A Chimerical Hope

Ooliri stumbles forward, his sandaled feet dragging over the muddy ground. A green tarsus holds his — Quessa’s foreleg is pulling the gray nymph forward.

He looks around this clearing sprawled outside Wisterun’s walls, eyeing all the ant majors gripping weapons in their mandibles, and at the white​-​ and black​-​clad ant intently conversing with the One Who Bites Water — and at his teammates, Awelah and Makuja, stalking forward with all the determination of trained soldiers.

That should be me. Ooliri was the warden (aspiring warden, rather). He’d been trained to defend the banes and bugs of the Windborne Stronghold. Training neither of them had, and yet — he couldn’t even hold a baton straight, could he?

What am I doing here?

Ooliri has stopped, and Quessa is tugging on his arm. She turns with a frown.

“Is something wrong?”

“Maybe it would be better if I waited here. I, well, I don’t think I’ll be of much use on the hunt.”

The One Who Shapes the Sky Below had been right — that one is a wise weaver after all. He is an… annoyance. It’d been assumed that he’d follow after the others wherever they went — but had anyone asked him to come? Did their plans hinge on his capabilities?

(Worsening the sting, he remembers a time before these sort of doubts accumulated without challenge. When Oocid was here, when there was someone to depend on, someone who could make him dependable. Yet even if there were no reassurance to be found, even if his brother would only scold or tease him… hearing his voice again would be enough.)

“You’re a vesperbane,” Quessa says. “You’re already a step above any laybug.” Behind her, where the commander in white and black converses with Bites Water, a blue clad ant glances over at the pair of nymphs.

“What if I mess something up?”

The green nymph lifts antennae at that, palps parting in — surprise? Recognition? “You’re worried,” she says. “Something’s shaken you. I could cast Calm Draft?”

“No — no thanks. I’m calm, it’s just… the One Who Shapes the Sky Below doesn’t seem to like me. Didn’t ask me to come. And that one is wise, you know? Maybe that one’s on to something.”

“The one who shapes… yes, right, that.”

Had she forgotten?

There’s a chirping form beside her, now. The One Who Bites Water. Quessa casts a light, and this one already has a message woven.

“The One Who [Shapes] has [distrust] of [bat​-​bug : all]. But the one who is [Duskborn] has [adequacy] and [pleasantness.] Not like [others].”

Ooliri frowns, thinking back to that headache of a conversation down in the ant tunnels. “I guess that one didn’t seem to like any of us very much. But why?”

“[Others] have [sourness] in [firstness] of [touch]. [Judgment] has [spoilage.]”

“Bad first impression? I guess Makuja didn’t do us any favors.”

“Nai! Not the one who is [knives]. The one who…” Bites Water has to pause here, reaching into their clothy folds to retrieve a tag. “…[Boleheva!] The one who is [worst] of [bat​-​bug.]”

Before Ooliri can ask for elaboration, a whistle sounds out from ahead of them.

“Right, that’s the signal. We should probably start moving.”

Quessa, still clasping Ooliri’s tarsi, starts toward the ant in black and white, and he is tugged onward. Bites Water falls into step beside Ooliri, rubbing this one’s head against him.

Ahead, before they can set off, the One Who Hungers for Spears is approached by a tall major. Rather than a weapon grasped in his mandibles, it’s a furry form. Ooliri makes a guess — he’d seen small holes in the tunnels, saw traps set and waiting. Confirmation comes when Hunger grasps the form by the tail and brings it to a torch, where the fur burns and the skin bubbles. But with that brief illuminated glimpse, Ooliri identifies it as a rat.

Too far away, Ooliri can’t read or hear the conversation. Is it a complaint about rats in the tunnels? Bafflement as to why the major caught one and dragged it out?

Ooliri averts his eyes as the poor thing burns. Other lights catch his eye. Strapped to the majors’ thorax (or is the word mesosoma?), there sit long, oil​-​doused torches burning. The wavering lights summon ever​-​shifting shadows beyond the ferns and bushes that line the path.

“Spooky,” he says. “I should be used to the woods at night… but I guess we didn’t have torches. Or maybe it’s just because I know there’s a direbeasts out there, close by.”

(Ahead, another whistle sounds, and legs start moving.)

“We have a troop of ants and the vespers to protect us,” Quessa says as they follow the marching ants. Walking in front of him, leading him, Ooliri can’t see her wan smile, but can clearly imagine the subtle curve of her palps. “I think we will prevail.”

“Still, I wonder what it must be like to live out here, with none of that.” Ooliri thinks of the Fisher, whose complaint is how they knew the direhound remained near the town. “It must be scary.”

As if reacting to something in his tone, Bites Water bumps a head against him again. Ooliri reaches over and scratches the ant in between the ocelli, and this one gives a higher pitched chirp.

“Bites Water, you were saying something about Boleheva, weren’t you? Why is she the worst?”

