Parsec

Dawn gleamed through wisps of cloud; from the taste of the air, rain was unlikely to return. Before long, summer sun beat down and baked the mud beneath their feet to dry clay. She’d offered to carry a portion of Jackal’s belongings, but he had refused. Perhaps it was a guest-custom thing, or perhaps he worried she might damage them through carelessness—whichever it was, Parsec found herself not especially minding. It left her free to examine the surrounding terrain, beautiful in its sprawl: rock-spotted grassland with little insects flitting between the stalks.

Sublime in firmament, Venera said, and the frequencies emanating from her ghost took on a lighter resonance, humming like song. Many years since the predecessor felt open sky.

Parsec eyed what few insects came near, darting by on flickering wings. It took her a few tries to snatch a particularly juicy one out of the air. She offered it to Jackal.

“Would you like one?”

He blinked. “No thanks.”

Ah. Perhaps this was another human thing, much like an inability to digest bones—but insects were nutritious, were they not? Would it be impolite to ask the reason for refusal? Parsec settled on eating it herself. Eventually, the grasses grew sparser, the ground sandier on all sides. She startled as a distant plume of mineral-steam speared skywards.

“By Hives,” she said as another erupted, a little closer this time. “How marvelous.”

Thermophilic prokaryote, Venera suggested. Would a Titania deign to taste?

“Careful,” Jackal warned. “Stay on the path—place is crumbly, see. Kraedia springs are all well and good to look at, but the water’ll burn even you.”

Unfortune, Venera said, sounding a touch morose.

As the day wore on, Jackal walked with what seemed like unerring patience—or perhaps she was simply not good enough at reading the subtleties of human expression to notice traces of boredom. They made their way along a half-formed track, a poorly-defined line through the steam-spouting landscape.

“Weird approach, this,” Jackal had explained. “They made it just for us dungeonrunners. It’ll be gone by the end of the season.”

Occasionally, they spoke of the weather and what to expect at Kraedia and other trivialities. Parsec, remembering her part of Pavao and feigning memory loss, found it difficult to carry the conversation for long. When she questioned him on his own past, he answered evasively—something about sailing and deserts before changing the subject.

Jackal’s estimate of a day’s hike must have been on the cautious side, because the gates loomed in sight by midday. When a proper meal came—arbitrarily at noon—Jackal provided pieces of hard, dry bread and strips of dried meat. They stopped to eat beneath the shade of a roadside tree; Parsec gazed upon the great gate and wondered if it would truly help her any.

Solace, Venera spoke. Bitter-bough birdsong, enzyme catalysis roiling among deeper crypts…

Jackal hailed down a passing horse-and-cart and offered a small coin token in exchange for being driven to the mouth of the gate. The man in the cart refused the token, gesturing for them to climb aboard.

“Hop on, kid,” he said, though he eyed Parsec with what was likely suspicion. “Just tell your friend to not eat none of my turnips.”

Taproots, Venera offered. Glucosinolates. Unappetising if raw.

“Worry not,” Parsec said. “I will refrain.”

The man raised his brow and muttered something under his breath, though he allowed them on all the same. The landscape rolled by for a short time before the cart fell in line with several dozen others at an emerging crossroads and drew up at the outer wall.

Entering Kraedia through its main gate was an onslaught upon the senses—Parsec, trained as she was in navigating the worst kinds of Hive blockages, found it difficult to adjust. The air shimmered with a haze of unsorted scents: cloying oils, human sweat, orange peel and horse dung and a great many more.

Humans moved on all sides. Most traveled on foot, though others sat atop animal-drawn carts like the man who had transported them here. She spotted some of her own kind, too—she would have liked to fly overhead like them, through clearer air. Though given what Venera had said about a-weakening…it was likely best to save her strength. It could also be useful to keep Jackal by her side—she did not have any coin-tokens, and it seemed they were useful for navigating human affairs.

They got off the cart once it made to turn into a market concourse. Jackal gave the turnip-seller a wave as they departed. Parsec frowned as they walked into the crush of bodies, flaring her wings wide to create room for herself. A few of the nearby humans gave her derisive looks as they stepped over the end of her tail. Ridiculously impolite of them; it wasn’t her problem if they thought her space was for the taking.

“Watch out,” Jackal said, his hand tugging at her elbow. A lopsided contraption whirled by, the human on top pedalling furiously. People cast hasty spell-shields at its passing. “Try to keep to the sides, or you’ll be run over by a high-wheeler. Every man for himself out here.”

Several more of the ‘high-wheelers’ arrived, no slower than the first. The riders whooped and hollered some head-and-shoulders above the crowd, ringing bells to clear the way.

