A Chimerical Hope

Once all of that was over, they could resume what was interrupted: Awelah passing Makuja the bit of rope she asked for. She needed some bits of baneleather too. Then, as they continued their journey vaguely parallel to the now‍-​out‍-​of‍-​sight creek, Makuja fiddled with the rope and tough fungal patches.

Ooliri watches with clear interest, but he’s not the one to ask‍ ‍—‍ perhaps on pain of hypocrisy for keeping his own project a secret.

“What are you doing?” Awelah says. “I’d prefer it if your eyes were out scanning for threats.”

“I’m making a sling,” Makuja replies after a moment. “Master had planned for me to take after her in use of a bow‍ ‍—‍ but hers is too damaged, and far beyond my strength. Until I can obtain my own, this will suffice.”

“And sling what, rocks? Do you think that’s going to be any help against that mutt? You saw the armor it had.”

“She could imbue the rocks with enervate,” Ooliri added quietly.

Makuja’s tarsi pause at that suggestion. She hadn’t thought of it. “You’ll have to show me how to do that.”

“You’ve, uh, already done it? Bane blast, but without the louse sign? You performed a simple enervate discharge when we were investigating Klepé.” Ooliri taps two antennae together. Then, perhaps feeling awkward at offering nothing, adds, “Maybe this will help.” He makes a tarsign with tarsi clasped together, one dactyl interleaving. “The wasp sign is for controlling and measuring enervate. Where louse builds up pressure for an explosive release, wasp gathers a specific quantity.”

Makuja picks up a rock while she walks, then halts to try it. She rubs dirt off of it, then bites it to hold it while her dactyls are busy clapping the focus seal. She makes an approximation of the wasp seal Ooliri showed her, adjusting it slightly until she feels the twitch of malign coldness shifting in her gut. The rock drops into her open hands as she splays one out in release. Enervate drips into her palm, like a small flow through too large a pipe. The enervate seeps into cracks in the rock, and it’s like rapid erosion. There’s a popping sound like the thing was squeezed so tight.

Makuja throws the rock at a tree, and the thing flies off into many pieces.

“Maybe you used too little?”

The red nymph casts her eyes to the ground for more rocks, but Awelah scratches her file.

“Are we really going to sit around here doing experiments?”

Makuja stops. “She’s‍ ‍—‍ right. It’s more important we don’t make targets of ourselves.”

Awelah pokes the compass for direction, and they trek further into the pathless wilderness. Despite all of the metataxites and big ferns with hard stems, the largest of the flora remains uncontested. Ancient trees whose branches had the breadth of houses dot the scape like landmarks. When Makuja confirms that Unodha’s dogs (is he still Unodha’s, now?) had trouble climbing, Awelah makes the plan to suspend hammocks high in a tree, and sleep there. Spring had come shades ago, so there should be leaves enough to obscure them.

“Could the sensor sense us sleeping?”

“There’s nothing we can do to hide from a good enough sensor‍-​bane. Sleeping in the tree is fine, or we have no hope,” Makuja says. “We have an advantage: the older, stronger you are, the easier you are to sense. We are new vesperbanes, and consequently there is little for a sensor to catch.”

“I’m not weak.”

“How do you know all of this?” Ooliri asks.

Makuja has a small smile. “There is a reason I was more useful as a pawn than a full vesperbane.”

Ooliri frowns, and looks away.

They find their next camp site where a stream intersects with the creek they had been following. The flow of water exposes the roots of a grand tree, and the things clung so tightly with its roots that the stream curves around it.

An hour passes of climbing up and down the tree, securing supplies and bedrolls‍-​turned‍-​hammocks with their rope. Awelah falls out of the tree at one point, and screams before she lands just fine. Ooliri has trouble climbing, and they fashion a kind of a ladder of sticks for him to reach the lower branches.

That done, they gather at the base of the tree as the sun nears the horizon. On previous nights, they’d make a campfire, but now the fear of revealing their presence stops them. There are ways to create stealthy fires, and they talk for a while trying to recall the details from their separate trainings. They know it involves digging a hole.

“Do we have anything to dig with?”

