A Chimerical Hope

“Enervate absorbs. Energy, matter, even itself. It absorbs heat, force, sound, and it doesn’t reflect them back like matter does. It’s like if you poured water onto a towel‍ ‍—‍ some of the water is absorbed, but some is always dripping back out. That’s matter. Enervate is more like if you had a tight bowl, you pour water in and it stays there, it doesn’t leak out.”

“Until the bowl fills up,” Awelah notes.

“Yeah. When enervate fills up… it’s like how water turns into steam when it’s hot. Only enervate turns into… The kind of enervate you’re used to, that you cast out with your projection, is called umbra. Umbra, when it absorbs too much, starts to turn into aura.”

“Okay,” she says. “What’s this for?”

“It’s um, sorry this is kind of beside the point. The thing I’m trying to explain is, enervate is physical. It has physical properties and interactions. We can describe it like a thing, rather than a magical force.”

“Ooliri,” Awelah starts, “what I’m trying to understand is what this all has to do with the barrel of water that’s hanging from our tree.”

The barrel rocks slightly, strung up beneath the lowest and thickest tree‍-​branch. The water splashed on its side and running down in rivulets hints at its contents. The rope goes up, loops around the branch once, and then falls back down. Opposite the barrel hangs a big log, large enough for a mantis to perch on. Underweighting the barrel by far, the log has to be suspended in place by another rope, which attaches to a boulder Ooliri must have pushed a long ways over for just this purpose.

“This is my idea. It’s… a scale.”

Awelah looks between the barrel and the boy.

“Water has a known density, and our waterskins have a known volume. By filling up the barrel with creekwater from the waterskin, I know the total volume, and from that, the total mass. So with that side of the equation settled, I can put something‍ ‍—‍ or someone‍ ‍—‍ on the log, and adjust the barrel until the two are balanced. That way, we can measure how much we weigh.”

“And then…”

“Enervate has mass. So if you cast a spell while on the scale, your weight would change.”

Awelah stares, waiting for elaboration but getting none. “Why do we need to weigh ourselves?” Then she tries to guess. “To track muscle growth? But that doesn’t really involve enervate.”

“No, think about it. If we have measurements, we can test things. I wanted to see how much enervate we have, how much we use with our spells. Maybe see what happens if we use more or less… And then… I guess it’s not really that useful, is it? I just thought I could… do something.”

Awelah watches him as he fumbles through his words. But the look she’s giving him isn’t one of rejection. Even still, her expression is neutral, evaluating. “You want to figure out how our spells work? Experiment with them?”

“Yes! If… if you want, that is.”

“I want,” Awelah pauses to consider her words, “to make my own spell. Makuja did it, and she’s not better than me. If I‍ ‍—‍ if we do this measurement thing, will you…”

“Help you with that?”

Awelah scowls. “I just want to know if this scale thing is going to be useful to my goal. Or if it’s a waste of time.”

Ooliri flinches back from that, but says, “Well, to modify a spell you’d have to know how it works, right? And we can figure out how it works.”

“Fine.”

Awelah takes off her cloak, hanging it off another tree limb. It sags. Then she’s kicking off sandals and, after climbing up, spinning on the log to face Ooliri.

Her side of the scale starts to sink down, and Ooliri leans over to pick up the weights‍ ‍—‍ gray‍-​shelled, unripened fruit that he had poked holes into. The meat was dug out and water poured in to make the weight precise. Each one weighed about five hundred grams, and he’d already poured twenty kilos of water and sand into the barrel.

Ooliri had guessed close to Awelah’s weight; he only added a few partly hollowed fruit to the barrel to even the scale. They float on top of the water.

“Now, uh, can you cast it?”

“Hard to focus on this swing,” she says with a frown. She spins around so that her hands aren’t visible to Ooliri, and runs through the tarsigns.

Now, finally seeing her cast outside the heat of battle, he can glimpse what ⸢Umbral Body Projection⸥ really looks like.

