A Chimerical Hope

One moment, a black and white form rises in the ants’ shelter, shaking, something falling away as it turns.

The next moment, it is close enough to see the veins in its eyes, the flaring of its nostrils. Black and white fur colors it in sharp contrast. The knuckles of its forelegs pound into the ground with each step, and the legs are as tall as the nymphs are.

A massive direbeast, and they don’t have their two strongest techniques. The anteater is fast‍ ‍—‍ if Makuja runs, she could at least escape. She can cover enough distance, climb into a tree perhaps.

She guides enervate into her midlegs.

Awelah had moved to the front to cast her projection. Now her raptorials fold around her spear‍ ‍—‍ it has the greatest reach any of them could bring to bear.

Breathing in, timing it, the Asetari thrusts up at the incoming beast. It dodges to the side. Makuja is on the left, and Ooliri on the right. Awelah is right‍-​dominant, spear‍-​end held on that side. It means dodging to her right has put the anteater clear of the attack. It means it puts the thing right in front of Ooliri.

To his credit, he has already fallen into a proper stance, holding his baton tight and untrembling. With but a moment of hesitation, he swings.

The anteater’s tongue appears, flashing out of two lips like an arrow. Ooliri flinches back, and the tongue catches on the baton. He pulls, and the anteater pulls harder. Ooliri is disarmed. Then the anteater is shifting weight to its hindlegs.

Makuja, throughout, is backing up. She could escape. But she had sworn loyalty, hadn’t she? So the red nymph leaps, knife in hand. The sudden flash of motion draws the beast’s eye.

On its hindlegs, it raises a clawed paw. Makuja stabs forward, pierces the flesh. With a raised leg, it bats Makuja aside like a ball. She hits the mud and rolls.

She can smell the blood before she gets up.

Awelah thrusts her spear again as the anteater starts after a backpedaling Ooliri. Her weapon goes deeper, wounds wider, and spills blood for one instant before the red mass is coagulating, sucking, closing itself over several seconds.

The Asetari takes a step back. “What can we do, if it can close wounds that fast?”

“It’ll‍ ‍—‍ it’ll run out of energy. Or mass.” Ooliri’s voice is unsteady as he dodges a swipe. Tries to dodge, rather‍ ‍—‍ it hits his leg and cuts deep.

“Not before we do.”

The tongue flicks out again, all of its tiny hooks scraping against Ooliri’s chitin. Another swipe, and Awelah, standing close by, tracks the creature’s eyes, and catches that it’s not looking at Ooliri‍ ‍—‍ it’s looking at the bag.

“Drop it! Drop your bag,” she says.

Ooliri frantically pulls at the straps, sloughing off the bag to clack against the ground. The anteater pauses in its advance, tearing at the bag as though it were another combatant. They see it nose through the bag, and what it stops at: the glass containing samples of Unodha.

This buys them a few seconds to catch their breath, minds wheeling for plans. Ooliri is backing up diagonally.

The pause ends when an umbra‍-​coated stone cracks against the anteater’s skull, splitting it open. Makuja is palming another stone. The impact angers it, but at least it didn’t laugh.

The red nymph is the target now. The anteater starts a charge that lasts until Awelah punishes the distraction. Her spear buries itself between two ribs. Of them all, the Asetari has the best they can offer. She puts out enough force to stagger a beast three times her size.

Will she be enough to save them, this time? There can be no reprise of that sapiovore tactic‍ ‍—‍ the mammal stands taller, on unsprawled legs. Unless…

“Get me some time. I”‍ ‍—‍ but she didn’t have a plan‍ ‍—‍ “will act.”

All Awelah can do is wrench the spear free before the beast’s torque sends her flying. The effort breaks her stance; so she’s in no position for a followup. Not before the anteater can use those claws, those legs as thick around as they are. Unlike Makuja, the pale nymph wouldn’t be sent flying by the force of the blow. With ground beneath her, it would be felt.

So Awelah can’t stall for Makuja to set up her technique. Without time, with Awelah soon to be crushed, Makuja should abort her plan, charge in.

