“I have devoured the Gazer. Ripped the lightning out of the Shocker. Ransacked this sea tirelessly to get wings, claws, and fangs that match yours, vampire. How dare you think, scum, murderer, cannibal, that your dream deserves to prevail over mine? I will meet my beloved at the top. We will make a new world at the Zenith of Ideas. We are borne out of a mind, Brother, and you have always been a despicable concept.”

—The Fourth Imagined to her brother, The Second Envisioned

Mining at the Mauling layer had been postponed after the Murkhound incident. Parvov hadn’t discarded it, but a Splinter had died, and despite the crew not being one for funerals, the absence was felt all across the Corship. Careless mistakes became more common, harsh punishments more rare. Legs missed the target and forced the other steerers to maneuver so the ship wouldn’t trip; refined materials still contained some traces of dog hair; the all-seeing eye of Psycholocators had grown lazy, missing small threats now and then; and the miners were extremely wary, worked in short shifts, never wandered away from the ship.

Dirofil hadn’t failed at defending Jadimar —the name of the deceased— because he hadn’t been informed about monsters he wouldn’t be able to see. There was this illness constantly making the rounds in the ship, this endless distemper that refused to leave. Everyone feigned that Murkhounds weren’t a thing. One couldn’t work in the sea when those things could even enter the Corship undetected and start sowing chaos around. It was a blessing that they were rare, and thus far no intrusions had happened. The Death of that Splinter rested completely on the Captain’s shoulder, and as he watched the mirror of his room, he wondered. Parvov stared back at him, pointed at his face with what would be his left horn. That wasn’t right. The right horn pointed forwards, the left, backwards. That’s was how Parvov and all of his Splinters were made. But the mirror didn’t care. “Just a trick of light,” he muttered, ten fingers drumming onto the throne’s armrest. The sound of someone coming up the spheres got him out of his musings. Then, Dirofil’s face began emerging from the spiral stair.

“I am ready to learn about legsteering duty, Parvov,” he said drily.

“The Doctor finished lecturing you on a couple more aberrations?” Parvov replied in a similar tone.

“I am done with Doratev’s lessons for the time being. Yes.” Dirofil felt that it was the right moment to ask his brother for a favor, as his disposition seemed… barely negative. “I want to ask for something in exchange for my cooperation with the crew, Parvov. If I will be fighting outside in addition to toiling inside —and I wouldn’t miss the chance to— I have two demands. Minor ones, nothing too resource intensive. Or so I hope.”

Parvov’s back loss contact with his throne as he leaned forward. “Let me hear them. I am willing to pull some strings for my dear brother.”

“Is that a threat or a pun?” Dirofil said, wiggling his fingers to imitate Parvov’s movements when using his technique.

“Whichever one you prefer. Get to the point, Dirofil.”

“I need to meet Shadiran, and I need to get past the Mauling layer for that. If I gather and refine all necessary materials, I want to be granted the freedom to recruit some crew members, Doratev among them, to investigate a solution that could benefit both me and the ship.”

Parvov relaxed a bit. “That’s mutually beneficial, I could allow that. But consider staying with us, Brother. It’s a ruthless sea out there.” Parvov then interlaced the fingers of both hands, the twenty of them. “I take your second request will stoke the flames of my fury?”

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“Free her,” Dirofil demanded leaning against the wall, next to the door to be able to run off if things got ugly.

“Pardon me? Free who?”

Dirofil didn’t respond, he barely held his brother’s stare.

“Please, Dirofil, if any Splinter has gotten trapped… I can help.”

“Faking ignorance won’t cut it, brother. You envisioned a prison.”

Parvov blinked with each of his four eyes, one at a time. “Sometimes I wonder if The Doctor’s voicebox is defective and it says things without him thinking them through.”

Dirofil stomped his foot against the floor, a metallic rapping overtaking the silence. “Free Lyssav, idiot.” His hand shot to a side, like a branch that grows towards the sun. “We cannot afford her hatred. I agree our sister deserves isolation and even punishment for her behavior, but we do not have the power to enact them free of consequences.”

“No. The prison keeps her neatly contained in her spire until we save her from the sea.”

“And then I watch her eat your thoughtcrystal out your torso while she tells me I follow, or what? What’s the plan then?”

Parvov shrugged. “She will understand, one way or another. Lyssav is wicked. The sea is outright nefarious. Please, don’t insist.”

“I have information you could find useful. I will even destroy her prison myself if you take me to her. Mediate between you two.”

“I know about you having somehow acquired an ear that can pick up what me and my Splinters say when we talk in infrasounds. I have seen you tilt your head suspiciously at times. You cannot blackmail me with that, if that was your idea,” Parvov said, analyzing his claws out of boredom.

“No. That may be truth, but I offer something else. Necromancy.”

Parvov chuckled. “Divination? Really? Another power of your special eye?”

Dirofil slowly moved his head from side to side. “How many of our siblings died so far, Parvov?”

“Two.”

“One.” Dirofil said, and advanced up to his brother, leaning in over him to look closely at his face. “Promise to take me to Lyssav. I’ll take you to Babesi.”

Every bone in Parvov’s body seemed to go loose as he slumped into his throne for a moment, and then recovered tone as he reached for Dirofil’s neck. “You found Babesi and left her alone in the sea to further your goals?” he pressed onto the slime of his brother as his hand trembled, barely containing the impulse to crush his spine.

“She’s safe.” Dirofil said with the tranquility only the breathless can have when strangled.

“You lie! Mislead me to play your dirty game!” Parvov squeezed further, and Dirofil’s flesh began to slip between his fingers.

“No, no. Babesi tamed a family of Tunnelers to defend her.”

Parvov’s grasp died out. He pushed Dirofil away by means of a kick to his abdomen, toppling him down. “Repeat that.”

“Babesi has entered an alliance with mutant Dachshunds to live in their tunnels. She plucks the parasite Samoyeds off them and they just… don’t attack her. I was about as flabbergasted as you are when she explained this to me.”

Parvov stood from his meticulously crafted seat and loomed over his fallen brother. “That sounds so Babesi that I don’t want to believe you and yet I know that you are not lying. Damn you, Dirofil!”

Scrambling to his feet, Dirofil offered a ten-fingered hand. “Deal? You get to secure the good sister, and I handle the bad one.”

“Forget it. You are telling me where Babesi is right now or—”

The Eye of the Reaper beheld existence for a brief moment, and fear took hold of Parvov’s expression. “You are going to keep using that blasphemous thing to force my hand, won’t you? Reapers are no game, Dirofil.”

“Bet Lyssav could kill one. Or several. If poking bears we are, I strongly suggest the smaller one we poke.”

Parvov scratched his skull. “Why the hyperbaton?”

“It sounded more poetic in my mind.” He wriggled his fingers. “Deal?”

Reluctantly and with a weight in his movements that made him seem cast from stone, Parvov stretched his brother’s hand. “For Babesi I shall tolerate your insolence. But short is the wick of the petard you are playing with, Brother.”

“I can get a new hand. You cannot get a new crystal if Lyssav decides to rip it off your chest and crush it.”

Parvov gestured the pest to go away now that it had gotten what it wanted. “Go with the legsteerers, watch how they do it. I will join you after the bitter flavor of your tricks washes off the mouth I never had.”