“WEEEEEEEEO WEEEEEEEEEEO WEEEEEEEEEEEO WEEEEEEEEEEO WEEEEEEEEEO AHOY MATEY I AM AN AMBULANCE! A PIRATE AMBULANCE!”

—The thief of the lost recorder, using it as the gods probably intended it to be.

They hid behind columns of Berneses as the thunder rumbled above, as the Tribulator pierced downwards, through the Mauling layer. Dirofil had seen and understood some of it, the short snout, the puffy hairs, the big cloudy eyes. Yet the building sized creature that was about to hatch from the layer above them carried shapes that he couldn’t make heads or tails of. Rapidly shifting appendages stuck to the sides of a body so massive, so encompassing.

The firmament of bullies and Kangals and Rottweilers threatened to crack down, the dogs howling as the mutant approached the bottom of the Mauling layer.

Then it happened. Aberration hatched: a snout with neon green scars, gashes swollen and electrified, peeked through. About the monster’s cataracts lightning crackled, distorting the air that touched the arcs of energy, and illuminating the Bernese layer with the green hues of distemper. The flesh of the jowls was missing, the teeth exposed in all their slick glory. Rattles, rattles of bone and teeth and parts unseen as the beast descended, revealing the tattered ears and the elongate neck. Soon the beast shook its massive head, breaking part of the Bernese web, dislodging the dogs and making them fall down, upon their brothers and sisters and, for some unlucky ones, even further below. Dirofil held one of his eyes stuck to the flesh of his index finger, peering at the creature with the bare minimum level of exposition. Most of his body was sticking to the column of dogs that granted him cover. The Splinters of Morbilliv were in a similar situation, except that they didn’t bother to look at the abominable Pomeranian as it destroyed the net that wasn’t even trying to contain it.

The creature growled, and the growl was thunder, and the thunder begot lightning that slithered and bounced away from the Pom, coiling around the nearest constructs of Bernese. Dirofil thought their hiss was that of treacherous snakes.

The forelegs of the thing split in two at the elbows, each half showing an ugly elongated scar, each holding half the fingers. A macabre parody of the Thinkers’ capacity to fuse and unfuse their arms.

There were no muscles to move among the Corship’s crew. No hearts to beat. No breaths to be taken. Neither Dirofil nor the miners trembled, but that didn’t in any way diminish the fear they felt.

Fear that was stoked by the shrieks of the creatures that the breaking through of the falling Pomeranian was dragging from layers unknown. They had leathery wings, like dragons brought to life by practicing taxidermy on Bloodhound bodies.

Dirofil wrapped his cape around his left arm and shoved his eye back into his face. Among the rumble, there were flaps. The mutant bloodhounds that nested among the Pomeranian’s tattered fur were on the hunt, and he wasn’t going to be an easy prey.

And that was an advantage of having no respiration to attribute to oneself: there wasn’t no place where another breath could hide, no confusion possible when the lunged lurked nearby. And he had no muscles that the fear could tense or forestall, and thus the clubbing of his arm wrapped in spikes had all the explosive power and precision of a well-planned strike. He had no stomach to feel nauseous as the slime of his head got drenched in the hunter’s fluids. And no brain to worry uselessly about the falling cadaver of the flying bloodhound with long fangs and a fragmented skull.

Blood dripped from the teeth of Dirofil’s cape as he followed another bloodhound with his gaze. The green lightning illuminated it dimly, giving the distant predator an otherworldly appearance as it prowled closer.

To his left, hidden behind another column, a Miner was strangling the runt of the pack. He wouldn’t need to defend Splinters of Morbilliv from this middle-sized menace, at least. When the hound swooped in with claws extended and the mouth opened wide Dirofil spread his legs, dug his talons among the Bernese under his feet, and intercepted the attack with his left arm, lodging the spikes through his attacker’s palate with a single movement. Afterwards he watched quietly how the creature struggled to pull his head off the lethal trap as it bled out and suffered seizures due to the teeth piercing through his flesh and bone. The voice of Babesi wormed its way out of Dirofil’s memory, surfacing in its psyche. Here, guest of the dancing green lights and the uproar so encompassing as to become a mirror of silence, there was no brother to make fun of the killed along him. Here, where the Bernese panted nervously and the Pomeranian tore through walkways and pillars, where only his mind would call them enemies out loud, they were just doggies.