Unless‍ ‍—‍ until‍ ‍—‍ Ooliri tackles Awelah. Off‍-​balance, pale legs tumble and she’s rolling to recover. The gray nymph is in her place. Standing shorter, when he dodges, the anteater’s claw‍-​swipe goes higher than center mass. Instead of being brained, Ooliri’s bandaged arm goes up. The blow is deflected.

Makuja wastes not a heartbeat more. Coldness flows into her legs under guidance.

The tongue flicks, catches on Ooliri’s arm again, and pulls‍ ‍—‍ pulls the bandages. Alien muscle is revealed and letting the bandages rip free, Ooliri claps. He makes the louse seal, and then a half a ⸢Bane blast⸥ explodes against the chest. One arm comes back, and the other is striking with boney claw tips, blood coursing down the limb in exposed veins. The inflicted wound mends a bit slower, the brightness of his ichor contrasting against festering dark direblood.

Ooliri lets himself be pushed back by recoil, falling away to gain a precious stride’s distance from death. “Awelah, are you okay?”

“Back, both of you. Get away from it,” Makuja calls.

Surrounded on both sides by overgrowth, getting away meant, if they didn’t want to be slowed, they’d draw closer to the red nymph. That’s fine.

With nothing in melee range, the anteater falls back on all fours. Good.

The tongue flicks out at an escaping Awelah‍ ‍—‍ and she had gotten distance! At this range… that tongue is longer than its head, and it does not have a short snout.

The saliva is sticky, but even with barbs, the tongue touches her cloak and can’t keep hold of the strange material. Awelah is jerked back for a single step.

Still, Makuja only needed the beast in a shorter stance. She splays her feet and sends herself flying at the direanteater. Mid‍-​air, she unsheathes two knives. The anteater tries to back up, stand up, but Makuja moves with explosive force.

Black feet are curling into balls with fur in her grip, and then Makuja fully secures purchase on the creature’s back with one knife stabbing in each side, angled between ribs. This close, the earthy, sulphuric stench of the animal is intolerable.

Her imitation of the Asetari would be complete as soon as she spares the moment needed to make the signs for a bane blast. Would it be enough to take it down?

Ooliri has other ideas. “Makuja! You made the hound flee‍ ‍—‍ you said you had your, Unodha’s blood.” He’s putting pieces together fast. “Can you —‍-​ does the control of direbeast extend to…”

The anteater’s still trying to shake her off, and by now its rampage has gone further up the path. Ooliri was cut off by a need to dodge. Makuja can finish the thought from there, anyway.

It’s a long shot‍ ‍—‍ but were the odds better than counting on one bane blast to be enough? She weighs it, and then she feels her heartbeat, imagines the pain and power of bloodletting. Did she have a choice?

Makuja imagines once again that sensation of her master’s technique. She slits a finger of each hand on the knife they hold.

Knowing her time is limited, she pulls back her hands with the speed of one flinching from a fire. The sign of focus. The whale sign. That burning sensation, hands trembling as they maintain the contortion. (Had she flinched from a fire, or toward one?)

Faster, faster.

Each hand is now slick with blood.

When she releases the whale sign, when she strikes forward, it feels like she’s losing something.

⸢Blood Wolf Bite!⸥

When the anteater shakes this time, screeching its pain, she hasn’t the security to resist, only to grab hold of her knives, pull them free as blood pours out. Tumbling off its back, her eyes glimpse the blood she’s used in the technique, that had flowed through her palm. On the creature, it congeals into linear forms like a brood of parasitic worms. They burrow into the flesh. This comes naturally to ichor, seeping into life like a transmissible cancer. She supposes she just gave it an energetic push.

Makuja hits the rocky road. Ooliri is there helping her up. Awelah stands before the beast, giving a trio of shallow stabs before leaping back.

The two of them, Ooliri and Makuja, are at its side. Before it can go after Awelah, Makuja strikes with her raptorial, vise grip briefly holding a leg, pulling.

Then she releases it fast. She feels weak. Had the spell taken so much from her? Didn’t she have arete?

The wounds are piling up. The anteater is limping. But what other tricks did they have? Maybe the blood she injected could have taken the thing down from within‍ ‍—‍ but how soon? One hit from those legs would kill or cripple. They can’t keep getting lucky, not forever. Something had to change.

