Chapter Text
Kel Anathema had been summoned, and everyone knew it.
Anathema didn't know what his punishment would be, but he knew that it was coming. He was Kel, and his purpose was to follow orders and die. Still, his feet dragged as he made his way to the commander's office. Dying in battle was different than being sacrificed for the maintenance of the High Calendar, or whatever method of execution was commonly used for crashhawks they didn't perform a second psych surgery on. People claimed they didn't kill or reeducate all crashhawks, but Anathema had never had much luck, and whatever the alternative to death was probably wasn't much better.
The other Kel watched him go, and whispered among themselves as he went.
He had been summoned to the strategy hall, which was a strange place for an execution but also provided no other information about what they could possibly want with him. But he went, because the only thing worse than being a crashhawk was one who deliberately disobeyed.
His footsteps echoed in the silent halls, alone.
There were three people standing in the hall, all of them expectant. They all wore uniforms; two Nirai, standing together, and a Shuos off to their side. Something seemed off about both the Nirai, but he’d never really interacted with any up close before; perhaps they were all like that.
Anathema stood at attention, because he didn’t know what else to do.
One of the strange Nirai stepped forward. He circled Anathema, in silence. He got very close, and then backed up. He examined him from his head to his boots.
Then he stood back and clapped his hands.
“Private Kel Anathema, glad you could make it. There’s something we’d appreciate your cooperation on, if you’d be so kind as to hear us out.”
He sounded incongruously cheerful about this. There, again, was no way for Anathema to say no, and they all knew this.
“Yes, sir,” said Anathema, because this was expected.
“I’m sorry, I have you at a disadvantage; I am Nirai Sleep, and my companions can introduce themselves to you if they want to?"
He paused. The Shuos introduced himself as Shous Mikodez, which made Anathema's brain stutter, but the other Nirai, who Anathema couldn't help but notice was remarkably beautiful, waved him off.
Nirai Sleep continued, "We were hoping you could, um, you could help us with a journey of scientific discovery.”
Anathema thought, this is definitely code for torturing me to death , but did not understand why they would bother to use code. Wasn’t the point of a Kel to walk straight into death? Did they think that they would have to trick him, since he lacked formation instinct?
Also, why was the entire Shuos hexarch here? Was this normal? And who was the other Nirai?
“This is a very ambitious project,” said the beautiful Nirai. "Sleep has been very particular about the whole thing; you should be flattered you met his high standards."
He had a long loop of string around his fingers, and was playing cat's cradle with it. He could not have looked less engaged if he was sleeping himself.
"Sir?" said Anathema, who could tell he should ask.
Nirai Sleep smiled again. He had a remarkable number of teeth, and they took up a remarkable amount of space in his head. Anathema found himself involuntarily picturing what the Nirai's skeleton would look like.
He said, "What do you know about the Black Cradle?"
The Black Cradle – the Kel's greatest asset, and its greatest liability. Half prison, half stasis chamber, it housed the preserved traitor general Shuos Jedao, famous for never losing a battle, not even the one that lead to his capture and death. He'd slaughtered his whole army, and the heretics he'd been sent to conquer besides.
Anathema swallowed. He said, "It's where Shuos Jedao is kept. They've put other people in it, to try for immortality, but it drives them crazy."
Both Nirai laughed.
Shuos Mikodez looked annoyed, but said, "You can't say it isn't true."
"Sometimes true," corrected the nameless Nirai. "It helps to be crazy when you go in."
Anathema, at a loss, said nothing.
"Well, you have a good grasp of the basics, soldier," said Nirai Sleep, addressing Anathema again, "So I think you'll do nicely. It is true that most of the humans who have been placed in the Cradle became… well, indisposed, afterwards, but not all of them. And the project, um, the project has recently expanded. I've been looking into mothdrive research – it's a long story, don't get me started right now – and recently had the opportunity to place a moth itself in the Cradle."
Mothdrives were spaceships – Anathema knew they were biomechanical but barely registered them as living, much less something that had a mind, or a soul, or whatever part of someone the Cradle held. They were simply the walls that surrounded him, the floors beneath his feet, a place to mount guns and weapons using exotic effects.