“I have this,” Awelah says. It’s the trowel they used to gather the old lady’s clay. Ooliri scowls, and Awelah rubs palps. “I was holding onto it and forgot to set it down before we left.”

“You should return it.”

“How? She’s like a day behind us now.”

“It’s not important,” Makuja adds. The conversation ends there, and they do manage a fire whose smoke won’t reveal their location.

After that, the three separate from each other, focus on their own pursuits. Ooliri is tying rope around his barrel. Awelah claims she saw a wild cicindela, and wants to see if it’s still around. She leaves, but not before Ooliri calls for her not to go far.

Makuja completes her sling, and then gathers rocks and practices imbuing them with enervate. The rocks needed to be uniform; cracks and mixed materials meant the enervate would render them unstable. She needed to hold the wasp seal for longer‍ ‍—‍ confusingly, the rocks become more unstable the less enervate she added. A small amount, and the rock fractures around a hard core. She had better results when she doused the rocks in the discharge‍ ‍—‍ but a few times doing this, and she found herself feeling painfully empty; she must be running out. She leaves the rocks by the streambed, and that’s all she does for the night.

Awelah found no sign of the cicindela, but did find two isopods to roast.

They fold in to sleep, and for once, when night comes there is no howling.

Waking first, Makuja unrolls the ladder to climb down. She lands softly and takes one step. She is not alone.

It had the size of a large roach, with black and orange patterns emblazoned on its elytra. Antennae like a beaded necklace wiggle above its dark black eyes. It was an erotyle; more commonly, its kind was called the pleasing fungus beetle, as a kind of placating flattery. The head is lowered, and the wet palps lick at rocks‍ ‍—‍ the same enervate‍-​laced rocks she had discarded yesterday after her practice.

Makuja bends her knees, heartrate quickening and stance swaying as she calculates. Erotyles are a danger‍ ‍—‍ they, like a few other beetles, are distinguished as one of the few creatures capable of natural nervecasting, adapting enervate to defense. Yet it’s a still wild thing, nonsapient, offering no safety of reason. And lashing out with a spell would be far, far worse than teeth or claws.

Folktales told that the things had some vague way of sensing intent‍ ‍—‍ it’s why mantids flatter them. Makuja doesn’t know if it’s true, and can’t rely on that. But the obvious recourse is always available.

Makuja picks up a rock from the ground. She could throw knives, but that’s too much threat, and if it fled with a knife sticking out, she’d never get it back. Briefly, she considers imbuing the rock, testing her sling. But that would just contribute to the problem, wouldn’t it?

She tries something new.

Focus. Wasp. Louse.

She holds louse for a moment. If the erotyle could sense enervate, would it know to be unsettled by the prepared spell? Would that be enough?

It lifts a head to stare at her, antennae extended out.

Fine, then.

Release. Makuja performs the modified bane blast after palming the rock. The blast hits the rock, and the rock flies out. It doesn’t strike the beetle, but it lands with a crash beside it, and the bug jumps, startled.

Makuja raises her raptorials and abdomen, and hisses —a threat display.

The beetle opens its mouth, wide. What is it planning?

⸢Umbral Body Projection!⸥

Awelah’s projection floats down from above them, and the beetle stares at it as if transfixed. Taking advantage of the unexpected distraction, Awelah’s spear strikes down from on high, cracking the elytra and piercing through the abdomen. The projectile lands offcenter, missing anything vital, but the bug is now pinned to the ground. Enough for Awelah to light down in a three‍-​point stance, then kill it with a bane blast to the head.

“Can we eat this thing?”

Makuja, for once, is the one scraping frustration. “There might be more of them. I wasn’t going to kill it.”

Awelah shrugs. “It offered itself to us, practically on a plate. Nature takes its course.” She gives the beetle and its patterned chitin another look. “Is this one of those spellbugs? They eat fungus, don’t they? This is probably equal to a plateful of venjaspirals on its own.”

“You will be taking care of the body. It’s not mine.” Makuja turns and walks away. She kneels by the extinguished campfire to revive it. Behind her, Awelah glances at the rock submerged in the ground, a crater of cracked dirt and roots around it.

