THE MOLTING

Every year, an alien race molts their skin, revealing a truth too horrible to bear!

Vemmer, a slave freshly picked from the iridium mines, watched the guards shuffle away after leaving him stranded in public view. He couldn’t recognize a single face; no one he knew walked among the temple crowds. His clan, the Ads’seed, never commingled with the Tar’r Gyr. In fact, no subject came within staring distance unless ordered to, like Vemmer had been, although not to stare, but to stand. He couldn’t do anything except watch his overlords with growing contempt. They gathered around the temple, focusing on the central altar by which he stood, and assumed their positions, keeping ample space between one another in preparation for the yearly molt.

He stared at the shackles weighing him down, but kept a tentative peace. He was in no position to protest. Time was short. He lifted his head and ran his eyes across the transept overlooking the assembly. An altar stood in the middle, shimmering in the sunlight that broke through the long, thin dormers lining the gables above. But that wouldn’t last. The ritual was messy, and he sighed at whose mess it would soon be. The thought of it made him reflect.

He had never seen a molt before, nor the ritual honoring it. And he hardly knew of any creature that did, only the amphibian my’yx who roamed the estuaries of swamps, hunting maggots and mites. The concept of higher beings losing their skins seemed alien, and he wanted nothing less than to keep as much distance from the Tar’r Gyr as possible. He had no idea where they came from, or how they came to be. No matter; it left a bad taste in his gullet. He only knew his crocheted skin was a deep velvet green in contrast with the lighter, sallow tones of the privileged class. His skin also puckered and creased when flexing his joints while theirs remained smooth as a bell. Their collective stature outsized him by margins. They were stronger, their features blazing with regality, commanding attention of anyone beneath their status.

Vemmer in contrast was slow, clumsy, and behaviorally odd, even for his lowly cast. He hunched down and clutched at his chest, his fingers and elbows rippling with tightness, as if to lamely shield himself from being seen.

Pathetic! He pondered his own stance in his tribe. His closest friend was a rovit, a fluff ball with six limbs everyone saw as a pet rather than part of his family. It made his scanty relationships evident, but at least he was aware of his shortcomings, though it was painfully obvious.

The tension in the room heightened. The Tar’r Gyr master, the Prime Magus Ra’ath, debouched from the awaiting crowds, head first, and straightened himself before strutting into the open. He cocked his mouth appearing scornful—then again, it could have been a gesture of confidence. Reaching down, he wiped at an unseen film of dust from the altar, showing off his penchant for cleanliness. The priest might have been a clean freak for all Vemmer had known, or he could have been setting the example for citizens to follow. Either way, his mannerisms alone demanded obedience, intimidating anyone who even gave him a casual glance. He expected the best, tolerating no other. Whatever he did, the others followed without question.

The Prime Magus loomed over the transept with an imposing air, ready to cleave the first beside him with the hatchet laying on the side of the altar. Outstretching his whetted appendages toward the congregation, he spoke, his tone matching that of a self-ordained demigod. “Thus begins the Dance of Passage, the Molt of Enniat’th,” he declared, “bridging our lineage by the blood of Haa, to whom we pay homage on this day of transcendence. May his merciful embrace carry us from the ways of old into a life of benediction!”

The Dance of Passage. That’s what they called it. Vemmer remembered something about a divine connection with ancestors—not his, of course. But the gossip vine stopped there, leaving his masters’ origins shrouded in mystery. All he knew was how the guards often scoured the mines for subjects, usually those unfit, to bring before the high priest. That’s where his knowledge ended; none had ever returned to confirm the details of what had come after.

A bang.

The slave flinched. He peered over an ocean of heads toward the far side of the temple. Shy of the back wall ribbed with balustrades, a troupe of four percussionists stood over a matching set of drums made from the cured hides of livestock. Interesting. The stories he heard around campfire meals never mentioned anything about a troupe, or ceremonial drums, but he assumed music helped supplement the ritual’s effects, and cover up some of the gorier details.