Pale violet chitin darkens like there’s little bits of smoke curling off her, and then a cloud of the stuff is flowing out. At first, it’s not like the familiar shadow form‍ ‍—‍ instead it’s translucent, just a darkening of the air. Her tarsi are still moving, coming together and then parting slightly, and a black mass is forming within them. Her hands open, and the orb‍-​like mass flies forth into the dark cloud while the nymph is rocked back by the force. Inside the cloud, the orb starts to unravel and expand, flooding the smoke, like resin poured into a mold. This all happens in the space of a breath.

Darkening to void‍-​like impenetrability, the silhouette becomes clearly Awelah’s. The shadow‍-​Awelah backs off while its creator is still rocking back and forth on the log. Even as it swings and rotates, the rope is now pulled upward‍ ‍—‍ as expected, she has become lighter.

Ooliri rushes to pluck up two fruit out from the barrel, their contents spilling a little due to his hurry. He picks up a third, and that’s enough to start to reverse Awelah’s upward trajectory, and she slides back down. Putting on a half‍-​weight brings it close enough to balanced.

“That’s… huh.”

Ooliri is glancing between the contents of the barrel and the projection.

“It’s what?”

“It’s hollow, I think. It’d have to be.”

“What?”

“Well, it depends on your volume, and there’s no tub around here… Unless I approximate it? Uh, could you step off the log for a moment?”

The log slides upward with a jerk, greatly unbalanced, until it’s stopped by the rope suspending it to the ground. On the ground, Ooliri is lining himself up beside Awelah, matching her posture, and then bringing a tarsus flat from the top of his head to where it intersects with Awelah’s height.

“You’re about… fourteen centimeters taller than me? And…” He looks to her side, and seeming too embarrassed to touch, just guesses. “Probably twenty centimeters wide…” He has a notebook in one hand, and starts to scratch with a charcoal pencil. “So if we model you as a tube…”

“I’m not a tube.”

He looks up. “Otherwise I’d have to measure each of your legs, and everywhere your width changes, so…”

“Fine, say I’m a tube. What’s the point of this?”

“I’m trying to figure out what your volume is. I don’t know what the usual volume for a mantis of a certain height is.”

“Didn’t you say something about the water’s volume? How’d you figure that out?”

Ooliri’s palps bend back, scrunching up in confusion. “Huh? I already knew the volume, it was the mass I didn’t know, and I figured it out because the density is just one… And mantids are mostly water! So they’d have a similar density. I’m being stupid. You’re right, thanks Awelah.”

“You’re… welcome?”

“So anyway, you only got about twelve hundred grams lighter from casting that spell, yet you weigh twenty thousand or so. And that little bit of enervate is all that makes up the thing. If it’s spread out throughout the whole volume‍ ‍—‍ well, umbra isn’t usually that diffuse, not when it’s as stable as your projection clearly is. I don’t know if that density would make it more translucent, or maybe make it evaporate to aura.” Ooliri stops himself, waving a raptorial in front of him. “So well, the alternative is that it’s like, a shell.”

“You’re saying it’s a balloon.”

“Well…”

Awelah scowls. “That sounds stupid. I’m not blowing balloons.”

Ooliri shrugs, which doesn’t ease her expression. He asks, “Well, what does it look like when it attacks?”

Awelah points at her projection, and it moves. It swipes a raptorial at a tall fern, and the stalk snaps from the force of the blow.

“How does that work,” he says, the words an expression of confusion more than a question. “It clearly can’t have that much mass behind the blow, so…”

“Maybe it has more mass than you think it does.”

“Where would it come from, though? It has to come from somewhere.”

“Dunno,” she says. “Does it matter? How does where it comes from help?”

“I don’t think we need to propose mystery mass. I think we already have the answer, actually.” Ooliri steps over to the fern, and then makes the tarsigns, and then: ⸢Bane blast!⸥ “Ha! I did it? I didn’t think I’d do it the first time.”

“That’s the answer?”

