Parsec

She woke unexpectedly.

It happened fast. She blinked her eyes open to darkness, every muscle tensed and ready. Instinctual knowledge simmered at the base of her skull: a full sleep cycle had not yet elapsed, and yet, she was awake.

The tent was dark and quiet and still, as was the air outside. The rain had stopped. She sat up and scented for suspicious signs: not the slightest hint of magic nearby, and no blood, either. So why was she awake?

Something must be wrong, or if not wrong, then at least out of sorts. What had awoken her? It could not be anything imminently dangerous, surely. If so, she would be knifing up and away, hissing and clawing reflexively before her mind could catch up—she knew this was so, because it had happened before. Multiple times, all back in the shattered lands. But she was not in the shattered lands; she was on the floor of a tent on the outskirts of a Kraedian dungeon.

Roused by that one, said Venera. You are safe, for now.

Two feet off to the side, Jackal rolled over in his sleep. He murmured something in the human tongue. She relaxed fractionally—humans had dreams and sleep-disturbances too, didn’t they? Then she frowned. Was she really so attuned, or was it lingering fear that had jolted her awake? The stress of Hive-severance could be affecting her more than she would have liked.

“Venera?” she whispered.

See it? Gnarls and whorls, scored into stone. The realm calls him.

“I do not understand.”

May show you.

Parsec hesitated and eyed the human’s sleeping form. “Show? He is safe in his own head. Orion spoke of lost arts, but you never told me in life—”

Archived art. Sleepless. Exhausting. Irritate any wound. Not ordinarily useful, but…

Was it just her imagination, or were Venera’s not-words tinged with melancholy amusement?

She hesitated. “Will it hurt?”

Not you.

“I do not particularly wish to injure him,” Parsec said with some reproach.

Will not. Is already…hurting, gash-drip. Knives and verglas.

She glanced down at Jackal. He was shivering now. The kind thing to do would be to wake him. But Venera’s offer intrigued her and besides, she sensed there was something to unravel here. She suspected the thing that had awakened her had something to do with his head, or brain, or thoughts—for was that not how she had escaped her cast-off Hive, skipping the space of more than a hundred miles? If she were to have any chance of gaining strength and returning for a reckoning, then she needed to learn all that she could.

“Very well,” she said, bracing herself. “Show me.”

Ghost-hands settled onto her temples, and she plunged into Jackal’s nightmare.

A landscape coalesced, shockingly clear. Hills of metal rose up around her, tumbling piles of swords pointing skyward. She blinked at the dusty, parchmented look of the sky—was it a sky, or a ceiling? She couldn’t quite tell. This place felt…Archival, but also not. It seemed worse, somehow. More dangerous, for one. Rusted implements littered the ground, a carpet of millennia-slow decay.

Yes. Many weapons go there to die. And crowns, and thrones. Predecessor knows. Predecessor’s so-called throne went the usual way. You see it, now? Realm-part.

There was that word again: realm. Something tickled on the edges of her memory with the singing cadence of an elder’s tale—whatever it was, it eluded her grasp. She was sure she’d heard the word before. But she had been too young to remember a great many stories, back in the shattered lands. They had been put to work before becoming mere fledglings. It had been necessary.

She cast her gaze around, searching for Jackal; surely he must be somewhere in his own dream? Before she could speak that thought aloud, the world shifted in the blink of an eye. Now she was in a room of some kind, built from stone. Sunlight streamed through a nearby window, and a green patterned weave lay upon the floor, circular in shape. An oddly sharp-angled platform lay in the corner, piled high with pale fabrics. It was a human-bower, she realised, sparsely-furnished but sufficiently comfortable-looking. Her field of view moved of its own accord and she startled, trying to turn her head back—then realised she could not. Her view skipped momentarily downwards, and she realised with a jolt of horror that her hands were soft, fleshy human ones.

Not yours, said Venera.

