“I am still inside the ACCU, but that won’t preclude me from recording my thoughts. One of my recorders has disappeared, it may have been destroyed while Parvov ripped my core out of my body. I can get by with the remaining ones, but I was… particularly fond of that creation.”
—Doratev, on a recording made a few tides after his body got savaged.
Dirofil’s meditation got shattered when images of the sea collided against his psyche. Images of Collies floating in front of him, not as dogs, but as silhouettes that were barely there. Ghosts floating around, passing by, as down below the puppy layer looked just as transparent and phantasmagorical. Mutant Chihuahuas and elongated Samoyeds with stubby legs and long claws —think of monstrous ferrets— frolicked around, jumping from untarnished dog to untarnished dog as the thousand points of view from which he watched the scene advanced, rose through the Collie layer. He felt as if he had been swallowed by a composite eye, unable to escape, to move. But there was something worse that could mean.
Stirring awake, the first thing he did was check his hand as the souls of the Splinters and his brother danced beyond the walls. The Reaper’s eye had opened, and it stared at him in the face. Soon enough he commanded it shut. It was now clear: as long as the eye remained open, there existed a strong link with the monster, and it was bidirectional. He knew where it was, and it knew where he was. If he could see through its eyes, it could probably see through his.
His self was so raptured from the recent experience that it took him some seconds to notice he was resting over the throne’s back. His legs were higher in space than his head and torso, and the new spikes of his cape created uncomfortable bumps under his spine. The Corship was climbing upwards, most likely grabbing onto a column of Bernese dogs as they ascended through the sea. And it was true that mountains didn’t exist, but maybe climbing mountain dogs was even more dangerous. Like the Corship he now had a defense of spikes, and yet he didn’t know what he could find out there. Parvov refused to address the matter. Insisted that as long as he remained on board, the only ones to worry about were those that breached the hull, or the Reapers.
He rolled out of the throne and landed on all fours at the far wall of his chamber. Using the lattice of Corgite wire that barely stuck from an L-shaped section of the floor, he climbed back to the door, and perching on the frame he looked down at the long fall to the ship’s rear end. A fun slide to take, it would be, but he would rather climb the short way to the bridge and see what Parvov had in store for him this tide.
Parvov was sitting on the wall, his legs hanging over the chasm of the door as his head pulled back to keep an eye on the path of the ship across the Bernese-neuroned brain. The only lights illuminating the dark sea where those rimming the ship’s front window, and despite no word of danger from the psycholocators, this always rendered him uneasy.
A tug on his leg pulled him out of his musings, and soon enough Dirofil emerged from the chasm, using his own brother as just another stepping stone on his climb. “I see you are lucid.”
Dirofil remained hell-bent on clambering out the hole with little regard for his elder brother’s comfort. “Your eyesight is enviable.”
A movement on one of the walls caught the Fourth Imagined’s attention: a metallic, four-legged apparatus resembling an amputated arthropod clung to a wall, and in its center it held a core that Dirofil readily recognized. “Ah, so that’s the Spider of Shame.”
“A.C.C.U, Accu if you will. Stands for Artificial Core Carrier Unit,” The Doctor complained in a comically high pitched voice. “It has the basics: legs for mobility, a tiny voicebox for communication, one ear, and one eye. Clearly, it is a work of a privileged mind.”
“He created it so we would have spare bodies if a Splinter got severely damaged by an intrusion. But it took only a glance for the prodigal genius of Parvov, The Third Dreamt to realize it had untapped potential as a disciplinary tool.” Parvov boasted, raising a finger into the air as he explained.
“You addressed yourself in third person,” Dirofil said.
“Our Illustrious Captain does that sometimes. To spite poor Doratev,” the arachnified Doctor said.
“Who is Doratev?”
“He is Doratev,” Parvov huffed as Dirofil walked along the wall that served as a floor, towards the Spider of Shame. “Anyhow, Dirofil, we are about to go in an expedition. Not far from us,” he gestured at the dark ocean above, where the lights of the ship barely penetrated, “boils in violence the mauling layer. Impenetrable, impossible to cross with the Corship or without it. That is, if you are not a mutated dog. The colossal creatures dive in and out of it unblemished—”
Stolen novel; please report.
“Your point?” Dirofil decided interrupting his brother’s discourse counted as self-preservation.
“We are going to mine the dogs the abominations drag with themselves in hope of accruing some rare but needed materials. This is dangerous for our miners, even if they are Splinters of Mi—ahem—Morbilliv. This is dangerous for us too, but it’s my duty to do it. And you could use a lesson about the threats that live in this sea.”