“Bane blast creates force, so your projection could be doing something similar when it hits things. But… if you push on something, it pushes back, and if the projection is so light, why doesn’t it go flying when it hits something?” Ooliri looks the projection up and down, and sees it standing on the ground. Standing. “You can make it float, can’t you? Could you do that?”

Awelah points at it again. The gray nymph is peering at her tarsus when she does it this time, and swears she sees a little bit of darkness flowing out.

“Can it attack while in the air? Try making it hit the tree.”

The pale nymph frowns as if she doesn’t like being told, but the projection floats over to the tree and punches it. The shadow goes flying backward.

“I guess it… sticks to the ground? Hm. How do you control it, anyway?”

“I just… it comes naturally.”

“Like the signs. Is it a sign that you’re making?”

“I imagine what I want it to do, and then I point and then… it does it.”

Now Ooliri is frowning. “Vespers don’t care about your thoughts.”

“What?”

“One of the things they taught us in the academy. The vespertine arts aren’t magical. No technique works because you want it to, or changes based on what you intend. Endowments are tools, and techniques are a logical application of those tools.”

“Then I suppose I’m different.”

“Maybe you’re doing something different each time, without realizing it?”

“I did what you asked. How do I make the technique stronger?”

“I’m still trying to understand it. I’ve never really stopped to think about how your projection works.” He glances at the thing itself, and pauses. “Its eyes are glowing. Did you ever notice that?”

Where a mantis would have pseudopupils if you were looking at it dead on, the shadow‍-​Awelah has two dim points of light, only really visible by the contrast with the blackness around it.

“Not really much time to notice details when I’m fighting for my life.” Awelah keeps her eyes on the projection, though, peering as if all the things she didn’t know is starting to trouble her. “Do you know why?”

“Hm… it’s probably… Enervate absorbs, remember? Right now it’s absorbing the heat and light all around it. The longer it sticks around, the more energy it collects. The glow, I think, must be how it’s getting rid of that.” Ooliri looks back down to his notebook, flipping back to his earlier speculation. “Can you cast two of them?”

Awelah starts to make the signs, but Ooliri interrupts.

“On the scale, please?”

The signs, and then the cloud of aura‍-​nerve forms again, and Awelah’s ball of darkness enters the cloud, starts to expand, but after expanding, it only holds the form of Awelah’s silhouette for a moment, then sort of collapses inward and returns to her.

“Did you put the same amount of enervate into that?”

“It felt like less.”

“Could you have put more into it?”

Awelah thinks for a moment. “No.”

“So you don’t have enough to cast it twice. Your reserves would be less than twenty four hundred grams, then. It’ll get bigger soon, though. Just takes time and practice.”

Awelah is biting a palp, thinking about her constraints. “Until then… could I use less enervate?” Rather than waiting for an answer, Awelah commands her projection to return, and then touches it.

(Ooliri doesn’t comment on how it contracting to a smaller size before being sucked in supports the “balloon” theory.)

Awelah makes the signs and then, as if to catch the spell off‍-​guard, opens her tarsi too soon. A smaller orb flies into the aura cloud. The projection waves and collapses after just a few breaths. She tries again.

In between attempts, Awelah glances at Ooliri. After four times, she finally gives in, and asks him to demonstrate the wasp sign again. “Maybe it will do something.”

It takes half a dozen tries before the projection stays, looking somewhat disproportionate in its limbs. Then Awelah casts another. She gives a command, and the projections respond awkwardly.

But there’s two of them.

“I think you’ve created a new spell.”

“Not really. It does the same thing. I can’t use this in combat, their movements are… wrong. If it doesn’t make me stronger, what’s the point?”

“Learning?” When that gets nothing, “What would make you stronger?”

“I don’t know.” Awelah stops, eyes paling then pigmenting in a slow wave as she stops to think. “Makuja, in our first fight, broke my spell with one hit. That wasp did it too.”

“So you want a version with durability? That won’t go down so easily?”

“Yeah.” Awelah dispels the projections, and casts them anew.

Ooliri watches with antennae outstretched like he wanted to touch the spellform, even though that would be a very bad idea. He wears the expression he shows the calculations in his notebook.

