“’Doctor, I need a new upper upper right.’

  ‘What did you do this time, my favorite mental midget?’

  ‘I tried to scratch the head of a friendly-looking mastiff that poked out the layer above the Bernese one, and I got mauled. Promptly. So give me a hand, will you?’

  ‘Have I ever told you I value your penchant for self-destructive experimentation?’”

  —Doratev and Parvov, on a recording archived as “Way more than his puns.”

  The Originals, the Doctor, Seloma —in a rather… humbled form— and fifteen other Splinters had gathered on the bridge, some trembling, feet shuffling, tails swishing, a wing or two extending just to contract again, and a single satisfied smile showed, at the front of the gathering, reflecting on the crystal surface of the bridge’s window.

  The million teeth of the Mauling layer, slick with saliva, walling off tongues as wriggling as pink, awaited their approach.

  “Will the reinforcement done to the crystal enough to keep them at bay, Doratev?”

  “Worst case scenario, we die,” he answered nonchalantly as his assistant curled around his neck and over his shoulders.

  “Encouraging,” Morbilliv voiceboxed flatly while the Splinters around him squirmed, imagining the Mauling layer honoring their name all around them. “What’s your opinion, big sister?”

  A wave coursed through Lyssav’s mouth, the sideways glance foreboding as it always was. “If they enter, I’ll live.” No more words were needed to convey the tacit part of her statement.

  “Will I live too, Lyssy?” Babesi asked, energetic as always.

  “I hope so, Babs. The sea deserves not to devour the cores of my siblings or their imperfect copies. But if they break through it would mean I slacked on my assigned job, and that, in itself, is unacceptable.”

  “And do you deserve to swallow them?” Doratev asked, unshackled by the fear Lyssav inspired in others.

  “Hush, Doctor. Your chest and mine hold the same kind of soul.”

  “Subtle threats are unbecoming of your ugliness, Lady.”

  Lyssav finally deigned to turn her head and stare directly at the Splinter, who had seized the opportunity to check one of his claws. “There’s no need to make the tacit explicit, being me. After all, what’s more becoming of a future ruler than her every word being rife with meaning?”

  “I think I chipped this one.” he extended the long arm in front of Lyssav’s face. “Care to give a second opinion about it?”

  “So this is how it feels.” She mumbled, eyes fixed on Doratev’s hand.

  A grunt from the captain spread a blanket of silence across the room. Save for Lyssav and Doratev, everyone held an approximately adequate measure of respect for Morbilliv. “I’ll tell the ship to go ahead and dive in. Any objections?”

  “Yes. I am rather comfy down here, boss,” said the only Splinter of Morbilliv in the room, who towered over his peers and the crawling Lyssav. “I’d prefer—”

  “I can solve that for you,” Lyssav suggested in a soft voice, and a shiver ran up the Splinter’s body.

  “…I’d prefer we do away with it swiftly. No need to linger.”

  A couple nods, and then Morbilliv sent the order through the mind links.

  Whenever you are ready, test the waters.

  Water is bad.

  “Lyssav!” The Captain whipped his head towards his big sister.

  She shrugged, bobbing her five shoulders at once. “I had to teach something to the little one.”

  Dogs are not water. Test the dogs. Reach with a leg into the Mauling layer.

  Okey-Dokey.

  The walls trembled as a limb appeared in front of the window, slowly closing the gap with the foaming dogs. From her privileged position hanging from the ceiling, the ACCU, back then hosting Seloma, proffered a high-pitched cheer.

  The blackened appendage surged forward and lanced the layer above them, inciting a violent revolt from the dogs that conformed it, the sensitive cylinder of black being pushed and pulled to and from all sides as one and another mouth tried to pry off the fingers or the well-protected eye in the palm.

  Tickles.

  So, are you taking no damage?

  Friends are playing rough, but Corship can handle it.

  Enter the layer and keep climbing, then.

  The ship decided to entertain his brother’s petition, shoving another leg in as the remainder of them pushed the body and the crew closer and closer to the hellish layer.

