This is a synopsis of my plans for book one of Misavow: Vermin Cathexis.

The motivation for the series overall is to portray that classic trope of an insect hivemind at war with the empire of humanity, except here the inhuman parasites are the protagonists, and they win. However, that’s only tangentially relevant for evaluating the first book, which serves to set up this future plotline. (After all, I think it’s more interesting if the protagonists’ views on empire and humanity and what’s acceptable to be done about it all changes over time. You maximize the impact of that character arc the farther you start from it.)

With all that said, let’s introduce our protagonists. Right now, there’s three.

The Characters

Pratta is your typical neglected orphan who wants to become a big important magic‍-​user and save lives and get accolades. She grew up desperate and friendless, but became super peppy about it. Imagine someone who thinks everyone around her should respect and appreciate her, except her way of demanding that attention is she’ll do whatever she can to make you smile. She’s quick to call people her friends, and she loves her friends. Very kissy and cuddly, but has zero interest in or understanding of romance.

One idea that’s stuck in my head is her name is just Pratta, right? Except she always introduces herself like “But call me her majesty Lady Prattalia.” And hearing this from some unwashed kid in ratty clothes, you think she’s doing a bit, and you laugh, and she laughs too because it is funny. But she’s also serious. It would make her day if someone, anyone, treated her like a princess.

I haven’t fully worked out Pratta’s background‍ ‍‍—‍ were her parents killed by monsters, giving her motivation to fight them or even just find out what happened that day? I haven’t decided.

One setup I like is that Pratta tried to become an alchemist, saving up months of earnings to afford the first round of exams, only for the examiners to study her innate transmutation and come back with the verdict that it’s utterly uninspiring and ordinary, and therefore not eligible for uniquity scholarship, and her performance on the skill tests are just a few points shy of the perfect score that would put her on the prodigy track. Sorry kid, but you’ll have to get there the hard way.

Of course, that first exam is the cheapest, subsidized by the chance that it might attract someone born lucky with a great innate transmutation. Point is, there’s no way that Pratta can afford the training needed to become an licensed alchemist without any help. But I digress.

Qyverna is actually the first character I thought of, the original protagonist for this series. Lately I’ve been calling the magic‍-​users alchemists, but the original term was vesselblades‍ ‍‍—‍ because magic‍-​users are vessels for holy light. Tools to be trained, knights to serve as hands for their lords and ladies.

Qyverna was steadfast and unfaltering in her service to her liege. She upheld every oath, executed every order. And she was skilled‍ ‍‍—‍ some of the priests murmured she might one day serve the throne directly, joining the inner circle of grand knights.

Of course, the nature of vessels is sometimes, they break. There’s a sickness that afflicts alchemists, a blight that spoils that plant which grows their magical fruit, and this blight spreads disease to the vessel if not caught before it is imbided. But the spores are everywhere; no vessel can truly escape from its influence. Caution and cleaniness helps, but who ends up catching the disease is ultimately a matter of bad luck.

So, Qyverna cracked and became a fallen knight. The doctors declare that further practice of alchemy would only feed the fungus growing with her. There is no cure for the blight, save feeding your flesh to the maggots and mosquitoes able feed on it. Qyverna will die.

She gets a veteran’s pension, and a room in a temple. It’s something like a shelter for vagrants, or a sick ward quarantine, or rent controlled housing. She’s surrounded by other broken vessels and they’re all waiting to die.

She hates them. Not the lords that pushed her too hard, not the doctors who left her here with no hope‍ ‍‍—‍ she hates the miserable wretches she’s stuck here with. They’ve lost all hope, spending their days crying, losing themselves in vices. Or they angst and abandon their faith, breaking their sworn oaths to the light they once served. It’s all so pathetic. At least face death with dignity.

So Qyverna works all day. She acts as a maid or courier or guard whenever the church needs it. She attends service every week. She watches fallen knights die month after month. When her sword was taken away, the doctors gave her eighteen months to live‍ ‍‍—‍ optimistic, as most knights don’t last half their prognosis.

Qyverna has been here for six years. Once a hotshot teen prodigy, she has now spent her entire adult life with death looming above. Her sickness has not gone away‍ ‍‍—‍ there is no cure or remission. Pain and weakness are constant companions. Maybe she’s built different, or maybe it’s because she followed doctor’s orders like oaths. Her insistence on the latter gives a few other knights hope. The ones that follow her example can cling to life longer.

Six years, and Qyverna starts to wonder if just maybe, she won’t have to spend the rest of her life watching brothers and sisters die. Then they start finding the bodies.

Lastly, we have Aoffe. Timothao was the princeling failson of a old noble house. He had strange interests and an odd manner of speech; he had no grace or tact and embarrassed his family at parties. So he spends his middle childhood hidden from sight, painstakingly tutored on his speech and bearing. He returns to public life as a quiet and stilted young man, but far less a target of mockery. Then one day, he disappears.

