Heartworm [WEIRD progression fantasy] (Volume 1 complete!)

"One tide we will stop fearing the end, Morbilliv. This ship will save us. Also I learned how make my fire green. Look, it's you."

—Parvov, the tide Morbilliv saw himself reflected into a shaped flame.

The scream resounded through the parody of a spire, rattling the walls, floor, ceiling and roughly-hewn throne without discriminating. Seven tentacles stiffened, vertical, as two left arms, trembling, grasped at the one that quivered wildly. The only open eye, lids black like all others, iris blue unlike any, could only see what stood in front of it, it all behind a crimson, ethereal curtain. Flashes of several hues of red danced like souls in Caenor's other vision. He interpreted them as carriers of hatred and viciousness, and even deluded himself into thinking of some as fluttering bats.

The pain was deferred: It came neither from his body nor his mind. But the Reaper wouldn't let a thief get away unscathed. Pain shared, pain amplified, that's what the creature believed he deserved.

He dragged his feet over the polished floor, manifesting some despicable whirring. Too late he noticed his talons carved little grooves in the crystalline surface. His mechanical eyes lingered on the little sediment such erosion had generated, but his mind drifted back to the incorporeal carnage. Number four had caught the one prey it had been never meant to, and now he was suffering for the beast's negligence.

Letters etched themselves across the walls of a spire that seemed. Blood that dripped upwards and came from nowhere carved into the field of vision of his stolen eye.

"Are you amused by the show?" The letters asked, the sentence punctuated by a little drawing of Lyssav's nightmarish smile.

"So she knows. Marvelous," he muttered, hoping Lyssav couldn't hear him through whatever link had formed.

"I am impressed that a Splinter," a line said, and then it got erased, writing the next, of your spiritual weakness managed to steal an eye," the process repeated, barely giving Caenor enough time to read each piece of the statement, "from this fellow that's giving me a veritable workout."

It seemed that Lyssav was monologuing to him. One less worry for him, if she couldn't hear him.

"How, indeed, were you able to obtain an eye from this creature? My brother barely escaped with his life." She kept sending her fragmented inquiries, and soon enough Caenor managed to ignore them. He focused on the feeling of his feet skidding over the lustrous surface, on the little falls between every step. He had carved them perfectly equal, tried to grant his spire the life of things orderly, for it would never have the one of natural spires. His creation would forever remain inanimate, but he could pretend it wasn't so. And that would need to be good enough.

Red lights kept flashing in the field of vision of the Reaper's eye, but Caenor had already shut out the pain. One was forced to learn how to do so when dealing with so many rebellious dog parts. It required a titanic mental effort, and Caenor thought himself more than capable of it.

Another step, and another, and soon he was sliding out the hole he called a door, his sprawling, fully-spined tentacles following him like lazy snakes.

Finally, the connection got severed, and the pain receded all at once. Disappeared without a trace. In the darkness, illuminating the collie layer with his weak core, Caenor stood with all eyes closed but the one that, to his relief, could still see. The death of Four deprived him of the ability to see the surroundings of the creature, of course, but it also provided a safe way to constantly watch out for menaces unseen. This eye's utility hadn't been diminished, it had been sidegraded. He could keep it open now, as long as he pleased.

There wasn't nothing good in pain. But in having one reaper eye he could use without worry… that was an adequate repayment for the torture he had endured.

The Splinters of the Second felt it first. A wave of abject pain washing over them all, driving them crazy. "The Lady comes! Line up! The Lady comes!" They proclaimed as they rushed through halls, rooms, and in and out of chambers.

They repeated their desperate claims, interrupting the work of fellow splinters, bothering even the investigators. They ran and clawed the floors and even broke some parts of the lattice as they rushed aimlessly, prey of a panic most others failed to understand. Morbilliv and Babesi, who had been awoken by the ruckus, quickly made their way to one of the legsteering areas, and there they found several Splinters of Leptos, longing lazily, doing nothing now that there was no more need to steer the legs, their arms slung over the snake's jaws, as were some of their heads lying on them.

"Lyssav must have gotten hurt by the Reaper. And she comes back angry, Babesi. Pained. Excited." Morbilliv said, voice trembling as he avoided meeting the cyclopean stare of his sister. "For the good of everyone on board we must go outside and meet her before she commits some atrocity to de-stress herself."

