A Chimerical Hope

“There’s something strange about the direhound,” Quessa replied quietly to the gray nymph.

The atmosphere has changed now, after they’d at last seen and heard a third flare. Gone went the panic of uncertain failure, anxiety at what they would do to help. There is still cause for fear, still things to dread — but they were back to the clarity of mission parameters. The plan marched on.

Just a few paces from them, the black and white ant stands, that one’s single remaining antennae working dutifully, a foreleg stabbing at a map drawn in lines in the mud. She can see the squiggles representing the gully ahead: their destination, where this would all end. If those crosses are their group, they wouldn’t be far now.

The map is lit by torches placed adjacent to illuminate, and beside each stands a major at attention, antennae outstretched. Quessa idly eyes them, but she’s trying to listen to the gray nymph, to hear out his plans.

His latest suggestion? Use her nouspells — her secret, Yanseno said you shouldn’t use these carelessly nouspells — on the direhound — on the mammal — to confuse or hinder it.

“Is that good or bad?” he asked, after a few moments without her following up on her comment. “Do you think it’ll work?”

“It shouldn’t, not effectively. Nouspells target the nous. Bugs, intelligent bugs, have it. But beasts… it’s faint, underdeveloped, yes?”

He nodded as if he’d heard it explained before. He murmured, “It’s not all there is to intelligence, though. Beasts still have feelings. Ooncerta always said…”

“Still, without a full nous, so many nouspells just can’t take hold. Except… it’s speculation, not even my own speculation, but Yanseno got a good look at the direhound out there, and… you know how he’s a sensor? He sensed, and the direhound… it had almost sentient levels of nou​-​enervate. But not in the brain. The brain seemed normal, for direbeasts — within the norm, at least. No, this was spread out, flowing through the body, and without the aura of nousomatic nerve. Wait no, I messed it up. Not flowing, pulsing — he said it was as if the blood had a mind.”

The gray nymph glanced down at his endowed arm — he’d reapplied the bandages, at some point, but they were bloody. He seemed to think on what Quessa suggested. “Is that… well, does it make sense? Could it be possible?”

“I’ve never heard of anything like it. Whatever it is… maybe nouspells could interfere with it. But we can’t plan for that.”

“So we’ll… what? Can you hit it with that stunning spell?”

“I… I’ll try. But we can’t plan for that, either. I haven’t mastered it. And Yanseno doesn’t want me using it if he’s not there to watch, and I —” She stops, and then she cringes because the nymph’s eyes don’t miss her tarsi making the signs. She casts a nouspell on herself, and continues, “Nevermind, we should get into position.”

Words formed on his palps, but they die in motions as chirping and waving torches draw both their gazes to the forest beyond.

It wasn’t the direhound.

Treading closer, Quessa makes a tarsign, coils twisting in preparation for a bane blast, should she need to cast one.

But she didn’t. Not yet. As they near the torchlight, she recognizes an ant she saw earlier. Paler chitin, with pretty brown cloth. The new ant approached alongside a limping major.

Had there been another attack? she thought. Quessa scanned the ranks of their ants until her eyes stopped on recognizable blue weft. “…Bites Water,” she names after a moment, calling for this one’s attention as she crosses the distance. “What’s the situation? Can you find out for us?”

Meanwhile, after directing the major to lean beside another, the paler ant breaks off and makes a straight line for the black and white clothed leader. They enter quiet conversation, backs turned.

She had heard the other group light all three flares. But…

Quessa taps the gray nymph. “How many ants were there, with the other group?”

“Well, there was that little one and three big ones?”

Quessa nods. That meant now, all the other ants must have been routed here. Still, the red nymph and purple nymph had used all three flares. Had they managed to keep the plan on track all on their own?

Bites Water is breaking off from the group of ants, stepping back toward them. This one’s antennae now work anxiously. When the blue clothed ant stops in front of Quessa, the chirps that intersperse the communication are hesitant, low keyed. The bright, sharp light of Quessa’s riftlight spell cut harsh shadows on the ant’s face that feel almost appropriate.

“Uu. These ones have [issue]. The One Who [Walks] Upon [Sands : Fine] was one who [flees] the [nearness] of [dog : evil]. Those ones who are [Duskborn] had [distance] from [position : planned]. [Routing] of [evildog] at [then] means [routing : wrong]. Not in [gully].”

Quessa frowns. Parsing through the text the ant is showing her, her frown deepens with her understanding. Beside her, the gray nymph looks towards her with request, antennae extending outward as if reaching for understanding. Above them, a droplet of water drips from a wet leaf and splashes on the gray nymph’s antennae fuzz. The gray nymph flinches, and Quessa giggles for a second.

Then she explains it to him, “The plan was to first lure the direhound into the gully that runs to here from a little farther north, then flush it down.” She’s looking to Bites Water as she explains, the ant nodding, assuring her she wasn’t forgetting or misremembering it. “This way, we could wait for it at the other end of the gully, and lay a more sure trap. But if it’s not following the gully, it’s harder to say where it’s going to go.” The clarity of the mission was escaping them again. Was it falling apart?

Then Quessa stops. So often, recalling knowledge feels like grasping for things through a choking fog, her quarry eluding her, if only by inches. Tedious, frustrating, failure​-​prone — but oh, so familiar. So it’s always startling when the winds change, and the fog eases to reveal an old thought. Not clearly, but so much less vague that she gasps.

Her gaze jumps immediately from the ant to the gray nymph. She remembers a conversation they had earlier, at the tavern. “You said the direhound was following you, hunting you.”

