Spawn-of-Six Yssil

Yssil came out of a war-clutch of seven: six identical sisters bred for coordinator duty, and one runt the tank produced when the nutrient mix went sour. Orthodoxy was to cull the runt. The broodmother did the cull, and then, in a defiance she never explained, pulled Yssil from the disposal vat and put the half-formed gills back on a feeding tube.

Yssil grew up wrong-shaped and alone, listening to a mother sing the perfect dead siblings until the notes were memorized. The Severed Lattice was the broodmother's gift on her final molt, against the caste-board, a gesture the Collective is still arguing about. A strut is missing for each dead sister. Yssil fights at the edge of a formation, where the chorus thins. They were already an outsider in the only place they had lived.