Another bang.

Each player took turns rattling the barrel, creating a three-dimensional wave that pulsed through the room. Their pace slowly quickened. Soon, the temple pounded like an ongoing tremor. It tricked the mind into hearing more instruments than what was actually played. A faint hum joined in, growing into a deep-throated chant that filled every space between the chitinous walls.

It became a deluge, drowning the slave in a sea of dread. His trachea went numb, and swallowing became as hard as chewing rocks.

“Arise…new flesh… Arise!” They decanted. “Wither the old… usher the new! Arise… arise new flesh… Arise!”

The litany receded into the background and merged with the edifice, haunting everything from floor to ceiling. The temple came alive—everything about it seemed alive, yet dead at the same time. The vast network of trusses, battens, and buttresses resembled the insides of a carcass rather than some artificial construct. According to apocryphal accounts, the builders had grown the temple from the ground up like a tree. How they accomplished that, Vemmer couldn’t have guessed. It might have been hearsay. But it didn’t change how hideous it looked sprawling over a crowd of dancers milling about mechanically. Even more disconcerting, everyone present contained the strength to subdue the slave had he tried to escape.

It was frustrating to think about.

To Vemmer, the ritual became repetitive, going on and on without discernible meaning beyond self-indulgence. Slightly bored, he drifted off. He didn’t remember falling asleep, but when coming to, he snapped to his senses, fully alert. The transition, too subtle to have been noticed in a single sitting, stood out like a flame in the midst of darkness. Patches of skin stretched, paled, and cracked as bodies twisted into serpentine patterns. Some of the skin chafed before flaking away. Debris littered the floor.

He squinted, trying to get a closer look at what lay underneath. The skin bore the deep tones of lichens that covered the side of a river, but with the gloss of newborn flesh. No wonder they celebrated. Molting was tantamount to rebirth, a rekindling of youth, recalibrating the body, mind, and spirit for their next evolutionary phase.

It was nothing Vemmer had ever seen in his life. To his sensibilities, it appeared lurid, grotesque, even startling to his sensitive eyes. But he pressed on, awaiting his fate.

It took some time before he noticed a change in the ambience. The drums beat faster. The floor stirred. Vibrations rippled into his feet, into his limbs, and throughout his body. He steeled himself, despite the impulse to shudder in cowardice, watching their eyes turn opalescent and losing the spark of life. They might as well have been dead, wiggling around as if by imprecation. Their expressions were blank, shells of hollow souls filled with nothing but dispassion, even cruelty when he considered their past. The more those lobes stared back at him like giant leering insects, the more he felt the weight of his chains.

What seemed like hours passed. It was an illusion, but Vemmer had lost all sense of time, hypnotized by how the creatures swayed and slithered to the synchronous rhythms, increasingly oblivious to their surroundings. They weaved their hands in arcs that never touched, flitting their fingers over diaphanous bodies, carefully pulling at the brittle shells like worn articles of clothing. He was privy to an elaborate strip-tease, a voyeur into the private corners of high society in which no mortal had lived to tell. Had he a stone in hand, he would have lobbed it into the crowd to see their reaction. But judging how detached they looked in their pre-molt expressions, he doubted they would have noticed, even if bonked on the side of the head.

Tinkling.

It sounded like a gentle shower. On closer scrutiny, Vemmer realized it was the pattering of tiny bits of chiton dropping onto the floor in mounting numbers. They grew louder, sharper, turning into a series of crackles that pierced the wall of din until ending in sporadic pops. Molts split open like hatchlings from eggs, and pieces shed like flecks of paint, revealing new sets of eyes. Vemmer looked closer. From what little he saw, their eyes were blacker than coal, reflecting the gabled windows above. It was a radical departure from their flat and sepia tones. They took on a new sense of life, a glistening luster that wasn’t there before. It made him curious. There was something familiar he couldn’t pin down, something unsettling. His soul began to stir.