He nods. “And the howls are like…”

“…it’s speaking your name,” she finishes. He seems momentarily surprised by her remembering.

Quessa looks back to the ant in blue clothe. “Can you tell the one in charge I might have an idea?”

Bites Water stops rubbing antennae, the bald lengths straightening with what looks like hope. Bites Wates scurries back toward the ant in black and white. Quessa follows at stride. After all, if the direhound is already moving, they don’t have much time to get things set up.

Ants have an easier time moving through the forest than the nymphs do. The mantids are bigger, needing to step around the bushes and trees clustered far too near to each other, rerouting to places that the ants can just crawl to. Around the banks of the gully, though, the trees clear.

Not far from her, ants are huddled separately, antennating and chirping among each other. The nice gray nymph had left her, as part of the plan, and now the green nymph stands here, alone. She doesn’t even have a torch for light. She didn’t need it (just cast a riftlight), but obscured in shadow, she’s some night monster, staring at the living.

It’s just three majors, the leader, and the One Who Bites Water with them now. They had treated the first injured major, and the second wasn’t as badly off, so they’d all been fit to return to the gate. Two nymphs, five ants.

Watching the group entranced her, for all that her thoughts seemed scattered and nonspecific. She tries to focus.

Were the ants worried? Quessa wondered. Did they feel anxious at how mucked up this mission has gotten, from our mistakes?

A new thought occurred to her, shining clear in the mental fog.

“Put out your torches,” she stridulates with force, hoping it carries to at least some of the ants. “Try to hide!”

It would all crumble if the hound saw them, all the bugs and fire serving just to spook it.

The ants stare at her in reply, eyes small and black and unreadable in the distance. Before doing anything they look to the black and white ant, seeking a second, more trustworthy opinion. Seeing this clicks together into a thought. They don’t trust me. They don’t trust any of us. Quessa looks to the other nymph.

The gray nymph steps now through the gully, advancing towards a wider, dryer segment. She tries to not to see it as an arena. It’s supposed to be a deathtrap. They’d pitch oil at it, the gray nymph would light it on fire, and it would just die and give them all peace.

Right now, the other nymph holds the blazing torch lit low to the ground. They picked this place for being gravelly and dry — how the rain had left the forest so muddy the one defect in their plan. So now the gray nymph bided his time, his torch drying the ground ever further.

Ants wait. Their real leader must have given the go ahead, because they’d extinguished their torches and retreated to cover behind ferns and fat mushrooms.

Quessa’s antennae bounce as she too waits. Her eyes flick over the ants and the gray nymph and then to the west, hoping and dreading for the beast to emerge. She stares at the ants and can almost see the plan in execution. The soldiers will rush forward, pitching oil and throwing weighted nets to trap the beast.

Anticipation growing, she replays that image of everything going right once more, and then again, and then — the thought slips away from her. It’s all fog. She can’t see it anymore. She can find where the ants are waiting, slowly forcing her eyes to trace an arc that a net or fragile oil flask might follow.

Quessa frowns. That bothers her. What was she thinking about? Something about how the plan will play out — will it go wrong?

Her eyes settle on the gray nymph down there. His long antennae have curled tight in dread. He’s worried. She’s worried. She’s bothered looking at him — why?

What was she thinking about? She looks at the ants hiding atop the gully. They’re about to do something, right? She’s here with them. She feels jittery. Something’s about to happen. Something… bad?

Quessa sees others react before she does. The sound comes distant, muffled, but the gray nymph, the one she’s worried about, he flinches. She hears… a dog bark? Following those blue eyes…

Eyeshine in the dark. Muddy, cracked bone. She smells blood. Terrible blood. She smells something spicy — spinner ant danger pheromone.

The dog. The direhound. It’s looking at the gray nymph she’s worried about. It’s padding closer to him. He looks so scared. It jumps down into the gully.

The ants are moving forward in the dark. Wet oil catches a glint of moonlight.

Things feel so foggy. What was she doing? What’s going on?

The nymph looks so scared, she’s scared for him, why? The fog is suffocating, thoughts are like slugs. She could just stop.

Quessa doesn’t see her tarsi moving in practiced motions. She’s frightening to a stop, and she might have stopped her tarsi if she noticed.

⸢Nouform: Calming Draft!⸥

It doesn’t clear. It doesn’t fix her. The fog seems to rush back. She’s scared, and everything’s going wrong.

But she clenches her raptorials tight. She imagines hunting down the thoughts that elude her. Squeezing tight around the conclusion she’s flinching away from, and ripping it out of the fog to face it.

She’s scared. Something is wrong. The ants are rushing forward. The gray nymph — Ooliri — is staring down the direhound.

Oil glints in the moonlight.

It doesn’t click. It remains vague, but she can feel something terrible in the gaps between her thoughts. She stopped imagining what the ambush would look like, couldn’t keep thinking about the ants throwing the nets and the oil.

Why?

She’s speaking before she has the words.

“Ooliri! Stop, run, it’s a trap!” (Wasn’t it supposed to be?) “Get out of the way.”

She looks at the ants, and she thinks they’re looking at her now.

(Somewhere in the mind​-​fog: They don’t trust us. Why did he have to light the fire? Why was no one telling him to get clear before they threw the oil? This wasn’t her plan, was it? Why—)

The gray nymph is getting bigger. Oh, she’s moving closer, running.

