Aoi is where she’s been for the past several days: by Ritter’s tank. She had moved her mattress up to the glass, the better to relax while they chat. Now she was up at the edge of the tank, her meal in her hand. She hadn’t turned the force field on in days.  

Aoi: {I’m getting tired of eating this same thing every day…}

Ritter: {W E A R Y ▃▚ ░ ▓ ▓▒ ░▘▐▜ O F T T I M E S ?}

Aoi: {You want this porkchop? I can’t stand these things anymore. I hate pork.} 

Ritter: {???}

Aoi tosses the meat into the tank. After examining it closely and holding it gently in her mandibles, Ritter gets a taste of it. She chomps it down with sudden gusto. Ritter swims up, tapping the edge of the tank at Aoi’s feet for more. 

A cheerful trip to the food synthesizer and she returns, tossing another porkchop into the water. Ritter devours it, shaking it back and forth in her jaws with a long, low coo of satisfaction. Aoi laughs. 

Aoi: {You like that meat?}

Ritter: {M E A T}

Aoi: {Meeeeat.} (After a silence) {… M E A T ?}

Ritter: {M E A T !}

Aoi: {“M E A T”, meat!}

Ritter: {M E A T … “meat”?}

Aoi: {“Meat”, “M E A T”!}

Aoi claps her hands and laughs. Ritter zips around in a figure eight in the water. Another word figured out. Though Aoi worries she is hurting her brain learning to think like Ritter… she supposes there’s nothing better to do with her brain. 

Ritter: {S P I D E R}

Aoi: {Aoi. Sorry, I don’t know how to say it “your way.”}

Ritter: {▀▟▖▋▒… S M A L L .    S L E E P S… ░▖ ░.   T I M E … S H O R T.}  

Aoi: {Yeah… not long until they shuttle us off the planet… or until we arrive at Planet Incubatopia if we already left.}

Ritter: {T I M E ░░▓▗▟▟ S P I D E R , R I T T E R ▟▓▓░ U N D E R S T A N D , S P I D E R▝▌U N D E R S T A N D , R I T T E R …}

Aoi: {Can we really go any faster with that than we already are?}

Ritter: (She rises out of the water and gently touches the top of her head to Aoi’s forehead) {T O U C H ▟▀▃ C O N N E C T} 

Aoi: {You can do that? Is that going to work?} 

Without answering, Ritter slides down into the water again. She hooks her beak on the edge of the tank, where she can keep just the top of her head above water. A comfortable position for both of them. 

Ritter: {W E L C O M E ▓▒▏▒▌  S P I D E R T H E F O L D}  

Aoi clutches her chest. She couldn’t understand what that final word meant, but even hearing about it briefly over telepathy fills her heart with warmth and a sense of togetherness.  For a human, who lived isolated from others, barely knowing her next-door neighbors, it was almost too much. 

Ritter is waiting. Aoi curls up beside the water’s edge. Somehow, she knows she won’t have the strength to hold herself up when it begins. She bends down and touches her forehead to Ritter’s. 

* * *

Warm. The water is warm, like a bath. Aoi looks up. The sun is a deep purple, the light shining down deep underwater. The water passes in and out of her lungs just like air, like swimming in a dream.

Something large swims past her, bumping her. A serpent, larger than Ritter, armored with dark scales, a long horn, and a brutal spike on its tail. Aoi recoils in alarm. The creature seems to sense it, turning around to face her. It has the same almond-shaped eyes, the same four-mandibled beak. The same face as Ritter. It gently pats her with the side of its tailfin and continues on its way. 

Below, on the ocean floor, there is a colorful seashell village. The seashells are so much like the spiraling conches on Earth, save for their size. A single one is the size of an elephant. Aoi swims down. The roads of the village wind between the seashells, and dozens of worms zip to and fro like cars on a highway. Only a few look like Ritter, with a rainbowy skin and an array of feelers around their heads. A mesh of glassy, fibrous plants covers the road. Aoi and any of the whaleworms can slip through, but she guesses it’s meant to keep larger predators from swimming in. 

Before Aoi can swim into the mesh, another whaleworm bursts out of the shell village. This one looked very much like Ritter. It swims towards her, straight and swift as an arrow. Unable to swim out of the way fast enough, Aoi raises her hands to protect herself.

