“Come next week, no more weeks will come. There are two milky eyes invading the night sky, and a shadowed tongue licking lips that aren’t there. The predators of the cosmos have set their gaze upon us. The universe collapses inwards, and the catastrophe will converge over us soon. But no. Creating the new universe will delete this one, replace it for the world of the Thinkers. All humanity has to sacrifice is our last second. A second to strike the pact after settling the conditions. I won the Lottery. We created a new world, if only on paper so far. Many naysay our vision. Many celebrate it. Some entrench in the fictions they weave, say it’s all a conspiracy conceived by some sort of evil cabal hellbent on destroying humanity.

I thought I would be done earlier with these notes. I must say, I procrastinated. We procrastinated. Together we designed another one of Shadiran’s siblings, breaking the symmetry between the Edge and the Core. We had to read on invertebrate paleontology to pick the correct eye. Singular. I am sorry for taking so long to complete Notes for Cosmopoiesis. Thank you for spending some hours of your time reading it in this blog, now that time has become a resource ever so scarce. Now that you are done, go, spend these last days, hours or minutes with the ones you love. I know I will.

Farewell, humanity. Our bodies may die, but through the new world our spirit and our beloved puppies will live on.”

—Notes for Cosmopoiesis, last page.

Leptos stared at Dirofil with two eyes of equal size and appearance. Behind his encased form trembled out of emotion a whole tail. Six arms sprouted from his torso. Not one less, not one more.

Dirofil took a small amount of offense at this.

“I didn’t know you could regenerate whole body parts,” he commented, and refrained from adding “I could have asked for more”.

Leptos didn’t answer. The reason of his muteness lay in plain sight: his soul had choked out his voicebox, covering it completely. Dirofil had always suspected Leptos had found a way to extract unnatural amounts of energy from his own thoughts. Parvov had once theorized, in all his creativity, that the First Pictured had managed to split his mind, and kept half of it on battery duty. In Babesi’s opinion, he needed a bit shorter of an attention span. Morbilliv had never spoken out for he feared his rage, even if such word was the antithesis of all that Leptos had ever stood for. Lyssav was the only one that could know for sure, but her mind was inscrutable, and her rage a very, very… tangible issue. Implying the slightest negative thing about Leptos in front of her needed to be filed under “creative methods for committing suicide”.

“Of course our brother can. You never paid attention to what he is capable of.”

Dirofil found himself losing the battle against his inner demons. He had to ask now that Leptos could defend him if Lyssav were to snap. “Even a backflip?”

Lyssav’s eyes spun in place, her pupils going horizontal before becoming thin lines. “Is that supposed to be humor, my little. Dear. Brother?”

Before Dirofil could answer, before he could face consequences for voiceboxing off so carelessly, a soft rain of dust and rubble began to fall from the ceiling, the whole structure of Leptos’ spire trembling.

“There’s no need to entertain his petition, Leptos. Really. No need…” Lyssav pleaded with a forced grin. Dirofil tried not to show his bafflement: to see Lyssav scared of anything besides water was a rare sight. A moment later, said surprise turned to worry: What was his elder brother truly capable of, that only Lyssav knew, that even Lyssav feared?

When he noticed the slow tilting of the floor, the little bubbles boiling on both his and Lyssav’s flesh, he realized what was happening: “Stop!” Dirofil called out. Lyssav smiled. “That would be a front flip. The other way around.”

Lyssav frowned with eyes wide open and injected in hatred.

The room began turning the other way. The Fourth Imagined secured his position by digging his claws into the stone. The second Envisioned screeched and hissed as her flesh bubbled, annoying her mightily. Leptos’ gaseous presence was a brick wall for both Lyssav’s and Dirofil’s souls, but the youngest of them had gotten used to the constant bombardment of influences from other souls: A gift of the Corship and its constant need for psycholocation, and of Shadiran and her disregard for personal space. This assault that made Lyssav want to tear her bones from her skin was merely a tickling sensation for Dirofil.

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Slowly but surely Leptos’ spire turned, toppling over, transforming the floor to which Dirofil held onto into a wall and then into a ceiling, leaving him hanging like a particularly unfazed cat.

Lyssav took air and kept her form suspended in the middle of the room, slimy wings beating desperately. Fingers curled as they dug in her head and pulled from an eye. She pumped on it, fidgeted with her eye between her fingers, a sort of disgusting tic that provided relief from the sensations inundating her.