Waiting a moment for Quessa to cast a light, the ant starts, “The one who [Shapes] the [Sky] of [Below] has [knowledge]. The one who [knows] had [knowledge : always]. The one who is [Boleheva] also had [knowledge!] [Knowledge] of [threat!]. [Threat], yet no [prevention]. Nai!”

“What was the threat?”

“The one who is [Quessa] has [remembrance] of [message]? For [pleading]? [Recollection] of [inquiry]?”

“It was,” she hesitates, “about a clan and… world​-​scars? I don’t know the specifics.”

“[Knowledge] of [threat!] [Prior] to [wife] of [fisher] having [drowned], the ones who [deliver] did [depart] for [conveyance] of [inquiry]. The one who [Shapes] the [Sky] of [Below] gave [warning] to [bat​-​bug : worst], [warning] of [resistance]. The ones who [deliver] had [future] of [death!] [Death] from [assassins]. [Wife] of [fisher] had [future] of [death!] Yet [Bat​-​bug] gave [refusal] of [protection]. [Cause] of [death!]”

Ooliri put the pieces together. “Shapes the Sky figured out that there was someone dangerous in Wisterun.” He glances at Quessa, slotting in her words into his model. “Someone involved with a clan? Or a world​-​scar? Shapes the Sky didn’t have all the information needed, and tried to send an inquiry to another colony, but the messengers were killed and she didn’t get the info in time. Fisher’s wife drowned, somehow, which could have been prevented with the info?” Then he remembers what he heard earlier today, in the lobby. “Then the bees came. Being able to fly, they got a message out without getting assassinated. The colony sent back a response — but being unfamiliar with Entcreek, they got attacked by a dire​-​anteater.”

“One which [Bat​-​bug] could have [killed : sooner].”

Ooliri frowns. “That’s a lot of mistakes. I can understand being frustrating but… well, I don’t think Boleheva’s a bad bane, certainly not the worst. She misjudged the threat to the messengers, of the anteaters… but it seems like she’s trying?”

“[Misjudgment] of [bat​-​bug] means [death] of [many]. [[Inadequate!]]” Bites Water taps this word many times.

“That is true, but… still.”

Bites Water looks ahead on the trail, then back to where the other troop (behind them, Awelah and Makuja) follow. Closer to Ooliri, this one conveys, “This one may [share] of [secret]?”

Ooliri nods.

“The one who [killed] of [messagers] was [bat​-​bug]. The one who [drowned] of [wife] was [bat​-​bug]. The one who is [threat] is [bat​-​bug.].” Heartbeats later, Bites Water in untying and scrambling those tags. “[Bat​-​bug] who is [Duskborn] is [okay]. But [bat​-​bugs]…” The antennae glides along a thread to a blank spot, and Bites Water seems to pause wondering what tag to put there.

Ooliri glances backward, to where he imagined beyond the shadows and hulking majors, Makuja strode forward with a tarsi on a knife hilt. He couldn’t wait to share this, see what she made of these revelations. “There’s another bane,” Ooliri concludes. “Some other force in Wisterun, acting from the shadows. Maybe they sabotaged the zipline. Maybe they revived the direhound!”

“Maybe there’s no other bane,” Quessa suggests. “And the root of it all is the same one who’s been making it so easy for them.”

“Boleheva is a warden,” Ooliri counters. “The bad guys, the ones who’ve been trying to kill us, they’re mercenaries. Mavericks with no loyalty to a stronghold.”

“Yanseno is a maverick.”

Yanseno might’ve been hired by the bugs trying to kill us.

But that’s just speculation — the world has to be larger than that, right? Not everyone they encountered could tie back into some grand conspiracy.

Ooliri says, “Yanseno seems nice, but… there are more laws, procedures with the wardens. Boleheva has responsibilities — once we make her aware of the dangers, she’ll have to do something!”

“[History] of [refusal].”

They cross a log fallen across the path, and Ooliri thinks of his response as they climb over it. The wet wood is soft, crumbling to mush under their feet.

“Did you make a formal appeal? If you commission protection through the right channels, the wardens will have to address it.”

“Why should it take such formality?” Quessa asks. “If she wanted to do something, she could have done something, she’s a vesperbane. There’s something Yanseno says sometimes: strongholds are as fast as a dictatorship, and as slow as a bureaucracy. All the rules and procedures can be skipped with a word if they want to do something, and must be followed to the letter if they don’t.”

“[Possibility] of [bat​-​bug : worst] giving [listening] to [bat​-​bug : fellow]. Not [ant], not [dismissed]?”

“Maybe,” is all Quessa commits to.

“Boleheva wants to talk to me anyway, so I’ll bring it up when that happens. I’m sure this is just a misunderstanding. The wardens protect bugs,” he says. He had to give voice to this reassurance, demarcate it. Inside his head, it sat right besides thoughts like what if they don’t?

“You’re going to be a warden, then?” There was an odd note of disappointment tinging those words, like a farewell.