It wraps itself around her in a tight spiraling hug, like tinsel on a Christmas tree. 

Ritter: {So excited! So excited!!} 

Recognizing her voice– or the feel of her mind, perhaps– Aoi pats the coil of Ritter’s body closest to her hands. 

Aoi: {Haha, okay, okay, let’s calm down…}

Ritter uncoils herself from Aoi, leaving only her tailfin wrapped around her to pull her along. 

Ritter: {Welcome! Welcome to the fold! Ah…}

It is so much easier to understand her with this direct connection. Ritter looks up towards the violet sun overhead.

Ritter: {First being from beyond the stars! Exotic! O Aoi, what you use these for? What does an Aoi do?}

Ritter pokes experimentally at Aoi’s limbs. 

Aoi: {“An” Aoi? Huh?}

Ritter: {What?} 

After an awkward, confused silence, Ritter seems to rally. 

Ritter: {Come with me! My home!} 

Ritter worms her way into the glassy mesh and joins the traffic of her kind on the village road. Aoi follows, at a slower speed. It’s all she can manage with human arms and legs. The fish and worms all brush against her and Ritter as they go by, and when a few stop to look at Aoi for avoiding them, it becomes clear these touches are not an accident. Aoi extends her hand to pet the creatures as they go by, and this seems an acceptable greeting to them. 

Ritter introduces some of the creatures as they go by. A smallish whaleworm with arm-like forefins is a “wright.” Flocks of little ones that tended the plants are “fermiers.” At a large intersection, they stop for a luminescent blue jellyfish thing, multi-tiered like a wedding cake. It enters a crystalline structure at the center of a large plaza, and the crystals bring the shifting lights from its body into focus. Like a television screen, it displays visions of approaching storms, of the arrival of predators, of disease that threatens the crops. The one who sees the future. Ritter reverently calls it the “spaewife.” 

One of the large armor-plated worms passes by in the opposite direction, its scales like sandpaper against Aoi’s hand. 

Ritter: {A ritter.}

Aoi: {Huh? That one? Ritter’s not you?}

Ritter: {Past, was a ritter… until D I S C O N T E N T came! Came to this peaceful world!}

Ritter said it with such deep intensity and meaning that it sent a shiver down Aoi’s body. 

Aoi: {Have I come to your world somehow? What is this?}

Ritter: {Just memories… just memories.}

Ritter leads them down into a fissure in the ocean floor. Down here in the shade, the rich colors of the plants and Ritter’s body stand out even more. There are more whaleworms like Ritter. She introduces them as the ones who heal others, the “nightingales.” Here, on a ledge about halfway to the bottom, Ritter finds an empty seashell. She enters backwards, her body smoothly curving into the spiral of the shell’s interior. Aoi can’t bend her body like that, so she settles for curling up at the entrance beside Ritter. Ritter peers admiringly at the way Aoi can bend at the waist and the knees.

Ritter: {So tight! So tightly, you can bend your body!}

Aoi: {I guess… what’s next?} 

Ritter: {To understand one another… O Aoi, share memories. Whatever is most important. Most important.} 

Aoi: {You want some of my memories too? Like what?}

Ritter: {From me, will share… how I killed D I S C O N T E N T. D I S C O N T E N T, made me wish for a different life! Should have stayed. Should have stayed. }

Aoi: {Wish? Oh, you mean the Incubators?}

Ritter: {Ah! That! Yes, called themselves that! What does an Incubator do? Sows D I S C O N T E N T! Didn’t explain to others, before I killed… }

Ritter makes a series of low clicking noises in her throat. With the mental connection they had now, Aoi can tell this sound is a mournful one.

Ritter: {D I S C O N T E N T changes lives, changes balance of world! Thought, must do this, save world… but others angry… blamed me. I was first wish made. Thought, was taking responsibility, nobody else would need to fight them, but… was wrong. Should have told everyone.} 

Aoi falls silent. A sudden current rushes through the fissure, like a passing wind. Up above, the violet sun glares down at her, just like the eye of someone she knew. 