‘Ah,’ she spoke, or tried to; her dream-mouth was not under her control. She was seeing from behind Jackal’s eyes—an interloper nestled in the hollows of his skull.

Jackal stepped deeper into the room, toward the bed. Parsec watched and felt as his hand reached out to shake the bundle of coverlets. From the shape of them, she guessed that a human slumbered beneath.

“Hakim,” came his voice. “It’s past morning. Wake the fuck up.”

The hand reached out and grasped a corner of the sheet, drawing it back. The field of view jerked as Jackal scrambled away from what he had revealed.

It was a human—a thoroughly dead one. Not dead in a normal way, either; it was covered in bright red human-blood, wounded deeply on the face and shoulder and along the length of one limp arm. Chunks had been torn from the flesh, holes resembling frenzied bite-marks.

Jackal shouted and raised his hands back into view. Though they had been spotless not moments ago, they were now wet with human-blood.

Hmm. Did he think himself a dangerous thing? She pondered this as he turned and ran, down into the corridor of the human-dwelling. Human-blood started seeping from the walls in slow, thick dribbles, coursing in through cracks between the stone blocks. Cracked teeth clacked down from the ceiling, sealing the hall ahead. Jackal shouted, his tone rough with terror. The scene shifted once more, back to the hills of metal.

Hungering filaments, came Venera’s voice. Aponeurosis.

The field of view placed her on one of the hills now. Jackal’s limbs scrambled beneath him as he clambered higher and higher, grasping sword-handles as handholds. Occasionally, he would glance down to search for better footing, and Parsec saw fragments of the metal landscape sprawled far, far below, pockmarked with craters scorched soot-dark. Streams of smoke flowed between the piles of hills, following strange currents to the horizon. Soon, Jackal reached the apex of the hill and stood.

The air smelled of shattered ash. Silvery laughter echoed on the winds, so faint it could have been imaginary. Remarkable, that the dream was so clear. A line of red scored the horizon and dark spikes drove out of the earth—but Jackal turned his head away from those. Parsec watched as the field of view focused further out, to the vanishing point beyond. There, the skies rippled as if sickened; a glint of darkness opened there like a crack.

The chip of darkness widened, and widened, and widened—Parsec glimpsed carnivorous teeth before everything turned as white as new snow.

She awoke back into her body with a jolt and glanced down to her hands at once. A flush of relief flooded through her to be in possession of familiar fingers again; she patted herself down and flexed her wings and tail, just to be sure. Then she glanced over at Jackal’s sleeping form—stirring now, lapsing awake.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Had that Archival-place been real? She suspected so. It had appeared too detailed and coherent to not be, and the strangeness of the landscape aligned with some of the dangers that Orion had spoken of. Though then came the question: had the torn-open human been real, too? Possibly not, she thought cautiously, given the discrepancies in continuity. Nightmares oft contained false fears, and the blending of them with real memories muddied the waters.

“Pavao?” Jackal croaked, sitting up. “Did I, uh, wake you?”

Dreams are only dreams, Venera said, then paused. Leastwise, one must assume. T’would be a shame if you must kill him.

“No,” she said aloud. “I thought I heard something; it was only the wind.”

I do not plan to kill him, Parsec thought as hard as she could. She didn’t think Venera could read her thoughts fully, but she must gain some sense of Parsec’s mood, because the ghost-presence shifted to an apologetic tone.

Predecessor knows not all dangers. Do like that one. Resonant-well. A precaution-habit. Predecessor was Titania for all-life—much time; too long.

“Right, right.” Jackal cleared his throat and reached for his canister of water, taking a long swallow. He placed it back down once he was done and to her surprise, rose to his feet instead of laying back on his bedroll.

“I’ll just go and…make myself a snack,” he said, fumbling for the coolbox. He hesitated. “You uh, you want any?”