  As the uvulas of those that tried to bite the window got revealed, Lyssav grinned wide, almost oblivious to the nervous atmosphere settling around her. It was not often that she found herself at the wrong end of a throat.

  Out of sight and beyond the reach of the crew’s souls’ echoes, Dirofil contemplated the same fascia of the ocean. The gravitas with which his upper left arm drew closer to the lower of mastiff heads as he stretched from the highest Bernese lump he could find in the intersection of the layers was worthy of the upcoming breakthrough. The blood-injected stare of the dog met his, and it filled with hatred after the confusion from snapping and failing to grasp the thin fingers washed off. The molars of a nearby Bull Terrier chittered against each other, having slipped off around the automaton’s femur after he used his wings to launch himself against this ceiling of dogs.

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  A Silvery Dogo popped her head out, gave the taste test to the metallic tail in front of her, and decided against prolonging her attack. Unlike its peers, she valued the simple things in life, like floating aimlessly, forever.

  Standing again on a Bernese and before launching himself against the mass once more, he cursed in a low voice at the realization that the slippery sound armor was a double-edged sword: The dogs couldn’t latch onto him, and he couldn’t properly grab onto the dogs.

  Yet thinking himself unassailable the Fourth Imagined took another jump, wings beating roughly and hands over head, ready to dive into the mass of maulers. He drilled a place among the dogs and screamed a clone beneath his body to act as a foothold while he analyzed the situation.

  Every centimeter of space around him was occupied by a ribcage, a jaw, a hindquarter. In this regard, the Mauling layer wasn’t that much different from the Retriever one. The viciousness of the molossers and terriers could not be understated, and only a dying song separated his flesh from their teeth. In addition, the determination the dogs showed to honor the layer’s name meant they constantly tried to collapse over him, applying great pressure from all sides. Advancing through the layer would require a titanic effort.

  And Shadiran deserved a titanic effort.

  It started by Dirofil steeling himself. To loosen the joins and lightly reduce the viscosity of the psychosarc seemed to him of utmost importance. He wouldn’t cross this layer as a cohesive unit with a defined form, he would most likely do so as a disarranged bag of slime and bones. Like the Reaper that had gifted him a curse for eye, he needed to shift shapes, to find any crack, any room between the dogs to slip in despite the pressure that believed itself constant, and he would prove wrong.

  A squelch; a head of brains, bone and blood crashing through undone spine of metal; legs mixing with the torso and a tail that refused to come apart following without complaint. Eyes at different heights were drawn closer to the core, forced to look away to not get blinded as the Fourth imagined spent energy on rearranging his whole self at every turn. The ribs and cape preserved Dirofil’s crystallized soul as he surged his way forward, the yodeler lungs letting out soft notes every few seconds to modify and renew his armor of sound. The precious wings travelled in the center of the mass of mucilage, bones folded neatly and membranes kept safe by generous amounts of slime. All within the mass that was Dirofil the rest of the bones and organs flowed freely: an ear accompanied the femur at times and approached the carpals at other times, and the voicebox jerked up and down as much as the vertebrae did.

  Meter by meter Dirofil infiltrated, his fluid form dodging the clasp of the bone-wrecking teeth, slipping through their cusps and valleys. His game on, no fighting dog could do more than caress his fluid nature, none could detain even a mere phalanx before meeting the repelling sound armor that enveloped every stretch of the Fourth imagined.

  Eventually, he came out into an open space, a stratum of air. He whisked his eyes up to see the new landscape revealed to him, and then understood that he had counted his microfilaria before they hatched.

  About a Morbilliv above the Mauling layer, there was a second a Mauling layer. Or, for the sake of accuracy, it could be said that the layer was composed of alternating strata of dogs and empty space. And this bothered Dirofil mightily.

  “I always knew the sea could render me thoughtless. But tide after tide what I find out is that you, Cynothalassa, are an annoying and quirky mound of bitches.”

  Before jumping again, he kicked a Toad bully to the side, expecting it to explode or something similarly parsimonious. It didn’t, a fact that he interpreted as a sign of the absolute lack of mercy the sea offered.

