A Chimerical Hope

Smaller, with big eyes and features defined by round shapes, the nymph looks up to her like the younger sibling to their elder. The refugee wears a look of calcined despair, of having lost everything yet gripping to one hope and determination. The nymph bears a look of emptiness, of having lost everything, of falling with nothing to hold on to‍ ‍—‍ like they look at her from down within an ever‍-​deepening pit. Somehow, her white eyes don’t look bright.

The refugee had asked the nymph why she should let them live. A nymph younger than her, and they don’t have an answer.

Awelah’s grip on the spear slacks, and her eyes darken with pigment as she looks at the nymph she’s threatening. For a moment, she’s not there. She’s in Duskroot, and she smells ash and blood. She hears the crackles of baneful fire, the pleading screams. She sees death and judgment.

The spear lowers, but it’s still pointing at the nymph.

“What are you doing out here?”

“I am gathering mint leaves. They will serve to make a salve. A roach nymph had hurt their leg running from a hound.”

Awelah’s messy antennae twist forward. “Where did the roaches come from?”

“Farmers from Duskhold. They tell me they supplied food to the stronghold of Duskroot, but now they flee… whatever had happened there. The region is dangerous now, and they believed I would be safer in their company.”

Awelah lowers her spear further. The second pawn had claimed their orders were to kill everything that crawls out of Duskroot‍ ‍—‍ and this nymph is not doing that.

“What’s your name?” the nymph suddenly asks.

The refugee is Awelah. “Awelah Asetari.”

There’s a look that flickers across their face. “I’m… I’m Makuja. Are you still going to kill me?”

Awelah stares. They look… pathetic. Awelah is struck by the thought that if she killed defenseless Makuja, she’d be just like her. “No,” she says. “Get up. Show me the roaches.”

Here stands one of the trees left in this countryside, roots carving into rock. Its branches are thick, but leafless and dead. Odd conic fungi grow underneath the boughs. They expand and contract as if breathing.

Beneath this tree, the roaches wait. The bugs are just barely bigger than the nymphal diamantids. They have bright chitin, faint reds and greens, and the largest pulls a small cart. They greet the mantids with waving antennae, rubbing against Makuja, but keeping distance of Awelah.

When Makuja introduces Awelah, a current of dread passes through the roaches, whose antennae jerk back like from shock. The roaches look between themselves, and then after a moment a matriarch kneels, followed by other roaches. “Honored Asetari, we thought you had all died.” Noble roaches don’t stridulate with their palps; they hiss through their spiracles.

Makuja asks why they would think that, and the mother roach replies that the noble clan of Asetari founded the Duskroot stronghold atop an enchanted mountain. Four days ago that cursed storm prowled in and an otherworldly destruction was visited upon the stronghold.

“Now Duskroot lies in ruins. Yet you are here. We thought the Asetari would have died protecting it.”

They watch Awelah silently, and she does not answer. Awelah casts her eyes down, antennae falling over her face. There was anger to be had at the insinuation, but shame, too.

The roaches turn back to hiss among themselves. Before they set off, the Mother directs one last question to Awelah: “We have no accommodations for a vesperbane, but if you can endure that, you may accompany us.”

Awelah stares at the light green face of this roach, meeting those dark eyes, and wonders what dwells behind them. Did she blame Awelah’s clan for the destruction that drove her and hers from their home? The mantis could scratch some rebuttal, felt the urge‍ ‍—‍ but that face… The Asetari had roachservants, maids who’d practically raised Awelah. Had.

Wary roach eyes turn to her, hearing her silence, seeing her hands clench into fists. But it’s not anger. Awelah had dwelt long on her family the past three days, but this touches a different, unexpected wound.

Unable to voice a reply, the nymph simply lowers her head‍ ‍—‍ what might be a single nod, or a small bow. It’s a level of deference a roach farmer would certainly never expect from a mantis, let alone a clan mantis. When the journey resumes, Awelah follows.

