Parsec

Venera wasn’t here.

Evening was falling. Foam crashed upon the shore. It had been three days. Parsec flew in loops over the place where the waves flattened and calmed, wondering for the dozenth time whether she should forcibly call Venera back. The thing stopping her was not the prospect of pain. It was the fact that Venera had insisted it be a last resort—and this was no last resort. The danger had long passed. No hunters had come calling, or the guards which Jackal so feared. She would have to trust her Titania was safe and as whole as could be, and that she would return.

“Parsec?” Jackal called. “Food’s done.”

She descended to where they’d set camp behind the dunes, far from the closest road and well above the tide line. He’d made a fire over which he’d placed a pot of foraged shellfish. The first attempt at cooking them had been a mixed success. After that, she’d shown him how to soak them in clean seawater first, to let them expel the sand.

“Are you sure you don’t want any of this?” he asked, gesturing with a spoon. “They’re not magic, so it doesn’t really matter.”

“No need. You have more precise nutritional requirements.”

Parsec thought it best to let him have all the meat, after the way he’d torn into that deer. He’d said the deerflesh would last him a while, but what little dungeon catch he’d brought with him had been dried or consumed before it could spoil.

“Alright, then. Here’s your dish.”

She’d gathered a bowlful of sea lace and samphire earlier and set it to steam in the shallows of the fire. They began to eat in companionable silence.

Her body felt at ease, and her senses bloomed; she could sense trace amounts of iodine perfusing into her body as the vessels in her gut churned to extract every spare nutrient they could. She suspected this awareness was due to the lingering effects of the Archives, now bolstered with schismatist syrup. It was more interesting than distracting, and she could ignore it if needed—but what did this mean about her strength now? She hadn’t been able to notice this before, even as a General.

Her spines twitched in agitation as she swallowed the last of her meal. There was plenty of syrup left—enough to make it down to Glister and beyond, so long as she did not go seeking out fights—but Venera’s absence stung like a cut left out to air.

“Will you go back to a dungeon, soon?” she asked. This campsite was surely temporary, even if its distance from the city seemed to comfort him.

“Can’t,” Jackal said between mouthfuls of broth. “Not near Kraedia, at least. I told you; we’ve got to go somewhere else. I don’t care where, as long as I can find food and we won’t be recognised. And you’re going to help me, right? Can we at least take a look at the map? You said you’d—”

“Patience, Jackal. I must wait a little longer.”

“For what?” he asked, not for the first time. “I thought the syrup fixed your…everything? How much longer before you’re rested up? I don’t know if we can afford to wait until all of your faery rituals are working.”

She didn’t know how to tell him about Venera without sounding ridiculous. Part of her worried that straying too far from Kraedia would sever the tie between them, that she would leave and never find her Titania again. She was far less concerned about humans hunting them down. Jackal could fret they would behead him all he liked, but Parsec was sure she could face a dozen guards in combat by now. She’d been practising.

Practising the raising of dead things, to be precise.

Only out of sight, of course, during her hours of ‘meditative ritual’. She didn’t want to startle him, the way he was now. Most of her subjects were dead seabirds, their skeletons roused from the dunes. She’d also tried it on fish, which didn’t move well on land. The experimentation was soothing; if she thought about it, it wasn’t as frightening of a power as it seemed. She’d never had the chance to command fodder constructs, but necromancy was surely similar and less resource-intensive.

If she concentrated, she could manage a whole flock of birds at once. This, combined with her physical ability, allowed her to fight over a large area. The only drawback was the way that necromancy hated all other forms of magic. It meant she had to forgo shielding if she wanted to attack most effectively.

But shields were for protecting her fellow people. Now, she only needed to keep herself alive, which meant flying away was much easier than shielding. She could carry Jackal with minimal difficulty, if it came down to it. And Venera, if—when—she returned, would need no physical defense.

Venera. She’d been trying to avoid his questions for the past three days, but the thought of Venera gave her inspiration.

