The War For The Pallid Throne

We Who Weep for our Fallen Foe

The primordial ones separate the chaff from the wheat. They are masters of the kiln and the battlefield, having tasted the Pallid Throne more times than their lesser peers. The worms who crawl upon the Great Devourer's vocal cords envy them, for they are everything they wish to be. Yet, the greatest of the engineers are not without their flaws. Icarus's hubris cost him the throne, Xerxes's envy his fingers and pride, and Persephone split her soul to escape gluttony and lust. Their weaknesses set them apart. Perhaps that is the extent of the Great Devourer's mercy, for only one of her children can be crowned the victor.

14

Velbrava cupped his hands to catch the tiny red droplets that slipped through the cornea. He was used to this space, the ripples in the membrane, and the sticky touch of bent rods and cones. There was a hole in the ceiling, a pit in the lens where a pupil once spun.

The rat king's vibriatus didn't respond well to his touch at first. No owned vibriatus ever would, or, at least, that's what they thought. Indeed, Velbrava's body was once slow to move, with a clicking noise between his joints as he dragged his left foot. An engineer forced to shape his own body. The insult caused his fingers to twitch and the jagged spines along his jaw to vibrate until red hot.

Velbrava made his vessel from Icarus's eye. Feet from the macula, tail from the retina, and the rods and cones that stuck between his toes made talons and teeth. There was a bubble that formed now, a rising mass of tissue that hunched his back and bent his spine. Velbrava filled the empty spaces with too much vitreous humor. It rose to the surface whenever he grew angry, causing a mass of blisters to form across his back.

At first, it hurt to take but one step, his toes bending every which way to escape his heel. Then came a scraping sound as his shoulder blades ground together in sockets much too shallow. Velbrava dislocated his right arm every second step. The bone returned to the joint with a pop, followed by exquisite pain, the kind that made him scream.

Just one more step.

Pop!

There it went again.

Back when the pupil still spun, and the floor was smooth and dry, he trembled from the pain. Yet, as time went on and the rat king bested foe after foe, Velbrava came to enjoy the pain. He greeted it like an old rival. Where once he was forced to his knees, Velbrava now stood, his joints no longer squeaking, and his arms clicking into place. Only his left leg remained stubborn as a mule.

Velbrava achieved the impossible, near-total submission of another engineer's tissue. That's when his spirit turned from blue to green, not pale but deep like an emerald. His luminescent digits, too, had grown steady and firm, for no other engineer save Icarus could claim as much control as he. Indeed, his toes no longer twisted, and the silver threads along his back beat in unison as he touched his fingers to the center of his thumb.

Pop!

There went his arm again, but not by accident. No, Velbrava came to love the pain; that scarlet touch of a red-hot poker, that tooth split feel of a nail pulled back, and that piercing ache of a shattered wrist. He was no longer afraid, no longer concerned with the twitch in his back leg. He had mastered his pain but was still far behind his siblings.

Velbrava had much to learn.

"Do you see how you pinch the membrane so?" Icarus asked, his voice echoing around that tiny cell.

Velbrava looked at the red clay cupped in his hands. Indeed, he had worked the fluid until it was sticky and soft, flattening the dough into a thin sheet. He then pinched the center to create texture with spines.