“This way, I s’pose,” Jackal called over the noise, gesturing to a gap in the moving crowd. “Like I said, there’s that faery office we can go to.”

Parsec stepped to follow, then came to a halt. Someone had trod onto her tail. She hissed in annoyance, spines tipping back as she turned: the clumsy human was a very large man, thick-jowled and muscled about the shoulders. He had a wheat-dusted apron draped over his front, and a glass bottle clutched in one hand. Parsec waited for him to move. A mere human boot couldn’t hurt her through General-strength chitin plating, but wrenching her tail from beneath his weight might.

She waited. The man didn’t move. Instead, he looked her up and down with a twisted expression on his reddened face.

“Bloody faery,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. His words came out thick and slurred; she eyed the bottle in his other hand with speculation. “Get up out of our way, or get out.”

Blood-surge, Venera warned.

An interesting thing happened, then: the crowd around them thinned out, very quickly. Parsec glanced at the passers-by—were those expressions of interest, or nervousness? Both, Parsec decided. It looked to be a mixture of both. Either these humans were particularly bloodthirsty, or they were especially eager to see a ‘faery’ put into its place. There was little question as to which of the two options was more likely.

“Well?” the man challenged. “Whatd’ya gonna do?”

His boot was still stamped over the end of her tail, where the chitin merged into feathers. It kept her pinned in place. Surely he knew this.

“Remove your foot from my person,” she suggested.

Perhaps her disgust showed; the man’s face rearranged itself from a scowl into a sneer. Or at least, she interpreted it that way. His complete lack of spines made it difficult to tell for certain. He opened his mouth to speak.

“Hey—Pavao!” Jackal’s voice piped up from the direction she had meant to go. She heard his footsteps, scented him scrambling back this way. “Oh, uh…”

That would be his realisation that the man was keeping her there. She resigned herself inwardly, readying herself to administer force—it would be a little difficult with her current weakness, but the human was just a human.

Careful, this-one, Venera said. Slow-constant a-weakening, and—

“Hey, hey,” Jackal said, stepping in front of her. He raised his hands in an open gesture. “We don’t want no trouble, alright? I’ll have my friend here move along now.”

The man paused at Jackal’s appearance, looking him up and down. Parsec frowned as she measured up the difference between them: Jackal was not short compared to the other humans in the crowd, but he stood at least a head below the large man.

“Your friend?” the man sneered. “Dirty fucking bugs crowding up our city and you call this one your friend? Get outta my way.”

“Whoa,” Jackal said. “Easy, big guy—”

The man stepped forwards and swung, bottle gripped like a bludgeon. Jackal ducked, jumping nimbly back—right into Parsec’s shoulder. She stumbled at the impact, thoughts already clouding with frustration. Were her reflexes already suffering so much, in the absence of the honey? A sudden feeling sank into her chest, one she hadn’t touched for some time now: a bead of fear. Small, but persistent.

“Fuck!” Jackal said, regaining his footing. “Shit! Pavao—c’mon!”

Poor waters. Go now.

She didn’t need to be told twice. With the man’s boot off her tail, she whisked it off the ground, tucking it close to her back as she pelted away. Every step felt slightly off, the motion not covering enough ground. She sensed heavier footsteps close behind, and the scent of fermented fruit wafting after with each slurred shout. This was not good: she had assumed the human would give up as soon as she left. Was human rage really so efficient at overriding selective predation instincts?

The fear thrummed, all along her armature. New and strange and wrong. She thought about it in order to push it away. Why here? Why now? Why was she afraid of a mere human?

Jackal sprinted down the street with surprising speed for how laden-down he was. Parsec struggled to follow through the crowd and took to the air instead. Her wings fluttered weakly, unused since her fleeing the Hive via Archival ocean. Still, they sufficed—she ascended some several feet, keeping an eye on Jackal below. It was not difficult: he moved quickly, carving a visible path through the many heads.

Left now, Venera said, rather urgently.

Parsec dodged as something flew through the air—their pursuer’s emptied bottle. It arced past where she’d been flying not moments prior; footgoers scattered below as it smashed against the tiles of the street.

She forced herself to fly faster until the shouts dimmed, wings almost quivering with exhaustion. Risking a glance backwards, she spotted the human standing in the middle of the street, shaking his fist and screaming what were likely obscenities—more words about bugs and filth and ugliness. Casting her gaze back ahead, she spotted Jackal as ran rightwards, his pace slower now. She caught up, cruising lower to call out.

“Jackal! He is gone.”