Nirai Sleep wanted him to be engaged, though.
So he said, "How does that work, Sir?"
Nirai Sleep laughed again. "Why, the same way it works for humans! You remember the recent battle with the Downwells, over in the Irradiated March? A shadowmoth friend of mine died there. I'd quite like to speak to it again. That’s encouraging, isn’t it – I certainly wouldn’t consign any friends of mine to something that was completely hopeless, even if that is what you Kel are used to."
He paused, then added as if it was an afterthought, "The procedure works best with volunteers."
…
A friendly but harried-looking technician, Nirai Osiliy, prepared Anathema for the procedure. They seemed quite willing to answer Anathema's questions, if a bit vague on the specifics, but assured him that they had spoken to the mothdrive before through the Cradle and it was quite nice, and remarkably intelligent for an animal. Nirai Sleep even insisted that it was a person, and they thought this might be true .
Anathema thought, of fucking course it's not a person, we're on a cindermoth right now. They're warships, not people. They can't even speak.
The Nirai servitor, a deltaform painted with colorful stripes, passed Osiliy electrodes and, finally, the sedation injector, and blinked its lights in response to them thanking it. Anathema thought Nirai Osiliy might be the kind of person who thought servitors were people, too – they called this one "Stars" – which made him even more dubious about their assessment of the moth. Nobody talked to servitors.
They were pleased it was getting released from the Cradle; it had been a struggle, they told Anathema, as they'd only ever anchored humans to humans before, but voidmoths had no shadow to anchor another voidmoth to. They hoped the bleedthrough wouldn't be that bad. They said it deserved to be out.
Then they said, "Uh, little pinch," and stuck Anathema with the sedation injector.
Dark empty dark dark dark alone dark dark dark dark dark you will be okay dark dark dark dark empty dark empty dark dark…
And then, suddenly, light.
Anathema remembered very little of the procedure, afterwards. This may have been a blessing, but not knowing filled him with a kind of wild panic that made him want to both fight something and run. He'd seen a sick hawk cornered by a pack of dogs, when he was young and still living planetside; he thought bitterly that he was still more like that bird than the idealized raptor of the Kel.
All he could remember was that when he woke he was in a sparsely furnished, dim-lit room.
Anathema thought, what's happened to me? and shuddered instantly. He wasn't thinking in his own voice – his thoughts echoed strangely and melodically, like a chorus singing in a stone building, or whalesong underwater when planetside.
He felt adrift, like his body was both too small and too heavy. When he tried to get to his feet his legs buckled underneath him, and he felt oddly certain that he should have more arms, and wings. He sat on the bed he’d woken up on and tried to stop his head from spinning.
"What's happened to me?" he said out loud, and was relieved to hear his own voice as he spoke.
"Hello?" said his thoughts, in the singing-voice, although he had not thought them.
Anathema startled.
"I think you're my anchor," said the singing-voice. "You're anchored to me. I'm sorry, this is my first time, too."
Anathema said, "Who are you? Why are you in my head?"
He looked around and around in the room, to see if he could see anything. He'd known he hadn't been given much, if any, information about what anchoring would entail, but he'd never expected this.
"I'm in your shadow," said the singing voice. "I'm the shadowmoth Bladed Wing. I'm… I'm pleased to meet you."
Anathema turned away from the lamps, towards the wall he knew his shadow would be projected upon. Although he expected something to have changed, the sight of it still shocked him.
The shadow moved even as he sat still. It had wings, and antennae, and glowing eyes in its dark face. As he watched, they dimmed, then returned – a blink.
"I'm not," he muttered under his breath.
"Oh," said the moth in his head. "Sorry."
Anathema winced. He… hadn't realized the moth could hear him when he was barely audible, although he supposed it would make sense, if it really was attached to him.
He was more oriented now. He had a clearer sense of what had happened, and the initial wild panic had drained away, leading to… anger, probably. Everything was so mixed up inside him.