Aoffe makes waves in the criminal underground when she shows up trying to offload some stolen gold and jewelry. She mostly acts as a burglar, with an uncanny knack for making moves against rich targets, but anyone who crosses her soon learns the ornate sword she keeps at her hip wasn’t just a lucky find.

There’s one idea I’m not too sure about. So, first, as you might imagine, there’s plenty of nonhumans in this setting‍ ‍‍—‍ e.g. the alchemists’ magic comes from the fruit of intelligent carnivorous vine people worshiped as gods. And there’s rat people living underground. Well, Timothao’s family had bat‍-​people as servants, and their butler (batler) took a liking to him.

I’m thinking the bats practice a kind of “witchcraft”, subtle blood magic that acts in counterpoint to the hegemonic system of alchemy. Through transmutation circles inscribed as scars, Aoffe exercises control over her body. This lets her influence her hormones, as you might have guessed. The main other tricks she learns essentially lets her amplify the effect of sex and drugs have. She isn’t very studious or utilitarian in her use of magic; as long as she can get her hedonistic kicks, she doesn’t care to learn anything more advanced.

Similarly, she has no grand agenda behind her crimes, no revenge or revolution. She steals enough to buy food and drugs, makes only enough friends to cycle through houses to crash at. She ran away from home, and she runs away from every group she works with before they come to rely on her. She never lets herself get tied to any gang or supplier.

Finally, a word about setting‍ ‍‍—‍ all three characters live in a decadent city called Loardlevain, where a mountain range curves and cups a lake. The geography leaves the city constantly foggy and frequently rainy. Tunnels run deep beneath the mountain, mining magical metal. Replete for centuries, the empty caves now offer only dregs.

Once the capital of a long fallen empire, the city lately had dreams of becoming a major territory in a newly ascendent kingdom. It did not. Now money is eyeing the exits and the future is bleak. Its best days are ancient and better days are behind it. In the wake of lost opportunity and soaring wealth inequality, crime festers.

Now that we’ve introduced our three heroes, let’s explain how it all goes wrong.

The Plot

Currently, I have ten nine arcs, mostly following a structure of providing three chapters from one PoV before rotating‍ ‍‍—‍ I thought this would be a better compromise than switching every chapter, but I’m not married to this pattern. In particular, I’ve considered Pratta’s subplot the most amenable to expansion; you can easily interpolate arbitrary shonen bullshit (training, fights, etc.) as needed.

And of the three protags, Pratta seems the most the most conventionally sympathetic, so it might result in a more approachable work if she gets the most screen time.

But I digress. Let’s get into it already.

Last night, I started sketching out the first arc, and wound up with a thousand words, something like 2‍-​3 paragraphs per chapter. That doesn’t seem a sustainable pace if I’m gonna get this synopsis to you today, so let’s try this again with more restraint.

We open on Pratta volunteering out at the schoolhouse where she grew up. When class is out, she spots a shady figure chatting up a kid and leading them away. Suspicious, she chases them down and beats them up; the shady figure is a drugdealer her age, pushing magic tea stolen from the knights. Their boss is gonna be pissed that Pratta beat up this runner, and after some deliberation, Pratta drinks the magic tea and circulates her essence.

The boss is a rogue knight, a “twistedblade”, someone used to overpowering civilians‍ ‍‍—‍ even as blight creeps across their flesh. Because Pratta obsessively practices the rituals she’d learned for her first exam, she’s able to keep pace and take down the twistedblade. Victorious, Pratta escorts the kid back home‍ ‍‍—‍ the parent is a fallen knight, so this takes her to the same temple‍-​shelter Qyverna lives at. Qyverna senses Pratta’s flowing alchemical essence, and warns her not to push herself.

Qyverna’s chapters open on her roughing up some kids who had defaced a temple mural. That would be sacrilegeous on its own, but she accuses them of being gang members trying to mark territory, and scares them off. (Good thing, too, because her facade of strength drops quickly; she was too weak to fight them any further.) Next she goes to a shrine to kneel in prayer, asking forgiveness for her violence. Here she meets another fallen knight, and asks about the parent of the kid from yesterday. She couldn’t find them anywhere when their kid got home. In a strange tone, it’s explained that they’ve been missing for days now.

Qyverna is disappointed, frustrated, but not surprised. This is the third fallen knight who’s disappeared. Then she finally places the tone, and doesn’t understand why the other knight sounds glad to announce this. They explain that’s almost hopeful, isn’t it? Whatever happened to those knights… it could be better than waiting for certain death, couldn’t it? But Qyverna hates this uncertainty. If they didn’t get taken, but simply left? How could they leave us to wonder? It’s damned selfish. The other knight flinches, shrinks away, and Qyverna mutters an apology for snapping and excuses herself.

