“‘Lights. The yellow Retrievers shine. We could… tape, somehow, balls of their hairs to the ceilings and walls of the ship.’

‘Or, and hear me out please, Parvov: we can refine these hairs into a substance that can be turned on and off by inducting thought energy in it.”

‘That sounds more efficient, but less… rustic. I have the soul of an artist.’

‘Stashed where, exactly?’”

—Doratev and Parvov, in a conversation captured by one of the recorders.

Walls without wainscots wearily witnessed, weakly wondered. Second to fifth proceeded down halls and chambers, fourth and fifth to each side of the elder sister, and the third permeating the air. The squelches of her jerking body violated the atmosphere of the refining room, made heads turn and gift her scared glances so short lived.

Both Dirofil and Morbilliv partook in this pervading unease, but they had to appear strong in the face of their sister and the crew. To weaver was not only to insult Parvov’s memory, but to succumb to Lyssav’s will. And on Parvov’s shoulders, now worn by Morbilliv, rested the safety of the crew. And supported by Dirofil’s back lay the unborn universe, place and —possibly— being of flawless peace, calm. A plane where even chaos would find it impossible to instill anguish in its inhabitants. And he would father, as well as Shadiran would mother, it. An existence as orphaned as theirs, but unable to suffer for it.

Splinters of five of the six siblings averted their gazes as the horrid form of Lyssav got dragged to an empty work station. Her copies didn’t mind it, and instead seemed to be enthralled by her presence, licking their teeth one by one. Their pains held no candle to the Original’s abject dolor. Lyssav’s power awed and frightened everyone else, but her Splinters considered it a secondary element now. It was her pain that granted her an aura of unquestionable authority before them. Pain so pure and untainted that it overshadowed every other measure of her grandeur.

Morbilliv took the lead as they approached the work station, presenting Lyssav with a carefully manacled Corgi, ready to refrain from defending the poor dog if she attempted anything… untoward.

“Ugh.” Lyssav complained, and then hissed at the dog. “I find it’s fluffiness affronting.”

“Well, the material refined from Corgis is the main structural component of the Corship,” Morbilliv said, matter-of-factly, as he patted the dog on its butt.

It is.

“Thanks, Corship.” He didn’t really mean it, as the ship’s tendency to restate the obvious seemed infantile to most on board, him included. But nobody on board had been apathetic enough to tell him to stop.

At least, until then.

“There’s no need for your constant comments and reassurances, ship. What do I do with this thing?” Lyssav’s words tried and failed to mutilate the air. “Dirofil, teach me.”

“I am the captain, not him.”

“He’s the captain, not me,” Dirofil seconded his brother with a funny tone.

“Consider yourself are dismissed, Morbilliv. I asked Dirofil for assistance. Go undertake captain responsibilities elsewhere you are needed.”

“Yes, Lyssav. Will do, Lyssav,” head down, Morbilliv shuffled for the exit of the room. “Going to see if any member of the crew needs me. Call if you need further assistance.”

Lyssav wouldn’t call, Morbilliv knew. Dirofil knew, too. She remained draped in this veil of pride, and none of their claws nor words ever proved sharp enough to pierce it.

“Dirofil, what am I expected to do here? Inform me. Now.”

Dirofil picked up the brush from the floor, passed it twice over the dog’s buttocks, and presented the freshly gathered tangle of white hair before Lyssav. “Take it into your flesh and run it through your core, willing for it to change form. The expected outcome in this case is corgite, the orange metal the ship is based on.”

To Lyssav, her brother’s explanation sounded barely more than perfunctory. She turned around to face her sibling. “I don’t doubt Babesi loves me,” she stated cryptically before receiving the lump of corgi onto three of her hands.

She devoured the loose fur like a starving child a piece of bread. Her deft teeth moved one by one, splitting the tangle, unweaving the structure back into singular, silky strands. The image of a spider feeding off some unfortunate fly crossed Dirofil’s core. The teeth the chelicera, the very aura of his sister the tissue-liquefying venom. And from this cadaver that wasn’t she drank, hair by hair slipping past her worm-like tongue, running through her gullet and raining upon her core, where they sizzled terribly as Lyssav’s rotten nexus consumed them.

But they didn’t turn to corgite, no. The hairs disappeared, something unexpected in Dirofil’s opinion.

“No… not like that, definitively not like that. You destroyed them. Burned them to ashes, such waste.” He pointed his statement with idle muttering.

