“‘So, what vaccines should we give the puppies, Dario?’

  ‘Why do you ask like it matters? Their life expectancy with or without parvovirus, distemper, coronavirus or even rabies are equal by but a rounding error by this point. The same as the life in your womb. Premature birth, or death in-utero as the world is torn apart by the looming shadows. The monsters we planned for the new world won’t hold a candle to humanity.’

  ‘You cretin. What if the prophecy and the scientists are wrong?’

  ‘Well… then vaccines don’t work and the puppies could develop dog autism. I’ll bring the vaccines and give you the number of a friend that sells model planes, so they can have fun.’”

  —Dario and the owner of a sixty-days-old Poodle litter, a month and a half before the end of the world.

  The Friend is Sharp. The Corship commented via the mental links to the crew as Morbilliv stepped out the hatch by the bridge, retractile claws coming in and out, betraying his excitement. His standing honored the new armor, dark and slick under the light of the Borzoi, and his white and cold soul bled out of every joint, flowing freely and underlining the dark greens that marked him as Morbilliv, the Fifth Conceived. Hanging from the borzoi spirals came a storm of bone blades, a mutant that moved upside down and charged with a thousand sharp bony appendages. It was the sort of mutant that Doratev often observed from the protection of the bridge as he tried to take a wild guess at what it had been before aberration struck. In Morbilliv’s opinion, gleaning the past of the menace was several orders of magnitude smaller in importance than securing a future where it would be absent.

  Lyssav, paralyzed, watched from behind the One eye of the Corship, still blue and ostensibly meek. Babesi had “errands” to run elsewhere, which often meant she had overexerted herself talking to some Splinters about anatomy or bouncy balls and fallen into a forced slumber in the middle of some room or corridor. Lyssav couldn’t look away from the clattering creature, from the clashing and self-sharpening structures of matte bone that lumbered closer and closer, not even if she wanted. It caused her not even the smallest of worries: Her Furious Form embodied might making right, but her Paralysis Form was all about mind over matter. Inside this sea, her spirit and her command of it was second to none. Morbilliv had asked for a chance to… play with the creature, however, and she would allow it. It would be a good test run of his new body, and an empress needed… at least three capable subjects. Maybe four with the Splinter of Shadiran.

  Her thoughts wandered to Dirofil and her bones shivered, allotting the second the puniest amount of movement. The emotional part of her wished him safe, seeking return and redemption somehow. But the logical half of Lyssav knew only in his death peace could be found. Holding onto a knowingly-useless shred of innocence, she hoped the world would for once bend over backwards and let emotions prevail over logic.

  Morbilliv sharpened his already fair-edged claws further. Eager, that was the word that could best describe the Fifth Conceived. A mycelium of blades approached, and he desired to test his new toys against it. Unlike his brother, he didn’t need to destroy the world to create one perfect for him. He just needed to parry, to outplay thinker or mutant. Then, during an instant, that superiority in tactic or might granted him a flawless present, a moment that, in his opinion, couldn’t improve. Glory, nowhere to be found when battling beast of simple minds, didn’t factor in. Deeper than that, he didn’t seek a stroke for his ego, but a symphony coming to fruition in either victory or defeat. And now that Lyssav looked over her little siblings and the ghost of Parvov had stopped clinging to his flesh, he was allowed to indulge in this unity, in this little paradise of his.

  As for the opinion of the dog, the minds of beasts are sometimes inscrutable.

  Not this one, though: The crew looked soul-food-shaped and they had stepped in her way. Oh, the motivations of Cynothallasans: always so honest and unbothered by the trappings of complexity.

  Morbilliv crossed his arms into an X and let the tendrils of soul dangle loose and wild from his fingertips as he bowed in front of the incoming mutant. It was time to perform, to dance, and lethal were his ribbons. Distemper raced off the ship, a din of metallic clanks resounding through the fur and sinew of the ocean. From his back self-woven wings of light emerged, their sole existence an arrogant display of Morbilliv’s mastery as a soul-threader. He didn’t fly like Lyssav or Morbilliv, he didn’t glider or maneuver or hover, he hanged from the threads of his wings, as if his soul anchored to the very fabric of space to support him. They detached from a point in the air and attached to another, once and again, pulling him closer to his adversary.

  “There’s peace to be found in knowing who pulls your strings, fellow puppet. Your puppeteer may be hunger, or perhaps instinct or rage. I am handler of myself. So be dragged forward, and let us see, fellow puppet, whose master has the defter fingers.” He said, dangling midair as if he were a lifeless doll.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  The back-down clinger began with a battery of tens of bone blades that coursed through the humid air and headed straight for the dark mass of Morbilliv’s armor. But the deep green of distemper had some Dobermann in it now, and contracting his hands and legs he took the brunt of the hit on his plates, reeling back, barely a few dents adorning the resistant metal that composed his new appendages. “This is the only welcome resistance I have found in this regrettable sea. My turn now.”

  The Captain of the Corship gracefully raised his left hand, the back facing his enemy, and then retracted his claws in the very instant where doing so would catch the bony edge between them and the body of his fingers. The right hand flew to the encounter of the knife, and none of the dogs nor most of the thinkers present could decide which was more sickening: the sounds of bones being shattered without mercy, or the wild howls of the creature.