Long stretches of the road pass with roaches humming folk songs in their spiracles. The pale nymph has fallen back at a distance, far behind the convoy of roaches, where they cannot see her.

That night, Awelah sits on a rock while the roaches sleep. She stares above, to where stars struggle to shine through a dark sky. In the shadows, Makuja watches her.

In the morning, the roaches serve the diamantids vegetable stew. Unwilling to eat it, Awelah leaves to hunt a beetle with her spear, and she returns to share it with Makuja. The roaches watch this, uneasy.

They travel north across Duskhold. Language presents friction, but Awelah has long lived with roach servants, understands their speech well enough. She tells them of traveling on foot through the heaviest parts of wispfall, and is met with disbelief and question after question as to how she survived. She doesn’t mention the pawns. In return, the roaches fill air with stories or warnings about menacing shadows and howls of beasts that haunt the nights, and dour talk of neighbors who disappeared all asudden. Her antennae work as she listens, recalling their nonsense talk of Duskroot being “enchanted,” or the wispfall being “otherworldly.”

The conversation stirs trembling anxiety in the roaches, and the pace of their walking slows. It reaches an intolerable point, and the mother roach calls for an end to it and leads them into a new song. They recant legends of a vesperbane in a nearby land, whose will shapes the very earth‍ ‍—‍ this, Awelah decides, is at least believable.

The sun crosses to its apex in the sky, blocked at times by the clouds and wisp‍-​masses that linger above. Awelah breaks from the roaches now, spear ready. Makuja comes with her, this time. Together, they venture into a field of dust and leaf litter crunching like old bones. Row after row of trees stand as cenotaphs to another time.

Awelah catches movement and a distressed purring. They find a fuzzy jumping spider caught in a trap, struggling to free itself. The red nymph steps forward, but a pale foreleg stops her.

“Are you hungry enough to eat a salticid?” Neither nymph says it, but instead speaks someone unseen.

“What choice do we have? You wanna try eating wisp‍-​choked rations again? Unodha didn’t prepare us for a fucking nervestorm.”

When they appear, Awelah recognizes the brigandine. More pawns.

They’re going to kill the jumping spider‍ ‍—‍ and they’re going to try to kill her, if she lets them sneak up on her again. It’s a fight.

The leaf litter means they can’t surprise the pawns. Like the last one, they wield weapons‍ ‍—‍ one a raptorial ax and another a sword. Awelah’s skilled, but not skilled enough to fight two pawns at once. She hits one with a stab through center mass, but this gives the other pawn a chance to come down hard with an overhead ax swing.

But Makuja lunges into Awelah, prothorax turned to take the brunt of the attack. Her momentum disrupts the swing, but she still gets an ax carving into her.

The small nymph doesn’t cry out as she falls.

Makuja’s sacrifice gives Awelah the chance to seize the initiative and push back the other pawn, but given the choice between pursuing them or checking Makuja, Awelah lets them escape. Awelah kneels by Makuja’s form, applying pressure to the wound.

“Why would you risk your life for me?” Awelah asks.

“The way you act,” she starts. “You have purpose. A drive‍ ‍—‍ it would be an ugly thing if you were denied the chance to fulfil it.”

“A purpose.” Awelah considers the words. She remembers the fire, and what burned. “Of course I do. But what about you? You are a diamantid. You are a predator, like a wolf. A wolf is strong enough to live on their own, for their own sake.”

“Wolves hunt in packs.”

Awelah shakes her head. “Even a packwolf wouldn’t sacrifice themselves.”

Atop a hill, you can see the roaches wait for the mantids to return. Watch their antennae stretching out in concern as they spot Makuja, watch her slow, ginger walk, and Awelah assisting her. Hear Awelah demand something to bandage her wounds with.

The roaches, of course, ask what happened. Awelah has to explain the attacks from the pawns, all of them.

“Where there are pawns,” the mother roach says, “there are vesperbanes. Wretches and fiends, monsters hunting for your blood. The same curse that befell the mountain hangs over you, little mantis. But we… we cannot withstand more destruction, honored Asetari.”