He turns away from the direhound and runs like she asks. The direhound’s instinct flares to life, barking and legs swiping into a run. It favors one side — was it injured? Maybe they had a shot.

Quessa is running, but she isn’t a bloodbane. Her family has terrible constitution. She’s nowhere near catching up.

Ants are frantic now, the oil is flying, and Quessa watches the trajectories, wondering which of those they threw would have hit the nymph before she yelled for him to move.

A net falls around the beast. It trips the thing up, and it fights to be free of it. Their aims must have been off, or they underestimated its strength, because it tears itself free, tatters of rope still pulled tight around it and trailing behind it.

Closer now, the direhound lunges and its jaws close around a gray leg. He drops the torch to the ground. He has now run past dry ground, and the torch goes out in the mud.

Ooliri falls to the ground right beside it.

The boy cries out — but it sounds like… pure surprise? Not pain. Quessa gets to the edge of the gully and she jumps.

She doesn’t land well. Her legs fold under her and sharp gravel bites into her chitin. Her abdomen curls up and keeps the wind in her, mostly, and she pushes to her feet. Ahead, the direhound is pulling on the nymph as he struggles to crawl away.

Quessa twists through a couple of tarsigns to cast a riftlight. Didn’t want to fight in darkness.

That catches the direhound’s attention. It drops the gray nymph, and rounds instantly. It growls for the first time, looking at her. She has time to cast one spell before it’s on her.

(“I have an idea,” Ooliri said.)

She makes the signs, and struggles with a sympathy lock. There’s not much nous in the brain — but there’s something strange about the direhound — so she tries aiming the spell at the heart instead.

⸢Nouform: Bedaze!⸥

One moment where the direhound seems to stagger or stop. Quessa thinks it might have worked. And then the beast shrieks, and charges at her. She’s knocked off her feet, hitting the gravel hard and squishing her abdomen. The direhound swipes with a claw and she’s rolling out of the way.

There’s no space and no time to make tarsigns. She has some control of her enervate — could she do a sealless bane blast? Even a unshaped discharged might be enough to get her out. Cold nerve flows through her coils, and—

⸢Bane blast!⸥

It’s not her. Before she can manage anything, the gray nymph is there, determined glower making his face unfamiliar to her. He holds a baton with one bandaged foreleg and the other has a palm pure black, darker than shadow. A one​-​handed baneblast? She couldn’t do that.

As Quessa scrambles to her feet, the nymph is swinging his baton. It hits the muddy bone armor of the direhound with a massive crack, more force than a tiny nymph like him should be capable of. What was under those bandages?

Knocked back before it gets up, there’s finally some distance between them and the snarling beast. The gray nymph moves, sidestepping. He’s interposing himself between the dog and her, and Quessa’s confused.

“You should run,” he says. “I’ll try to hold it off.”

“Why?”

She hears the smile on his palps. “Well, wardens save bugs.”

“We had a plan. We were going to end this.” She’s fishing a bottle from her bag — the makeshift explosives. One of them had been smashed broken when she fell, and the shattered glass cuts her soft chitin, but she finds one intact. Umbrasulphur match lit, and she primes the bomb and tosses it.

The direhound flinches away from it — does it recognize what it is? — and starts moving towards the two nymphs even before the thing explodes. It gets a few steps before glass shrapnel flies everywhere. Quessa is holding a foreleg over her eyes, and feels shards cut into it at the same time as there’s a canine yelps.

When she lowers her foreleg, she sees the eyeshine of the direhound, and it’s not looking at her. It’s looking at the gray nymph.

“Oooliri,” it whines. That’s his name, isn’t it? “Nooo.”

“Are you — can you understand me?”

It’s distracted, Quessa thinks. Make the signs, mold black nerve, sympathy lock with the heart —

⸢Bedaze!⸥

Whatever sound it’s making stops, dying in the throat. The direhound staggers under Quessa’s spell and shudders rattle the bones of its armor.

“Now!” Quessa scratches.

The gray nymph glances back at her, features knitting into a frown of confusion.

Nothing the nymph himself could do, she realizes. His torch had been put out. But she still has some matches. Her hand reaches into her bag, frantic despite the bite of shattered glass. How many seconds until the direhound shrugs it off? At the same time, her green eyes cast about the shadowed gully, searching for a glint of reflected moonlight.

Let’s see… the nymph ran west, past the trap, but then the hound had turned back to attack her. The oil would be… behind them!

“After me,” Quessa urges, turning and hoping the gray nymph is right behind her. They run. She clutches her matches tight in her right hand.

Behind, they hear the direhound’s paws slapping through the mud. Quessa’s footing is sure, but the other nymph is slipping in the patch of oil. She half​-​turns to grab a flailing foreleg, to pull him with her left foreleg. He staggers, half​-​carried and then one quarter​-​carried as he finds his feet.

Light flickers at the top edges of the gully and along the walls it crawls downward. What… oh. The ants are having the same idea.

“We have to get out of here, come on.” They need to climb, or they’ll burn with the direhound. She turns sharply enough that the other nymph’s grasp is ripped from her, and he stumbles even as she makes a quick tarsign. Enervate flows to her four feet, and she’s walking up the gully wall.

Looking back at the top, the other nymph isn’t with her. Still at the bottom, slipping again and again on the muddy incline.

He doesn’t know how to wall​-​walk. Terror grips her, stills her.

But it’s just a gully. You can climb it without spells, and he’s managing it. Sparing one moment to breathe out, Quessa starts making signs.