Ritter: {Sharing now?}

Aoi: {Walk a mile in your shoes, huh?}

Ritter raised her head up, turning her head slightly left and right in confusion at the amount of information that came with relaying that idiom. Aoi resolved to keep her messages a little simpler.

Aoi: {Yeah, I’ll tell you about… my fight, too.}

Ritter: {Sharing!}

It was a perfect day on the band of twilight. On one side of the world, the sun shone forever over a warm ocean. On the other, an endless expanse of deep, deep ice under eternal darkness. In the narrow ring around the planet between the two, there was some dry land where things could grow. The Grove of One Hundred Fruits, where the whaleworms went to mate. 

Ritter took a throatful of water and heaved herself up onto the land. She had dark, armored scales back then, and a tail spike that would be the pride of any ritter. He came up onto the shore after her. Another ritter, a little larger than her. His tail spike curved cutely. She liked his eyes. Blue, like hers, but He had a fetching rim of purple around the edges. Rim-of-Purple. 

They went their separate ways into the grove. Here and there trees sprouted up from the tide pools, spiraling up from the water. Between there were cool expanses of sand and rocks. The trees bore every kind of fruit one could imagine, in every shape and size. Ritter set about finding a fruit to present to her mate. 

Plump orange fruit, thin green fruit, blue fruit shaped like a ring. Ritter paused to consider a black fruit that erupted with spikes. A neon ultraviolet fruit bristled with hairs that raised when she poked it. A curving purple fruit reminded her of His eyes. Finally, she selected a flat, iridescent fruit. It grew thin in the middle, so thin you could look through and see the world in rainbow colors.

Ritter waited by the shore for quite some time, coiled around her fruit to conceal it. Finally, He returned. He pushed the fruit He had selected towards her. 

He had picked the same fruit. Of course. He held it gently in his beak and Ritter obligingly looked through, before revealing she had picked the same fruit. “Rainbow-lens fruit” would do for a name. Of course, they both accepted the other’s fruit and ate them. Rainbow-lens fruit didn’t have much flavor, but that wasn’t important. Looking through the fruit and seeing the world in a kaleidoscope of colors, Ritter felt she was seeing their future together. 

They slipped back into the water. The actual mating would come later. 

Or so it should have. 

On the way back from the Grove, in the shadow of a rock spire, they were attacked. A colwrath, a massive knot of muscle and rage. Its mouth split its body from fin to fin with a sinister grimace. 

Rim-of-Purple fought valiantly to protect her, and Ritter to protect Him. Before she could drive her tail spike into the loose, greasy flesh at the base of its thick skull, the damage had been done. 

His blood clouded the water. It tasted bitter. His scales had crumpled, the shards driven deep into His body by the creature’s bite. He didn’t have long. 

He would live, of course. Because of the life-bud. 

All life had one. An inconspicuous, rubbery pod, tucked away in His home, probably. When he died, his soul would return to his life-bud and, with a fresh body, he would spring anew. 

Like a Soul Gem.

Yes… like a Soul Gem. All creatures will be reborn without cease… the needle deep in her maw being the only exception. Evolving that needle, that exploited the splitting of the soul between body and life-bud, that caused destructive clashing and resonance until the soul was destroyed… that was why they were the dominant species on this planet. 

In her infinite kindness, Ritter didn’t use the needle on the colwrath as it sank into the depths. All species in the Fold had come together to decide. As a condition of allowing Ritter’s kind to exist without all-out war between them and every other living thing on the planet… Death had to be a last resort, used only in the most severe of circumstances. Death was too much. 

Rim-of-Purple would live. But He would not be in any condition to finish their promised mating for a while. There was no guarantee He would even remember her. 

Ritter curled around Him, mourning. For an instant, she wished she could have been born a nightingale instead, who could heal His wounds. 

And then. 

A tender, white nudibranch approached. It slowly flapped through the water on its fluffy wings, coming to a stop in front of her. 

“I could change you, if you want,” it squeaked. Sensing Ritter’s doubt, it continued. “I’m Miralie. Make a contract with me, and you can save him. A piece of your soul, in this sparkly rock, and you can have anything you desire…” 

Impulsive. Stupid. Ritter had taken the offer. In an instant, her hard, fighter’s scales were replaced with velvety rainbow skin. Dextrous feelers sprouted from her mane, the better to gently examine and tend wounds. And she now had the gland in her throat, to secrete the stem cell paste that would make it all possible.

