Serpentine Squiggles

Wisps and Pawns

Three nights have passed and no dawn has risen to break them. A torrent of black wisps is falling from the sky, the dirt eroding with each silent impact. The wisps stick to everything. A malevolent mist chokes the air, and above, strange flashes illuminate the sky, like rifts to unseen heavens.

In these brief flashes, the light hints at a skeletal land of crags and gorges. A lone figure stumbles through the dark on four legs. Wisps slide off her heavy cloak. Atop a distant mountain behind her, scant light silhouettes the ruins.

It must have been a journey of many miles, every one of them urgent, as written in the wheezing breaths, the aching, trembling muscles. A dusting of ash lies beneath the cloak.

The figure, a mantis, walks alone. In this light​-​starved climate, though, you can’t see for sure, can’t banish impressions of other figures in the shadows — but if they had left other survivors, the refugee would know. She’d surely know.

A hiss of pain comes when a wisp slips under her cloak, and she stumbles when a large one falls nearby. The wisps feel hungry, like voids sucking at the world, pulling in matter just as they pull other wisps. Squeezing the air, and compressing the dirt. The dark things absorb sound, leaving the procession oddly silent. You cannot even hear the refugee’s desperate footsteps.

So she jumps in shock when a half​-​muted cry cuts through the dark. There’s no mistaking the direction: there could be no echo, no sound reflection in a wispfall.

Hearing this, the mantis looks around, and starts into a fast trot. Following after the noise brings her beneath a tree’s shelter. Glowing bulbs hang off the tree, warding away the black wisps. There aren’t many trees in the countryside, fewer still that live. The refugee keeps looking. The thrill of urgency fades.

A stridulating call brings it right back.

“One little scream in the wild makes a hero out of anyone, doesn’t it?”

A mantis steps forward, compound eyes dark, antennae curled into spirals. They had no cloak, just heavy cloth, brigandine with metal studs. It’s armor for a battle — one that already looks lost. The cloth appears torn and melted from the wispfall.

“What brought you out in this evil weather? No place for one to be at all. Unless…” Those mouthparts come together, wrapping into a smug, triumphant curve. “You had no other place to be. Refugee, arentcha? Fleeing the crush?” A dangerous tenor inflects the voice. The hairs on those mouthparts grew together like little spikes, little fangs.

The refugee reaches a foreleg into her cloak.

“You should have had the sense to stay and die like the rest.”

Then the speaker lunges forward, raptorial forelegs wide open and spikes deadly. The refugee dodges. A near thing, and the target backs up several more paces. But against a diamantis? Still a dangerous place to be.

The attacker spins around and strains to see where the refugee went. In wispy darkness like this, it’s two shadows fighting. The defender has retrieved her quarry from her cloak, and unfolds it in quick, practiced motions. Trained, she can do it without seeing. She can do it without thinking.

She can’t do it without the click as parts secure together, though, and freed from the torrent of wisps, sound isn’t so strangled.

Another lunge, and another dodge. It will be the last. Now, the weapon is held true.

“Good reflexes. Good reflexes. Where’d you learn — ah, you’re a pawn too, arentcha? Same as me. Or not, because you have nothing left, not with Duskroot cleaned off the map.” They take a moment to steady their stance. “But if you were a pawn… I really can’t let you live. Orders, you know? What we’re training for — we do what we have to, even when it’s ugly. It’s what vesperbanes are all about, right?”

The refugee wonders if the words are for her, or themselves. She readies herself, plans. There is no third lunge, the speaker now wary of whatever came from the cloak. But she doesn’t even need it to be that easy.

The refugee’s reply comes very suddenly, a midleg’s tarsus punching out as she leaps forward — and meeting empty space. She is turning as she lands.

Then, as the speaker stops, recovering from the dodge, they die.

Most fights don’t last long. It only takes one mistake to get a spearhead run through your gullet, right into your head. They fell for the feint, right into the trap.

The refugee pants through their abdomen, releasing the spear held in a grille designed for her raptorial vise. Dropped, it makes no sound on the black​-​imbued ground.

The excitement was over. Instead of collapsing, the refugee catches themselves with forelegs as the legs holding her up give out. The thrill is gone, the strength is gone. Can she even stand back up?

She looks at the body, the pawn they just killed.

We do what we have to, even when it’s ugly.

Her mouthparts tighten. It has been three nights — perhaps more, when no dawn can pierce the inscrutable dark heavens above.

It’s what vesperbanes are about, right?

Cannibalism is distasteful — but it has been three nights. This mantis was lucky to escape at all — they had nothing but the amalgam​-​dark cloak on their back and the spear.

And the knowledge. The knowledge of just who was responsible.

She gives the dead pawn one more look, and her mandibles part.


The refugee sleeps under the tree. When she awakens, light is bursting from the horizon, a cavalry come at last, and those sunrays reveal the sight of a heartlands sky. The heavens crawl with lines and waves of dark energy, emanating from the waxing fullness of the black moon Tenebra like blood from a deep cosmic wound. Dawn has arrived, cavalry has come, but the night may have already won.

She stands and resumes her trek across the countryside. In the dawn light, you can see this bug, this diamantid, with the big eyes of an adolescent nymph, and white chitin streaked with dark purple patterns. The lines cross each other in shapes like stars. It may have been pretty once, but now it’s dirty with ash. Above, antennae once cleanly​-​trimmed now grow wild and unmaintained setae, and she runs a tarsus through her dark locks as she marches on through the land.

The uneven packed dirt she travels is lucky to be as flat as it, as it meanders around mounds and boulders. Moss and ferns cling to the land all around. They sit as cover for mollusks: with the passing of the wispfall, snailflies of several kinds have unfolded out of their shells, gliding around for seeds and mates, and evading opportunistic birds. Perched on the prominences, those crows watch, perhaps lured by the carrion left deliquescing in pools of black. Her pointy auricles hear the kraa of their calls to each other.

The path now winds between taller, steeper hills. No crows perch on them, and a few scurrying longicorn beetles pass her by. The refugee works her antennae into uncertain loops, a part of her put on edge. A vesperbane would be suspicious; this nymph is still taken by surprise.

A diamantis lunges at her from behind a blind curve. Dressed in the same wisp​-​liqued brigandine, this one wields blades in their raptorials. A good hit lands on her thorax, but cannot cut her cloak.

She hops back and sizes up her foe. In the daylight, you can see the other pawn is also a nymph, green​-​shelled and scant instars older than the refugee.

With the moment afforded by her distance, her spear is out. Then she throws it at the ground in front of her foe. They’re distracted one moment by the tactic, and that’s when she rushes in. She grabs a blade​-​bearing foreleg in the vice of a raptorial arm. Squeezes and digs in with its spines until they drop that blade.

But the pawn had been taken off guard, not cowed. They don’t hesitate to slash with the free foreleg — and there’s no room to avoid it. Her other arm gets cut as she brings it in to hold secure the other foreleg.

So she sweeps her leg underneath them and uses her hold to shove the pawn to the ground. She grabs the spear with the tarsus of her midleg, and points it at the diamantid’s gullet.

“Why?” she demands. “Who sent you?” Her palps rubbing against mandibles is a soft stridulating buzz, and the sound ragged​-​edged from days of disuse. The reply comes:

“It’s orders,” the pawn says. “Just orders. Kill everything — every bane, pawn and especially every clan bug — that crawls out of Duskroot. That’s what we were hired to do.”

She stares at them for a moment, and pushes her spear closer till it sinks just barely into the chitin, and stops. Then she says, “You failed. Get out of here.” The spear is taken away. She gets off them.

The pawn gets up. Then they’re lunging at her for another attack. She sustains another cut.

“My master won’t accept failure.” They punch with a foreleg, and she catches it. “So I cannot fail.”

She didn’t have a choice, did she?

It only takes one more misstep to bring it to an end. They’re speared through the thorax, severing the dorsal nerve. She rips away pieces of their cloth armor, digging till she finds fabric not blackened by wisps, to loop around her injuries and hold back the bleeding.

The only thing she can do is keep moving, march further on. The more distance she puts between herself and Duskroot, the safer she’ll be. Behind her, those mountaintop ruins stand, pale from the distance. It was Duskroot.


She walks a packed dirt road as it meanders near a creek of darkened water. Down by the bank stands another nymph, picking at small plants in the mud. Their chitin is dark red with black spots. The refugee spots them, but they haven’t seen her.

She readies her spear with a click and jumps down onto the bank, rushing up to the nymph to pin them. Held at her mercy, she asks them why she should let them live.

A Nymph and a Trap

Smaller, with big eyes and features defined by round shapes, the nymph looks up to her like the younger sibling to their elder. The refugee wears a look of calcined despair, of having lost everything yet gripping to one hope and determination. The nymph bears a look of emptiness, of having lost everything, of falling with nothing to hold on to — like they look at her from down within an ever​-​deepening pit. Somehow, her white eyes don’t look bright.

The refugee had asked the nymph why she should let them live. A nymph younger than her, and they don’t have an answer.

Awelah’s grip on the spear slacks, and her eyes darken with pigment as she looks at the nymph she’s threatening. For a moment, she’s not there. She’s in Duskroot, and she smells ash and blood. She hears the crackles of baneful fire, the pleading screams. She sees death and judgment.

The spear lowers, but it’s still pointing at the nymph.

“What are you doing out here?”

“I am gathering mint leaves. They will serve to make a salve. A roach nymph had hurt their leg running from a hound.”

Awelah’s messy antennae twist forward. “Where did the roaches come from?”

“Farmers from Duskhold. They tell me they supplied food to the stronghold of Duskroot, but now they flee… whatever had happened there. The region is dangerous now, and they believed I would be safer in their company.”

Awelah lowers her spear further. The second pawn had claimed their orders were to kill everything that crawls out of Duskroot — and this nymph is not doing that.

“What’s your name?” the nymph suddenly asks.

The refugee is Awelah. “Awelah Asetari.”

There’s a look that flickers across their face. “I’m… I’m Makuja. Are you still going to kill me?”

Awelah stares. They look… pathetic. Awelah is struck by the thought that if she killed defenseless Makuja, she’d be just like her. “No,” she says. “Get up. Show me the roaches.”


Here stands one of the trees left in this countryside, roots carving into rock. Its branches are thick, but leafless and dead. Odd conic fungi grow underneath the boughs. They expand and contract as if breathing.

Beneath this tree, the roaches wait. The bugs are just barely bigger than the nymphal diamantids. They have bright chitin, faint reds and greens, and the largest pulls a small cart. They greet the mantids with waving antennae, rubbing against Makuja, but keeping distance of Awelah.

When Makuja introduces Awelah, a current of dread passes through the roaches, whose antennae jerk back like from shock. The roaches look between themselves, and then after a moment a matriarch kneels, followed by other roaches. “Honored Asetari, we thought you had all died.” Noble roaches don’t stridulate with their palps; they hiss through their spiracles.

Makuja asks why they would think that, and the mother roach replies that the noble clan of Asetari founded the Duskroot stronghold atop an enchanted mountain. Four days ago that cursed storm prowled in and an otherworldly destruction was visited upon the stronghold.

“Now Duskroot lies in ruins. Yet you are here. We thought the Asetari would have died protecting it.”

They watch Awelah silently, and she does not answer. Awelah casts her eyes down, antennae falling over her face. There was anger to be had at the insinuation, but shame, too.

The roaches turn back to hiss among themselves. Before they set off, the Mother directs one last question to Awelah: “We have no accommodations for a vesperbane, but if you can endure that, you may accompany us.”

Awelah stares at the light green face of this roach, meeting those dark eyes, and wonders what dwells behind them. Did she blame Awelah’s clan for the destruction that drove her and hers from their home? The mantis could scratch some rebuttal, felt the urge — but that face… The Asetari had roachservants, maids who’d practically raised Awelah. Had.

Wary roach eyes turn to her, hearing her silence, seeing her hands clench into fists. But it’s not anger. Awelah had dwelt long on her family the past three days, but this touches a different, unexpected wound.

Unable to voice a reply, the nymph simply lowers her head — what might be a single nod, or a small bow. It’s a level of deference a roach farmer would certainly never expect from a mantis, let alone a clan mantis. When the journey resumes, Awelah follows.

Long stretches of the road pass with roaches humming folk songs in their spiracles. The pale nymph has fallen back at a distance, far behind the convoy of roaches, where they cannot see her.

That night, Awelah sits on a rock while the roaches sleep. She stares above, to where stars struggle to shine through a dark sky. In the shadows, Makuja watches her.

In the morning, the roaches serve the diamantids vegetable stew. Unwilling to eat it, Awelah leaves to hunt a beetle with her spear, and she returns to share it with Makuja. The roaches watch this, uneasy.

They travel north across Duskhold. Language presents friction, but Awelah has long lived with roach servants, understands their speech well enough. She tells them of traveling on foot through the heaviest parts of wispfall, and is met with disbelief and question after question as to how she survived. She doesn’t mention the pawns. In return, the roaches fill air with stories or warnings about menacing shadows and howls of beasts that haunt the nights, and dour talk of neighbors who disappeared all asudden. Her antennae work as she listens, recalling their nonsense talk of Duskroot being “enchanted,” or the wispfall being “otherworldly.”

The conversation stirs trembling anxiety in the roaches, and the pace of their walking slows. It reaches an intolerable point, and the mother roach calls for an end to it and leads them into a new song. They recant legends of a vesperbane in a nearby land, whose will shapes the very earth — this, Awelah decides, is at least believable.

The sun crosses to its apex in the sky, blocked at times by the clouds and wisp​-​masses that linger above. Awelah breaks from the roaches now, spear ready. Makuja comes with her, this time. Together, they venture into a field of dust and leaf litter crunching like old bones. Row after row of trees stand as cenotaphs to another time.

Awelah catches movement and a distressed purring. They find a fuzzy jumping spider caught in a trap, struggling to free itself. The red nymph steps forward, but a pale foreleg stops her.