Awelah hears the request in between the words. Please go. The refugee’s eyes darken, and she stands, and she leaves.

She splits from the path, and walks back into the dead forest of grave trees. She hears a crunch behind her. Someone following her.

It’s Makuja.

“What are we doing now?” the smaller nymph asks.

“I’m done being hounded, put on the backfoot by these pawns. What are we doing?” Awelah echoes. “We are wolves. We will hunt.”

The leaf litter makes tracking the footsteps of the pawn easy. They cross out to the other side of the forest. The edge of the forest overlooks a hill that rolls down to a craggy expanse dotted with pools and streams. They smell the lingering scent of smoke from a fire.

A camp. “There could be more than one remaining,” the pale nymph says.

Makuja asks if they’re still going to hunt them.

“Of course. But we need a plan,” Awelah says. “The camp must be hidden among the rocks, but it is nearby. Wait until dusk, and then strike from the shadows.” Awelah looks at Makuja, peering, face conflicted. “Do you want to risk your life for me again?”

Makuja pauses, some doubt or calculation deep within those white eyes. But she speaks steady and says, “I shall serve.”

At last, the sun sets. In the dark, they pick out the glow of the campfire, and set the plan in motion.

Makuja walks up to the camp from the most obvious point of ingress. Awelah’s startled by how silently the nymph moves.

Once at the entrance to the camp, having clearly gotten the attention of any watch, she’ll be intercepted by the pawns. With their attention, she’ll spin a story of having been abandoned by Awelah, and seeking protection, even offering to help them get back at the pale nymph.

While this is happening, Awelah sneaks around from the back, well hidden by the blackness of their cloak. She’ll use her stealth to pick off any sleeping pawns, and backstab any focusing their attention on Makuja.

There are four pawns in the camp. Awelah pauses by the first she finds, eyes covered as they sleep soundly in a bedroll. Her spear is out, and it wouldn’t take much for at all to put the blade through the eye. It should be easier than all the fights she’s won (or less) today.

But Awelah smells the smoke, hears the fire. Was it easy for her?

The nymph takes her eyes off her target, glancing to where Makuja should be causing a fuss. The bright tongues of a small campfire catch her eye easily‍ ‍—‍ and contrasts against the shadow of the meat it’s cooking. Awelah recognizes the body shape, and even the color of the chitin as it blackens.

She knows what happened to the roaches’ neighbors, then.

Her eyes are on the roach, when she thrusts her spear forward. She isn’t cutting down the innocent, she’s taking vengeance. This is good practice.

That pawn is left bleeding out in their sleeping bag. The next gets metal through their heart as they sit by the fire, sharpening a weapon.

Things go off the rails when Awelah comes up behind the two at the camp entrance, who now turn round with Makuja in tow. They see Awelah, see the blood on her spear, and intuit what’s going on.

The response is surrender. They explain that they’re the last ones‍ ‍—‍ “You’ve killed all of us. Even if we took you in now, our master’s displeasure is inevitable.”

“If you tried to to take me in now, I would kill you,” Awelah says.

“Exactly. So let us go,” the pawn says. They put down their weapons.

“Won’t your master just come after me now?”

“Of course. We have orders, after all. But we’ll… we’ll desert. She’ll think we’re still handling it. That’ll give you a headstart. Our master has more important things to handle out here. You might be able to slip away. Please.”

Awelah looks to Makuja, and the hollowness still in her gaze. Awelah lowers her spear. “Get out of here. If I see you again, I’m killing you.”

Two nymphs sit alone in one of the tents. Awelah is changing Makuja’s bandages, cleaning the wound.

She watches blankly, and eventually asks why she’s doing all this. Why she’s bothering.

Awelah says that she already decided she wouldn’t kill her. “What’s the point, if I go on to let you die?”

They sleep next to each other, and Awelah notices Makuja sleeps with a knife beside her.

In the morning, vesperbanes attack the camp.