The canine-type chimera ant lay motionless in the transparent containment shell, showing all the visible signs of something recently dead. Then it shuddered. Its shriveled limbs slowly filled out, and it released a low, pained sound that the chamber's walls absorbed without comment.
There were no restraints. It stayed flat anyway.
The monitors returned to steady baselines. Gel read the data with the focused patience of someone who had been doing this for some time and intended to keep doing it. Strings of readout numbers scrolled down the screen in the lab's cold light, and she watched them the way other people watch familiar roads.
She turned her left palm upward and let the natural energy shape itself into a conjured replica of the chimera ant's foreleg. It materialized precisely: the correct density, the correct layering.
Then her right hand became a snake.
It was not a gradual process. Her hand simply was a snake, her conjuration technique operating at the substrate level that months of natural system development had made available to her. The snake's tongue moved. It prepared itself with the specific patience of something that has been asked to do a job and is taking it seriously. Then it released a concentrated ball of venom toward the suspended replica, which absorbed the dose in stages: skin layer, fat layer, muscle, nerve. Each layer peeled away and floated in its own category, separately suspended, while the venom worked through each in sequence.
She ran the simulation three times. Then she dispersed the conjured limb, prepared the venom she had synthesized as a physical compound, injected it into a test tube, and transferred it to the medical cabinet across the room.
The venom atomized and spread through the glass cover of the second containment unit. The cat-type chimera ant inside inhaled it. The effect was visible within seconds: eyes bulging, breathing labored, the specific distress of something encountering a substance its biology had no reference for.
Gel collected the data she wanted, made a pot of coffee, and sat back down at the lab table.
She opened the laptop, browsed her research files for a few minutes, then opened a video call.
Cheadle answered promptly. The Dog of the Zodiac had the particular alertness that three-star Disease Hunters developed over years of receiving calls about things that urgently required them: glasses, contained expression, eyes that sharpened the moment something relevant appeared.
"Gel. What is it?"
"Your paper on the viral conditions described in zombie fiction," Gel said. "The one from a few years ago. That was actually about Zobae Disease, wasn't it."
A brief pause. "Yes. The Licensing Office requested that research. They wanted a framework that could be shared publicly without naming the source." Cheadle looked at her steadily. "You've encountered something with similar symptoms."
"Someone commissioned me. It's related to the chimera ant situation."
"Who commissioned you?"
"The person Netero has been paying unusual attention to."
Cheadle's expression did not change, but her eyes did the thing they did when something relevant had just arrived and she was already processing it. "Liam."
"Not just Netero." Gel lifted her right hand. "Watch."
The hand became a snake. The snake became a mouse. The mouse shifted and became a dog's head, Cheadle's specific head, working its jaw and producing a close approximation of Cheadle's voice: "I need your help to complete his commission. But before that, you may want to find Liam yourself."
Silence from the other end of the call.
"Has your conjuration reached that level?" Cheadle said.
"That is exactly why I think you should find him."
"Don't tell me he taught you this directly. Even if he did, why would you spend the energy learning it? That kind of precision isn't free."
"That's the remarkable part," Gel said. "It didn't take hard training. It arrived quickly."
Cheadle's face was now approximately fifteen centimeters from her screen. "I don't believe that."
Gel let her right hand keep changing: other faces, other proportions, each one distinct. The hand moved through a sequence of heads like someone turning the pages of a reference book.
Cheadle watched until she was satisfied, which took longer than usual.
"How do I find him?"
They looked at each other across the connection.
Cheadle said: "Netero might know his location. And even if he doesn't, he'll want to know about your ability. It breaks the standard rules, and Netero pays specific attention to things that do that."
"My thought as well," Gel said. "Either way, I need your research."
"Tell me where you are. I'll be there." Cheadle's hand was already moving toward the laptop lid. "Buying tickets takes too long. I'll charter an airship."
"Bring the Zobae research materials."
"No need. It's all in here." She tapped her temple. "I'll be there soon."
The screen went dark.
The room smelled of sandalwood.
It was a quiet room, the kind of quiet that accumulates over years of deliberate maintenance, with several shrines arranged along the far wall and incense burning in the Kakin style. Former King Nasubi Hui Guo Rou sat with his back to the door and his face toward the shrines, saying nothing.
He had lost weight in a short period of time. The particular heaviness that had been a permanent feature of his silhouette was gone, replaced by something quieter and harder to read.
Camilla walked in.
"You are no longer the king," she said, before he could speak. "You don't have the standing to disobey Camilla's instructions."
Nasubi did not turn around. He said, in the even voice of someone who has been composing this statement for a while: "The Kakin royal family has maintained the succession war for generations. Each cycle selects a worthy heir. That is why the kingdom is what it is today."
Camilla did not respond. She stood and looked at the three shrines.
The middle one held a carved stone Buddha. The right one held a dagger in its scabbard, the Ancestral Blade, the ceremonial weapon passed from each departing king to the confirmed successor at the conclusion of the succession war. Old, maintained, specific to this purpose and no other.
The left shrine was empty.
What it had held, until recently, was the Seed Urn, the vessel that generated the guardian spirit beasts for each participating prince. The mechanism by which the succession war ran. The physical anchor of four centuries of institutional design.
Liam had taken the Yin Nen Sword to it. What remained of the Seed Urn was currently a carved stone object from which all the embedded Nen had been permanently removed.
Nasubi reached out and touched the scabbard of the Ancestral Blade.
"The succession war exists to ensure each generation produces a qualified ruler," he said. "The Seed Urn, the Succession Arbiter, the Ancestral Blade: each one has a role in that process. Camilla, you ended the succession war and destroyed the Seed Urn. When you die, there is no mechanism left to ensure the quality of your heir. When your heir dies, there is no mechanism for theirs. The kingdom is one bad generation away from the kind of collapse that takes centuries to repair."
Camilla said: "What's the concern? Camilla intends to be immortal."
Nasubi exhaled slowly. "Every monarch has had that intention."
"They were not Camilla."
"What makes you different?"
"Camilla does not need to explain that to you." Her voice carried no heat, the way it carried no heat when she was being absolutely final. "What you need to do is stand up, leave this room, and prepare to accompany Camilla to the cemetery."
She turned and walked toward the door without looking back at the shrines.
On the rooftop of a building in Kakin's capital, a butterfly landed.
Then another. Then more, arriving in small groups, too many to count individually, each one dissolving at the moment of landing into something finer than wing-dust. More came and continued to come, accumulating in the same location, building density the way a storm builds pressure: gradually, then all at once.
The mass condensed. A shape formed within it, gaining definition the way photographs develop, detail arriving in sequence until the whole was present and complete.
Shaiapouf stood on the rooftop of a building in the Kakin capital, looked out at the city, and breathed the air of a place he had not been before.