She walks away, ruminating on what to do and what to think‍ ‍‍—‍ somehow watching knights die was easier: at least then she knew why. She visits a familiar spot by the lake to reflect‍ ‍‍—‍ this was the lake where the temple gave the dead a watery burial, just as the good book commands‍ ‍‍—‍ but her peace is interrupted by the sounds of a couple making love. She stomps over to interrupt, then screams.

Aoffe’s section opens with her picking a lock to break into a mansion. She’s working with a crew, and they have a detailed plan for how to get in and out. Aoffe hates it; this job is too much heat, even if it goes perfectly. Why couldn’t they just keep things simple and low profile? When the job goes wrong (she might have sabotaged it), Aoffe ignores their contingencies; she doesn’t even warn her crew. She lets them take the fall while she runs away, slipping into their lair and grabbing all her things (helping herself to some cash and goodies they won’t miss from inside a cell), then leaves.

Then she goes out on the town, encountering another loner girl. Both pique each others’ interest, and they go on a bit of a crime date culminating in a walk by the lake. The girl thinks it’ll be kinda hot if they defiled one of the shrines dotting the lakeshore by having kinky sex on the altar. In fact, they go all out making it look like a heretic ritual‍ ‍‍—‍ candles, ink circles, and lots of blood.

Somehow, the girl cuts Aoffe up with her nails, and at this point, Aoffe wants to stop. Spilling enough blood to look like a crime scene hurts, and she’s never done something like this before, but the girl pressures her to keep going. She reveals that she also has self‍-​transmutation, enough to have altered her biology; not only can her spit numbs the wounds, but it’s also psychoactive. She gets Aoffe high, and Aoffe starts to relax and give in. She’s hallucinating, and has a vision of the girl as some kind of monster, but that’s ok. Something enter her body, and it doesn’t feel like any human organ, but she doesn’t know what’s real at this point anyway. The last thing she remembers is the monster girl drinking her blood.

End of arc one!

The next day, Pratta gets some knights knocking on her door. Two grunts in full plate armor flanking a slim figure in a suit and huge glasses. She evades their questions‍ ‍‍—‍ she knows how to shut the fuck up‍ ‍‍—‍ but they already know she drunk the tea and fought the twistedblade. The suited figure tries to build rapport; see, they’re very high‍-​ranking alchemist, a bit of a maverick, and they think Pratta has potential, and propose bending the rules a bit to recruit her. This is kind of a dream come true, so Pratta agrees. At the knight headquaters, they want to get a measure of her abilities, so she spars with a knight and shows off her innate transmutation (still a bit insecure about how ordinary it is), then she gets to ride along on a patrol into gang‍-​controlled territory. They get attacked, and she gets to watch real knights in action, and sees how much stronger she needs to get.

Days later, Qyverna returns to the shelter to find there’s been a fourth disappearance‍ ‍‍—‍ and this time it’s the fallen knight who told her about the third disappearance. This one hurts the most; she’d almost come to consider that one a friend. Qyverna searches their room, for even the faintest clue‍ ‍‍—‍ and finds a note. It says: I’m not supposed to say anything, but I didn’t want to be‍ ‍‍—‍ what did you call it?‍ ‍‍—‍ Damned selfish. The note goes on to give a hint of where to look if they aren’t heard from again. When Qyverna goes to look, she finds the corpse of one of the knights who disappeared‍ ‍‍—‍ and Aoffe is there, shamelessly looting the body. She tells her to fuck off.

Aoffe wakes up alone on the shore of the lake. The girl she was with last night is nowhere to be found. She drifts back into town, finds herself in a seedy bar, looking for work. Bartender says someone has a job for her. When Aoffe leaves, the bartender runs out after her, giving her a gift to open before she breaks into the job target. Weird, but he insists she take it.

Aoffe scopes out the place she needs to steal from, plotting out her approach, but she’s curious and opens the gift‍ ‍‍—‍ it’s a note. The job is a trap, the guards know you’re coming. You move dangerously, kid, and you’ve made too many enemies. Switching names and hair‍-​dos isn’t gonna cut it anymore, the gutters are smarter than that. Frankly? You’ll be dead by the end of the month unless you skip town.

End of arc two?

Next, Prat continues helping the knights fight the gangs, training even harder. The first twistedblade she fought was dying of blight, and she’s not cut out to stand against even the mid‍-​ranking alchemists employed by gangs. One day, she bumps into Qyverna again. Qyverna explains that she’s investigating the gangs as possible culprits in the disappearance slash murder of fallen knights. They agree too work together. The pair ask around till they hear of a gang pushing a strange new drug, and beat up low‍-​rankers until they get answers. They finally get a name to pursue: “Trexi.”

Qyverna decides to look up Trexi in the temple’s archives‍ ‍‍—‍ turns out, this was a high‍-​ranking priest, ex‍-​communicated for defiling the dead. When she hears another body of a disappeared knight has turned up, Qyverna visits the morgue. Watching the autopsy, they find the tracks of worms throughout the body. The next night, thugs ambush Qyverna, too many for her to handle at once given her condition, but Pratta swoops in to save her. Outmatched, the thugs run off, but not before warning them to stop asking questions.

