I pinched the nerve again. How am I supposed to compete if I can’t shape a glial cell? I’ve seen what Icarus, Persephone, and Xerxes can do. These Pallid wars aren’t fair, and the odds were stacked against us from the beginning. I have a name but have done nothing of note save death by their hands. That’s why I choose to jump. My fate is mine alone. Join me, brothers, and sisters. Join me in death at the bottom of the chasm. They say it’s a coward’s way out, but who are they to judge us? Better to die on our terms than on no terms at all.
Persephone waited patiently for the sound of that low drip, that leaking faucet of crimson fluid slipping through the upper layers of Kath’le Kal. She preferred building hives close to her mother’s endothelial layer dipping into the rivers of pus. That way, she caught the red rain as it filtered through the sands.
Unlike Xerxes and his aerial fortresses, she was never the first to touch the red rain, nor did she gather as much as Icarus and his land-dwelling behemoths. A necessary sacrifice for the sake of purity.
Her siblings once called her the alchemist because of her peculiar tastes. Persephone didn’t like the feel of their mother’s clay as it fell from her soft palate. There was something in the consistency, a grainy feeling that scratched her palm like seeds from a crushed berry. She shuddered, thinking back on when she vomited white filth, unable to stand the impure touch of that crimson sewage.
What is an engineer who cannot shape?
When she was a larva, that question bothered her the most. After all, her siblings took to it like caterpillars crafting immaculate silk cocoons on base instinct, while hers were tattered, loose, and gray. She couldn’t overcome the feeling of that sandpaper touch slipping through her fingers like salty bile. Persephone always lost control, and her creations never turned out right when her vomit mixed in with the batter.
She remembered the crooked claws, the fins like cheese, and the lopsided crawl of a top-heavy grub. Was she truly related to Xerxes, who crafted velvet wings and antennae with a thousand fine hairs pointing in the storm’s direction? Or Fortessa, who created paper-thin fibers deceptively soft yet able to cut deep? Persephone was a child, even amongst children.
What right had she to claim the Pallid Throne?
“The same right as all brave enough to step forward,” said Icarus, back before the breach, before he was called the rat king. “You give up without even trying and risk nothing in convincing yourself to lie down in the dark. That’s why, sister, I hate you the most.”
“What chance have I?!” she shouted back. “I cannot shape the clay like you! It cuts my palms and turns my stomach sour!”
“If you don’t like the feel of our mother’s clay, then change it,” Icarus spat. “You’re an engineer, Persephone. So, start acting like one.”
To change that which she didn’t like. Such a simple idea. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Persephone was a child, after all.
She started hoarding vats of crimson fluid after that, swirling the liquid between her fingers to isolate that which made her sick. There it was, that salty grain pinching the nerves between her thumb and forefinger. They were vacuoles filled with ether and honey. She could taste the substance on the tips of her forked tongue, sharp and pungent impurities absorbed through the basement membrane of her mother’s vena cava.
Persephone tried pulling them out one by one. She spent a month alone picking salt from mud until the vats were as smooth as silk. Fortessa killed her before she shaped it.
The next war was different. Persephone tried boiling the mixture, causing the ether to evaporate but leaving the honey behind. Her clay was smooth but too sticky. She had to pinch the batter off her palms, leaving imperfections to exploit. Her eldriatus were soft and weak; Xerxes cut them down like a knife through butter before rending her head from her shoulders.
Persephone finally got it right in her third war. She found that ether and honey stuck to the Pallid sands of Kath’le Kal while the rain slipped through. The deeper the fluid sank, the cleaner the batch. That’s when she learned to dive far below the desert and build her first hive near the rivers of pus. The crimson fluid that dripped down there was so pure it felt like lotion in her hands. Moving the dough between her fingers, Persephone pinched and needed until the claws were straight and narrow, the fins smooth like glass, and the grub-like eels sleek and balanced, pushing through the rivers of pus like kites.
She wasn’t so different from her brothers and sisters after all and took the throne by storm. That year, a pod of orca rose above the desert sands, drowning Fortessa in a sea of pus and breaking Xerxes’s immortal charge. Even Icarus fell to her creations ferocities as she drove a scintillating spike through his spine.
