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“This feels somewhat reckless. Even for you,” I said to Ana. We were standing on a little buoyed platform in the Bay of Yarrow, beyond the first manifold of the Shroud, the sea winds bearing down on us as we approached the leviathan’s remains. I still had no idea how she’d convinced Thelenai to permit us access to the dissection, or how such a morbid practice could possibly aid us in our understanding of the case. I was beginning to suspect it was just a means of satisfying her own personal curiosities.
I glanced out towards the carcass once more and felt a creeping dread, not only at the pit of contagion we were about to walk into, but at the waters surrounding it. The glassy surface of the sea seemed a constant reminder of the beasts lurking in its depths.
The commander-prificto joined us on the pier—I was surprised to see her clad in an algaeoil suit rather than her usual crimson robes, and only recognized her by the many heralds gleaming at her shoulders. Her trio of Apoth commanders followed close behind her, armed with piles of parchments and gleaming surgical tools. The entire fermentation division must’ve been quite shaken by the threat to the marrow, I thought, to have dissolved their commitment to secrecy so thoroughly.
“Well, Dolabra, we’ve gathered here at your request,” Thelenai pronounced gravely. “One final examination of the cadaver before we put it to the torch. I hope this gives you the answers you need.”
Ana bowed deeply. I recognized the look on her face as the rather unctuous expression she wore when attempting humility. “Thank you for your assistance, Commander-Prificto. I assure you, this is of the utmost importance to the case.”
I scanned her words for irony and found none. Perhaps whatever plans she did have were so convoluted I couldn’t see the relevance. Or perhaps I just wasn’t able to read her as well as I thought.
Thelenai gave a brief nod of acknowledgement. “Let us begin, then.”
We followed her along a narrow gangplank towards the body. The beast had already been bled dry, we’d been told, and thus the Apoths expected none of the risks associated with its metamorphic properties. Yet that was not enough to quell my fears of contagion—or anyone else’s, from the looks of things, entombed as we were in dozens of layers of algaeoil and moss. My mind still struggled to make sense of the thing as we got close: one moment I could make out the fins of a whale, yet the next it seemed a great, shelled insect, or a senseless, writhing mass of limbs and organs. How unsettling it was, to meet one’s maker in such a fashion.
“Each one is different, as I mentioned before,” Thelenai said softly. “And often arranged in a manner that defies biology, or even common sense: lungs sprouting directly from a ribcage, wholly disconnected from a separate system of gills, or multiple hearts scattered throughout their torsos. Even I am unsure what else we’ll find when we open it up.”
She walked up to an opening along the leviathan’s flank. It almost seemed a portal to another world, or some equally fanciful children’s tale. “We remove a segment of chitin, here. The aim is to locate a major artery, and, while their organs evolve rather quickly and inexplicably, they always seem to require quite a lot of blood through the spine.” A wan smile. “One characteristic, at least, that we can explain with conventional biology.”
Ana nodded along attentively, all the wild madness in her eyes gone dormant. “It is quite rare to see an organism possessing both spine and chitin, did you know?” Thelenai added. “No common creature that walks the lands of Khanum is built in such a manner. Another mystery to save for more peaceable times, perhaps…”
She took a step beyond the threshold into the carcass, and I suppressed a shudder. “If you’d follow me this way…”
The Commander-Prificto led us through a short passage carved into the leviathan’s flesh, shootstraw beams affixed at regular intervals to keep it from collapsing in on itself—almost akin to a mineshaft, or the tunnels within the sea walls. “Here is where we removed a sample of the marrow,” she said, indicating an incision by the root of one rib. “We were incredibly lucky to find a segment of bone so isolated from the rest of the circulatory system, for our first three attempts failed due to the strength of the blood. This sample possessed five hearts and three distinct networks of veins.” She paused, considering something carefully. “It was our most senior polytia who chose this location for the cutting, and performed the extraction,” she said finally. “With six other augurs to stabilize the body. I will not describe the entirety of the procedure to you, for I still must make some attempts at protecting what secrets we’ve discovered, and you would likely not comprehend it in full, regardless. Suffice it to say we had to perform many delicate operations, over the course of many, many hours.”
“How fascinating,” Ana whispered. I wondered what kind of information she was gathering now, given the blindfold.
“The augurs will now continue their work, dissecting and studying the cadaver further,” Thelenai informed us. “You only wished to see the site of the marrow, yes?”
“I believe so, ma’am,” I responded, for Ana was still carefully pondering something, and seemed to have missed the question entirely.
Thelenai gave a short bow. “I will leave you to your investigations, then.”
Ana gestured at the mouth of the passage. “Well? Go look, Din.”
I eyed the carcass with distaste. “Pardon, ma’am, but what exactly am I looking for?”
“You never wished to know more of the workings of the titans?” she said, incredulous. “Because whatever you engrave of that should be sufficient for my purposes.”
“Perhaps,” I replied, “but not more strongly than I fear the contagion they carry.”
She sniffed. “Fine. Do your minimal investigations and tell me how Pyktis might’ve walked through such a thing. How many steps before one loses sight of the sun, how heavy the chitin they had to remove, whether the one who made the incision was left- or right-handed, and the like.”
I watched the augurs venture forth into the cadaver, armed with parchment and scalpel, drumming out their findings as they turned a careful eye to every smallspan of flesh and bone. Then, reluctantly, I stepped beyond that strange little workstation into the creature’s cavernous ribcage, and nearly doubled over with nausea.
I felt my head spinning. Though I’d seen pieces of a leviathan’s skeleton before, first buried into the hillocks beyond Talagray and then repurposed as decorations at the Haza estate, I still struggled to comprehend what I saw: a tangled, incoherent amalgamation of flesh and sinew and viscera that seemed to span dozens of leagues in every direction. Yet I engraved it all, each aberrant twist of flesh, each foothold and mark of the surgeon’s blade.
I forced myself to walk the full expanse of the dissection site, counting under my breath the number of steps I’d need to return to the pier. Most disturbing were the humanlike faces embedded within its flesh, so twisted one could hardly be sure they weren’t just a trick of the light, yet proved to be true upon closer examination. The memory of contagion in the Midlow prickled at the back of my mind—corpses twisted beyond recognition by the same forces enveloping me now—and I resolutely pushed it aside. I forced my eyes to focus on the traces the augurs left behind: surveyors’ flags, boot prints, little ashpen markings diagramming their findings, all a reminder that others had walked through such a strange and hostile landscape and survived.
My minimal investigations complete, I made my way back to the pier, lightheaded. Yet another horrible sight that would be permanently embedded within my memory. I took my place at Ana’s side and attempted to regain my bearings—silently, for she seemed to be deep in thought. Through the hazy sunlight I thought I caught the bright flash of a knife. “What was that, ma’am?”
“Nothing you need to worry about,” she said archly. There was something conspiratorial to her smile, then, but I let it lie.
Once we’d passed beyond the folds of the Shroud, I pulled off my warding helm, forcing the stagnant air from my lungs. Even the acrid scent of phalm oil billowing up behind us seemed preferable to the stale moss I’d been breathing for the entirety of the day.
I glanced sidelong at Ana across the choppy waters. “Well? What did you make of all that, ma’am? Will it be enough to solve the rest of the case?”
She grinned her horrible, predatorial smile, the pale sunlight illuminating each knifelike tooth. I half wondered if the dash of blood I spied across her mouth was the same one I’d seen earlier that morning. “I found it quite enlightening indeed.”