relief as the chain and vial stopped moving and hung like a column once more. Parvov knew her. No bars or bolts or shackles would keep her restrained for long. Yet her own flaws were a prison she couldn’t break free of. But why had he imprisoned her? She promised a way to survive the sea by finding out how to command it. The world wouldn’t end, it would just go from the Time to Move to the Time to Obey — or, for her, the Time to Rule. Parvov, then, would rather damn everyone than live under her rule. Like she wouldn’t be an excellent monarch.
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The collies drifted slowly in front of the lone eye of the Corship. Parvov’s twenty fingers were steepled. Dirofil was adapting to the life on the ship in a satisfactory way. The crew remained under control. The biggest threat around were the Samoyeds and Chihuahuas, that he could easily crush if need arose. The fuel and Corgite reserves had been restored. No living sibling of his was lost adrift in the sea. It was so peaceful, so perfect as he watched the rigid end of one of the ship’s legs extend forward to grab onto a passing dog and pull them all forward and upwards. Since long ago the doctor had been harping to him about reinforcing the defense system of the ship. The spikes, mainly. And to do so, they needed some rare materials. Materials whose veins, so to speak, they couldn’t reach, for they lay somewhere above the Mauling layer. Only when titanic abominations crossed that layer some of the dogs of the other side would be dragged with them. That’s how they had gotten the material for his ring: foraging the dogs fallen from the injuries in the Mauling layer.
The reflection of his brother appeared among the floating collies, and it was quickly increasing in size. “Are you done with your refining tasks for the tide?”
“I wouldn’t be here otherwise,” Dirofil stood by the side of his brother, hands joined behind his back and under his cloak.
“I have been meaning to ask, Dirofil: The blood stains on your cape, what did they belong to?”
“Chihuahuas that behaved like little sharks. I take those are the same that your crew constantly worries about?”
Parvov glanced at him and hummed in satisfaction. “They are damn plagues. The only good thing about them is that their remains have use in refinement, unlike those of many other Abominations. Were they easy for you?”
Dirofil punched Parvov’s shoulder. “What do you take me for? A pansy? I crushed one’s skull, skewered another with the tail, and pressed a pair inside my cape to make… chimonade.”
Parvov let out a low laughter and palmed his brother’s back. “Excellent. Did you absorb anything from them?”
Dirofil turned to stare at him directly. “Beg your pardon?”
“Like you did with the Reaper’s eye. Being honest, I wouldn’t notice if you carried a Chihuahua attractor with you. They are omnipresent in this sea.”
“No, no I didn’t.” A rubbing of the wrist betrayed the Thinker’s worries about his recent acquisition. “You won’t take the eye, will you?”
“Taking eyes from you is becoming a tradition between us.” Parvov made a pause, his stare followed another of the ship numerous legs as it reached to grab onto a new dog. “No. You seem to be capable of keeping it closed most of the time. Reapers are not the only dangers of this sea: taking the eye from you could leave my dear brother at a disadvantage against our common enemy.” He fidgeted and scratched the back of his hands, uncomfortable. “I cannot risk the crew, and I cannot be an agent of your death, an instrument of whichever amalgam of vile intentions puppeteers the abhorrent canines.”
“You think something out there conspires to put out the flares of our psyches?” Dirofil mused about it for a few seconds, and then shook his head. “No, I believe the sea is ill, but there isn’t an ounce of evil intent in it. Like a cancer that without knowing kills the host in which it evolved, there is no malice in the actions of these creatures. They live, they hunt. And prey we are. There’s no necessity of a mastermind to explain their behavior. The Samoyeds suck blood from the Dachshunds, and that tells me that they are not on the same team.”
“You met Tunnelers? How did you survive, exactly?”
“I found a pocket amidst the puppies,” he lied without thinking it twice. “I asked myself what my siblings would do, and then thought about the fact that the things couldn’t exactly dig anywhere, or the whole warren would collapse. I rested next to intersections, to where I deemed the puppies unstable and prone to collapse. The Dachshunds refused to destroy their home to swallow my core. After several days of stealthy ascent, I managed to break through the puppy layer and reach this one, where I found, well…” he raised his right hand and wiggled his fingers.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
“We are about to face more dogs of at least a Tunneler’s size. Don’t panic, this operation could be crucial to the Corship’s long-term survival. And…” Parvov’s head fell back as he searched for the words. “Quite harmful for the short term survival if things go awry. But we have the time to do it well and acquire even new materials.”
In the distance, a net of Bernese mountain dogs began to reveal itself. The black and brown dogs bit onto each other’s tails and held steady, forming flowing branches that interconnected nodes of them. It was like a brain made of dogs.
“Bernese layer?” Dirofil asked.
“Chihuahua break in the Psycholocation bay!” A Splinter screamed from the corridors.
Parvov rubbed his knuckles and gestured Dirofil to follow him: they had work to do.
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The Psycholocators on duty—two Splinters of Babesi, one of Dirofil, and one of Parvov— had clambered up their thrones as the swill of golden, black, white, short or long haired, and always sharp-teethed Chihuahuas invaded the place. Their scales showed slick under the dim light of the ship. Parvov and Dirofil stood at the entrance, without descending the two steps, watching the Chihuahuas gather and climb onto one another to try to reach the crew members as they clawed and swatted at the jumping dogs.
“Their teeth can bite through metals,” Dirofil said, a finger in front of his voicebox. “Maybe we could reinforce some part of the ship with them.”
Turned the thousand heads of the swarm. The eyes opened wide, the tongues peeked through the forests of enamel some called mouths. The nostrils waved, the manifold banners of a mercenary army. They trampled each other and flowed towards the brothers like a turbulent river.
“Want to see something I learned from Morbilliv?” Parvov said, fingers spread as his palm faced the onslaught of Chihuahuas.