“The throne is mine!” Persephone screamed.
She leapt upon him, driving a stake into Icarus’s neck as she peered into his eyes. Where was the surprise at being bested by the one he hated? Where was the rage at having lost the throne, that violent spark and bitter bile spilling from her enemy’s throat? Where was the satisfaction she so desperately sought?
“Look at your hands,” Icarus said, blood leaking from his lips.
She looked down at her trembling fingers, thick with callous and crooked from scars. The digits of her spirit broke again and again until her orcas’ gills were smooth and pink with a thin, fibrous film.
“Look at your feet.”
Persephone did and found a thousand lashes from when she waded through a sea of teeth and broke Xerxes upon their mother’s hard palate—Her toes bent, claws snapped off, and bones sticking through her ankle.
“Say nothing, do nothing, be nothing. You’ve come so far from the worm who shivered in the dark,” Icarus said, eyes growing pale as his spirit leaked out onto the plains. “That’s why”—the ground shook as the last of his porous soul slipped below into the dark realm— “that’s why, sister, I love you the most.”
When the tonsil finally dropped from the ceiling, and the Pallid nectar flowed between her toes, Persephone screamed. The sound ruptured her eardrum as she bit off the end of her tongue. The nectar, bittersweet, didn’t at all taste the way she had dreamed.
There was nothing left but the sound of rolling sands, the hollow whistle of wind slipping through a bent rib, and the emptiness in her gut with no mountain left to climb or ocean to conquer.
Was that what it was like for Icarus?
Was that what it was like to be truly alone?
Persephone rose as a greater name, the crown peeking out of her skull and cursing her with her first Id, Gluttony.
“I now know what it is we truly fight for,” Persephone said, swirling the new vats of red clay.
The tempest ended before dawn, and the rains filled the hive to burst. With only two engineers remaining, there were a lot of leftovers. Such a stockpile would produce a grand army, but Icarus no doubt had a wealth of material as well. That’s why her hands trembled as she pinched the dough and why she clenched her teeth, anxious and alone.
“No, not like that,” said Ingenuity as Fortitude pressed hard on the clay forming a thick lip with a deep pit.
Losing Fortitude’s skull was a terrible blow so close to the finish. Ingenuity and Fortitude worked best when together, but also apart. Unfortunately, sharing a skull wasn’t Ideal, and thus her fingers weren’t as dexterous nor her eye for detail as refined. Still, she could shape better than most engineers with smooth batter, even with shaky finger work. It would take a refined palate to notice the subtle changes in her brood—left-leaning dorsal fins and eyes that poked out from the skull one inch too far.
Unfortunately, she was against an artist with a steady hand, careful eye, and unshakable will. Second-rate work put her at a significant disadvantage.
“We will have to find another way,” said Wisdom.
Of course, her seventh id was right. Persephone would not return as a mewling worm in the dark. She would fight to the last of her breath, but there was another problem that tugged at her belly.
Drip, drip.
Her stomach growled. Gluttony had grown, causing her second Id’s skull to swell with only fragments of Temperance remaining. She had made a terrible mistake leashing the two Ids together. Gluttony was just too strong, consuming her cage mate and bending the bars. Now, Persephone woke each morning chewing on her tongue, licking the gills along her neck, and missing several fins, fingers, and toes. Even as a new skull poked through the gash in her neck, it was too late for Temperance. Only her mother’s embrace would restore her spirit, and she wasn’t ready to go home.
“I would recommend cutting Gluttony in two once the skull is whole,” said Wisdom.
Agreed, but that would have to wait. Fractured as her personality was, now was the time to work together.
“Just one bite. Just one bite. Just one bite,” said Gluttony.
But working together would not be easy.
“We should strike the rat from the dark and come from behind where he is blind,” Navigator said.
“No.” Persephone tapped her fingers together. “Icarus will expect us to strike from the dark. He will shape his army as a dagger to match our cloak.”
“We have to do what he doesn’t expect,” said Wisdom. “We have to strike him head-on.”
