“The Zenith of Concepts rests over Vedala’s palace. Its only function is to grant the Thinkers the possibility we humans were once granted, by grace divine or chance mundane: to create existence anew. Yet I aim to spare the Thinkers the cruelty of a lottery, the encroaching uncertainty that beset us as we drew the numbers, as we waited in our homes. Therefore, I am entrusting this quest to make the world once more, whenever they see fit, to Dirofil, The Fourth Imagined, and Shadiran, The Besotted. Whether they succeed or fail, I’ll leave it to their skill and their luck.”

—Notes for Cosmopoiesis, page 13.

Two stars gamboled in the night, spiraling around the axons of the ocean’s brain, one chasing after the other. The leading one moved nigh weightlessly, bouncing among the dogs with an enviably ease. The other followed with heavy landings, his movement happening in bursts rather than flowing. Behold, the first one embodies water, with its meandering curves and coursing grace. Watch out, the second embodies thunder, gifted with all-reaching arcs of light and explosive puissance.

The legs of the first parted, without making him lose his grasp on the column, the dog beyond the space they were occupying a moment before plucked from the wall by the force of the second’s pull on the strings of his soul.

The failure frustrated Parvov and made him cry out in the dark. Dirofil was not easy to catch: his constant visits to Shadiran’s palace had endowed him with a familiarity of the climbing practice that most of his siblings straight out lacked. Dogs or spheres, they weren’t very different to the Fourth Imagined, not anymore. The Captain had the impression that his brother had been already assimilated by the sea, just another dog traversing the unwelcoming landscape. “Dirofil, come back, I won’t do anything painful to you.”

Dirofil balanced on a meager leg over the head of a Bernese that jutted out from the structure. “That would be counterproductive.” He vaulted off backwards, where a nearby lenticular formation of Samoyeds awaited, and landed on a bed of fur soft as cotton. He had glimpsed the concave bottom of the lens as he ascended, and now lay upon the flat top.

He sat up when the heavy frame of Parvov arrived at the other end of the lens, sending a puny wave coursing through the Samoyeds. “We are far enough,” Dirofil affirmed with a calm tone. One of his fingers shot accusingly in direction of his incoming brother. “You are not Parvov.”

“I am Parvov, idiot! Is that what this is all about? You distrust—.”

“Parvov loved having his arms split into four individual ones. That was the first thing that struck me as odd, but maybe the needs of the life here had changed his mind.” Dirofil hopped to his feet and opened his cape, revealing the light of his core to better illuminate his own body.

“I am Parvov! You don’t know what this sea does to people, Dirofil!”

“Parvov would laugh at the idea of a mirror. Parvov would still be giving me a beating after I pulled off the whole Babesi ordeal. And more important, even if I managed to escape, Parvov would have caught me.” Dirofil strode and began advancing towards the hunched form of his brother. “You are not Parvov. You will never be Parvov. Don’t lie to me, little brother. Be honest, Morbilliv. Why do you have his body?”

The horned head turned to both sides as the captain made sure they were alone. “I should be Parvov, Dirofil,” he admitted, defeated. Then he looked at Dirofil with guilty and soft eyes. “He tore my core from my body as it got taken by the Reaper, and when the thing caught up to us once more he detonated his very soul to save me. I should have died. Had he escaped and left me behind, he would be alive. I took control of the body as the tentacles of the creature burned due to the psychic fallout of our beloved brother’s essence. I returned to the ship and began to behave like he did, or at least trying to, albeit making some… small changes. I slowly began surrounding myself by Splinters of Parvov. I fabricated a mirror to include in his chambers. I took on the mask, because the crew needed their captain, and Parvov would have wanted me to take care of them.”

Morbilliv fell to Parvov’s knees, feeling as if a weight on his shoulders had lifted, only for a bigger stone to be dropped onto his back seconds later. “Don’t tell the crew.”

Dirofil knelt in front of him and placed both forearms on his dead brother’s shoulders. “I won’t. But they deserve to know.” Then he made a pause. “I won’t as long as you don’t force me to steer a leg.”

Morbilliv let out a single bout of laughter. “By the creators, you couldn’t let the chance to blackmail me slip, could you?” His big arms then squelched Dirofil’s lithe form against his chest, the quills of his cape ignored completely.