"I don't think Lissy would—" Babesi began, and Morbilliv grabbed her head with his huge, dark hand.

"You hold her in a pedestal, and she lives up to your expectations only part of the time. When she's distressed, she hungers. And when she hungers, you wish for higher powers to exist." He let Babesi go, his new hand slowly curling until the fingertips nearly touched. "I respect our sister. But she's daughter of a fallen angel and a rising demon. There are five things I fear more than this sea." His voice fell lower and lower, as if saying the worlds would manifest the devils they enclosed. "Leptos' carelessness about the mundane, Lyssav's boundless hunger, Parvov's eternal flames, Dirofil's apocalyptic obsession, and…" his eyes were a soft thing as he regarded Babesi. "And your dismissal of the other four. You are fearless, Babesi. Why or how, I cannot know."

"My capacity of planning for times to come is unparalleled. I am not even sure how my sentences will finish sometimes."

If Morbilliv could, he would have dedicated her a smile. "It's no time for jokes. We must receive our sister and hold her back every way we can."

She looked up at her brother as they headed for the nearest corgite ladder to the outside world. "Morbilliv, do you believe Dirofil will manage to destroy the world?"

"I believe it's preferable if he reaches Shadiran in time. We have a chance to persuade him into coming to an agreement with Lyssav if that's the case. But if Shadiran has been claimed by the sea, or by whatever is happening at the Edge… I am afraid he may go rogue out of grief. And if Lyssav doesn't kill him, we better hope Leptos cares for once."

They met under Borzoilight, claws and purple scales scraping onto the outer layer of the Seventh, as the shambling mess of their sister dragged what remained of her body towards them with foreboding sluggishness. The core emitted savage pulses of carmine light, and every feature of Lyssav was present inside her psychosarc. But half of them were metal no more. The light of her soul had remade an eye and part of other, half the teeth, several legs, and the phalanxes of her left wing. Lyssav crawled hurt and broken, and every last one of her splinters could taste the pain as she approached, leaving behind lumps of unstable slime over the brown sausage dogs that composed the ground.

Morbilliv restrained the urge to jump off the ship and run in her aid. Cynothalassa breathed with unease under the feet of his younger brother, even as he descended, Babesi left behind, staring in unusual silence. A quick test of his new retractile claws reassured him that he was, at least, a bit armed, in case he regretted what he was about to offer.

"I assume the reaper has been reapt?" he shouted, unafraid of the oceanic horrors his voice could summon.

"Licked away every last remnant that polluted my form, and I am still starving. I see you through an eye and a half, and though no eye and no half," she slurred, her voicebox damaged, filled with a distressing static. "I won, Morbilliv. And this is the price." Twisted claws of light clawed at the place where her cheeks would have been, had her psychosarc remained in the places it should be. "One less menace roams the sea."

"It seems to me that the amount of things that threated my crew remain constant." Hen advanced towards his sister, back straight, forehorn tilted downwards. It wasn't the posture of a warrior facing its enemy, but of a damned one walking the gallows. "If there are any souls to be devoured today, let mine be the first and the last, Lyssav."

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"It's not your essence my suffering calls for, dear brother," she said, trembling like jelly, her body so unstable anybody who didn't know her would think she was about to perish. "I feel them coming for me, the vultures I cast into being. But this isn't carrion for them to eat, and they know. This is carrion before which they shall bow. My shadows and the prerogative to devour me are utterly incompatible."

He stopped advancing towards her. A shiver running through Parvov's metal plates, and through the new arm too. A wall of cries smashing onto him from behind just before Lyssav stopped, sat in place with the mouth agape, teeth hanging uneven.

"Here they come. Mirrors incapable of standing a broken reality. Here they come."

Morbilliv turned the upper half of his body, and tendrils of soul emerged from every crack of his armor. Crawling underlings shone crimson as they bled out the Corship's every entrance, their wings batting uselessly as they rushed forward, as some took air and others fell to the ground like sacks of screws. All nine crew members who owed their existence to Lyssav's had come out, and despite they all looking nearly the same, Mobilliv's eyes darted from twisted face to twisted face, invoking before his mind's eye a name for each.

