Parsec

It was not so much like sleeping as drifting upon a sea of hungry shadows. The cocoon speared threads of spell-silk into her body, twisting her scent like malleable chitin beneath deft hands.

Near done now, Venera spoke.

Vapours could not unweave tell-tale starlight and brittle knife-edge. But they could blanket her body in a wreath of misdirection. They could sprout the scent of wildflowers, allow illusion to root over her face and wings and fingertips, allow her the lie of a still-living Hive.

When she opened her eyes once more, the shapes past the veil of the cocoon were wreathed in darkness. When she strained her ears, she could barely piece together the sound of breathing beyond. She frowned, guessing the strain of disguise-making had exhausted her, further blunted her strength and focus.

The human dreams, Venera observed.

Parsec grunted in acknowledgment and flexed her limbs, tearing through the skeins of webbing anchoring her upright. The outer wall of the cocoon was more difficult to pierce; there was a fresh quiver to her movements that hadn’t been there before, and she ended up having to use her teeth.

When she crawled through the gash and out into the room, she was greeted by near-pure darkness. A faint square of light shone through the shut curtains, but she could not discern the slightest thing about the rest of the room. She squinted, scowling when her eyesight didn’t adjust of its own accord, and not even when she urged it to.

A thrum of unease filtered through to the forefront of her mind, far sharper than the initial acceptance she’d mustered upon the realisation that she’d get no honey this solstice. Weakened strength was one thing, and slowed flight was not a pleasant prospect. But night navigation had always been her favoured domain. Without it, she felt blind.

Tatterdemalion woes, Venera said.

Parsec swallowed the sourness arising in her throat: so the disguise-making had additional costs? Well, it was to be expected. It simply meant she had to find that honey substitute, and soon.

She stumbled another couple of steps further into the room, mumbling a spell beneath her breath. A faint speck of spell-light sparked in her palm and she saw in the glow of it that the human, Jackal, had curled up to sleep upon the remaining cot. In the space between one blink and the next, the slope of his shadow seemed to undulate, like a saltwater wave.

Venera’s ghost-sigh sifted along her cheek. Clear waters clouding over. Our blame, foresee it?

“Well,” Parsec murmured. “I doubt the…travel…through his Archive-link did him any good. But it is not my fault. I did not know the route when I chose it.”

Disapproval washed over her like a coat of thick snow. Precipitated, this-one. Predecessor was not the spark, key, catalyst. No body left to hurt with.

“I said I would help him, did I not?”

Said, or promised?

“I do not make promises to humans.”

There came a sense of more faint disapproval. Try nourish now.

Parsec ground her teeth together and gave her wings a tired shake. Part of her wished to argue, to simply sleep until morning. But the lack of true Hive honey scratched at her insides, a new and shaken hunger that refused to fade. The air tasted stifling upon her tongue. The cocoon tasted of nothing.

See it? Predecessor and Archive lend a ravenousness. Stoke a hunger. The severance is more to blame, with this-one, but does this-one see it? Is as such for the human.

“Hm,” Parsec said, and continued her meal.

The night bore on as she knelt beside the carcass of her creation and disassembled it, mouthful by mouthful. The spell-forged material flaked open like desiccating parchments in her hands and melted beneath her teeth. Her fingers twitched minutely every so often, without her say-so. What leftover nutrients remained were crucial if she hoped to use her strength effectively—with ghostly aid or otherwise.

This-one engulfed knowledge, Venera said. Need not the predecessor.

Could Venera see or feel the set of her wings? Parsec wondered, or was it some other unfathomable ghost-sense at play? If their thoughts were becoming intertwined, she did not feel it.

“I have said so before,” Parsec hissed around a mouthful of crumbling cocoon. “That you are—”

Yes. The predecessor understands. The predecessor only asks this-one-Parsec to implement for itself. Fire in the hand. Predecessor bequeaths, and it will burn-crackle. This-one creates, and it will…will hurt less.

Parsec sighed. “I am not a Titania.”