She set to work healing his wounds. Everything would be alright.

Or so it should have been. 

Miralie arrived in the village, and everyone crowded around her with excitement. Everyone else reacted to the “contract” with a mixture of apathy and confusion. Why wish for anything when they already had so much? 

Rim-of-Purple seemed unsure how to respond to Ritter’s transformation. Why she’d done it when He would have lived anyway. The date of their mating came and went and she didn’t see Him. 

A predator came to the village, and Ritter almost rushed out to meet it like she always had. As she watched the other ritters, she knew. She was born to be a ritter. She didn’t like her new softness. Her smallness. 

Ritter saw Miralie in the plaza one day, preaching her wishes and contracts, and she realized. Like everyone, Ritter had a role she was born into, a place to be, a happy future placed before her by the spaewife. She had everything, she was content! Miralie had seized onto her passing whim and turned it into a life-changing mistake.

Miralie was discontent. 

Algal blooms that hid the water from the sun. Methanogens that toxified the ocean. Like every other threat that had called the entire Fold to action, discontent threatened everything about their way of life. Ritter watched Miralie cajole everyone who would hear her. She wheedled them, luring them into making a tragic mistake. Some of them were starting to listen. Miralie had not even stopped to sleep a single time. 

Ritter asked Miralie to a private place, in a cave below the sands. There, Miralie told her that she would not consider stopping no matter what. That she was here to make her contracts. That it was her life’s purpose. 

Miralie couldn’t be allowed to live! 

Ritter rushed forward and impaled the little nudibranch on the soul-shattering needle. Miralie made no effort to dodge or resist. There was something wrong with her! 

Beginning the soul-shattering only made her more sure. She could feel Miralie’s life-bud was hideously far away. Impossibly far away. Unimaginably far away. One could spend their entire life swimming from one end of the ocean to the other, swimming there and back, a hundred times, and it still would not equal one one-millionth of the distance to Miralie’s life-bud. Miralie had come here from somewhere else to ruin this world!

Only when the soul-shattering began did Miralie react. She twisted and screamed and spasmed in agony, and Ritter had to pin her to the rocks to stop her from escaping. With a final cry, her soul shattered and Miralie lay still. Dead. Her cries had attracted others. They peered down into the cave at Ritter. Their eyes were full of accusation.

Days later, at the hearing, they didn’t understand why she killed Miralie. Ritter wasn’t sure she wanted them to. Even to comprehend discontent was to stare the basilisk right in the eyes and give Miralie exactly what she wanted. Ritter was prepared to accept whatever punishment awaited her. It was worth it to know that she had saved this place. To understand that she had barely avoided a crisis that would have affected everyone.

Then the other Miralies came. There were more of them. Two. One was a dark, spider-like being with four limbs and two swimmers on her back.

Aisha.

Yes, Aisha. The other, a ball-shaped floating matrix of white fibers, fractal-like and infinite like a tree root. Shikari.

They arrived in a massive metal shell, with a horn that made their voices loud to boom over the village. They demanded Ritter be turned over to them for what she did.  She was loaded onto the shell, and forced into an insultingly small cage. Her life-bud, too. The shell roared and rumbled and left the village.

She had fallen quiet at the hearing, when she realized that Miralie wasn’t the only one. This wasn’t over. As she turned around and around in the tiny confines of her cage, Ritter knew what she had to do. Finish the job.

Behind every vermin there are a hundred more. If there were three discontents, there would be more. As she pounded on the walls of her cage, she regretted not enlisting the Fold. Now she knew it would require all life on this world to revolt and cast out the discontent.

Finding a weak spot in her cage, Ritter broke out. In the soulless, clinical underbelly of the metal shell, she found her confiscated Soul Gem. She broke open a wall, letting the water flood in. She swam up to the upper levels. Shikari was encased in an impenetrable metal capsule at the front of the shell. Ritter swam around the passages of the shell in a fury, searching for a way in. 

In another room she found Aisha, imprisoned in a glass tube.

“Wait!” Aisha cried. “I’m on your side! He locked me up, too!” 

