I hear that the Sabine people worship leeches. Rumor has it the beasts are the only things left in the Malvasia harbor. They are ravenous, having consumed every living thing beneath the docks. Yet, I’m told they are not cannibals. How is it that leeches with cavernous appetites survive when nothing remains to slake their thirst? I have a mind to travel there, ensnare one of these beasts, and find out. Yet, I’m afraid of what I’ll find in a leech’s belly. Tufts of hair and the lower jaw of a young girl. Gods have mercy, I hate these primitives.
“What have you done to me!?” Velbrava shouted, clawing at the soft tissue that made up his cell. The walls were smooth, sticky, and felt like rubber snapping back in place when pushed too far.
In this form, he was neither wave nor particle and should’ve been able to slip through the cracks of any solid matter. Yet, the tissue of a vibriatus was different.
He tried to move through the arterial wall, but the blood pushed back, a current breaking upon his spirit like water on rock. There, closest to the optic nerve, the tight junctions in the epithelial lining were thin. Velbrava almost slipped through, finger-like projections probing the outside until something snapped at his heel. Something that stitched the tissue in his face and tapped on the Sclera.
“Quit struggling,” said a voice from above as a black oval disk, the lens, shifted across his cell.
That’s right; it wasn’t the vibriatus that locked the door but its owner. The tissue resisted Velbrava. He knew something was wrong when he came from the dark place; the organs didn’t feel like they should, not warm and embracing but cold and rigid.
He spent too much time sorting through the pink tendrils and the soft vibrating tissue, the cilia, that loosened his grip on the skull.
How could Velbrava have been so foolish? This vessel already had an owner, but he was desperate for a place in this war and blind to the thing that wriggled above him; A porous light that hung like cobwebs with a faint blue aura, the corona of the Pallid Throne.
Icarus had tasted the throne many times, that was clear from his coat’s sheen and mane’s breadth. They were like the soft glow of a pale star and a vast boiling sea whose waves hissed upon the shores.
How could he have been so blind? A primordial engineer caught him stealing from the cookie jar. By the time he noticed Icarus’s daunting presence, the trap was sprung. The ancient one fell on him from above, a spider wrapping him in luminous threads that ground his soul down like sandpaper scattering fragments of his spirit.
Velbrava was small now, so small he fit within the vitreous humor of the rat king’s left eye. A suitable cell for one so foolish; a suitable crib for a newborn babe. This was only his second war, after all.
A mere decade before, and he was no different from the nameless hordes they carve and shape, a larva nesting in the walls of his mother’s womb. Her embrace was warm, and the little hairs that scratched his chin tasted like nutmeg, her breath like diesel fuel.
Content and blind in ignorance, he was a nymph, a mudbug that cared little for meaning. So it was, until he sunk his teeth, those black tendrils that make up the underbelly of his spirit, into his mother’s glottis.
The tissue didn’t taste familiar, not sweet like his mother’s epithelial lining, not sour like her mucous membrane, not salty like her adipose tissue, but bitter and rotten. The flavor made Velbrava’s digits curl, and the corners of his soul wrinkle like old leather. Yet, he came back for more. Driven by instinct he didn’t yet understand, he drove his fangs into the glottis. Then, a hole appeared, and he could hear something beneath the tissue, a voice calling out.
There was a rush of wind, a solar heat as his mother opened her mouth. What was she going to say? Was she crying out in pain, cursing, or praising him? He would never know. When the syllables formed like crystalized droplets at the tip of a stalactite, he plucked them from the wound in his mother’s glottis.
Velbrava, that was not a name given but taken. All engineers were thieves, after all.
Soon after, he plummeted from the dark plain, took a vibriatus of his own, and joined his brothers and sisters in war. Even as a hatchling, he was born with a craving to feed upon the Pallid nectar.
Oh, to taste the pale river. Never once had the syrup touched his tongue, but he knew the flavor all the same. Sweet, savory, and sour, it stuck between his teeth and ran down his chin; the vibriatus crying out in pain as its flesh peeled back and skin turned purple. The Pallid Throne was sustenance for the spirit alone and belongs to only one, the victor.
Velbrava was killed before he even had time to shape his first brood. Another engineer stabbed him in the back, and his spirit returned to his mother’s embrace.
Ten long years he waited till the tonsil opened once more, but this time he woke too late. When he descended from the dark plain, all the vibriatus were taken. Velbrava scoured the floor, stretching his body thin until tendrils probed every nook and cranny. Truly, there was nothing left.
“Why do you hate me, mother?!” he cried, scratching at the floor until his projections splintered.
How long would he wander in the abyss? How long would he have to wait for the next war? Sleep would not come easy, but just when all hope seemed lost, he caught a familiar scent.
The air smelled like rust, freshly baked bread crackling beneath his fingers, and a salted flank rotating on a spit beneath a hissing fire. There was a powerful vibriatus free for the taking.
How could he have been so ignorant?
