“‘Every brain a person, every person a world. Every world, a unique topography. Countless maps, as similar as dissimilar. That’s why I studied neurology, psychiatry. Psychology too, of course. Does that answer your question, Sheila?’

  ‘It pretty much does, doctor. Have you seen our plans for the new world?’

  ‘Yes. And I find it quite revealing of your nature. Both of you, I mean.’

  ‘And which judgement are you going to pass about it?’

  ‘It’s almost half-adequate as a diagnostic manual.’”

  —The creatress, conversing with her psychiatrist one last time.

  Paralleled the scars of the gone earth the canine ravine, and Dirofil considered the mass of Grand-Danes hideous, with their bodies contorted to fit and conform the walls and their legs reaching out like the tentacles of the damned. Caenor had seen it before, and slipped past the reaching paws without sparing a thought, despite the fact that light had abandoned them, except for the one that bled out their hearts. Only with Psycholocation could they navigate.

  They nest and rest in the shallow niches in these cliffs. You may see them coming, and if you see them coming, it’s possible those eyes you stole won’t see anything ever again.

  Eyesight and I have a rich and convolute story alright. One more eye, one less eye… a rounding error, really. Plus, you are going to see them before they come.

  I am interested in their lenses, not your integrity. I’ll warn you if it furthers my goal, and I’ll let you take a hit if it furthers my goal.

  I hope we find a Reaper I can feed you to one of these tides. Will make for fun times, friend.

  My fall won’t be far from yours if a Reaper takes notice of us. You are no virus.

  A sudden change in the air that Caenor failed to notice, but Dirofil’s new nose picked up without issue.

  Picking something up, however, didn’t mean he could relate a particular perturbation to a concrete situation, no matter how safe or unsafe said situation could be. Chemoreception of all kinds remained, ironically, an alien world for the Heartworm.

  The nose says something changed.

  Noses are fickle things. Trust a Thinker’s senses more than those of the dogs. I have tried far more parts than those I decided to keep.

  Why? they have practically no upkeep cost.

  Caenor stopped and faced the Original. Your spawn privilege blinds you. What to you is a mere afterthought is an hour’s worth of pondering for me. Even more maybe.

  Dirofil made an act of tilting the dog’s head. You think as if there was some sort of moral failure in said blindness. If there is, I am blind to it too. Blindness through and through.

  The Splinter of Doratev curled and uncurled his tentacles to shake a lingering numbness off the stolen vertebrae. It would behoove you to try and make up for such blind spots, Kind One.

  It proved that easy to disarm Dirofil. It proved that easy to remind him that no matter how far away he was from Leptos, he valued his judgement, and disappointing the eldest brother wounded an ancient part of him deeply. A part he valued, but that lay without a pragmatic use given his current situation.

  He needed to push through. To ignore melancholy and the memories of a world that would never come back. It wasn’t the world of the thinkers anymore. The floating spheres and cylinders long sunken among fur and whine, the spires eroded by lick and nibble, the souls of uncountable Splinters snuffed out by the caress of tooth and claw. The world had fallen chronically ill. And it was the role of a comorbidity to put it out perpetual misery. This was the kindness he ought to offer. The kindness of an euthanasiac. To the crestfallen brothers and sisters. To the cruelly twisted animals all around.

  It proved that easy to disarm Dirofil. Just as it often proved a mistake to do so. For an original needed no weapons to be a menace: children of a peculiar pair of minds, through their pliable bodies flowed the residual rage of their creators. The Thinkers of the Core had been named after ailments that fascinated one of their makers, and ailments had metaphorical claws as real as the talons of Dirofil or the burning will of Parvov. Once Dirofil had wondered why would their makers endow them with sharp bits and pernicious magic, why the desire to spar had budded in their hearts. The claws and tails could be excused as a mobility tool: to climb the spire walls, to hang onto the wobbly stairs of cylinders and spheres that led to the edge. It could be argued that the fire of Parvov returned pliability to that which had become rigid, to cold metal and stone. It could be argued that the threads of Morbilliv granted him the mobility he lacked since the day he spawned. Then there were the teeth of Lyssav. The smile she would so readily share. The ugly, high density blobs of psychosarc that budded on the surface of her body. The pain-seeking ability and behavior. Lyssav had been conceived a temple to wrongness, a reminder that their seeming paradise lay built upon shaky foundations. Before the sister no Thinker of the Core could forget their namesakes, the parasites they had been named after and the way they were damned to walk the tight rope: Leave the host weak enough so it cannot fight you back, but avoid killing them soon enough, or you shall perish too.