He shut his eyes in horror. His spindly fingers shivered, which he pressed against his lumbar, hoping to avert attention from how close he was to breaking down. When he mustered the courage to open his eyes, they filled with water at the dreaded sight. He lowered his head back to the floor, focusing on its fancy tessellations through the layers of fallen molts. It made him nauseous—everywhere he looked made him nauseous. But something else robbed his attention. Their skins became much darker, sticking out as blights on a sapling’s bough.

A shard clattered sidelong toward the edge of the transept, landing close to his feet. The mounds grew larger and he grew sicker. Even Prime Magus Ra’ath did his part, prancing about in his full naked splendor and muttering like a madman, his skin splitting and flaking along the way. He was equally divorced from reality as his privileged underlings. Vemmer wondered if the Magus ingested anything to boost the experience, but given the shared mental state of the congregation, medicants might have been hardly consequential.

The rhythm of drums continued apace. The shavings piled on the floor like sand dunes. Vemmer winced, holding back the reflex in his gullet. He needed to move—any excuse to distract his qualmishness while feigning a level of decorum. He reached behind his nape and scratched, trying to be discreet. His girdle felt a little tight, as if he, too, was prone to molting. It was likely insecurity.

He remained alone with his aimless ponderings. It only made him uneasier. But he assured himself he was normal, biologically speaking, as was his clan; one issue he thankfully never dealt with. His itch was only the work of dust accumulated through the years of shoveling iridium. Besides, the slaves were never given much time to bathe, which he regretted since their tiny scales often collected new layers of grime each day.

Someone screamed. He scanned the undulant crowds, but it was hard to spot the details between constant planes of movement. He heard anecdotes involving the painful sting of a molt, particularly with undeveloped skin where they pried the molt away like an adhesive. He shivered at the thought. The next scream nearly made him jump. It sounded closer to a growl, as if the more extreme parts of Enniat’th included the gritting of teeth. He didn’t see what had happened, but judging by the pitch, it wouldn’t have surprised him if they had similar troubles undressing.

How could anyone live this way? he mused. Were they a bunch of masochists?

A moan followed. It came as a smooth glissando, not the sharp trill of agony, and was loud enough to be distinguishable from the general din. He searched the perimeter, this time hoping to find the object of interest. After a minute, he succeeded. A few rows back, a fem rolled her head around, reveling in extreme ecstasy. It seemed to him the ritual elicited both pleasure and pain, celebrating the duality of nature. Maybe the idea related to the peaks and troughs of growing up, that no life goes without its opposites, thus forcing self-improvement or situational awareness—or it could have been the effects of whatever they imbibed.

That reminded him. He wondered if the Ads’seed were allowed their rightful place in the cycle of maturity promised by the high priest. Though somehow, he didn’t think that was the case, and drifted back into his reflections.

A long howl snapped him from his muse. It was the fem. Her moans degenerated into aimless babble, peppered with intermittent shouts as though she argued with unruly spirits. Stretching herself beyond her means, she leaned back until losing her balance. She hit the floor. His immediate impulse was to rush to her aid, as members of his caste did for those injured on the job. But he knew better. His fate would have been accelerated had he acted so brashly before the Tar’r Gyr’s most crucial moment. As for the fem, she lay in situ, as if unconscious, having suffered a concussion. Moments later, he watched her twitch, then stir. Soon, she resumed her chants, flinging her appendages around as if treading water—in this case, her old skins.

Others followed, dropping out of sight and wiggling on the floor like a swarm of drunken roaches. To Vemmer’s eyes, some appeared to fake their reactions, judging how they poised themselves before carefully rolling onto their backsides. Others hit with a solid thunk! They seemed more authentic in their reverie, or they were just inebriated.

