Mortal Shell

by AShadowOfCygnus

Mortal Shell

A gasp and sickening plunge. Legs flail against the grim submersion, screams bubbling in the sudden, airless viscosity. Hooves press her down, saliva dripping from the walls, the ceiling as the eerie green grows, beats a heartless tattoo around, about, within. Nowhere to run at last. Cement horseshoes, and suit, and helmet, and terror-slack eyes, the last to submerge, howling into the abyss please no it fills and leaks and echoes into everywhere the coat and eyes and mouth hellish bile choke-smother and then

Warmth.

Warm here.

Love.

Loved here.

She is near, and She is All.

Dimness, lightless; the body is curling, littler in comfort. It is warm. Warm is Good. Good is She. She is All.

Like waking, and unlike. No memory of sleep, but the body’s eyes are opened.

Memory?

Smooth and gentle hushes, against the sudden soft-mewl question. No Memory. There is Now, and there is She. Good is She, and Warmth, and Love.

The body sighs, and nestles into. Her voice soothes. Muscles still their beat.

Rest.

And that is All.

Time passes. Faint noises, without—familiar, desperate, echoing within and just as quickly stilled. The cradle rocks, and She is there to soothe. And then . . .

Like waking, in that there is no memory of sleep. Stirring, gentle, unfurling. And Full—so Full of Love and Goodness and Warmth. There is a whoosh, and an evacuation, and the slick sense of . . . disgorgement? The words are muddy, thoughts difficult—but again, She is there, present, comforting against the needless things that need not be worried about.

And beyond Her, something . . . more, echoing dimly in her shadow. A humming, churning presence, pressing down. And hard as it is to think, there’s somehow more—like seeing through a hundred thousand eyes, the whole . . .

Hive?

Everything is smooth, blunt and rounded edges. But awareness looms regardless, sharper as it should be. Tympanic nodes, layers and chitin, breathing suddenly in the hot-wet—humid?—torpor. And a growing sense of loss.

Warm—but not as much so.

Love—but fading.

Tantalising, and it becomes apparent, oh-so-gently withheld. The newborn wail, then, crying, desperate—paw at the cradle, bile-savoury cocoon. New wings flitter; new horn glows, crawl back inside and seal away with the Warmth and the Love and Her.

But no, She comes again, allure and mother’s comfort, and whispers at last the secret. Love feeds, and Love is not free. Return with Food, and be Fed; feed, burst-full, and be Hers. And then, with a last lingering caress, She is gone, and the absence is palpable pain; there is but a body again.

More than absence, then—vacuum, the existential emptiness that fleeting mortal wiles so often conspire to hold in abeyance. And once they might have, in whatever life this new body might once have had—a book, a laugh, the fleeting company of a friend.

Friend.

Something rumbles in bare-smooth synapses; familiar, without, and echoed within. Emptiness, welling, twisting, fleshy corkscrew driving deep, driving true. It builds, roiling through lung and loin, a hunting-song, a chorus, with the faintest hint of razor smiles. All around the damp, dark nest, cocoons are opening, hive-wax combs disgorging bodies. Tall and small, many-legged and slithering, they chitter and froth and come, and the press of bodies is exhilarating. It is not Her—could never be Her—but the heave of clatter-chitin, womb-slick carapaces echo of Her, and of all the sinuous yen She offers.

Her hoof could not but be in it—holey and divine.

And even as those more cogent bodies squirm beneath Her, a hundred-hundred voices rise, within and without, chatter-howl and mouldering wingtip clangour: reveille, at last, hoof and horn, fang and foetor! To the Hunt!

And the swarm moves. Like a flood, inevitable and endless, yearning, nigh intoxicating, teeming along the narrow channels, filling space and air and hoofpaths. Splashes, here and there, as smaller forms are borne up in the wake of the larger; a mindful crush, ordered chaos, swimming in their own cicada sea. New-sense, not-minds, smooth and jubilant, skimming, breaking, rushing on. A face here smashed against rock; a leg there caught under the grinding stampede, and yet there comes no cry, no halt. The tumult is exaltation, and broken limbs sway to the pervading harmony.

Lacquered hive-walls, waxy and breathing, part like lips to admit the swarm. Daylight is on them for but a moment, and a hiss escapes the body as it shields overattenuated eyes from the ruddy sun. Night, soon, and all the more helpless their quarry; but until then, the swarm will suffice to hide her scorching light. It billows, it crests, clouds above and streams below, pushing on along the miles, ten, twenty, as the umber world heaves with their passing.

