The Silent Sea? Mislabeled. It was a ghost party.
Cassandra Vaughn was standing at the front of the Lymph-Reader, a small, sturdy boat made from a divine ear's cartilage. The thick, silver liquid seemed to go on forever, all flat and still. The Drowned Choir, the air buzzed with it—not a sound, but a feeling that impacted the stomach and was accompanied by faint, shimmering shapes and voices in the head.
…I fashioned a moon from a breath…
…holding orbits in my palm, they felt heavy…
…everything is slipping away… color names…
She was by herself. After the crew separated from the Maw, Captain Rhodes let her off hook, seeing that she was overwhelmed. Or maybe Rhodes just wanted the unstable oracle away from the crowd. Cassandra required the Choir. The terrible throb from Sanctum—she could even feel it from a great distance—had tampered with the ghosts. Their memories were gradually shattering, repeating, and becoming more sorrowful.
She put a crystal device into the silver liquid to listen. It was not a sample-taking device, but a hearing one. The liquid was lymph, like a god's juice, and was full of dying thoughts. When the device landed on the water, she was struck with a memory.
She was not Cassandra. She was gigantic. She was Aethelrex, very far back in time. She was not in a body; she was the body, and it was all a thought that had been made real. A very big feeling. The Mycelial Wastes were not a colony, but the nice tingling that happens when thoughts become real on your skin. The Spine Mountains were like the solid bones of an idea. The Sea of Sighs was like going over the things again in your mind.
There was no pain. Only the good feeling of being alive, of making a world just for the fun of it. There was love—not for things in the dream, because they were not separate yet—but for making it all. It was perfect creation.
Then, something else, a point of wrongness. A tiny prick. A need. A hunger that was not her own. It was small, but it was wrong. A hole in everything. Confusing. Then painful. Then the slow realization as the pricks got more, became a pattern, a way of eating. The love changed to anger, the joy became an ever-lasting wound.
The vision ended. Cassandra gasped, stepping back, dropping the sampler. She lay crying on the deck but they were not her tears, they were the god's. The loss was enormous. It was like remembering paradise, then falling forever.
The Choir around the boat got louder, their shimmering forms more distinct—not faces, but sad feelings, forgotten creations.
"I understand it," said Cassandra to the sea, to the ghosts. "I see it now. It wasn't food. It was a gift. And we used it in the wrong way."
A voice from the Choir
A thin and clear voice, more distinct than the others, joined the choir. It was not from the sea, but the Ribcage, on some psychic wave.
…mercy…
The Still Voice. Bianca's bit of awareness. Reaching out, and the Drowned Choir, the lost memories, tried to reach back, like lost body parts.
Cassandra knew what she was for. Not just a survivor. She was a link. The Choir held the before. The Still Voice was the pained now. And the Sanctum people were the why.
If the Final Digestion happened, the before and now would be gone, eaten by Wilder. Only the why would be left, always hungry in nothing.
She needed to convey her message to someone capable of utilizing it. Not to Bianca, as she was already convinced. Not to the Symbiotes, who only experience the pain, but not the lost happiness. She wanted someone who works with facts. Someone who needs proof.
Maxine Sharpe.
The Chief Carver was the key. She was going into the Cerebral Vault. If she could see the god not as parts, but as a ruined awesome thing…
Something interrupted the water. Not a wave. Something large, emitting a sick kind of light. A thought-eel, a mind predator drawn to feelings. Her vision had been a light.
The Choir screamed as the thing, all teeth, lunged at her boat.
Cassandra ran to the engine—a heart muscle hooked to the propeller. She sprinkled salts on it. The muscle twitched, and the boat moved out.
She turned around to look at the creature. The thought-eel was chasing her, and it was leaving a trail of black water where it landed. It was quick.
She was not able to lose it. She had to speak with it.
Cassandra expanded her thoughts. She zeroed in on the first incision. The world's destruction and the accompanying pain.
She directed that signal straight to the creature.
The thought-eel struggled. It was constructed of pain and lost memories. Here was the source. The scream. Too much. It perished and dropped.
Cassandra slumped against the wheel, she was bleeding, and her head was spinning. The sea was calm.
She was to find Maxine. The memory of the god was a weapon. And being nice was over.