"I cannot believe they picked a girl from that backwater country to make up a new world!"

—A complaint heard from way more mouths than it should have been.

The floating collies could be considered a constant as the pair of thinkers negotiated hills of shining puppies and thickly packed clusters of silky-haired shepherd dogs. It wasn't wonder but wariness that followed them like their shadows did. Caenor climbed up and down piles of dogs with enviable ease, and Dirofil could believe this Splinter had one day woken up in this sea.

Do you hear the lungs? The hearts? The sniffles?

"I have microphones just like you do. I do not listen to the bodily functions of the dogs, if that's your real question. They are white noise." He answered in a bored tone. "And I refuse to call them ears, before you complain about it."

You are too recent to be that jaded. We are not machines.

He glared back at Dirofil as the little Chihuahua legs propelled another leap and allowed the Fourth to catch up to Doratev's Splinter. "Jaded is not the word to describe me. The creators were most likely similar to dogs, creatures of blood and bile." With a hand and a tentacle he pointed up and ahead, through and beyond a columnar cloud of Rough Collies. "Over there, Dirofil. We may find your quarry in such an area."

I'd love to know what we are hunting, before anything else.

"Mutated coonhounds or maybe Braccos. I never figured out what they are before they mutate. I need the focusing lenses of their ears. A few of those, different sizes. Steer clear when the blisters in their temples light up. Psychosarc and metal may take the hit with little issue. Opaque flesh will not." He listed without a hint of enthusiasm.

I am not a machine. Dirofil corrected.

"It wasn't my intent to disprove your claim. Sound is at a premium out here, and I am not spending thoughtenergy to speak to you when no sentient eavesdropper is around. Understand, or fail."

Could have gone with "perish"—still, your tact is appreciated, Caenor.

With the cloud traipsed by, the automata arrived at the border of an irregular, dark blotch on the terrain. The snouts of several thousand basset hounds pointed at the depths of the sea, oscillating from side to side with perfect coordination, living metronomes whose bodies protested out of pace with the silent song whose tempo they marked.

Dirofil stepped lightly onto the dark patch, dead nails digging into living faces, having to tip-toe around snapping jaws. The cadaver seemed to dance ballet onto the faces of anxious or unaware hounds, a spectacle that was short lived, because it didn't take long for Caenor to get tired of watching Dirofil struggle with his footing, causing him to pick the original up on a couple tentacles. "I respect your lack of a suitable body enough to imagine why you struggle with travel, but I must cast doubt upon your ability to hunt down the prey we are after."

I killed a Chihuahua with nothing but my bare core and some puppies.

"That speaks areas about the Chihuahua's survival skills."

Dirofil paused for a second. Areas?

"I am not granting the little shits another dimension of relevance for them to have volumes, Original. Have some sense."

Dirofil then wondered if Caenor had managed to reinvent the marble just to lose several of them. Then he remembered it was a Splinter of Doratev. Eccentricity had to be in his nature.

You make quite the decent vehicle.

And thus, Dirofil got dropped over the Nervous Basset Hounds, some of their teeth finding his dog legs, forcing him to struggle and painlessly race for a passing collie that opportunely drifted, just to clamber upon it. Ass.

"You are the one with power here, your majesty. Why would you need a humble copy of a copy to carry you?" His words dripped acid, and even with undead ears Dirofil could notice.

He hopped off the Collie and onto a patch of butt-up Bassets. He found footing on a quartet of cheeks, and the wagging tails caressed the underside of the chi's body.

Then, a shrill cry made the air tremble, both their gazes snapping in the direction of the sound.

"I suppose we could detour a bit."

What comes?

"Early birds. Or maybe just one. Their radiuses are modified into motile elements that hold a single line of adapted carpals, metacarpals and fingers."

They get the worm? Dirofil asked as he readied the chihuahua's muscles, ready to spring or dig to safety.

"More like they come with the morning star. If it's just one or two, we can handle. If it's… say, seven or more, I can run."

Dirofil scratched a side of a jowl a bit as he considered his options. He could point out that Caenor hadn't used the plural of first person but the singular, but he reckoned it was probably intended like that.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

We heard only one cry. Do you have a need of any part from them?

Caenor faced the source of the cry, trying in vain to see past a curtain of distant collies. "They are mere sources of blunt weapons for us. Not worth our time."

Definitively worth mine if we can kill one.

"I believe the parts from the Braccos would be more interesting to you." Caenor said. He wished to be expeditious, for time spent outside the only place of the sea he deemed slightly less dangerous than any other stressed him out . Yet, it costed him nothing to use one of the purified eyes to check how many Early Birds they could be facing, now that he could freely open them.

It still felt wrong, dangerous, even if it wasn't. But the eyes of his arm and the eye of his mind still aligned, revealing to him that I was only a couple dots in the distance that threatened them. "It's a pair that comes in our direction. I reckon we can dispatch them with enough haste for a detour to be a waste of time. But I am not carrying their cadavers."

Nor waiting for me to assimilate their parts. Blunt weapons, however, could prove valuable at killing the braccos without damaging the valuable bits. A few broken ribs go a long way in killing blooded prey.

Caenor thought about sending Dirofil a mental image of the braccos and their bivalve shells, but decided that letting him find out on his own would spare him of his further attempts at brainstorming a plan. Kill the thing, take the ears. They were dumb dogs. They would fall with ease.