And how different the world, through a thousand pairs of eyes. A leaf, seen from both sides; a rocky incline, its every contour mapped with the flood of bodies; the arcing spray of a rabbit caught underfoot. Glistening drops catch the air like heady dew. A fleeting lick of Pain and Fear—not enough to sate (how could it?), but the millipede of hooves and drone of wings redouble, no less the whetted.

The twist of bodies catches the town unawares. Perhaps they thought the roil some natural disaster; echoes speak of earthquakes, or Rockdog caravans churning on their multitudinous courses. Those who saw them streaming down the ridge out of the sunset had not the time to run, and even if they had, what would it have availed them? Rabbits before the airship, fire and screams, and then the wolf is at their throats.

Three-score waking corpses, stumbling over themselves, reeking Fear and the animal stink of little farms. The screams galvanise, nourishment enough to redouble the Hunger, and the lusting vanguard lunge upon those nearest the ridge. Fangs extend, maws yawn, venom bites deep and quick: amnestic, aphrodisiac. As others try to run—as raptors’ wings and too-taut legs spring to cut them down—the first line are falling to their knees, on their backs, and bodies bestride, screams quieting to whimpers and groans of ecstasy.

Chaos, and in it the only true sustenance: what Love the body can steal. Inflict the Pain, take what may be Ripped from flesh and minds and hearts, and Turn the few who might survive.

And the last gasp the sweetest, as the body tears another throat: the stallion—the meal—arches, gasping, as the last of him whispers away into a blind crevasse. Love, yes; oh-so-lustful Poison, yes, but nothing can outmatch the ice-sweet savour, the biological imperative: the Love of life itself, faint and fading as the corpse flops to final stillness.

Mountains may tremble, seas may rise, but nothing can stop the flow once that last line is cut. Invisible veins flow back on air, through minds and hivish subterrene, to Her, and even as She basks, even as She licks invisible sweat from dead and staring faces, She sees. A thousand-thousand eyes, and two dark specks between them. She smiles, She writhes, She churns; She has them. She has won.

And then there comes a howl, within-without, triumphant and terrible; bodies turn, infinite glass transfixed with infinite wonder, for the ploy has worked! True Flesh has come at last: gold and silver idols, shining midst the swarm, all the sweeter to tear and render down! They are coated—chitined—resplendent and shining. The air tastes of Hate, and Magic, and of Her, pheromone-sweet and laughing. Hot-burn Hunger—scornful, calculating, salacious; these are needed, and these will be had. The body obeys, heedless now of weapon or of spell.

The Flesh narrows its too-few eyes, wordless and cold. There is no taste of Fear, but the thought that echoes through the first line to meet them is resolve. Swords larger than bodies cleave tendril-titans in twain. Wing-blades slice; mana-spears burn. Ichor splashes thickly; rent limbs rain hither and yon. Silver flashes in a hundred different places, cutting deep into the swam, while gold stands tall behind.

Silver is beyond a body’s reach, but gold might yet be taken.

And so the body rolls, arcing under blade, dancing beyond spear, and lunges for white amid the gold-clad throat. But even now, as fangs brush burnished metal, there is no Fear—something unspoken, alien; a colder sadness.

And then a collision, all too brief and sharp and final—animate golden hammer, swinging with the force of worlds, cracking chitin, pulping spine, throwing the body forty metres, fifty, cracking and smashed on impact. A leg rolls sickly this way; a wing snaps off against briar-branching shrubs. Roll and tumble, leaking, flop, and stop.

Pain.

Pain brings clarity, smooth as eggshell minds might be. The body feels Her withdraw: a last look of anger—on its behalf or Hers?—before She turns away at last.

Alone, then. Desperate cry, abandoned pup, thrashing against the empty ghost edging closer in the mind. Back means emptiness; back means alone; back is not Her. Back endures, back is panic-rage, wraps hooves around bile-slick throat and squeezes.

Pain. And then—victory, such as it is.

Tympanic breaths, shallow, careless; pseudo-lungs racking, thin and airless. The body writhes, and something breaks beneath the shattered exospine, and that is all; hard-won freedom in a cage of broken shell. Muted. Lessened. Smooth.