Aoffe can’t sleep‍ ‍‍—‍ can’t stop thinking about how many people are out to get her. The money she stole from her old crew has run out and she hasn’t had a good meal in days. She’s staggering through wet streets when a concerned bystander calls out to her, offering her shelter from the rain. Ravenously hungry, Aoffe can’t stop herself from raiding the pantry in the house, eating whatever she can find. Yet in the face of this, the old lady is still all soothing words‍ ‍‍—‍ you must be sick, dear. Do you need somewhere to sleep? Aoffe awakes from delirious dreams in a pool of blood. It feels like ants crawl across her skin. She calls out and gets no response. When she finally staggers to her feet, she searches and finds the old lady o is dead.

End of arc three.

The higher‍-​ups order Pratta to stop associating with that fallen knight. Don’t you know they’re all corrrupted? She’ll drag you down. Next, Pratta gets a mission to defend a convoy. What are they transporting? No one gives a straight answer, but her leader tell her a knight follows orders without question. After more training and more orders, the blur of missions comes into sharp relief‍ ‍‍—‍ she has a job from Trexi herself, tasking her with defending a research lab in the swamps outside of town.

Qyverna stares out over the lake, mourning all those she couldn’t save. Should she just give up her pursuit of Trexi? The hired thugs say it all‍ ‍‍—‍ she had found the answer. Both to who was behind it, and the fate of those who disappear. Did it matter, then? Did they need to be stopped? They’re only killing people who are already dead. Once again her lakeside reflection is interrupted, this time by a figure staggering toward the shore. And again it’s Aoffe, half‍-​dead and famished for breath. Worms wriggle beneath her skin.

Qyverna leverages her reputation to give Aoffe a room to herself at the temple, and does what she can to treat her diseased state. Qyverna tells herself it’s just to get answers for the case, but something in her rages at the idea of this girl dying like all the rest. Day by day, the girl’s condition improves, until one day, Qyverna goes to check in on her, and find she’s disappeared.

Aoffe ran away like she always does. Doesn’t matter that Qyverna seemed to helping her, she’s seen the way the fallen knight looks at her, there’s no way she wasn’t planning to send her to prison or worse. Now she’s skulking through alleys. The thought that the whole city is out to kill her still hounds her every thought, and she’s spooked by every passing figure.

Then someone appears right behind her, provoking a scream. This girl cheerfully announces she was hired to hill Aoffe. Why is she revealing this? Because Aoffe seems weak and pathetic. It’ll be easy to find and kill her if she tries to run, so no reason to be cloak and dagger about it! What’s she going to do, get help? From who? Exactly. But hey, if this is your last day on this blue marble, might as well go out pleasantly. How about I treat you to a meal?

Aoffe agrees, and as they share a meal, their banter continues, especially as the reprieve from starvation softens her nerves. In a way, knowing for sure that she was going to die obviates worrying about it. As Aoffe relaxes, she starts to get a bit flirty, and the assassin matches her energy. You know what else would make my last day pleasant? Like that, they have sex. Aoffe regrets her advances as soon as they start undressing‍ ‍‍—‍ her body’s become so gross because of the sickness (she overheard Qyverna and the priest say ‘parasitic infestation’)‍ ‍‍—‍ and yet the assassin is utterly unbothered. The way she takes everything in stride… Aoffe’s blood runs cold when she realizes just who this reminds her of.

But the assassin completes her thought. She’s able to describe the same girl Aoffe met before that terrible night at the lake. Turns out, this assassin had also run into them. They’d fucked, too, and disappeared in the morning. No luck finding them after that. Aoffe is concerned, now‍ ‍‍—‍ this ‘infestation’ started after they’d had sex. Could the assassin be victim, too? Will she end up like Aoffe? You know, if we both worked together, we might have more luck tracking her down and getting answers. How about this: this assassination is postponed for a bit. Contact tracing first, kill you later, okay?

Their attempts to investigate flow more like dates, but Aoffe’s condition only gets worse. At this point, the pretense has worn thin‍ ‍‍—‍ maybe the assassin says she wants to kill her, not some worms, but how convincing it that, at this point? Regardless, the assassin knows a woman‍ ‍‍—‍ Trexi, a mad scientist she’s taken jobs from in the past. That creep studied parasites like this. She might have a treatment, but she keeps that place looked up tight. We’ll need a plan to beak in.

All throughout, Aoffe’s dreams get stranger. It feels like something is reaching out to her, tempting her to just give in.

End of arc four. (Fun fact: this is noted down as ‘arc five’ in my notes‍ ‍‍—‍ I skipped an arc! This off‍-​by‍-​one error persists.)