“He’s so used to engaging in overt nepotism that he almost calls them ‘Splinters of Mine’. That’s your captain, Dirofil,” whistled the annoying spider.
“No.” Dirofil tickled the Doctor’s core with a finger. “He’s my brother.”
“And your captain,” Parvov tried using his persuasive voice. The one that preceded the violence.
Dirofil raised his right hand slowly, showcasing the closed eye of the Reaper. “Do you want to see if you can rip this off before the Reaper manages to reach us?”
“Don’t play stupid games, brat,” his tone got serious instantly, and Dirofil laughed, pleased with his brother’s reaction.
“I am very glad you still think, Parvov.”
The captain’s stare softened, and he looked at the sea once more. “I could say the same, Dirofil,” he said, bitterness growing on his heart, for he knew that he wasn’t being completely honest with his brother. Then, had he had a mouth, a smirk would have crept into his face. “I am glad I still think, too.”
----------------------------------------
They exited the ship — that now rested in a horizontal position, grappling onto a Bernese branch like a chameleon onto a tree’s — through the Cargo bay’s gate, where the retractable, composite rails and the carts that slid on them often extended out during mining operations. But there were no carts this tide, only Parvov, Dirofil, and a group of four Splinters of Morbilliv descending the ramp. About fifty meters above them drooled and snarled the Mauling layer, a compact mass of game and guard dog breeds ready to tear whatever crossed the threshold to tatters, no matter if it was a Thinker’s body or a part of the ship.
The light of the Thinker’s souls shone bright in the dark environment, exposed them and illuminated their whole beings as it refracted across their slimy flesh. Had it not been for his cape, Dirofil would have felt like the prime target for any prowling predator, for he lacked the armor plates that covered most of the Splinter’s bodies, or the ones that preserved the skull, shoulders and extremities of Parvov.
“Stay alert, everybody, we know not what lurks in this darkness.”
“I can know. I can take a peek.”
Parvov turned, stopping his ascent towards the nearest nexus in the net of Bernese mountain dogs to address his reckless sibling. “No.”
“The Reaper is in the Collie Layer still,” Dirofil said with absolute certainty.
“You can feel its presence?” Parvov asked, crossing his arms in disbelief.
“See through the eyes of its body when I open the one in my hand. It was far down in the Collie Layer when I woke up. An hour ago. It was moving slowly. Doubt he could reach us anytime soon, more so given the… nature of this place.”
“Sir Dirofil, with all due respect: The Reaper shapeshifts,” chimed in one of the bulky miners as he examined the Bernese dogs underfoot. “Sir Parvov, do we need Bernese materials?”
“No. Thanks for informing my brother, Dalvari.” Parvov continued his climb, and the sound of dogs breathing and panting all around coalesced into a suitable replacement for silence.
For minutes on end they climbed a slanted pillar of Bernese mountain dogs, grabbing onto snouts, tails, paws. They balanced over branches barely a dog or two wide. They drew closer and closer to the Mauling layer, cores interrogating reality in a way the eyes just couldn’t. Or, at least, most eyes couldn’t.
Whenever Parvov wasn’t looking, in the interims where the ripples of the captain’s soul weren’t colliding against his body, Dirofil batted the Reaper’s eye, catching just a glimpse of the dogscape around, seeing through the Bernese net as if it were made of limpid quartz.
The sempiternal night beyond turned scrutable in those instants, the palimpsest that was world naked before Dirofil’s monstrous eye. He saw beyond the Rottweilers, beyond the Pit Bulls and Bull Terriers that gnashed at the air. And in one of those glimpses, he froze, and kept the eye opened, pointing it upwards despite Parvov’s reproaching stare.
“Do you want to kill us?”
“It’s big. Slow. And going to crash on us if we don’t scarper,” he said as he closed the Reapers eye and raced across the branch on all fours, ready to leap to a perpendicular path that stuck out slightly lower than the one they stood on.
“Which breed?!” Parvov demanded.
“Pomeranian maybe!”
Parvov followed his brother and urged the Splinters to do the same. Pomeranians were not to be underestimated. Suddenly, he stopped and looked down below. In the distance he saw the lights of the Corship. They were almost directly above it. “Cursed be this sea! You lot, follow your orders. Dirofil, protect my miners to the best of your capacity!” The captain jumped and dove into the void, falling hands-first towards the ship, ready to land over its upper part. The hull was thick, it would, at worst, get some dents that wouldn’t hamper the functionality.
A thud reverberated through the ship and the space around it when Parvov landed, and even before extending his hands and hurrying to a standing position, he attuned to the Psycholocators and Legsteerers mind-channels. His mind shouted only two words into the psychic link, and the ship immediately whirred to life when they reached the crew. Tribulator Protocol.