“Are you hungry enough to eat a salticid?” Neither nymph says it, but instead speaks someone unseen.

“What choice do we have? You wanna try eating wisp​-​choked rations again? Unodha didn’t prepare us for a fucking nervestorm.”

When they appear, Awelah recognizes the brigandine. More pawns.

They’re going to kill the jumping spider — and they’re going to try to kill her, if she lets them sneak up on her again. It’s a fight.

The leaf litter means they can’t surprise the pawns. Like the last one, they wield weapons — one a raptorial ax and another a sword. Awelah’s skilled, but not skilled enough to fight two pawns at once. She hits one with a stab through center mass, but this gives the other pawn a chance to come down hard with an overhead ax swing.

But Makuja lunges into Awelah, prothorax turned to take the brunt of the attack. Her momentum disrupts the swing, but she still gets an ax carving into her.

The small nymph doesn’t cry out as she falls.

Makuja’s sacrifice gives Awelah the chance to seize the initiative and push back the other pawn, but given the choice between pursuing them or checking Makuja, Awelah lets them escape. Awelah kneels by Makuja’s form, applying pressure to the wound.

“Why would you risk your life for me?” Awelah asks.

“The way you act,” she starts. “You have purpose. A drive — it would be an ugly thing if you were denied the chance to fulfil it.”

“A purpose.” Awelah considers the words. She remembers the fire, and what burned. “Of course I do. But what about you? You are a diamantid. You are a predator, like a wolf. A wolf is strong enough to live on their own, for their own sake.”

“Wolves hunt in packs.”

Awelah shakes her head. “Even a packwolf wouldn’t sacrifice themselves.”


Atop a hill, you can see the roaches wait for the mantids to return. Watch their antennae stretching out in concern as they spot Makuja, watch her slow, ginger walk, and Awelah assisting her. Hear Awelah demand something to bandage her wounds with.

The roaches, of course, ask what happened. Awelah has to explain the attacks from the pawns, all of them.

“Where there are pawns,” the mother roach says, “there are vesperbanes. Wretches and fiends, monsters hunting for your blood. The same curse that befell the mountain hangs over you, little mantis. But we… we cannot withstand more destruction, honored Asetari.”

Awelah hears the request in between the words. Please go. The refugee’s eyes darken, and she stands, and she leaves.

She splits from the path, and walks back into the dead forest of grave trees. She hears a crunch behind her. Someone following her.

It’s Makuja.

“What are we doing now?” the smaller nymph asks.

“I’m done being hounded, put on the backfoot by these pawns. What are we doing?” Awelah echoes. “We are wolves. We will hunt.”

The leaf litter makes tracking the footsteps of the pawn easy. They cross out to the other side of the forest. The edge of the forest overlooks a hill that rolls down to a craggy expanse dotted with pools and streams. They smell the lingering scent of smoke from a fire.

A camp. “There could be more than one remaining,” the pale nymph says.

Makuja asks if they’re still going to hunt them.

“Of course. But we need a plan,” Awelah says. “The camp must be hidden among the rocks, but it is nearby. Wait until dusk, and then strike from the shadows.” Awelah looks at Makuja, peering, face conflicted. “Do you want to risk your life for me again?”

Makuja pauses, some doubt or calculation deep within those white eyes. But she speaks steady and says, “I shall serve.”


At last, the sun sets. In the dark, they pick out the glow of the campfire, and set the plan in motion.

Makuja walks up to the camp from the most obvious point of ingress. Awelah’s startled by how silently the nymph moves.

Once at the entrance to the camp, having clearly gotten the attention of any watch, she’ll be intercepted by the pawns. With their attention, she’ll spin a story of having been abandoned by Awelah, and seeking protection, even offering to help them get back at the pale nymph.

While this is happening, Awelah sneaks around from the back, well hidden by the blackness of their cloak. She’ll use her stealth to pick off any sleeping pawns, and backstab any focusing their attention on Makuja.

There are four pawns in the camp. Awelah pauses by the first she finds, eyes covered as they sleep soundly in a bedroll. Her spear is out, and it wouldn’t take much for at all to put the blade through the eye. It should be easier than all the fights she’s won (or less) today.

But Awelah smells the smoke, hears the fire. Was it easy for her?

The nymph takes her eyes off her target, glancing to where Makuja should be causing a fuss. The bright tongues of a small campfire catch her eye easily — and contrasts against the shadow of the meat it’s cooking. Awelah recognizes the body shape, and even the color of the chitin as it blackens.

She knows what happened to the roaches’ neighbors, then.

Her eyes are on the roach, when she thrusts her spear forward. She isn’t cutting down the innocent, she’s taking vengeance. This is good practice.

That pawn is left bleeding out in their sleeping bag. The next gets metal through their heart as they sit by the fire, sharpening a weapon.

Things go off the rails when Awelah comes up behind the two at the camp entrance, who now turn round with Makuja in tow. They see Awelah, see the blood on her spear, and intuit what’s going on.

The response is surrender. They explain that they’re the last ones — “You’ve killed all of us. Even if we took you in now, our master’s displeasure is inevitable.”

“If you tried to to take me in now, I would kill you,” Awelah says.

“Exactly. So let us go,” the pawn says. They put down their weapons.

“Won’t your master just come after me now?”

“Of course. We have orders, after all. But we’ll… we’ll desert. She’ll think we’re still handling it. That’ll give you a headstart. Our master has more important things to handle out here. You might be able to slip away. Please.”

Awelah looks to Makuja, and the hollowness still in her gaze. Awelah lowers her spear. “Get out of here. If I see you again, I’m killing you.”

Two nymphs sit alone in one of the tents. Awelah is changing Makuja’s bandages, cleaning the wound.

She watches blankly, and eventually asks why she’s doing all this. Why she’s bothering.

Awelah says that she already decided she wouldn’t kill her. “What’s the point, if I go on to let you die?”

They sleep next to each other, and Awelah notices Makuja sleeps with a knife beside her.


In the morning, vesperbanes attack the camp.

A Bloody Wolf

Ooliri had never been on a C​-​rank mission before.

Every mission that took banes — and it had to have banes — outside of the safety of the stronghold walls was a C​-​rank at least. Even if combat or politics wasn’t mentioned in the brief.

Ooliri is staring down the reason why.

The direhound roars, crouching, and then it leaps for his vulnerable neck. The pawn is freezing up.

And that’s why I haven’t been promoted yet, he thinks.

A metal mass cracks against the hound’s skull mid​-​jump. It falls limp and bleeding. Well, the direblooded are always bleeding. But it’s blood that flows rather than crawls.

The metal mass is attached to a staff, held by a diamantis with Ooliri’s same gray​-​green chitin, same golden yellow antennae, and a welkinmark between them.

Oocid smiles and firmly pats his coxa. “Breathe, brother. I’ve got your back.”

His abdomen rises and falls, and his right raptorial is taken in the nymph’s grasp.

“Do you remember how to hold your baton?

Consciously, Ooliri tightens his grip.

“Do you remember how to swing it? Get ready, it’s standing back up.”

The direhound is panting, but still has fury in its eyes.

“Let’s give it a try.”

And, with his older brother guiding the swing, with him providing half the force, Ooliri knocks down the hound.

That doesn’t kill it. That happens when a brown nymph with burnt​-​orange antennae comes up, and plants a sword right in the beast’s bulging heart.

“You’re wasting time,” she says.

“This is partly a training mission, Fihra.” Oocid directs Ooliri to hang his baton at his side. The older nymph steps away, graceful in flowing red and white robes.

“Was that the last one?”

“I took out the other two,” the orange​-​antennae’d nymph replies.

Oocid nods. “Did anyone get hurt?”

Ooliri looks around to see if any of the other two pawns say anything. Then, hesitating, he lifts his foreleg.

Oocid curls antennae in concern. “Let me get that.”

He grabs a ritual knife and slits the palm of his tarsus, then his fingers contort into tarsigns. He has to make the full sequence of ten, then blood crawls out from the wound, over his flesh, deep red rather than mantid green. Empowered, the ichor of vesperbats grows brighter in the air, much brighter than blood exposed to air should. Then, it clears, transparent and pure.

Oocid’s mandibles crunch in concentration as he presses the hand to his brother’s wounds and closes them.

And that’s why I was supposed to be good enough to promote, Ooliri thinks. Oocid was only one instar older than him, and he was already using ⸢Serum Form: Pure Healing Palm⸥ in the field.

At Ooliri’s age, Oocid had already been promoted from pawn to wretch. They were both supposed to be the great prodigy sons of the Arch​-​Sovran Silverbane, legendary knowledge​-​hunter.

And he couldn’t even hold a baton straight.

“Excellent work, my little nymphs.” Their mentor steps forth, wearing the gray vest with the Windborne Stronghold insignia, four spirals arranged in a diamond. The same symbol, etched on the blood​-​iron plate, adorned her antennae​-​band. “This is why you never drop your guard when traveling the heartlands.”

It’s why every mission that left the safety of a stronghold was at least C​-​rank: the world​-​scars. Direbeasts were merely the most common, least threatening of the horrors plaguing this land.

And one had nearly killed Ooliri.

“Who can tell me what exactly this is? Was, rather,” their mentor asks after calling them all to sit before her. Oocid’s antennae perk up — “I’d like to hear from one of the pawns, if you please.”

Through his goggled eyes, Ooliri glances at the other two, one shrinking down and the other tapping antennae nervously.

Cautiously, Ooliri lifts a leg.

“Yes, darling?”

“It’s a maned wolf, madam.”

“What do they eat?”

“They mostly live on a diet of fruits and smaller bugs.”

“Then why attack us?”

“It wasn’t just a maned wolf, madam. It’s infected with the direblood, which turns any mammal into a vicious predator.”

“And how do we deal with direbeasts once they stop moving?”

This time, all the pawns have an answer. “Burn them.”

“Adequate answers. But there’s more to these beasts in particular, I suspect. Pawns, set up camp. Oocid will need a meal after so much bloodletting.”

“Madam, it was only a few cuts I healed—”

“Oh, I don’t mean that. Dissect these beasts, and taste their ichor. I expect a full report of your findings.”

The pawns get to work under a sky still dark with clouds and black orbs. At least the wisps had stopped falling this morning. But the sunless land still felt desolate.

In the horizonward distance, you see the crags and creeks of the Duskhold territory. They could reach it by day’s end. Then they could start carrying out their mission.


As the banes and pawns eat packaged meals prepped over a fire, Oocid is sharing his findings.

“They’re arete​-​touched,” he says. “This isn’t the result of natural direblooded infection. A vesperbane did this.”

The mentor is nodding. “I knew something was wrong.”

Ooliri can’t help asking: “How? What tipped you off?”

She points out toward Duskhold. “Tell me, what do you see in that country?”

“Hills… grassy hills? Crags from erosion, so streams, creeks, I’m not sure what you’re looking for, here.”

“Exactly that, darling. It’s a healthy land, more or less. Not many trees, but there are some, and the mountains are kilometers distant. And it’s late spring! Given all that, how in E’yama’s name is there a wispfall? A wispfall that lasted three damn days?”

Ooliri thinks to what his brother just said. “It’s a bane’s work too. But that would take…”

“Shadowcalling,” their mentor finishes gravely. She looks out, not to Duskhold, but the plains they had just crossed.

“Navera better not have sent us to die. Pray the prophets this just a C​-​rank.”


The mentor is scraping out orders, tone buzzing high. “Fan out. Check the tents.” The team has marched upon a camp where two dead bodies are still lying around.

The noise spurs motion. The flap of a tent is opening. Awelah emerges. Makuja is behind her, the glint of a knife visible in her hands.

“Threat spotted. Fihra, engage.”

The wretch with burnt​-​orange antennae rushes at the pale purple nymph.

Awelah has time to get her spear up — having started unfolding it as soon as she saw the fiend — and she blocks a swing of Fihra’s sword.

The pale nymph never gets a chance to attack; she’s buried under a rain of blows. Some she blocks, and some quick and weak blows break through her guard. In seconds, it is clear: this nymph, who had taken down half a dozen trained pawns, is utterly outmatched.

Fihra hadn’t even used any vespertine arts; just her hands and a sword.

The fight’s over when the wretch throws out a foreleg to wrap like a vice around Awelah’s. She’s pushed to the ground by the novice bane’s weight, and another foreleg seizes another limb, completing the lock. It doesn’t matter if Awelah gives up; she can’t move.

Makuja’s knives are nowhere to be seen; she’s now kneeling before Oocid, having surrendered in the course of Awelah’s fight.

“Stand down and face judgment. You are hereby detained under suspicion of defection against the Pantheca. Laymant, are these the bandits?” That last line wasn’t for Awelah, but for a mantis hidden safe behind the banes. They tentatively step forward.

“You!” Awelah says, struggling against restraint, making Fihra suddenly redouble her grip. “Why aren’t you killing me?” The mantis who stepped forward — it was one from the camp, whom she’d spared.

The mentor arches one antennae. “There is no warrant out for your execution.”

“Beetleshit! Your pawns have been hunting me for days now, Unodha.”

At this remark, Makuja’s expression flickers.

“There has been a misunderstanding, then,” the mentor says. “Allow me to grant you context. I am Emusa Rutabrood, fiend mentor under the Windborne Stronghold’s countenance. We’re here because communication lines with Duskroot went dark days ago, followed by anomalous nervestorms in the region. Team nineteen — that’s us — were dispatched to assay the damages and provide emergency relief to any refugees we find, escorting them back to Solaroch.”

“I am a refugee!” Awelah says. “I was there, I watched my home get destroyed, and now you’re detaining me for defection against the Pantheca?”

“Your name?”

“Awelah Asetari.”

The mentor’s gaze flickers to her chitin, pale violet tint visible despite the grime and dirt. “Thought so. Release her, Fihra. The story checks out.”

“You’re buying it just like that?”

“You don’t have the diplomatic briefing I do. I know what a member of the noble clan of Asetari looks like, and I was advised personally to give any Asetari refugees high priority.” Rutabrood looks at the bug with orange antennae. “That was an order, wretch.”