“I could. I wouldn’t.”

But the embrace didn’t last long, for soon three delicate ears picked up five indelicate howls.

“Yodelers. We will need to fight again,” Morbilliv said, hurrying to a standing position, giving his back to Dirofil as he adopted an offensive stance, claws extended and ready to dig into any potential attackers.

“Do they have something useful for me?” Dirofil lazily gave the back to his brother and cracked his neck. “We haven’t covered Yodelers yet.”

“Death. Is that useful to you? Why are your arms folded under your cape? Appearing bigger than you are is a good deterrent for them.”

“Oh, you think I want to deter them?”

An erratic bulge under the cape made Morbilliv realize Dirofil was making use of the eye of the Reaper. “Do you want to add a Reaper to the party that is going to unfold about us?”

“Tsk, I won’t get scolded by my younger brother. Parvov’s body is big and, in the way you make use of it, slower than mine. The Reaper is far away, so I must make sure we don’t get ambushed by anything worse than these…” The image of the nearest enemy manifested as Dirofil pointed the eye to his right, Morbilliv’s left. “Basenjis?” Dirofil blinked with all the eyes, his and other’s. “I refuse to die to a dog that cannot bark.”

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“If you are gonna say something in tense moments, at least finish your thoughts.”

“I am channeling unhealthy amounts of Babesi today.”

One of the mutated Basenjis lurched from the right and Dirofil dodged by dropping his body supine against the floor, supported by his three arms. An afterimage flew over his head as the dog had done, a perversion of the air made chiefly of sound and seemingly pulled in by the very howl of the creature that stood on higher terrain.

“Yodel, leave an afterimage behind, and then yodel again to hit you opponent with the damn thing, is that their strategy?” Dirofil asked, refusing to regain his footing: crawling on all fives was his element, sort of. He tested the Samoyeds for a loose one, tugged at their tails gently.

“What are you doing?”

“Searching for a projectile.”

Morbilliv extended his tendrils furtively until they found their way to Dirofil’s legs. “Me too.”

Dirofil opened his eyes wide as his world began to turn around him. Being slung overhead as some sort of bolas gave one an interesting perspective in life. His brother launched him into the fray, releasing him against the furthest dog that was conjuring a sound clone of his slick green figure.

Dirofil opened his arms wide and clasped around the back of the creature, that squirmed and tried to wrench himself free, exuding an icky mucus, not much different from a frog’s.

“If two of the ghosts collide midair they explode, Dirofil!” Morbilliv warned as he raised an arm to protect his head from the incoming jaws of a Yodeler. As soon as the dog bit, he yanked it down and shifted his weight to collapse upon the creature.

Dirofil kept sending soul signals into the body of the creature. Be mine, be mine! If he had bested a reaper, this pathetic opponent couldn’t be much.

But two of them, maybe, were.

A clone of sound rammed into his side as he wrestled with his enemy, and forced him to let the real dog go to avoid further damage. He thought he should have been more careful as he found himself plummeting down into the void between Bernese mountain dogs.

Calling forth his soul, his core vibrated. Once, twice. Channeled energy on his hand, in only for ease of aiming. And so he let a wave of violence to lash out at nothing, embracing the recoil that drove him closer to the column his arms had no trouble latching into.

“I need some wings.” He mused as two of the dogs —whether they were the ones that had toppled him or the ones initially going for Morbilliv didn’t matter— pranced down from lintel to buttresses to nexi to dendrite of the Bernese-brain.

Clamped onto the wall of dogs as he was, Dirofil couldn’t help but seek a path up: If he could reunite with Morbilliv and draw the attackers close, the battle would become so much easier…

And there was an explosion. And there was Morbilliv, falling down the platform, with his armor plates releasing smoke as he cursed the godsdamned hounds. The Fifth Conceived quickly shot his threads of soul to drag itself onto a horizontal formation of Berneses, meters away from Dirofil. The yodeling intensified as the dogs regrouped in the darkness.

“I managed to kill one. Six to go.”