The shedding soon covered the floor in a uniform matte. Fresher lamella showed itself, glistening in the light. The drums grew furious, the acoustics overwhelming, yet he remained faithfully still as the wind on a balmy night. But keeping decorum pained him. Controlling his faculties became harder with each passing minute, like swimming up a waterfall in defiance of natural law. His heart fluttered; his nerves trembled. He was vulnerable. His immunities felt compromised, too weak to fend off sickness. It seemed psychosomatic, but his gullet gave protest, spasming periodically. He gagged, nearly hurling, and struggled to keep his poise even though he faded in and out of consciousness, scared he would faceplant on the floor, smacking into layers of skin.

It was utter madness. He could not have been more biased towards his masters; anything they valued he reviled by default. His contrarianism might have been a stretch, but his experience said otherwise. Hating his enemy with passion helped console his grievances, but he could do nothing to change the circumstance.

And it kept going.

Vemmer drowned deeper in despair. Each moment he watched them ripping themselves apart became an act of torture. It wore away his health. He kept his eyes open, but his ocular shunts grew heavier with time. Sooner or later his façade of self-control would crumble. The prospects of getting cleaved atop the altar didn’t help. He visualized how his stains would oxidize and harden on the molts. It made him bereft of hope, drained of the will to run and hide in a vain attempt to seek some unattainable refuge. As the main attraction, he wished they spared him the embarrassment and granted him some privacy, allowing him to die with a sense of dignity, even if alone, and not in a pool of his own ejecta.

His chest throbbed.

Hypnosis took effect. He became one with their madness—or it became one with him; they were inseparable halves. The pulsing rhythm merged with the movement; whatever it touched. The building resonated, and so did the listeners, from music designed to reprogram the mind, lulling those under its spell. All it had to do was repeat…repeat…repeat. It’s how they kept their citizens in line and the slaves under their feet. It always worked.

Vemmer saw no escape, no path to freedom. Life was a trap, every measure predetermined before birth. Caste was everything. He wanted to break down and sob, watching his captors jiggle and bob like sea urchins, casting away their flesh as he would toss the trash. He despised them; every one of them. They treated his clan worse than insects flitting around the crocks that piled up after an evening meal, and he went as far as to wonder if the Tar’r Gyr had once spawned from the swamp. The my’yx came to mind.

Getting sacrificed on behalf of a class of idolaters only fueled his fury. An urge burned deep within to wrap his chains around the high priest’s gullet, cutting circulation until his fledging skin lost its glimmer and his eyes turned to cataracts. Of course, the guards would storm the temple faster than Vemmer could react, pry him off their impeccable leader, and beat him into a bucket of chum. He wondered if that would count as a worthy sacrifice. To him, it didn’t matter. Just thinking about it gave him peace.

Yet, despite his blustering protest, he remained stone-faced. But he would soon reach his breaking point faster than he could muster enough control to stop it. He couldn’t take it any further. He hit the wall. His mind and body caved. His sanity lost its footing on the precipice and careened over the sheer. It all became dark, like the final veil before falling down the abyss.

However, moments before he would hit the bottom in a great splat, the wall of noise stopped. The final rapping of hide receded like a distant echo, leaving Vemmer’s conscience bruised and battered as if smacked with a mace. Maws with palettes as wide as their heads snapped shut, their final chants rolling across the gaudy ceiling. It left the temple in a menacing silence that shattered the air like glass.

The sudden shift disturbed him more than anything seen or heard in the Dance of Passage. He opened his eyes. Throngs of creatures stood before him; naked, brawny, their demeanors more imposing. Their feet lay steeped in leavenings, lost among the drifts. They faced the transept, still as statues and glistening as if drenched in plaster that had long since dried, eager for that axe to fall.

The differences, to Vemmer’s distress, ended there.

Everything else became a reflection. Vemmer lost control of his hands. It spread. His body shook, and he no longer cared about how much he appeared to be weak. Instead, he witnessed a reality that would haunt his final minutes of life. The dark green complexion, the three bituminous eyes, the starry anatomy… Apart from their physical size, they appeared no different from him. The truth clattered through his gut, indigestible and irreducible.