He thought about shouting. About commanding as the captain he was. But twenty-seven were the cat's or snake's eyes staring at him. The claws remained retracted as his soul kept welling out in all its light, which rivalled the Borzoi's for this light had a purpose, and shared it with a wall, with a net. As the Splinters rushed past a speechless Babesi—for oxymoronic that may sound—he was determined to hold them back. The Captain had a duty to the crew, and he was the only one that stood in the way of Lyssav's hubris-coated jaws. If to swat them like flies was the only way to save their souls, swat them like flies he would.

Lanidara spearheaded the suicide charge of her sisters. Mobilliv sensed, watched stressed, but counting with platinized steadiness. No muscles to jerk. No nerves to betray the control of a body only partly his. The continued existence of part of his crew on the line wouldn't shake his determination. A thinker's fear was naught but a weapon to be harnessed, or a means to flee. Fight or flee, never freeze: a mind wouldn't stop thinking until it was destroyed, so why would their bodies stop moving just because of a little anxiety?

Lanidara tried to fly as close to the borzois as possible, compelled by a drive stronger than any of her kind. But for her came the soothing tendrils, salvation woven in threads, tangling around her tail and pulling her down with little care for her physical integrity, slamming her against another of her sisters that tried to crawl by Mobilliv, low to the ground.

Nine Splinters had left the ship, and nine would return, even if his core shattered from the effort of holding them back. But he had only a mind, and maintaining his focus tired as he was resulted a challenge. He slammed dreads of soul into his underling with merely a though, but he still had to kept track of nine disorganized splinters gone rogue, and of an Babesi that watched paralyzed. He could appreciate her looking at one and another, trapped in a frantic loop.

And he said nothing, because he had stared into her mind, and knew the monster she had to face. One of the Splinters slipped away from his grasp by reducing the consistence of her body, part of the slime flowing through the spaces between the ropes of soul, to rejoin a broken body on the other side.

"Sendari!" Morbilliv cried out, realizing she rushed towards her fate and he had failed to account for the fact they could dislocate their own bones and break their dense attachments, if they were driven crazy enough by his sister's pain. And seemingly, they were. Lanidara used the moment of distraction to extend her tail and stab at Morbilliv's chestplates, the stinger and the armor colliding, their clanging nearly muted by the thin sheet of psychosarc covering both. A cascade of rebellion followed this harmless attack. Each coil weakened, Morbilliv's realization that this was not a tide he would stop draining the strength from them. The flower of a thousand threads for petals withered down, letting the blood-colored friends and underlings rush past him, towards his death. The Captain of the Corship could stop most threats the sea threw at them. Against Cynothalassa he could stand as a wall, but against a desire to serve and die, he found himself powerless. "Farewell, Splinters of Her. You were excellent crewmates. And forgive me, Parvov, a little part of your dream is getting devoured by a monster I am not willing to face anymore."

He dropped onto all his appendages and with a weakened, overexerted core he undertook the titanic task of dragging their form back to the ship. He could feel his thoughtcrystal struggling to remain whole, his very ideas fragmenting only to rejoin and leave cognitive scars in their wake. "Babesi… Drag me in. Drag me in!" He commanded, prey to panic as he realized his pointless bravado was costing him his life. Too many threads, too long, trying to create a safety net that The Splinters easily negotiated. Now he could believe himself a fool, for he had jeopardized the wellbeing of the whole crew for a few Splinters. They needed him, even as the light inside him diminished and shadows began to nest inside his armor.

Now he was afraid. And as his eyes died out to save energy, he saw three flaming eyes, cleft suns, staring directly into the deepest of his being.

"Dumbass." The eyes said, and the word echoed in the bottomless gloom. "Hold on for a few minutes while I feast. Then, I'll share some energy with you if you still need it."

Morbilliv fell unconscious, and Lissav watched from afar, surrounded by her equals that stalked in a circle, dragging their long bodies with two to four of their five arms.

"We have come Lady, we answer the call." Sendari said first, and the others repeat the last clause of the sentence in unison.

Lyssav didn't bother with an answer. She just stood there, with her mouth open as the circle of seeming vultures closed, their wings of bent and fragmented bones like colorful crests, displayed in a grotesque ritual dance.