Another cry, closer this time, as they skipped though the Bassets, with Dirofil trying to find a path through the forest of mouths. He avoided teeth with the grace of a cat on a china shop, but the dead flesh failed to bleed.

"Look, can you see them over there?" Caenor pointed at the bipedal menaces as they shoved their way past the clouds of collies, sniffing the air with their dorsally convex snouts.

Chihuahua eyes. So no. There's movement, and there's… movement.

Dirofil cloaked his whole body in psychosarc, ready for the rumble. Caenor stretched his tentacles.

"This is an easy quarry if you know how to deal with them. They are strong and somewhat fast, but have nothing to do if you outrange them. Avoid being cornered and getting pummeled."

Such a complex strategy.

I am not about to Rube-goldberg a way to murder mutants when you can simply go for the heart. Caenor answered mentally, the spiritual topography of his mental message evidencing hints of annoyance.

I am known as an enthusiast of going for the heart.

"I hope your cheekiness can be extirpated as easily as your soul from your body."

Caenor's array of Chihuahua brains shone bright if only for a moment, sending a fresh wave of energy to nourish his core. He was readying himself, for the eyes of the mutants had set on the pair of worms.

Powerful thighs pumped as the biped monstrosities closed in, their four toes splayed for balance, claws as thick as cigars scrapping against the invulnerable corneas of the ground Bassets. They charged with their arms tensed, rigid in front of their ribs, the two-clawed maces half their hands had turned into cupped by their two remaining fingers. The convex curve of their snouts betrayed their original breed: the cranium unequivocally belonged to a bull terrier. Their jaws, though, dangled deformed. The teeth had coalesced into a few parodies of carnassials, and the rims of their tongues showed swollen, scarred, when they panted and inflated their wide chests. And whenever they exhaled sharply, the blood-curling whistles of gnarled airways made themselves known.

Their race could be described as an ambling one, careless in regard of what or who they stepped over, long mouths opened in a rictus of rage, marching towards the automata with the full intent of feasting on Dirofil's soul… and having Caenor's as a side dish.

Using his tentacles, Caenor lifted his body enough to freely maneuver with his arms and legs. He shifted his body such that he seemed stuck in a permanent backwards somersault, legs to the front, the eyed arm erected skyward like a vile beacon, the neck outstretched and the mechanical eyes whisked one to the top of the head, and the other to the area anterior to the crotch, such that it monitored the other eye's blind spot.

Dirofil glanced at the splinter of his Splinter and nodded once. That was a decent battle position. Better than his, as he had not really thought through the concept of killing mutants ten times the size of his new body. But as long as they had ankles, he would have a target to aim at.

I can handle one, entertain the other. Caenor instructed dryly.

Dirofil started down his left, skipping on between the clumsy jaws of the potato dogs. He rushed in carelessly shedding the light of his core, a flaring bait for the soul eaters. He didn't feel at ease commanding the tendons and bones of the Chihuahua, but that wouldn't stop him from becoming a nimble, annoying little thing.

As one of the biological maces unlatched from his attacker's hand he kicked off to his left, and as the other blunt weapon swung towards him he dove under the creature. And as he rushed past the nether regions, he had a revelation. A thirst for castration.

A bite, a howl born out of abject pain., and a bloodied scrotum, ripped open by the half-metal, half-apatite fangs of Dirofil.

The Early Bird collapsed out of pain, kicking and flailing his maces as the angry basset hounds bit onto his think skin, unable to pierce it but trying nonetheless.

Dirofil hadn't stopped running, because the second Early Bird still chased after him, drawing closer and closer. Caenor, in turn, followed the Early bird.

Dirofil swallowed the ripped off testicle and began processing it inside his psychosarc. He projected his will onto the tissue and ordered it to harden, to become whatever sort of substance it was meant to be, as long as it wasn't something soft. True, it was a part from a mutant, but if Chihuahuas could be properly processed, trying with this part wouldn't hurt.

"Face me, you disgusting creature!" Caenor yelled as he closed in to Dirofil and the mutant that tried to pummel the small Chihuahua, who slinked under the female Early Bird's feet and between her legs, fearing a crushing not because bodies were… replaceable.

While the male struggled to get up in spite of the all-encompassing pain, , Dirofil managed to get the female to hit her own toe with one of her biological flails, the heavy mass of bone impacting onto one of the stubby toes without causing major damage, yet not being exactly painless for the monster.

And the distraction served its purpose: Caenor crashed like a hungry spider onto the Early Bird, his Talons going straight for the eyes, digging into them and into the soft flesh of the jowls only for a second, only for his legs to retract back before the swinging maces impacted.

Dirofil, a little too confident on his paw-work, slipped just in time to take one of the flails square against the ribcage, which, due to those pesky laws of physics, caused severe internal damage and reminded him how having wings had felt not so long ago.

Considering the body wasn't his and the broken bones were a mere frame to hold him together, he didn't suffer from anything but a healthy dose of surprise and a refresher on his new body's frailty. He was lucky enough to land upon a patch of butt-up bassets, away from the snappy-happy ones.

Yet he had no time to ponder upon his situation, as the neutered one had somewhat recovered and limped to his encounter, and as it was natural, it wanted to ensure his castrator had hell to pay.

The Fourth Imagined rearranged his broken limbs with some internal movements and got ready for another bout. Those flails of flesh and bone were almost his to swing around.

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