How did the Tar’r Gyr, who themselves were Ads’seed at one point, grow so large? They towered over him by at least two heads. If he ventured a guess, it might have had something to do with their newfound abilities to molt. He heard about strange surgeries, a kind of cell enhancement, that might have required the additional support of an exoskeleton they replenished every year. It sounded crazy. He also could have been sucking wind with every guess.

With his posture as straight as a bomboii tree, and head held higher than such, the Magus spoke once again, his voice thundering through the naves with added excitement. It made Vemmer twitch, worsening his now-shattered appearance.

“Rebirthers, we have seized our rightful throne. Rejoice now, I say!” A rolling cheer. “We’ve conquered the mantle of suffering; the day of the molt has passed. Our next phase shall be wrought in the seed of dominion, a time to nourish the bosom of fertility and fulfill our demographic destiny. Lord Haa, the greatest of ancestors, has gifted us with new life, where the tide of maturity flushes the shells of our prior existence and remodels us to his will and commandments. New frontiers await! The heavens shall burn, for the throes of space shall yield to us. Infidels be damned…eternally. Now, let the wars begin! Hail the Great Ancestor! Hail Lord Haa!”

He turned to the slave who stood as impassive as the moment the guards marched him onto centerstage, except now Vemmer was ready to die without the other’s aid. Inspecting him up and down, he assessed his worth in blood, subtly nodded, and beckoned with two fresh fingers that gleamed under the filtered sunlight.

“Come hither, knave. A sacrifice requires the generous libation from those who repent of their slavish path and seek the way of Haa. Only then can your past transgressions be forgiven.”

Vemmer’s eyes widened. His nerves quivered. But he mustered the strength to finally speak.

“In all honor bestowed upon Your Highness and the Greatest of Ancestors,” he said, wanting to retch at the blandishments, “may I ask what this sacrifice entails?” His quavering, provoked by the combination of fear and anger, became more obvious.

The Magus furrowed his brow and smirked. “Everything! You shall reap the wages of your old life, but rest assured of salvation for such a pious act.”

Wages? It sounded ambiguous, a passive-aggressive way of degrading the slave in order to smite his fragile ego. He breathed deeper, expecting a dagger through his vital artery, followed by his spillage on the altar.

A fitting reward for a noble cause! Atoning for past transgressions he knew nothing about. It reeked of a lie, though he couldn’t be sure. Considering no one had ever briefed him or his clan on their sacramental role aside from blind servitude, he settled on his hunch: it was a raw deal.

“For life requires life,” the Magus resumed, addressing both slave and congregation as he lifted his head across the room. “The cycle runs like an ever-flowing stream, from which we imbibe its restorative grace and join our ancestors’ raging river.”

One of the subalterns approached, cradling something in his arms Vemmer couldn’t make out, and handed it to the high priest.

“One life feeds many,” he continued, stepping to the altar with the object in hand, grabbing the blade, and raising it, “a commendable requisition to restore our place on the hallowed vine; each step manifesting newfound strength and will none others can match. All worlds between the dark depths beyond shall bow!” He incanted, “Lord Haa, we bestow this offering, as a token of your mercy that seals the fruit of our labors and divine right of conquest. May your will consummate in this offering of hallowed flesh!”

The blade came down as sharp as a bolt of lightning. A whimper. The crowds cheered uproariously. Some fainted, mostly fems, overwhelmed by the weight of ecstasy, real or imagined. Others, particularly males, intertwined their hands in a congratulatory salute. Enniat’th, the Dance of Passage, had ended; the Tar’r Gyrs’ transition was now complete.