“Awelah. I know it hurts, but”‍ ‍—‍ Ooliri pauses, fractionally‍ ‍—‍ “can you try it again? We…” And then he is deflecting another swipe with his muscle‍-​leg before he could find the words.

The Asetari is weaving signs. Ahead, Ooliri and Makuja are holding the line.

Behind them, smoky aura‍-​nerve curls off Awelah’s chitin as she maintains one sign longer than usual. Makuja even feels the pull of her enervate within her coils.

Awelah finishes the signs.

Nothing happens.

A pale form screaming and stumbling, and gray running over the help. In that moment, Awelah can only stand with the help of her spear.

Makuja stands alone, wielding two knives against the bleeding beast.

Faster, faster.

The anteater towers over her. That mouth could swallow her. It evolved to swallow bugs.

Ooliri laughs, a sad sound. “We‍ ‍—‍ we did well for three nymphs on our own, didn’t we?”

“No,“ Makuja scrapes. Dire beast and shadowed bug had all cowered and fallen before them. How is this any different?

“We can’t die here,” Awelah asserts, the words a whispered rubbing.

Makuja can’t die here. Doesn’t she have a purpose‍ ‍—‍ a use?

She’s the only thing between her, her… her friends (there’s some truth to the word) and animalistic death.

Faster, faster.

Death. In the end, is she subject to it, or an agent of it? She looks away. With no pretenses left to believe… Makuja fears death.

But she wouldn’t fear death alone, no.

Makuja stares back, showing teeth.

A gasp from behind her. “Is that—”

Awelah’s subtle tone speaks. “Killing fear.”

Makuja needed to fight this monster, blood against blood. Her heart beats faster, faster. And then:

⸢Cruor Form: Myxokora!⸥ Fresh blood gushes, and knits into muscle. Her claws finally come out.

Makuja hisses, and makes her prey screech when thrusting her new limbs forward. She draws blood, and it feels right soaking into the myxokora’s liquid muscle.

She doesn’t get to feel much more of that, though. When the anteater pulls back, renews its assault, what her endowment grants her is only resistance. She blocks swipes and pushes back with force that makes her legs ache. When that vermin tongue flicks out, that eagerness meets the blade of her knife. Bleeding, it retracts, and the beast won’t try that again.

An opportunistic lunge lets her bury the blade in the right leg. Then, she dodges under a new attack from the left leg. She rises to plant her other knife in the other shoulder. That should slow the beast, and now her hands are free.

⸢Blood Wolf Bite!⸥

Her myxokora deliver the strike, this time. She pierces into the breast with one, the meat of a leg with the other.

She sags with sudden exhaustion, myxokora pulling back as less than they were.

Weariness is catching up with the red nymph, but the anteater just keeps moving. There’s so much more mass, so much more blood. How could one girl stand against this titan? How could her muscles overpower those thews, her will match with that of something born and bred to kill bugs?

They had done well, hadn’t they?

Makuja takes a step back, and then another. It’s hard to even keep her myxokora from going limp.

The anteater moves forward, inexorable. It rises on its hindlegs for another swipe. All closes with quiet finality.

A loud gunshot rings out.

All opens anew.

Makuja lifts her myxokora. Ahead, the beast staggers from pain and the force of the impact. Not just that, but the foreign blood in its system is taking its toll.

The distant gunshot didn’t deafen them, so now they hear the leather soles slapping the wet stone, coming up behind the direbeast. More gunshots come, each closer than the last, as help arrives.

Makuja sees them, and pieces click. A sensor in the wild, tracking Vilja. Awelah failing a technique so spectacularly she had felt it.

Those long forms they had seen so many days ago had been arquebuses. (An oddly civilian weapon for a vesperbane.)

Three diamantids run toward them. In the lead, a burly bane with yellow chitin, clad in traditional ropes of pride. She keeps moving while others stop. Makuja watches blood pools between the thorax‍-​encircling ropes. The blood knits and crawls over the bane’s forelegs like a snake, and between her fingers they evert spikes‍ ‍—‍ this is another myxokora user!

An arquebus fires again. The one who holds them‍ ‍—‍ no, no one holds them! The guns float mid‍-​air, all four arranged around a slender tiercel with deep burgundy chitin marked by light brown. A leather trenchcoat engulfs him.

“Is that going to do much against this?” Makuja asks.