“Why are you looking like that? Is something else ‘odd?’ ”

“When Firha or Emusa trained, after they used their enervate, they needed to take a break, eat lunch, before doing more. I’ve never seen them… keep going like this. You must have gone through your reserves several times over by now.”

“Enervate’s like water, isn’t it? You drink it back in and spit it out.”

“Enervate in your body and molded into a spell is not the same.” His eyes look around, and then land on the barrel for an analogy. “It’s like clay. You can mold wet clay into shape, but after you burn it… maybe you can recycle it, but that takes work.”

In defiance, Awelah casts another projection.

“So anyway, how are we going to make it stronger?”

“I don’t know. Maybe reinforcing it with one of the earthly elements would do it… but affinity distillation is so far beyond what I know. Maybe, maybe we need something less ambitious to start with.”

“But still effective.”

Ooliri casts his thoughts about, but nothing really came to mind. He thinks he could say more if he knew more… but doubted Awelah would share all the details. The only observation left is, “I saw it knocked you back a little when you casted it on the log.” It feels useless even as he says it.

“You think I could create it with more force? That’s… that could be something. Like some sort of projectile?” Awelah nods as she works through the idea. “Thanks Ooliri.”

Awelah returns to the iterative cycle of casting projections, fiddling with the tarsigns and asking Ooliri questions. She does have to take a break at one point, and eats some of Ooliri’s unused fruit. They taste awfully bitter.

During her break, she has a new idea.

“What are you doing?”

Awelah had only just minutes ago returned from her break, now interrupted.

Makuja is back.

The red nymph walks low to the ground, a raincoat pulled tight with one foreleg disguising the way she cradles the other.

Ooliri is smiling, unconcerned. “Hey, you’re okay! Look, I built a scale!”

Awelah frowns. “You’re not okay. You’re hurt.” A few things gave her away‍ ‍—‍ the slow steps, the gasping of her abdomen, all of the mud‍ ‍—‍ but Awelah could smell the blood.

“What are you two doing?” she asks again.

“Experimenting,” is Ooliri’s answer.

“I’m making my own spell.” The challenge, the comparison between them, went unspoken. “I answered you, now do the same.”

“If I told you, you’d just be worried. I lived.” She gazes up at their tree. “We will leave before the day is all lost. Before we do that, though,”‍ ‍—‍ she starts at Awelah‍ ‍—‍ “you have learned that knowing just one spell is not enough. Would you like to measure your spell once more against a bane with more tricks than one?”

“Not while you’re hurt.”

Makuja looks at her with a tilted head, and her next words are calculated. “Or when I know enough not to fall for your tactics?” She adds, “If I lose, then I will surrender a retelling of what happened.”

“You should tell us anyway,” Ooliri says. “It might be important.”

“If you’re so insistent,” Awelah says. “I need some real practice today.”

Makuja gives a starting bow, standing where she entered the camp.

“Are you going to get any closer?”

“You should have space to run,” she says.

Awelah laughs. “Fine then, let’s go.”

When the words leave her palps, the red nymph leaps. Covering the distance between them like that would be an impressive feat for a mantis, and that’s what keeps Awelah from suspecting.

They are now both familiar with the other’s style, and quickly settle into a rhythm. Awelah throws punches that Makuja at times dodges. But this time, Makuja is more aggressive, scratching with raptorials and grabbing; and Awelah is more focused, now that she isn’t setting up a misdirection with tarsigns.

While they’ve settled into a rhythm, it’s one played slower. They are each low on energy, Awelah having cast so many spells, burnt so much arete, and Makuja having evaded death.

Makuja disengages again and again, buying space with powerful leaps. For Awelah, after a morning spent grappling with new concepts and focusing, her head aches. Thus, because Makuja keeps the leaps cunningly short, her spell remains ambiguous. Even catching her once and twice making signs (and punishing it), Awelah doesn’t put the pieces together quickly enough.

