Parsec

This-one-Parallax?

Parsec cracked her eyes open to a world of pain—and not only that. For a terrible instant, her body spasmed like a borrowed husk. A ghost-hand laid itself onto her shoulder, and blunt wakefulness wormed up into her head and neck, chipping its way to the very tips of her spines.

Tap tap. Augment. Invigorate. Wake, now. That-one-Realm-touched fears this one is dying.

The pain faded, but she did not especially want to move.

Supine, Venera said, and sent an impression of blood-spattered whiteness, crinkling at the edges. Awake. Ensconce. Archive ways unkind to those of solid flesh.

Parsec finally shifted and opened her eyes fully. Her gaze landed upon a woven ceiling, not unlike coarse Hive sheeting.

“Venera,” she rasped. Her throat was dry. Her tongue had veiled itself in the ghost-tastes of ashes and salted earth. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a memory replayed itself: embers falling in slow motion.

“You awake?” someone asked. The voice was certainly not Venera’s. “For real this time?”

Parsec sat up and was promptly rewarded with a burst of pain behind the eyes. She hissed, scrunching them back shut as she reached out with her scenting instead: blood, rain, human.

“Oh, good,” the human-scented voice said. “Can you talk? You were hissing a lot, before. Wasn’t sure if your sort get feverish and the medics didn’t, either.”

She sensed the person drawing nearer. With great effort, she forced her eyes open once more, setting her jaw against the pain.

The speaker looked as human as they came: its hair was tied back and deeply pigmented, darker and duller than her own carapace. Its skin, too, was pigmented for warmer skies. It wore simple-looking clothing, though there were a great many implements attached to its belts. When it leaned closer to study her, she glimpsed a glint of gold tucked into an earlobe.

Was it a man, or a woman? she wondered. And did it have a secondary subtype, or was that not a human thing? Probably not. Orion had once told her their species had a peculiar ratio, close to half-and-half. Should she guess? It had been a long while since she had encountered any humans directly, and she scrambled for the usual guidelines: hair and voice and build, though a Lieutenant had once informed her that hair length, especially, had regional variations. A different Lieutenant had spoken something about germinal reproduction, but it had been a bewildered and not altogether helpful remark.

That-one-Realm-touched is a man, Venera supplied helpfully. Leastwise, other-human indicated as much. Moreover, most strangeness of inner textures; grey birds, pale shadows, long-gone daemons. All that predecessor can tell, am afraid. The name; know not. Other-human did not speak it.

Other-human? She surmised Venera had witnessed the goings-on while she’d slept. A flurry of blurry images poured into her thoughts: the shape of her unconscious body seen from above, the burbling of two humans talking in the background, a different viewing angle showing an unfamiliar human gesturing with a roll of bandages in its hand. Then the images faded away, fast as water soaking into dry soil.

Realm-touched, Venera repeated, insistent.

What in Hive’s name did that mean? There was a tinge of something ancient in the cadence of Venera’s not-words, an edge of confusion and reverie.

“Hello?” the human said, waving a hand in front of her face.

She shook off the musings for now and focused instead on the human in front of her.

“Who are you?” Parsec asked in the human-tongue. The words felt rusted-over, coming out; it was only the Hive honey that lent her comprehension and coherency, and very little of her own skill.

“Who are you?” the man countered. “I think I deserve to know, on account of you bursting out of my head and all. How’d that happen, huh? I carried you out from the dungeon, by the way—you were out cold. Hardly kitted out to be there, either.”

His head? And a dungeon? Parsec tipped her spines back and drew her wings closer in consternation. She’d grasped the best-looking landing site she’d come across, with Venera’s agreement. The image had blazed bright. She’d twisted the Archival tendril in her hand and sent her magic along its length, up into the broken light. Then there had been much pain—and nothing more until now.

“Out…your head?” she asked. “I did not…it was…magic.”

“Yeah,” the human said, and made a huffing snort through his nose. “I figured.”

“That is the truth of the matter,” Parsec said.

“Well, okay. That doesn’t answer my other question though, does it?” The lack of spines made his expression difficult to read.

Neither-nor, Venera supplied. Doors draining to rivers and granulations. Hive affiliations? A warning.

“Other question?” she asked, feeling as though she had lost his thread of speech; ordinarily, she would be sharper than this. Her head still ached faintly at the edges.

The human scoffed faintly. “How did you, y’know, appear out of nowhere?”