No, Venera said dryly—if a ghost could speak dryly. This-one was born to accomplish more than that.

She finished the last of the cocoon and stood again, stumbling over to the curtained window. Twitching the fabric aside revealed the street gone quiet, blued by lanterns. At least she could still see that.

She reached for the pack slumped at the end of the bed, examining its pockets for what she sought. In the third one along, she found something suitable: a vial of pepper kernels, half-full. She found two spare cups and emptied the pepper into one of them.

She took the remaining cup into her hands and drew a deep breath. Venera touched her shoulder in silent understanding: this was going to hurt.

“Now?” she asked.

Fly with own wings, if this-one would. Would be…easier. Less movement, less pain.

Reluctantly, she summoned the recollection of shapes, the knowledge of where those ghost glands had rooted themselves. She gathered her magic and poured it into her neck and tongue, thinking, shaping, remembering…

A little push from Venera, in the form of a finger brushing her throat, and it happened.

Searing, burning, spikes at her throat, followed by a twisting ache in every joint. At least she was prepared for it this time. She gasped out a precious few drops of unripe honey, the cup raised to catch them. It was so little. Wouldn’t last her a day. But syrup, schismatist-brewed syrup…

She distracted herself with the promise of that syrup as she squeezed more honey from the ghost-glands, just enough to fill perhaps a fifth of the cup.

Enough, Venera said, at the exact moment she resolved to stop.

She released her hold on the glands, letting them dissipate. The soreness lingered in her joints as she poured the honey into the vial, careful to not spill a drop. She capped the vial and set it aside, licking the cup for any spare trace.

There. She had done all she could. Now it was a matter of hoping a brewer would want such a thing, and to find the brewer in the first place.

Behind her, Jackal turned over in his sleep. He murmured words in the human tongue, tinged with distress. She frowned when she did not glean their meaning and strode closer. Another spark of spell-light in the palm, to light the way.

Jackal shifted again, half-shouting as he rolled onto his side. His pillow did not obscure his syllables when he spoke them, but they sounded odd nonetheless—she could not understand.

She reached out and shook him roughly by the shoulder. “Wake up,” she said against the unease uncoiling in her chest.

His eyes snapped open, strangely wet-looking in the low light. He yelled, hands flying out to shove against her arm before faltering halfway.

He spoke something. She didn’t know what. At least he sounded calmer.

“Jackal?” she tested. “Can you understand me?”

Human faces were more difficult to read with their lack of spines, but his confusion seemed clear enough. He said a different thing, equally as meaningless. The sounds coming out of his mouth were all too round. Warbling, like birds. She turned her attention away.

“Venera?” she asked.

Predecessor cannot breach.

Parsec gathered herself, stepping back from the cot as Jackal sat up, rubbing at his face. So the cocoon had taken half her sight and half her comprehension. She had a disguise to show for it in return, but what good would it do her if Jackal could not lead her to his alleged nest of schismatists? Scent alone would not save her from trying to trick the Hival office—it was only two-thirds of a measure. It would, she thought with some irritation, be best to avoid Hival sight altogether.

Least it is night, Venera offered.

“Yes, and they are able to see,” Parsec said sourly. “Unlike I.”

Not so, Venera said. Unless all are Generals?

“Lieutenants, too. The higher patrols.”

This one has scented too much of the inner sanctum. Think of proportion. Most can see same as this-one. Will carry—concept of moon-fire-sun-chained-in-glass—light abreast. Warning enough.

“Mm,” Parsec said, and lashed her tail in agitation. “Only the human knows where the schismatists lay.”

She turned back to Jackal, who stood quite still at her back, watching her talk to herself with wide eyes. Perhaps she was mistaken, but he looked stricken. Ill at ease. How to convince him of the meaning?

If not sound, then? Venera prompted. Scent?

“No,” Parsec said. “Not scent.”

