“Rabid dogs sometimes develop a curious symptom: a severe aversion to water and light. Rabid people, I think, too; but they do not concern me, as they are not contemplated by my field of study. This should be taken into account while making the new world. She will hate it.”
—Tidbits of Our Creation, page 2.
The nightmare wouldn’t allow her to use the time to think appropriately. She licked her fangs as the inflamed red slime of her face rotted and fell in ribbons, rejoining with that of her body where it touched it. Once more, she was awake. Once more, Parvov’s inhumane crime met her, the vision of the nefarious vials imprinting into her three eyes. She couldn’t leave her throne, as the whole room had been filled with them, with the bloody walls of the chamber obscured by the sheer density of gold and glass. They hung from the ceiling, supported by frail chains, with about one third of the links holding little bottles. Where? Where had Parvov gotten the damned liquid for filling them? Had he boiled dog saliva and distilled the vapors? Had he found another source of water?
Because that was what the vials had, the only thing capable of striking fear into Lyssav’s core: water, simple and pure. She had been trapped amidst this stilled rain, a prison devised just for her. She was tempted to extend her claws and shred through the curtain of torture. But her body wouldn’t answer, for the phobia was stronger than her will, than her desperation.
“One day, Parvov. One day I will get rid of the vials. And then, if you still think, I’ll get rid of your skull and use the horns as a toothprick!”
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Dirofil screamed yet once more, not caring if the Tunnelers heard him. The Wings had passed through his core, they had emerged out his back, and they still hurt like nothing had ever hurt him. It was a supreme soreness that spread all over his body and even his mind, a fan of little, spinning knives spreading from the wings, all over the wings. Everywhere. He felt even his memories, those natural and those granted by the creators, were wounded and throbbing, warm and swollen mounds of pain.
“Lyssav once told me she was used to feeling a little sore all over. Is that what happens with the wings, Dirodiro?” Babesi offered helpfully, but always staying at the shore of the lake of carcasses, for she wasn’t willing to face potential Chiranha attacks.
“A little sore?” He whistled with a thread of voice. His head jerked and trembled as he spoke, the wings under his cape spreading while the slime created the membranes between the fingers. “There’s not a particle of my body not shrieking in pain. It feels like I have assimilated the very essence of torture.”
In a sudden movement he unfastened his cape and let it fall over his tail, that swiftly turned about him. He needed to beat them. He needed to beat them or the pain would erase his sanity. And they were heavy and they were sore and they couldn’t not be! These wings had been crafted to hurt as much as they had been crafted to fly, Dirofil could feel that. Afterimages of the pain of the past second clouded his mind, and the fear of the future suffering made the present one worse.
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And beating them was barely making things any better. “Stop!” he cried out, and found that his left hand had reached behind his back, grasping at the base of his left wing. They were deeply rooted into his scapulae, but not a second more he would stand such abhorrent existence.
His whole arm quivered and his back curved as he pulled.
And pulled.
And pulled.
One by one the filaments that joined the native bone to the foreign one tore apart. Dirofil howled and curled the claws of his feet in agony as he kept on tugging, on wrenching his new extremity. And with a snap and wet sound, it got ripped off. The ensuing clamor of the now one-winged automaton was one of relief as much as one of pain.
“Now… onto the other.”
He was more savage with the second wing, as the vice of pain had eased its grasp on his body, and he could afford a little self-inflicted brutality, a smidge of extra stress in exchange for expediting the process.
And the second wing got mutilated away from his body, and the ratchet of horror stopped turning. Relief, washing all over him as his slimy flesh healed, filled in the holes the wings had left. This pain was nothing in comparison to the one he had been feeling since assimilating the wings.
He let himself fall on his back and stared silently at the hanging Babesi. “Poor Lyssav.”
“I haven’t felt her pain, but what you just showed me is enough to spur the imagination. Poor Lyssav.”
Feeling his body lighter than it had ever been Dirofil sprung to a standing position. “It seems I got something from the wings after all.”
Babesi waited for him to continue, a curious look settled on her face.
“The knowledge that my existence could be way worse than it normally is. That a slight distemper after a hellish episode cannot be called but a bliss. I am complete, Babesi.”
“I am glad you are! Wanna come with me and groom the Dachsies together? “
Dirofil shook his head as he exited the heap of remains. “I am complete, Babesi. Exhausted completely, too. Show me a place to rest, and after I meditate enough to recover the energy I lost with this… educational ordeal born out of greed, show me a way out of the tunnels, and into the next layer of this sea that is my fate.”
“Wane the lyrical a bit, you dork! I cannot listen to long speeches without getting lost.” Babesi laughed and let the wall go, falling at her brother’s feet. “Come, I have a little room close to the upper level of the warrens. Rita is most likely sleeping by now, and I can make the others tolerate you, I swear!”
“Thanks, sister,” Dirofil lowered his shoulders and felt something was off. “Ah, the cape. That’s why I feel so light.” A little light flared from his core and the piece of clothing, imbued with his essence after an eternity of wearing it practically all the time, began crawling over the rubbish, approaching like an army of silvery caterpillars.
“That’s a cool trick you got there.”
“It was on my back the very first time I opened my eyes. It’s as much a part of me as my spine.”
“I want a cape. I need to make a cape.” Babesi made a mental note to, indeed, craft a cape as soon as she found a suitable material to do so. Which could take a while.
“I could fish one for you from the pile. Some of my splinters have capes of their own.”
“No! It wouldn’t be Babesi’s Cape if you do so.”
“Suit yourself, Bab. Now take me to a safe room, if you would be so kind.”
Babesi meandered away, and Dirofil followed, despising his most recent thought: that it was far easier to walk over the dead than over the puppies.