Something stirred apart from the temple erupting in triumph. Vemmer felt it deep inside, a sensation that belied the obvious expectation. He opened his eyes. He was alive, or he was staring through the eyes of a disembodied spirit. Was there something he missed? Curious, he loosely felt his hands drag along his chest, still enchained. A ghost would never wear manacles. Between the din of the crowd and the fact that he wasn’t a slab of meat jarred his senses.

After some confusion, he let his eyes adjust, moreso his mind, since it wasn’t his vision that needed refocusing. A freshly defiled altar resolved before him. But he didn’t find his butchered form draped over it. There was still blood, though not his own. From what he made of the tattered pelt and mangled entrails, they used some kind of animal. He suspected a pretext to the main attraction, yet the others talked among themselves as they would after an assembly.

He craned his head, staring into the ocular triad that glared back at him with a demonic flair. The intimidation returned once again, stronger than before, now verging on the supernatural. Vemmer yearned to know what the high priest had in store this time. He raised his hands and opened his maw, yet to his horror, the Magus knew his question before he asked it.

“We thank you for your invaluable offering, slave. Now, here…” He grabbed a broom the subaltern handed him and shoved it into Vemmer’s arms. “Clean up this mess. Haa demands tidiness!”

A broom? the Slave mulled, expecting another swing of the axe that, to his surprise, still laid against the alter, even though bloodied. Instead, the Dance of Passage made him their errand boy. It took him a few seconds to accept this untimely change of events.

He surveyed the sea of molts, casting a weary eye. Flashbacks returned of loathsome creatures—his own to his chagrin, yet mutated, genetically altered for status’s sake, shedding layers of themselves unnatural for any Ads’seed. He grew sick, not just at the prospects of handling their waste, but the contention of how his own people warped their identities under the guise of religion. And it was his to clean up.

After a moment of deliberation, he paid his respects to the high priest, though begrudgingly, muttered something about Haa, and resigned himself to his custodial duties, preferring to live another day. However, when scrutinizing the grim offering, his body went numb. The libation, the subject ushering in the new age, raised an alarm deep inside him. He wanted to cry, to shout above the commingling crowds, and fall on his knees with the clanging of shackles.

It was the cry of familiarity.

He scanned the tatters…again and again with the same result. The fur! He recognized the frizziness, the patches of bleach-white left unstained, and size once small enough to crawl onto his lap. His heart sank as he vacantly stared at his rovit. His closest companion lay shed over some arcane ritual honoring a biological function built into a race of narcissists.

As an outcast even amongst his own, it only made him lonelier, dejected, becoming a shadow slowly retreating into the grottos of oblivion. Perhaps it was the most brutal form of punishment, a perfect ploy to intimidate, to solidify the status quo and keep the slaves under a veil of obfuscation, nullified of purpose except obedience. Kill their closest family, then force them to watch the act from start to finish, an act the Magus deemed fit for a lowly subject.

With eyes wide open and mouth agape, Vemmer stared into the gleaming triad of his own likeness, a semblance without pity or remorse. A newborn Ra’ath smiled wickedly and patted him on the shoulder.

“Maybe…” the high priest said as he parted from the transept, then stopped and turned his head, “…just maybe, you’ll have your chance on next year’s molt.” Laughing, he turned back around and left. The crowds broke up and followed, wading through their empty shells that buffeted the feet of the slave.

From what he gathered of their choice of offering, besides losing his closest friend, Vemmer realized he wasn’t even worth the sacrifice.

NEW PHANTOM WHISPERS OUT NOW!
Also, please check out my other short stories on Substack: Robert Garron's Substack

Please visit my other sites:
Robert Garron on X

Robert Garron on Instagram

Phantom Whispers Zine on X
To purchase:
https://amazon.com/Phantom-Whispers-Fantasy-Sci-fi-Magazine-ebook/dp/B0D788TGMQ/ref=sr_1_1?sr=8-1… https://amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0DKXFY9ZW?ref_=dbs_m_mng_wam_calw_tkin_1&storeType=ebooks&sr=8-1