“We believe our creations deserve to know about our world. That the beauty our creator —about whom we have but an engraved slab with the words ‘A carving overlying the dying Carving. Orphaned, with no Father, no Mother. Clivald so decree.’— inherited us shouldn’t be lost, but shouldn’t be included either. The Thinkers won’t suffer debts, they won’t see dragons fly above and terrorize their peers, and, most definitively, won’t attend funerals. But they will know about them, and about our fauna, and flora, and arts […] but not much about us.”

—Notes for Cosmopoeisis, factually wrong page.

Dirofil hauled the squirming dog all the way to the cargo bay, and tossed it into one of the cages after a Splinter deigned to open the tailgate for him. It was Lurgas, a Splinter of Parvov that often filled the role of Psycholocator, sometimes leading the team. Dirofil knew he often chatted in the way Splinters of Parvov did with Tiervol, that he considered an educated folk, and Kirval, that almost deserved to be thrown to the Chihuahuas and left for thoughtless. Almost.

“This place is silent. Too damn silent. What happened?”

“Funeral protocol,” The Splinter spouted almost automatically. “Err, I mean, we are organizing a funeral. For Parvov. I was told to deal with, and I quote, ‘your bullshit’, sir.”

Dirofil took a second to answer. So the Splinters knew now. The miners were vertiginously fast to spread rumors, it seemed.

“Words of Morbilliv?”

The Splinter nodded subserviently. “Exact words of Morbilliv.”

“Do you need any help?” Dirofil sheathed his arms inside his cape, and marched inside the entry corridor of the bay, his eyes fixed on the lines of little circular lights. “Any help, at anything. Even steering a leg.”

Lurgas gestured with his horns, tilting his head back. “Above, in the refinery. They are making trinkets out of Chihuahuite.”

Dirofil wasted no more time with questions, heading up the corridors and the perching-ball-stairs that he was coming to know as intimately as he had every nook and cranny of his late spire.

The air in the refining room hung heavy, tyrannical. It threatened to reprimand any sudden movement, upholding the ritual atmosphere. The iron hand of Parvov, manifested from beyond the grave, likely for the last time.

Dirofil conducted himself to the station he usually took whenever it was available, not too close to the door, but not too far. Next to Morbilliv, who was too busy using his soul to bend a glass-like lump of material to notice his brother standing nearby. A flower, Dirofil thought, he’s making a flower. A flower for the dead Parvov. For Parvov, who’s dead. “The loss of Parvov hurts me more than yours ever did, Morbilliv. And it’s wrong, for I should love you the same.”

Morbilliv didn’t look away from his task. “Hurts more, or hurts differently, older brother?” he left the chihuahuite mound over the table and turned on his stool, to face Dirofil. “Parvov once broke into an ugly cry while we were alone by the bullseye of the bridge. He tortured himself for what he was subjecting Lyssav to. I asked him why he felt bad for Lyss. You know she’s no saint of my devotion, and he did too. You told me you pity her. But Parvov used the word ‘love’.” If a pause could freeze slime, the one Morbilliv indulged in would have shattered his body. “It was then when I realized that I had never entertained the idea of a world without Lyssav or Leptos, that the only reason why I wasn’t ready to weep for them one day would be because there was no possible scenario, in my core, where they could be gone. I’ll cry if we fail to save Lyssav. As much as I did for Parvov. But not hiding; not pretending I cry for my own death.” He returned most of his attention to shaping the flower, and then let his shoulders fall a bit. “What I am trying to say is that ours is a dysfunctional family, but a family all the same. And it’s normal for love to be unevenly and unfairly distributed within a family.”

Dirofil wanted to protest to say that he had used the word “wrong”, and not abnormal, deviate, rare, or any synonym thereof. “Normal doesn’t make right. What’s the thing you are making for?”

“I’ll cast it out the cargo bay and let it shatter against the first dog it hits after the funeral ends. Until then, I have to hold it. Feel free to ask a Splinter for some Chihuahuite to make a funeral offering. We have an excess of it.”

“I brought a Doberman,” Dirofil helpfully informed, just to change subject. His claws found his hipbone to scratch it, under the cape.