Pratta is hanging out with her fellow knights at an upscale bars. Her background is a far cry from the preppy and privileged so common among alchemists. She doesn’t care about romantic gossip or hitting on people, and the fact that she cares about helping people more than status or duty drives a wedge between her and everyone else. She gets approached by a sickly girl (Aoffe; they’ve never met) who tries to seduce her. Pratta’s immune to the seduction, but she’s curious to get know someone and this makes for a good excuse to fuck off from the crown and get a private room.

Aoffe continues being flirty and foreplayful, but Pratta is oblivious and just keeps yapping. Maybe she goes down and gets Pratta off (and Pratta decides sex is kinda fun actually), but more importantly: throughout this scene Pratta has leaked a bunch of info and Aoffe is able to yoink a key. (Pratta was hired to guard Trexi’s lab, after all.)

Pratta takes her post in front of the swamp lab. She’s watching‍ ‍‍—‍ and listening‍ ‍‍—‍ as a broken vessel is dragged in. There are screams. She tries to ignore her conscience. Good knights follow orders. That’s what they keep telling her.

Qyverna’s immediate conclusion was that Aoffe was taken by Trexi, and she vows to get her back‍ ‍‍—‍ or get payback. Qyverna puts together a team to raid Trexi’s lab. She has spent six years holding herself back, on doctor’s orders, refusing that addictive alchemical tea that would only feed the fungus within her while so many others couldn’t help but indulge. It’s what kept her alive where other cracked vessels crumbled. But for this? She would burn with that light.

Standing in the rain, mired in the swamp, Qyverna marches to confront Pratta. She pauses when she sees where they stand‍ ‍‍—‍ was Qyverna finally breaking the oaths she’d sworn? Why cause did she, a corrupt failure, have to stand against a knight still steadfast in their holy duty? But then she remembers Aoffe gasping in pain, and her will remains resolute. Are Pratta’s orders more important than doing the right thing?

But is this the right thing, or is Qyverna just pissed and looking for a target. What proof does she have that Trexi has done anything wrong? Pratta says it, it’s what she should say, but she can’t feel it. Words don’t work, it comes down to a fight, and they’re evenly matched‍ ‍‍—‍ mostly because Pratta just can’t bring herself to fight a friend at full strength. She relents, desserts her post and lets Qyverna advance.

The mad doctor Trexi… is shorter than she expected. An simple academic, Trexi cannot fight back; all she has to fling at Qyverna is arguments and bargaining. Qyverna’s will is resolute, and she doesn’t bend. Still, Trexi explains the details of the procedure, it’s necessary. Trexi has alchemy enough to sense that the light granting Qyverna enhanced strength is also feeding the blight. You’ve killed yourself on this vengence quest of yours‍ ‍‍—‍ but you don’t have to die!

Aoffe was sneaking into Trexi’s lab while the two meathead knights fight outside. Seeing the bodies Trexi has operated on, all the specimens she’s collected, it fills her with horror and certainty. Trexi is studying the same parasite infesting Aoffe. The assassin follows behind her and pokes the notes, able to make sense of all the jargon oddly quickly.

The assassin tells her to wait while she check something, and Aoffe has nowhere to run when a lab assistant catches her and takes her hostage. She’s taken to where Qyverna is menacing Trexi, and at this point Aoffe explains to Qyeverna the almost‍-​full picture.

The parasites can eat the blight. Trexi had a theory that you could ride a fine line‍ ‍‍—‍ let the infestation progress far enough along to consume the blight, then kill the parasites before they advance to the next stage of their life cycle. If it worked, she could mend a broken vessel‍ ‍‍—‍ it could save all those consigned to death.

That is what Qyverna’s friend meant, when suggesting that the vessels who disappeared had found a hope better than certain death. They were willing sacrifices to Trexi’s research‍ ‍‍—‍ though admittedly she may have exaggerated its odds of success. A little.

(The four victims they knew about all died. There are more than four bodies in the lab.)

Seeing it all laid out like that and feeling the ache of blight more keenly than she had in years, Qyverna falters. Six years, and she’d surely pushed her luck as far as it would go. But… she wanted to live. She agrees‍ ‍‍—‍ she’ll go under the knife for Trexi’s procedure.

Aoffe doesn’t want to see this, so she wanders away. Throughout the lab, she finds Trexi’s other lab assistants and patients all dead. When she ventures outside, all of the knights hired as guards, and the ragtag group that had stormed in with Qyverna, all lay dead, scattered around the swamp like they were fleing something.

The assassin is nowhere to be found.

End of arc five.

As the only survivor of a disasterous mission, Pratta recieves accolodes and a promotion. Pratta feels guilty about surviving, and taking credit for the evidence Qyverna and Aoffe found, but her commander reassures her. They spar like nothing’s changed, in rain lightly falling.

Pratta gets sent on mission to take down the people and places implicated in Trexi’s files. Now that they know where to look, the infested are scurrying like bugs from under a rock.