“No, thank you.” Was it a habit of humans to feel hungry after having nightmares? How strange. Then again, the wounds upon that sleeping dream-human had been imprinted with tooth-marks…

Jackal stepped outside. She raised a corner of the tent flap and watched him go, on higher alert now. Tracking his movements, she realised something: he moved swiftly, and with the deftness of a scout. It could well be an ordinary trait for people in his line of work, she supposed. But it was something to keep in mind, given what she had seen in his head.

Venera’s not-voice flowed over her shoulder.

Are still hungry. Should have partaken of food.

Parsec blinked. “No, it is no trouble. He does not have much by the scent of it, and it is best to remain in a host’s good graces.”

This one is a-weakening, Venera said.

Several images flashed into her head, accompanied by clashing sound—lines, dots, molecular charts scrawled in thunder and mercury, all of it incomprehensible. A quick spasm of pain followed, from thought processes under strain. Parsec hissed reflexively.

Apologies, Venera said. Predecessor forgets how…paraphrasis for flesh-brain. For not-Titania.

“It is alright. I will be well with further rest,” Parsec shifted her leg to test the movement. “See?” The tremoring had largely abated.

Not so. Nourish. Nectar. Severed now—solstice, past now. While this-one was within Archive.

“Solstice?” she echoed. “Ah.”

The Generals received their drops of Hive honey every midsummer or thereabouts, refreshing their magic and sharpening their minds with Titania-wrought adaptations. It was, Parsec thought gloomily, increasingly necessary in navigating this fast-becoming human-dominated world.

Losing access to honey wouldn’t kill her. Schismatists could not exist, otherwise. She recalled running close to dry before, fleeing her way from the shattered lands, and she’d felt no pain from it—only slower and weaker before she’d found Glister Hive. Still, it would be irritating if she lost the ability to speak with humans. She might need to converse with one for directions in Kraedia, Jackal’s company notwithstanding. And there was also the strength she’d learned since, on her way to becoming a General. How much of that was made from the borrowed magic of a Titania?

“That is a problem, yes. It is true; I am…unsure as to how I may fix this.”

Sorrow-stress. Thorns a-withering to grey. Know not. Thinking, now.

“It will be alright,” Parsec said slowly. “Unless, say, you think it best for me to join another Hive. Perhaps not Kraedia, if still too closely linked to Glister.”

Patience. Difficult to think in flesh-ways without brain.

Parsec frowned and thought it over herself. She’d received an allotment of honey for most of her life—even back in the shattered lands. Titania Ephemeris had spent every last particle of her body in pursuit of keeping her Hive safe and fed; the honey had been thin and sometimes edged with rot, but it had still been honey. If there was one thing she respected more than Venera’s steady guidance, it had been Ephemeris’s sheer, unparalleled resolve.

But Ephemeris of Almucantar was long gone. Titania to the very last, burned alive with her Hive. Venera, though, was still here in a sense. Parsec clung to that hope, that shard of sanity in the sea of malice that had turned her, of all people, into a traitor. Venera might not be able to produce honey any longer, but surely she had a solution. The problem loomed and it was good to have awareness of such things, but it was not an imminent issue…for now.

She shifted, restless, and stood up to test her strength. Everything felt as though it was recovering in good order. She stepped outside the tent and breathed in cool air, tasting traces of geosmin rising from the mud-loam beneath her feet.

Darkness still dimpled the sky, though a suggestion of dawn hung at the horizon. The camp surrounds lay still, and what few lit lamps hung from poles were few and far between. She tested her wings, too, hovering briefly off the ground. She estimated perhaps a day or so before she was recovered to full capacity, but she would be able to fly for medium distances if strictly necessary. Perhaps even all the way to Kraedia, if needed. From there…

From there, then what? Her blood flared hot with rage at the thought of Eltanin and Dysnomia, but she could hardly swoop back to Glister and break their necks with the entire Hive at their backs—a traitor in name only was treated the same as a true traitor.