Fihra complies. But Awelah’s eyes are on the traitorous pawn who led them here. But it seems she was the only one; they’re taking this moment to slip away from their baneful entourage.

Awelah shouts alarm with her spiracles, but the mentor raises a tarsus.

“They’re getting away!”

“Let them.”

“Aren’t you going after that lying sack of shit?”

“Outside of mission parameters. You and your companion are our concern.”

“They tried to kill me, and will try again.”

“Do you not trust banes of the Windborne Stronghold to defend you?”

Awelah looks to Fihra. The wretch smiles, baring her mandibles.

“Come on, let’s get you out of here.”

Awelah and Makuja join the vesperbanes on the road, and journey on — but in the distance, they hear wolves howling.

A Beleaguered Journey

Upon a sheer hill, dark filaments rise up to the heavens. You can see for kilometers in the distance. There’s a far away lake or large pond, and near the horizon, there’s a hint of farmland.

Atop this cliff, the pawns — Ooliri and two others — sit in meditation. Oocid guides them, while the mentor stands off, regarding Awelah.

“I watched you fight Fihra,” she says. “You’re trained. You were going to be a vesperbane, yes?”

“It was my purpose.”

“And now, the banehold that would have countenanced you is…”

“It’s gone. All of it.”

“Yes. So, what now, Awelah? What is your new purpose?”

Awelah’s eyes darken in a way that the fiend looking at her, years of exposure to all the menace real monsters offer, can only find cute. “I will hunt down whoever is responsible for this, and I will find out why, and I will avenge my clan.”

The fiend nods. “For that, you’ll need the power the vespers grant, and for that, you’ll need the countenance of a banehold. The Windborne Stronghold is the strongest of all the provincial baneholds. It welcomes new vesperbanes, and one of your bloodline…”

“If it will make me stronger, then I will have to accept.”

“What does being stronger mean, to you?”

Awelah pauses to think for a moment, eyes distant. Then, “Do you know… have you ever heard of a vesperbane that can walk through fire without being burned? Travel through blazing flames without crossing the intervening distance?”

“Ah, you’ve heard the stories of the One​-​Winged Phoenix? The ashbane with an unpaired aviform myxokore… They are a mighty vesperbane. Is that your ideal?”

“How strong would I have to be to be better than them? Defeat them?”

“You… There are some banes it’s best not to compare yourself to. The Phoenix is heir to the great Thimithi clan, and a once​-​in​-​a​-​generation talent — she was the youngest bane to be admitted into the Arch​-​fiend Selection Exams, the youngest to win, though they refused to promote her. Even if she were a normal vesperbane, she’s a fiend and you are a pawn. That’s enough of a headstart you might never catch up before one of you dies — and, it’s there in the name, rumor has it the Phoenix can’t die. Mere training won’t beat greater training — so I advise against besting your heroes being your goal.”

Awelah scowls at that.

“Lighten up, little nymph. I’m sure you’ll become a strong vesperbane in your own right. Now here, if I’m going to put a recommendation in for your enrollment, I want an idea of what Duskroot was teaching you. Fihra, come here. I want the two of you to spar. No weapons, no injury. Ready?

Without her weapon, without a foe who’d just woken up, and without the need for an efficient, immediate takedown, Fihra doesn’t cleanly outmatch Awelah. It’s still no puzzle which one of them has the greater physical power, and seasons more training. Awelah puts in a good showing, but her struggle against the wretch imparts her with mounting frustration. Her temper only makes her easier to shut down. The mentor watches on, antennae working in thought.


The other pawns gathered nearby, sitting with abdomens to the ground, and Oocid is guiding them through meditation.

“…and breathe out. Come back to me now — what did you feel?”

One pawn shrugs, and another stridulates negation. Ooliri is the odd one out — when am I not? — feeling what might be unmistakable success. But if anyone could mistake it, he might.

None of the three pawns were quite of the laity, even now. Each had a single vesper nursed within their guts. A vesperbane had at least two; but traditionally, a pawn is given one vesper first, to give the body time to adjust, to see if they are found wanting in the vespers’ judgment.

A vesper feeds on a diamantids’ victual offerings, consuming them to bind arete, the foundation of a veserbane’s power. It’s energy stored in dense, umbral fatty tissue. Even a pawn with one vesper produces arete.

If arete is stored caloric energy, it should be within even a pawn’s power to withdraw. That was the goal of this meditation. The vesperbanes had eaten breakfast; the pawns had not.

Ooliri hadn’t eaten breakfast, and he felt full.

“So you succeeded, little brother?”

He nods. “But that’s not enough to get promoted, is it?” He hated the tone of hope that crept from somewhere into his tone.

The response is a click of mandibles. “It’s progress, certainly. But a vesperbane is a balance of mental and physical excellence. You’ve never been wanting in mental regards — so to be promoted, you need to improve physically.” His eyes lose their focus on his brother. “I’m going to give you three a break, then we can try again later?”

When the wretch leaves, one pawn turns to Ooliri. Her name is Mita. “How. How did you do it? What are you doing differently?” Ooliri’s goggles are hanging around his neck. Without them, the world is blurry, expressions hard to parse.

He pauses a moment to consider where to start. “Relaxation is the first step, right? What calming image do you focus on to get there?”

The other pawn’s eyes flush, as if it were embarrassing. “Uh, I remember the day my mom walked me to the academy. I think about what she’ll say when I come back as a real vesperbane. Uh. Something like that. Like, thinking of your mother — that’s got to be calming for anyone, right?” Mita finishes, defensively.

“Oh.” Ooliri is now thinking of his own mother. Wasting away from disease, dying of a condition father had thought he could save her from. A condition he probably could (or did) discover how to fight, in the end. If only they could decode his notes — if only they could finish his research. Silverbane thought he could save anyone. Everyone.

“Sorry,” the other pawn is saying, and it sounds distant from this deep in Ooliri’s thoughts.


They’re traveling east along a dirt road, stopping regularly to let the pawns rest. Fihra isn’t impressed by Awelah hunting beetles with her spear — but saving her the work, that’s convenient, she concedes. Ooliri gives the fresh kills strange looks, and shies away from eating them even as the other diamantids eagerly take them to pieces.

That night, they hear the howling of direbeasts again. When they make camp, they split into watches. The banes keep watch for direbeasts and bandits, while the pawns are told to keep an eye on Awelah and Makuja. It’s Fihra and Ooliri who get the watch in the middle of the night.

The sound of distant wolves howling haunts the night air. They swear they can see shadows crossing the distant countryside.

Is the howling getting louder? Fihra hears something and gets up to investigate.

Ooliri, meanwhile, is all but nodding off. He’s brought back to attention by Awelah.

Something’s wrong.

Ooliri asks why she’s awake.

Awelah hasn’t slept well in five nights. Thus, she noticed when Makuja got up, but assumed it was to relieve herself. It’s been a while — Awelah counted to a thousand — and the other nymph hasn’t come back.

“I’m going to look for her,” she states simply.

Ooliri can only follow behind. It’s opposite the direction Fihra went.

When they do find her, she’s on the ground, forelegs bound, and the pawns from earlier stand above her. Awelah rushes forward.

There’s a trap, and she trips it, getting caught in a net.

Awelah still manages to sound demanding. “You have me, now. Let her go.”

“No, I think our master will want both of you.”

Ooliri thinks. They’re some distance from the camp. Screaming for help isn’t the smartest thing to do in a night with direbeasts on the prowl. Would it work in the short term, thought? But Makuja was at the pawn’s mercy. What might they do, if Ooliri panicked them? So, not good in the short term, good in the medium turn, bad in the long term.

If he were more like Oocid, Fihra or even Awelah, this would be so much easier. Would this be already over, if Ooliri had the guts to act when it mattered?

Oocid’s words return to him. To be worthy to be a vesperbane he didn’t need to think better, but to do better. He reaches for his baton.

He wonders if the energy from his vesper would help. Probably not.

He draws a breath, and then runs forward. They didn’t prepare more than one trap, almost as if they expected only one to come here.

Ooliri swings the baton like his brother taught him. It cracks against his foe’s chitin. Fear is already flooding his mind when he gets a closer look at the weapons the pawns are wielding.

Then something happens when they’re distracted, advancing toward Ooliri as he backs up. Makuja is bursting up from where she lay on the ground, cut ropes falling off her limbs.

The first thing Ooliri registers is the bleeding, the pawns falling over. Then he sees the knives in Makuja’s grasp. She’s kneeling, and slitting the necks of fallen pawns.

“Y​-​you’re killing them?”

Makuja just looks up at him with those empty white eyes. “Why do you sound so shocked? Are we not predators?”

“No, no. We’re beings. With thoughts, emotions, souls. They​-​they were too. And you… killed them.”

“They were threatening us, so I made us safe. It is good for an axe to cut through wood, and it is good for a vesperbane to cut down the enemy.”

“Their life… Every life matters, Makuja. Weren’t you taught that?” he says. “I came to your defense because you matter — you defended us because we matter. I don’t think anyone… anyone should have to die.”

They look at each other for a moment, but Makuja doesn’t have a reply, and Ooliri goes to help Awelah down out of the net trap.

Makuja looks thoughtful all the while, and her grip tightens around her knives.

A Hunter and a Dead Bug

Gaze upon mangled roach corpses. They’re familiar: the faint reds and greens, the mother’s face that once regarded Awelah sadly, now ripped away.

“You said the hounds were bane’s work, Oocid?” Fihra’s saying. “No fucking kidding. More and more of them, and they just keep getting closer. Feels like we’re being hunted, doesn’t it?”

“Get used to it,” Awelah scrapes. “Thought you noble Windborne banes were going to protect me?”

Fihra smiles with her teeth.

“Kindly quit it, dears,” the mentor cuts in.

“If we are being hunted,” Oocid starts, “the question is what to do about it.”

The mentor leans back, watching her wretches work through it.

“Any bane that could make direbeasts has got to be out of our league.”

“Any bane that hides behind minions is weak,” Awelah says. “It shows they lack the confidence to take on their prey directly.”

“Sure. And if you want to wade through a pack of direhounds to get to this weakling, be my guest, princess.” Fihra smiles at Awelah again, and the pale nymph scowls back.

“So our options so far would be… tracking down the bane behind the beasts, or run and hope they lose our trail.”

“Or were never on it.” The quiet voice is Makuja. “We’re assuming we keep feeling the hound’s presence because they’re after us — but if it’s simply coincidence?”

“The pawns spoke about a master giving orders to kill all Duskhold natives. I am a Duskhold native. There is something out there hunting me.”

Oocid nods. “Pawns imply a bane, and the hounds imply a bane, and the hounds are fulfilling the pawn’s mission. All the pieces fit.”

Makuja backs off and says no more.

“I am satisfied with your analysis.” The mentor is all grim seriousness now. “We are returning to Solaroch at top speed. We are not prepared for an engagement with unknown hostiles.” The mentor reaches in their bag.

“Soldier pills?”

“You’ve learned how to use them? Oocid? Fihra? Good. Each of you pick up one of your teammates. I’ll carry the rest.”

The two nymphal banes are only big enough to carry one. Their mentor is much bigger. A pawn climbs on and wraps their closed forelegs around her, followed by Makuja. Awelah is reluctant to be carried like a child.

“Just do it, princess.”


It is faster. Over an hour, they see the hills and pits near the Spider’s Spine give way to the plains as they venture into the southern plains of Windhold.

It’s while running along a ridge that they see it. The ridge flattens down on one side to a small lake. And along the shore of that lake, a fight.

It must have started at great range. On their side of the lake arrows stick out of the sand at increasing frequency. A cloaked figure is advancing. From under their cloak, a trio of black orbs fly out, reminiscent of the wisps.

Their target strikes an imposing figure, even from this distance. Thick cords of muscle are visible between plates of chitin. They stand a head taller than any imago — including their mentor.

In one instant, they kick forward, and an impressive spray of rocks and sand fly up. The innumerable small particles must destabilize the black orbs, and they lose momentum and are pulled down by absorbed mass. The kick sent the big bug back, too, so all three fall short.

They’re holding a huge bow. While gazes were distracted by the trajectory of the orbs, they had nocked, aimed, and launched a pair of arrows. In less than a second.

The cloaked figure dodges with an ethereal deftness. The arrows fly faster than any nymph can track, and still go wide of the target.

The banes above run faster, hoping to pass unseen. They might have. But the dodge of the ghostly figure briefly throws up their thick cloak.

Just enough for Awelah to catch a glimpse of their chitin — a pale, subtle violet, just like hers.

“My clan!”

The only thing securing Awelah was willingly clinging to Makuja. She lets go. It’s a rough landing, due to the mentor’s great momentum.

Awelah stands and runs as fast as she can down the steep slope of the ridge, unfolding her spear.

Meanwhile, the two strange banes continue closing to melee. This much closer, each has less time to dodge the others’ attacks.

Now a few things happen in a very small window of time.

The archer crouches, and the cloaked one tenses, but when they make a massive leap, it’s toward Awelah.

Before they get there, though, Awelah is yelling. “Asetari!”

The cloaked bane glances at her.

That moment of inattention is exploited. They nock an arrow midair, and it flies true.

The other Asetari doesn’t move. Their hands are running through a short series of signs.

⸢Astral form: Umbral Body Projection!⸥

It’s like a physical shadow flying out from under the cloak. It floats between Awelah and the archer for one second.

Awelah had been prepared to thrust her spear at the incoming bane.

But then the shadow makes one tarsign.

It says nothing, but Awelah easily identifies the technique. One of the basic four spells wretches learn: ⸢Umbra Form: Bane Blast!⸥ Something between a punch, a small explosion, and an impulse of raw force.

The archer is shoved back.

Then the shadow spins in the air, and grabs Awelah by the spear, pulling her towards the now​-​advancing cloaked bane.

“Awelah? You survived.”

Awelah makes an inarticulate sound at hearing a familiar voice. Her uncle, Honarari.