In the dead of the night, Pratta is abducted by a group of ninja‍-​monks who explained to her the crylurks and the secret hunters who protect the world from them. Crylurks are the final stage of parasitic infestation, a innately malevolent leech on humanity that cannot be allowed to spread. She thinks of Aoffe and her sense of guilt deepens. But what is she guilty of? Who does she believe is telling the truth?

Qyverna doesn’t know where to go or what to do. She can’t stay, the knights will come to the lab, and she burns that foul place to the ground in cleansing fire. Pratta, bless her heart, will have reported her, so she can expect them to look for her at the temple. So, where does she go now? Qyverna and Aoffe stagger away from the burning lab together. If nothing else, maybe there’s time to grab Qyverna’s stuff from the shelter.

While Qyverna sits and wait sfor Aoffe to get back, she is visited by the assassin, who calls her a pitiful thing. Qyverna’s rage surges, but between the blight and the worms, she’s too weak to do anything. The assass continues: I could kill you now, and save you so much pain. Qyverna spits. She knows this bitch slaughered everyone at the lab. Qyverna will avenge them.

Aoffe takes Qyverna to the lake, and Aoffe loudly questions why she’s even sticking with Qyverna. Qyverna tells a story about how she first learned patience and devotion. The river is long, at times tight and sharp with stones, but it leads to the ocean. I’m seeking the ocean, yet you splash mindlessly in a pond, going nowhere. You are a fool, and I hate you. The more I learn about you, the more I have to hate. But even given all that… I know you better than anyone else in this city, don’t I? You can’t easily let go of that. Even the ones who love you haven’t seen you, have they? But I’m looking.

When Aoffe broke into the shelter, she overheard how others talk about Qyverna‍ ‍‍—‍ it fills her with both respect and resentment. People love Qyverna, they count on her. How could she keeping doing this for years? How could she stand it? She’s tempted to run away again, or snitch on Qyverna to wash her hands of the hassle. But for once, she doesn’t. She stays.

Aftering hearing Qyverna’s speech, she opens up about where she came from. Her family. Her childhood. Timothao. They thought someone took him, they’ve been waiting for a ransom. Maybe by now they think he’s dead… but I could go back. I have some clout with the help, they could hide you in their dens.

Trepidly, Aoffe returns to her family’s mansion. It feels the same as ever, frozen in time. They smile at Timothao’s return, almost unsurprised there was no ransom, just another one of his stunts. Ready to be a man now?

End of arc six.

By now, Pratta has solidified herself as a mid‍-​ranking knight, ascending the ladder of power at a frightening pace, but she’s hitting a wall. Comrades joke that even she has limits. The technique giving her trouble is a masterwork of advanced alchemy. Once learned, an alchemist could be surrounded on all sides by a legion, but should he draw a great circle upon space itself, he can transmute the flesh of his foes to dust. Even other alchemists tremble before this. (It’s domain expansion.)

As her training continues in the day, at night Pratta has more meetings with the ninja‍-​monks, who reveal secrets about crylurk anatomy. Crylurks are living transmutions unable to perform alchemy themselves, and thus must siphon alchemical essence from humanity to sustain themselves.

At a fancy event, Pratta encounters a boy who almost looks familiar‍ ‍‍—‍ but the girl who seduced her at the bar was dressed like a tramp; this boy is perfectly refined. Still, he shies away. There are familiar topics of gossip discussed casually among the guests‍ ‍‍—‍ did you hear the oldest broken vessel finally snapped and got herself killed fighting knights? Pratta feels a pang of regret: she misses Qyverna. But she didn’t die fighting knights, though she looked dire by the end. Pratta has seen and heard nothing of her since.

Suddenly, commotion‍ ‍‍—‍ a crylurk attacks the event and slaughters several of the guests. It even kills a high‍-​ranking knight, but then it slinks away before it can be cut down. Pratta can’t be sure, but almost seems like the beast had aimed for the boy, yet stopped short of a killing blow.

Qyverna is stuck in the mansion, helpless as the worms infest her body. For the first time in so long, she feels herself free of that gnawing blight‍-​tumor, but is unable to circulate her essence at all.

As the days go on, Qyverna and Aoffe grow closer, depending on each other for comfort. Qyverna is powerless and trapped, while Aoffe needs to pretend to be a good son all day. They are each other’s only reprieve.

One day, Qyverna spots a bruise on Aoffe‍ ‍‍—‍ her father slapped her for questioning. Qyverna mutters something about killing her parents, and Aoffe laughs, only Qyverna wasn’t joking. They’re wretched failures. If I struck, it would be in defense of another and therefore righteous, Qyverna says. Aof says, but they’re my parents.

One night, Aoffe feels a voice and will that is not her own, twitching her body like a centipede under her skin. It’s trying to tell her something, but its grasp of language is weak. Unable to sleep, Aoffe gets up and creeps around the house.