The direhound had been behind them too, but even having caught up, it isn’t attacking the gray nymph. It’s clawing at the gully wall too. But they can’t let it escape.

⸢Umbra Form: Melter ball!⸥ Her hands spit out a tiny enervate projectile (pathetic compared to what Yanseno can do). The direhound gives up climbing to dodge, and it only hits a leg, but the beast whines and backs down. Which is just what she wanted. Furry, mangy feet are splashing in oil now.

She weaves more signs, several more, a longer invocation than any other spell she’s cast today.

She’s not supposed to cast it, not without supervision. Could she even manage it? It takes her multiple tries even in the calm of practice, never mind this frenzy.

Focus. No fog, no doubts, no failure. She already ruined this plan once, hadn’t she? She can’t let the direhound escape again. Ooliri needs her to do it, the ants needs her, she needs herself.

She felt the buzzing in her abdomen, felt it running down her coils, stringing in the way black nerve was cold. She felt the umbraplasm kneaded into long filaments. She felt the hard, hook​-​like teeth of the spellform prepared in her palms, nearly bursting with energy.

⸢Copper form: Electrostun!⸥ She pulls back her foreleg and then throws it out, flinging the hook out to latch onto her target.

It’s enervated, first and foremost, so even when it hits bone armor, it liques and pierces through to secure itself in bloody meat. A line pulls taut, so dark to be invisible in the night, but it connects Quessa and the direhound, and it means pain.

The buzzing current within her lances down the filament. It’s visible as flashes or sparks in places where she failed to knead the filament perfectly.

But it’s over in a second. The current hits, and the direhound cries out, an awful whining. But the hard part had just begun. To do this technique right, to do more than inflict a bit of a shock, she modulates the current. She breathes to maintain the right rhythm. If she doesn’t mess this up… the beast’s muscles would spasm and contract uncontrollably. It’d be paralyzed.

It is paralyzed. Legs fold underneath it as it fights to move under the electric assault.

The ants are almost at the edge with the backup torches now. They would do this.

And then, almost at the top of the gully, Ooliri grabs the edge and the dirt gives. It crumbles in his grip. He slips, and he falls, tumbling back down into the oil, into the pit with the direhound.

The ants with the torches. The direhound held in place. The oil, glinting in the moonlight. Ooliri, about to burn.

Quessa has only a moment to make a decision.

But it’s the same decision she made at the start.

She ends the technique, releases the current, letting the filament snap and fall away into nothing. She crouches, and angles herself for the gray nymph’s prone form. She had awful constitution, awful coordination, but could she leap down there just quickly enough to grab him and drag him out before the flames consume the both them?

Maybe she’d deserve it, anyway. If she made him die.

Her legs coil like springs under her, tense as they can get—

And the direhound moves before she does, free of the stun. The beast lunges for the nymph in the dark, and wet jaws close around his warden barding.

It lifts, and, paws audibly scrambling the oil and in the mud, it runs. It flees, stealing Ooliri, saving Ooliri, just as the torches fall and the oil goes up in flames at last. It escapes, and they’re both safe.

Quessa doesn’t know if she has time to think about what she does. She’s already crouched. She’s already coiled tight, ready to leap.

So she leaps. Into the gully, just beyond the flames.

Not beyond the heat, and like the first time she jumped, she falls gracelessly into a heap. For a second she lies there, cooking right beside the blazing flames, before she musters will to roll over and get up.

She glimpses the barely recognizable grimy white form of the armored beast disappearing in the distance, and she starts running.

It hurts. It’s hot and still bright even as she escapes the flames. Why—

She still had the matches in her hand. They’re in fire now and now they’re burning her. She drops them and shakes her hand, enough to throw off her stride and stumble even as she runs.

Quessa has horrible constitution. She can feel her tracheae straining just tens of strides into the run. Her distance from the direhound only grows. She’s slowing, legs in pain and her breaths turning to wet coughs.

She can still see the look on the gray nymph’s face, imagine it even as he retreats from view. What is his name? She was so scared for him, and she tried to save him, and this was all for, she was trying to, he was important, somehow, wasn’t he?

He’s gone.

She was running after him, chasing him, so she keeps doing that. She’s slowed so much she might be walking now. Walking and panting. She’s slipping in puddles and wet muck, and pushes enervate into her legs, hoping the adhesion is some help.

She doesn’t have much enervate left. She must’ve been fighting, casting so many more spells than she should.

The walls around her slopes down and the gully widens. It’s a pond or bog, ferns and shrooms rising from the wide mess. She’s lost sight of whatever she was chasing and now she doesn’t know which way they even went.

She falls down, legs feeling so soft and so slippy and so dirty that they might as well be mud at this point. She doesn’t bother getting up and now just rolls over and stares up at the sky. There are no stars, just the obscure clouds blanketing everything by the bright moon.

Where is she? What was she doing? Why does she hurt? The fog is closing in, blanketing everything. Her tarsi move in practiced motions, making signs, but it doesn’t work, because one of her hands is terribly burned and hurts so much. She can’t make signs. The black nerve within doesn’t move. She’s powerless and choking in the fog. It will close over her and take away all the bad memories, and maybe it would be good to lose this pain. Or…

All Quessa knows is she lost something. Everything went wrong, and it’s her fault.

She is alone in the dark of night, and she cries.

Is someone coming to save her? (Like she failed to save… someone.) She knows she should remember, there was a name that didn’t escape her even despite the fog, but it never got this bad, she was never unable to make any signs, unable to make the fog go way.