“I…do not fully know how I arrived here, myself,” she said carefully. Venera was right: if this human did know someone from a proper Hive, Glister or otherwise, then it would not bode well for her if he reported her as an escapee. “I was in a strange place, for a long while.” Drawing inspiration from Venera’s ghost-touch, she added, “I do not remember much of my life. It comes back in…pieces. Where are we?”

“A dungeon camp,” he said, frowning. “About a day’s hike from Kraedia.”

Kraedia? She had heard of the name before, but she struggled to trace out the contours of the continent in her head. As if sensing her frustration, a many-layered ghost-image formed in her mind’s eye, sketched out in Venera’s cold touch: imperfect, perhaps, but it gave her a fair idea. Her chosen Archival tendril had sent her very far away—far enough that inter-Hive communication was unlikely to be an immediate issue.

“I guess we can get you dropped off at the Hive there, see if someone won’t know your home. You remember your name?”

Parsec hesitated. True, they were far from Glister Hive and the traitor Eltanin’s poisonous reach. But Parallax was an uncommon name, tinged of the shattered lands, and Parsec had not become a General without an abundance of caution to show for it.

This-one-necromancer, Venera suggested.

“Pavao,” Parsec lied. It was a common name, yet close enough to her own to answer to if the pretense needed to be maintained for long. If the human across from her thought it strange, he didn’t make any obvious indication as to the case.

“Alright, Pavao. You can call me Jackal.”

Wasn’t that some sort of foreign wildlife? She hid her tail-flick of confusion behind her back. “I see. Thank you for bringing me to your shelter, Jackal.”

Jackal glanced around the inside of the tent and huffed out what might have been a laugh. “No problem,” he said. “Yeah, uh. It’s fine. Medic’s tent was full and they didn’t know what to do with you. You can wait out the rain in here until…wait, I guess you don’t remember the way, do you?”

“I do not think I have been to Kraedia before,” she said cautiously. “It will perhaps be…not necessary for you to bring me to the Hive,” she added. “I…lived alone before this.”

Were there independents and schismatists in Kraedia? She hoped her lie was not terribly unconvincing.

His brow crinkled into many lines. “Right, well. You didn’t live in some stars-forsaken dungeon camp either, did you? I can show you the way to the city tomorrow. There’s probably people who can help you better there. Sorry, I don’t…” He made a gesture with his hand. “I mean, I’ve run with you guys before, but I don’t know much about medical stuff or none of that.”

“I am uninjured,” Parsec said. It wasn’t a lie, exactly; a heavy, fog-like exhaustion had seeped into her core, but her body showed no wounds for all her trouble.

“Alright,” he said. “That’s great. So, you can eat meat, right? Cause it’s almost dinner. Figure you might be hungry after appearing from uh…nowhere.” He scratched the back of his head. “If you can’t, I guess I can buy some vegetables off a camp merchant.”

That reminded her: she was hungry. She’d burned through a lot of magic on her way out of the Hive, and she hadn’t had anything to eat in…she wasn’t sure how long.

“Whatever you have is appreciated.”

“Right,” he said. “Hope you don’t mind snake, then.” He grabbed a bundle out of a chest in the corner and lifted the flap of the tent. “Stay here. Be back soon.”

Parsec waited until he was gone before standing up, legs oddly shaky with each movement. She’d been placed onto a pile of fabrics, adjacent to a rickety little table and a chest coated with icy runes—coolboxes, the humans called them? Some lieutenants had bargained for a few at a Glister market and brought them to the Hive. Parsec had thought them interesting at the time, but not altogether useful. The heaviness in the air—a murky discomfort akin to being submerged in half-warm water that was almost never present in the Hive—made her reconsider her assessment now.

She cast her eyes over the rest of the tent. Whatever this Jackal did for a living—something with dungeons, had she heard that right?—was likely not very highly-ranked among humans. He did not appear to have many possessions, as the humans liked to rank themselves by, but he seemed well-intentioned enough. There were not many humans in Glister who would offer food to a faery unprompted, or so she had heard from various scouts and Lieutenants.

She stretched her limbs and tail to pass the time, then peered out the tent. Rain pattered steadily down, turning the ground to mud. Several other tents lay about, some well put-together and others not. She glimpsed a few humans hurrying about, coats thrown over their heads against the wet. The air smelled saturated, and the sky was very grey; she did not think the rain would stop for many hours yet. She stepped back into the tent and began to pace despite the shakiness of her legs. It would not do to let her muscles weaken of their own accord.