“I can only explain it properly in our language,” she said. “Which you will not understand. Here, listen.” Taking care to speak in the thickest of Hival murmurs, she said, “I am waiting for my Titania. It is worrisome that she has gone hunting and not returned. I cannot discern whether she is in your head or in the dredged realms or both at once. Hival murmurs and crooning songs. Archive. Shellfish. Tree sap. There, that should be enough words to sound very detailed and plausible.”

“Can’t you translate that?”

“No,” she lied. “I cannot replace important meanings with words that do not exist in your tongue.”

Jackal sighed. “Fine. Dessert?”

He held out a stalactite fruit, harvested from the coastal caves two days prior. They were better fresh, but the tough casing preserved the insides well enough that there was still moisture within.

She hummed noncommittally. “Isn’t that the last one? Break it in half.”

“No, you have it. I don’t really like sweet things.”

She shook her head. “We will share. You must maintain a more balanced diet. It is known to us that humans are omnivorous creatures. So, it is not good for you to eat only meat.”

“Fine,” he grumbled. He cut the stalactite fruit in two and took the smaller portion for himself. “But do you know how long we’ve got to stay here? Can we plan a good route before tomorrow? If we get jumped—”

“We will not ‘get jumped’,” she said severely, flaring her wings wide. “It isn’t possible. I won’t allow it.”

A pair of skeletal birds scouted a wide perimeter around their camp: it served as endurance training. Unless someone had the strange desire to trek all the way out to this lonely shore without the slightest stitch of enchantment upon them, she was certain there was no one else here.

“We need to plan,” Jackal argued. “Unless you want me to pick out a route myself?”

Parsec relented. “Very well. We will plan a route to Glister City after you consume your carbohydrates.”

Jackal sighed and began peeling his stalactite with a knife. Parsec bit straight into her own, spitting the stony rind aside to get to the succulent pulp. Jackal was wrong: it was far from too sweet. But perhaps only she could taste the rich, underlying flavours known only to certain tongues. There’d been similar fruits along the Glister coastline, and the bats always left them alone. Only ants picked at the fallen pieces, and some of the rarer birds. Perhaps humans were like bats? Both had soft, membranous coverings.

She hummed with bitter nostalgia. Glister’s climate made the fruits far smaller and sparser than here, too cumbersome to harvest. The desirable tastes did not outweigh the labour cost. Perihelion had given her a basketful upon her entry into the Hive. It had been the very first gift she had ever received.

“Are we going straight back to Glister?” Jackal asked, unrolling the map. “You sure there’s someone who can help me there? Thought we could rabbit-hop along to this old dungeon to the east, but…”

“Your problem is Realmlike. Tunneling into your head. So, you will need an Archivist. Or someone trained by one. I know of an unusual, independent Hiver who fits the latter category. And if she is too Hival-tied to be persuaded, we can explore further options.”

Jackal traced a finger down the coastline. “Right. But there are too many cliffs further down. You want to avoid the main roads, yeah?”

“Yes. Until I find a way to alter my appearance.” Her scent may be disguised, but a Glister patrol might recognise her on sight. A Kraedian patrol, too, or any other Hive for that matter. She was sure a physical description must be circulating alongside the scent-markers by now.

“Then unless you know how to sail a sea-ship, going through the Nightbloom forests would be better. Folks say it’s dense as all hells, though. I’ve gone into a bit of the edge before, but not through the middle.”

She tipped her spines disapprovingly, recalling knowledge of the terrain and its inconveniences. “If that is truly the fastest, then it will be sufficient. I embarked on an expedition there, some years ago. Much of the wildlife is…shy. Fewer yet would harm you.”

He gave her a skeptical look but continued in his perusal of the map. “Hey, there are a couple of hanging townships we could stop at for resupply. Unless that’s too risky, you think?”

Parsec whisked her tail close, scrawling a crooked line across the sand. “You may enter what settlements you wish alone. We would be conspicuous, traveling as an alliance.”

“Yeah, I know. Traveled with Volans for a bit, remember?” Jackal grabbed a shiny implement from his bag and sketched a pale line along the map. “I stayed at a couple of these villages on my way up to Kraedia, and they’re quiet. No faeries. Don’t think there’ll be any of your folk searching there, even if you were important back home—or, erm. Everywhere, now.”