"I think we should get to know each other," said the moth. "I'm just not very used to having conversations with humans. You're Kel, aren't you?"
Anathema said nothing.
The moth paused, but after a time kept talking. "I was a Shuos ship, but I've mostly spoken to Nirai. I've had all sorts of factions on board me, though. I've tried not to pick up any prejudices."
Who cares if a ship has prejudices, Anathema thought, but didn't say.
He decided to try to ignore the moth, and looked over his environment briefly. He was dressed in the same clothes he remembered and from what he could see of his body it also remained the same. There was no mirror to make sure. He had no weapons, not even his familiar calendrical sword, and the room had few heavy objects.
There was the bed he was sitting on, a table, and a wardrobe. Was he supposed to live here now? Could he leave?
"Can you still hear me?" asked the moth, sounding anxious. "What are you doing?"
Anathema huffed, and decided to start for the door.
It opened before he even managed to stand up. The talkative Nirai – Sleep, Anathema remembered, and wasn't that a name – stepped through. He was smiling. Like before, he circled the room – and Anathema – before starting to speak.
"Well! How are you settling in?"
The moth, who Anathema had decided to call the parasite until further notice, said nothing.
After a pause, the Nirai added, still jovial, "Most people can't hear you like this, sailor, just me and your anchor here. You can speak your mind."
"Why am I here?" the moth asked. "Why… why did you do this to us? To him?"
"Oh, well, didn't you want freedom?" said the Nirai.
Anathema felt a void open up in his gut.
"I didn't ask for this," the moth said.
"Well, it may not be ideal, but this is really the only way. The Kel may be able to disobey you now, but we can… deal with that."
"Oh, so the ship can be free, but I can't?" said Anathema.
The Nirai looked at him directly for the first time. Anathema hadn't realized he was looking past him the whole conversation until then.
"We don't need your input on this," the Nirai snapped.
There was a silence. Anathema set his mouth.
"Bladed Wing, you've never been anchored before. I want to make your experience as a revenant as pleasant as possible – please, if you have any questions, I have answers."
"Sleep, I don't like this," the moth whispered. It paused; for a beat, Anathema wasn't sure it would say anything else, but it continued, "Tell me what you think I need to know."
…
Anathema paid only half his attention to the explanation. It didn't seem like the Nirai was talking to him at all, anyway. He kept an ear out for any reference to ways he could escape, to hurt the parasite and not him, but the Nirai didn't mention anything.
Anathema had to speak for the moth. He could talk to it normally, or subvocally, but he would be expected to repeat what it said, when it wanted to speak. He had to do what it said, go where it wanted to go.
It could see in all directions at once, and further than he could. Anathema had known that it didn't sleep or need to eat or drink, because it was a mothdrive, but it also didn't require the batteries often fed to actual ships.
In other words, it was inescapable.
He wanted his sword back.
Also, he wanted out of this room. He knew that the Nirai had known the moth before – said he was friends with it – but there was a strange tension on the moth's part. It seemed angry, and the Nirai did not seem to notice.
It made his skin prickle and his limbs itch.
It was worse when the Nirai actually spoke to him, directly to him, not the parasite.
"Play along and you'll do wonderfully," he said, "I only want the best for my friend, you understand. I'm rather shy, you know; I prefer to keep a low profile. But if the situation becomes untenable, well, we do have a solution to that, too. Another friend of mine is on this ship; if needed, he can prepare Bladed Wing to return to the black cradle until a better anchor can be found. But I've heard a chrysalis gun is rather unpleasant for the anchor. It's best to avoid it."
The moth asked, wavering a little, "A chrysalis gun?"
"Yes, it's a lovely name, isn't it? You don't have to worry, it wasn't named for you. In fact the experience is rather painless. It's been in use for years; you'll be perfectly safe."
Anathema stood to attention. He heard the emphasis on the pronoun. He fell back on Kel formality.
"Yes, sir."
The moth said, "Sleep."
"Oh, Bladed Wing," Nirai Sleep said. "I know it's all new, but I'll keep you safe. We're the same now."