A Glossary for Vermin 2026-02-10 In definitional cathexis 3589 words
Meanings for the terminology used in various writings in the dark fantasy series, Vermin Cathexis.
Traitor-Mastering 2026-02-09 Posted on an anonymous binding board 1920 words
:: Be me :: thrallborne. :: Vectored by a master infiltrator. :: stealthy as fuck :: slipped right into the summer palace :: infested a princess. :: Court never figured it out! :: Three instars pass :: fending for myself :: totally parasite-mastering. :: One day a hive nurse shows up, starts tending to me :: it’s another infiltrator. :: Court’s face when princess’s favorite maid was a bug and no one noticed.
One to the Light, Swarm to the Shadows 2026-02-09 Where a single bug crawls, a hive lies unseen 4882 words
Golden sky hung above as horizon enveloped sun. Gilded like kintsugi, shining between shards of darkling clouds. This twilight might well have been night already — that suited me.
I crawled up the tower, claws of my tarsi hooking into brickwork. Human alchemists loved this plain white stone. What was it that drew such empire-wide devotion — the symbolic purity? As if this tower wasn’t a stain on forest that predated it. Even where it wasn’t garrish white stone, it was angular iron bars flecked with red.
On the Emotions of Thralls 2026-02-09 Digression concerning abnormal psychological spectra 1584 words
For a mortal enthralled to a chrylurk’s will, one’s mind is not one’s own. Trivial wisdom, oft quoted. But for all its overpreached banality, few have reckoned with what this truly means. Chrylurk subjugation is no less than a challenge — a refutation, an annihilation — of the human condition. Beyond human! Subjectivity itself ought experience a profound vertigo in the face of the thralls.
Selected Ideaspawn 2026-02-07 Brief, scattered pieces of Vermin Cathexis Writing 5083 words
Alchemy is about change. Not decay, not erosion: the art of transmutation wroughts new order from components sacrificed. At its core, alchemy is change for the better — the fuel of transmutation, then, is hope.
Whenever an organism burns with dreams, wishes, ambitions, a little mote of alchemical essence is created. Call this cathexis. This bundle persists in the body for a time, absorbing energy from the world, before its eventual dissolution, whereupon it releases more energy than was spent to fuel it.
Restless, Enwrapped, Rotten 2026-02-02 Of Sleep and Other Kinds of Death 2504 words
Sleep is another kind of rot, Ava thought. Her dreams had changed. Images hung around. Shapes carved into her sight, afterimage of a some blinding glare. Colors bleed from the forms, as hazy as smoke in still air. Maybe blowing out some long sigh of relief — maybe achieving that relief, first — would be what banished them, but Ava was suffocating.
Entiotic Notes 2026-02-01 Incomplete thoughts and works in progress for Vermin Cathexis 4186 words
What does every hive need? Its pair of mated queens, of course. Feral queens must attend all the needs of chrylurk biology by their own hand, but this is demanding work. Once she bears a brood, that burden can be shared.
At first each chrylurk drone would have the same gamut of responsibilities — casting their own shell, weaving their own webs, securing their own prey, constructing their own quarters. All save the conceiving and laying of new entiotes
Consort In Recapitulation 2026-01-26 Ravel and Waken 1756 words
You awaken in chrysalis. Your mind hangs by a web, our web, our embrace. Like dewdrops rolling down threads, your dreams are pulsing-sliding along silk lines, and our dreams enjoin and subsume. Your sleep is long, and the accord has washed all vestiges of you into us — tucked safe, in care unending — leaving you blank as a palimpsest. Upon this canvas we shall paint you.
A Living Transmutation 2026-01-17 The Rules of Alchemy and How They’re Broken 1767 words
The first law of alchemy defines the chain of emanation. Through dreaming, matter begets essence; through alchemy, essence begets limina; through transmutation, limina begets matter. This is a chain and not a loop, as enforced by the second law of alchemy: It entails that alchemization and transmutation are governed by opposing fields whose energy values must have a product of zero at all points in space. Thus, the “transmutation of dreams” would be a phenomena as paradoxical as a machine perpetually in motion.
Verminous Vignettes 2026-01-14 Assorted writings for a new fantasy setting 2548 words
Should I begin by disclaiming how deeply miserable I am to be retreading these roads? I’ve always found something innately pathetic about explaining myself. The concillatory gesture, prostrate before the judgment of another.
Victory, after all, is self-evident. If my story was one ending triumphant, why would I stand here preparing my case as if awaiting a capital trial? Yet if my story truly met a dire end, would I even persist to speak it?
Oh! Vile She Bleeds 2026-01-06 Story of a sick girl and rotten hunger 4987 words
Do tapeworms feel cozy or confined, dwelling undetected in those prison walls of flesh? The host feeds them, yet growth must conform to viscera squeezed tight.
A certain ennui gnaws at Vil. (“Vili” if you must — do not use her full name). She has everything a girl could want — provided that girl does not want more than three plates each day, a bed to sleep in, and a life as a bargaining chip.
The Larval Entiote 2025-09-30 Parasite Genesis 1534 words
When the eggs make contact with your skin, they hatch and burrow into your flesh, like blowflies or lice. While you sleep, they’ll crawl out and migrate across your body in the fashion of bedbugs, seeking the best hiding and feeding spots. Ideal for them is access to your digestive system.
As they grow, each can split apart to multiply, each asexual generation enhancing the odds that a questing worm arrives at its goal — as well as making the infestation that much harder to permanently root out.
About Vermin Cathexis null What this is and where to start 213 words
In late 2025, we began to brainstorm a race of parasites, combining a number of concepts that interested us — vampirism, hiveminds, and above all a sensibility for weird and detailed biology.
These thoughts remained on our mind for months, and we gave a few attempts at outlining stories that would make use of these monsters, but we achieved little writing in those anguished final months of that year.