NOVEL NEXT V2 Chapter 25: Unseen Shield
"I am not sure choice belongs, or ever belonged, to men. Humans. People. Call us as you will. I find the fact these concepts of creatures, the automata, having non-biological brains truly idealistic. To be free from the flesh, from physical dimension that is humanity's ultimate jail. It has been written that no man is an island, but I'd argue we are closer to an island than to the idealized figures found in the tales we weave. Both we can create: islands, characters, but only the second we have deemed free one and a thousand times. And yet, the more we study our brains, or the rest of our bodies for this matter, the more things we find fall actually outside our control. How are we, then, different to the island subjected to the erosion of the tides, the lift of the plates, the tan of the tropical sun? What does the island control about its own existence, about its passage through the world? Not a thing, not the smallest thing."
—Musings of a Detractor, page 15
For several hours on end he wandered, and not a single hole he found into the fabric of the barrier. The Eye of the Reaper had been closed as he waited for the creature to drift away, as he blindly ran from the last place the eye had gawked at. Discouraged Dirofil was: the barrier seemed impenetrable. Each attempt got closer to insanity, not to Shadiran. Each panting and whining corner turned presented to him this wall, unnegotiable, an imperfect analogy of Lyssav's noxious presence. Claustrophobia creeped in, even if Dirofil knew half the world was available for him to roam. Having survived a nap outside the Corship even meant that he could probably live a long, mostly peaceful life inside Cynothalassa if he managed to gather the right body parts to develop a sustainable routine. Components like chains and a bit of ingenuity could help him cheaply weave temporal nests where he could rest, safe from most of the sea dwellers—titans like the Reapers and the Tribulators notwithstanding.
A life after failure was at hand. And it didn't have to be a bad life. But the sole fact there was a life of any sort meant he would have betrayed Shadiran's trust and their shared dream. There had to be a solution, a shortcut, a passage somewhere. The habitable spindle of the universe reached the point of maximum width around the height he was at, as it extended from the core far above from the one far below, from welcoming fire to corrosive smoke, both things donning the same orange hues. In no other span of creation could he travel the four cardinal directions as far as he could there, and that was a damning reality. If holes in the wall could be anywhere, but were few, he would rely on pure luck to find one that completely crossed it, not only in time, but maybe ever.
The oldest of lights, orphaned daughter of the sun, wasn't welcome by him, and yet fell upon his frame without pause. Dogs of crystallized hairs tried to escape their horrible cocoons under him, and yet he sat. He sat and existed. He sat and thought, indecisive, hating himself for this paralysis.
But soon came a weak call, one able to break through the dense psychical fog. A call that included his name, and a petition made with a voice he recognized as his dreaded sister. Distant, almost unintelligible.
Dirofil, return to the ship. Dirofil, return to the ship. Dirofil, return to the ship. She broadcasted without a care for the titanic energy expenditure, and the signal grew gradually stronger.
The Reaper stalking, Lyssav coming. It was a bad tide to be thinking. And regarding thoughts he needed them running fast. A quick peek at his right hand told him what to do. Maybe Lyssav could devour the barrier, but letting her garner such amount of power would render her unbeatable, inevitable. No. The only winning move was to set up a trap, weaponize the Reaper against his sister, and pray. Pray that the horror that haunted him and cursed his hand didn't prove lesser than the horror he loved.
He begun by injecting a dollop of zeroweave into a cavity formed between several crystallized dogs. An anchor for the chains. He attached a single link to it, and then another and another, his three weaving hand-tentacles working as one, a steady progression towards completion. Soon he anchored the other end, lower on the vertical axis, defining a diagonal line.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
From one of the links near the speleothem he dangled from he extended another chain, an unsound structural choice, but the chains were not made to stand the tug of war. These were not manacles, this tangle he was creating was not meant to fulfill the role of a catching net, or of a restraint. These were condensers. Clouds without freedom.