“Congratulations on inventing a sort of murder that adds to the enemy lines instead of subtracting from them,” Dirofil mocked in a calm tone unbecoming of the situation.

“You underestimate the sea that killed so many of us,” Morbilliv chided hurriedly, for the yodels grew closer.

Morbilliv resolved on prying his brother from the wall and letting the breathing column behind them cover their backs this time. “Get serious, Dirofil. Or we will be in dire straits.”

“Fine, but don’t burn their bodies. I want a clone of sound.”

“I cannot use that against them! they have a sound armor that prevents my technique from latching.”

“Ah, so that’s why the mucus doesn’t stick to everything.”

A snort of Morbilliv and the sharp sounds of an incoming attacker punctuated the end of their idle chatting. Dirofil didn’t feel like moving, so he allowed his body to lose cohesion and melt to a mesh of metal, cape and mucilage at the feet of his brother. Action which, one has to admit, was a very effective way of ducking the lunge of a mutated canine.

The Basenji crashed against the wall of Bernese and his head lodged onto the fabric of the column, where it got thoroughly licked by friendly heads. The end of his life came when three talons pierced his side and tore his guts out while he tried to wriggle free. Dirofil let it go and reformed his head and torso, his eyed hand now providing footing, attached to his ankle, while his right talon had attached to his wrist.

Morbilliv hammered his intermingled fists down onto another Bajensi, knocking it out and letting the limp creature fall into the chasm, towards the Collie layer. “What a creative use of your lithe form, Dirofil,” he chimed in as he recovered his poise and prepared for the three howling enemies that could lunge at them at any moment, including the one that ran down the wall followed by three sound copies.

“I am a worm. I need some tricks to squirm my way out of trouble. Launch me upwards.” He said, returning to his shapeless state.

In a single arc of movement Morbilliv scooped Dirofil’s spherical core in his heavy palm and sent it flying in a vertical line, in collision course with the descending Basenji.

The dog unclasped his jaws wide, pedicellate teeth glistening when exposed to the core’s glow. Drawing closer each instant, Dirofil readied for the impact, covering his front with his cape, and commanding little roots of slime to slip through the links of the chain. As the cape-shield engaged with the jaws of its adversary and engrossed them into a clash of teeth, he commanded his talons and claws to flow around the cape, and reunite at the other side —inside the mouth— while both him and the creature fought for purchase during their freefall. Morbilliv had moved, barreling against another adversary, and thus they bounced onto the walkway, the impact entangling Chihuahua and Basenji teeth more, causing Dirofil’s bulging core to gag the creature while the sound clones converged on the body of their maker, harmlessly running out of existence. His enemy immediately began shaking the core with destructive intent.

Oh, but Dirofil had plans. His core wouldn’t easily give in, protected by the cape and his burnished ribs. And the dog wouldn’t close his mouth. The Basenji’s armor of sound may have made clawing his outsides while the dog was alert a fool’s errand, but the soft flesh of its mouth didn’t enjoy the same protection. He didn’t need to imprint much force on the slime-covered claws to inflict bleeding wounds inside the dog’s mouth. The idea wasn’t to get the monster to stop its attack, to pull back or try to escape. No, the wounds needed to be minimal, just enough for Dirofil’s flesh to crawl inside the veins and arteries.

The core had served well as bait, and after a few seconds enough of Dirofil’s flesh coursed through the dog to reach the heart and clog up the arteries there, inducing a cardiac arrest, honoring the Thinker’s cursed name for the first time since creation had granted it to him. The dog convulsed, whistled and went limp soon enough, letting the thinker extricate his self from the cadaver.

Morbilliv, whose foot was crushing the throat of another dog against the ground, googled at his brothers reforming figure as the dog’s blood besmirched Dirofil’s transparent flesh. “What sort of madness did you just engage in? How did you kill it, Dirofil?”

“Oh, you know,” He replied without turning, inspecting the dog’s cadaver to see if he could absorb any part before the battle ended. “Heartworm things.”

Once the squelch of a crushed trachea resounded through the Bernese layer, the remaining mutants joined the shadows, escaped the scene. These were not prey to be trifled with, and they had suffered many losses already. To run and live another tide; even to an aberrant Basenji that seemed like a wise course of action.