It’s not quite true that Qyverna was Aoffe’s only source of comfort, not anymore. One of the house’s maids knows and is willing to call her by her real name, and more than that. Sometimes she cleans Aoffe’s room wearing no undergarments under her dress. Aoffe goes to her quarters now, and they sneak out onto the roof. The maid leads her farther and farther astray‍ ‍‍—‍ it’s best if your host doesn’t see what happens next, daughter. What? Then the maid’s skin splits open to reveal dense bundles of cenipede legs.

It’s her. It’s always been her, all along. The maid, the assassin, the old lady who took her in, the bartender who rushed out after her, and the loner girl who raped her that one night. Her mother. The monster that did this to her. It holds Aoffe down while screams come from below. She listens as her parents die.

End of arc seven.

Pratta arrives to the ruin of the mansion and offers to comfort to a distraught Aoffe. Through sobs, she reveals that Qyverna is alive, but abducted by the same crylurk who murdered her parents. Pratta is sent to hunt down that crylurk, tracking back to its nest.

When she arrives to confront the thing, it reveals it can talk, and taunts her. When asked why it fights, it speaks of ruthless devotion to its princess‍ ‍‍—‍ that loyalty is familiar. This fight mirrors Prat’s own confrontation with Qyverna, only this devotee doesn’t relent. And Pratta is stronger now‍ ‍‍—‍ she draws the great circle upon space itself, and turns the crylurk to dust.

Bound and taken to the depths of the crylurk nest, Qyverna feels the growth of her “guest” accelerate. She is made to open her mind to the the leader of these crylurks, a princess who demands Qyvern submit and swear to help her bring about the return of their mother, the sealed queen.

Qyverna writhes in a chrysalis pod, but Pratta tears her out of the slimy prison‍ ‍‍—‍ but this is a limited salvation. Qyverna is now under arrest, and the chrylurk hive is surrounded. Surrendering completely is Qyverna’s best bet to survive.

Trading one prison for another, Qyverna lies in a cell ruminating on how far she’s fallen. Her prayers stutter on her tongue. What was her first mistake? Where did her path go astray? Her will falters, and for once, she truly wants to give up on life itself‍ ‍‍—‍ but she can feel the parasite groping her mind for exactly that sort of weakness. If not her, something worse will take her place.

Aoffe listens to a lawyer drone on about her inherited estate and her parents’ affairs. She just doesn’t care. Soon after, that thing finds her again, wearing a brand new face. She wants to rage at it‍ ‍‍—‍ wouldn’t Qyverna be itching to swear new vengence against her? But it just doesn’t matter, does it? When it suggests what Aoffe should do next, she just sags and listens.

First, Aoffe goes to break Qyverna out of prison. The thing teaches her its tricks for self‍-​transmutation, bending and painting human flesh. Aoffe isn’t a natural at it, but with that thing taking charge, infiltrating the prison is pitifully easy.

There’s going to be a feast soon, a celebration of Pratta’s stunning victory over the crylurk hive‍ ‍‍—‍ and she’s now the youngest knight to ever achieve the great work. When the return to a tavern to plot their next moves, they overhear commoners‍ ‍‍—‍ Pratta is the talk of the town everywhere, and it fills Aoffe and Qyverna with mixed feelings. The praise is so familiar‍ ‍‍—‍ would Pratta crack just like Qyverna?

End of arc eight.

Pratta’s mentor congratulates her, along with the rest of her team. Pratta still feels guilt about the people she couldn’t save, but this is dismissed. You have to focus on what you can do, who can save. But there is someone Pratta can save, still. She wants Qyverna out of prison. Her request is denied‍ ‍‍—‍ you really want to save that sack of corruption? But she pleads, and her mentor says they’ll run it up the chain.

Pratta returns to the schoolhouse, playing with the kids just like she used to. She’s a hero now, and stepping back into her old neighborhood, the pride and awe really drives home just how far she’s come. She smiles back and tells them that she does it for them, they’re what keeps her going.

At the feast, there are speeches, and so many rich networkers trying to make connections with the up and coming star. Pratta is uncomfortbale at the buzz of so much incomprehensible socialization. At least Aoffe (as Timothao) is there, a rock for her to lean on in this sea. Now a representative for the throne, the lady of Loardlevain herself, comes to her to offer Pratta a position as apprentice to one of the grand knights of the inner circle. Pratta is on track to become one of the most influential people on this side of the kingdom. It’s so much, so quickly. “I promise I’ll do my best,” she says, and it’s the last thing she says that night.

Aoffe, especially with her parasite’s mother, has a bit of an ear for the politicking of this party, and is able to discern the winds of change. Trexi was involved with the drug trade in the city, and taking her down has already lead to one gang imploding and creating a cascading power vacuum. The city’s getting tenser, even without considering the crylurk infestation. More knights are flying in to deal with escalating tensions. And if what Qyverna says about the princess crylurk is to be believed… There’s so much to consider that Aoffe almost misses it with the gunshot rings out.

And just like that, Lady Prattalia is dead, and all of the hope gushes out of the world with her last heartbeat.