The gun… controller‍ ‍—‍ it must be him, hands outstretched and coated with black as they make small gestures‍ ‍—‍ the gunmantis smirks.

“How about this, then?”

He snaps two fingers, and the anteater explodes. And then again, once more for every gunshot. Each time, chunks of gorey flesh escape and scatter.

Now bullets float into the guns, reloading them. Meanwhile, the big lady has reached melee range. She punches. Each hit staggers the anteater, but the beast is still struggling‍ ‍—‍ its determination inscrutable. Even for a hungry direbeast, why hasn’t it fled? Or tried to?

Scrambling back from the punches, the anteater has space to recover. It rears up for a swing‍ ‍—‍ and then it is convulsing, with slurring screeches of pain.

A black form had hit it, and Makuja traces the line of enervate back to the last of the new arrivals. She’s their age, between Makuja and Awelah in size, chitin vivid green. Her spells fail as they watch, the line of enervate rippling and then snapping, the spellform between her hands collapsing. Her hands jerk back as if from pain.

“S‍-​sorry, teacher.”

“Pretty good for a first try. Boleheva, put it out.”

“Ain’t tryin ’nything else, am I?” The myxokora‍-​user, Boleheva, charges up and sweeps out a leg. With great might, she pushes the large animal back as it recovers from whatever spell the nymph had used.

With one punch, she shatters several ribs and then her other foreleg is driving up, tearing open the breast.

“That a clean enough shot for ye?”

The trenchcoated bane takes aim with a floating gun and fires. Fingers then snap, and the anteater’s heart explodes.

It is over.

“What—” Awelah speaks, Ooliri helping her walk. “What kind of technique is that?”

“Niter form. It’s the air you breathe,” he says, gesturing to the floating gun. “And mixed with some potassium and such, then heh.” He pulls a trigger. Empty, though, and nothing happens. “Boom.”

“You sensed us,” Makuja states.

The arquebusier is strapping the weapons back behind him. Handlessly, if you don’t count that his hands controlled the technique. “Truth be told, kid, I sensed you three days ago. Told this lout.” He’s pointing at Boleheva. “A third level sensor tells you they sense unknown signatures, and would you disbelieve them?”

“Ye’s the one who told me you couldn’t be sure ’ey weren’t wee beetles.”

“Beetles don’t cast projection spells. I said they were banelings, and I was right.” The humming black nerve leaves his hand once the guns are all secured.

“Banelings don’t cast B‍-​ranks either.”

Ooliri steps forward. “But if you didn’t believe, why are you here? Why were you out at all? Who are you?”

“I am Winterchild Yanseno, distinguished maverick investigator, stewartry certified third level sensor and fifth level connectique. My uncooperative partner over there—” (“I outrank ye.”) “—is Boleheva Redbane, fiend ranger for the Entcreek prefecture.” After the three nymphs introduce themselves in turn (first names only, except for “Makuja No‍-​name”), Yanseno continues: “Might have expected our interests first lay in investigating the newest threat, that wandering direhound‍ ‍—‍ and on that topic, you three have anything to do with that?”

Awelah and Ooliri look to Makuja.

“We don’t know why it’s here.”

“First sighting had it carrying around some sealed book from the looks of it. Must be some bane’s pet.” The silverbane research notes Ooliri was looking for. So they had been taken. Just avoiding or killing the direhound wouldn’t be enough, then, would it? Now they’d have to find it. “But this just reopens the question of who you are, and what you’re doing here.”

Ooliri takes this one. “We’re travelers, looking for safety in Wisterun.”

“That so? We’re stationed there. Could give you an escort.” He glances at the anteater carcas. “Think you need one, truth be told.”

“That would be welcome.”

“Good, good. I just need you to confirm your countenance.”

The nymphs look between themselves. Makuja’s the one who says it. “We, uh, don’t know the spell, sir.”

A frown, and a shaken head. “No. You’re trapping me if you’re gonna tell me the pharms slapped a frons‍-​protector on a kid without telling ’em how to use it.” When the nymphs only stare, he sighs. He slowly forms a series of tarsigns, and then lifts a finger to press it against the metal plate of his antennae‍-​band. A heartbeat later, the swirls of the Windhold symbol light it with a faint glow that’s more like a mere change of color. “It’s one of the simpler vesperbane arts‍ ‍—‍ if you can do it, you prove you are a vesperbane, and that your frons protector was issued to you, specifically. Won’t work on anyone else’s.”