She lies there, staring up into a cloudy night sky, trying to remember.

Maybe hours passed. No one had come yet, and she’s lost in vague impression of memories, searching, grasping.

There’s a gunshot, distant but not distant enough. She’s so deep in her memories that the sound doesn’t even stir the hope that it should.

No, she hears a different masculine voice.

“One bullet for each traitor. No more, no less. Remember that, child.”

Awelah watches Makuja almost kill the next ant they see.

No, not kill. She’d want to question the ant afterward. So Makuja has a knife in hand, primed to throw, and at this point, Awelah almost lets her; she’s tired enough.

Awelah had endured the younger nymph enveloping her in alcohol and bandages over the direhound’s bite. Tolerated the red nymph tugging on Awelah’s arm whenever she tried to walk on her own until she leaned on the other nymph for support. Deigned to agree when, hearing the low explosion in the distance — that wasn’t part of their plan — Makuja surmised that the other nymphs had screwed something up.

You can trust Makuja with a few things, Awelah thought. Knowing when to strike first isn’t one of them. Her grip on Makuja tightens sharply, and she scratches, “Don’t.”

The red nymph had tensed, had already lifted a knife that’d probably land dead center into the new arrival’s head.

“This smells like Quessa’s ant, Bites Water,” Awelah adds.

“What would it be doing here?”

“Something went wrong. That much we already figured out, yeah? Light a torch, I need to read what this one says.”

Makuja had insisted on traveling with as much stealth as they could manage. Why, when the thing they were fighting was bred as a hound, Awelah couldn’t say.

Awelah staggers forward, lacking support, while behind her, fire begins eating oil and wood, casting the woods in light and shadow. Awelah needed to take more care in walking now. If she tried to adhere to the ground with enervate, Makuja would yell at her.

Suppressing a grunt, Awelah crouches down to be level with the ant in blue cloth. This one rushes forward, as if invited, and rubs head against her. Bites water chirps a ‘yay’ — happy they survived? — and antennae are already in motion, indicating, but Awelah interrupts it all.

“What happened?”

“Uu,” this one starts, and it takes a few moments for this one to clear the threads already woven, rearrange its labeled cloth into a new message. “[Evil​-​dog] and one who is [Quessa] and one who is [third] of [Duskborn] have [goneness]. [Lost] of [location].”

Awelah’s antennae whip forward and she leans forward, labrum raising. “They’re gone? What do you mean they’re gone?”

Bites Water flinches backward. “Aa! [Safety] for [pleading], [calmness] for [pleading]. This one is [messenger]. This one has [sorrow] for [bat​-​bug] of [lost].”

“Look, sorry.” Awelah breathes out, and backs up. Was she threatening the ant? …Really, she was. There’s always threat when a mantis talks to another kind. Awelah scratches frustration. “Our teammate could be dead, and we weren’t… you were supposed to keep it from happening! By the stars if you, if they didn’t do everything they could to save Ooliri—”

“Um. No one of [troop] would [save]. It is [woven].”

Awelaeh forgets her earlier restraint and rushes two steps toward the ant. Her stridulation is more noise than words, as she leans down. “What?”

“Eep. [Time] for [pleading]? This one has [need] of [time] for [composition : careful] of [events]. [Recounting : long] for [pleading]?”

Awelah sighs. She looks up at the sky, and jumps at a movement behind her. Makuja walking up, torch in hand. The red nymph arches one antennae.

“Maybe you had the right idea,” Awelah murmurs, rising to full height. Looking down to the ant, she says, “I’ll give you a few minutes. You better explain yourself well.”

Makuja’s eyes are pale, and the woods are dark, but she sees when the ant is ready, foreleg tapping hesitantly on the Asetari’s leg. The pale nymph sat beside her, futilely wiping mud and rainwater off her cloak — by feel more than sight, since she’d told Makuja to put out the torch. She had thought it a joke — the Asetari wanted to make the ant write in the dark? But spinner ants could manage it just fine, she explained. Claimed she could smell the pheromones soaking cloth, pointed out how the words woven on it rose tactilely from the surrounding. The ant tunnels are pretty dark, so perhaps Makuja shouldn’t be surprised.

She has the torch lit immediately, so she doesn’t have to hear Awelah ask.

When all is ready, the One Who Bites Water begins chirping and waving antennae, eyes on Awelah rather than her message. Makuja peers at its work, trying to follow along. “[Trap] of [plan] had [danger], had [cost]. [Third] of [Duskroot] as [lure]. [Oil] has [splash], [fire] has [spread]. When [evil​-​dog] has [fire], then [risk] of [third] may be [sharing] the [fire].”

“So you used him as bait in a trap that might have killed him?” Awelah glances to Makuja as she said it, and scowled at the ant when she was done. The ant nods slowly.

Well. If the Asetari was going to save her the trouble, is there any need for her to read the ant?

Makua steps back and listens to Awelah’s interpretations. By the sound of it, Quessa noticed the implications of their tactic right as they started moving. Right as Vilja showed up she warned Ooliri to run, abandoning his position. In the chaos, she jumped down in the gully with him, and none of the ants saw what happened next, only that Ooliri’s torch went out and there was an explosion and then only Quessa climbed out of the gully. She made “magic signs” with her hands, but none of the ants saw what she was doing. By then the direhound stood over the oil they’d wasted, so they tried to light it. Then it ran at the last second, dragging Ooliri with it. Quessa gave chase, but she’s just a nymph and none of the ants think she could have caught it, wherever she went.