The other Asetari moves to stand between Awelah and their enemy.

“If my niece is watching… I suppose I’ll have to show just what made this clan noble. ⸢Asetari Style: Shell Game Technique!⸥” The bane’s cloak had looked thick, and it’s because beneath the cloak lay other cloaks.

There’s what looks like an illusion of tearing, and two identical figures fly out from underneath, both with their own cloaks, and each one of them like that physical shadow. The cloaks tighten around them, and they repeatedly swap positions as they advance, rearranging themselves faster than Awelah’s eye can track.

The enemy bane, who still hasn’t landed, simply nocks and fires three arrows at once, piercing all three forms. The shadows seem to waver, but they all persist.

“What? One of those had to be your real body.” The other bane is landing with three legs on the ground, staring down the two Asetari.

“Oh, it’s a clan secret.”

Each of the shadows move to surround them, throwing out punches and attempted grabs, all moving at speeds only high level vesperbanes can track. The other bane twitches back from the shadows’ touch, and they land several hits. There’s a unity to them that exceeds mere coordination; as if the archer fights one enemy with three bodies. When the larger mantis backs off, you don’t need the expression of wide, extended antennae to tell that the larger bane had underestimated them.

The shadows regroup and then fan out around the panting mantis. “Witness the power of the Asetari bloodline. Our astral will is divided, but undiminished. Each of my projections acts with full autonomy. You are outnumbered by far. Give this up.”

“Outnumbered? Then you are ignorant of the name Unodha.” The vesperbane makes a sound in their gullet that should be impossible for an insect.

She howls.

And her hounds reply in turn.

“Come to me, my children. Our hunt will end.”

Her uncle makes a fourth projection to lead Awelah away from the fight, back toward the ridge.

Team nineteen is already coming after her.

“It wasn’t supposed to come to this. I’ll engage Unodha. Fihra, Oocid, protect Awelah. Get her out of here.” The mentor moves forward, and eyes go to the shadow guiding her.

The shadow has vague tints, coloring the light that refracts or reflects off it, hinting at her uncle’s expression. “This is goodbye, my child.” The sound is unnatural, coming from the absence of palps.

“No. No.”

“You will be the last of us on this plane. Make our spirits proud from where they watch you, yes? You have to rebuild our clan. You have to avenge us.”

“I will. But you could—”

A head shaken. “My time is borrowed even now — and Unodha is beyond me. Here is my advice, child. Heed it. Tell no one your name. Trust no scourge in this land: they heard our pleas, and still let our stronghold crumble. The Anthimati clan is your enemy: take no offers from them, and grant them nothing. And do not fear the light of dawn.”

Awelah nods with a look of determination, committing the words to memory.

“And at last, I have a gift to give you.”

And then the shadow steps forward, into Awelah, and the nymph screams.


Moments ago, the mentor stepped forward to confront Unodha. She leaps, and from a height, rains down a hail of throwing knives with a single sweep of her forelegs. It’s a two dimensional volley, and Unodha easily positions to avoid it, but in so doing goes right where the mentor wants her.

Two well​-​practiced tarsigns. A mouth yawning open. Then:

⸢Ash Form: Flamespitter Technique!⸥

A jet of some liquid or gas bursts from the mentor’s mouth, rocking her back in the air. Then it ignites, and a gout of burning fluid is crackling toward the archer.

When smoke and ash clears, it reveals a wall of beach silt pushed up to defend Unodha, made almost glassy by the assault.

The mentor eyes the wall. A sand form user?

The fight picks up rhythm after that. The mentor closes to melee, and wields a torch doused in oil. Under her will, the flame bends, flying out to lick the bane like an additional limb.

Three direbeasts bound in moments later, and Unodha commands them with barks. She wonders why they weren’t already accompanying their master — then realizes: they had been tracking a bane whose signature technique was called shell game.

The bane holds out a limb towards the canines. Under an unseen force, their muscles swell and convulse like a pit of snakes. Spurs of bone split their skin and fur. The hounds have bulged to half again their initial size.

The mentor has time to form a string of tarsigns, seemingly to no effect, before a hound is charging at her.

The mentor grits her mandibles, and the battle rages on.


Awelah, recovering from whatever her uncle had done, feels heavier, but not very different. She turns to watch him fight. He has five projections now, and that seems to be his limit. It was enough to check the disadvantage imposed by the arrival of the three hounds — but even with a numerical minority, Unodha was just a different caliber of vesperbane.

They all were, really. What were these wretches, these pawns, next to the techniques the imagos were throwing around? The mentor has seemingly given up on the flame spells, and instead repeatedly makes the signs for a technique that rips or distintegrates chunks of flesh from the hounds. Their meat just shifts around to fill the gaps. Her uncle uses the water of the lake to give solidity to his vantablack creations, wisp​-​like orbs and spears that result in utter deliquescence when they land. It’s not enough to resist Unodha’s pressure. Her arrows flow true, and her hounds swipe through his shadows. One projection dissolves, and then another. He doesn’t cast more to refill their ranks.

Awelah sets her features and steps forward.

“You idiot!” Fihra says. “Why?”

“I watched my entire clan die. I can’t stand by and let another be… slaughtered.”

“What good are you to your clan if you are dead?”

She scowls. “My uncle’s gift… perhaps it made me stronger.”

Awelah is rushing off before any replies reach her.

Unodha gives a bark of a laugh. “I’m glad at least one of you is coming willingly to your death.”

But it wasn’t just Awelah — now others are running after her, to stop her. But Awelah moves fast. She sees one of her uncle’s projections disengage and kick off from the ground, move in Awelah’s direction, but at the wrong angle to intercept her.

Unodha nocks an arrow and switches targets right before firing — from the mentor to Awelah.

The arrow is let free.

Somehow, a pawn is jumping over Awelah.

The arrow hits their head. From the force of the arrow, the nymph’s head bursts into chunks of flesh. The cost of her life rains down onto Awelah.

Ooliri has a moment to think I wouldn’t have taken Mita to be the type for self​-​sacrifice. And, How did she jump like that?

Fihra is scraping her chitin raw, stridulating loud. “How many have to die for you before you wise up and save yourself?” The wretch is grabbing the violet nymph with raptorial spines, making Awelah bleed from her grip.

Even still, she is fighting her, trying to inch toward the fight. “I can’t… lose another.”

“My niece, you don’t understand,” one of the projections is saying. “Do you know how I survived all of my projections being shot through center mass?”

Another arrow is flung and it’s well within her uncle’s speed to intercept it.

This time, the cloak falls away.

It’s not a mantis underneath.

Just painted leather animated by a shadow projection.

“I’m already dead.”

Awelah falls limp, unresisting as Fihra pulls her away.

Before Unodha has time to make another move, the mentor’s authoritative voice is calling out.

“Oocid, hear me? Do you remember all our objectives? I’m transferring mission command to you — immediately.”

“Madam, what do you mean?” It’s Fihra asking. Oocid is just nodding seriously.

“Get out of here. Fast as you can.”

“Accepted your fate at last, Wardens bitch?”

“With the assurance of yours.”

The mentor begins forming tarsigns. It’s a long string of them. Unodha’s meaty antennae straighten in surprise, and she starts backing up.

“This must be—”

“Do you smell it, Unodha? Ever since you brought your hounds here… I’ve been filling the air with heavy flammable gas.”

Oocid watches her tarsi, and makes the connection at the same time as Unodha.

“—a suicide technique!” she finishes, while Oocid’s palps ghost the words, ‘Self​-​immolation.’

Emusa Rutabrood’s last words are thus: “⸢Ash Form: Funeral Pyre.⸥

And the world erupts.

An Overburn

The nymphs are blown back by the blastwave of the explosion. The beach becomes but ash and smoke.

“We need to run,” Oocid says.

The other nymphs are struggling to stand, recovering from the trauma of the blast.

Minutes later, they’re climbing up the slope they came down, but spare a glance behind them. The smoke and flames are clearing.

There’s two immediately conflicting facts.

A new pit yawns deep into the shore — like Unodha had used a sand form technique to dig in and weather the blast. But there are two charred bodies above ground, one lying atop the other.

The worst is confirmed after a dread moment of watching. The rise and fall of an abdomen.

More than that: the back and forth of mandibles working to chew. Unodha, clinging to life, has the mentor’s entrails in her mouth and devours them.

After swallowing, more of her moves. We saw the prelude of this when she transformed the beasts. She swells, muscles crawling to life across her husk of a body and attaching to limbs, like a colony of worms wriggling and then biting down.

A mewling hound, caught at the edge of the blast, ambles over. It lies down, and Unodha rips out its throat and starts to eat it. Blood gushes and splashes all over her, and this just accelerates the restoration.

The nymphs start climbing again, faster, but it’s not enough.

By the end, Unodha looks more canine than mantid. The red flesh covers most of her. From her side, where an imago might have nonfunctional wingcases, instead two limbs unfold or evert, born of liquid muscle and skin.

You could call it a pair of bat wings, or gaunt claw arms, and neither would be incorrect.

The bane begins to step toward the ridge.

Oocid looks at the nymphs with him, and makes a calculation.

“Fihra, Ooliri, Yugen, with me. We’re fighting.”

“What?”

“No way she’s at full power after all that. We’ve still got soldier pills in us. Let’s go.”

“What about me?”

Oocid smiles, but something’s missing from it. “It is the duty of the Windborne Wardens to defend you. Remember that.”

He lets go, and slides down the slope.

Fihra goes next. Then the pawns.

Awelah almost follows. Then Fihra gives her a look.

Awelah and Makuja climb up to the top of the ridge and with how close Unodha now stands, team nineteen is in no position to see those whom they’re defending.


The nymphs stop even as Unodha is approaching, suddenly overcome.

It’s overwhelming. Standing before this monster. Yawning, incongruous maw of teeth. Serrated claws. Mass far beyond what a mantid frame should support. Blood crawling. Eyes that are the eyes of death.

“This feeling…”

“Killing fear. A will to maim and destroy so powerful it spills out, becomes palpable. Enough to paralyze the weak,” Oocid says.

“But it can’t stop us! We are Windborne!” Fihra yells and takes a step forward. The others, inspired, follow her example.

It’s dark on the battlefield. Lingering smoke hangs above them, casting shadows over them all.

At the front, Fihra engages with sword, and Oocid with his staff. Each is able to fend off either of the fiend’s wing​-​claws.

The pawns make to encircle her, attack from her undefended flanks.

It’s an error. Unodha spins. Her hindlegs kick out, and claws dig into Yugen. You can see her gullet emerging, severed, from her thorax. Muscles spill out alongside everted tracheae still flaring, trying to convey breath. Her dorsal nerve is cut, and she cannot move. She falls, never to rise.

The monster’s forelegs, though, are reaching for Ooliri. Tarsus wraps tight around his neck and lifts him up. Oocid swings down with his staff, but Unodha’s arm could be a stone pillar for all the difference it would make. A wing​-​claw brushes him aside, carelessly, leaving long gashes.

Two limbs reach for Ooliri, as a wing​-​claw goes to the ground to support her. One grabs hold of his arm, pulling on it, and another is swiping for his abdomen, now hanging beneath him.

Even in this danger, there’s a part of him still analyzing. Why is she doing this? It doesn’t seem the quickest way to kill me. Oh.

She’s playing with us.

It’s the last thing Ooliri can think before his mind is lost to fear and pain. He feels something tearing in his arm, and wishes that was the worst. The monster is clawing at his abdomen — it’s reaching, punching, in.

Ooliri feels his heart.

So does she.

Then she pulls. Rips the nymph’s heart out of his abdomen. Holds the bloody, bouncing thing for a moment while his brother watches. Squeezes it.

Eats it.

Oocid roars and charges at the fiend. He gets one swing and a sick crunch of his staff before a single full​-​force punch to the head sends him flying back sliding and scraping across the ground. He doesn’t get up. His dear older brother doesn’t move.

Ooliri, still watching with darkening vision, tries to say something and cannot. He’s dropped, a discarded toy.

Fihra is the last one standing. She holds her sword high against the monster, undaunted like a hero.

“How does it feel to be the best of your sorry lot?” Uhodha gargles, barely intelligible. “To be the best, and still worthless? I don’t need to kill you. If you run screaming, I will let you escape.”

Fihra can only articulate two words. “You’ll pay.”

“I won’t.”

Fihra steps forward. She thrusts and sinks her sword into bleeding meat. Dodges around wing​-​claws. Ducks under forelegs. Steps over kicks.

She truly is the best of team nineteen.

It’s not enough. She’s a wretch, and her opponent fought a fiend mentor while outnumbered and lived.

Tired, injured, and down her primary weapon, Unodha is still bigger, stronger, faster. Better.

She makes a sign. Fihra trips; the ground had sunk beneath her.

The nymphs lies there. She feels the killing fear reach a crescendo. She knows she’s lost. She sobs once.

Then Unodha’s leg comes down like a judge’s hammer on her head, and then her skull and eyes and brain is so much gore. Fihra is dead.

Ooliri, shadows dancing across his vision, watches this. Did his vesper have something to do with why he was still hanging on?

The last thing he sees, before a final darkness takes him, is Makuja climbing down the slope and slinking up to Unodha.

She doesn’t attack — neither do. Makuja offers clothing.

It’s Awelah’s cloak. A single drop of blood falls from it.

Makuja looks up. Unodha nods at her.

And Ooliri watches her walk off with her master.

Then he does not see, and does not think.

A Servant, a Scholar, a Scion

Makuja is a good tool. She does what has to be done. When it requires violence, yes, but also when it requires patience.

That’s what sets her apart, she thinks. She isn’t just loyal. She’s clever.

Unodha’s other pawns are dead, and she lives. Why? Because she had a plan. She didn’t just join the others in marching like ants to their deaths.

She found refugees. Instead of killing them, she gained their trust, traveled with them. They would lead her to others. And when a great many refugees had banded together, there would have been a slaughter, and her master would have been proud of her plan.