Yet the fact that Makuja needs to disengage is symptomatic of the true problem. Though both are exhausted, Awelah aches in mind, and Makuja aches in her body. She just can’t keep up. On a good day, Makuja struggles with Awelah’s greater reach, greater mass. Today, it’s… useless.

When Awelah hits the wrong foreleg, Makuja hisses.

“You shouldn’t have thought you could beat me after whatever did this to you.”

Makuja doesn’t reply with words. She steps closer, dangerously within her foe’s guard. Her raptorials are thrown wide, as if offering a deadly hug. She swings them inward, spikes angled to meet and impale Awelah’s head.

The pale nymph only has room to duck.

Maybe if she didn’t have a headache, she’d realize how un‍-​Makuja the attack was. Instead, she’s focused on immediately retaliating. Awelah swings out to knock the legs from beneath her.

But they’re already moving, Makuja kicking out with her midlegs. The tarsi connect with her thorax, hard. They straighten, thrusting her back.

Then, it feels wrong and cold.

⸢Bane blast!⸥ The concussive expansion of black nerve hits her. Awelah is flying backward as if thrown.

The sound of the blast echoes quietly in the woods. With it, a scream.

Makuja is stepping toward her slumped form. Ooliri is running.

Awelah is making tarsigns.

“You… you aren’t the only one with a new trick.”

⸢Volatile Body Projection!⸥

The Asetari’s silhouette materializes already lunging. The shape is unstable, wavering. But that’s the point.

Makuja has a second to feel dread.

Her legs have just extended in a boosted leap when the spellform explodes.

“I can’t believe you did this.”

“She was trying to kill me.” Awelah lifts her head, but the motion draws a gasp of pain, and admonishment from Ooliri.

Said nymph had bandages pulled off his arms. With some effort, he is able to cast ⸢Pure Healing Palm⸥ and he applies the serum to the wide, collapsed section of prothorax.

“Both of you!” he says. “Why would you use techniques like that against allies? We are allies.”

“If I wanted to kill you,” Makuja says. “I would poison your food each morning.” She does not touch the other accusation.

Awelah glares, and Ooliri cringes.

So she continues. “You could have killed me in either spar. You did not. I could have killed you today. I did not.”

“That’s not what’s important, Makuja. Awelah didn’t give you any serious, lasting injuries!”

“She’ll heal. We are vesperbanes, we mend fast.”

Ooliri scratches frustration, and turns back to his efforts to clean the wound.

Makuja reaches over. Awelah flinches back and Ooliri tries to stop her. She pushes through, placing her tarsus near and pulling as she had earlier today. It siphons enervate out of the wound.

“That will help,” she says. She looks between the two of them. “I will… I will go collect our sleeping bags and pack up. If she is able to walk.”

“As long as you don’t aim for my legs next.”

Makuja leaves; no more words are exchanged.

The intermittent drizzle seemed to hide when the sun gazed from behind clouds, an increasingly rare occurrence. It’s wet, and the weather had finally forced them to dig out light raincoats from team 19’s bags.

As they journey on, the countryside loses its level calmness and hills swell up. Viewing distance suffers. But the creek declines this new development. Instead, it sinks deeper into the dark soil, even as its walls crept higher. The depth imitated a ravine, and soon there might be little difference, if the breadth kept widening.

Awelah watches crows take flight, rising up into a ‘v’, but she nor either of her teammates are wise the warning it is.

Instead, they learn when walking into a valley between two hills. The side of the creek had become innavigable due to a steep incline, and now they seek a detour.

They hear it, distant. A call for attention, the sound of a roach or many of them crying out. Some of them sound so young. The nymphs share a look, and quicken their pace.

Winding around the path between the hills, a fallen log lies ahead of them. Not impassable by any means, but an impediment. What would otherwise be a speedbump feels like a wall when the shadow lands upon them, cast by many tagmata.

A predator stares down from atop the hill behind them, and they can go nowhere. Run forward and reach the log, be impeded there lethally. Climb the other hill, and be picked off. Turn back, head for the rearward hill, and they would face death head on.