Grey-green ichor spreads upon the grass; mixing, steaming, empty and indefatigable as sea-wash. Head lolls; the last thing mobile, swerving, drunken. Eyes roll over carnage—an infinitude of bodies, heaped and scattered, whole and shattered, and in the centre the idols—the Sisters—cutting through the scattering, breaking tide. Another titan roars, its too-sharp claws cutting the air; silver deftly cuts between, and in a fluid arc, the great sleek head flies free.

Lips—maw; there is only a mockery here now—twists into a smile; head hits the soft and sticky earth.

Time passes, and the body, ebbing, waits.

And then it rolls—is rolled—over. A sucking noise, as a pseudo-lung collapses, a grunt of Pain; but with the last awareness the eyes roll open again and they face one another.

She stands there, white-gold, immaculate but for the victim-spatter gore. Her face is hard, and the hammer-handle digs sterner still as it finishes rolling the body on its back. They regard one another. There are no words, no panic, no immediate thrash of reprisal. She above; the body below, in the dry cold morning.

And perhaps that is what stays her hoof. Resignation, in her movements; pity, in her grim frown. Animal pain, and she the only anodyne.

The sound is a struggle: the last two words textured and contoured in unfamiliar ways; unfamiliar throat, unfamiliar maw, poorly-rendered and thick with leaking bile. But behind that golden barding, there is a flash of recognition, and then of something like fire, and the maw curls once more into that sad and triumphant smile.

Then the Pain and the Hunger and the Emptiness are blessedly banished, as the hammer comes crashing down at last.

Author's Note:

A waking nightmare, to MOSAIC's dreaming.

Were I a somewhat more whimsical bloke, I could probably have gotten away with titling this ‘Unhealthy Relationships.’

Comments

[Shachza]

Now write the one where ponies steal a changeling from Her by turning it into a pony.

[Admiral Biscuit]

Her hoof could not but be in it—holey and divine.

Indeed.

Also, I learned a new word today: foetor!

Also also as usual describing the experience of this story is beyond my talents. It’s almost dreamlike and yet dark, surely a nightmare although perhaps not (I suppose it depends on whose side you’re on) . . .

We make our choices as readers; we decide who is the good guy and who is the bad guy, and I made mine. You surely know which side I’d choose, and as such you can guess my opinion at the outcome [I’m being cautious to avoid spoilers].

What gets me is how close I came to considering the other view as the right one.

[AShadowOfCygnus]

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That was quick! Thank you, as ever, for the kind words and evident wonderment (?!). I'm glad these half-mad little things keep providing some sense of narrative fulfilment.

It’s almost dreamlike and yet dark, surely a nightmare although perhaps not (I suppose it depends on whose side you’re on) . . .

Oh, absolutely -- just a matter of determining whether it's a nightmare you can wake up from. And so often, as per the semi-snarky comment in the author's note, we sometimes have about as much power as the not-quite-narrator when things go to shit.

What gets me is how close I came to considering the other view as the right one.

Neither of us would be the first to suggest that there's a certain comfort in being able to just let go. Just a matter of what, and to whom.

[FanOfMostEverything]

Her hoof could not but be in it—holey and divine.

A+ wordplay

Fascinating perspective. One could almost see it as a Zerg perspective rather than a changeling one. Great piece of xenofiction. Thank you for it.

[GaPJaxie]

Simply delightful. Masterful wordplay. :D

[AShadowOfCygnus]

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I'm getting really bad about actually responding to things. Thank you both for your kind words, truly.

Changeling xenofiction -- and really any proper depiction of them as an appropriately rapacious alien horde -- seems to be severely underrepresented on the site. If y'all have any recommendations as to other works in that vein I might have missed, I'd love to hear 'em!

[PaulAsaran]

You can has review!

[Bad Horse]

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Thank you for recommending this. I tried writing in an alien mind once, in a Philomena story I no longer remember the name of. But I didn't take it nearly as far.

ShadowOf, how long did it take to write? Many drafts?

[AShadowOfCygnus]

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One, actually! Full story struck me completely out of the blue after work one day.

Maddening, I know. Wish that sort of serendipity would strike more often.

[Bad Horse]

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You didn't revise?

[AShadowOfCygnus]

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For this one? Nope. Wrote it up, sent it to a friend, posted it.

[Bad Horse]

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AAAAaaaaAAAAH.
That's okay. I forgive you.