And then she had shown up. The Asetari. It was doubly important to ensure no Asetari lived. But she’d seen her fight the other pawns. Makuja wasn’t a fighter. Makuja was an instar younger than her, half a head smaller. The Asetari had reflexes, and slept a weightless sleep, held up by nightmares.

Makuja wasn’t just violent, she was patient. So she waited. For the Asetari’s sake she took a safe blow that bled much but wasn’t terribly threatening. (That pawn had been surprised, hesitant, when he saw whom he was hitting.) This would gain the Asetari’s trust, let her get closer. She hadn’t expected the Asetari to care, to bandage her up just like she did. Makuja ought to kill her just for that.

She tried to let her fellow pawns escape when they raided their camp. But they were too afraid of Unodha to plan more deeply than taking the first opportunity they saw, every time.

She thought they’d learned a lesson, when they came to her with the plan of luring the Asetari out, into a trap. It nearly worked — and then that Windborne pawn showed up. Confused her with lies. She killed both of her fellows — at this point it was for the good of her and her master. It was just making things chaotic, keeping them around. A blade should never cut its wielder — her master always said that. This mission had been a test, and she decided they had failed.

Success had been down to her, in the end. As always. But the Windborne banes made her plan intractable. How was she to kill the Asetari, when two of this ‘team nineteen’ were on watch every night?

But her master always made things simpler when she came around. Now they were all dead.

even the one with the goggles, who pretended to care about everyone —

Now they were all thankfully dead. Makuja had served her master well. She was a good tool.

She had the Asetari’s cloak to prove it, fresh with the blood of her master’s prey.

Unodha takes it, and sniffs it. She regards her tool with a slow nod, frowning.

“Why not bring me her head?”

Because her knife had trembled even as she finished it, and you would have seen the imprecision and hesitation of her cuts.

“Beheading is slow with my tools of choice. Speed in my returning to you was essential. You suffered gravely in your battle.” Perhaps she could attend to her master’s wounds, for once.

The battle was over, and with the octopamine fading, she watched the muscles that had crawled over her master’s form retract and shrivel away. It had been an advanced stage of the myxokora manifestation — the wretched raptorials could only emerge in the heat of battle, when a vesperbane’s heart rate had elevated to extremes. To have encompassed so much of Unodha’s body…

“Will you survive?”

“Do not pity me. Did you sabotage your mission because you thought I was too weak to fight a couple of runts?”

No mission matters more than your master’s life. You told me that. “Forgive me, master. Shall I make camp and tea for you?”

“Do it. That shadowy ’cel claimed your target was the last of those fops. Let’s make sure.”

“We’re staying in Duskhold? It’s within mission parameters to return to our client now with what we’ve accomplished.”

Unodha grunts as she starts moving. She bends by the corpse of that ashbane she fought, retrieving something rectangular, untouched by the flames.

Makuja keeps talking. “Our recruits are all dead. Your hounds are dead. Your bow is beyond repair. You’re on the edge of death. No mission matters more than my master’s life.”

“We’re staying in Duskhold. We’ve got a mission to do.” The words are stated, and it’s missing the characteristic growl of her master. It’s unlike her.

Makuja meets her eye, and see something she’s never seen there before. Not emotion, but dark lines flowing across her compound eyes. An inscribed pentagram. Or is it a trick of the shadows, the lingering smoke? It seems to fade.

The nymph follows the bleeding imago in silence. At length, they stop and the red and black nymph sparks a campfire, and bows before leaving to gather herbs.

She’s a quick study, and had familiarized herself with the flora of Duskhold in preparation for this mission. She can tell sweet creep apart from paralytic ivy. Gather the spiral roots without the blight​-​mites. Cut away the leaves of the red might, so similar to blood mint with deadly amounts of enervate.

While cutting the herbs, the force of her knife goes too far, and she draws her own blood.

A blade should never cut its wielder.


There is darkness.

When you die, there was nothing after. That’s why it was so scary — it was the ultimate loss of all that matters. Some, clouded by mysticism, believed in a fiery Welkin deep in the earth where the flames of all our ancestors burn forevermore, and all were united and exalted. Some thought the umbral filaments were souls uplifted into the sky, to rejoin the stars and gods. Some thought the vespers themselves were our spirits reincarnated.

The only story father thought acceptable to believe was that, if someday a technique were devised to restore life to the lost, then there really was no death, only a long, uncertain sleep.

Ooliri’s thoughts are scrambled. He couldn’t help but think of metaphysics as the darkness came for him — but if he was still thinking, it hadn’t come, had it?

“Wake up, little brother. Please, I have to speak with you.”

Or maybe there was something to the story of the Welkin?

“Oocid? How…? Is this the pure branch?”

“No… A technique… I saved you. I always have your back, little brother.”

“I watched you d​-​die.”

“I miscalculated. Unodha… stronger than I thought. I faked death. She must not have been concerned enough to check.

“How am I…?”

“Your heart… you didn’t have one anymore — so I gave you mine.”

“But… that means…”

“Yes. Only the vespers are keeping me alive, now. I know a little bit about venomotion, but I don’t have much arete left. So this is goodbye.”

“No!”

“Take my bag. You know what’s in it, how important it is. What we promised. It’s up to you to bring her back now. Keep father’s notes. And our secret objective… our real mission. Find the surgeon, father’s colleague. They escaped Duskroot before…”

“But… I can’t. You’re the genius. So you have to live. I can’t figure it out on my own.”

“Elders… family shouldn’t have to bury our youngers. You have more life ahead of you.”

“No! You’re better. Take your heart back, stupid brother.”

“Don’t want it. How could I live without you? Love you too much…”

“How could I live without you?”

“You have longer to learn… Remember how to hold your baton, Ooliri.”

“Please. You did all this… there has to be some technique you can use to save yourself now.”

“Maybe… but shush. You can’t hold your baton if I don’t get to work on that arm with the time I have left.”

Ooliri’s eyes pale as his vision fades to sleep.

When he again awakes, Oocid’s corpse is lying beside him, holding him, in death.

There is a bloody hound that must have attacked him, leaving a gaping wound in his abdomen. The hound is still, dead — or if it was alive, Ooliri didn’t want to wake it. Not yet. He’d come back for Oocid’s bag. For now… he didn’t know if could he bear to disturb him — his body. He reaches out as if to touch, then gives a startled look down at the arm he lost.

It’s not gone — or rather, it’s replaced? Healed? It feels different. It’s all bandaged up, like a cast, and beneath it… skin and bone, no chitin.


There is a deeper darkness.

“A new spirit enters the astral plane — and here I thought I was the last. Greetings, Asetari.”

The speaker is a shadow in the form of a mantis. Its head leans closer, peering at the new arrival.

“No… Awelah? No, you were our hope. You cannot have…”

It takes a moment for Awelah to move her palps, reach for her voice in this new form. “I was betrayed.”

“You were foolish. I thought… I thought I had done enough to secure you a path… Maybe I have. Every child of a noble clan is born with the vespers. Pray to them now. Only the kindling dream can save you.”

“Will this be my pharmakon rites?”

“Yes. You’ll have to fend for yourself, learn the ways of the chimerae without a teacher. Find one soon. Flourish, or the vespers will devour you whole.”

“Can I ask… is this the pure branch? Life after life?”

“No. It’s a technique your grandmother Uvema discovered. A way to preserve astral projections. If each member of our clan is a tree, and their projections the limbs thereupon… My tree is severed at the root. Dead. I will rot. I am just a memory. But here in the astral plane… the Asetari and our teachings will not die, even if we no longer live. But for that, we must have a living Asetari on the mortal plane. Begone, child. Survive. Avenge. Flourish.”

Awelah wakes up screaming. She has nightmares every night.

When the nymph awakes this time, she is not alone.

A Chimerical Hope

Everyone was dead.

Oocid. Madam Rutabrood. Mita. Yugen. Fihra.

And Awelah. Unless…

Ooliri had climbed up the ridge. With Makuja’s seeming betrayal, it shouldn’t be a surprise to find the pale nymph lying there, bleeding out.

Her cloak was gone.

A filament of enervation extends down to her body, trailing from the wisp​-​masses high above. It makes him quirk an antennae.

Ooliri sits, and his eyes pale in meditation.

There was no reason to expect this. But he had a feeling.

He’d done this same ritual yesterday morning. He’d withdrawn arete from the crypt of his one vesper.

And now…

Now he had multiple vespers. He was a vesperbane.

Make that three gifts from his brother, then. Why entrust all this to him?

But if he had his brother’s heart pumping blood, if this arm was the design of that medical genius…

Ooliri had watched him make the signs enough times. Centipede. Cricket. Mite. And so forth.

⸢Serum Form: Pure Healing Palm.⸥

Blood pools in his new hand. He feels a tug of what is not his will, and follows it. The blood brightens and clears to purity. He presses it to Awelah’s back.

Healing yourself with ichor is hard. Healing others is much, much harder. So much could go wrong. But Awelah is dead anyway.

The filament extending up to the sky fades to nonpresence. Awelah screams. Ooliri does not know if that means it worked, or didn’t.

Awelah’s eyes scramble for focus. She finds him sitting there. Antennae spiral defensively. She leans away. Her murmur is barely intelligible.

“Traitors…”

Awelah clasps her tarsi together into the seal of focus. Holds it for a moment, and when her tarsi release, the palms are covered in black nerve.

She nods once, and her gaze flickers to the clear liquid on his hands, albeit stained with hemolymph now. Awelah is wary, but this seems to confirm that she at least had one ally remaining.

“So we’re vesperbanes now.”

“Long awaited, and yet I find the circumstances… distressing.”

“Let’s make our first mission getting back at the ones who did this to us.”

Ooliri wants to say no. It was stupid. They would die. Just like the rest of team nineteen. But…

“Before he died, my brother told me what our mission really was. We need to find our father’s correspondent and” — this was inference — “help them decode his last research notes.”

Awelah waits, listening for more.

“I checked our mentor’s body. The notes aren’t there. I think Unodha has them.”

“She has my family’s cloak, too.” Awelah stands with a groan, and wobbles for a few moments.

Ooliri stands with her. “It’s not defeat until you fail three times. That’s how the stories go, right?”


A clear sky yawns above. The wisps are gone. It feels like something is ending.

The sun seeks darkness at the horizon. As it sets, the tone of everything warms, like the world had been set alight.

Makuja’s world had been set alight. She’d watched master burn in that warden’s suicide technique. She wonders how much of her had burned, in that conflagration. She wonders how much of her remains.

They sit at their camp. Unodha drinks her tea. She is condensing enervation, binding arete to replenish her reserves. Makuja sharpens her knives.

Their camp is not hard to find — they thought everyone else in a large radius was dead, and they’d be leaving soon. Two figures round the bend of a ridge — a familiar, vexsome pale violet and a gray against gold.

It seems they hadn’t been hard to track, either.

Unodha didn’t have her bow; Makuja hadn’t retrieved it.

Dutifully, she says, “Enemies incoming.” Doubtless the fearsome hunter her master was had already noticed.

“You should have brought me her head,” Unodha growls. “You told me you killed her.”

“She has returned to life, much like the nymph whose heart you set free.” Makuja grabs her other knife. “Shall we put these angels back in the grave?”

“Gladly.” Unodha takes the skin of tea and downs all of it. “Bitter. You should know better,” she murmurs.

Makuja smiles. “Allow me to spill your blood?” she requests.

Master arches one antennae.

“You do not have the arete left to manifest your myxokora. Nor your bow, nor your hounds. You have me, but my body is young and weak. I am an assassin, and with only my natural endowments, I will be of little use in this battle. With your blood, however, you can use ⸢Blood Wolf Howl⸥ and grant me strength.”

A moment, and then Unodha holds out a foreleg. Makuja stabs, and drinks. The wound closes itself.

In moments, Makuja feels the blood in every muscle fiber. It hurts.


Awelah and Ooliri arrive.

There’s no will left for posturing. It’s the dregs of two exhausted armies meeting, each disfigured by attrition.

Awelah has one word for Makuja. “Traitor.”

Indeed. How perceptive.

Ooliri has a proposal. “There’s still a possibility of an amicable resolution if —”

Unodha’s voice is not a growl. “Die.” Makuja watches closely, sees the shadow of a pentagram in her eyes. Her master seems to lose all swagger when it comes to this mission.

Her master lunges forward and the nymphs flinch back. She slams a leg into the ground and casts, ⸢Sand Form: Rising Ground.⸥

The earth in meters’ radius around them expands, granting them the high ground.

Master had explained to her the limit of this technique: it was just an air bubble supporting them. Excess weight would pop it. But would fresh pawns know that?

The mystery of her survival is joined by a new inexplicability. Awelah is a vesperbane; she claps her tarsi together, and casts, ⸢Umbra Form: Umbral Body Projection.⸥

A second pure black Awelah joins the first, but without the spear.

How can a nymph who was pawn yesterday cast such an advanced technique?

They rush in to engage Unodha, and the bane is moving substantially slower now.

Something has changed in the gray nymph. Ooliri closes in with so much less hesitation. And why should such a soft larva outdo her in that regard?

Time to play her part.

It’s with a rush of power that Makuja enters the fray. Her legs pump, and she darts forward. Her arms swing forward with weight. She breaks Ooliri’s baton swing.

Then Awelah claps and swings her foreleg and her shadow is rushing for her, faster than the pale nymph herself can move. Makuja dodges back, and its raptorial stab misses. Then she replies with a lunge forward, and stabs once, twice, three times with only her knife. The barrage unravels the projection, and it melts.

The blackness clings to the metal of Makuja’s knife, and it no longer reflects light.

When she blocks a swing of Ooliri’s baton with the knife, the metal bends. She drops the useless, degraded tool.

Awelah can do more than make projections. She holds out her palms and casts bane blast — but it’s nothing like her relative’s efforts. It’s more of a black sputtering, spitting enervate at Unodha.

A scrape of master’s raptorial spines across the gray nymph’s thorax leaves a gash. Then he makes a sign and slowly runs a bandaged arm over the wound, messily closing it.