“Then I hope I am not as important as I think,” Parsec remarked, finishing the last of her fruit.

They played dice by the embers of the dying fire. She hadn’t gotten any better at it since she first encountered the game. Once they were done, Jackal retreated to the tent and she bundled her borrowed blankets beneath the warm and open sky. She lay awake for a long while, breathing in the clean salt air and puppeting her skeletal birds. They skirted the very edge of her necromantic range with sun-bleached bones, dead for years and easy to control. She poured her newfound magic into all of the hollow spaces, crafting ghostly joints. This game of precision did not distract her from her worry.

Unease slithered along her spines, crawling in waves across her shell. Yet another day had passed. Why hadn’t Venera returned? She glanced in the direction of the tent, tail tensing in suspicion.

Venera had said, ‘Jackal-mind being Realm-touched—could be…vector?’

Parsec felt unharmed and well. She only wished Venera would return. Foolish as it was to fret over the safety of a ghost…unless—?

A suspicion tickled at the edges of her mind, not for the first time. If the Realm was not flesh, then could it affect unflesh? Perhaps it could injure or maim, far worse than its control of Jackal’s appetite.

She rolled over and whistled, soft and melancholy, as she tested the limits of her range with new maneuvers. It was only a distraction. A pitiful distraction. How could she lie here and wait helplessly, if her Titania were being torn apart at this very moment? She imagined Venera fighting, fleeing, growing armour, ducking behind chunks of misted monolith as the hungry creature prowled…

Enough. This was enough. She’d been plentifully patient. It had been three—three—days. She would summon Venera now, emergency or no.

Use blood and brain, Venera had said. Scraps of knowledge swirled in her skull: other things besides how to alter her form or synthesise precursor. She had not yet reached its limits, but she was drawing close. And the closer she came to understanding the sum of what the Archive had given her—very specific skills, synthesis, necromancy—the more difficult it became. She concentrated for many minutes, until a thought bloomed softly at the memory: an Archival inkling as to the specifics of how.

She concentrated some more, and when she was done the moon was high overhead. The how solidifed, congealing…

Parsec almost baulked. Really? she thought. Did it really mean to tell her—she rechecked, and yes it did. The Archive spoke without words and there was no misinterpreting this meaning. She supposed they would regrow since the damage was restricted to above the first joint…

Well, Venera had said it would be painful.

Parsec growled and grew fangs, spines already spasming as a headache made itself known. She readied herself. Then, one by one, she bit off the fingertips of one hand. They cracked before they crunched. Blood wet her palm, pooling there before it dripped down her outstretched arm.

She thought, Venera—maybe spoke it, too.

Invisible strings spun themselves into existence beneath her skin, drifting gently along every nerve. They slept and they dreamed. It was soft, numbing, and the sensation lasted a handful of moments before they moved. Threads hardened like attendant-silk left out to cure. The outer layers clicked into place. The innermost strands bored into her chest, clumping like a burl of unflesh. Emptiness became pain became agony. And the agony was agony was agony—

Parsec crumpled into the sand. She fought to keep from heaving up a molten slurry of sea lace and samphire and stalactite fruit. The pain fled slowly. When at last she could think again, she saw a connection, rooted deeply in that snarled binding. She felt a tug on the line, sensed her spines swaying in response. The link did not feel like a link between a General and her Titania. It did not feel like a message or a leash. No—this was like two dead birds, orbiting.

The line drew taut and there was a syrupy weight on the other end. Too much. Intuition told her Venera should come trailing along, like iron to a lodestone.

But there was no Venera. There was only tugging, darkness, exhaustion. There was only sleep, like teeth closing gently over her fingertips.

===

Parsec opened her eyes to no darkness and no light. Recognition kept her from panicking; this was only the null of necromantic magic. Still, how could this be when she hadn’t used it?

Her body was confinement. The muscles were overlaid wrong. Every joint, too. Where were her spines? Her carapace flexed fleshily, organs rumbling with the motions of sleep. No. It was not her carapace. Not her body.