Babesi couldn't help but catch a glance while begging Morbilliv to wake up , curling over Parvov's limp body and keeping guard like the dogs that surrounded her.

A thorn of crimson light extended from Lyssav's heart and stabbed one of the Splinters into their chest, and then four more strikes like the first followed, the tips of the luminous ribbons curling into hooks as she beckoned with a finger like a corkscrew. "Edráde. That's the name that you fear will be lost. But I won't forget, Edráde. I won't forget how it is pronounced, nor how it would be written."

With a violent tug the ribbons retracted, plunging Edráde straight into Lyssav's broken mouth, impaling her flesh into teeth both real and freshly imagined, light and alloy matching each other's sharpness, the blood that none of her kind had, manifested from Lyssav's will and puissance, molten metal dripping sizzling from the wounds and boiling the mucilage it touched as Lyssav carved her way towards Edráde's soul.

The teeth reached the soul and light escaped through the cracks of the flawed thoughtcrystal until it gave in and melted down into a paste that Lyssav could down with ease. One by one the Splinters became undone, lifeless bones of dark red allow scattered over the earthy dachshunds, their hearts offered in sacrifice to an original whose every missing piece gradually restored itself, the slime exuding metal over the framework of cursed light, the macabre spectacle seen by every thinker soon to die.

And whenever one fell, she grabbed the next, and swallowed the nexus of their existence all the same.

One by one, the Splinters became undone. One by one, the reflections turned into the object that had spawned them in the first place. In the middle of a cemetery of lookalikes Lyssav, satisfied but never sated, renewed, bearing bones of two hues, bright red on the new ones, and tempered mate on those that survived the Reaper's onslaught.

Babesi watched, frozen still. She knew not to move when Lyssav acted like this. Never before had she tried to interfere, nor would she start now that Morbilliv lay under her, deep in meditation, his core struggling to heal the damage done by his careless display of power. By his useless display of power. Babesi knew what her dear sister did. She had seen the carcasses, she had inspected them and learned every detail. But it was only now that she witnessed the horror and found it… less distressing than she had imagined. Far cleaner.

"Lyssy! Morbilliv needs help!" She called out, waving her tail to catch her sister's attention. She knew not to approach the feasting Lyssav, at least until she came back to dogground.

After a second allotted for acclimation to the new eachoes inside her deepest sanctum, Lyssav answered. "Fear not, Babesi: Nobody goes thoughtless this tide."

The Second Envisioned lunged savagely and with flight like a dead man's heart she suspended herself in the air, looming over her siblings. Out of her soul and the windows into it she fashioned two tears, droplets of light and intent. And they fell with the grace of dead leaves, one from the central eye, one from the left eye. Two tears for her second-youngest brother, under the watch of her only sister and the toddler they called a ship.

I can help Morbilliv too.

Unnecessary, dear Corship. The fifth will immediately rise when the tears land.

And as it was thought it happened. The tears suffused through and into the battered armor of Parvov and their essence reached Morbilliv's weary nucleus. Morbilliv started back to the world of the aware, with a mental scream, pain too overwhelming to demand more than a gurgle from Parvov's voicebox. Fear wouldn't paralyze the Fifth Conceived, but pain as sure as the lack of morning would.

IT was not a pain that he had ever felt. It was not a pain that allowed him to think. , ideas flowed freely, streaming as they turned into pure thoughtenergy, overloading his core with newfound life, tinging his flesh in the hue of his sister.

Eyes so artificial opened wide, and they stared into the old and new ones of Lyssav, failing to understand for a second. Then an arm raised and pointed at the face of the looming goddess with three fingers. "Eat it." He demanded, and he knew why he needed jaws: not to bite and tear, but to grit one's teeth in those moments of absolute desperation. "Eat it Lyssav!"

"It's a gift. Do not reject it, please," she landed by his side, her stinger caressing his shoulder. "We are tired, we should go back into the ship."

One hand grabbed the skull, two the armpits, and the remaining two served Lyssav as an aid to drag her body forward, wings rowing at her sides, legs Pushing her weight and the one of the paralyzed captain.

"Eat… it," he pleaded again, but said pleas fell in deaf ears. For the remainder of the tide, he would suffer. And she would expect him to be thankful for it.