Makuja evaluates the tide of this fight. Her chance to end it would be soon.

It comes when Awelah stops, stabbing down on her master’s foot, briefly rooting her to the spot.

The red nymph takes a deep breath.

Makuja does what needs to be done. She is not just violent, but patient.

Last thoughts flicker through her mind.

A blade should never hurt its wielder.

No mission matters more than her master.

Makuja is a good tool, and does what needs to be done. But whose needs? Who would wield Makuja, when this was all over?

Makuja crouches with the great power that hurts her legs, and she leaps. She flies like an arrow and buries her knife to the hilt in what was her master’s neck.

Unodha roars, and there’s something uncertain in it.

“Your tea was poisoned. This fight was over before it began.”

Makuja wasn’t done. The two former pawns have halted in confusion. The nymph pulls herself onto Unodha as she begins to struggle. Reaches for her abdomen, retrieves her knife and stabs again. Begins to dig.

Feels her heartbeat accelerating.

Makuja grabs Unodha’s entrails, rips them out and bites down.

Blood loss gets to the huge bane, and she shudders and crumbles. Makuja turns to face the nymphs as she feels something squirm in her gut.

And now, to inherit. She’s seen her master do this.

⸢Vesper form: Chimerical Sacrifice.⸥

Three nymphs’ eyes pale in unison.

Two entities, wriggling in dark crypts, so tiny, yet growing, reaching out —

— through an endless procession of profoundly rotting corpses, worm​-​colonized and fungus​-​rooted, the gravestones like pillars upholding realms —

— through a grand bat with wings like the heavens above, exalted above every last thing in existence, his head a fractal of horned antlers like a great lord’s crown —

— through a small mantis kneeling supplicant, whose eyes are spirals and tarsi are joined in prayer, whose back is wingless before bat wings climb free and there is kneeling no longer, never again —

Appraisal.

Agreement.

Investment.

Agreement.

⸢Vesper form: Pharmakon!⸥

When lucidity returns, two nymphs look upon bloody Makuja, standing atop the corpse of her teacher, her guardian, her master.

She hyperventilates. From her side, liquid muscle erupts. It sculpts itself into a form broad and long, tipped with claws.

The two nymphs look upon Unodha’s heir.

Awelah moves first, forelegs reaching for the projection mass Makuja earlier dispersed, compelling it to reform.

A new battle unfolds. From a distance, it resembles the first fight of the day in miniature.

Awelah flanks her with her projection. Makuja surges. She feels the blood in her muscles. It doesn’t pain her. It’s not her masters’ power now, but hers.

It’s a dance. Wing​-​sweeps meet with spear thrusts. Myxokora meet with projections. Makuja meets with Awelah.

One thrust lands true, and Makuja leans into it. Awelah is forced to readjust her grip. She now holds her spear just beneath the head as Makuja closes to extreme close range. Myxokora hug Awelah, box her in, and Makuja stabs and stabs with her knife.

A bane blast and a touch from a projection frees Awelah from the hug, but dangerous proximity is inescapable. So she leans into it. The next beat of the fight is a climax.

Makuja’s knife is just under Awelah’s head.

And Awelah’s spear is right against Makuja’s neck.

But it’s not restraint holding them back.

It’s Ooliri.

“Stop it. We won.”

Awelah stares at Makuja for a moment, then pulls away.

“Your eyes,” the pale nymph says. “There’s light behind them now. Something’s lit a fire inside you. You really needed it.”

“And you… I see reflection, faintly. A deliberation of impulse. Perhaps you’re learning patience.”

“Are we…” It’s Ooliri speaking. “…allied? Were you against Unodha all along?” They look at the corpse. Unmoving now, they finally get a look at her antennae​-​band: a copper plate with two nested, concave hexagons, thinly trisected. The insignia of the Bloodweb Stronghold.

“I loved my master.”

“Why?” “How?”

Beside her, Makuja’s myxokora are falling limp, and squishing as they invert back into her. She says, “Years ago… the poorest of my village were stricken with a blood plague. Unodha and her apprentice came through on a journey, but had no reason to help us. Eventually, I convinced them to heal my family and my neighbors… the cost was I would be taken, as per the law of heroic exchange. So I became her pawn. She taught me strength. She gave me everything.”

Awelah latches on to one element in that, as if hunting for lies. “Unodha has an apprentice? Where are they?”

“She had. They were the one who healed the plague. But one day, after I had trained with them for seasons, they disobeyed an order master gave. So my master… disabled them and ordered me to… strike them down, to prove my loyalty. I was loyal.”

“I — I’m sorry,” Ooliri says.

“Don’t be. Traitors deserve death.”

“But you… your master…”

“Unodha betrayed herself, in the end. It’s what she would have wanted, were she in her right mind.”

Awelah hisses. “You betrayed me, nearly killed me. You tried to kill me.”

“I failed. My — my hand lacked the confidence to strike you down.”

“What does that change? You. betrayed. me.”

“Your trust was freely given. I freely discarded it.”

“So it doesn’t count?

“A traitor forsakes their sworn ideals. I swore you nothing.”

“So swear you will atone for what you’ve done.”

Makuja pauses as if considering. “Why should I?”

Ooliri says, “We have to stick together? We’ve each lost all else.” It doesn’t win her over. “What do you want, Makuja?”

“Want… My master’s will was not her own. She would want me to find out why, and strike it down. So I must know what all of this was for. Who wanted this?”

At the mention, Ooliri looks down and sees something. Emerging from the dead bane’s head, a thorned black stem beneath an orb glowing baleful red like a terrible rose. A shadow, as of a snake’s pupil, splits the orb.

“Whatever is behind this, I think this is our first clue.”

“You mentioned research notes Unodha stole,” Awelah says to Ooliri. Glancing at Maku, “Did she seem interested in them?”

“She did retrieve a sealed object from the master warden’s remains.”

“The notes, the control of Unodha, and the eradication of Duskroot. It must all be connected. Someone wanted all of it. To find out who… we share that goal.” Awelah leans toward Makuja. “Swear loyalty to us, and we can work together.”

“You make it sound like we’re some organization.”

“We can be a team. United in the wake of Duskroot… Team Duskborn.”

“So be it,” Makuja says. “I shall serve.”

“Then where do we start? We can ask around, about whatever this thing is, about the surgeon or what happened in Duskroot… but I get the feeling that just leads to more people coming to kill us.”

“The roaches,” Makuja says. “They were heading to a village to the east. They say it’s blessed by a guardian who shapes the earth. I suspect this means a powerful vesperbane lives here, on the border between Duskhold territory and Windhold territory. Perhaps they’ll be willing to teach us the arts of vesperbanes, or grant direction.”

“Or we could just report back at Solaroch,” Ooliri notes. “I’m registered as a pawn of the wardens.”

“And get picked off on the long road over? And let everyone know what happened, who we are? Whatever enemy we have is powerful, and subtle. We need to… we have to hide, and become stronger.”

“So that’s our first mission as Team Duskborn, isn’t it?”

Makuja nods. “When the reaper cuts away at foliage, only the toughest stems resist. So many have been cut down… but we remain.”

“That already makes us strong, doesn’t it?”

“Or lucky.”

And so, team Duskborn escape the doomed land amidst the ruins of Duskroot, and journey further to the east. The sun, having gone to the darkness at last, leaves them. Night has engulfed them all, and dreams elude.

Yet the omen of dawn remains.

End of Arc 1: A Duskroot Exodus

Lingering Clouds

Premonitions of a storm haunt the three nymphs lost in northern Windhold. The sun, which had abandoned them after their defeat of Unodha, returns now fleetingly. Clouds amass from the horizon to the dome of the sky, and rays of light shine fadingly through till the east is but a blurred region of rosy light.

Even that is muffled further by thin banks of fog, but the warming air gradually banishes them to mere humidity. By the time Awelah awakes, it is only vaguely misty and visibility is fair.

The pale nymph lifts violet antennae and looks around. Then she bolts up.

She immediately rouses Ooliri, her tone whispered and suspicious as her eyes dart around their camp, a firepit ringed by hammocks suspended on the fungal columns of a metataxite. There’s her and the gray nymph. Her folding spear is already in her tarsi and she levels it at a sudden motion in a wall of ferns. It’s nothing but the wind. She turns, and has to stifle a jump at the appearance of the red nymph. Makuja flits into the camp with ghostly steps. She got this close, and Awelah hadn’t heard her, hadn’t seen her.

The pale nymph jabs the spear at her once, then scowls when the red nymph doesn’t dignify her threat with concern. Makuja has gathered materials — tubers and fruiting bodies — and sets about making breakfast. The nymph moves like she’s used to waking at dawn, used to making meals.

Ooliri eyes everything she’s gathered with extended antennae and bright eyes. “This was thoughtful, Makuja.”

Awelah frowns. “We need some meat to go with it,” she says. “I can hunt a longicorn.” It’s more impressive than the other nymph’s weed​-​plucking, she thinks.

“You’d take too long. I gathered grubs.” Makuja points at some slender forms pinned by needles. The chitin of her fingers is black, like natural gloves. It’s hard to see the hemolymph on them.

Awelah gives something of a growl or grunt. “Fine.” There’s not room for arguing. The nymphs are ravenous hungry; even the pale mantis shakes from weakness. Ooliri tasks himself with taking down their hammocks, while Awelah stalks away from the camp. In this brief moment alone, we see her start to practice her spear jabs.


Their meal is served on flat rocks. Ooliri is poking skeptically at ghastly black mushroom caps.

Awelah’s mandibles open in surprised recognition. “Venjaspirals?” When the other nymph looks over curious, she continues. “All the older nymphs started eating these as soon as they made wretch. My cousin, she hated these.” Then recognition on her face turns to numb shock, and then folds into anger. A tarsus goes to grip her spear, but neither of the other nymphs were target of her offense — or defense. She doesn’t raise the spear, just holds it like a talisman.

Ooliri frowns, eyeing Awelah in sympathy — but he never figures out what to say, and limply returns his gaze to the mushrooms. “I was always told to avoid these. That I might die… or at least it’d be painful.”

“For the laity.” Awelah’s voice is flat, mistakable for frustration. “They are poisonous. But that poison is enervate.”

And then Ooliri gets it. “Which is unpalatable for most creatures, but not a vesperbane with growing umbracoils.” Ooliri sighs, and then looks up. “We really are vesperbanes now, aren’t we?”

“It only took losing everything.” Awelah says it, but the sentiment could have come from any of them. The statement’s punctuated by silence, moments stretching until Ooliri clicks his mandibles.

“We should pay our respects to them, somehow.”

“Bury them, you mean?” Awelah chews on the thought for a moment, then. “No. We need to keep moving.”

“But—” He gets interrupted, and not by the Asetari:

“No, we go back and we bury them. Not for sentiment, but for practicality. If the bodies are hidden, it’s that much harder to piece together what happened, slowing down anyone else who comes after you.”

“And my brother, my teacher, everyone… they were vesperbanes. They had supplies that could help us.”

“Fine, but we’re not making a long ceremony of it. We go back, we get it done, then we’re back on the road.”

Makuja gives her a wide​-​antennaed look that’s so innocently curious it could only be an act. “You don’t care about the dead, Awelah?”


“Something about this feels disrespectful,” Ooliri murmurs.

He watches as Awelah puts on Firah’s antennae​-​band. The cloth had hemolymph on it, along with bits of her shed setae.

“We’ll raise less questions this way. Without antennae​-​bands, we look like unsavory defects.”

“We could always just pretend we’re of the laity. Easier to go unnoticed that way, even.”

“If I have to kill someone, I shouldn’t be tried like a common mantis.” Makuja’s voice came from farther away, as she left footprints in the ash of the scorched lakeside, picking through the half​-​exploded, half​-​disintegrated remains of the fiend mentor, Emusa.

“And I don’t suppose I could offer not killing anyone as consideration?”

“The danger we’re in is not up to us.”

The scene has a dim buzzing ambience to it — snailflies by the swarm have found the bodies, and now stick to them, scraping at the meat with radulae. It won’t be long till their slug children were oozing around inside as well. Maybe they already were. Crows had found the bodies too, but had flown off when they arrived.

Makuja finds the headband, and pads back to the two nymphs. She hands the headband over.

“Wear it,” Awelah says.

“I want to wear my master’s.”

“We’ll raise less questions if we aren’t two Windhold banes traveling with a Bloodhold bane.”

Makuja bites her mandibles together, but she folds her antennae back and complies.

Ooliri wears Oocid’s old headband. “Now, I suppose, we get digging.”

“Would be less work to put them in the lake.”

Ooliri sighs. “Sure.” He gives the bodies another glance. “There’s spells for burying vesperbanes, for preserving and exhuming the vespers. None of us know any, do we?”

A pair of shaken heads. “Couldn’t they do it for themselves? The vespers, I mean. They’re the source of every spell, right? Shouldn’t they all know the burial rites or whatever they are?”

“Maybe.” It was noncommittal with the effect of a negative; if the vespers knew, they aren’t telling.

Swarms of snailflies burst away in a panic from the bodies while the living bend down to grasp them. Some fly poorly, and crash into eyes or soft chitin. Their sharp shell​-​wings come uncomfortably close to cutting.

For the older nymphs Oocid and Fihra, it takes Awelah and Makuja working together to carrying them to the lake. They put rocks on the bodies so that they sink beneath. The pawns are next, and Ooliri is staring at the lake depths for a moment. “My father… he was insistent there were no gods, no heaven, no metaphysics to this world beyond the vespers’ will. He did tell us about the empyrean, the welkin, the transmigration cycles, but wanted us to decide for ourselves. Oocid didn’t believe either.” He turns to Awelah, then Makuja. “What about you two? Do you believe?”

Awelah shows her mandibles. “There are no gods, because we killed them. Mantids don’t serve any higher power than ourselves and those we care about. That was — what my mom said. I… do believe in something after life, I think. I have to.” She’s remembering her dream​-​like visit to the astral plane, and she’s remembering the stories and legends and rumor of that same place among her clanmates. “Not for everyone, though.” She’s not sure how much she should say, how much those outside the clan were allowed to know.