“So he lives,” Makuja murmurs quietly. A little bit of hope stirs in her heart, even though it shouldn’t.

Then the Asetari glances at her, and she knows she heard. Now she’d have to explain.

She was talking about Vilja, but… “Remember, he’s only ever attacked me. Never you, and he howled Ooliri’s name same as yours. From the sound of it… he saved Ooliri’s life.”

The Asetari frowns, not believing her, but that moment of thought is better than the quiet fury that had engulfed her features previously. “We won’t know until we find him. We will find him.” She professed uncertainty, but by the sound of her voice, the relief in it, she prefers that to assuming him dead.

Makuja inclined her head, not challenging it.

The Asetari turns her back to the ant. “I suppose there was nothing you could do to save him, once it started. But that’s not what you said, is it? You said the ants wouldn’t save him. What did you mean by that?”

Makuja leans forward, scanning the words being arranged in response. She’d hear this from the ant’s self.

At length, it indicates, “Err… It is [woven]. The One Who [Shapes] the [Sky : Below] has [orders : woven] for these ones. [Priority : only] is [killing] of [evil​-​dog], of [threat] of [colony]. [Survival] of [eater​-​bug] is not [priority], is not [worthy] of [expense]. [Eater​-​bug] are [threat : potential].”

“So that’s why,” Makuja says. Awelah arches an antennae at her. She explains, “The ants, especially the small one that came with us, behaved… strangely. Watching me, startling when I caught them watching. I didn’t think much about why that other one was so eager to leave us behind, but it fits, doesn’t it? If we died against the direhound without them, all they’d loose is a potential threat to the colony. If Ooliri died…”

Chirping catches their attention. Bites Water is adding, “This one has [counterweave]. [Quessa] has [affection], and [Duskroot] has [pleasantness]. [Threat] is [Boleheva]. [Weaver] of [wisdom] is [cautious] and [ruthless]. If [Duskroot] will have [value] for [colony], then [weaver] will [value] of [Duskroot].”

The Asetari shakes her head. “No. I’m not going to value the colony very highly if Sky Shaper tried to have us killed. Should have known better in all that wisdom. If you’re telling the truth… that one has made an enemy today.”

Bites Water’s antennae droop. “This one has [need] of [departure]. [Safety] of [Duskborn] for [pleading].”

“We’ll see. If you came here of your own initiative… you’re a better bug than your weaver, Bites Water.”

And then the spinner ant in blue cloth is gone, traversing the underbrush with all the ease the nymphs envy.

“Are you planning revenge?” Makuja asks, knife in hand, antennae hidden behind her back.

“I’ll tell you after we find Ooliri. Then I’ll know. Let’s go.”

The Asetari pulls her (slightly less dirty) cloak over her and starts to the west.

“Wisterun is this way, Asetari.”

“The gully runs southwest. If that’s what the direhound followed—”

“You’re injured. We’re tired. And we’re tracking a vesperbane. Yanseno is a sensor.”

“Ooliri—”

“If Vilja wants to kill him, he’s dead. If not, he’s alive. There is no need to search right now.”

The Asetari paused. “You think the hound isn’t trying to kill me or Ooliri. Just you. So why not go back yourself, and let me handle this?”

Rather than pointing out how stupid this is, Makuja smiles. “So you don’t expect to fight it? Perhaps you won’t need this, then.” In her hands, Makuja has Awelah’s folding spear.

“How did you—”

“When you were cleaning your cloak.”

Makuja’s smiling, but the Asetari isn’t. “Give it back.”

“Take it back.” Makuja waves her fingers, inviting the Asetari to come at her.

The pale nymph gives a lunge that’s more of an extended stagger, and even as tired as she is, Makuja sidesteps it, throwing out a leg to trip the Asetari. The other nymph gives a hiss of pain as she falls, and before she can rise, Makuja steps on her, getting more mud on her just​-​cleaned cloak.

“Tell me, Asetari. Do you feel like you can steal a nymph from a direbeast that stole him, fight soldier ants that might have orders to kills us, or even keep walking through this forest? In the state you’re in?”

For a moment, Awelah doesn’t say anything, nor does she nod or shake her head. “Give it back,” she says. “I’ll flee back to town with you, but give it back.”

The mud isn’t so bad, Awelah thought. Slippery, sure, and the ground at times tries to suck her in. But traveling near​-​blind through a forest at night, the mud just made you careful. She could cope.

What Awelah hates are the roots and vines that crawled underfoot. She couldn’t see them, could barely feel them before they tripped up her next step and sent her tugging on the nymph she was hanging off of like an invalid.

Was Makuja always this strong? Vesperbane nymphs are stronger than they look, Awelah knew that much from trying to spar against her older cousins. But Makuja hadn’t been a vesperbane for years. The longer this goes on, the more Awelah is unable to walk from pain and exhaustion, leaning on Makuja more and more, and yet the red nymph is supporting Awelah as if her weight is barely a burden. Awelah doesn’t know if she herself could do that, roles reversed, and she’s bigger, years older.

There’s a lot to learn, this close to Makuja. Awelah now knew of at least five places she hadn’t expect the red nymph to keep knives, easily and instinctively accessed in the face of a threat — though she’s not sure why she even bothers emptying her hands, at this point. Each reaction is subtle, yet unmistakable. Tensing, readying her hands with small, obscure motions — yet her breathing remains steady, her antennae don’t jolt in surprise, her head doesn’t spin around searching. Awelah holds her tightly enough to feel her pulse, though, and it spikes like a drum each time.