She sent her speck of spell-light skittering overhead and pressed a hand to her throat. The cocoon-markings had faded off the floor, but she could still summon that memory, that sensation like a hundred tiny thorns raking the underside of her tongue…

Indigo splashed into her palm. Jackal yelped and backed away. Ignoring his babbling, she dipped her free hand into the ink and stalked over to the closest wall. She was no anointed artisan. The shape formed clumsily beneath her fingers—head, torso, limbs. Then another, with a tail and a pair of wings stuck to its shoulders. After a moment’s thought, she added spines crowning its head.

“See?” she said aloud, hoping the guidance conveyed something. She glanced over her shoulder—he’d stopped backing away, at least. “This is you, and that is I.”

Turning back to the wall, she hastily inked another drawing an armspan off to the right: several figure-shapes, all with wings and tails and spines.

“And this is the nest of schismatists.”

She dipped her finger into the last of the ink and scratched a crude line across the wall, joining the two.

“You will take me to them. I require it.”

She turned back round and watched as he stepped hesitantly closer. More words burbled from his mouth, but she gripped his shoulder and shook her head from side to side—a gesture adopted by long-ago Lieutenants, she recalled, a habit filtered through to the rest of the Hive. Surely it was sufficiently rooted in human behaviour? She tried to recall whether she had encountered a human who had done this—but then, she had not been on proper patrol in a long time. They were such fast-moving creatures, teeming and prolific, their cities choking clusters with no proper rhythm to them.

“Do you understand?” she asked with a trace of desperation. She gestured at the window, then on second thought, to the door.

Jackal began to speak. She almost hissed with frustration, until he halted of his own accord. He looked the wall up and down once more. His gaze dawned in something that could be recognition. And he nodded.

===

Kraedia City was almost peaceful by night, the smaller streets quiet save for the occasional passer-by. A faint mist of rain had fallen during her time in the cocoon, and Parsec counted herself fortunate that her borrowed cloak did not look so suspicious given the weather. She tucked her wings closer to her back and walked in lockstep at Jackal’s back.

Seawater and saffron-paste, Venera hummed into her ear. Predecessor senses hollows on approach.

Parsec eyed the surrounds warily. Sooty bricks loomed on all sides, their silhouettes melting into the dark sky. If she squinted, she could make out a few details—windows, doors. But the signs swinging from forlorn shopfronts remained incomprehensible. Jackal led her down another back street, avoiding the glow of lanterns that accompanied trickles of midnight pedestrians.

Her costly disguise seemed to be working, at least. Several times she tensed as they passed beneath the shadow of a Hiver patrol, and several times they walked on unscathed. Eventually, they reached a portion of the city curiously empty of any Hivers at all.

The human-built structures grew simpler as they progressed, starker in shape, some of them in ruins, even. Wire fencing emerged around some of the buildings, half-rusted over. Parsec smelled soil and stone and old mortar and—just barely, in the distance—a hint of ocean.

Jackal spoke something in a low tone, turning round to look at her. His face was nearly impossible to make out, half-obscured behind a pair of oversized goggles. He gestured at the fence before them, formed of tall wooden planks. Parsec flew up, peering over.

Beyond lay a large, square tunnel that bored into the side of a low, human-made hill of crumbling brick—as good of an entrance to a schismatist’s nest as any. She hesitated, scenting no tell-tale presence. They must be some ways down.

See beneath, Venera agreed.

She lowered herself from the air, back to Jackal’s side, and hesitated before offering her free hand, palm-upwards.

“Will you be accompanying us?” she asked, though she knew it to be useless.

He spoke several words in quick succession, sounding a touch frantic. She waited, arm outstretched. Several seconds passed before he took it.

Perhaps it was cruel of her, she mused as she flew the both of them over. It was, after all, in his best interest that she return from the venture unscathed enough to assist in his hunger-dreaming predicaments. But was it truly bribery if he’d had the foresight to bring a knife?

It was a very large knife. She suspected it had seen a variety in the way of flesh. He had the rest of his equipment too, and this tunnel seemed something like a dungeon. She would take whatever advantage she could get.

Mean not to parley?