  None of them considered the word parasite implied something to be ashamed of, yet they were aware that wasn’t the case in the World Before the World. And in this darkness, and enclosed between those ribs, Dirofil felt he was finally honoring the noun as the makers had intended. Something he silently despised: Out of a duty towards Shadiran and their shared dream he would create a new world, but out of a spark of resentment towards the makers a part of him would cherish the act of burying the current one.

  You are far too quiet. Bother me, or I will expect a backstabbing to come soon.

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  What do you think you have that would benefit me to take by force? I cannot rob your knowledge. I am no mind eater: that’s my dear sister’s prerogative.

  Caenor mulled over his answer until they negotiated a sharp turn in the ravine, where hind legs battered and scratched the neck and side of Dirofil’s carcass, wounding the painless flesh and causing thick ropes of congealed blood to slowly slurry out of an open artery. He needed to better assimilate the skin and muscle to avoid such... petty losses.

  I have no blood. Caenor communicated a last.

  Such a lovely reply. But I find our status quo more than acceptable for the foreseeable future.

  That begs the question: what do you call foreseeable future?

  Dirofil stopped walking to meditate on it for a spell. In all honesty, a fiction. There’s no such thing as foreseeable in this sea.

  Not for the ignorant or blind, no. Caenor extended his eyed arm far to the side, blinking each Reaper’s eye in quick succession. In this needless act of arrogance, he glimpsed the form of their quarry, resting with utmost peace on a niche carved or unfilled far overhead. I found a napping one. Think you can climb over to it and make their rest into a permanent affair?

  Plotting murder, parasites? A mind intruded theirs, one Dirofil hadn’t felt before.

  Ah, the damned Collies. They are one of the few non-aggressive abominations, and they can learn languages and pick up on mind links. Caenor explained posthaste. His thoughts wore a coat of annoyance, but lacked any urgency whatsoever.

  Dirofil felt the seed of worry sprout in his soul. The dangers of the ocean, he could harvest them readily, or avoid those he deemed best to leave be. The ocean had always shown its cries, it’s howls, barks, and heartbeats. But it was the first time since he had awoken in his crumbling spire that Cynothalassa revealed its voice.

  Dog. Dirofil acknowledge their interlocutor.

  Temptation. The collie regarded back.

  Why are you? I am to destroy the world. To make a better one. Why are you?

  To justify our existence would be an atrocity bigger than the one isolation among peers inflicted upon us. We are, full stop.

  You consider your changed forms atrocious? Because we agree on that, fellow sentient… thing.

  Caenor, impatient, tapped Dirofil’s nose with a vertebra. The Original didn’t notice. Dirofil, there’s time enough after we finish the hunt to… study the collies.

  Sorry bud, my partner here is getting jealous. We have a peer of yours to put out their misery, if you’d allow it.

  Mental silence for a beat, and then an emotionless answer. We do not interfere. We think, we watch, we learn. We judge, yes. There’s not much more we can do.

  Dirofil dedicated a probing look to the Splinter.

  “The collies are too deformed to put up a fight.” Caenor whispered, careful that his words would get lost between the droning complaints and breaths of the sea before reaching the eardrums of their quarry. “The cannot hamper our hunt, and their physical hearing is … sub-canine at best. Once we are out of their range I’ll send you an image of their form. You will understand.”

  Are you a poorly amalgamated mass of heads melded together? Dirofil asked without hesitation.

  No. We are a well-amalgamated mass of border collies melded together.

  One less mystery in this life, then. Your carcasses make excellent hiding spots.

  We offer gratitude for your compliment.

  “Creators cruel, focus on the hunt,” he hissed in Dirofil’s dead face.