“We know that,” Awelah says. “We aren’t stupid. We’ve seen vesperbanes before.”

“I thought so. Tell me, where’d you three come from?”

Ooliri’s the one who speaks up‍ ‍—‍ from him, it wouldn’t be a lie. “I and my companions came here as part of a relief team. Team 19.”

Yanseno’s nodding. “I see. And you killed them for their bands?”

Ooliri and Awelah start, antennae flaring straight. Makuja reaches her hand to rest on some unseen weapon. But Ooliri is scrambling to produce a certain Bloodweb Stronghold antennae‍-​band from his bag and thrusting it out towards the maverick. “No, no. We only killed the one who wore this one. But she… she took all the rest out.”

“Must be a hell of a story. You’re going to tell on the walk over.”

“Are, are you‍ ‍—‍ are you gonna…” Ooliri is looking at the arquebuses, the myxokora.

“Not till you give a reason to. Do you anticipate that?”

“No, no. It’s just… you’re a little scary.”

“Any vesperbane who makes it out here must be.”

“Nothin to be scared of,” Boleheva says. “We wanted to kill ye, ye’d be dead where ye stand. Simple as.”

That only straightens antennae, and gets a backstep out of Ooliri.

“The corollary she forgot to add is that we aren’t doing that. That statement is necessary to make it a consolation and not a threat.”

“But, but are we… have we broken the law, being vesperbanes without countenance?”

“Not quite. Don’t got any legal protections under the pharmakon accords, but you’re no defect just on account of that. You have to do something more to get the hunters out for you. Not hard, when you’re operating undocumented. Make getting those papers a priority and you’ll be good.” He tosses a towel from his bags at Boleheva, something to mop up the blood coating her. “Want a secret? I’ll grant it if you intend to tell the whole truth in your story. My ward is in the same boat as you. Vesperbane, no papers. Her name’s Quessa.”

Said nymph has knelt to look at something in the grass. She startles to hear her name, glancing around as if forgetting where she is. “Oh. Hi?” She waves.

Boleheva at last cleans some blood off herself, and steps over to Makuja. She extends a hand for the nymph to shake. A part of Makuja wishes she hadn’t wiped the blood off.

“That blighter was determined, ain’t it? Really came after ye.”

Ooliri perks up at that, remembering something. “It seemed really interested in something from our bag.” He runs over to find the sealed glass in the shredded remains. “I’m surprised it sensed anything through the glass.”

Yanseno asks, “Did it need to? Whatever you try to put in a glass, some of it leaks out, sticks to your hands. Could be smelling that.”

Ooliri presents it to Boleheva like evidence. The imago brushes antenna over it and nods.

“Scents like right powerful blood. Little surprise a beast of dire would be attracted to that.”

Quessa has stepped over, listening to the words. “Where did you get it?”

“From the bane we killed. They seemed oddly strong, so we wanted a sample before we burned them.”

“Then I am all the more interested in how you three got here alive,” Yanseno says. Then shakes his head. “On the topic of burning, though…” he trails off.

Quessa is looking, staring at something near the bag’s remains, where the sealed jar had lain. Yanseno follows her gaze, and then flinches. He drops to pick it up: the strange flower that sprouted from Unodha.

“Where did you get this? You know what this is?”

“Same as the blood. And no, we don’t,” Awelah says. She’d recovered enough to stand on her own, now.

“What is it?” Makuja asks.

“Dangerous. It’s the result of a particular curse, and the one who casted it can track you with it. From kilometers away.”

Without a tarsign, enervate rushes into Yanseno’s hand, flooding the red bulb and black petals. For a moment, it resists. Then it explodes, and he drops the fragments. He claps his hands, makes a sign, and a gust of wind blows and scatters them even further.

Yanseno looks back at Ooliri’s bag, as he’s scanning for more dangerous materials. He finds it. “That clay jug. Where did you get it?”

“We met this lady—”

“With a wasp?”

“Yeah.”