Lyssav gargled and vomited a coil of orange smoke, and then observed it as it lazily dissipated into the air. “Ashes to ashes, dogs to thoughts,” she cackled with a grimace that Dirofil considered so ugly it turned vile, but didn’t find it worth commenting on.

“You can turn dog hair into energy?”

“It fits me,” she gloated. “Nobody can deny that it does.”

The crimson light of her core spilled all around, overpowered the lights of the Corship and turned every Splinter that worked nearby into a nervous statue, their hands barely trembling and their refining tasks paused as they watched or Lyssav or the long shadows she forced them to cast.

It was Veranda who broke the icy spell, who began crawling closer in a way far more gracile and prim than the Original’s habitual gait. A smaller Lyssav approaching the one true rabies, dwarfed before her, yet not humbled, for you cannot polish a star or offer fire alien warmth. Only when a Splinter stood before her one could appreciate how much of Lyssav’s unsightliness stemmed from her gestures and overall attitude. The Splinter flowed, the original moved with the jittering grace of a freshly reanimated scarecrow. The Splinter kept her mouth closed most of the time, Lyssav freely extended and retracted her individual teeth. Veranda’s pupils remained vertical most of the time, Lyssav often spun her eyes in place while staring at her disgraced interlocutors. It turned out that Lyssav’s appearance was the least hideous thing about her person.

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

“Lady Lyssav, if you would allow me, I’d like to offer some insight about the process of refining dog hair into valuable materials.”

“Why, Splinter, if your mistress has already mastered it? Do you have a death wish?” Lyssav’ forwarded a hand and grasped low, advancing about half a meter across the metallic lattice of the floor, looming over Veranda.

Dirofil was quick to step between his sister and her Splinter, facing the former. “Nobody here has a death wish, Lyssav. The crew is not your buffet.”

“Nobody here but you, little brother. Isn’t utter annihilation of yourself and of the beloved Shadiran your ultimate goal?”

“Our dream requires sacrifices. And so does keeping this ship up and running. Without Corgite structural damage caused by Chihuahuas cannot be repaired, just to forward an example.”

Lyssav smiled. To see Dirofil’s claws drumming on the floor as he crossed his arms and tried to put up a stern façade was, to understate it, entertaining.

“I can turn the hairs to precious energy and you want metal? Fine. I’ll give you metal.”

From her three eyes three beams of ruby projected straight into Dirofil’s forehead. The intrusion of the foreign energy itself presented the Fourth with a golden opportunity to feel excruciating pain both in his body and his soul.

Dirofil wouldn’t let his knees give in as his spirit battled the intrusive presence. Or as it tried to battle it, could be said. Lyssav had injected into his head an amount of energy equivalent to several years of aggressive psycholocation, and unlike Leptos’ serene presence, Lyssav’s energy carried ill intent. And said intent headed for its bones, and coiled around them, and materialized, grew into a layer of corgite that crystalized over his bones, slowly assailing the joints like a cursed, robotic gout. After a few seconds the accusatory finger pointed at Lyssav became unable to return to its prior position, and then followed the arms, the spine, the legs, and even the toes. Every bone in Dirofil’s body got welded together, making him a slimy prisoner of his own form.

“Very funny, Lyssav.” The petrified automaton commented with excessive venom in his pained voice. “Very funny. I’d be impressed at the amount of power you wasted in this if I weren’t quite incensed by your… prank. Conjuring corgite out of nowhere.” He turned his eye inwards as he inspected the damage to his spine. Everything was being displaced, encroached. “It will take me a good while to remove it. Almost commendable.”

“Come on, Dirofil. Turn that non-frown into a smile. Oh… you cannot,” she mocked as she circled her brother like a stalking feline would a prey. “Here, let me help you.”

Lyssav got closer, and closer, until Dirofil could feel the pain of her cheeks on the flesh of his visage. She grabbed him from stiff shoulders and turned his whole body around to face Veranda. She rubbed her redness against his transparent slime, making him cringe internally, and try to pull the psychosarc away from her touch. Hadn’t he been tortured enough already?

The other Splinters kept toiling in their working stations, brushing dogs and refining their hairs, not daring to gaze directly at the spectacle unfolding at the center of the room, but neither refusing to steal a glance or two when Lyssav wasn’t looking at them. The little Parvovs commented on it, mumbled between themselves, knowing that Lyssav wasn’t supposed to hear them, but still wary in case she somehow could listen to their infrasonic mumbling.

Hadn’t he been violated enough already? The teeth were coming. Coming out of Lyssav’s flesh and worming into his. With all the pain that entailed, with the paralyzing fear. Parasite parasitized, the heartworm trembled, as frozen in place as he was. He felt them entering, overcoming his control of the substance his very soul had exuded into reality. The rose-colored wires and the fangs they held broke through any resistance he tried to impose on them.

