“I have the theory that the dogs Abominate under particular conditions that seem to vary for each breed, but most of the ones we could find in intermediate states were outside their place in the ocean: far from their clusters, tetrads, currents or layers. There may be ways of forcing abomination without changing the location of a dog, and finding them could play a crucial role in our understanding of the phenomenon itself.”
—Doratev, in one of his recordings.
The grown dogs gave place to a rather viscous layer of puppies. They whined and drooled and licked and even tried to chew a bit onto Dirofil’s body, and he didn’t mind much, because the little things barely presented a nuisance, despite the tiny needles they had for teeth. They wouldn’t harm his metal structure, and the flesh surrounding the skeleton would flow back into the little holes as soon as they stopped biting him.
After another period of monotony and puppy-nibbling, his left hand emerged somewhere that provided nothing to grab onto. So he held onto the last puppy before that seeming bubble in the sea and popped his head out. It took some seconds for his eyes to adapt to the far less bright atmosphere in that empty place, as he emerged from between the puppies and, covered in Retriever hairs of white and gold, he found out he wasn’t in a bubble.
He was in a tunnel. A tunnel well illuminated by the puppies that here and there popped off of the ceiling and fell to the ground, like debris in a soon-to-collapse cave. Then, the young dogs buried themselves among their kin, reincorporating into the structure of the sea.
Dirofil quickly turned on his talons to look at both ends of the tunnel. It connected to others like it, but, besides that, he couldn’t see a reason to fear. Of course, this only made things worse. The tunnels needed a justification, they had to have been dug by some process or entity. And given they looked like he imagined warrens would to a small bug, the entity option was more likely.
There were approximately six Dirofils, head to toe, from the ground to the ceiling. Four Parvovs, maybe. Lyssav wasn’t a good unit of measurement.
A gentle caress on his core took his attention hostage for a second. It was nothing solid, merely a feeling that hung in the air. As if another presence were calling for him…or looking for his mind. It was probably the one responsible for the tunnels.
He tuned down his psycholocation to attempt to go unnoticed by whatever was seeking him. That’s when the tunnels around him started trembling, the puppies’ whining intensifying as they licked their own noses and lowered their rounded ears in distress.
Something was coming. Something big. For him. Something big was coming for him. And a part of him felt flattered. Another got on all fours and started racing to the nearest wall, a scared opossum racing for its den. Or trying to race, as the heads and bellies and butts of baby dogs didn’t provide the best of footings. It was more like a creature unfit to live in a swamp trying to wade his way across it.
In a rather anticlimactic twist, it was only a dachshund that came out one of the side tunnels. Thoroughly mutated and as tall as the structures it had carved across the sea, with his jaws split in seven roughly equal parts, and opening like a monstrous starfish with long canines and sharp molars on each arm. With eyes on its shoulders, and claws like shovels to dig through the puppies adorning the seeming collar of extremities its pectoral girdle hosted. It was only a dachshund, even if it resembled some sort of hirsute sandworm. Puppyworm.
And it charged, mouth agape, throat pulsing as it advanced by roving on the walls with all of its abominable arms.
It was six Dirofils tall, and the gullet was the perfect size to swallow said unit of measurement whole.
The Thinker turned away and tried to hurry in the contrary direction. He soon realized his pathetic attempt wasn’t a mere fraction of “fast enough”. It would never be. But maybe he could escape if he sacrificed enough of his lifeblood. He’d have to climb away afterwards, as tunneling straight upwards was probably harder for the thing than doing it in any other direction.
So he got on his feet and began gathering the energy of his core, visualizing it projecting forward and battering his pursuer. It would cost him some thought-energy, but it was preferable to getting devoured and having his body crushed beyond usability.
Another paddling of the shovel-legs brought the beast closer, and it was unaware of the storm the Thinker was gathering in his heart.
And when the Dachshund got close enough —close enough for Dirofil to see the papillae lining his mouth and forking tongues, close enough to feel his warm and putrid breath, close enough to make a beating heart stop— said storm unfurled. A shockwave of the Thinker’s very soul spewed forth, the whitest of lights spreading in arcs of scorching rage, landing upon the soft tissues of the abhorrent dachshund and searing its sharp whiskers away.
The creature shivered and howled, stopping its charge, seemingly stunned, and Dirofil lost no time to put some distance between them. That would not last, and the attack would likely make the thing, in whose territory he had intruded, angrier.
He hadn’t taken a tenth step away when he heard the renewed stir of the extremities behind him. He began gathering energy again as he headed for the intersection of tunnels. Maybe there he would find a way out. A crack, a crevice through which to escape as the thing dug for him. But they couldn’t do that forever. His core was strong and well-nourished; it would likely take dozens or even a hundred discharges like the previous one before it broke. But break it would, shattering his very existence, if he couldn’t find a way out.
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And even if he could escape, doing so while weakened would be a thoughtlessness sentence. It was time to move, and the tide wanted to shove him straight into an inexistent afterlife.
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Parvov opened his eyes and shot a displeased glance as he heard the drilling voice of one of his subordinates call at the arch of his chambers. His ire at the interruption lasted but a mere instant, as he made out the words the Splinter of him was repeating amidst a darkness where only the light of their cores irrupted into.
“Sir, sir, we detected a Reaper! A Reaper! We followed protocol and turned off the engines and refinery stations and lights. The psycholocators remain on duty, and we are monitoring it closely.”
“You are unfit to bear my visage,” Parvov judged the lesser, and smaller, version of himself. “You were the one picked up about forty tides ago, if I am not wrong. Filbaros, was it?”
“Yes, captain Parvov,” The crew member trembled when he noticed the captain was incorporating, ready to address him face to face, illuminated only by the light of their souls.