Ooliri nodded. “I passed the exams at the inculcatorium, and I was on track to be promoted before… this disaster of a mission.” He ran a tarsus along an antennae. “You could join us! I think they’d listen to my recommendation, and with skills like yours…” Ooliri trailed off, because Quessa was already shaking her head.

She spoke with a soft tone she sometimes adopted, as if she could barely move her palps. “I can’t.” The green nymph looks away.

“Why not…” Then some puzzle pieces snapped together in Ooliri’s head, recalling an odd conversation they’d had just this morning. “Parents,” he said.

A long moment of silence in the dark woods passes, a monologue of footsteps. Shadows squirm around them. At length, Quessa again meets his gaze, giving a fraction of a nod he almost misses.

“They don’t want you to.”

The wardens couldn’t admit a nymph without a parent’s consent. Ooliri frowns, a memory coming unbidden. He pushes it away.

Another moment of hesitation, but, as if the conversation has now passed out from under a shadow, the nymph seems to find her words more steadily. “It’s not something you can easily leave, the Wardens. To be bound like that… I wouldn’t want it. Your parents…” Quessa trails off, perhaps the first time he’s heard her not finish a sentence.

The answer to that unspoken question comes, a memory he can’t push away, now. A memory of a childhood premised on Oocid and Ooliri growing up to work in the Stewartry right alongside their father. A memory of how Oonserta never scratched a word of joining the wardens, despite the old blood​-​iron plate a younger Ooliri had found, proving his father had served. A memory of how the recruiters only showed up to speak with him, to speak with Rooth, after Oonserta was gone.

“I believe in the wardens,” he said. “To be committed to doing the most good, that’s something I’d hold myself to if I join the wardens or not. So the binding doesn’t bother me.”

Like before, Ooliri has to speak the reassurance allowed, separate it from the doubts that coiled around it. Because right beside the question of what if the wardens don’t really protect bugs? sits a deeper doubt: would Father want this for me?

Ooliri is pulled from his thoughts by a jolt running through the ants that escort them, spurring them to immediate attention. A murmur of chirps surrounds them, the ants behind questioning those ahead and making plans. The upset had come from the direction they were told Awelah and Makuja would be chasing the direhound. A cold fear flickers within Ooliri. Is the direhound coming already? There had been no signal, no warning.

Something is approaching. They can hear the swish of plants, the crunch of underbrush beneath them. The chirping of their ants loudens.

The response comes: pained chirping from their arrivals.

Ahead of her, the Asetari is walking beside a major, purple mantid antennae working alongside the elbowed antennae of ants. The group of them — Makuja, Awelah, the One Who Rides Upon Fine Sands, and three so far unnamed majors — have walked for minutes now. Makuja’s pulse slows as those minutes drag on. Makuja is patient, no stranger to the hours of waiting entailed in a hunt — so why did her legs shake as if they could only be still when closed around a prey’s flesh, rivulets of blood leaking onto them?

Her pulse had slowed, but her blood still felt hot. Cool mud from the forest trail squishes onto her sandals, and it feels so much less welcome. She draws cool breaths of night air.

Head cleared, her eyes are drawn back to the Asetari leading them in front, those messy antennae busy, while Makuja’s sat idle. Makuja squeezed her raptorials tight. When they found the direhound, she thought, position would be reversed; Makuja is the one who could stand against it with her myxokora. The Asetari was still injured. She couldn’t compare.

A howl sounds from far ahead of them. The ants jump; Awelah tights her grip on her spear. Makuja nods; Awelah wasn’t leading them astray, then. Her raptorials close tightly. Soon, she thought.

The Asetari and the major stop moving. Makuja almost steps on an ant — the One Who Rides, a small minor. This one had been peering backwards, attention on Makuja, eyes darting around her body. The red nymph frowns. Ant eyes were inscrutable enough in the sunlight — cast in flickering torchlit granted them a new dimension of mystery. It gives her pause, and the apprehension seems mutual — Fine Sands flinches from the foot that almost kicked her, a fearful “Eep” escaping her. Makuja smiles, but it doesn’t help. (Did they think she’d hold another one of them hostage?)

Marching further, Makuja finds the holdup. Ahead of them, a runnel cuts through the muddy ground, water churning through with some force. It wasn’t wide, and it wasn’t deep; Awelah is stepping through it without issue, and Makuja is striding forward to join her. The One Who Rides Upon Fine Sands hesitates in front of the running water, before turning and climbing upon a major. That one starts forward as Makuja finishes crossing. The pale nymph’s messy antennae are out in front of her, labrum raised. Makuja didn’t need to see the raised hairs near her antennae base to tell her irritation. Her focus is on continuing the hunt, not on waiting for the ants.

“Leave it to us.” That was what the Asetari had demanded of the wise weaver earlier this evening. To trust the vesperbanes, rather than risking her own ants. For once, Makuja hadn’t found herself disagreeing.