“It can wait. Abomination knows better than to deny us time for our mourning.”

If bioluminescent algae, with their hues of blue and green and red, were to gather in a circle around the only lighthouse in existence, the image would somewhat resemble the scene taking place on the upper hull of the Corship. Exposing their cores to the peering eyes of the ocean, the Splinters flowed around Parvov’s body, around Morbilliv. Many of them had crafted humble ornaments out of different dog-based materials: improvised garlands, little replicas of Parvov’s skull, wristbands of colorful beads, and other small trinkets. Wasteful trinkets, a part of Morbilliv told him. But Parvov deserved them. He deserved so much more than that.

The soul-waves of the Psycholocators washed over Dirofil as he kept his mechanical eyes focused on the darkness around. He couldn’t open the eye of the Reaper: the monster was too close, such that it could reach them in a matter of minutes if it launched full-throttle on their pursuit. Yet the gross share of fear didn’t come from the prospect of oblivion with eyes of blue, but from the quiet and unknown veil that surrounded them. To see something staring back would be mercy, relief from the constant skulking of the unformed nightmares.

The soft beating of millions of hearts and the pumping of twice that amount of lungs was constantly picked up by P-model ears whenever the dogs stopped their panting and whining. A maddening chaos, insulting for its uselessness: had those hearts beaten in a discernable pattern, had the dogs been coordinated somehow, a change of rhythm could have served as a signal of nearby stressors, of anything that bothered the Bernese mountain dogs.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

But the hostility of Cynothalassa, sea of dogs, respected no boundaries. It wouldn’t let them mourn in peace, be it by throwing mutant dogs at them or merely by standing as this noxious presence, this omnipresent manifestation of a deepest paranoia that it had become for everyone present.

One by one the Splinters stepped up to Morbilliv and gifted to Parvov their trinkets, not without checking their backs, or glancing above before doing so. They honored their former captain, hung the garlands and wrist bands from the fore and backhorns, making Morbilliv grunt from the added weight as more and more accumulated, or left flowers and skull replicas and things that in their minds had a shape no one else could determine at the feet of the Original who wore his brother’s body. And Dirofil remained apart, watching. Worrying.

Parvov had died out there, there was no practical use for this custom. Or, at least, not for him, for the Fourth Imagined. The Third Dreamt dreamed no more. There was no location, ritual, spell or lie that could restitute what had been lost. Not a single thought would ever again be birthed forth by the rightful captain of the Corship. Morbilliv could do his best to puppeteer the body, to pantomime their deceased rascal. And it wouldn’t be enough. Yet he wouldn’t prevent his brother from using Parvov’s body as he saw fit. After all, it would have probably pleased Parvov to let his favorite sibling live through him, listen to the things he could listen.

Parvov had been rendered thoughtless. The idea held onto his mistreated psyche like a Lyme-infested tick to a mangy cur. It couldn’t have been that long ago, for Morbilliv had been present, and that meant it was after The Fifth’s spire fell. He regarded the span of his life, and let out a whimper when realizing that he had never known a world without Parvov. There had been times before Morbilliv, and times without Babesi. But Parvov had been a constant. Had been. Nevermore he would hear his mockery of his devotion to Shadiran, or look at him swinging Babesi above his head as the brat whee’d happily. Over were the discussions, the advice, the arguments.

He had no heart, and yet there was a Parvov shaped hole in it, bleeding him out.

“From then and until we murder this world you are gone, brother,” he whispered and whisked his eyes to the top of his head, holding his gaze towards the mauling layer. He had to cross it, whatever it took. The apocalypse needed to conclude, the new world to come forth and erase this pain he couldn’t simply rip off his back.

His attention snapped to the ritual for a moment. Slowly but surely Parvov’s body was bedecked in wasteful garnishes. Unpractical garnishes. “Drop it, now,” he demanded. “You cannot fight properly while covered in trash, Morbilliv.”

Morbilliv incorporated, the Splinters around him dispersing as he sauntered over to his brother. “Did you notice something, Dirofil?”

“No. That’s the worst part.” An arm emerged from the cape’s protection to gesture at the vastness of ocean all around. “And besides, you are always scolding me for taking what you consider unnecessary risks. And here we are, clinging to the outer side of the ship, wasting chihuahuite that took energy from our cores to be refined, indulging in these self-aggrandizing practices that do us no favor.”