“I will attempt to be courteous,” Parsec said as she set Jackal onto the ground. The one good thing about having lost her ability to communicate with him was the ability to speak to Venera without worrying about slipping into the wrong language. “But these are schismatists we are speaking of.”

Predecessor advises avoidance of conflict. A diagram spiraled into her head, curling lines and scent-impressions mingling together in a prickly blur. Hiver-not, they will take measures.

“Measures to protect their own honey with utmost caution?” Parsec asked sourly as they approached the tunnel. “Yes, I do see why.”

Not mere storage; also source. Would be a brewer, perhaps. Potential of several, for redundancy. Archive-stolen skill, passed along…like a Titania? The principle is…the same?

“Schismatists are nothing like a Hive,” Parsec said carefully. “I apologise if I have implied a disrespect—”

It is true. They are somewhat alike, this-one-Parallax.

“Still,” Parsec said. “It was not my intention.”

Say then, what does a Titania care of it, much less the predecessor? Far from umbrageous. Not self’s duty to uphold it so. Only catalysis. Only to nourish.

“Hm,” Parsec said, and peered into the thick darkness of the opening.

The night mocked her with its impenetrable shadows. She felt a scowl forming, then turned at a sound: Jackal, tugging his goggles to his forehead and fumbling with a small contraption strapped to his chest. Something clicked true, and a beam of light speared down the tunnel, sparing her the need for a spell. She considered the downward slope, the beginning of what looked like steps at the furthest reaches of the illumination.

“Well,” she said to Jackal. “I suppose I should lead.”

She stepped into the dryness of the tunnel, scenting nothing out of the ordinary. Steps sloped down some several feet in, as did the ceiling to match. The overall effect was one of being penned in from all sides. Surely the schismatists had chosen this location as a last resort? The air was quite stale; for a moment, she wondered whether Jackal would be safe continuing with his human-lungs.

Venera provided a somewhat painful, unhelpful mix of scents, followed by the impression of an apology. Several stuttered not-words echoed in the depths of her ears, values and percentages, until ghostly fingers patted reassuringly at her shoulder.

Suffice, Venera said. Parsec took it to mean her one ally in this tiresome place would not suffer overmuch in accompanying her.

Still, it was clear that such unpleasantness resulted from willingly turning one’s back on a proper Hive. Worse yet came the realisation she would be perceived lower than even that. No sane schismatists harboured exiles; it was only on a Hive’s mercy they continued to exist as they did. She would need to hold fast to her plausible story.

The steps, when they levelled out, merged with an eroding platform overlooking yet more tunnel—perpendicular, this time. Twin lines of steel sunk into the earth, disappearing past the distant curves of tunnel on either side. Jackal drew alongside and looked both ways, murmuring human-words beneath his breath. The crunch of their steps atop the platform seemed to echo. When she sniffed the air for tell-tale traces of schismatist, there was a hint of vernal bloom—a greenness, like algae and diamond willow.

Predecessor senses enchantment, Venera murmured. Clumpingness. Cannot discern.

Parsec lowered herself to sit on the edge of the platform. She waited, vial of honey held firmly in hand. Jackal spoke something in the human tongue and made a loose, confused gesture with his arm.

“We shall stay here until called for,” Parsec said. It was comforting to speak aloud, otherwise pointless as it was. “They are aware of us now, I am sure. Seeing as this is their…equivalent…of a Hive, it is only polite to await at the threshold.”

Sole offering, Venera agreed.

Jackal spoke back, his words as unintelligible as ever. After some moments, he began to pace.

The air remained still, making it difficult to discern an approach via scent alone. Parsec listened for wingbeats, though she was sure the lack of honey had since blunted that sense too. Venera spoke to her in fragments, a slow and fractured song of scents and impressions.

It was not long before the scent of greenness grew, thickening off to the right. Parsec rose to her feet. Jackal, head whipping round at her movement, tensed all over. She strode to the end of the platform, peering into where light met darkness.

“Greetings,” she called out, hoping fervently that her cocoon-wrought disguise held true. “Is this the un-Hival place?”