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Velbrava dove towards the optic nerve, rolling his body like dough until he was thin and sharp. He pushed himself through, scattering the dual nature of his spirit amongst the branching nerves. Traveling through the neural network, he slipped through the channels only to strike a wall that waved under pressure and scattered like marbles sticking to his spirit.
“Where do you think you’re going?” asked his captor.
Icarus cracked his tendrils like whips and took hold of Velbrava’s collar, a single scarlet weave, and tossed him back into the vitreous chamber.
“Get comfortable, brother.”
The optic nerve peeled back, and the retina felt more rigid, tight junctions snapping in place like staples.
“Let me out!” Velbrava shouted again and again.
“Are the younger generations truly so slow-witted?” the old rat asked, tapping the sclera. “What hope have you of winning this war on your own?”
Velbrava fell Silent. He had the same chance as any other lesser name, scraps from a bowl.
“With me, you stand a greater chance. With me, you will tower over our brethren. With me, you will learn so much. I have given you my eye. All I ask is for you to be my weather sense.” Icarus said.
That’s right. All the engineers knew the primordial rodent was blind in a drought.
“Will you let me taste the nectar if you win?” Velbrava asked, gathering himself up like untangling a knotted rope.
“I will give you one taste, just one, before I cut off your head.”
A fair trade: doubtful he would get a better offer.
“Now, pull yourself together. You’re no good to me in that form. You may use the walls of my eye if it pleases.” Icarus said, and the retinae relaxed, the cells growing soft and drooping.
Velbrava poked the walls, and the tissue coiled around his projection, sticking to his essence. The rat king had relinquished control of the retinae, and so he gathered up all the rods and cones within reach.
To think Velbrava would have to shape his own body. There was no greater insult.
The flesh felt strange between his luminous digits as he kneaded and stretched the matrix. Velbrava started with his legs, leaving kinks in the fine hairs along the toes, an ankle that didn’t fit wobbling left to right, and back thighs top-heavy with muscle and too many bundled fibers.
His head was next, and he shaped the skull, leaving hills and valleys in the snout and patches of coarse hair just above the brow. There was only enough milky white tissue to mold his left eye, deformed with a flattened pupil and broken lens. So, he embedded chitin into the corners of his right eye socket, forming teeth that clenched when he blinked.
Velbrava spent some time sorting the ribs, crooked with roots that overlapped. Then, he elongated and flattened the collarbone, fitting it near his neck before rolling patches of scarred flesh over the top. The mane came in all wrong, hairs crisscrossing with bald patches, and his abdomen was too heavy for his front legs to support.
Velbrava sighed. This vessel would have to do.
The tendrils of his spirit slipped in through the back of the skull, the barest hint of a spark still visible in the left eye. He took a deep breath and touched the corners of his toes and fingers. He had a lame back leg and arms two fingers short.
Yes, this vessel would have to do.
“Well?” the rat king tapped the corners of Velbrava’s cell once more.
Velbrava listened closely. He shaped the collarbone large, curved, and hollow to amplify the sounds.
Scratch, scratch.
Finally, the tiny hairs under his collarbone tapped slowly. There was a minute or two between each interval as the tissue hummed.
“Five days,” Velbrava said, “five days and the rains will come.”
— ✦ —
Five days, huh? Icarus mused to himself, proceeding down into his kiln.
No longer would he be blind. No longer would he have to wait for the sounds of battle to tip him off. This time would be different, and all he had to do was offer a taste for his brother to drop in line.
Of the twenty-two eyes embedded in his left socket, the twenty-first was lost to him. He could feel his guest moving around just under the pupil. If only he could see Velbrava’s new body. To think an engineer would be forced to shape one for himself. What a mockery that had to be. The old rat laughed.
Icarus sat on his heels, scraping the walls of the hive with the spikes on his forearm. The tissue bled, and he tasted the fluid with a forked tongue, Sour, bitter, and a hint of salt. The liquid was clear and ran between his fingers without sticking to his palm. There wasn’t enough iron, salt, or fructose.
He opened a tiny gash along his wrist and smeared the walls with his blood, turning the fluid brown and thick. Then, poking open an inflated sack nearest his eardrum, he poured out a milky substance, turning the floor pale and the tiny veins along the kiln silver.
“What are you doing?” Velbrava asked.
Curious, are you, brother? Icarus thought to himself.
“The kiln must be prepared. Why else do you think our creations last while others fail? The crimson fluid makes the base, but a proper kiln holds it all together.”
Of course, that was only one reason. Flooding the walls of a hive with his protein tricked the immune system and prevented it from rejecting his touch. He wondered how long it would take for Velbrava to learn that. Some lessons had to be taught with experience.
“What are you making?”
“Quiet now,” Icarus said, spinning his left eye. “Pay close attention and see how an engineer is supposed shape.”
Icarus swirled the crimson fluid between his fingers, just enough left over from his battle with Fortessa. Five days was all he needed to shape his masterpiece, and there wasn’t an engineer alive who’d see it coming.