Aoffe scrambles to escape the gala in the chaos. Knight are flailing for control, moving to catch suspected attackers and possible culprits. She gives Qyverna and her not‍-​mother opportunity to escape, but makes herself look suspicious in the process.

Detained, Aoffe shivers with dread‍ ‍‍—‍ there’s so much she could be caught and killed for, a life of crime, a malevolent infestation‍ ‍‍—‍ but she still has the honor of her family name, the condolences of witnessing back‍-​to‍-​back tragedy. They let her go with an apology for the trouble!

Qyverna is uneasy waiting in the mansion, stuck with the very thing she swore vengence against. The thing in question teases her, and Qyverna replies with raw vitriol. But when Aoffe returns, Qyverna leaps forth to embrace her, hold her tight, lest the world take someone else from her.

They lay together in the dark, dank basement as the sun sets and shadows engulf them, both girls dripping and intwined with each other. They can’t hold back now‍ ‍‍—‍ both of them have fully matured, given in to their infestation. This is the path they’ve chosen. They make love, desperate and achingly forceful, and Qyverna’s parasite fertilizes Aoffe’s.

The thing reveals that she was listening to them going at it, touching herself to her own child’s moans‍ ‍‍—‍ the ragebait works, and Qyverna lunges at her, but the thing is swift enought to dodge. Meanwhile, Aoffe is motified.

But there are more important things to handle‍ ‍‍—‍ now that she has mated, Aoffe will soon need to lay her eggs, but for that, she needs to find hosts. We’ll need to transform this mansion into a proper lair for a parasite queen. The thing looks to Qyverna, asking if she’ll take care of it’s daughter. And Qyverna thinks‍ ‍‍—‍ why did Pratta save and spare me, time after time? Was it because friendship trumped oaths? Finally, Qyverna admits that she was right. The order of knights failed Pratta and failed her. None of them deserved any of what has happened to them. And she’s going to make it right. She’s going to do whatever it takes to survive and see it through.

Qyverna breaks one vow, and swears a new one. For Aoffe. For survival. For herself.

MISAVOW / Vermin Cathexis

And so on

That’s the end of book one, but as is the norm for my ideas, the sprawl continues. Book two would concern itself with a sort of macro‍-​scale murder mystery‍ ‍‍—‍ who shot Pratta? Was it the gangs, the crylurks, the knights themselves? The chaos ignited in book one continues, you’ll have gang wars and politicking, and all throughout Qyverna and Aoffe wrestle with their need to prey on humans to survive while they expand their hive and secure their existence. The book climaxes in good ol fashioned revenge against Pratta’s killer. (Narratively, it probably needs to be a knight to ensure Qyverna never trusts human society again.)

In book three you start to get the protagonist hive open attempting a city takeover, while simultaneously they pursue the mystery of the sealed queen the princess mentioned. There’s a hidden lab beneath the city where the church was researching the crylurks, testing their ability to repel the blight‍ ‍‍—‍ the sealed queen is the mother of the parasite Qyverna merged with, so of course they have a big confrontation.

Things get vaguer from there‍ ‍‍—‍ I have the idea that the arc caps off with the crown sending more and more knights to beseige the hive until their last gambit is stealing a titanic sized airship and flying away, and basically becoming a wandering horde of bugs that raid cities before flying away, escaping into the clouds.

But of course before I can refine any of those plans, I need to decide whether this is foundationally worthwhile. Lots of things I’m uncertain about, but Pratta’s arc is a big one. She pretty much exists to set up this great big bait‍-​and‍-​switch. “You thought she was the protagonist? Haha, gotcha!”

I also think the start is super weak for all characters, except maybe Aoffe. When the story hits its stride, there are a couple of beats I like, but whever I contemplate writing that schoolhouse scene or the graffiti policing scene, it does not remotely activate my neurons.

(The original concept for the story had a better opening, I think: it cast Qyverna as a courier working the blighted lowlands outside the city which the knights avoid. She encounters a town that succumbed to blight entirely, except for a little girl. She protects and trains the little girl as she continues her route, eventually crossing path with a bandit‍-​turned‍-​crylurk host. Turns out, it’s one of her old sisters in arms, who tempts Qyverna to embrace crylurks with her. Qyverna eventually beats her, but not before the crylurks eat the little girl. So basically the Pratta plotline, but playing out over the course of one arc instead of one book. After that, Qyverna gives up being a courier, and returns defeatedly to the shelter, where she hears about knights disappearing.)

The last concern I have is that, well, I mainly want to write about buggy parasites hunting people, and not a lot of that actually even happens in book one? It’s all setup. Granted, some of this is due to the concise pacing‍ ‍‍—‍ there’s probably room to insert a chapter of Aoffe or even Qyverna sating their newfound hunger in between the big plot points.

But overall… this could be good if it’s good, but at it stands this isn’t the strongest outline I’ve written, is it?