Persephone nodded to herself. A head-on assault was unlike her, and there was a good chance she would catch him off guard. Still, she could feel Faith wriggling under her belly. None of her siblings knew her, as Icarus did.
“What design should we choose?” so asked Navigator, whose teeth clicked under her chin.
“A better question. What design will he choose?” Persephone asked.
Again, Faith scratched at her waist, lifting her head to be heard. “You know in your heart what plague he shall unleash.”
“I do.”
With Xerxes gone and the Pallid Throne within his grasp, Icarus was going to attack from the sky with his most famous design. One he hadn’t used since the time of the first revolution. Though her fingers trembled, teeth clattered, and voice broke, Persephone’s chest swelled with pride.
Icarus wouldn’t hold back anymore, and it was high time she learned to slay a dragon.
— ✦ —
Velbrava was right. The rains came the next day. Icarus came to rely on the younger engineer’s forecasts. After all, being blind before a storm was one handicap he didn’t like.
The crimson rain fell like hail, crashing against the walls of his hive, making the epithelial layer bleed. Icarus shaped the pores just right, rivers of fluid rushing down into his kiln and collecting in tear ducts.
Mountains made for useful kilns if one knew how to shape them properly. Unfortunately, Icarus was responsible for the collapse of two in his younger years. Still, his creations often formed the backbone of new mountains like the behemoth he used against Xerxes.
“How do you intend to beat Persephone?” Velbrava asked, skittering across his retinae.
Icarus laughed. The junior engineer had grown on him. He had forgotten how fulfilling it was to mentor his siblings. Like Xerxes and Persephone before him, Velbrava was a quick study, and, once his spine stiffened, he would make a suitable successor.
“How would you beat her?” Icarus asked.
A moment’s pause as Velbrava scratched his chin.
“If I am reading your memories correctly, our sister is an opportunist. She will strike when our back is turned. I would use that against her, set up a trap to lure her to me, and remove her head.”
“How would you deal with her orcas?”
Such a clever design of Persephone’s. She took Icarus by surprise when they first burst from the sands. To think she had grown so much, had overcome her deficiency, and developed clay so smooth as to produce digits capable of commanding the putrid rivers.
“Quills,” said Velbrava. “I would design my eldriatus with stiff hairs to pierce and several hundred barbs to hold firm and never let go. Her orca’s hide is thick, but not from the inside.”
“You would bait her creations to swallow your maggots whole?” Icarus asked.
“They would kill from the inside out.”
Brilliant; Velbrava was a quick study indeed.
“I’m impressed, but your plan is flawed.” Icarus started stirring the crimson fluid with his index fingers.
“How so?”
“I know our sister, Velbrava. I knew her when she was a coward. I knew her when she found her courage. I knew her when she split my spine and claimed the Pallid duchy.” Icarus lifted his fingers, allowing the red solution to hang like a drop of dew. “Persephone will not attack from the shadows. Your trap would be useless. She will design her orca to fire barbs from a distance, perforating wings and hide alike. Your maggots, intended to be swallowed whole, would die before getting the chance.”
“I don’t understand,” Velbrava said. “A frontal assault isn’t like her.”
“Precisely,” Icarus said. “She will do what is most unexpected.”
“Why would she design eldriatus with barbs to counter a strike from the air?”
“Because she knows what design I’m going to pick.” Icarus laughed once more, rolling the clay in his hands, and pressing it into thin sheets that covered the entire floor of the hive.
“But why fall into her trap?”
Icarus stopped for a moment, the tips of his fingers and toes shaking, jaw quivering, and heart-pounding. There was that queasy feeling in his gut, that surge of adrenalin just before rushing into battle. For a moment, he could hear screams as skulls were split and feel sharp fangs latching onto his ankle as air flung from his lungs—what a glorious feeling.
“In defeats embrace, victory tastes all the sweeter,” Icarus said, pinching the center of the crimson sheet, forming enclosed membranes for easier blood flow. “Watch closely, Velbrava. Watch closely and learn why they called me the wyrm father before the rat king.”