With four legs to the ants’ six legs, the nymph’s lead is briefly held. Awelah pulls in front of Makuja, to the red nymph’s surprise. She’s joined by an ant, the burdened major having accelerated further when the One Who Rides dropped off. That one lands daintily, careful to hold the cloth up, away from the mud below.

It’s a few more steps before a chorus of dissonant, alarmed chirps overtake the ants behind them. The Asetari presses on, but Makuja turns. Behind her, she sees the turned backs of ants. The red nymph has a moment to twist palps into a confused frown, before giving the ants another glance. A major had walked behind them. At that one’s side, the One Who Rides Upon Fine Sands. Further behind, another major.

“Awelah,” Makuja scrapes. She sees the light of the torch behind her shift. “We’re missing someone.”

Wordlessly, the red nymph joins the majors in backtracking. In her peripheral, she notices the One Who Rides only starts moving once the vesperbane stands between this one and whatever lay behind them all.

In moments they hear the pained chirping and moaning breathes. Here is the missing major, clinging to the banks of the runnel they’d crossed. Where the chitin was not violently bitten and clawed, this one was doused in muddy water — as if something had reached out to pull the ant under when passing over the runnel.

Lowering a torch to examine the wound confirms the suspicion Makuja already nursed in her guts. Her pulse quickens. She looks to the One Who Rides, having just arrived. This one leans in to chirp and antennate with the fallen major.

“It was the direhound.” The Asetari speaks before Makuja does, in her attempted growl of a voice. Makuja startles. The Asetari had been strides away just a moment ago. That was quick.

Turning, the One Who Rides Upon Fine Sands gives a shaky nod.

Makuja frowns. She quirks an antenna.

With a torch lighting their myweft, Fine Sands indicates, “One who [guards] has [chance] of [recovery] but [lack] of [mobility]. [Proposal] of [returning].” Turning dark eyes away from the mantids, this one instructs another major to help the injured ant up.

Makuja’s frown doesn’t let up. This one had spent long enough conversing with the other major that this one had to have learned more than that. Before she can ask, the other mantis is answering.

“No,” she says. “You can turn back if you want. We’re finishing this tonight.”

The One Who Rides spends a long moment fiddling with the threads of a worn cowl. Shadows hid the specifics of what exactly the ant was working out. Then this one turns back toward the light, nervously chittering, “Yes, yes. That one will [carry] that one to [wall] of [Wisterun] as [return]. This one will [remain] with that one for [[hunt]].”

The other major, the third ant indicated, taps the speaker. Fine Sands folds back antennae and turns toward the trail they’d been following. The other ant heaves, supporting the conspecific in a half​-​carry. Out from the waters of the runnel, Makuja could see that two legs had been bitten terribly deep; this one wouldn’t be walking well for quite some time.

With a single nod, Awelah’s the first to turn to move, steps oddly like lunges. Makuja starts into motion next, then flinches. The ants share her reaction, a tremor of fear reflected in jerked torches casting wild shadows.

The direhound had howled again, once more in front of them.

“Did you smell it?” Makuja asks.

She thinks the Asetari doesn’t hear her. Or ignores her. She only realizes it’s hesitation, or confusion, when the pale nymph turns minutely, enough to see more of the red nymph in her peripherals. Awelah’s has an unsteady frown that seems answer enough.

Makuja presses her. “The direhound. It got this close — did you even notice?”

“I can scent the new trail.”

“You didn’t,” Makuja concludes. “This isn’t a hunt. We aren’t hunters. We’re being hunted. Once again.” Those last two words came out with an edge of frustration she couldn’t hide. She tightens her raptorials anew, imagines them closing around flesh — then with a start, opens them wide. She’d been imagining Vilja, her legs around the dog’s throat. But she remembered him as a puppy. How could she?

How could he?

(“What’s gotten into you, boy?” She’d asked just before he bit her.)

“It’s still afraid of us,” the Asetari says, but there’s no attempted growl in her voice. Makuja can hear the shades of unsteadiness, anxiety.

Makuja stares for a moment, watching the expression on what she could see of the pale face. Then, as if in mercy, she says, “You were right.”

The Asetari only grunts.

“About his hunting, it’s not like a predator, not anymore. He could have eaten that ant, if it were. Instead…”

“It disabled that one.”

It hadn’t been the word Makuja was looking for, too clinical. She had been thinking in terms of cruelty — thought it savage in a way only a civilized bug could act.

Ahead of her, the pale nymph stops walking, and the red nymph catches up. The Asetari says, “This… it takes forethought, planning. It was tactical.” She glances back to see Makuja watching her, listening. “With this move, it’s taken out not one, but two pieces from our side of the board.”

It wasn’t cruelty, then. “Yesterday, Ooliri thought it was herding us.”

Vilja was a smart boy, but that smart?

Soon there comes another howl, and Makuja wonders if it’s an invitation. Has the sound gotten closer?