While the three gather around the fire at breakfast, Makuja meets Ooliri’s gaze. “I have done it,” she says. “Shall I show you?”

“Hm?” Ooliri is writing something in a notebook they’d recovered from his team.

“Your suggestion. The principle works.” Makuja retrieves a small river stone, holds it for a moment as if weighing, then tosses it into the air. Focus. Wasp. Release. Enervate surges into her palm, where the stone returns to be suffused in the black void. The enervate is sucked in, and the stone blackens until it looks to be made of shadow itself‍ ‍—‍ but there’s so much enervate that the black still curls off it.

To demonstrate, she tosses the stone at a fallen log. Despite the cracking wood, it impacts silently. It rolls to the ground, but where it first hit, a black circle of enervate soaks into the wood.

The key lies in the quantity, Makuja learned. An excess of enervate is required; when there’s more enervate than can imbue the rock itself, the excess can be imparted to the target. Enervate seems more willing to imbue solid objects than the air around them.

“Good job! I’m glad my idea worked out.”

“Well, it doesn’t.” Makuja is curling up her antennae. “You see how it imparts enervate when it touches the wood? I cannot use it with my sling.”

“Ohh… I’m sorry.”

But Makuja picks up another stone‍ ‍—‍ she had a few in her bag, now. “I can, however, do this:” She tosses it up again, and then: Focus. Wasp. Louse. Release. She catches the stone, splays her tarsus for enervate to surge up, then quickly closes it again and thrusts her foreleg straight out, pointing down and away from anyone. When her tarsus splays again, the familiar explosive pop of bane blast sounds, and the stone flies out with it, smashing into the ground with a crack and a cloud of dirt.

“Woah!”

“So that’s what you did…” Awelah murmurs.

“I could show you how to do it, if you like?”

Awelah pauses, mouth slightly open, but rolls up her antennae, and scratches. “Why would I need to fling rocks? I have better techniques.”

Makuja’s antenna twitches, and she combs a palp through it, freeing her from being able to respond.

“Maybe hold off on further nervecasting? I think I may be able to get my idea to work today, and it’ll work best if you’re near full reserves.”

“Do you want to learn my technique, Ooliri?”

“I, uh, I’m still having trouble with regular bane blast, sorry.”

Makuja inclines her head with spiraled antennae, and turns to leave without a word. She leaves to the west.

“We’re still training today,” Awelah says. But, sensing the mood, she stands to take her leave as well, grabbing her spear. There’s drops of beetle blood still on it.

“Still hunting that cicindela?”

“It’s got to still be around.”

Awelah goes east. She doesn’t get ten strides out of the camp before a yell erupts from her spiracles. Ooliri comes; Makuja doesn’t. (It’s not a cry for alarm, just attention. She may not have even heard, having left soon, in the opposite direction.)

Dead beetles. They find three erotyle corpses, when they start looking, littered around the outskirts of their camp. Cause of death is similar in all cases: bit and clawed to bits in a manner that suggests exactly one creature. The footprints are here too. If there needed to be more confirmation, Ooliri finds direblood festering in two of the bodies.

“So it’s still out there. It came this close.” Ooliri scans the wood around them, but there’s no skeletal dog stalking them.

“I’m going to track it.”

“Alone? Shouldn’t we get Makuja?”

“We know I can scare it off with my projection. You… no offense, but I don’t think you would help much in a fight, and you definitely would slow me down.”

“What about the vesperbanes?”

“Think about what we actually saw yesterday. The dog was moving slowly. The vesperbanes were running, and fast at that. We know they weren’t traveling close with the dog, and it must have been even farther than it seems if they were moving faster than it. Look at the beetles. All bites and clawmarks‍ ‍—‍ no tools, no nervewounds. I don’t think the vesperbanes were with it.”

“Maybe. It all seems so tenuous.”

“Ooliri, I’m not hunting the thing‍ ‍—‍ if it hasn’t smelt us and came back, it might be gone entirely. I just want to make sure it’s not nearby; I’ll be back soon.”