Ceiling became a wall once more, and then a floor. The movement stopped suddenly, sending Dirofil barreling against the nearest wall, the laugh of the First Pictured bathing the minds of both his siblings through their psychic link as the body of stone settled.

I feel blessed to have both of you here, my cherished siblings. Only the presence of the other two could make this better.

Lyssav resented how Leptos’ laughter smothered her rage. Furthermore, she couldn’t chastise Dirofil for entertaining their brother.

Dirofil couldn’t help but admire the integrity of his brother in the face of the news regarding Parvov. It was clear he had heard them speak somehow. Maybe he had been clued in by his spire. Or he had eavesdropped with one of his projections. It didn’t matter in the big picture, but it still poked the bear of curiosity.

Dirofil unglued his self from the cloud-colored rock and reformed his body, placing each bone back where it ought to be. Lyssav watched in disgust. Her brother flowed not unlike the foulest of liquids. Dripped off the perfectly cut bricks. Even under the pristine light of Leptos, water remained anathema to the second envisioned.

“Lyssav wants me to guide her through the ocean,” Dirofil dropped as casually as his phalanxes clicked in place. “Put simply, I fear this time it may be the definitive farewell, brother. Thank you for everything. For the arm. For the tail I lost. For the eye that Morbilliv now uses. For the backflip.”

Lyssav approached him and started massaging his shoulders, the cape and its teeth separating their bodies. “I shall make every molecule in your body scream in pain, Dirofil. With love.”

“I must inform the ocean that with a sister like you I have no further need for enemies.” With a sudden movement and a few disdainful steps, Dirofil pulled away from the sibling he wished he didn’t have and towards the one every Thinker admired. “I’ll send your regards to both Morbilliv and Babesi if so you wish, brother.”

They must already know I consider them precious. Dirofil, Lyssav, take care of each other, and of them too. Little is our clique already. Strive so it doesn’t become smaller. But if the world has to end, may it end by your hand and Shadiran’s, Heartworm.

Dirofil took a knee and crossed three arms in front of his chest, head down. “I’ll honor you, First Pictured.”

And if it is meant to endure instead, may it endure under your unwavering yoke, Rabies.

Lyssav smiled, satisfied and content with Leptos acceptance, and, in an act hitherto unseen for Dirofil, she knelt by his side. “The world shall honor you, my one beloved.”

Under the light of Leptos’ cyclopean soul both of them were rendered equal. And basking in this equality they found, when they looked into each other’s eyes, that all victories in this world of theirs would be pyrrhic. Like the core at the edge of the world their spirits burned with determination, irreconcilable kinds of. And this was no enmity, no rivalry being born. It was reality settling in like sediments in a basin: There was only one host, one world, for them both, and Dirofil intended to seek a promotion to parasitoid. If neither renounced to their dream, Leptos’ wishes would soon become untenable. One of them would have to render the other thoughtless, for the sake of a world. The one they lived in, or the one that, in Dirofil’s opinion, deserved to exist. Comprehension was a curse, and in that moment they both fell bewitched.

They averted their gazes simultaneously, fixing them onto the steps that led to their imprisoned brother. Awareness had graced both of their minds, congealing the air around them, turning it thicker than the mucilage that covered their skeletons could ever get.

She was fast enough. She could lash out and tear his core out his chest before Leptos could react. Maybe even crush it with her teeth.

He was intelligent enough to realize jumping off to the side, out of her reach, was the most logical course of action. But that didn’t make it the right one. He didn’t just trust Leptos to stop any ill-intended move from his sister, but trusted her to not make any at all. He respected and feared Lyssav, that was true.

But Lyssav, in her own wicked way, loved him, and he couldn’t help but reciprocate such feeling in this silent and tragic complicity.

He stood first, and without mediating a word trailblazed a path through the hanging tension, leading the way to the hole that opened towards the spire’s tip, to the irregular wall he had first climbed many tides ago. “Come, Lyss. Leave Leptos to think in peace. Fate waves and barks over us, anxious.”

Lyssav nodded slowly. “I’ll meet you again once I manage to rule over the sea, Leptos. Goodbye.” She waved with her three rightmost arms. “Meditate until then. And don’t you dare to go thoughtless.”

Then Leptos sent a message only meant for her. Take care of our little siblings in my stead, Lyssy.

Silence, both of the mind and of her voicebox, was the only honest answer she could muster.