“It’s not about gods, or heavens,” Makuja murmurs. “I don’t remember any of that. Before I left, I knew about the fivefold natural order that united everything. Mantids were separated from it, but we could become one with it again, by living well.” She has a knife in her hand, and it’s not clear where she had hidden it. “But being a vesperbane, killing, is not how you do it.” There’s an odd cadence to her tone, when she stops talking but sounds like she would continue. Makuja isn’t one to sound unsure, and yet… At length, she concludes: “I don’t need an after if I fulfill my purpose.” Then, with a look to Ooliri: “Your teammates died with purpose.”

On the other side of her, Awelah is frowning. And she cuts in, “Better to live.”

“Yeah,” Ooliri said.

Without rebuttal, Makuja turns from the lake.

Awelah claps her hands. “Anyway, we’re done. Now let’s—”

“We’re not done.” Makuja is looking at Unodha’s hounds, who were easily as big as a nymph.

“You’re joking. They’re dogs.”

Ooliri is looking at the direhounds too, but for different reasons. Emusa’s last technique had left their flesh charred. They wouldn’t have to burn the direbeasts themselves, then. He looks closer, counts them. “Hey, weren’t there three hounds in the fight?”

“Yeah so?”

But Makuja is nodding. She glances to Awelah. “Two bodies,” she says slowly.

“It’s odd,” Ooliri adds as he crosses the weed​-​pocked sand behind Makuja, and starts tugging at one dog.

Awelah opens her mouth, but thinks for a second, and decides it’d be faster to just get this over with. It’s more work than the nymphs had been.

“They were good dogs,” Makuja says.

“They tried to kill us.”

“Exactly.”


Above them, the sun is slipping by a crack in the cloud cover and a ray of light shines through, briefly. The crows have returned in small number, and watch them from the hilltops. Tiny bubbles rise to the surface of the lake, air escaping the recently dead.

Awelah has been ready to leave. She pokes the sand with her spear tip, glaring at Ooliri. Beside her, Makuja throws flat stones at the lake, making them bounce a few times.

Ooliri sits with all the bags they recovered from the vesperbanes, and all the odd burned remains around Emusa, and he pulls things out and pushes things aside and he looks and looks. He’s rummaging. Antennae bounce erratically above him, and Awelah can smell his unease.

“What are you looking for?”

“A sealed parcel. Emusa or Oocid was supposed to have it and it was fireproof and it has to be here. It’s so important. A crow wouldn’t steal it, right? They couldn’t. Where is it where is it…”

Makuja watches him, and after a moment she puts her rock down and walks over. She extends her foreleg to Ooliri’s head, touching an antenna, and running along it from base to tip. His setae have a wavey pattern that flares wide, the strands longer toward the end. “Breathe three times,” she says. “What was it?”

“One of my father’s research journals. He’s gone and—”

“Like the one my mast— Unodha took?”

“No.” Ooliri produces what they recovered last night, the rectangular folio firelicked but intact. He cracks it open, and flips through the pages of wavey, cryptic symbols as if it showed something. “I can open this. It’s a cheap copy. A fake. The code was imitated, seemingly by someone who didn’t know what it means. But Emusa had this! Why? Maybe, maybe they thought, they knew someone would try to take it? But my brother said, it has to be here. It —”

“Look,” Awelah snaps. “We’ve already scoured the whole field. You’ve looked at everything we’ve recovered twice over. It’s not here.”

Makuja runs a tarsus along Ooliri’s antennae again. She looks up to the sky. “There might be a storm soon. It would be best if we could find shelter before then.”


Among their supplies, Team 19 had oil. Like direbeasts, it’s advised to dispose of a blood fiend corpse with fire, if there were no haruspex to perform true burial rites.

“There’s one last thing.” Ooliri stands away from Unodha’s body, and is looking at anything but. “Oocid mentioned it in his report. He dissected a direhound, examined its blood. It was strange. That’s how it figured out it was a bane’s work, of course. But more than that — more than he even shared with our mentor. Something about the blood felt… he used the word regal, and for everything I can’t figure out why.”

“This matters?” Awelah asks.

“It’s been bothering me, as I think back over the fight. Emusa acted like her final gambit would have killed Unodha. Yet she survived. Oocid thought she would have to be terribly weakened. Yet she still put up a fight. There’s… something more, explaining this. I want to know why.”

“We had the bad luck to be up against a A​-​rank maverick. A lot of banes die to these kinds of unpredictable… flukes. This world doesn’t always have a good or fair explanation.” Something in Awelah’s tone was the slightest bit strangled, saying that.

“But you have to be looking for one,” Ooliri says. She looks down.

“Unodha was B​-​rank.”

“Huh?”

“Her entry in the bounty books. It lists her as a B​-​rank fiend. She was never A​-​rank.”

Ooliri is nodding. “A B​-​ranker shouldn’t have survived all that.” The pale nymph frowns.

“So what?”

“We have some sealed glass jars and alcohol. I want to preserve some tissue samples and find someone to examine them. Or do it ourselves, when we’ve learned more.” Ooliri then glances to Makuja. “If that’s okay with you, of course.”

“A corpse is a corpse. She would have done the same, if she had reason to. We have reason to.”


Handling corpses, drowning and burning them, doesn’t exactly stoke the appetite, but it had been several hours by the time they were marching east again, and hunger was undeniable. Awelah hunts beetles and Makuja gathers flora and funga. Ooliri opts to accompany the red nymph, and she occasionally murmurs pointers.

Still, Ooliri refuses beetles and grubs. It garners quizzical glances from the other two. Every nymph knew mantids couldn’t live on plantmatter alone. It wasn’t hard to sneak after him when he left to do his own scavenging, particularly with Makuja’s stealth. Their suspicions and bafflement only deepen when they at last learn his preferred source of protein.

Ooliri liked to eat slugs.

“I don’t like them, okay. They taste fine, but you’re right. I do have to eat meat. But,” he trailed off. “I’ll put it this way: would you eat a mantis?”

Makuja looks thoughtful. “If there were no untrustworthy witnesses? Yes.”

Awelah had flinched and stilled at the question. “I have,” she says.

Ooliri had backed up at Makuja’s remark, and backs up further at Awelah’s. He looks between them, antennae spiraling up. He is smaller than them, and feels like prey.

Awelah glares. “I marched three days through a wispfall. If I didn’t… resort to cannibalism, I wouldn’t be here today,” she says. Then adds, “And you wouldn’t either.”

Ooliri sighs, relaxes his antennae, but doesn’t return to his closer position.

“What were you intending with your question?” Makuja asks.

“Well, would you eat a roach?”

No!” Awelah’s word is emphatic.

Makuja bounces her antennae in a shrug. “The answer doesn’t change.”

Awelah glances at her, antennae drawn back as if repelled. “What? Would you eat little nymphs too?”

Ooliri waves. “We’re getting off track. I just want to say that if eating mantids and roaches is bad, it’s also bad to eat lower insects.”

“They aren’t people,” Awelah says.

“But they still deserve to live. It still hurts when they die.”

Ooliri turns his gaze back to a fat slug he’d caught. It wriggles and struggles a lot like the grubs Makuja had caught.


The eveningstar, herald of worldly beauty, dances above the horizon, barely visible as the sun descends. It’s time to make another camp. This time, they lay out soft rolls on the rocky shore of a small creek. The wall behind it rises high like a shelter, curved almost like a shallow cave. They scare a snake out of its home here before settling in. Makuja makes a kind of stew. They stare up at the clouds and the stars are withheld from them.

Distantly, they hear a howl. Each nymph listens closely, and tries to find something unfamiliar in the sound.

It’s Awelah who speaks the dread in words. “Didn’t… didn’t all of Unodha’s dogs die?”

No one has an answer, and their dreams are troubled for that reason.

Direction Without a Path

With closure on the battle, and nothing but uncertain danger urging them on toward an uncertain goal, a certain lethargy grows in the nymphs. They sleep like corpses, and awake at midday, ravenously hungry. Meal after meal, their bodies never seem to regain strength, their stomachs fill like pits too deep to see the bottom of, and the soft parts of their cuticle hold a feverish heat as if coals burn within them. It gets worse, and days pass like this. Sometimes one of the nymphs doesn’t awake for most of a day, leaving the others to care for them.

It’s made all the worse by the sudden, causeless inception of it. They suspect parasites from meat, or poison from misidentified herbs. The feeling wanes like the waning of the moon. It’s Ooliri who finally puts a true name to the condition. Each of their bodies had new passengers; adaptation to the vespers felt like a terrible sickness.

What finally drives them from their cave by the stream bank is the weather. Either the clouds have taken to raining at night, or somewhere further upstream, but the flow comes faster, and wider, and soon they would risk waking up drenched — or drowning.

Walking away from the stream, they pass under the shelter of tall ferns. Makuja stops, prompting a glance from the other nymphs. She points at the ground.

Here, just meters away from where they slept, diamond shaped imprints sunk into the mud. The tracks of a maned wolf.

“Maybe we should have started moving sooner,” Ooliri says quietly. “We should put as much distance as we can between us and that…”

“No,” Awelah says. “We didn’t get this far by being cowards, did we? We need to get stronger. Train, and if that dog comes after us, it’ll regret it. It was almost dead, and prey isn’t plentiful this soon after a wispfall. It must be weak. It stands little chance.”

The gray nymph sighs. “Would you really say that after so many people underestimated Unodha?”

“Its master is dead,” she replies. She doesn’t linger on it, but Ooliri glances to Makuja, the red nymph’s face betraying no reaction. “It’s weak, and it’s alone. Didn’t you fight one of them? We’ll be fine.”

“I’d feel more fine if we weren’t alone in the wild. A little civilization around us, help to call out for.”

“And we don’t know where the nearest village is! You said your map burned up with your mentor.” A glance to Makuja. “And your team killed the roaches who knew where we were going!”

“We had orders.”

“Your new orders are to help us. And right now, that means training.”

Rather than acknowledge that, Makuja glances to Ooliri, whose antennae are spirals, his eyes cast away to the horizon.

Awelah put a tarsus over face, palps scraping. Why are you looking to him? He isn’t the team leader. He’s a wimp, she half​-​murmurs, half​-​thinks. She runs the tarsus back, sliding up to her antennae and running through her tangled fluff. “Remind me, why are we going to this village?”

“There’s rumor of a vesperbane they call Lady Earth​-​shaper protecting it. They could teach us.”

Awelah smiles the smile of a trapper. “And they will be more likely to teach us if we’re already strong. If we didn’t waste all our time running.”

Ooliri starts off, “That’s not what—”

But she cuts him off with a click. “Look, if you want to be safe,” she begins.

Then she claps her hands together. The seal of focus draws enervate into her hands, and they buzz with the power. She thinks of her family’s signature technique, and she feels her fingers moving, forming more signs. She was only passingly familiar with tarsigns, and never learned this sequence, but the flow came naturally, in the way every limb had a way it preferred to bend, in the smooth inevitably of a martial form. Of course, she thought, it’s my birthright.

⸢Umbral Body Projection!⸥ She steps to the side, leaving a shadow in the air. It darks as it fills with enervate, becoming recognizable as Awelah’s silhouette.

“You need me,” she says. “You need what I can do.” Then she turns away from the two nymphs. She gestures at her projection, and then it moves after her, propulsed more than it walks. “I’m going to find a clearing. You can… join me.”

As she walks away, Makuja and Ooliri share a glance.


Projection dispelled, Awelah stands half​-​crouched and punching a metataxite. It is about as thick around she is, but its lowest limb starts above her head. With each impact, the great lichen shakes a little. With a grunt, she takes one step back, then makes the seal of focus, followed another tarsign, as natural as her last sequence. Then:

⸢Bane Blast!⸥ Her foreleg is thrust out toward the central fungal column, and before it impacts, a burst of black knocks her arm back. The taxite is only slightly worse off; now, it shakes a bit rather than a little. Some of its chitinous protective layer flakes off and falls to the damp mossy ground. She frowns at this result, as if it offended her.

“How did you do that?” Ooliri asks. Even now, his voice is higher pitched than either of the girls.

They find the Asetari not long after she had left. This clearing is due to a giant tree that fell and rotted until it was just a crumbling line of woodchips, wreathed by former branches. It must have been the last relic of when this was a land for trees; now ferns and metataxites seize the ground. Hidden by fronds, they had watched briefly, unobserved.

When she doesn’t answer, he tries, “Were you… were you taught?”

“It comes naturally,” she finally says without glancing at him.

He looks down to his arm — the one without the bandages, and extends long antennae toward it. “….How?”

Awelah closes her raptorials, then walks away from her fungal foe. Standing before Ooliri, she demonstrates. “I make the seal of focus and then… I feel the rest of the signs like a pull, like my hands want to make them.” She sees the look the gray nymph is giving her. “Is that unusual?”

“It’s not how tarsigns work — not how I learned they work, anyways.”

“How do they work, then?” Awelah says. There’s a moment for Ooliri’s slight surprise to register in a small bounce of antennae, and then she is already defending. “I didn’t learn anything about nervecasting. I hadn’t been promoted yet.” There’s something in how she says that last word, some emotion. And it was different from the loss he had heard in her tone so many times before. Was there something… bitter, to it?

It’s then that he realizes there’s another expression on her face — she’s expecting a reply. “Um, could you hold out your midleg?” It’s a moment before she does. “And bend it?”

Then Ooliri chops at the joint, and the leg kicks out. It almost hits Ooliri in his thorax, but he leans out the way. “This is how Emusa demonstrated the concept. Did you kick out your leg?”

She frowns. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Exactly. It’s just how the body is wired. But imagine if you couldn’t control your leg at all, so if you wanted to kick, you had to hit it like that every time. That’s what tarsigns are. When there’s enervate in your hands, twisting them in special way sort of… tugs on enervate elsewhere in the body, in ways we haven’t learned to do directly, yet.”