Morbilliv raised Parvov’s right horn in a disdainful expression. “To help and keep us all sane in the face of loss is no favor to you, Dirofil? Or do you think that the ever-lurking disheartenment would not shatter our souls just as easily as the jaws of an aberration? We were made to perish after our spires fell. Yet stubborn and deluded here we live, honoring our names, parasites of the ocean that predated on us. To lose heart, to let grief consume us, is to die ourselves, to kill the load-bearing Corgi.”

Dirofil deigned to look forward and turn his head towards his brother. “Compromises have to be made. This ship is a valuable tool for my ends, and so is the crew.”

“Hey, we are here and can hear you two!” A Splinter of Dirofil protested.

“And I don’t care!” The Original retorted, looking through his brother’s midriff at the distorted image of the complaining crewmate.

“You are ruining your sibling’s funeral, Dirofil.” Morbilliv chided, raising a hand, ready to slap his brother.

Dirofil raised his index and shook it from side to side, the back of his right hand facing Morbilliv, the lidded doom closed for the time being.

“Open it and I shall tear you asunder, Dirofil.”

“Because it endangers the crew?” Dirofil asked in a cocky tone, “Like the funeral does?”

After a second or two of hesitation, Morbilliv gave up. His poise crumbled as he turned to the crew. “My brother is right.” He rapped the Corgite hull with his heavy foot. “Everyone, inside the ship, now.”

With sounds of relief and cheer the Splinters slithered in avalanche, one after the other, racing on all appendages in the case of the more… eager ones. Like the waters of a turbulent river they flowed about the brothers, climbing down the ship walls to reach the nearest entrance, be it the cargo bay, the emergency exits, or the front hatch.

After they found themselves alone, one in front of the other, arms hidden behind a back or under a cape, Morbilliv spoke. “It’s the war drums, right?”

“Excuse me?”

“The hearts. I like to think of them as the constant reverberation of an army’s drums. They fill me with this pervasive unease too. They sow rage in my soul. An anxiousness that refuses to accept it isn’t welcome.”

Dirofil nodded slowly. “I should not be bothered by the sounds of my rightful homes.”

Had he had a mouth, Morbilliv would have grinned at that statement. “What a squeamish worm you resulted to be.”

“I want to spot something in the dark. I want for the predators to look at me, to see their greedy eyes and know myself stalked. I don’t fear the Reaper anymore, brother: I can see where it is at any time just by closing my eyes. Feel its presence whenever it draws near. But the nothingness that assailed us today, this unbroken solitude? It terrifies me. Every empty spot is filled with potential attackers. Every particle of my flesh quivers at the idea of a death so silent, so invisible. An end I failed to see.”

Morbilliv spread his arms, and Dirofil disembarrassed himself of his cape to embrace his brother without the teeth getting in the way. They remained like that for a moment, neverminding the annoying garlands and collars and wrists bands that hung from the captain’s body without closing their eyes, pricking up their ears. Then each pushed the other apart softly, and they stared into each other’s eyes.

“Will you cast the flower you were making down?” Dirofil asked.

Morbilliv reached for the frail chihuahuite construct he had stashed inside the flesh of his torso, extricated it from his body, and held it at an arm’s distance, grabbing it with just two fingers. Like this he walked up to the edge of the ship’s hull, at the back, over the closed gate of the cargo bay. He almost didn’t notice when Dirofil’s hand joined him in holding the delicate trinket.

“At the count of three?” Dirofil said as they stared down into the endless abyss.

And when “three” was pronounced, they both let the flower go simultaneously, and watched it get swallowed by the darkness.

“Farewell, Parvov,” Dirofil whined meekly.

“Live forever, my Captain.” Morbilliv saluted with a sudden movement, destroying one of the ornaments that rested on his head, and acting like he had not noticed as the pieces fell to his feet.

The distant crack of a glass rose shattering marked the end of the improvised funeral, and Dirofil couldn’t help but repeat the sour phrase while they descended to reach the cargo bay’s entrance. “Farewell, Parvov.”