“Venera?” she asked aloud. “What now? Do you think we should leave?”

Feast-flesh and river-rain. Best to wait. This-one is a-weakening.

“Very well. Yes, food sounds good.” A thought occurred to her. “Do you require food?”

Predecessor is deceased. The deceased do not require food.

Her legs threatened to crumple out from beneath her, so she sat back down. She drew her wings around herself, hunching her shoulders. “I see. Do you remember…?”

Remember the eating? A little. Honey, burning up the throat. Something…broth, forced down. Over and over and over, the Titania laid her life in service. You know of these things?

There was no anger in the tone—only blank curiousity.

Parsec frowned uneasily. “I am deeply sorry, that it was that way.”

Ah. Isoforms. Not needing sorry, no. Predecessor suffers no longer.

Sometimes, the ghost sounded like Venera. Other times, not at all. Parsec made to reply, but the doorway of the tent flapped open before she could form the words.

“Here you go,” the human—Jackal—said.  He passed her a bowl, full of much-heated pieces of meat, before ducking fully into the tent. “Grilled snake,” he added, and shook raindrops from his hair. “Sorry, it got a bit burnt on one side, but I scraped most of the black bits off.”

“It is not a problem,” Parsec said hastily. “Many thanks for the food.”

Her stomach hungered, but she waited for him to begin biting into his own portion before copying his movements; humans oft had many customs, and it would not do to offend him by accident—not when he was providing shelter and sustenance.

The first bite was wonderful. Warmth suffused through her tongue as she sampled a variety of proteins and amino acids, tasting dusty echoes of insects the creature had itself eaten in life. She crunched through the bones, too, before realising that the human had not—in fact, he was eating different meat than her own. He seemed too preoccupied with wolfing down his own food to comment on her chewing, and she was hungry…she swallowed in what she hoped was a polite manner and ate the rest of the bones as discreetly as she could.

“Huh,” he said, when he was done with his own bowl. “The bones don’t scratch up your throat?”

“No,” Parsec said.

Glister Hive had processed hunted bone into arrowheads and needles and other such implements, seeing as they were large enough to afford the luxury. But in the shattered lands, they had eaten what they could get.

“Thank you,” she added again. “It was very good.” It had been fairly stringy, actually, and the burnt parts had been a touch too bitter, but she had only noticed on account of her time in Glister Hive. Back on the other continent, though…well, she had eaten many worse things.

Jackal glanced at the leftover bones in his own bowl. “Well, you can have these too, if you want. I’ll give them a rinse first.”

“If it’s no trouble.”

“Erm, no. It’s alright. Good that it’s not going to waste.” He poured some water into the bowl from a human-crafted canister and swilled it around before leaning past the flap of the tent to drain it. “Here.”

“Thank you,” Parsec offered again, and ate them. It was not bad fare. Lizard, she guessed, and maybe part of a rabbit’s leg.

Jackal cleared his throat once she was done. “Could you stand up? Since you’re waiting out the rain and all, I can move the blanket of the bedroll to make something to sleep on. Sort of.”

Most gracious of that one, Venera observed. Archival is politeness writ.

Parsec shuffled off the fabric to sit upon the floor. “It is no trouble. I do not wish to deprive you of—that is to say, I do not require such trappings.”

Jackal blinked at her. “Are you sure? Er, just cause, all the faery runners I knew had bedrolls, too.”

She supposed it was plausible, that a bedroll would do well in lieu of a bower. Her own bower back in Glister had been lined with many soft leaves and the occasional sachet of feathers, when they were available. She wondered if it had been swallowed up yet, reabsorbed into the bulk of the Hive now that she was fled, gone, severed whole. Probably, she concluded. Traitor Generals did not require bowers, and the Hive would know of it.

Severed, said Venera, a melancholy echo. This-one-Parallax sorrows like deadened wingbeats. This-one-Parallax should drink what kindness this-one can.

“It is not necessary,” she said aloud. She had slept on bare earth along with the rest of the dawn patrol back in the shattered lands; it would not be difficult to do it again, now. “I am not so fragile as a human regarding temperature fluctuations,” she added.

He frowned. “Are you sure?” he said. “Cause uh, I had a runner buddy a while back, Volans, and he sure did like to complain about the cold a lot.”

