A Chimerical Hope

The nymphs are blown back by the blastwave of the explosion. The beach becomes but ash and smoke.

“We need to run,” Oocid says.

The other nymphs are struggling to stand, recovering from the trauma of the blast.

Minutes later, they’re climbing up the slope they came down, but spare a glance behind them. The smoke and flames are clearing.

There’s two immediately conflicting facts.

A new pit yawns deep into the shore‍ ‍—‍ like Unodha had used a sand form technique to dig in and weather the blast. But there are two charred bodies above ground, one lying atop the other.

The worst is confirmed after a dread moment of watching. The rise and fall of an abdomen.

More than that: the back and forth of mandibles working to chew. Unodha, clinging to life, has the mentor’s entrails in her mouth and devours them.

After swallowing, more of her moves. We saw the prelude of this when she transformed the beasts. She swells, muscles crawling to life across her husk of a body and attaching to limbs, like a colony of worms wriggling and then biting down.

A mewling hound, caught at the edge of the blast, ambles over. It lies down, and Unodha rips out its throat and starts to eat it. Blood gushes and splashes all over her, and this just accelerates the restoration.

The nymphs start climbing again, faster, but it’s not enough.

By the end, Unodha looks more canine than mantid. The red flesh covers most of her. From her side, where an imago might have nonfunctional wingcases, instead two limbs unfold or evert, born of liquid muscle and skin.

You could call it a pair of bat wings, or gaunt claw arms, and neither would be incorrect.

The bane begins to step toward the ridge.

Oocid looks at the nymphs with him, and makes a calculation.

“Fihra, Ooliri, Yugen, with me. We’re fighting.”

“What?”

“No way she’s at full power after all that. We’ve still got soldier pills in us. Let’s go.”

“What about me?”

Oocid smiles, but something’s missing from it. “It is the duty of the Windborne Wardens to defend you. Remember that.”

He lets go, and slides down the slope.

Fihra goes next. Then the pawns.

Awelah almost follows. Then Fihra gives her a look.

Awelah and Makuja climb up to the top of the ridge and with how close Unodha now stands, team nineteen is in no position to see those whom they’re defending.

The nymphs stop even as Unodha is approaching, suddenly overcome.

It’s overwhelming. Standing before this monster. Yawning, incongruous maw of teeth. Serrated claws. Mass far beyond what a mantid frame should support. Blood crawling. Eyes that are the eyes of death.

“This feeling…”

“Killing fear. A will to maim and destroy so powerful it spills out, becomes palpable. Enough to paralyze the weak,” Oocid says.

“But it can’t stop us! We are Windborne!” Fihra yells and takes a step forward. The others, inspired, follow her example.

It’s dark on the battlefield. Lingering smoke hangs above them, casting shadows over them all.

At the front, Fihra engages with sword, and Oocid with his staff. Each is able to fend off either of the fiend’s wing‍-​claws.

The pawns make to encircle her, attack from her undefended flanks.

It’s an error. Unodha spins. Her hindlegs kick out, and claws dig into Yugen. You can see her gullet emerging, severed, from her thorax. Muscles spill out alongside everted tracheae still flaring, trying to convey breath. Her dorsal nerve is cut, and she cannot move. She falls, never to rise.

The monster’s forelegs, though, are reaching for Ooliri. Tarsus wraps tight around his neck and lifts him up. Oocid swings down with his staff, but Unodha’s arm could be a stone pillar for all the difference it would make. A wing‍-​claw brushes him aside, carelessly, leaving long gashes.

Two limbs reach for Ooliri, as a wing‍-​claw goes to the ground to support her. One grabs hold of his arm, pulling on it, and another is swiping for his abdomen, now hanging beneath him.

Even in this danger, there’s a part of him still analyzing. Why is she doing this? It doesn’t seem the quickest way to kill me. Oh.

She’s playing with us.

It’s the last thing Ooliri can think before his mind is lost to fear and pain. He feels something tearing in his arm, and wishes that was the worst. The monster is clawing at his abdomen‍ ‍—‍ it’s reaching, punching, in.

Ooliri feels his heart.

So does she.

Then she pulls. Rips the nymph’s heart out of his abdomen. Holds the bloody, bouncing thing for a moment while his brother watches. Squeezes it.

Eats it.

Oocid roars and charges at the fiend. He gets one swing and a sick crunch of his staff before a single full‍-​force punch to the head sends him flying back sliding and scraping across the ground. He doesn’t get up. His dear older brother doesn’t move.

Ooliri, still watching with darkening vision, tries to say something and cannot. He’s dropped, a discarded toy.

Fihra is the last one standing. She holds her sword high against the monster, undaunted like a hero.

“How does it feel to be the best of your sorry lot?” Uhodha gargles, barely intelligible. “To be the best, and still worthless? I don’t need to kill you. If you run screaming, I will let you escape.”

Fihra can only articulate two words. “You’ll pay.”

“I won’t.”

Fihra steps forward. She thrusts and sinks her sword into bleeding meat. Dodges around wing‍-​claws. Ducks under forelegs. Steps over kicks.

She truly is the best of team nineteen.

It’s not enough. She’s a wretch, and her opponent fought a fiend mentor while outnumbered and lived.

Tired, injured, and down her primary weapon, Unodha is still bigger, stronger, faster. Better.

She makes a sign. Fihra trips; the ground had sunk beneath her.

The nymphs lies there. She feels the killing fear reach a crescendo. She knows she’s lost. She sobs once.

Then Unodha’s leg comes down like a judge’s hammer on her head, and then her skull and eyes and brain is so much gore. Fihra is dead.

Ooliri, shadows dancing across his vision, watches this. Did his vesper have something to do with why he was still hanging on?

The last thing he sees, before a final darkness takes him, is Makuja climbing down the slope and slinking up to Unodha.

She doesn’t attack‍ ‍—‍ neither do. Makuja offers clothing.

It’s Awelah’s cloak. A single drop of blood falls from it.

Makuja looks up. Unodha nods at her.

And Ooliri watches her walk off with her master.

Then he does not see, and does not think.