“Make no mistake: Even if we have a soul, the ghost is the machine. You only ever see through your eyes, only ever hear through your ears, only ever take in the world through the senses your imperfect flesh provides. What’s the use, then, of an immortal essence, if all I am and can be is a gathering of sensations, needs, and the thoughts they have shaped? A mere recorder of the gods?”

  —Musings of a Detractor, page 14.

  “Fine, we will do it your way!” Morbilliv conceded as he climbed the inclined slope that led to one of the side hatches of the Corship.

  Babesi lost no time, finding her way down to her brother’s waist and head-butting her way under the plates at the sides of the lower back, drilling a hole in his brother’s flesh , disregarding his protests. She wormed in, her eye and voiceboxes negotiating her brother’s spine and the slight purple tinge of her flesh mixing with the transparent one of Morbilliv, like a river meeting a sea, painting with lobed plumes of freshwater over the dense canvas of the ocean.

  The tendrils of Babesi curled around the corgite-rich bones, her egg-shaped core surging from her entrails to invade Morbilliv’s.

  “What in our thirteen names are you doing?”

  Fourteen.

  Sorry, Corship: fourteen names.

  Babesi didn’t answer, but kept acting up: her core approached Morbilliv, and rays of energy jumped between both, a synchronization of minds that made both voiceboxes proffer desperate cries.

  It’s all at once! Sister, you are a monster.

  It’s so dull! All painfully dull! Kill yourself, Brother!

  A minute explosion of thoughtenergy, cores rejecting each other as the siblings gazed into alien souls. Babesi’s core, unsupported, tried to shoot out of Morbilliv’s body but hit on the concave inner side of one of the chest plates, toppling her brother forward, forcing him to land on his hands as her heart rattled his insides like a pebble inside a shaking can.

  Morbilliv broke the amalgam of Parvov’s left arms and used the lowed one to reach inside the body they now shared, clenching Babesi’s slick core with dual-clawed fingers.

  And then he pulled. And pulled. And pulled. Tearing the heart of his beloved sister from his flesh, mesmerized by her light as his eyes struggled to focus, his own soul extremely tired. He let her fall, and then slumped to the floor, mediating no words. Babesi’s body melted away from Morbilliv as his form slumped down the ramp, her thoughtcrystal calling for her body in the same way Dirofil commanded his dear cape.

  The decapitated snake meandered her way back to her core, the scales enveloping the crystal like a sock a potato. The eye, attached to the voiceboxes, wouldn’t have been able to roll over smooth flooring. But the metal lattice, the thick-walled hive-like pattern that let Thinkers claw their way up and down when the Corship turned around their vertical or anteroposterior axes, was used as an aid, and not a deterrent. By flapping around its voiceboxes, simultaneously changing the angle of both respective to the eye, it managed to lift from a hole just to fall and partially fit into another, once and again, until it reached the body and inserted itself in the blind blob of Babesi’s head, returning sight to her.

  Morbilliv, likewise, recovered the reins of his flesh and Parvov’s bones, pulling himself up with the aid of threads of thoughtenergy that curled around the holes in the lattice and acted as pulleys.

  “Never… never do that again.”

  But Morbilliv spoke too late, for the only sound that came out of Babesi was that of some air bubbles escaping her slime as she meditated and dreamt.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The Fifth Conceived shuddered. Shuddered and envied. Dirofil could have stood that. He was a hundred percent sure his brother would have taken it in stride. Maybe he too, would have been overwhelmed with Babesi’s mind, but he would have known how to react, how to make things right and synchronize with their sister. Harmonize, even.

  It didn’t matter, Lyssav needed help now. Lyssav needed help. From who? From him. But he couldn’t. No amount of willpower would overcome the fatigue from rejecting Babesi, from gazing into her soul.

  He wasn’t giving up, but he was paralyzed all the same.

  Corship, how’s Lyssav doing?

  She dances.

  Dances? Is she dancing or fighting?

  She dances over my back. Dances well.