Like a fool, Ritter listened.

“He thought I was getting too sympathetic to you. That I was on the Path…”

Ritter didn’t know what that meant.

“As soon as Miralie died, he locked me up just for being upset! I just want to get out! No contracts. Okay? I can open the cockpit. Please?” 

At Aisha’s direction, Ritter pressed the button that let Aisha loose. She knew the shell well, knew where the vital organs were and how to open the sheets of metal that blocked the way. At one point, they arrived in the chamber with the horn that amplified their voices. Ritter knew what she had to do. While Aisha went to open Shikari’s capsule, Ritter stayed by the horn.

By now, the shell had navigated to open water. It must have been very near the surface before she flooded it. Ritter couldn’t be sure her kind would hear her, but… she sang into the horn about everything she had experienced from Miralie’s schemes. About how these creatures existed to sow doubt and discontent. About how life on this planet already had everything they needed, being born into a body that suited them and having the spaewife plan a happy future for them. The discontent would change all of that. Everyone could act on every passing fancy, derailing the life they were meant to lead. The world would fall to pieces, no one would be happy! It would be chaos! Complete chaos! 

There was no way to know if they’d hear her, if the Fold would decide it was worthy to act upon. Ritter turned and left. At the very least, she had to kill Shikari. 

As promised, the secure door opened when she approached his capsule. There were more protective layers within, but they wouldn’t stop her. Ritter used her Soul Gem to blast and batter it, lashing it with the energy ribbons her wish had given her, and ramming it. How simple this would be were she still a ritter!

It took hours. The shell came apart around it, letting the water and sunlight flood in even more. Taking on even more water, the shell hit the ocean floor. Finally, she separated the capsule from the shell, and Shikari had to emerge. He shot up through the gaps in the shell she had created, and she followed him up.

Somehow, it was dark when they emerged. How could it be so dark in open water? Her eyes adjusted. 

Thousands upon thousands of fish surrounded them, completely enclosing them like a dome. Every kind of fish Ritter had seen, and some she never had. A massive colwrath blotted out the sun. Silent. Staring. At Shikari. The Fold had judged Ritter’s plea worthy. Everyone– everything– was here to kill Shikari. Even the plants tangled around him, pulling him down. 

“What’s the matter with you savages?” he bellowed. He tried to leave, but he couldn’t leave. Up above, electric flatfish swarmed in great numbers, sparking and flashing with lightning above them. A magnetic storm that prevented him from abandoning his body and fleeing to his life-bud.

“So that’s how it’s going to be…” Shikari seemed to gather white matter from out of nothing, swelling and growing to tremendous size. A sickly white leviathan with sunken black pits where its eyes should be, and a gaping maw that never closed. His voice shook the sea. “Now that you’ve threatened my life, I don’t need to hold back anymore. I can exterminate every last drop and scale of your filth!”

Ritter was first up. The shell had traveled far from her village, and until others of her kind arrived, she was the only one who possessed a soul-shattering needle. She had to be their champion. 

She rushed him with the needle out. At his size, it would be easy to stick him. Unlike Miralie, he seemed to understand and swam away. Allowing Ritter to touch him meant instant death. She used her Soul Gem to launch balls of energy, cratering his white flesh. She swam after him as fast as she could as he circled around, trying to avoid her and the wall of life hemming them in.

Metal things rose up from the wreckage of the shell, firing beams of heat that released bubbles of steam that cracked and popped in the water. Ritter swung her ribbons wide to destroy a huge swath of them. There were too many, but other creatures were upon them in an instant. Some of them sacrificed themselves, throwing their bodies over the metal things’ mouths to block the beam. It hurt to lose them. Ritter kept firing until all of the metal things were destroyed.

She looked up. Shikari was rushing her. Impossible to escape. She opened her maw and exposed the needle, to impale him as soon as he touched her. He changed course at the last second to avoid her.  Ritter backflipped in the water to drag her ribbons around, slicing off his fin as he tried to crush her with it. 

He plowed into a shoal of fish, trying to catch them in his jaws and slam them into the seafloor. An entire herd of colwrath slammed into him to stop him, more of them than Ritter had ever seen. They rammed him and bit him and forced themselves into his eyes. 