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But a heartworm had to go on despite the ever-present dread of killing the host. He was no microfilaria; he had never been. The world began before there were even tides, and in that instant he was just as capable of ruthlessness as he wished to be right now. No childhood among the Thinkers. No excuses to behave unlike a fully grown parasite.

Most incoming mutants died in a hit or two. The Chihuahua teeth served Dirofil well, the grasp of his hand and soul on the cape keeping them on a raised position, a porcupine’s quills ready to stab its assailants. The Splinters of Morbilliv, for their part, had the advantage of sheer size. They were not as agile as Dirofil, but that didn’t matter when they tripled him in raw strength. Monster that they grabbed onto, monster that met a crushing end.

The skirmish didn’t last long, as soon the winged Bloodhounds learned to keep their distance, to not mess with the Thinkers despite the allure their cores presented to the mutant dogs. The Pomeranian kept digging its way through the Bernese layer, its curly tail wagging from side to side, creating powerful gusts of wind and green thunder with each fanning. Dirofil and the miners shrunk against the pillars, feeling the impact of each blast against the Bernese structure, enticing it to jiggle relentlessly, nervously.

In this manner they weathered the storm, until the darkness reclaimed every corner not lighted by the thinker’s cores, until the snuffles and growls of the abhorrent Pom became distant and echoed only in the memory of the almost-victims.

“Good, we avoided death for the foreseeable future,” Dalvari said softly, minding not the blood that drenched his hands.

Dirofil appeared from beneath the pathway Dalvari was standing on, skittering up to a standing position in a way that reminisced the Splinter of a gecko. “You could elicit an attack like that, if someone confuses you with a menace.”

“We need to search the hole for rare dogs, there’s no time to lose.” Another of the miners, Tuldrum, cried out before taking a jump and landing heavily next to his peers.

That’s when the three of them where blinded by the unmistakable nova cast by a shattering core.

“Run! Murkhound!” The damned one managed to say before his soul collapsed to the pressure of unseen fangs, rending his consciousness, obliterating his self.

Dalvari’s Bulky hand clasped around Dirofil’s shoulder, and he urged the Fourth Imagined to escape. “You cannot battle a Murkhound. You cannot see them, and psycholocation often fails to pick their form up.”

Dirofil opened the eye of the reaper and slapped the Splinter’s hand off his shoulder.

“Komondor. The one you call Murkhound is a mutated Komondor, by the looks of it,” Dirofil took a few decided steps towards their enemy, a mass of dreadlocks tangled together, full of holes, with two empty eye sockets staring directly at him. “It could have been me that died. You all return to the ship. I have orders from Parvov to follow.” He unfastened his cape and wrapped it about his left arm again. “It killed a Splinter of my dead brother. I either hunt it down now, or I infuse the regrets of letting it go into those underserving of them when I create the new world along Shadiran. I can deal with this one. I will it, and will do it.”

Without hesitating any further Dalvari jumped off the ledge, and the other two soon followed. Dirofil was left alone, against a monster that only he could see, and was now savaging the remains of a thoughtless Splinter.

Spreading his legs to attain a better footing, The Fourth imagined got in position and flared his core once, then twice, his right hand always pressed onto his forehead. Soon enough he caught the Murkhound’s attention. Soon enough the floating death came for him with fanged dreadlocks aimed to the nexus of his existence. And soon enough his spiked arm met the dog’s protruding teeth with a sideways swing, causing the mutant to hang in the air for a few seconds, dumbfounded as it kept its distance and examined Dirofil, whose blue eye always remained set upon the beast. With it Dirofil could see every detail of the monster, every sucker-like mouth on the dreads of its mane, every place where a feature should be, but was now missing: nails, eyes, and even the nose seemed to have been surgically extracted. An existence so hideous that neither light nor gravity were willing to touch it.

“Hail, sea; the one about to die refuses to greet me!” he said, infusing his soul onto his cape, and preparing to unleash hell over his — clearly suspecting — enemy.