“‘Darling, how do you want our new world to be?’

  ‘Full, Shadiran. A universe so full that the scant spaces between matter define life themselves. That way, there’s nearly no room for suffering.’

  ‘Nearly, Dirofil?’

  ‘I am afraid if there’s some sort of life, it may find some new way to suffer, my cherished.’”

  —Conversation Between Dirofil and Shadiran, during the afterglow of a spar.

  Dirofil stirred awake inside his cocoon of variegated breeds, and, only for a moment, found himself wondering where he was. It was only then when the sounds of anatomy all around him brought the memories back to the surface. Beating hearts, breathing lungs, cracking joints, and gurgling cerebrospinal fluid, he heard it all. And it struck him as odd that this stirred no fear nor revulsion inside him, no more. The sea had hearts, the sea had lungs, the sea had eyes and the sea had ears. The sea had grumbling stomachs and pulsing veins. He had… meditated. Waited. Grown.

  Most tides he was Dirofil, Fourth Imagined, lover of Shadiran and future murderer of reality. But this time he had woken up numbed, without the need to fear that which lay beyond the limits of his self. What could the dogs take that Lyssav hadn’t already tainted? What was a worse outcome, even: failing to reach Shadiran, or reaching her too late?

  He pushed the dogs apart like a parasite carving through flesh, for that he was in the end. Most tides he was Dirofil. Today, he was the animal that had given him its name. A sensation of purity — not of the body, but of purpose — coursed through his psychosarc. New energy fed every bubble and particle of his being, old and new bones animated as equals. How magical a good rest could become, in the right circumstances and sitting in the appropriate throne. For nearing the heart of Cynothalassa he was, the heartworm. And while there wouldn’t be no grand act of reproduction, no glorious pinnacle of a life cycle, he felt the middle point of the sea closer than ever. And if the sea belonged to the realm of things symmetric, crossing the first half of it required the same resources it would take to cross it all, the difference merely a quantitative matter regarding effort. So long as he kept the wings and the lungs safe, he would be able to win this race against Lyssav.

  No.

  This race against Shadiran’s anxiety.

  Emerging from the trunk Dirofil took a peek around with an eye he had stolen, and found no menaces crawling near. At the root end of the tree there should have been the cadavers of the dogs he had killed in tides prior, but not even the eye of the Reaper could see dead Murkhounds. It was not worth pursuing their parts, anyway: he had no idea if any other dogs could see them, and the problems he had theorized earlier could get in the way. But studying them, trying to assimilate a part of them to see how they reacted to the energy of his soul… that could be a wise move.

  He scrambled up to the root end and scrabbled about for the bodies, finding only one of them. Whatever had happened to the other was a mystery, but gravity remained the main suspect. The copse was humid, and by tact, he could notice it had bloated significantly. The invisible liquid was probably a vile mixture of putrid tissues.

  It, most likely, smelled rancid, and a living creature would have considered it noxious, something to give a wide berth to.

  Whether he was living or a creature at all were matters up for debate, but the point was that he didn’t care about the advanced state of decay, and thus sunk one of his hands into the soft flesh of the dog’s abdomen.

  The squelching felt funny to say the least, as he rummaged through organs that seemed to be mere moments away from losing their shapes. The fact his hand had become invisible after entering the dog amused him. He imagined himself puppeteering the hollowed out carcass as a joke for his siblings, or for Shadiran’s. His mind liked to commit said heinous crime, mixing the days gone with the reality around, once in a while.

  While he tried to gently inject the energy of his mind into the flesh and bend it to his will, he stared down the bright chasm in front of him. He wondered if he was where he thought, or if the sea had wildly warped his spatial perception. Perhaps he hadn’t climbed so far. Perhaps he was unduly tired despite having barely cleared a few dozen spire-heights. And that idea alone filled him with unparalleled fatigue. This tide, he truly embodied a heartworm, destined to become a major nuisance to the sea, a fact that did nothing to diminish the feelings of powerlessness before time itself.

  The energy flowed right back into his tissues, rejected by those of the dog. No matter the intensity, all he got was foul-feeling interference. Like — unbeknownst to him — the creatrix despised the high-pitched sound of metal grinding against metal, his own processed thoughts crashing back into his skin, waves against a beach, resulted distressing to an unwarranted degree. But he would take it. He could, that and much more, unlike some of his siblings. He would take everything with a body he had been estranged from little by little.

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  And from the Murkhounds there seemed to be nothing he could take. Their tissues refused the thoughtenergy, no matter its intent. Dirofil pulled the hand, and he noticed even their blood, invisible as it was, had this property. Thougthenergy and murkhounds were immiscible, and as ironic as it could be, that birth forth a new idea in his mind. If he could build a shield out of their bones, sinew and skin, and then keep it handy, he could use it in a potential face-off against Lyssav. But it would take time, and while he trusted himself to be able to make something workable out of materials he could see and bend, these… didn’t fulfill said conditions.