“Do you still think he’s scared of you?” she asks the Asetari.

“I scared it off, that day. Even now, it’s still not confronting us, not directly. But… I don’t know.”

Makuja nodded. She looks around. Two ants still follow behind them — the One Who Rides Upon Fine Sands is watching her again, palps deftly tying and twisting threads of myweft. The ant jumps when she looks back. This one’s myweft, and the thoughts therein, remain in shadow.

The major looks at her then, and the red nymph wonders if she’s imagining a threat in the yawning of mandibles. Makuja takes a step closer to Awelah, putting some strides between her and the ants.

“You said it could have eaten the ant,” the Asetari says. At the red nymph’s quirked an antennae, she elaborates, “It was your direhound. Did it? Eat ants?” There’s an edge to her voice.

“All direbeasts eat insects. Their blood hungers for it. But we never fed any of them citizens of the Pantheca.”

“Rootless, then? Exiles?”

Makuja nods.

“Except there wouldn’t be any, this close to a settlement. What is it eating, then?” Awelah continues, gaze already turned back to the path ahead. She muses, “Ooliri found wolfapples, that day with the barrel. The ants mentioned rats in their tunnels, so there must be some in the forest… But you said direbeasts have to eat insects.”

“They have an appetite for them. But they could eat other direbeasts. Or vesperbanes.”

“Vesperbanes are insects.” Awelah’s labrum had lowered, at some point. Easing out of hunter’s focus, sounding conversation.

Makuja hummed. “Bat blood in our veins, fungus crawling over our shells, vespers in our guts… are we still wholly insect?”

Before the pale nymph can answer or even react, there’s a harsh scream from beneath, the keening scrape and ragged breath of an ant in pain.

Makuja whirls around. The ants had fallen further behind. She starts running. She hears something moving the underbrush around them — quieter, getting further away.

She reaches the ants, but Awelah beats her there with those lunging strides. The One Who Rides Upon Fine Sands is kneeling by the major. The ant lifts up layers of cloth to avoid the mud, granting a glimpse of the brownish chitin beneath.

Makuja has to step around that one to see the injury for herself. This major had gotten off easier than the last — the direhound had only gotten a chance to bite down on one leg before running off.

But with that much bleeding, and the certainty of infection… the sooner it was treated, the better.

“Will the ants make it back alone?” Makuja asks.

Fine Sands nods without turning.

“You should go back too,” Awelah says.

Makuja frowns. She hates to say the words, but, “If we accompany them back, we can protect them.”

“No. No, this is our hunt. The direhound has a special interest in us. This tactic… it must be to ensure we meet it alone. Why else would it leave the ants able to make it back?”

The One Who Rides Upon Fine Sands rises. Makuja doesn’t have a firm grasp on ant body language, but she supposes trembling is universal response. With fear like that, she expects this one to plead they protect them.

Instead, Fine Sands indicates, “[Bat​-​bugs] shall [hunt]. The [weaver] of [wisdom] has [declared]. [Pleading] for [fate] and [skill] in [hunt].” The small ant bows to them.

“May safety follow you.” With a nod to the now​-​departing ants, Makuja turns to Awelah. “Still have the scent?”

“The new trails leads… this way.”

Awelah points off the side of the trail. This had been a test; after all, Makuja heard which way he went. Awelah’s guidance wasn’t completely worthless, at least.

A glint in the darkness ahead of them catches her eye, and the red nymph lifts a torch. At the same time, the source of the glint approaches, reflective eyeshine revealing as bloodshot eyes.

As he stalks closer, Makuja sees familiar bone armor emerge from the undergrowth. Her heart pulses a thrill.

Ooliri’s fingers squeezed together.

Whale. His left tarsus constricted his right, even as the right tarsus’s dactyls rose in the middle — though his left pointer broke from the others, and encircling from the other direction.

Next up is mole — no wait, was it racoon? No wait, does this come before whale. Or had he already done it?

It’s hard to focus — he didn’t like techniques that used the whale sign. It always took a little bit out of him. Sapped him of his energy to fuel the spell. Like most sign associations, the name puzzled him; bane manuals didn’t care to explain trivia, and it wasn’t clear to him why this sign would — oh. Whales… blubber. Oil stored energy. That made a kind of sense. It was why bugs hunted them.

Ooliri’s focus is well and truly broken at that point. He relaxes his forelegs and makes a sign to release the blood he’s been working with, his pulse washing it away through his endowed veins.

“I’m sorry,” he says. Eyes pigmenting, adjusting to focus on the ants surrounding him, watching him. Judging him. He is wasting their time.

Ooliri hears a scrape — that must be Bites Water, an ant voice he is beginning to recognize. Beside that one, Quessa stands. She rubs the ant’s back, while giving him a little smile. “Still worried?”