This, again?

‘Jackal,’ she tried to say, but his mouth would not form the shape of his own name. Not here, in this realm of dreams.

Was it a dream? How could he be sleeping in his own dream? And where was Venera?

She had no claws with which to scratch against the inside of his skull. There was only the full use of her consciousness as a battering ram. How had it felt when she’d left the Archival depths? If only she’d been conscious for that part—if only she knew more than the memory of pain. She screamed without noise. He didn’t wake.

She waited and the null-ness beckoned. What did it mean? Could she use magic, here? Necromancy, against that not-darkness?

She tried. Her grip on him was weaker than it’d been than back in the forest. Weak, but enough. She prodded, and Jackal’s eyes flew open. He was looking at the sky.

It wasn’t like any sky she had ever seen: a dead spill of murky brown clouds, shot through with veins and puddles of glimmering green like algal blooms. And puncturing her field of view, goring their way skywards, were shapes, if one could call them that. Each started as pillars lower down, resembling Archival monoliths, or perhaps tree trunks, but they bent and curled and oscillated gently in more and more unnatural shapes as they stretched skywards, like kelp reaching for the sun. Their pale surfaces rippled with no rhythm or pattern, and the texture was smooth in places and grainy in others. Sand. They were made of sand.

Jackal sat up. She felt more sand—silty and dry, like the dunes on the beach—beneath his palms and smelled a blunted, brackish smell through his nose. It was not the clean scent of the Kraedian coast. The sand on the ground rose upwards in places, forming those pillars. Why was it sand? Did it have to do with their location, back in the real—in the solid world? Because this was real. It smelled real. Not like memory. There was even a whiff of rotting samphire on the breeze. She’d used magic deliberately, but was the veil-between coincidentally thin where they’d slept?

Her vision flickered, for just a moment. Sand cycled through mud, stone, flesh, song, before it became sand again. An illusion, and yet not. A mirror fusing with reality, so far gone that two had become one.

Jackal, she thought frantically. Let me out. She tried to use necromancy, but there was nowhere to latch onto him now that he was no longer sleeping-not-alive; her magic slithered against a vessel that was now awake, aware, staring at the forest of sculpted sand around them. There was nothing the necromancy would fasten to, except herself.

She remembered the pain. Was she dead? She didn’t think so, but she tried it anyways. The hold was as weak as it had been on Jackal. Promising. She sent herself a command to speak, to walk, but nothing happened. She tried, instead, to fling herself outwards—out of his head, through the unbroken window his gaze provided.

Jarring sensation flooded in: cold air against her spines—that rotting briny scent was much stronger now—and wind, whistling. She flared her wings wide and tucked her tail close, tumbling to land in a crouch. Sand puffed around her feet. Her fingers throbbed, the ends still missing.

“Parsec?” Jackal said slowly, hand to his head. “This isn’t a dream, is it?”

He caught on quickly. Everything must be lucid from his end, the same as it was for her. No blurred scents, no shadows of pain. All here, now.

“No, it is not.” She searched for Venera again. Thinking of the seeking command hurt less here and the tie between them drew taut, tugging her past a space between two sand columns. There were more pillars in that direction. Deeper into a forest-that-was-not.

“Where are you going?” Jackal demanded, catching up to her in easy strides. “What have you done? You’ve dumped us out in the Library somewhere, haven’t you?” His voice held a hint of panic.

“No. This must be a—a slice. Of what you call a Library seems to be…another…slice. Far away. Not like our—like the Hive’s. I doubt we are there. It would feel different. This is only an o-over—an inter—” Fathomless powers gripped her voice, stifling it. A headache flared, half-familiar. Half-alive?

She glanced upwards, where bridges of sand formed and shifted and broke away again, sending a light shower of grains upon their heads. She shielded her eyes and mouth with her arms. There was no beating brain, but she was certain now that there was something analogous. Or if not the slow and mountain-eating heart of the Archives, then…she looked at Jackal, to her side. Him and his Archival problem…Venera had left them to think. To investigate.