  And then Morbilliv did give up. Lyssav fostered a tendency to overestimate herself, but if he had to be honest with himself, whatever Lyssav couldn’t handle, he wouldn’t even scratch.

  Once more he slumped to the floor, and like his sister, he rested and fed his tired soul.

  Crimson threads extended from Lyssav’s twenty-five corkscrew claws. They gathered over the metallic back of the Corship, as she stared at their enemy directly in the eyes. In some eyes, that is.

  Lyssav counted the legs, and the claws in each. It wasn’t an even number for either, nor a constant. It couldn’t be said it had teeth, as while they were there, they resulted covered by the bags of flesh embroidered with pulsing, dark veins. Under the borzoilights the Reaper was a basaltic mountain range, a crawling mass of ebony whose flattened body reminded one of a lazy lizard lounging in the sun. The open wounds covering its skin bled liquefied eyes, the pupils and irises and sclera creating braided rivers of white, blue, and black dripping down the bulking creature of legs so many, arms so many, claws so few, and mouths temporal.

  “You are but art, my friend,” she said with a trembling voice, marveling at the aching mound crawling towards them.

  So. Much. Pain. Lyssav had to restrain herself to not jump to action. The Reaper suffered in ways that even to her tasted new. She could feel its entrails constantly rearranging as it moved, the unrelenting hunger pangs coursing all through him. The latter led her to conclude that a Reaper was what happened when a Labrador had enough, when it couldn’t restrict its cravings no more. In her opinion, no other breed could become that painfully hungry. Maybe one even needed a blue-eyed Labrador, a rare one.

  The shambling mass approached one shaking jerk at a time, and Lyssav could barely remain in place. The mutant ached all over, all inside, and even in the air around itself. It presented her with a buffet, and she was almost desperate to indulge. Almost.

  Before a creature of cravings, Lyssav was an empress with a duty towards her future subjects. Her were the wings that would become everyone’s umbrella for the never-ending rain. And they spread proud and tattered.

  Dragging the threads like ribbons as she took air, the Second Envisioned closed the gap with their incoming enemy and flew over its expanse.

  Almost scratching the tails of the helixes she witnessed the molten eyes pooling all over the creature’s back, its pupils wobbling to meet her judging slits, painfully battling their liquid nature to remain somewhat coherent.

  The red sun rising over them was beautiful, and despite how it itched and hurt to be illuminated by her rays, the Reaper had to follow. The front of the creature, with all the wounds that turned to mouths before shivering into bulging scars, flowed backwards, the anatomy of its limbs reversing to propel the quivering dark flesh in the opposite direction. Away from the Corship.

  Lyssav felt a pang of satisfaction course through her. She could fight, sure. But this wasn’t a tide to greet with the hues of blood. The Corship was too close, and she had listened to the recordings about the threats of the sea. The Reaper could be lured away safely.

  She performed a barrel roll to avoid a trio of Borzois that peeked out lower than the rest of the helixes. She wasn’t worried about her own safety: if she was caught by this enemy, that would test her might. Prove her worthy of the crown she yearned for or vanquish her and demonstrate how utterly unfit she was to rule.

  Down below the eyes gurgled out their wells, seeped in old scars as the carpet of horror below shifted. The extent of the creature filled Lyssav’s core with awe. If there was a being that better embodied the might of the sea, she couldn’t envision it.

  Another beat of the wings, another out of place group of Borzoi dodged, and the legs of her pursuer drawing slightly closer. She loved it.

  A leg erupted from where there were none, between two ocular pools, and put an end to her flight. She slammed into a podomere of oily black bones, the inertia causing her to break through it and fall battered upon the skin of the beast, rolling and tumbling over patches of rough hair until the hide creeped up her arms and tried to pull her deeper into the mass that was the Reaper.

  Her core shone with excitement, the red light burning the hairy tendrils of her captor to ashes. The pupils became thin slits as five newborn legs rose around her. Her teeth clicked.

  Even escaping would need some fighting this tide. How quaint.