Ooliri stiffens. He flattens his palps into the neutral look Emusa (oh, teacher…) had once favored, the look of confident competence that befitted a Warden. Quessa had been a vesperbane for longer than him, but she hadn’t been trained by the Wardens. He’d be failing them if he didn’t look at least as put together as her.

The green nymph continues. “I’m scared too. I’m not sure I could focus, knowing they might throw up a signal at any moment. Maybe you should try again when we get to the gate?”

Ooliri frowns, and looks back at the major, the bloody cloth of improvised bandages pulled aside to reveal the wounds still weeping hemolymph. The two majors had found their party before they found the gate. This one needed something more to bandage the wounds — and, Bites Water confided to them, that one thought the majors were scared of walking the forest alone, with the direhound stalking them from the dark.

Ooliri had stepped in then. He could help, do more than a simple — and unsanitary — bandage could.

Well, he thought he could. He had done it earlier.

“It’s important we do this as soon as we can. If this is a bite from a direhound, it has bits of blood in the saliva. The wound will get worse than infected if it’s not properly cleansed. I’ve got to do this. I can do this.” He’s as much talking to himself by the end.

Relax, Ooliri continues internally. What did it feel like to be relaxed?

Unbidden, a memory from months ago floats to mind. Before Ooliri graduated, Oocid had come home from a mission, foreleg swaddled in discolored bandages.

“****Ooliri…****” He’d spoken weakly, unreadable expression on his palp, arms outstretched as if for a hug.

Face knit in worry, Ooliri had stepped forward. One step further, and Oocid seized him, and rapped his knuckles on Ooliri’s head until the smaller nymph cried out.

“Gotcha!” He was laughing.

Ooliri frowned, even as he fought to keep a giggle out of his spiracles. “Why’d you do that? I was worried you—”

“I’m here, you baby. I’m fine. If I’m here, I’m fine.”

“But if you got hurt and—”

“Look, ’liri, you have to learn this. Don’t worry. Do what you can. If anything, worry about what worrying stops you from doing. It gets you nothing that calm focus can’t do better.”

In reaction, Ooliri weakly punched Oocid, in the thorax, well clear of his bandaged arm. “Well don’t make me worry, then. It’s your fault.” He didn’t really mean that. While the younger brother didn’t yet smile or laugh, the frown was gone now.

“If I’m here, I’m fine,” he repeated. “And Ooliri? I’m here.”

Oocid was different when he wasn’t on a mission — teasing, joking. If Oocid were here to call him a baby or a bonehead, Ooliri’d instantly know things were alright. But if Oocid were here, he’d be serious, mission​-​minded. But he’d still say the same thing. Do what you can, and worry about what worrying stops you from doing.

Right now, it’s stopping him from potentially saving a bug’s life. If Oocid were here… if Oocid were here, he could do the technique himself, and better. He was always better.

He was dead, Ooliri thought. He was dead, and Ooliri wasn’t — the youngest Silverbane would keep improving, and someday, some day soon, he would be better.

What would Oocid think if he could see that?

Ooliri takes a deep breath, feels his heartbeat, and starts making signs. He fails, then starts on the signs again. Rat. Bear. Rat. Whale. He feels the drain, and doesn’t let that stop him. Raccoon. Bat.

Even as his blood twisted and pulsed inside of him, he imagined Oocid, thinking past the hurt to imagine his patient yes, little brother smile turning into one of shock, surprise when he saw—

⸢Serum Form: Pure Healing Palm.⸥

He did it. Clear serum coated the palm of his ichorflesh arm, and he turns it toward the ant, touches the wounds.

It isn’t an accomplishment. He’d done it before. He couldn’t have done it without his brother’s sacrifice. But… he hadn’t done it under this much pressure, had he?

Quessa’s smile widens, becomes half​-​grin, half​-​gape. Her spiracles make a sound of quiet surprise. Ooliri preens; he didn’t know if this is as impressive as casting nouspells at her age, but at least he could do something she couldn’t. Maybe she’s just humoring him. But Ooliri isn’t just showing off here. He has a bug to help.

The ant hisses when the palm touches their leg. That’s a good sign.

While Pure Healing Palm is used for healing, what it actually does is more of a precursor, a preparation. (And that’s a good thing — if it actually healed, it’d do so in a way fit for mantids, and be of no use to this ant.) Pure Healing Palm cleaned a wound of contaminants and mutated ichor; it nourished the flesh with an injection of easily metabolized calories; and it dried to a gel​-​like seal to close up wounds. All in all, invaluable for stabilizing a bug in the field.

Ooliri has to cast the technique a few more times, each a little less demanding of singular focus. Ooliri felt the blood flow strangely through the ichorflesh arm; like the organs there wanted to make serum. Pure Healing Palm is such a demanding spell because to do more good than harm required medical grade, universally compatible ichor. Mainly, the issue was avoiding foreign ichor the patient’s own would react to — which, in fairness, this ant had none of. Ostensibly, that should ease the demands of purity, but Ooliri didn’t want his ichor to linger and leave this one with virulent, iatrogenic sequela.