“You are a Splinter of my person. I insult you; you answer in kind. It’s far more offensive to see a reflection of me acting with such abject deference in the face of a superior’s abuse.” Parvov faced his Splinter, and his gaze softened a bit as his arms found each other behind his back. “Inform me of the Reaper’s movement. Is it hunting? Is it Idle?”
The splinter couldn’t help but to salute the captain before answering. “It seems to be idly drifting across the sea, sir.”
“You are a lost cause, Filbaros. I’d be sighing if I had lungs. Back to our main concern: I assume the Reaper protocol is being followed without any deviations.”
“Crewmate Edala tripped on the way to her chambers to meditate,” he dutifully informed, which made Parvov press on his own wrist to fend off frustration.
“That’s an irrelevant detail. Tell the lucid ones that we are deviating from the protocol almost completely if that Reaper’s movements indicate that it has begun to hunt. The whole ship powered and moving away from the thing, the defensive spikes at the ready, everyone refining or psycholocating or powering something.”
Parvov shoved his way past his subordinate, heading for the door with an air of anger-fueled authority.
“That would be suicidal! Reapers are way faster than the ship, sir!”
“And they are faster than my brother too. What do you think it would be hunting around here, if not Dirofil?”
“With all undue respect: I won’t tell the rest of the crew to sacrifice themselves for your brother, Parvov.”
Parvov turned, a hand raised as if to strike the insolent crewmate down, but instead, what found Filbaro’s trembling temples was a gentle caress, the yellowish light of his core reflecting off his captain’s forearm. “See? There aren’t lost causes when the motivation is the right one. If that Reaper begins to hunt, there will be a suicidal mission. Mine, and mine alone, as the Corship sneaks away at minimum power. Then you will have to choose a new captain.” And before his subordinate could answer, Parvov left the room, descending the spiral of spheres with heavy steps. “I will check on the psycholocators personally. See if they need rest. Thank you for your dutifulness. Are you dismissed?”
“You are asking me if I am dismissed, Captain?”
“Yes. Linger if you wish. Or not. Choice of yours,” the distant and worried voice of Parvov reached his ears.
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A ninth explosion staggered the Tunneler once again, sent puppies flying against it due to Dirofil’s nervousness, which caused certain lack of accuracy on his blasts. “Let me go!” he said, uncaring for keeping a homogeneous tone, scurrying away a few steps once more. He had begun to fall victim to the burning sensation of an exerted thoughtcrystal.
He grabbed a loose puppy that scratched his back against a heterogeneous layer of its equals. There should have been dog viscera splatting everywhere with the ensuing violence, but the pups remained untarnished, unharmed. Probably the common dogs that made up the sea were impervious to damage.
Once the Dachshund recovered, Dirofil held the clueless puppy against the core in his chest and focused the energy he gathered right behind the little dog.
The violent discharge made him lose his footing as it ripped the puppy off his soft grasp, sending him or her —Dirofil hadn’t bothered to sex the poor thing— hurling forward, spinning chaotically across the four or five meters that separated the Thinker from a gruesome fate, slipping through the dachshund’s flower of jaws and impacting right into one of the shoulder eyes, digging into the flesh, splashing gore everywhere, and injecting a whining and wiggling Labrador puppy into the Dachshund’s monstrous frame.
For the first time since their little game of cat and mouse had begun, the creature allowed an echoing howl to ripple out. It was in pain, with a living Labrador lodged deep into his pectoral orbit. It thrashed against the wall of its own tunnel, accelerating the falling rate of ceiling-puppies.
Dirofil skittered away while the dachshund violently threw its body against the walls. The waves of violence barely reached him: the mass of puppies enjoyed a fantastic capacity to absorb impacts and disperse their energy.
Reaching the intersection of tunnels Dirofil barely looked both ways before jumping to his right. This tunnel was slanted, and he would be ascending a bit as he traversed it. And laying on the floor, he noticed the presence once again, it seemed to come from a crack amongst the puppies that interrupted the curve that normally formed between the wall and ground. He approached, defeated by curiosity, and introduced his head in the crack to see better.
And from the depths of that crevice, emerging from amongst puppy debris like fungi on dead wood, shoot several tentacles that reached for Dirofil’s face and hands.
Fear lasted but a second: Those were known appendages. This wasn’t a monster dragging him into the hole, this wasn’t some hell-bound beast that crawled out of the creator’s nightmares.
“You hurt my bodyguard!” came the high-pitched voice of a Splinter of Babesi.
When his whole body had been introduced into the crack. by the relatively weak tentacles, Dirofil responded. “You wound my soul with that voice. You have no right to use it. What’s your name, Splinter?”
A head with a lone eye popped from between the puppies. Its two voiceboxes were inserted below and to the sides of the orb of purple metal, black vestibules and ducts floating amidst the transparent slime. “Babesi: Sixth Pest, Elongate Annoyance, Mirthful One, Essence of Brat, Dear Little Sister (rarely heard), Lyssav’s Lapdog, First to Fall, Future Chew Toy, Guest of the Giant Dachshunds—” she enumerated until Dirofil’s hand found her eye and obstructed her vision.
“Ah, it’s the one with the right to use that voice and the tendency to abuse it. Pull me into whatever puppy-pocket you inhabit and shut up, Bab.” Dirofil said, struggling to contain his emotion, for a Splinter trying to trick him would have called herself the Sixth Conceptualized, and not all of the nicknames her siblings had given the real one during her inopportune visits. This was as Babesi as any being could ever get.
“As you wish, Dirodiro!”
And thus, he closed his eyes, seizing the opportunity to meditate and slightly restore his energy as Babesi dragged him somewhere safe. Or safer, at the very least.