Ritter quickly closed the distance, scarring Shikari’s hide with lashes from her energy ribbons. Struggling to push past the colwraths and escape, Shikari swung his immense tail at her. By now, Shikari was covered in plants and fish, swimming against his every motion to slow and cripple him. When his tailfin drew close, the fish parted to allow Ritter to slice it clean off. No blood, no cry of pain. 

He tried to shake the fish off and swim up, his tailfin regrowing itself. He went for the flatfish maintaining the magnetic storm. If he broke through them, he would escape! 

A swell of water pushed them all back. A chill ran down Ritter’s spine. Something gigantic had come from the deep, deep depths. A colossal, dark thing rushed in and rammed Shikari with its head. Ritter could barely make out its shape, wreathed in dark clinging plants that waved to and fro like a shroud. It seized Shikari in its jaws and slammed him down into the seafloor with all its weight. 

Ritter rushed to catch up. Not an inch of Shikari was visible anymore, completely covered with life. She couldn’t see the seafloor or anything around her anymore. Millions more creatures were arriving, from every direction, more and more and more. Mouths big and small ripped Shikari apart, shreds of his flesh filling the water. Some of them parted, to expose a circle of pale flesh for Ritter. She streaked downward, needle extended.

The thoughts of every creature in the Fold hit her as she drew close. Their verdict for the one who would bring D I S C O N T E N T to this world: death. Death! DEATH! DEATH!

“What freak of nature is this planet!?” In desperation, Shikari flung globs of his flesh at her, to knock her off-course. 

Ritter buried her needle in his body and began the soul-shattering. Shikari groaned in agony. His soul seemed different from Miralie’s, and though still far away, much closer than hers had been. Was it important?

A sudden pressure at the base of Ritter’s skull. Aisha, pressing into her, preventing her from withdrawing, preventing her from alerting the others tearing into Shikari of her presence. 

“Excellent work, little whaleworm!” she crowed. At her side was a tender, white nudibranch. Miralie. Ritter’s eyes widened. Shikari’s soul was different because she hadn’t destroyed the real Miralie.

“So this is your doing?” Shikari roared. “Even you, Aisha!? Is the Path so important to you that you’d murder your own mentor on a savage planet!?”

Aisha pressed harder on Ritter’s head, forcing her to continue the soul-shattering. “Well, you were just a li’l too close to exposing Miralie for following the Path, weren’t you? Too bad you didn’t think about me until it was too late! I spent a long time finding the perfect planet, the perfect life-form to get this job done… I think it’s time for you to retire, old man! A nice, looooooong retirement…” 

Even with the mass of creatures on top of him, Shikari managed to writhe with the last of his strength and almost hit Aisha. “Miralie! Aisha! You TREACHEROUS SNAKES!” 

Shikari’s soul was at the breaking point. Every creature in the Fold cried out for his death. Aisha was pressing into the back of Ritter’s neck. Electric impulses traveled through Ritter’s nerves to force her to continue. 

And then, a pull. Something was pulling on her. Her collar. 

Aisha yanks on Aoi’s collar, heaving her away from Ritter. The connection between them breaks when they separate. Aoi reels, blinking. The vision of the battle with Shikari is still in her eyes, bleeding and mixing together with the holding cell. It still seems so real. Aoi reaches out to strike Shikari, and it passes through him like air. 

Aisha: Excuse me! Just what is going on in here? I asked you to heal this rainbowy whaleworm. That’s it! That’s all I needed! Care to explain what all this is, going through my past like that? 

Through a gap in the vision like a tear in a painting, Aoi sees that Ritter is stunned too, still in the throes of her vision of the final battle on board the Walpurgis Night. 

Aisha: Why bother? Do you really think it’s a good idea to make me angry?

Aoi tries to move toward Ritter, but she needs to readjust to her limbs. She flaps her wings to try to move herself along, and cries out in pain when her broken wings strike the floor.

Aisha: You know, Aoi, I’m getting a little tired of seeing you limp around like a broken bird. 

She produces a long, sharp pin, which she drives into a broken bone of Aoi’s wing, forcing it straight. Aoi cries out, and Ritter thrashes blindly in the water. 

Aisha: Why don’t I fix that for you!!