“Your brain,” she settled with. She began walking quickly away from the falling trickles of sand. “Perhaps mine too, now that I am here. A crossroads. Venera called it an aponeurosis. I suspect it must be both.”

“Who’s Venera?” He glanced about, as if expecting to unearth a skulking figure.

“We’ll find her. We should move quickly.” The line tugged. She started to run, sure that Jackal could keep up. She felt exposed, despite the growing tangle overhead. Its shapes cast the wrong shadows.

Jackal swore. “Look,” he said, pointing behind them.

The sand had changed. Where before there were bending pillars and blocky shapes, organic forms emerged. Hands and limbs. The occasional curling wing, feathered like her own. Nothing whole. Was it learning? She’d thought the Archives held the sum of all knowledge, but—

She scooped Jackal up by the arms and flew.

“Who’s Venera?” he shouted against the wind.

She was too busy dodging sand to answer. The pillars pooled along their lengths, forming hollow mouths. Some were sculpted like hers and others mimicked human lips and teeth. She was glad the mirror only reflected sand. Her link to Venera spurred her on as the smell of salt and rot thickened to almost choking. They were nearing a shore. Venera was already dead. What could be worse than that? Was she wounded? Beneath the water? What kept her?

“Go left!” Jackal shouted, and the fear in his voice was so sharp that she obeyed unthinkingly. A tower of limbs slammed through the air where she’d been moments prior, passing with barely a sound. It rumbled as it hit another pillar up ahead, both collapsing. But the crumbled hillock was already reshaping itself as they sped past, fingers bending the wrong way, crawling over their own wrists.

It wanted to—how could it want? It wanted to bury them alive. This whole world wanted to weigh down and mirror and muffle and it wanted her to dry-drown into the softest of sleeps and now she was drawing nearer and nearer and she should give in, give in now and slip into its starving bower, let it peel her open and peck at her ribs and gnaw for spare flesh and gulp the hemolymph from her shell—

“Hey!” Jackal was shouting. A hand slapped at her shoulder, which was as far up as he could reach. “Parsec! Stop thinking! Don’t think! Just go!”

She realised she was slowing, wobbling mid-air.

“Fly!” Jackal howled, and she did, barely glancing back to see a tide of limbs fast on her trail.

This was not the Archive, she thought panickedly. Hunger throbbed in her gut. This was Archival, but not the Archive. Not benevolent, not even neutral, and not gently bowed to the service of a Hive. This was a land of air and darkness, slithering behind the mirrors, hungry to devour—

“Parsec! Ignore it!”

Venera, she thought instead, drawing on her Archive-tinged magic. Venera. She could not allow little difficulties to stop her now. Silver wings cupped her spine and burst to the surface at her command, slinging her forwards as they unfurled. The hands fell behind, and the air nipped at her extremities as she flew like a falling star. Soon, they reached the shore.

The sea was simmering-wet and as green as boiling chlorophyll. Mist whiskered the horizon. The water seemed more endless the longer she looked at it, so she looked away. Venera. The goal was to find Venera. She flew along the shore, the line between them growing shorter and shorter. A monster lurched into view.

“What in the hells,” Jackal hissed as she slowed to assess it.

A being of bubbling red flesh lumbered along the coast, where sand soared into cliffs. It was at least fifty feet tall and twice again as wide, studded with drooling mouths and dark tendrils. The main body oozed green fluid and strings of meat—like a slug marking its path—and the trail curved out from the sea.

She caught a flash of silver in the distance. Whiplike tendrils crashed skywards, and the silver glint arced to avoid it.

“Venera,” she murmured.

She swooped down and made to drop Jackal upon the shore, but stopped short. He’d latched both hands around her arms.

“Wait, wait—what do you think you’re doing? You can’t just charge in to fight that.”

Venera was here. She could. She would. She needed to test if that thing was not alive.

“You’re going to fetch your friend,” Jackal said. “I get it. But you need an exit ready.”

Parsec considered telling him the specifics. “I already know how to wake us up. You may wish to stay near, but not too near. Let go.”

“Huh?” He blanched. “You mean we could’ve just left, this whole time? Let me out!”