  A quick glance back allowed Morbilliv to see Babesi cheering and jumping outside the ship, bouncing over the dachshunds. “Woo, Morbi, again, again! So cool!”

  This instant of distraction earned Morbilliv an impalement: a long lance of bone finding its way between the plates, missing the core and coming out his back without causing major damage, but still pinning him. The rattle of bone kissing metal made itself heard as the blunt sides of the blades bashed into Morbilliv from above, from below, from the front, from the left and the right. But his calm demeanor was worthy of being extolled: Morbilliv was not one to feel the world in his face: He often felt reality happened behind a screen that separated his body and its sensations from his true self. It had begun shortly after possessing Parvov’s body, and now a part of him knew that sensation would never go away. But what else could a warrior want more than to be immersed in his own microcosmos as they battled? To be able to remain cold and logical in one’s assessment of the threat because one’s own life being a stake feels as an externality, as if it was a loss that would happen to someone else—to someone he didn’t care about.

  He withstood the violent lashing without emitting a single sound. As long as his bones weren’t pierced, he wouldn’t blow up. And if his skeleton blew up, he knew his core capable of withstanding the explosion, and trusted Lyssav would intervene to save his life before the creature took him. He hadn’t been born with this body, and he wasn’t hell-bent on keeping it around for long. His body had been lost; Parvov’s lay in dark, quiet solitude. Disposable was the most honest word that could describe the new one.

  A flick of the tail as he realized where Doratev had placed—or, rather, hid—the trigger. He spun using the lance of bone as his axis by pulling himself up his soulstraps, and once he was head down he aimed the stubby tail, the bright barrels that crowned it, against the stake’s exposed joint. Then, his flesh, like half a dozen of little fingers, pulled on the small hooks whose only reason to be was to expose the puggum loads to the flows of energy in Morbilliv’s body, allowing ignition. Obliterating the knees or elbows the slugs pierced through with violent hatred. They ripped through air and tissue alike; a whistle complemented the explosion of the puggum as the shots flew wild and uncaring.

  The beast wailed, and like the gun that had wounded her, she recoiled. Her armored suckers unlatched rhythmically from the helixes of borzois just to reach again for those that they had hold onto moments before. The creature closed her blades around herself in a layered, fragmented armor, missing plates where Morbilliv had severed an arm or leg. It was like watching a wounded wiwaxia retreat, try to hide in the poorly oxygenated waters of the Cambrian.

  And while Wiwaxids couldn’t run away from extinction, one could run away from Morbilliv. Distemper, unlike rabies, sometimes spared a witness. “The bite’s worse than the bark, but not by much.” He curled all of his fingers over the stake of bone, and extracted it from his chest with surgical precision. He lifted it and aimed, reaching back with the bone spear readied. Then, he aborted his movement, seeing the creature insisted on running away. Another parting gift could be considered unwarranted cruelty.

  He wouldn’t deliver the blow, impale the bone into the body from whence it came. SO he let all of his articulations relax, his body go limp as it dangled form the soul strands.

  Doratev, I need to reload the tail. Could you do me the solid?

  I work in the more entropy-rich states, not in solids.

  Morbilliv glanced down, at the severed bone spear. He had been reminded there was always someone on board who deserved a little impalement.

  A explosion of blue fire startled the Fifth, the defeated party bursting in flames and crying in pain , white apatite letting wounds of sky ripple through each blade. Belabored breaths, a loss of strength that made the clinger fall down over the Dachshunds and Chihuahuas, Sick squelches of self-impalement and the cracking of broken bones disrupting the symphony of hearts.

  Lyssav! Cease! This isn’t necessary. I had already repelled it.

  It’s my palace, and my right to tidy it up as I see fit.

  Morbilliv tensed up, enthralled by the reflection of the blue fire on the dorsal of his dark arm. Your palace. The ocean that soon will have swallowed all that is good is your palace?

  Our eldest brother refuses the calling. He’d rather see nature take us before taking the reins of the world on his more-than-capable hands. I love Leptos: for his sake I’d shatter my very existence. But he has left reality to rest upon my aching form. I ought to inhabit the whole world because I alone can restructure this chaos into a new order. And order, brother, is tidy. Order is devoid of angry mutant pooches that want to mince the souls of my family.

  Morbilliv hoisted himself back before the entry hatch of the bridge with ungainly thoughts, sick of the sizzle of boiling blood, giving his wide back to the bright blue hue the whimpering pyre gave off. If it were a real palace, sister, what would you like to have as the centerpiece of your throne room? A statue to your ego?

  Lyssav, still, thought carefully, never averting her gaze from the victim of her psychic might. A fountain. With a pool around it. And water. Graceful, beautiful, peaceful water.

  Morbilliv tuned out of the mental link, pulled open the latch in front of him, and descended back into the bridge with a consistent rhythm, glared at Doratev, and bee lined to the laboratory by his side. He understood why Lyssav wanted a water fountain, and wondered if he wished he didn’t.