Jackal skidded to a halt, backing up against the side of the street. He brushed his hair back from his forehead, huffing out several breaths. “We lost him? Great. Let’s just, uh,” he leaned over, bracing one hand on his leg as he made a vague gesture with the other. “Let's get out of the big street, maybe? It’s alright, the faery office is kinda this way anyway, I think.”

“Very well.” She was more than happy to agree. As she alighted, her wings gave an alarming pang of overuse. She couldn’t recall such a pronounced sensation beyond her escape into the Archival sea, and that had required far more exertion than this. What was happening to her health? Her stamina?

She swallowed her unease as they stepped into a quieter street, one with far less human crowding. It was lined with shopfronts, though these smelled less colourful than the ones on the main avenue. Some were shuttered, their signage peeling. A few women sat on doorsteps, quietly chatting amongst themselves as they peeled vegetables and shucked oysters into woven baskets.

“That human,” Parsec began after some minutes of uncomfortable silence. “He seemed…”

Vastly intoxicated, Venera supplied.

“Did I breach some human custom of yours?” Parsec asked instead. She was not unfamiliar with the concept of personal churlishness; indeed, it was not as if those of her own people never acted in such a disrespectful manner. But it was perhaps best to be sure, until she regained her bearings in places beyond her former Hive.

Jackal scratched the back of his head. “No, he was just…a real rude guy. Sorry.” A strange little frown flickered over his face. “We’re not all like that, I promise.”

“Hm,” she said. A thought occurred to her. “Before, you said you were of some…desert place, correct?”

“Oh,” he said, looking in a manner she guessed was uncomfortable. “Uh, yeah, I suppose. Haven’t been back for years now, though. Suggest you don’t go there, either.”

“I am correct in my guessing, then?” she asked, half out of curiousity and half out of a desire to make morbid conversation. “You hail from that desert place?” The place of many deaths, it was told, was very far and wreathed by poison mists for a reason.

“You mean you’ve heard of the Magicians? Their thing about faeries? I guess. It’s not just faeries, though. More like…anything different. The wrong kinds of magic. Stuff like that.”

Had it been those unpleasant-sounding Magicians who had filled his head with dreams of blood and meat?

“Then what are you doing here?” she asked suspiciously. “You have the right sort of magic, do you not? The human kind?”

He glanced away evasively. “Oh, you know. Wanted to start afresh. Hey, look—round there’s the faery office.”

She glanced up ahead as they approached a busier intersection. The ‘faery office’ looked like any other building along the street: wide and squat, with rounded doors and a fluted roof. The only indication it had any Hive connection was the strong scent of citrus and seaweed emanating from its direction, a guideline indicating helpfulness and assistance.

Did she really wish to enter that place? She resigned herself to it: she needed the honey. Her abysmal display against the human was proof enough. There was almost certainly a process for independents to beg drops of the substance. She supposed that her status as a non-entity to Kraedia Hive, would make things difficult. Still, she reasoned, Kraedia was far enough away from Glister. She might as well try.

She followed Jackal as he led the way up to the office.

“Here you go,” he said, scratching the back of his head. He made to step away. “So uh, good luck, Pavao. It was nice to meet you.”

She supposed that was a human equivalent of a farewell.

“Thank you,” she said, as graciously as she could.

Good partings, Venera said. He gave them a nod before disappearing into the crowd.

Parsec pushed at the office doors and entered. The scent of kelp and oranges hit her square in the face: a strong wavefront at first, before changing subtly, filtering into something tinged with smooth-edged, honey-sweetness.

The room was as wide and squat as she had assumed it to be on the outside; the entrance had been cordoned off into a foyer area, and the rest of the space was filled with two rows of human-desks. A Hiver was seated at each station, each bent over what looked to be stacks of lost belongings and written requests.

Fresh sunlight washed in through large, circular windows. The place looked very plain otherwise, though efforts had been made to sculpt the far wall into a feature. Whatever builder assigned to the task had made a valiant effort with the available stone and minerals, but the base material was clearly inadequate. Nothing like Glister Hive had been. More than anything, it reminded her of an empty creek bed.

Several others milled around the foyer area, likely Kraedian independents. A few of them had instruments lashed to their limbs and tails, coils of rope resembling the one Jackal had worn. ‘Dungeonrunning’ must be a relatively popular pastime, she deduced. She stepped forwards to join the end of the two-person line forming at the entry-desk, listening to the conversation ahead of her as she did so.

“…Fast messages, you see,” someone said. “Very urgent. Can you believe it! Sampling, too, as far as can be. All the way to Ironport. That Titania called in many favours.”

A companion broke in. “They say they’re hunting for her in their Archive.” He shook his head, making a vaguely disapproving sound. “See, it was strange of Glister to allow their Archive to run so big. Got far out of hand, and now we see why. I have a friend there; the last time I saw her, she said…”

Hunting for her in their Archive.