  Dirofil’s body gurgled, and then something cracked inside as he shifted his own flesh and core into a more comfortable position. A low blow, evidence of assimilated lungs. Of useless lungs. Me missed his armor, his explosions. He missed wings and his urchin cape. Mostly the cape.

  Crystal clear drool dripped on the thinker’s bodies as a couple Grand Dane stuck their heads out and tilted their snouts down to gaze at the weird travelers.

  “Well, will you climb?” Caenor’s impatience was showing itself. Dirofil didn’t mind: this seemed like the impatience bred by discomfort, and their environment was everything except comfortable for the average Thinker. For the Babesi-minded, though, the ravine with all the claws and extended twitching legs probably looked like a playground. Parvov would have seen opportunity there, too, albeit he couldn’t begin to guess what for.

  Will and capacity are wildly different beasts.

  The council fully agrees with that unprompted statement.

  “I’ll do it myself. Keep watch with mind and eye, will you?”

  Dirofil agreed without mediating a thought. Not refusing nor acknowledging Caenor’s order blissed him with a speck of plausible deniability in case things went awry. On his haunches he admired the flexibility even a lesser and modified Dirofil model was capable of, as The limbs with metallic bones grasped at thighs and arms and the claws and talons scratched heads for support, aiding the climb of the heavy mass that made up Caenor. The tentacles didn’t lack use: they secured the Splinter to a crowd of legs and tails and fangs. Yet their contribution paled in comparison to the nimble and precise limbs shaped after Dirofil’s. Looking at Caenor scamper up the dogs stirred up his memories, reminded him of the time he had endeavored to memorize the shape of each irregular tile that made up Shadiran’s palace’s outer walls. And he had succeeded, back when it was the time to live. And it had been long, the time to live—as long as it had been good. And it had been as good as his time in the sea had been stressful and despicable.

  Yet in this darkness pierced just by the light of their temperate souls, trapped in this corrupted reflection of their idyllic past, remains of that beauty could be found. Among the dogs, sometimes and only sometimes, an eroded sphere emerged, just to be swallowed by the living mass once more.

  A dry jab, a wet result. A pierced lung, the gurgle of blood and air escaping a wound together. Another quick stab from Caenor’s merciless claws, and the Lensed Bracco breathed no more. “One of the ears is torn and scarred. Such a waste.” He lamented, dislodging a talon from his right foot and driving it all the way up to the one hand of the same side of his body. “We could have double the stuff already, if only this moron hadn’t gotten himself maimed by I-know-what.”

  Dirofil turned off his ears. A modular existence had its advantages with it came to dealing with the annoyance of senses. To go deaf, blind, or numb on command: a valuable perk of inhabiting an alien body. Back in his, it was much harder to let go of the corporeal vices, like eyesight or core-unrelated pain.

  For the record, I am not listening to anything right now. Be my ears, chatterbox.

  I am no part of a Splinter of Babesi to be voice and ears at the same time. Behave in a way becoming of your nobility.

  The thought of piercing the eardrums of his new body flashed through Dirofil’s mind. The thought that Dirofil may had already done such a larvish thing peeved Caenor.

  And thus, deaf and happily so, Dirofil didn’t hear the warning sizzle of the suddenly-heated air. And with a surprised expression he watched as the beam pierced through his shoulder, searing the flesh and introducing him to the stench of a burnt cadaver for the first time in his life.

  He stitched the arm back into place with threads of dense psychosarc, and immediately dipped into a crouch, fully aware, all senses tuned up to find the attacker. Realizing it was behind them, he turned, just in time to take a shot straight in the head, towards the left side, boiling the bullterrier’s brains, obliterating half the snout, an eye, and the ear on that side and leaving a smoldering gash in their place. Melarsomine peddler of a bitch!

  Caenor hid deeper into the niche as he fabricated a pouch out of his own flesh to stash the lensed ear on. Need help with it?

  Dirofil spent more and more energy on psycholocating until he found the sniper, far out of his reach, with her ears curling under her eyes, adopting a position no regular dog was capable of accomplishing on their own.

  I lost an eye and an ear already. You judge by yourself. Dirofil communicated as he moved closer, ducking under outstretched grand-dane limbs. After a few steps, he realized something to be thankful for remained: Their attacker’s aim was awful when it came to hitting moving targets.