The darkness spoke. “That depends on who is asking.”

“I have left my Hive.” Parsec squinted, little good that did her. “And I have come a long way. Might I ask you to step closer? I am afraid I cannot see.”

Predecessor sees, Venera whispered. Not as this-one does, but suffice enough. Winding structure, syrup-fed—schismatist, certainly.

“Why have you brought a human?” the voice asked.

“I cannot see,” Parsec repeated. She allowed her spines to droop. “I am newly-arrived to the city. I met an independent—passing through—and he led me to this human as a guide.”

“Newly-arrived?” The voice asked with interest. “Usually, the fresh ones join at the Hival office. From where do you hail?”

Fawnfell? Venera suggested. Ironport?

Parsec froze, but the voice gave no indication of hearing the ghost-word—it seemed the illusory effect of Venera’s presence was not confined to humans, after all. There would be time enough to ponder the merits and downfalls of such a fact later.

“A place near Ironport,” she answered hastily. “Though it has been…many seasons, living alone. A long time, and the winters are growing difficult. As for the choice of office…I have my differences with Hive matters, you understand.”

“I see,” the voice mused. “Well, we are a place for those who cannot merge with Hives. So long as you’re willing to prove your worth, then you’re welcome here.”

“Thank you,” Parsec lied. She hesitated, turning back to Jackal. “I am afraid the longtime loss of honey has made communication difficult. Might you inform my guide that I will be…my thanks, and that I will visit, soon?”

“Certainly.” To her surprise, she understood the next words. “Human-guide, your companion says her thanks and that she will visit you shortly.”

Beside her, Jackal frowned and nodded.

“How,” Parsec began. “Oh, I see. You use the honey, to metamorphose?”

“Syrup.” The voice was tinged with amusement. “We call it syrup, here. And don’t we all? I have one friend who learned the human tongue proper, but he is as strange as they come. Let us be off, then.”

She hovered off the platform, pausing when Jackal spoke a selection of words.

“What is he saying?” Parsec asked.

“He asks how you will find him,” the schismatist voice answered. “A fair question.”

“I remember the way.”

She did, though it was a relief when Venera said, predecessor recalls the corridors, too. Perhaps she would need the guidance, should this schismatist syrup not prove sufficiently timely or effective.

“She says she remembers the way.” A pause, as Jackal spoke again. “He says ‘alright, I’ll stay there,’ and ‘don’t be gone too long, Pavao.’”

Parsec paused. Pavao. Perhaps he was cleverer than she had given him credit for. She raised her hand in a farewell gesture and he nodded, departing hesitantly. His light went with him, and Parsec muttered a speck of spell-light to life in her hand.

“Apologies,” the voice said. “It’s easy to forget, with newcomers.” From the darkness came movement, and the owner of the voice emerged, cupping a conjured glow in his own hand. “There, is this less worrying?”

He was as green as she’d expected him to be in the pale gleam of his light, and specklings of gold dusted his spines like lichen. His horns were of the hooked sort, and to her surprise there were all manner of stones and shells and feathers strung between them with twine.

Tessellations, Venera remarked thoughtfully. Would have been a Lieutenant, once.

“You may call me Linden,” the schismatist said. “It is not the name my Hive gave me, but it is a truer one.” His spines tilted in a considering way, and she caught him glancing at the vial in her hand. “Shall I call you Pavao, as your guide did?”

“Certainly,” Parsec said, all-too-aware of the lie. “And now, are you to bring me to your…”

“Un-Hive?” Linden supplied with a dry chuckle. “Indeed. This way, Pavao.”

She shrugged off her borrowed cloak and slung it over her arm—if he made to attack her, perhaps she could fling it and run.

He ventured deeper into the tunnel, giving no sign of even turning his head. She followed his flight into the pressing dark, careful to keep her spell-spark alight. Venera soared alongside, a soothing presence at her shoulder. Around them, the air soaked in the scent of greenness and forest and wildflowers, and not the slightest hint of starlight.