All the muscles in Parsec’s body had locked tight without her realising it. No. This was too much of a coincidence.

Out of hand, Venera murmured. Breaking-fall-away. The weight of a cold sea and then some.

Had Segin, with the power of Titania, been influenced to—no. No time to waste pondering now. She forced herself to turn as languidly as she could before striding to the door.

She caught the eye of a swirl-spined individual as she went, laced with the scent of sour roses. It was an easy mistake, a terrible one: she sensed, as if in slow motion, the moment the swirl-spine took in her scent—eyes widened, nostrils flared.

Venera flooded her mind with an alarmed expression in that same instant. The thought resembled words even less than usual.

Recogbadnition. Fleego. Now.

Swirl-spine parted her mouth to speak. Parsec was out the door before the slightest sound exited her mouth.

Hurryhurryhurry. Too much for colloidal, a-weakening—try best, this-one-Parallax. Hide-route.

She took to the air—had perhaps a minute before they would follow. A shout echoed behind her, followed by overlapping trills of alarm.

“Where?” she asked aloud, frantically charting routes. She could feel the weakness acutely now, her quickness failing when she needed it most—she struggled to close her pseudo-hydathodes, and was stunned when she could not manage fully. Cruel it was, that limitations became so clear when she had cause to use them. Had it really taken so much honeyed assistance, before?

The corridors of Kraedia were far less long and labyrinthine than those of Glister. She doubted she would lose them so easily here—never mind that this was their home territory.

Jackal, Venera supplied.

Ah. Jackal. Humans would have no stake in Hival trouble, it was true. He could not have gone far—and he was the closest thing to an ally she had.

General-sense, Venera said. Attempt it, this-one-necromancer. Smell is often the last to go.

Parsec ground her teeth together and scented the air in desperation. Venera was right: Parsec, for all her weakness and for that she had abandoned the title, was still something like a General in ability. She doubled back as she caught the fading thread of Jackal’s scent-trail, tracking it through open air. The effort made her spines splinter with pain, unaccustomed as she was to the task. She gathered every last scrap of effort—down the alley here, and a turn into a square.

She skimmed as low as she dared over the crowds of humans—a few looked up at the passing breezes in her wake, but she wasn’t concerned. No, it was the Hive-affiliated who would tie her in chains and drag her back to Glister if Eltanin’s influence had anything to say about it.

Jackal had stopped at a vendor’s. She briefly lost the trail as it became buried beneath a blanket of fried meat-on-skewer-scent and had to circle twice around to pick it up again, wasting precious seconds.

The awareness of her own weakness grew wider—had a Titania’s borrowed magic made so much difference? Evidently so. It had been years since she had run low. She must have forgotten the changes, if there had been many. She had been younger and frailer then. Now, she had further to fall.

Jackal’s scent led her down another ragged alley; there was no one to see as pigeons scattered at her passing. No one to see—yet. Her scent trailed behind her, weakened but still there. She tore through the air, taking sharp corners as best she could despite the fragility threaded through her wingtips.

The trail grew clearer, sharpening into focus. Coming into sight—there. He walked with his back to her, recognisable at once from the heavy pack slung over his shoulders. She tipped her wings back, slowing as she swooped out of the air to land alongside—and miscalculated. The strength of her flight was wrong and she stumbled, toppling. She rolled twice over before scurrying upright.

“Jackal,” she coughed, glancing back the way she had come. “I need help.”

He frowned at her, hand still clutching a pair of half-eaten skewers. “Pavao? What’s wrong?”

“They are—” All the way to Ironport. How to explain, when she had no time? The human-words stuck in her throat. “Help me to hide.” She held out her hand. “I need some magic. To borrow. Please.”

He frowned, not moving to take it. Instead, he glanced her up and down as a look—likely one of suspicion—flashed across his face.

“Look, if there’s another guy hoping to beat you up, you need to go back to—”

“No,” she broke in quickly. “They are…it is the other—the faeries. Embassy. Messages. Please, I must.”

He looked at her, puzzled.

She snarled, shaking her head. It was useless: what could a human understand of such things?

Hurry, Venera said. Twisting scales, summered spears, enzymatic corruption. There came a hesitation. Or allow predecessor to…? May be damage, but…

“What more have I to lose?” she said aloud—not at Jackal, who was growing more confused and suspicious-looking by the moment.

Piecemeal, Venera said.