Death, today, is a centipede. The head and first segment is nearly their size, and there are so many segments to come. Its chitin striped to blend in, the beast stalks forward, legs in flawless synchrony, motion passing between them like waves, waves upon a sea astorm. It hisses out of all its spiracles, the voice of the roaches instead becoming a terrible threat, the sound of many serpents as one monster. There were no roaches, only this imitation.

“What’s the plan? Can—can we run?”

“Not for long,” Awelah says. “Not long enough.”

“We can split up. Go different ways, not all of us die. You two run.” Makuja produces a smooth river stone. She’s imbuing it.

“That’s stupid. We—” But Makuja doesn’t pause to listen, and neither does the ravenous centipede. There’s so little time.

The stone is cast. It flies true, and strikes against the bug’s side. It hits like it would hit a wall. The great plates of its chitin do not give.

The centipede hisses as it descends the hill, the sound hitching briefly from the impact. It sounds so much like laughing. It, the centipede, sounds so much like a mantis. But it’s not. A common beast had no malice for them, only hunger.

“Scolopendra sapiovore. The fool‍-​luring crawler. It‍ ‍—‍ eats people.”

Awelah unfolds her spear. “Help me out!” She’s speaking quickly; they only have so much time. “You two run forth. Go, go.”

Ooliri starts, and Makuja’s one spell had done nothing. She goes.

“Fake a fall! It’ll think you’re the easier prey.”

Ooliri’s the one who falls, and Makuja stops to help him.

As the centipede hits level ground, it turns and seeks the two. They see a pale form get out of the way, but she can’t be abandoning them.

The sapiovore approaches with mandibles yawning wide, dentition apt to rend and grind. Makuja palms another stone, casts it at the mouth and hopes that slows it down any.

One of the big antennae, thick and long like some tentacle or mouthpart, swings out to seize and ensnare a foreleg.

Makuja could do nothing. Nothing but flinch and wait for the Asetari to save her.

⸢Volatile Body Projection!⸥ Then she screams in pain.

The lunging shadow‍-​Awelah explodes, and its umbral flesh rains across the tagmata, the force pushing it back.

“Did that kill it?” Awelah asks, tamping down on her cries.

But no matter how damaging such a spell might be, the scolopendra was big, and injuries don’t matter that far back. Not soon enough.

They scratch, “No!” so loudly their chitin hurts, and underscore it with an alarm cry to be sure.

“I think I’ve got one more in me.”

Makuja has helped Ooliri up by now. Shock from Awelah’s spell weakened the antennae‍-​grip, but it takes Ooliri with one of her knives to cut her free. He pulls her into motion and they desperately seize another few strides of space that wasn’t the centipede.

⸢Volatile Body Projection!⸥ It can’t come soon enough. This time, Awelah aims for the legs, to slow it. It’s seconds it saves, but it counts.

The two nymphs scramble all the way to the log, and start to push past its branches. When they look back, they see Awelah.

The legs she took out are useless, and their segments drag on the ground. From there, she climbed onto the beast, and they now see her coming for them across the centipede’s back!

She doesn’t run across it; the thing can’t keep still. Instead, she stabs her spear at an angle with one leg, stabilizing herself with a stake through the centipede’s sensitive spiracle. Then she yanks it out and hops across more segments, until, at risk of being bucked off, she stabs anew.

When the scolopendra makes that final pouncing leap to taste their flesh, Awelah makes it truly final with a leap of her own.

Her hands curl together in the sloppiest louse seal that could possibly still work.

⸢Bane blast!⸥ One tarsus slams down on the head, dead center, and black nerve surges forth. That still doesn’t kill it. But its thick, tough chitin is weakened just enough.

Her other foreleg is rushing downward next: her spear runs it through: impaled, the beast falls as a puppet discarded.

“Stars of the blackest night, that hurt.” Awelah slumps, trembling grip sliding off the spear. She tumbles, and rolls off the centipede, hitting the ground with a smack.