  His final verdict was that, for now, this cadaver was useless, and so he kicked it off the tree and sat with his feet dangling over the edge, imagining how it fell down and down, past the Borzoi, over a range of Pomeranians.

  He imagined an unseen explosion of gore that would wet and stink the ground up, but no normal dog could see. He imagined the distress of the poor bricks of the sea. He imagined it all ending, a wave of undoing pushing through all reality and imposing the will of the lovers upon it.

  The conversations about plans for the next world came back to him, the deranged design he and Shadiran had so lovingly concocted.

  But it was no time to engage in idle reveries. Wings spread, it was time to reach the heart of Cynothalassa.

  He leapt from horizontal tree to horizontal tree without looking back, using them as a monstrous staircase towards fate. His wings assisted in gliding and sometimes beating once or twice, improving the jumps. Something could attack him any moment now, and he needed to be ready. Darkness grew thicker as he went up, but to the eye of the Reaper, flickering open every other jump to check for Murkhounds, no gloom resulted disabling.

  Eventually the forest ended, the few Murkhounds he found on his way refusing to follow the fast-moving Thinker, to hunt for something so mighty and lively.

  At the top end of the horizontal forest he found cooler air, and kilometric stalactites of Huskies and Malamutes hanging from a ceiling unseen, adorned by veins of miniature pinschers with bioluminescent orange patches shining against their slick black coats.

  An atmosphere reeking of uncertainty loomed above. The reassuring cold needed an explanation, and Dirofil was sure it wouldn’t be as benevolent as its effect over the local temperature. Something older than life had taught him to distrust such unforeseen improvements. Overconfidence, as he drew so close to a goal, could prove catastrophic, and the only benefit of recklessness was speed—which, he had to admit, he sorely needed.

  But there was something else. Something unseen. It vibrated his soul ever so slightly, an almost-imperceptible energy drumming against his crystal core. And it would have gone overlooked, had it not been for such precious moment of reflection.

  It resulted unmistakable now that he had become aware: another core, or its echoes, acting close-by. Albeit it didn’t bear the hallmarks of psycholocation: It took on a pervasive behavior, and he could detect no rebounds of the rhythmical waves. Whoever existed and lived up here wasn’t trying to find him, nor to hide their presence.

  Maybe it was one of Shadiran’s elder sisters. The rhythm boasted consistence, a subtle solidity that made it feel like a wall once one became aware of it. It wasn’t much different from the aura Leptos constantly exuded, or what one got subjected to in presence of Lyssav. It couldn’t belong to Mardhaka: she was not so far above him, in terms of her core. It couldn’t be other but Vedala.

  And that very idea was scarier than anything the sea had put in front of him until that moment. What could force Vedala, of all beings, to descend deep into the sea? Her disinterest in the apocalyptic affairs was only rivaled by Leptos’.

  A second didn’t pass before he realized he had asked the wrong question. What could imitate Vedala? It made far more sense to believe in lures and creatures that had learned to fake thought, that from the random stupidity of the sea some semblance of intelligence arose, a cheap pantomime. Things like the Flame, with or without thinker input.

  But he couldn’t afford to wait around to find out. So he took another leap, off the tree and into the stalactite, and his phalanxes found purchase in repulsively cold fur. The dogs he was grabbing onto shivered, not from fear but from the freezing breeze that emanated from the minute spaces between one dog and the next.

  A crossroads, not in the world, but in his mind. Remove a few dogs and find out where the cold came from, or keep on going without a piece of information that could result crucial. Time spent doubting was time wasted, so he kept on climbing as he deliberated, taking a peek or two all around with the Eye of the Reaper to confirm nothing would ambush him

  He had to dig. Not every mystery of the ocean called for his immediate attention, but this combination of circumstances was off in ways he could barely put into words. The other mind, the cold, the horrid tranquility all around. It was not fear that was taking hold of his mind, but caution: failing now would be not only a shame, but absolutely unforgivable. He had survived the Reaper, the Murkhounds, the mauling layer. He had evaded Lyssav.

  And now he was pulling from a Malamute with his two left arms, sticking the tail between the dogs for leverage. He had to hurry, partly because he wasn’t sure he hadn’t already run out of time —and he didn’t want to consider it a possibility, either— and partly because having two hands and a tail stuck in the wall only left him three appendages to defend himself against incoming attacks.

  Finally, the Malamute budged, and he let the poor dog fall down back first into the luminous abyss. Whatever horror arose from its mutation wouldn’t be his problem, or so he hoped.

  Under the Malamute ran a vein of Pinschers, and those were easier to set loose. Eventually, after a while of digging, he beheld sky blue. His flesh almost froze when touching the opal-like substance, his reflection on it deformed by its uneven surface.

  The realization provided a blunt awakening. That material had been quite possibly refined from the dogs around it. The malamutes, if he had to guess. Not, that only begged a question: were dogs refined naturally so deep in the sea, and such phenomenon caused the feeling of being near his kin, or was he intruding someone’s territory?

  He had the creeping and unwelcome sensation that he would find out soon enough.