Focused on rubbing his serum​-​coated palm over the ant as if it were a rag, Ooliri only dimly notes the ants shifting around him. Quessa turns to regard a minor. He sees her cast a rift​-​light, and a moment later, she speaks.

“The One Who Hungers For Spears wishes to know if you are done yet.”

“Well, almost. Give me a few moments, then I can re​-​apply the bandages.”

He hears chirping he cannot parse without seeing the myweft.

“This one says there’s no need. Bites Water can apply fresh bandages.”

“Okay.”

More chirping. “Also, are you fit to fight? This one hopes you haven’t spent all of your energy on this.”

Oddly brusque. Didn’t the ants appreciate his efforts? “Well, I don’t know any ichor techniques for combat, so this doesn’t really affect my readiness.” Chirps, and before Quessa translates, Ooliri asks, “Is there a reason that one’s being so insistent?”

It couldn’t have been a response, just exceptional timing, but in the moment before Quessa could scratch or Hunger could chirp, a boom resounds, the distant, unmistakable noise of gunpowder exploding.

Quessa jumps, eyes turning toward the sky. She soon sees the bright fire of the bombs she had improvised, and gave to Awelah and Makuja to use as signals.

“It’s coming now?” Ooliri asks. The answer, it turns out, is negative, but he doesn’t get an answer in words.

Instead, seconds later, another flare goes up.

Ooliri’s heart skips, serum of his forgotten technique dripping from his lowered arm.

All of them wait for, and hope for, a third flare.

No sudden moves are made by either side. The nymphs startle still; the direhound approaches slow. Mud caking his bone armor — had he known how to to hide his scent? — Vilja steps through bushes and ferns, the force of his steps tearing branches free. Wading through foliage lends him no speed — certainly insufficient for a deadly ambush.

With the time this buys, Makuja is stepping away, even as the Asetari holds her own place, settling into a stance, spear held at the ready. What is she thinking? Does she think she can hold off a direhound beast with nothing but a spear and some injuries?

Makuja’s heart reaches a steady, elevated rhythm. She feels a curious unsteadiness as she grasps knives in her hands. (Knives would do less than spears, unless she got close enough to find breaks in the armor.) Makuja didn’t have a plan, not a fully formed one. There is no patience in her now, nor calculation coiling behind her moves, not even the quiet, intuitive kind she prefers.

The word, she realizes, is gambling. That day, she had leapt with nothing to catch her but her myxokora. Now it is becoming a habit.

What were the tarsigns for myxokora manifestation? She would ask Boleheva tomorrow. She didn’t know, she didn’t control her myxokora; sometimes they appeared, and sometimes they didn’t.

If now they didn’t…

The direwolf gives a low howl as it approaches. So many nights ago, one of them had identified this sound as their names spoken in an alien throat, and now it couldn’t be unheard.

“Aaawelah,” it crooned as it approached the edge of the underbrush.

“Vilja,” Makuja started. The direhound turned to her, and growled his threat. She almost repeated her question from the day before, but it’d be no use, she knew. “Master Unodha is dead. But you have a new master now, don’t you?”

A harsh bark. Is it wishful of her to hear it as a attempted “no”?

Awelah starts moving, hoping to catch him before he break into the open. She covers much of the distance in a single leap, saving a few steps to center her balance before delivering the final spear thrust. That was planned, Makuja intuited.

But Vilja moved as soon as her legs left the ground. At an angle, escaping the underbrush with the snap of ferns uprooted, he still manages to throw up distance between himself and Awelah. He’s dashing out of reach, bounding strides circling around the path.

The hound keeps moving even as Awelah aborts her charge, coming to an immediate stop right where she landed — what? Makuja didn’t have time to consider the (lack of) physics in that, because the hound kept moving and now Makuja is standing in between it and Awelah.

Faster, faster. Her myxokora weren’t out yet. But soon…

Vilja gives another momentary growl, shining eyes on Makuja and only Makuja. His legs pound against the mud and propel him forward.

Faster. Still no myxokora. Makuja starts to scramble backwards, but there’s mud underneath her. She’s slipping, and her muscles are burning, her pulse is too fast — she’s falling, abdomen squishing beneath her.

Vilja is leaping, maw yawning open. She can count the teeth.

Faster. Her pulse has become a throbbing pain at her sides. The wound where the blood has gushed forth again and again hasn’t yet healed fully. The cicatrix was a dam about to burst, but it couldn’t save her from —

Slamming into her side. Not the direhound. Smells like — Awelah? The Asetari. But she was so far behind her.

Nonetheless, the pale nymph had rushed from behind her somehow, thrown her out of the way, her footing firm on the treacherous mud. She’s lifted a pale leg to block —

Makuja hears jaws clamp down on chitin. Smells the hemolymph mixed with baneful ichor, now freed of its shell. The Asetari cries out. Cries out — or yells out? With an angry snarl, Awelah is pushing forward with retained momentum.