Their faces sewn together by Lyssav’s dentition, they smiled. Together. Lyssav, willingly. Veranda took some steps back, shrinking like a scared cat.

Dirofil whistled in sheer desperation as the violation of his autonomy continued. The hourglass of time had shattered, and he was drowning in its sands, about to be mummified. The body he had shared with Shadiran now ached unbearably; the bones she had caressed and even used were now imprisoned in foreign metal; and his face, the one that had meld with hers as they exchanged eyes and spots… he didn’t want to think about what was happening in his face.

Half a smile in her face, half in his, Lyssav cackled lovingly, almost innocently. She felt his desperation, but for once she didn’t care to understand it. Maybe it was her pain spilling into him, but it would do him good to learn to stand it. After all, she didn’t want anything truly bad to happen to her dear brother, not by anyone else’s claws: If Dirofil was to fall, he would fall by his own hubris, defying her despite the fact that hers was the reasonable course of action in the face of the apocalypse.

The flesh extricated from the frozen arm and slapped at the conjoined faces. The boneless limb, unable to irrupt past skin, flopped helplessly against the grin it hated. But short lived resulted this resistance, for soon enough the arm lost the little cohesion it had left, as Dirofil screamed his mind out in the mind links.

Water! Someone bring water!

No need for water, I am just making him smile! Seriously. Whoever brings water dies.

Nobody dared come in Dirofil’s aid. Morbilliv remained in the bridge, looking out the window and conversing with the ship, trying to calm it down. Doratev and Babesi exchanged gazes and kept on searching for materials in the chaotic storage chamber, with Babesi brushing it all off as some rough play between the older siblings.

Dirofil’s pleas went heeded, but ignored. None on board would defy the Second Envisioned, for they knew doing so endangered everyone else. Even if everyone rose up in arms against Lyssav and attacked her at once, the odds were stacked against the crew.

The wings, the wings were not paralyzed! But he could hurt them if he used them to hit his sister with. Logic dictated that he couldn’t risk flight. It was too valuable a mobility skill, and it could save his life against the horrors of the sea, or help him negotiate immense gaps in terrain with ease. And the wings were there, trembling at the sides of the cape, partially covered by it as it dangled lifelessly…

The cape!

Dirofil infused his garment with the energy of his own soul and commanded it to jump onto Lyssav’s back and begin stabbing her. It did so promptly, the Chihuahua teeth believing themselves treacherous daggers as they dug in between the plates of Lyssav’s back, and even into the mucilage of her wings.

“Ow, you are hugging me back the only way you can. I love you too, little brother.”

The flesh of his head was compromised, and it was in it that he felt the vibrations of Lyssav’s voicebox when she spoke. A terrible continuity of psychosarc had been stablished, a spectrum that went from carmine to limpid and clear slime, with a concomitant gradient in pain.

“Let me go or I will blow my core up.” He said, desperation palpable in his tone. “I mean it, Lyssav.”

“I told you already: I don’t doubt Babesi loves me. I suspect now that the same doesn’t hold true for you. It’s a shame.”

The connection got severed without effort on Lyssav’s part. The teeth abandoned the invaded soma and returned to their original places, some remaining nude, and some wrapping themselves in Lyssav’s dense tissue. Dirofil smiled no more, and that brought unparalleled relief. Had his bones not been welded together, he would have slumped to the floor while sobbing meekly. Naturally, he didn’t slump, but still whined like a wounded puppy as Lyssav crawled away, heading for the exit of the refining room.

His face remained deformed, his soul refusing to command the slime to fill back the hole Lyssav had left. Veranda rose in front of him like a vigilant suricate, and even tilted her head as she considered how to word her next sentence. “Sir Dirofil, would you like my help to return to your chambers? I could carry you while you work on retrieving the corgite.”

Dirofil didn’t answer immediately. He thought the latter was a good idea, and, barely still in control of his core’s pulses, he commanded his flesh to begin lapping at the metal around his bones, prompting it to be molded by his thoughtenergy, reshaped into little pellets he would later extrude from his body.

He wasn’t in the state of mind to hurry it along. He would stay there for a few hours unless someone helped him. And that someone could be Veranda.

After a few seconds of internal deliberation, he uttered “No”. His honor had already been abused enough, and now it lay battered in the floor just like he couldn’t.

The tide was still young; the tide was already ruined. His chamber or the refining room, little would change.