Sometimes, Awelah knows what sets her off — the calls of an owl, or the silent sight of it swooping down on a rat or beetle. A frog leaping from a puddle, the reflective glint of light against a huge snailfly’s reflective wing​-​shell, a snakepit Awelah almost trips into before Makuja pulls her to the side. Once, they almost walk into the meter wide web of a huge spider — that was enough to get a gasp out of the cool red nymph.

Other times, though, Makuja reacts and Awelah doesn’t know what she’s missing, can only imagine some unknown bump in the night. She almost asks. Then she scowls, and remains silent.

She hasn’t noticed Makuja react to anything new in a while when Awelah’s startled by her voice.

“Torches ahead.” Cool and hunter​-​like.

Pigment returns to Awelah’s pale eyes. She wasn’t drifting off — she was just as alert as Makuja.

When she looks, the light in the distance isn’t hard to find.

Awelah thinks for a second, and says, “Too tall to be ants.”

Small relief surges at that. They’d both agreed it’s safer to avoid the rendezvous point, looping around Wisterun to try their luck at another gate. This had almost doubled the length of their route back, and the woods aren’t forgiving terrain.

“Wait here,” Makuja says. “I’ll investigate.”

“No. I’m coming with you.”

“You’re asleep on your feet.”

“They’re mantids, have to be. Laybugs. They’ll be more scared if there’s two of us, and if there’s any threat, intimidation is our first line of defense.”

“If your clumsy steps alert them,” Makuja says, “I’ll let you face them alone.”

By now, the two of them face southeast, having hit upon one of the trampled trails leading out of Wisterun, following it back. They judged that the incoming mantids were coming west from Wisterun, walking up a nearby fork of the trail.

Makuja’s plan has them angle southwest for interception. They slip through the undergrowth, given cover by night, to wait behind metataxites for the mantids to walk by.

Feet coated with enervate, Makuja simply walks up the metataxite, perching on a shelf​-​like outgrowth. She’s high up enough no laybug would have the awareness to spot her. Awelah couldn’t do that, so she lays down on the cool ground, draping her cloak over her. It’s black enough to pass as a shadow if she were fully covered.

But Awelah can’t resist peeking. It’s quiet for minutes until they hear the footsteps, and then they’re in sight. Two torchbearers wear undyed plainclothes, and crude mallets strapped to their sides. Random citizens drawn into the night watch? Doesn’t explain why they’re here, though.

The mantis walking between them, following behind, wears garb with a finer cut, buttons and clasps gleaming metal. He wore a dress with suspenders and many trailing ribbons — and he’s familiar.

Tiredly, the three pass by Awelah before she realizes: this is one of the townsfolk they met just earlier today. This one had ambushed them outside the town hall, had asked to talk with Awelah about the Duskroot attack.

No signal is shared. Makuja just drops out of the taxite and strikes a silent, enervate​-​muffled landing. Awelah’s scrambling to her feet, shaking the dirt off her cloak. She’s nowhere near as silent, branches creaking and bushes shaking as she surges forward. The bugs all turn around. Two raptorial forelegs reach for weapons, while the third mantis startles and flinches back a step.

Fear and threat holds the faces of the night watch mantids, but the tiercel smiles the more he peers at them. The very same smile Awelah remembers from before, when he spoke like he knew exactly who Team Duskborn were — like he knew too much.

“Ah, isn’t it just, just the nymphs we’re looking for. Awelah and… Makuja, was it?”

Awelah doesn’t care that her mandibles show. She opens her raptorials, and asks, “Why were you looking for us?”

He raises to raptorials, folded inward, and gives placating pushes. “Call it an anonymous tip. I was told you three would be out, out looking for trouble tonight. And by that haggard look, I dare to think you’ve found it. Say, where is the third, third member of our group?”

“Perhaps you should start explaining,” Makuja says, stepping forward, as if to partially interpose herself between Awelah and the well​-​dressed tiercel. “If you meant us harm, you would not be the first friendly face to betray us.”

“Glad you find me friendly, heh!” It’s a brittle smile. “But no, my intent here is entirely, entirely benign. That anonymous tip told me you would be in danger, and I meant only to help, I assure you! No betrayal, not in the slightest.” He looks to his left, and then to his right. “Vesperbanes, I imagine, get into quite dire straits, perhaps too dire for two night watchbugs to help — but it’s the best I can muster.”

He nudges one of the bugs, neither of which had realized their weapons would be of little use against vesperbanes. The one just nudged then nods. A mantis of yellowish complexion, she speaks with the tight, high voice of a countrymant. “Right, just as Karatikale said. Is there anything we can do to lend aid?”

Makuja glances back at Awelah, but rather than answering them, she looks back at Karatikale. “Who gave you the tip? Was it an ant?”

“Oh, ’twas through written correspondence, so there’s no telling. Though, I’m given to believe, believe that spinner ant writing have a… distinctive style, one my informant certainly lacks. Anything’s possible, though!”

Makuja doesn’t relax, and her eyes track to the two night watch, as if sizing them up.

“You wound me with this distrust.” Another brittle smile.

She doesn’t reply. She looks back at Awelah. “What do you think?”

Awelah takes her time to respond, genuinely thinking it through. “Can’t see an angle for this to be the weaver’s plot, or anyone else. I’d kill to know who that informant was, but he doesn’t even know.” Awelah sighs, and it sounds so tired. She looks at Karatikale. “Only things we need help with are getting back to Wisterun, and getting a message to Yanseno.”