Her spear thrusts forward, cracking against bone, piercing the armor, penetrating the ichor​-​warped flesh, and the pale nymph leans farther forward. Her great attack pushes the beast back. He lands leglessly on the ground, smacking and clacking.

Makuja rises. Staring at the beast, that threat to her life in a heap on the ground, her heartbeat falters. He’s unable to stand at the moment, whining at a painful pitch as Awelah tugs on her spear to free it.

“You saved me.” Makuja’s voice is quiet.

Awelah grunts. “What did I say, that day after the Scolopendra?”

After the centipede was dead by her hand — after she’d fried her umbracoils casting an improvised technique to save them.

“You’d do it ten times more, if it would save our lives.” She thought the Asetari had meant all of them, herself included.

“I wasn’t lying,” Awelah continues. “Besides, you did the same for me, not so long ago.”

Makuja looks down. “We’re even, then.”

With a final pull, Awelah frees her spear, ichor spraying out, congealed into a few large gobules that splash or squish. “We’re more than even,” she says. “We’re allies.”

Groaning, the direhound gets to his feet.

Makuja begins making tarsigns. Cold black nerve stirs within her. She’d gambled on her myxokora, treated it as the only tool at her disposal. Why? Black nerve is cold. Red ichor is hot. The two forms interfered with each other. One had failed her, but the other never had. Makuja makes the wasp seal, and began to calculate.

Slippery grass and wetness beneath still fought her — a difficulty Awelah had never displayed tonight.

Oh. The steadiness, the speed she repeatedly displayed?

So the Asetari had figured out Makuja’s trick that quickly.

Makuja finished her signs. She lunges forward as the direhound started to back up.

⸢Bane Blast!⸥

Force erupts from only one of her foretarsi; the other is folded away, raptorial opening to wrap its vise around one of the hound’s legs. The blast throws it off balance, and her grip holds in place long enough to give Awelah another chance to stab.

A pained yelp, and the direhound tears itself free with all of its might. Makuja pulls her raptorial away quickly to not damage its spines. The direhound is backing away.

“Let’s finish this.”

“No. Remember the plan, Awelah.” Makuja points to the south, where the others should be waiting to trap the hound. The direhound scrambles away from them, and Makuja moves to gives chase. Awelah grunts.

“Fine. But we’re following after it.” With that concession, Awelah hisses and after a boosted leap, lands on the other side of the direhound.

Saying nothing, Makuja reaches into her bag, withdrawing the first of Quessa’s bombs. Lighting an umbrasulphur match with a minute discharge of enervate, Makuja rigs it, waits a moment, and tosses it into the sky.

The smell of the direhounds leaking ichor is pungent, putrid metallic stench filling the path. Makuja lunges forward at the direhound, blasting a stone at it to keep it scared.

One flare, she recalled, signaled that the hound is fleeing.

Makuja lights another, tosses it up to explode with one more echoing boom. The bombs seemed to startle the direhound more. It turns tail and runs, bleeding out, bones rattling as it flees — right in the direction of Ooliri and Quessa.

Then the red nymph lunges once more, but not at the hound. She touches down in front of the Asetari, and grabs her by a foreleg.

“What the black gulfs are you doing? Let go before I—” The threat is undercut by pained hiss she’s emitting even as she speaks; Makuja had grabbed the arm Vilja bit.

“Two flares mean we need assistance. The others will abandon their position, let the direhound escape, to come lend us aid. And you need aid. You’re injured with a direhound bite, and you’ve been using enervate even though Yanseno told you your coils were damaged. I will light the third flare and let this hunt proceed, but only if you cooperate. I appreciate that you saved me, Asetari, so let me return the favor.”

“And if Ooliri fails to kill it?” The twang in her voice — as if a question involving Ooliri killing something answered itself.

“And if you push your wounds beyond recovery in this reckless pursuit of — what, exactly?”

“I’m not a heartless bloodhold maverick,” she spat. “I’m not going to let bugs die if we can do something about it.”

“You had so much to say about Vilja’s tactics — yet you are blind to his strategy. It is abundantly clear what he wants, if not why. He’s only attacked me. He cries your name, and flees from your attacks. When he growls, he is only ever looking at me.” Makuja releases Awelah foreleg — she yanks it back — and white eyes stare into purple. “I’m the target. Not you, and not any bug of Wisterun. If Ooliri fails, if we must protect bugs… perhaps I can spare them simply by not returning to town with you.”

“No. We’re allies, Makuja. I told you I would protect you.” Awelah breaks eye contact, and stares off where the direhound fled. Labrum raised, leering. “And protecting you from the direhound — it’s obvious I can do that.”

Makuja nods. “Take off your cloak. I have antiseptic.”

Awelah scowls. “Fine. Go light the last flare. I pray the stars Ooliri doesn’t mess this up.”