“Stay away from her. She’s—” he stops. “I’m a sensor, and if you could see what I do… Don’t trust her. That curse I mentioned earlier? I sense traces of the same enervate in her.”

Ooliri looks back at his barrel, and frowns.

“We got this from her, too.” Makuja produces the compass paper. “A seal, they said. Should we worry?”

The maverick peers at the compass. “Never had a mind for seals. I’d consider burning it, but…”

“The wasp said it would get their attention.”

“Then leave it. I’ll give it a closer look when we get to town, then decide if it’s worth burning anyway. A sealscribe capable of that kind of failsafe…” As if unsatisfied with the defeated note that ended up, Yanseno quickly glances over to the anteater. “But about the burning. I trust Boleheva will dispose of this direbeast?” The yellow lady gives a nod.

Makuja steps toward the anteater before they can do anything. She crouches, pressing a tarsus to the dead flesh. For a moment, she focuses on her pulse. Then she feels it‍ ‍—‍ the blood she’d lost, that sits stagnant in this body. It crawls, now, the motion of a slime mold, smelling its original host. Makuja felt she had lost something, earlier. Now, it returns to her.

One last look over the brutalized corpse of the anteater, torn by claws and explosions. With these vesperbanes were by their side, all of the monsters that had challenged them alone would be nothing. She still has the scars from Vilja biting her, but what was Vilja next to this beast? And it is dead. They are safe, for now.

She rises, and quickens her pace to catch up with Yanseno and the others heading toward the ants’ shelter.

“Quessa was worried over the ants,” he says. “We came out looking for a delivery from another colony, and this must be them. But they should have avoided anteater territory. You should have avoided anteater territory.”

“Now, they’re dead,” Quessa says, voice restrained, neutral. “Poor ants.”

“Don’t they live on in the hive? Ants share a mind, don’t they?”

“Hardly,” Yanseno says.

At the shelter, they discover context for the anteater’s behavior. Cowering behind an ant corpse, the pale form of a baby anteater mewls.

It only takes a moment for Yanseno’s black hand to float out an arquebus, and with a blade mounted on it, impale the small pup through the eye.

Ooliri gasps.

“Should have warned you what was coming, my bad. Still, shouldn’t be a shocker. With the mother gone, it’s already dead. And if it wasn’t? You want it growing up to eat more ants? Things are already an issue around here, the ants are losing farmland to them. Good riddance.”

“We should…” Quessa starts speaking, quiet. She can only say it indirectly: “there’s likely some direblood in the ants.”

“Yeah. Point. I’ll take care of it.” He looks around. “You kids have seen enough. Go wait further up the road. We’ll come soon.”

The crackling of fire fills the cloudy afternoon. Even still, the quiet is felt.

“I sit with the ants at the library, sometimes,” Quessa says. There’s little inflection in her voice, unless you listen for it, like a picture with muted contrast. “They wrote about friends coming to share a story with them. They were eager. I hope I don’t have to tell them what happened.” From a pouch at her side, she takes out a brush and starts brushing her antennae. She looks off in the distance, frown starting to ease. Her way of distracting herself, maybe.

Awelah frowns at seeing this, touching her own messy setae.

“I’m sorry,” Ooliri says, since no one else is saying anything.

“For what?” she asks, and there is a certain curiosity there.

Ooliri looks down, antennae tapping together, nervous. “Just… it’s unfortunate.”

Quessa only nods, a confused frown on her face.

The underbrush around them sways in the wind and the fires seem to fade. A glint catches Quessa’s eye, and she kneels, setting down her brush to pick up a rock with crystals in it. Quartz, perhaps. She starts to rub dirt off it, but Yanseno arrives, Boleheva at his side.

“Alright, get straight. If we move fast, we can make it back to town before dusk.”

The three nymphs turn to the road that leads off into the distance. But Ooliri stops and backs up. Quessa had forgotten her brush on the ground, and he returns it, getting a small ‘thanks’ and an embarrassed smile.

They set off. The sky above them is all clouds. The premonitions of a storm that haunted the nymphs are no more. As the sun descended toward a new sunset, black clouds are gathering on the other horizon and they wait there.

With new allies to lead them, the hope of true bed and shelter ahead of them awaits, while behind them, a true downpour is approaching.