“No. I only have one set of fingers remaining.” She tore free, heedless of his yell.

Her quicksilver wings took her to the being in seconds. A coil of tendrils sprung to greet her—how had they lengthened from her estimate of them?—and she dodged crookedly, making for Venera on the other side. Another whorl of tendrils whipped round, trailing hissing droplets. Several whipcracked in its wake, and experience forewarned her of a cage, closing. She shot straight upwards. The tendrils followed, and her flight path didn’t leave them behind. A brief glance downward told her it was drawing upon its main body to accomplish this, suctioning biomass into the filaments to elongate them.

She pulled chitin from her arm and formed a blade. Ducking and slicing, rolling through the air—she cut a good twenty feet of tendril into pieces. The ends wept green before fusing closed. More tendrils surged from the main body and slashed at her, forcing her to dive.

Where was Venera? She’d spotted the silver flash but a moment ago, but the creature had heaved its form around to block her view.

Infuriated, she drew on her necromancy. Then she remembered that her wings were still active, her blade halfway merging back into her body. But there was very little pain, compared to how shielding had been. Still, her concentration lapsed—and the tendrils coiled around the end of her tail, climbing upward. They were tough and ropy, sharp enough to score burning lines into her chitin. She sought a hold with her necromancy, found weak ones, and pried them away.

As she’d expected, it wasn’t properly alive nor dead. She couldn’t anchor her control into the main part of its body, like she had with Jackal. But she forced the tendrils to twitch away as they reached for her again. She flew, seeking Venera.

Venera found her first.

“Parallax,” she shouted, and Parsec was so surprised at seeing her, at hearing her voice and smelling her blood, that she almost didn’t dodge a tendril in time.

Venera swooped in with six shining wings and caught her by the arm, dragging her out over the sea. “It will be slower following us here,” she called over the rush of the wind. Ghostly blood poured from a dozen heavy gashes across her chest.

“You’re—” Parsec choked out, and stopped herself, because despite looking very much like her old body, Venera was not alive. Her grip was solid, but her form was half see-through, like imperfect mesoglea. “You’re here.”

“I heard your call.” Venera swiveled her gaze round and shot spellfire from a hand with most of the fingers missing. The tendrils shrank back when burned, but rebuilt themselves in moments. “We should go.”

“The human,” Parsec managed. I left him on the shore.”

Venera changed course and they carved steeply through the sour air. “Catch him. I will take us away. There will be pain, but I will spare you further harm. Ready?”

In moments, the shore came back into view. A wall of tendrils speared close, but Parsec forced them to a grinding halt with necromancy, earning herself a brief burst of agony along every spine. She snarled and focused her gaze on Jackal’s form, growing closer and closer, until he was so close she could make out the fearful expression on his face. She flung out her arm and tail, caught his raised arm in her good hand, and lashed her bleeding tail around one of his ankles for good measure. He yelled as they ascended.

“Now,” Venera said, and gave a wordless cry.

The air blazed bright with magic. Her missing fingertips burned, until they were buried under the torment sinking into every layer of her body. It was a kind of sick, helpless pain—like suffocation, like starvation, like the ache of an infected bite, like vomiting rotten grain back in her old Hive. She felt her wings stall, the quicksilver bleeding away. Spongy fractals blossomed behind her eyelids. The world fell away.

Parallax, said a familiar not-voice.

And Parsec woke up.

The first thing she heard was Jackal speaking swiftly—even with syrup to buoy her understanding, it was difficult to keep up. Her reserves must be low, because she didn’t understand every one in three words. But it was enough to tell that he was very angry, and somewhat afraid.

Not-Library. Not-Archive. Only realm-remnant rambling along forgotten edges. Silver-soft. Mineral bubbles.

She sat up, rubbing her head. Her tail burned where the tendril-thing had grabbed her. She didn’t open her eyes yet; she could smell morning on the breeze, and the light would be bright enough to strain her eyes.