  After some solid minutes of ploughing through the most determined, unmutated murder-dogs the sea could offer, the Corship partially emerged into the cynological hiatus, unable to completely fit into the restricted space.

  Friendlessness

  Passed an instant of awkwardness cheers spread among the Splinters crowded at the bridge, and arms slung over shoulders and horns clanked against scapulae as they celebrated being alive. Morbilliv kept his silence, glancing sideways at Lyssav with his hands joined behind his back. She had a Splinter of Parvov and a Splinter of Babesi inadvertently hugging her. Her tongue came out, piercing through her cheek, and licked two teeth, one superior, one inferior. Then she closed her eyes and subtly nodded once. The Splinters were safe, at least for the time being.

  “There are even more above,” Babesi duly noted, her one eye struggling to discern both strata of the layer as they seemingly joined in the horizon. “Buncha bad boys beyond.”

  Morbilliv stepped up and turned around, address the crowd and his sisters with a sweep of the horn. Then he straightened Parvov’s head. “Friends, family, the way ahead is unknown and perilous. We know not how deep this layer goes, we know not what hides beyond its jaws. Therefore, I will be holding a vote through the main channel. We can turn back with this victory, and find a way to study this layer slowly, or push onwards and risk it all—”

  “Whoever votes to go back gets a one way trip to oblivion.” Lyssav both said and sent through the mind links, like her brother was doing.

  “Lyss, should I remind you that you are not free to threaten my crew?”

  Lyssav’s hand opened like the mouth of a spitting cobra, threads of crimson light shooting into Morbilliv’s shoulder. The Fifth Conceived gave her technique a quick glance, and then his gaze returned to her. “You tarnish my art, but oh, how beautifully you do so, Second Envisioned.”

  Lyssav dispelled the threads, and with four arms dragged herself forward, closing the gap and ending up face to face with her brother. “I perfected your art. Soon, I may figure out how to match Parvov in the making of,” she snapped the fingers of her free hand; a minute, pathetic flame, lesser than a candle’s one, danced atop the tip of her leech finger, “fire.”

  “Your talent is unmatched, sister. But that doesn’t give you the right to frighten the crew of Parvov’s ship. Prove to me you can behave and look for their best interest, and I’ll gladly bequeath the title of captain to you. Until then, Rabies, they are the tides of Distemper aboard this ship.”

  Tension build up, tendrils extending from Morbilliv’s fingers, a smile forming on the horrible visage. Babesi jumped in between them. “Stop that. I want to be captain too!”

  “No.” Said her siblings at the same time.

  “No!” spouted a hurt Doratev a second later. He quickly scuttled up to the vermiform brat and picked her up, letting her curl around his neck. “You cannot be captain. You are my apprentice, my ally in the lab. Your work is nearly flawless when you are not ruining everything. There’s no one else on board I’d prefer to have as a truth-seeking, experimenting companion. You cannot take on another role, Lady Babesi.”

  Babesi purred softly and made herself comfortable over the Doctor’s shoulders.

  “Who are you and what did you do with my snotty rascal?” Morbilliv joked, relaxing his posture, slouching slightly. “I am tired of conflict, Lyssav. Antagonize yourself for a while, will you? Today, we revel in victory over the mauling layer, or part of it at least.”

  “All of it. Cross it. I must know the full extent of the sea if I aim to rule over it.”

  “The Corship is the one crossing. The Corship should decide.” Babesi argued. “You need a softer coat, Dora.” She changed subject as naturally as her eye changed focus.

  Corship, it’s up to you. Continue climbing or go back to the Bernese layer. The captain told the ship through the mind link.

  Wanna see what’s beyond. Corship will go up.

  “So it should be. Everyone, hold steadfast to the safety lattice. It’s about to get turbulent again.”

  The Splinters braced. Lyssav hummed, pleased. The Corship raised his legs and grabbed onto the upper layer, ready to headbutt in for second time that tide. And the rest is a known song and dance.