Ah, Parsec thought. This might be a little difficult to explain; whoever Jackal’s friend-colleague was, he was likely not a General like her. Generals acquired additional strengths depending on how they earned their way to the title, but she could hardly explain that to Jackal without seeming notable or suspicious, could she?

“I am acclimatised to it,” she said instead. It was not untrue.

His frown deepened. “I’ll make you a bedroll,” he said. “Really, it’s fine. I can use a coat as a blanket and you can have the spare oilskin to cover you.” He was looking at her with a strange expression on his face; it took her a moment to place it—pity?

For a moment, she thought of protesting. She needed not impinge upon him; though she had not spoken to many humans, she knew well enough that theirs was a harsher existence without the blanket of a Hive to provide nourishment.

Full moon. Fish scales. Many-braided cords tying together.

The nonsensical impressions floated into her head; she was not sure what Venera was trying to tell her.

Clasped hands. Demure-tide.

Perhaps it was a human custom to provide aid, and she would be offending him by refusing further. Perhaps, having dredged her from the depths of this dungeon he kept talking about, he thought her needing care like a hatchling would.

“…Very well,” she said at last. “Thank you,” she added, for what must be the dozenth time since she’d woken. She was grateful for the food and shelter, she truly was—the words felt like a poor offering. If she’d had any of those metal tokens that humans found valuable, she would have given them instead. Her time in Glister Hive had lacked the need for such things.

Jackal folded his blanket lengthwise to create a makeshift bedroll across the floor of the tent, rolling it up slightly at one end to act as a headrest. He draped a coat over it, saying she could use it to preserve warmth. Truly, there was no need for such an amenity, but she held her tongue. It would be slightly more comfortable, after all, and it wasn’t as if she were borrowing his items permanently.

It grew dark outside, and the same darkness seeped in with inexorable swiftness. Parsec’s eyes adjusted, but Jackal searched around his belongings before emerging with matches. He struck one and used it to light a human-crafted lamp hanging from the ceiling, one that encased a stub of wick and wax instead of mosses or mushrooms.

“Sorry,” he said as he shook out the match. Smoke wisped from its blackened head. “I usually go to sleep in an hour or so. Not much to do here; it’s a real shithole—uh, pardon.”

“Boredom does not trouble me,” Parsec said, searching her thoughts for polite things to say. “Might I ask, what is your purpose for staying here?”

He gave her an odd look. “It’s a dungeon camp,” he said, as if that were explanation in of itself. “Wait—I guess you have that amnesia thing to deal with…you do know what dungeons are?”

“I have heard the word before.” It was an occasional topic of conversation among the scouts and she had a vague sense of ‘dungeons’ meaning magical tunnels in the ground, but Glister ecology was stable aside from the Behemoth-creatures. Such things had not drifted into her circles of concern when she’d been a General.

“Right,” he said. “Well, we—us runners—we go down into the dungeons and hunt monster parts, and sometimes there’s treasure if we’re lucky.”

“Is it not hazardous?” she asked. “I smelled an unusual quantity of human-blood, outside.”

“Well, yeah,” he said, scratching at his jaw. “We do it for the coin. I guess you can just go around hunting whatever you want…”

“Oh,” she said, floundering. She had broken some human custom, hadn’t she? “I am sorry. It sounds…difficult.”

He shrugged. “I’ve done worse. Jaunting was—eh, never mind. It’s not too bad; I don’t do anything crazy. Just here for the easy food, really.”

“I see,” she said. “So after your working, you retreat here and…sleep early such that you might arise early? I do not wish to disrupt your routine, if so.”

“It’s fine, Pavao,” he said, and she reminded herself that she would have to react to that name as if it were hers now. He cleared his throat. “Normally, I take a couple hours to wind down. I was going to finish reading this book I got for cheap off a merchant, but it’s actually awful. Say, you know how to play dice?”

“No,” Parsec said suspiciously. “But I amenable to trying.”

She played and lost at four and a half rounds of dice before Jackal announced it was time to sleep; likely out of pity, she suspected. Venera’s comments over her shoulder had been a comforting companionship, but also of little help; her suggestions came by the way of pale diagrams which Parsec supposed could be read as gravitational tracings if one possessed the understanding for it. Seeing as she was no Titania, they merely gave her a headache—so she was in truth, rather relieved when Jackal put an end to the game.

“Goodnight, then,” he said as he extinguished the lamp.

“Goodnight,” she echoed.

Sleep came easy, in the wake of the exhaustion wrought by Archival travels.