Once he settled up an intricate arrange with twelve anchors and interconnected chains—a veritable net of links—he let the crystal dogs go and folded his wings, diving head first into the abyss, away from the barrier of memories. He could feel Lyssav's mind drawing closer, her call even stronger, and he needed to defend against her long distance attacks, her ankylosing rays. And the sea had the perfect answer. If Lyssav's fashioned herself an empress, he would be the tailor to present her the perfect set of clothes. And he had the prefect hunting ground to procure the "fabrics", far down, where the cold ended and the forest began.
A glimpse of the cursed here, another there, and without breaking his fall, he located slumbering prey. The Murkhound woke up to the stabbing pain of Dirofil's talons digging into his shoulders, to the short-lived agony of bones breaking as the impact pushed him deep among the dogs that composed one of the forest's trunks. Dirofil's foot wasted no time finding his head, burying the talons into the skull to crush it and extinguish the flare he had ignited for his sister to follow. He grabbed the cadaver fast, stashed it between his two left arms, and, with the eye of the reaper closed, glided, jumped and climbed back to the upper edge of the horizontal forest, where the dying light of the distant borzoi caressed the cold atmosphere. He kept ascending, quickly locating a platform of huskies and malamutes to lay his prize and get to work. He swapped his lower left and the foot of the same side and got to work by tact, puncturing the skin just to insert a little bit of zeroweave into the hole. A visual aid for the delicate task that followed.
With no time to lose, Dirofil began shaving off ribbons of the creature's invisible flesh. Muscles, skin, the mouthed dreads, even organs would do: all of them served to detour thought energy. To act as an extra defense against Lyssav's tricks. The bones, too would be of use to him. The humeri were too short to contribute to the frame of what he had in mind, but the bones of both anterior and posterior zeugopodia had an adequate length. The femurs were also… acceptable, even if they had an undesirable thickness to them.
He extracted the bones with haste; Lyssav's call grew stronger, clearer, consistent. The cuts were quick and the production of zeroweave bracers to join the bones together by the ends quicker. Each articulatory surface required careful feeling, so he just butted the ends of the bones into the slime of his head, leaving a mold of them in his face. The molds, he used them as a guideline to shape the zeroweave and attain adequate unions between the bones.
He fitted the interior of the freshly-assembled bone pentagon with numerous ribs, and interdigitated some of them for good measure. Over and through this lattice he introduced and stapled the ribbons of flesh and skin, and tied and interwove what he thought and hoped to be sinews, epithelia and blood vessels. Several layers of tissue he applied, making sure to be methodical enough as to cover the whole circle in them, introducing the buckler inside the slime of his abdomen to find any holes in the mesh and cover them with more Murkhound tissues.
Once the front was finished, he used a portion of the spine of his victim, rendered inflexible with a few lumps of zeroweave clogging each articulation, all to fashion a handle for the buckler.
He finally returned his extremities to where they should be and attached the shield to the dorsal side of his upper left wrist. Its weight was comforting, and seeing the pieces of sky-blue matter seemingly hover a few centimeters away from his arm quite amusing.
He had finished in time. Lyssav hadn't found him yet. The Reaper lounged nearby but out of sight.
Leisure drenched his flight upwards, relaxing between the beats of the wings despite the beats of the hearts. The moment of truth, and, paradoxically, of betrayal, approached. He didn't hang under his canopy of chains, though, no. The chains rained, and the rain was a gift that had to remain untouched, hidden. He was far enough from them to try and lead lyssav there after a short persecution. And by batting the eye of the Reaper, he lured the monstrosity there, too, damnation inching closer with each wag of a nearly-frozen tail.
It was time to kill a sister. To go from the kind one to the slayer of one's kind.
He loved Lyssav. He loved their world. But he loved Shadiran and their shared dream just a drop more.
And a drop… a drop could be all he needed. More so now that her call drew closer.
And closer.
And closer.