“Impress me.”
The soul of Parvov ran to his fingers, and then little threads began to be weaved from the space between his nails, like silk pumped though spinnerets. With these threads he lashed against the nearest Chihuahua, and with ten attachment points took control of his tiny body, swinging it around as it squirmed and howled and barked. Using it as a flail he punished the little army, broke bones and dislodged teeth.
Dirofil imitated a yawn with his voicebox. “It lacks heart.” The Fourth Imagined gave a little jump and landed with his claws over a dog, piercing its scales as easily as he pierced its lungs. With his left hand he swept low, reaching several attackers and slamming them into each other. To his right, another Chihuahua had been grabbed by Parvov’s loaned technique, and was being recklessly used to whack its equals. The things bit his cape and his legs, but he wouldn’t let them overwhelm him. When a couple of chis began climbing his back, Dirofil hopped backwards and let all of his body weight fall upon the predatory creatures, crushing them against the floor.
Parvov marched through the tide of attackers swinging one Chihuahua with each hand, sending dozens of others flying as he conducted this macabre symphony of whines and squelches, cleaning a way for his tired underlings to leap over his head and escape.
And despite killing dozens, the dogs kept entering through the breach of the hull as if water they were.
“Are you keeping count?” Parvov asked with unwarranted amusement.
“I am sorry, dear brother, but in can only keep track of fifteen with my fingers,” Dirofil’s voice dripped with sarcasm as he used his cape, filled with dead dogs once more, to smash the heads of the incoming lap dogs. Eventually the solid wall of barks became a field of whines, cracks and squelches, as the Psycholocator’s bay adopted the hue of Lyssav.
While his big brother kept on punishing the invaders, Dirofil reached for one of the multiple dead Chihuahuas and channeled his will into it, into its teeth. He invoked the feelings of need and desperation he experienced when caught by the Reaper. Called for them, recreated his wish to command the eye, and the teeth began to tremble in the deformed jaw of his victim. The Chihuahua that tried to sneak on him while he was doing this soon found out Dirofil was quite good at multitasking, her delicate trachea collapsing under the pressure of the automaton’s vice grip. “I am trying to incorporate your dead friends into my wardrobe. Sit down.”
Returning his full attention to pulling the teeth with his soul, he managed to make them flow into his flesh and ascend through his arm until they pierced his core and the dentine turned to a strange metal. He liked to use his cape during his encounters, and thus he commanded the teeth to emerge on his upper back, and with the light of his core, together with the newfound malleability of the materials that had attuned to him, he welded each tooth onto a link of his chainmail cape. He would need hundreds or thousands of teeth to complete his work, but, given the nature of the battlefield he and Parvov were the architects of, it was plain to see that he had... A surplus to work with.
“What are you doing with the teeth?” Parvov asked, disgusted. “Why not use them as claws or knuckles.”
“My lifelong dream is to become an echidna whose placentas are the size of my deep concerns about your opinion, dear brother,” he said, injecting his words with a healthy dose of sass.
“Echidnas were egg-laying creatures,” Parvov answered as he smashed the heads of two chis against each other.
“Precisely!”
Parvov grunted and took out his frustration by making abominable lapdog puree with his hefty foot. “Someone believes himself funny.”
“No. It’s not an act of faith. There are ample amounts of evidence proving my hilarious nature.”
Another grunt, more dead Chihuahuas. “Whatever. Suit yourself, those teeth could have a better use.”
A little question gnawed at the back of Dirofil’s mind as he undertook the monotonous task of attaching teeth to his cape. “So, Parvov, why are abominable Chihuahuas addressed as such? You often have names for the mutations. Tunneler, Reaper, and so on.”
“I consider the breed itself annoying enough already. And we can refine the mutated ones in the case of Chis, so why bother looking for them? As you can see, they come to us out of their own volition.” Parvov made a pause as he considered the few stragglers remaining in front of him, scared and raising their hecklers, barking. “But if you want to know, the Doctor proposed calling them Swarmers.”
“In my opinion, Bijouterie is a better name for them,” he admired the flow of the teeth as part of the cape, how seamlessly they fit into the garment. “I imagine this must smell pretty rancid. We have to thank the creators for not providing us a sense of smell.”
“This whole place probably reeks of guts and blood. We rarely bother cleaning.”
Dirofil stared at the dirty floor underfoot, where balls of hair and congealed blood—older than the one of the just-slain chis—gathered against walls, on every corner. “I took ample notice.”
As Parvov finished off the last invaders Dirofil kept on improving his cape. Row by row the teeth became spikes of enamel-covered metal fused onto his garb.
Long after Parvov left to rest and a new group of Splinters filled the Psycholocator role Dirofil continued harvesting Chihuahua dental pieces. A Splinter of the captain, Kirval, used his infrasound voice to badmouth Dirofil once more. It was always Splinters of Parvov that behaved like this, Dirofil thought. Probably due to the fact that the others couldn’t hear them say such things. Mayhap even the few Splinters of Leptos on board disparaged him, and perhaps even spoke ill of Parvov, but they had to do it in secrecy, as they lacked the privilege of a private channel of communication, as the both the Splinters of Parvov and the captain himself had. The mental links could be used, but anybody could attune to them, listen whenever one pleased.
What he couldn’t imagine, though, was the Splinters of Babesi talking ill of anyone, as that required an attention span longer than ten seconds.
Once his cape was completed, and after some dry answers and grunts to avoid being dragged by the repair crew into a task he wished not to partake in, he returned to the quarters Parvov had reserved for him and sat to think idly. It had been a long day, his core was tired, and he had managed to get another advantage against the sea. His last conscious thought before his soul split in two once more was that perhaps he would reach the other side of the ocean being more dog than Thinker.