The War For The Pallid Throne

In my talons, I shape clay

I pinched the nerve again. How am I supposed to compete if I can't shape a glial cell? I've seen what Icarus, Persephone, and Xerxes can do. These Pallid wars aren't fair, and the odds were stacked against us from the beginning. I have a name but have done nothing of note save death by their hands. That's why I choose to jump. My fate is mine alone. Join me, brothers, and sisters. Join me in death at the bottom of the chasm. They say it's a coward's way out, but who are they to judge us? Better to die on our terms than on no terms at all.  

17

Persephone waited patiently for the sound of that low drip, that leaking faucet of crimson fluid slipping through the upper layers of Kath'le Kal. She preferred building hives close to her mother's endothelial layer dipping into the rivers of pus. That way, she caught the red rain as it filtered through the sands.

Unlike Xerxes and his aerial fortresses, she was never the first to touch the red rain, nor did she gather as much as Icarus and his land-dwelling behemoths. A necessary sacrifice for the sake of purity.

Her siblings once called her the alchemist because of her peculiar tastes. Persephone didn't like the feel of their mother's clay as it fell from her soft palate. There was something in the consistency, a grainy feeling that scratched her palm like seeds from a crushed berry. She shuddered, thinking back on when she vomited white filth, unable to stand the impure touch of that crimson sewage.

What is an engineer who cannot shape?

When she was a larva, that question bothered her the most. After all, her siblings took to it like caterpillars crafting immaculate silk cocoons on base instinct, while hers were tattered, loose, and gray. She couldn't overcome the feeling of that sandpaper touch slipping through her fingers like salty bile. Persephone always lost control, and her creations never turned out right when her vomit mixed in with the batter.

She remembered the crooked claws, the fins like cheese, and the lopsided crawl of a top-heavy grub. Was she truly related to Xerxes, who crafted velvet wings and antennae with a thousand fine hairs pointing in the storm's direction? Or Fortessa, who created paper-thin fibers deceptively soft yet able to cut deep? Persephone was a child, even amongst children.

What right had she to claim the Pallid Throne?

"The same right as all brave enough to step forward," said Icarus, back before the breach, before he was called the rat king. "You give up without even trying and risk nothing in convincing yourself to lie down in the dark. That's why, sister, I hate you the most."

"What chance have I?!" she shouted back. "I cannot shape the clay like you! It cuts my palms and turns my stomach sour!"

"If you don't like the feel of our mother's clay, then change it," Icarus spat. "You're an engineer, Persephone. So, start acting like one."

To change that which she didn't like. Such a simple idea. Why hadn't she thought of that? Persephone was a child, after all.

She started hoarding vats of crimson fluid after that, swirling the liquid between her fingers to isolate that which made her sick. There it was, that salty grain pinching the nerves between her thumb and forefinger. They were vacuoles filled with ether and honey. She could taste the substance on the tips of her forked tongue, sharp and pungent impurities absorbed through the basement membrane of her mother's vena cava.

Persephone tried pulling them out one by one. She spent a month alone picking salt from mud until the vats were as smooth as silk. Fortessa killed her before she shaped it.