“I don’t think you should be casting spells with your injuries.”

“If it’s gonna save our lives? I’d do it tens times more.” A groan. “Not today, though.”

“We would have died without you. You, and your power, was essential.” Makuja’s palps keep moving, but without pressure, without sound.

“I’ve been telling you that.” Awelah moves, an abortive spasm of limbs. “I don’t know if I can move without you, though. Help me up, this is no place to camp.”

Ooliri is staring with some awe, some lingering fear, and what might be… regret? He is gazing at the corpse.

“Can we eat it?” Makuja muses.

“Might be gamey, but it’s meat. Can we carry it, is the real question. Not all of it, that’s for sure. And the smell… Wait, are we gonna have to worry about more of them?”

“Unlikely, I think. It’s… with an apex predator like this, when it’s not yet even mating season, you aren’t going to find another in several kilometers, I think. There’s just not enough for it to eat.”

“It’s enough for us to eat, though. Maybe we can put your barrel to use.”

“I’d rather not.”

They go higher after that, just for caution. They walk the crest of hills, and climb atop trees to scan the wilds ahead. Much lower, and far past the winding hills, they see dirt and stone flatness, what must be a road. More than that, it’s in use. They see a procession of figures on all sixes.

“From all the way up here, they look like ants.”

“Yeah. Spinners, probably. Think there’s a colony nearby?”

“Does that sound right, Makuja? Did the roaches talk about a village of ants?”

It’s a moment before she responds, thoughts heavy in her gaze. She looks over and nods.

Awelah and Ooliri share a glance.

“Well, the road is a good sign for us getting close.”

“Don’t want to camp near it, though. Not if those banes are still around.”

“We should find a camp spot soon, though.” It gets dark early, with so much overcast.

Climbing out of the tree, Awelah is working antennae in thought. “If we’re going to be around people soon, I should hide my face. Someone might recognize me‍ ‍—‍ my clan, that is.”

“Do you think there’ll be more hunters after you, when we get to town?”

“It’s been shades now, and we’re so far from Duskroot. That has to mean something. But anyone that determined to wipe out my clan… they’re not going to stop. Not until I stop them.”

“Whoever is behind all of this, hiring all these mercenaries, do you think they have something to do with the direhound, too? Another bloodbane like Unodha?”

“No,” she says. “Whoever’s behind this is nowhere near us. You don’t understand, Ooliri. My entire clan, my entire stronghold, with vesperbanes stronger than your teacher, are dead. Destroyed. If a vesperbane responsible for all that knows where we are, is near us, then we’re dead. Then we never stood a chance.” Awelah’s tone, usually so firm, slides wholly into untethered despair by the end of it. She drifts out of step with Ooliri, and soon the gray nymph is quite alone, both of his companions silent and unreachable in dark thoughts.

The depth of the creek now cuts past some of the tallest hills yet, crafting a formidable gorge. They find a tree big enough to sleep in not very far from it, and make camp, Ooliri and Makuja. Awelah can’t do much without worsening her wound, but it takes Ooliri telling her that.

Then they’re all done. Sitting around the campfire, Awelah chews on tough centipede meat, and Ooliri starts speaking.

“Hey Makuja, you never did tell us what happened to you earli…” But as he looks around, he sees Makuja is not sitting with them.

High above, her hammock sags.

“Must be tired. I know I am.”

Later, as night’s darkness fully blossoms upon them, its unapplauded accompaniment is once again heard. Night after night, the howling never seems to get more distant, the pursuit eternal.

Listening to it, Ooliri makes an entirely unwelcome suggestion.

“Hey… do you ever notice that those calls… they sound almost like our names.”

The trisyllable motif makes it hard to mistake or dismiss. When they climb into their own hammocks, they can’t unhear it.

Aaawelah…

Oooliri…

In the morning, no breakfast waits for them. They look around, and they do not see the diamond‍-​shaped pawprints of the first suspect, leaving the absence unexplained.

Makuja is not in her hammock, nor anywhere in the camp.