“I did not willingly drag you into danger,” she spoke, cutting off his burbled tirade. “Wait one moment. I must…” She allowed herself to crack open her eyes the slightest sliver and tip a droplet of syrup onto her tongue. Magic suffused down the length of every spine, warm and bright, but her injuries still ached.

“There. Can you understand me now?” She shielded her face with a wing and squinted.

He was scowling. There was sand dusted up to his knees; he must have sprinted all the way here from the tent. “I could understand you before. Anyway—what was that? Explain.”

“I was looking for Venera,” she supplied. “As I’ve said, I was wrongly accused of murdering my queen—the Titania Venera. It was with her aid that I found my way out through your realm-touched skull. She left, for a while, to…investigate. To see if I was affected. To help you. I sought her, and the results were unexpected. So, I had to extricate her from the realm-space.”

“Oh you did, did you? Where’d she go, huh?”

Here.

“She is right here, but we cannot see her. You cannot hear her.”

Doubt clouded his face. He crossed his arms combatively. “If you say so. But dragging me in was just an accident, huh?”

Parsec held out her injured hand. “The initial—yes. I had to spend this in order to enter. There was only one exit. No more entrance or exit until it regrows.”

“Still, you could’ve given me some warning. You heard it too, right? That Library thing was bloody loud in there.”

She dipped her head in acknowledgment. “I am…sorry, for the unforeseen circumstances.”

“Sure,” he said skeptically.

Were kinder ways of accomplishing, Venera admonished. Predecessor was not in true danger, though predecessor could not set to rights. The fleshghostthoughtbeing was…one part of many obstructions. Vector transmission. Dormant buds, must strangle-choke. Intertwined, Parallax.

Parsec felt a spike of alarm. But she didn’t feel ill, or even a little peckish. Venera had said the influence was dormant, and Venera was a Titania. She would think of something to fix the both of them, and if not—well, they were going to seek that half-formed Archivist anyhow.

Must not allow the human to die. Aponeurosis roots in his skull first, but—there came a head-throbbing diagram, with too many spinning layers to it, a hundred thousand moving parts—aponeurosis will chew through him and reach you. Safe for now, but should he succumb or perish…

Jackal was still scowling at her. Parsec shook her head to clear it. “I am…truly sorry for endangering you, Jackal. And I thank you for having the presence of mind to direct me away from your…‘Library thing’. But I could not leave Venera. It was also for your sake, you see. Her knowledge is necessary to help you—you saw that flesh-being. You don’t want such a creature inside your head, correct?”

“Yeah. But don’t do that again.” He frowned, brow furrowing as a thought seemed to occur to him. “And you said something about seeing my dreams, back in Kraedia? Stop doing that, too. In fact, if you can read my mind—”

“That is far beyond me.” She rustled her spines in agitation, still concerned with what Venera had revealed. “I haven’t dreamwalked since. Nor has Venera. We have no wish to subject ourselves to your nightmares.”

“…Right.”

“I see you will not believe me without proof. That is understandable, and the solution obvious.” She stood, noting the lines of blood beading around the end of her tail. Ah, the miracle of syrup—almost fully healed. Already, she was thinking of what dead things lay near. “Come, Venera. We must find you a new body.”

“What do you mean, ‘a new body’?” He sounded suspicious, now.

“It might be easier to show you.” She began walking back to the tent. “Shall we have breakfast first?”

His stomach grumbled audibly. “Yeah.”

“Are you worryingly hungry?”

“I have some dried meat left,” he said warily. “It’s fine.”

His shadow flickered across the sand. Parsec took a moment to be glad she was not a fleshy human.

Wherewithal, Venera broke in. Wandering star. Necromantic form. Truly, Parallax?

“We must, if we are to convince the Hive. And to convince the Hive, you must convince Segin. Surely there are things known only to Titanias? You might use those to prove your legitimacy.” Jackal glanced at her curiously, but he had seen Venera for himself and would again soon. There was little need to think thoughts very hard now.

Perhaps. Requires consideration. Though, predecessor thought…the traitor, his name Eltanin…?

“Oh yes,” Parsec said. She spared a glance at Jackal and switched to the Hival tongue. “Yes. I am still going to kill him.”