Ghost-fingers wrapped around her throat, pointed tips plunging through. Warmth suffused the area, a mild glow swiftly turning harsh—burning, painful, white-hot imprints in the shapes of ghost-glands. Her throat spasmed. Once, twice, almost choking her in its futile attempts to vomit a mouthful of Hive honey.

Jackal took a step back, looking alarmed.

Parsec doubled over, legs buckling as she hissed into her clenched fist. Every joint in her body throbbed, pleated with agony. Something trickled onto the back of her hand: blood, and a single drop of pale green honey. Thin and unripe, but honey nonetheless—from false Titania-glands. How? No time to ponder. She pressed the bead to her mouth and drank it down.

The granule rolled back down her throat, blazing a line of pain as it went—unfledged, uncured. There would be exhaustion to come, but the problem did not concern her overmuch right now. The pain diffused as it settled in her stomach, the sensation growing feathery and misted. Magic surged afresh through her body like freshwater currents.

All…the predecessor can give. Hive-parts, truly, but…a…a-weakening still.

Venera’s not-words were faint. The impression of her ghost-touch drifted sluggishly down Parsec’s face, before coming to grip lightly onto her arm. A questing tendril of questioning brushed against the edges of her consciousness.

The predecessor must…not sleep now, but a rest for a time…translucence recuperate…suffice it…?

“It will suffice,” she said, and straightened herself with great effort. It would suffice, because it had to.

Finally, she sealed her pseudo-hydathodes shut. Good—her scent trail would dissipate, so long as she could hold on to the act. It was doable now, but difficult, like keeping a muscle tensed. Now she simply needed to—

“The fuck?” Jackal asked.

“A place to hide,” she demanded, wiping her mouth against the back of her hand. Lingering spikes of pain pierced her joints; she ground her fingers into fists in an effort to ignore them. “Do you know a place to hide?”

He was looking at her as though she’d gone mad. Perhaps he thought himself reasonable to think that way, but a human could hardly appreciate the significance of a Titania made manifest.

She cast her gaze about the alley instead, leaving him standing there as she dashed further down, every step an effort. There was a selection of debris scattered by a selection of wall, giving off a strong scent of decay. Good—it would disguise her more in case of hydathode leakage. She ignored Jackal following several feet behind, instead following the trail of debris around a corner to its source: a large container sitting flush against the back door of a building. Paint flaked off beneath her fingers as she hauled herself over the lip.

“Pavao, what—”

“Leave,” she said. “Pretend I am not here.”

She reached up and pulled the lid down—it was heavier than she’d anticipated, shutting with a clang. Crouching lower, her eyes adjusted to the darkness. She traced out the shapes of debris in the box with her: broken pottery, splintered barrel-parts, small hills of molded bread and rotting vegetable matter. The base of the box was damp with something foul-smelling. She concentrated on keeping her pores closed, expanding her senses to evaluate the environs beyond.

“Pavao,” Jackal started.

She shushed him. Perhaps the sound meant a different thing among humans, because he made to speak again.

“Pavao, are you—”

“Hush,” she murmured as loudly as she dared. “Go, if you will not help. I am not here. I do not exist.”

He hesitated. Drew breath. The sound of wingbeats fluttered at the edge of her hearing: feathered, not diaphanous. Bodies made for combat.

Out of time. She shut her eyes and did not move.

They arrived moments later—not so close she could hear clearly, but not far enough for comfort. At the mouth of the alley, she guessed. She tensed as someone called out to Jackal, his voice muffled as it carried through the wall of the box.

“…Gone past, human?” the Kraedian Hiver spoke. “Purple, ah, indigo-ing colour. Ultraviolets. Shining?”

Parsec clenched her fists in the moment of silence thereafter, clutching at her hydathodes.

“Nope,” Jackal said, sounding as though he were speaking through a mouthful of food. “Don’t think anyone came this way. Sorry.”

The lid of the debris-box cracked open, letting in a line of light. Parsec’s heart near stopped in her chest. Something clattered into the box, almost striking her shoulder before the lid closed again. She eyed the items as they rolled to a stop before her: the pair of wooden sticks he’d been eating from. She kept herself very, very still as she heard him step away from the debris-box.

The Hiver called out a word of thanks. Parsec strained to listen as the wingbeats departed. Jackal’s footsteps, too, grew fainter.

Perhaps two minutes passed in silence. She waited, controlling her breathing and calming the twist of fear lurking in her chest. Her attention pricked again at the sound of approaching footsteps, tail lashing reflexively. She curled her hands into tighter fists, preparing a spell in case—but it was a familiar human’s scent that approached.

The lid cracked open once more. Jackal peered down at her, frowning.

“So,” he said and cleared his throat. “They’re gone now. Care to explain yourself?”