“What about our teammate?” Makuja asks quietly.

Awelah shakes her head. “They can’t do anything about it. No use telling them, just in case this somehow is a plot and they go tell an enemy. If they tell Yanseno just what they saw” — two members of Team Duskborn without the third — “he can figure out the rest.”

Makuja nods once, then her head snaps around to give Karatikale an intense look. “Speaking of that… why didn’t you tell Yanseno? Why aren’t we speaking to him in your stead?”

Karatikale cringes, and shrugs. “We couldn’t, ah, find him? We went asking, when we checked the inn and confirmed you weren’t there. Yanseno still, still hasn’t gotten back, they said.”

“The hierophant asked for his help,” Makuja notes. “Perhaps he’s still assisting her.”

“That must be it.” His antennae curl up. “Hope he’s done soon, heh.”

“You seem nervous.”

“Nervous? I’m right terrified, haha! Outside the town walls at night, with vesperbanes and spinner ants on the hunt, and a new direbeast howling in the distance? Why, one might just catch their death out here!” He flinches back at that, as if afraid of the very possibility he outlined.

Makuja nods. “We would like to return to Wisterun. An escort is within your abilities, yes? My friend here is injured. One of you should be able to carry her.”

Awelah scowls, “I don’t—”

“Refuse it if you like. I will not help you walk any further. If you can get there of your own power, prove it.” The red nymph peers skeptically at the pale nymph.

It’s understandable: Awelah is swaying on her feet. (So much for intimidation.) The bigger of the two night watches steps forward now, hesitant. Makuja nods at her, and the yellow mantis moves to sweep Awelah off her feet. She grouses, but is too weak, and too aware of her exhaustion, to fullheartedly resist. She’s deposited on the imago’s back, saddled between their lower thorax and abdomen.

“Before we part ways, can I ask that we meet again tomorrow? I’d like to discuss tonight’s events.”

“Why, exactly, are we parting ways?” Makuja regards the tiercel.

His antennae twist. “Oh, there’s other bugs out there who need our help — the other member of your team, the ants you mentioned.”

“But…” Something’s bothering Awelah, and she’s almost too tired to articulate it. “Why are you here? Why not send the night watch alone? You’re just a, you’re just a laybug.”

Karatikale smiles. “Oh, haven’t I mentioned? I’m a writer. I intend to be the one to put this news to page and inform the town — a journalist, if you would.”

Awelah has another question, and she thinks she asks it. It’s last thing she remembers, she doesn’t remember if she got a response.

She doesn’t remember moving, or getting through the town gate at night, or navigating the streets by torch. The next thing Awelah’s aware of is Makuja shaking her, and when she finally growls for her to “Stop it, stop it, get off me,” she finds they are in their room in the inn.

The floors are dirt but seem now even dirtier with their arrival. Awelah’s lost her cloak and two of her shirts (Makuja’s doing? checking her bandages?) and she finds she lies on a bed.

“Calm down. I would have let you sleep, but you should see this.”

Awelah rolls to her side and then climbs up so she’s sitting on her folded legs. “What is it?”

“A note. It was under my pillow.”

She pushes a page so that it fills Awelah’s focused vision. Fancy white pages, fine, ichorborne parchment. Not euvespid chewed wood, or fungal substitutes. The ink is black written in a flowing, aristocratic style. There’s not much of it, only a few sentences and a huge signature embellished with stylized thorns and vines.

We thank you for your cooperation. We have such grand plans for Wisterun, and you have already been just so helpful in their fruition.

Until next you serve,

Miss C.

“You know anyone who could be called… Miss C?”

Makuja shakes her head.

“I think,” Awelah starts… she scowls, but manages to say it: “You might have been right. Maybe there is someone, an enemy, behind the scenes.”

The red nymph doesn’t look happy to be right. “Perhaps. But… they will have to take on us both.” It’s not quite a question, the way she ends the statement, but she’s searching for something on Awelah’s face. Not finding it, she asks explicitly. “Did you mean it, earlier?”

“What?”

“That we’re allies, in this together?”

“Do you think I lied to you in the heat of battle? Of course I meant it. We’re not backing down. We’re going to get Ooliri and Quessa back, we’re gonna stop the direhound, and we’re going to take on whatever the One Who Shapes the Sky and this Miss C bug has in store for us. We’re gonna win, do you know why?”

Makuja quirks an antennae, but doesn’t venture an answer.

“Because we’re Duskborn.”

Makuja smiles, though there’s hesitation there. “We’ll make them suffer.”

And then they’re both smiling.

“But first… maybe we do need to sleep.”

“Wake me up, if you need to leave the room. I set traps.”

The red nymph is shedding her bags, and a layer of clothes before climbing into bed. Makuja wears an undershirt with dots and feathery lines, and something about that is funny to Awelah.

The pale nymph, meanwhile, she just falls over and rolls back into position. She stays up, just a few more moments to see and hear Makuja go to bed, and then she’s out.

That night, as they sleep, a gunshot rings out in the far distance, but, too low to disturb them, they only dream of Yanseno, arquebus in his grasp, slaying the monster that had hunted them for so long, standing steadfast against the new monsters that crowd around them.

Above the town of Wisterun, vast and dark clouds amass to obscure the stars and moon, and to the east, the black surface of a great lake is roiling.

Tomorrow, it will rain.