Was there no possible way of proving her word? If she could get to Orion…ah, but he was imprisoned deep within the Hive and likely would be for a long, long time. Depending on if he found a way to prove his innocence and perhaps Parsec’s by association…but no, there was no use depending on such thinly-threaded possibilities. And as for Venera, she had said that she did not even remember Eltanin. Parsec frowned. Venera could also only appear to her, as far as she could tell—Jackal had given no indication of hearing the ghostly not-words filtering through her head. Would it be the same for others of her own kind?

“Venera,” she said without much hope. “Do you remember how you died? Do you remember…anyone in the vicinity?”

There came a humming frequency, wavelengths untranslatable. And then:

Have told this one—predecessor not remembering much…cored open, perhaps. No—something else. Poison. Cold air flowing. Failing lungs. Everything became…quite small, quite far away. That is all.

“I see,” Parsec said. “It was the Archive’s doing, or so I believe—though Orion is not to blame. For it was General Eltanin, and his ally the General Dysnomia.”

Venera was silent for several, long moments.

These names mean naught to the predecessor. Though much clarion-clear that this-one-Parallax closes jaws upon significance. Seem…sure to be sure.

“Yes,” she said, even as a pang of injustice clawed into the folds of her heart. “I still wonder, why they chose it.” She breathed in a calming breath. “I will ask, before I complete my vow.”

…Spider-spun confusion. Vow?

“I vowed to avenge your death,” Parsec said, though her own inner voice whispered that the skill of dreamwalking had sprung from a piece of Archive. Was this really Venera, anymore? Even mostly Venera, anymore?

Perhaps not, she concluded, but what did it matter? Parsec curled her hands into fists. Titania Venera might not be here any longer, but she had still existed. She had meant much to a desperate youngling fleeing the ruins of her Hive and continent. She meant much to Parsec now. She had existed, and she should still be alive were it not for Eltanin—another ten years, at least.

Spurs of frost. Icicle-hearts. Tongues of flame; knowledge seeping in through a shell, though predecessor finds nothing with which to answer. Offer only the light of pale candle by which you might see.

“I am glad for your presence,” Parsec said. “And I promise I will see this through.”

Promises admirable. Though vengeance is for the living.

Parsec swallowed her sorrow. “Yes. That as yet may be, Titania, but between the two of us, I am still alive.”

Venera made a strange sound, half sea-swell and half mimicry of a sigh. The predecessor wishes this-one-Parallax all help and hope. Hark! That one returns now, sliver-sated.

Parsec scanned around and spotted Jackal in moments, making his way back from between a row of distant tents. When he arrived, he seemed startled to see her standing and outside.

“Pavao?” he asked. “Hey, uh—were you looking for me? Didn’t mean to be gone so long.” He gave a grimacing-grin; Parsec noted a fleck of flesh at the corner of his mouth before he wiped it away on his sleeve. “Sun was going to rise soon, so I cooked some extra—might as well have early breakfast.”

He passed her a bowl heaped with grilled meats. It was topped with freshly-rinsed segments of bone, stripped clean of even the cartilage—the remnants of his own meal, she guessed. There was a great quantity of bone in comparison to the meat; he appeared to have slaked quite the appetite.

“Thank you,” she said, even as tales from the shattered lands seeped into her mind: stories to frighten hatchlings, mostly—clean your portion, else the ravenous ones will do it for you and other such nonsense.

It was a tale, she reminded herself. Just a tale.

Jackal crouched into the tent and began pulling his items out as she ate—his bedroll, his clothing, a rucksack, the coolbox. Then he began unpinning the tent itself from the ground, bundling the stakes beneath his arm.

“You are packing away so soon?” she asked, puzzled.

He glanced up from his work. “Yeah? You need some real Hive help, don’t you? Thought we might as well set off before the day gets hot. You good to travel?”

“Certainly,” Parsec said, ignoring the almost imperceptible tremor that shook its way down her spine. “I am well-rested. Is it to Kraedia, then?”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “To Kraedia.”