Makuja had come beside Ooliri. Silent, she had been easy to miss. She speaks now, though. “Yet the signs are tugging on her instead.”

Awelah draws her raptorials together. “No, it’s more like I’m remembering them. Muscle memory, except I hadn’t done it before.” The longer this conversation went on, the more her tone seemed to waver with uncertainty. As if she’d never questioned it, and now that she does…

Then Makuja asks. “Can you do the signs again?”

It was a simple sequence. Focus seal, then a sign like two fists pressed together, then the dactyls of both tarsi splaying out flat.

Ooliri is nodding. “Bane Blast is one of the simplest spells. I think that’s the louse seal, which… compresses enervate, right? And then the basic release seal, which just… expels it.”

Makuja takes a step to the side, then runs through the same set. She holds the louse seal for a second longer than Awelah had, then on unseen cue, makes the release seal and points her foreleg at the ground. A spray of dirt announces her success. She plucks a worm from the pits.

“Wherever this memory comes from, it only needed to grant knowledge of the seals,” she concludes. She’s placing the worm in a compartment of her bag. Done, she looks at Awelah. “Will you show us the seals to your other spell?”

“No.” The red nymph, the killer, holds her gaze, and after a few seconds Awelah is twitching antennae. She stammers to add, “Would you even have enough enervate to cast it?”

“She has a point,” Ooliri says, nodding. “Emusa thought the most important thing for pawns to be learning, besides martial arts and tactics, was the arete binding ritual. It builds up the arete reserves necessary for more advanced techniques.”

Makuja glances down at the pit she’d made the very first time she attempted the spell, like that was counterargument enough. “I’ve been a pawn longer than you,” she says. It was true; he’d told them as much over one meal by their campfire. “I know how to bind arete.”

Ooliri inclines his head in concession.

Point made, she looks back to the last Asetari, gaze challenging her once again.

“I’m not teaching you the spell,” she says. “It’s my clan’s technique.”

The other girl doesn’t reply. Her antennae fold up, and no frown comes to her palps, as if that admission was victory enough. She looks to Ooliri. Rather, she looks to his bandaged arm. He’d revealed to them that it was soft skin and bones beneath them, not chitin.

“Can it channel black nerve?” she asks.

Uninterested, Awelah resumes her assault on the metataxite.


Makuja makes a ‘follow me’ gesture with the arm facing away from Awelah. She walks, and then waits for Ooliri on the other side of the clearing.

“We have to train to become stronger,” she says, her tone an echo of the last Asetari. “But sharing a spell that might make us stronger?”

“It… it’s not just that. Her clan is dead. I understand why she’d be protective of anything she has to remember them with.”

“Sentiment over practicality.” Makuja tilts her head. “Is that why she gave you time to mourn your teammates even when moving on would be more practical?”

Ooliri cast his eyes down. “I guess… but people have their own feelings and priorities. We should be understanding of them. What else can we do? She’s not going to stop caring about the things that are important to her if we tell her to.”

“We only have to agree there’s a problem. Then we can figure out how to solve it.”

“Solve it…” he murmurs, eyes paling a little as his palps brush the words, and he remembers who he’s talking to. He glances down at her black hands, as if checking her for weapons. “Don’t hurt her, Makuja. Please?”

A sigh. The red nymph shoots one last glance at the one out of hearshot. Then a more neutral look at Ooliri. “You didn’t answer my question,” she says, not answering his request.

“Huh?”

“Can your new arm channel enervate?” When the boy only frowns uncertainly, she commands, “Make the seal of focus.”

Haltingly, he lifts his hands, but it takes Makuja grabbing his wrists and slapping them together. After she does, he says, “Odd… there’s a coldness flowing in from my core — that must be the enervate. But I only feel it in one hand. In the other… it’s just my heartbeat.”

“The louse seal,” she continues.

He does it before she intervenes, and, getting the idea, he proceeds to make the release sign with his bandaged arm — and it flares rod straight in an instant, quickly and with force. It’s like a punch, and the impact hits the red nymph in her thorax. She’s knocked back a step, tips off balance, then catches herself.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to it was —”

Makuja tone is only confused. “That wasn’t Bane Blast.”

“No,” he says slowly, his confusion instead born of her lack of concern. “It wasn’t.”

“Do it again. With your other arm this time.”

Ooliri starts again. He doesn’t turn, so Makuja steps out of his way this time. When he throws out his normal arm, nothing happens. When the red nymph steps around to check, she reports there are black globules on the surface of his hand.

“That’s consistent with the spell, at least. I must have failed to cast it.”

“Try holding the louse sign for longer?”

“When I made it, my heart started beating faster. It scared me, so I stopped.”

“Your heart will beat faster in a fight, too.”

Makuja oversees a few more attempts from him, then leaves Ooliri to figure it out on his own. She goes a few paces away, though still closer to him than to the other girl, and takes out a knife. She feels its weight in her hand for a moment, then pulls back and throws it to impale an old fern. The projectile hits hard enough a spasm goes through the plants limbs.

Dreary and overcast as the day had started, the air is still and humid, so their actions bring a kind of life to the clearing, with these bits of motion. Makuja compares the shaking of her fern to that of the metataxite Awelah now trains against, which catches her eye from across the clearing.

She compares it in turn to another, slighter shake from a fernbush, sitting among a clump of the things a ways away from either of them, as she draws another knife. Her eyes settle on her target, and she weighs her knife. Then she stops.

Why was that fern moving? None of them had gone to that side of the clearing. Why, when the rest were still, so it could not be wind?

Her knife is gripped lightly as she moves. None of the nymphs glances over.

She finds the clues after a moment of staring. Folded leaves of one frond on the offending fernbush as if gripped, and far behind the clump, she saw crushed moss, widely spaced as if they had avoided stepping in the mud that separated them.

She picks up two rocks, and throws them in sequence; one to hit Awelah on the head and another to land beside Ooliri. Silently, she gestures for them to come over.

“Something was here,” she says. “Something was watching us.”

A Wasp and a Pond

The spear is quickly unfolding in Awelah’s forelegs. “Alright. Let’s kill it.”

Ooliri is glancing at the frond, the evidence for Makuja’s claim of someone’s presence. “It’s not the hound, is it? It wouldn’t have hands to grasp with.”

“If it’s a mantis, we can trade supplies or information.”

“Or get the drop on them,” Awelah says, “if they’re like you were.” There was a pause before she added the ‘were’.

The accused shakes her head. “Everyone from my team is gone.”

“So? Your orders were to kill everything coming out of Duskroot, that’s what you said. It’s a big territory, so whoever actually wanted it done, if they wanted it done, had to have hired more than just your boss. We’re in Windhold. You’re from Bloodhold. That’s on the other side of the mountains.”

“Well reasoned.”

“That’s a yes. I’m right,” she says. “Let’s go.”

The pale nymph stalks forward with her spear at the ready. Behind her, the two share a glance before following.

Flapping sounds from ahead of them; but it’s just birds startling. The rainfall has worms surfacing in the mud, making a feast of themselves. There are slugs among them, too, though they might soon have hope of growing wings, escaping with flight of their own.

Fresh ferns litter the ground here and there, suggesting whomever they pursued cut down the underbrush as they went.

“Stop,” Makuja calls out from behind Awelah.

The Asetari stops without complaint. With the keen focus of a present hunt, she cares only about finding her quarry, a goal the other nymph shares. The social implications of taking an order from her, and the accompanying annoyance that would inspire, feel as distant as old memories. They were tracking unknown prey; and the warning in Makuja’s tone was message enough.

“Dead snake,” is her elaboration.

It’s a big one, with more girth than their legs. It lies half​-​obscured by a cut fern. A stab wound cracks its skull like a bore hole, and a long, dark gash gutted the snake. It’s unclear which came first.

Awareness of the fact has been shared; but none of the nymphs know quite what to make of it. They go forward, through bends, around boulders and past thinning ranks of fronds.

Another carcass litters the way, this time a longicorn. Awelah doesn’t miss it, and Makuja walks up to the thing. She’s peering close at the wounds on the thing.

“Something’s off about it.”

She makes the focus seal, then skips straight to release. She presses a hand to the leg, and cold black nerve passes into it. She sees the chitin warp with deliquescence, flesh looking to implode.

They compare it to the slice wounds, and the similarity is apparent. “It’s liqued,” Awelah concludes. “They’re using enervate, whoever, whatever they are.”

“Shouldn’t we turn back?” Ooliri asks. “They left after watching us practice, so could they have been… scared? Didn’t want to mess with us?”

“If they’re scared, all the more reason for us not to be.”

They hear it before they see it. The bubbling flow of a stream, and not the one they’d camped by. Three nymphs emerge from the foliage, and their approach is stopped by a harsh buzz. A moment, and they realize it’s intelligible as speech.

“Ztalking an unzeen being, one leaving only death in wake. Yet you find it wize to purzue?” Some quality of the voice renders it hard to track where it’s coming from.

“Show yourself,” Awelah says.

“Very well…”

A sword flies up out of the creek, piercing high into the air. All of the nymphs look up to track it, tensing as if in threat.

It’s a sleight of hand. The weapon arcs and falls to earth, where a bug now stands, their arrival entirely missed. The blade is buried halfway in the mud, but the bug pulls it free, and not a trace of dirt remains on the unreflective metal.

The head is yellow and black, with traces of orange fuzz starting on its thorax, but this is obscured by its garb. The bug wears armor of studs and plates, but rather than leather lying beneath, it looks like layers of… paper? Black lines trace over the paper in intricate, unrepeating patterns. The armor doesn’t add much to her bulk, and if the mantids had been imagos, they’d outsize her. As it stands, the bug is eye level with them while on six legs — five, rather, as she brandishes the sword, the rapier, and stares with dark eyes. A euvespid.

“What do you want?”

“To be unthreatened, unbothered.” She emphasizes with a single stab. “You are but larvae before me. Begone.” Like a mantis, euvespids speak with stridulation of palps, close enough to be barely intelligible, as if through a thick accent or speech impediment.

“Why were you watching us?” Ooliri asks. “What are you doing here?”

“Turn back. Leave. I will not warn you again.”

“We are vesperbanes,” Awelah says. “I think we should be making the threats here.”

“I have read from book of Mother Zhadow. Wisdom of her pages exceeds your vile chimerae.”

Hearing this, Awelah tightens her grip on her spear and settles into a stance. Seeing this, Makuja palms a pair of knives. Seeing this, Ooliri unholsters his baton.

The euvespid watches in stillness for a few seconds. Then, “It would zeem my wordz are not heeded. Hear my actions, then.”

Instantly the bug flashes forward at Awelah. The mantis throws herself away just in time to only escape with a gash. Putting a stride of distance between her and the euvespid, she starts making tarsigns as her foe recovers.

Too slow, Makuja thinks. The euvespid recovers far faster than Awelah counted out, and Makuja steps forward to buy her ally time. But she has two knives, and the euvespid has a sword. At her approach, the euvespid interrupts a thrust aimed at Awelah, stabbing the rapier at Makuja. She deflects it with a knife, but a euvespid imago has so much more muscle to put behind it. She’s pushed back.

Ooliri steps forth to assist her. His baton swing distracted their foe for a moment; that’s how long it takes for her to grab the baton after a missed swing, pulling Ooliri toward her and then kick him back with middle legs. His legs buckle and he’s down on the ground.

Then a chill passes over them all: ⸢Umbral Body Projection!⸥ Awelah had finished her signs.

Awelah’s projection holds a spear (had it before?). At a signal from its creator, it jabs it at the euvespid. She doesn’t try to parry, and deftly avoids the enervate construct. Committing to that dodge gives Makuja an opening, and she pounces, knife slashing out.

It barely makes a sound against the armor, the force of her blow sapped as if repelled.

When her recovery is complete, the euvespid has something new in her offhand: an unrolling slip of paper. She slashes her dactyl across it as if striking a match.

⸢Wasp Art: Aura Storm!⸥ Lines on the page thicken with unearthly black and race across the paper — at the very end, they give rise to a kind of plume of smoke without color or mass, just a darkening of the light that passes through it.

It looked… not unlike the space that existed right before Awelah’s projection ‘filled in.’

The shadow flows toward the umbral projection, and Awelah’s spellform undulates, as if waves rocked its surface. The construct loses cohesion and starts to collapse, and like a failsafe triggered, it starts to drift back toward Awelah. On instinct, she reaches out toward it, and touches the unstable mass with a tarsus. Then the blackness flows back into her, like blowing a bubble in reverse.

The euvespid says nothing, but Awelah snarls, and lunges for her. It’s a fool move, as shown by the bug merely lifting its blade. Awelah arrests her moment to keep herself unimpaled. The pale nymph’s reply is a stab with her own spear. The euvespid knocks it aside, and now they’re pushing weapons against each other.

Awelah is stronger than Makuja, or maybe she just has better leverage, because she contests the euvespid’s strength.

What happens next depends on your perspective.

Awelah sees the euvespid shift to the side, as if to seek a better position to push against her. The mantis leans forward to punish this, and the euvespid relents, giving ground Awelah eagerly seizes as she hears a loud, hissing voice.

Makuja sees the euvespid doing something with the legs obscured from her ally’s view, and then a piece of paper drifts to the ground. She tries to call out a warning, but the pale nymph is already rushing forward.

The euvespid lifts a foreleg, and snaps, the middle and opposing dactyls of her tarsus rubbing together. It’s a tiny sound, immediately overshadowing by Awelah crying out.

⸢Wasp Art: Threefold Binding—Activate!⸥The mantis is pulled to the ground by an unseen force, as three ropes spring from beneath her — ropes which could not have been present in the undisturbed ground.

Awelah is stuck there, and the euvespid turns her eyes toward Makuja.

By now, Ooliri has recovered, standing up and drawing his foretarsi together into focus.

“No. Be ztill, larva, and fight no more.”

Ooliri glances at Awelah, and lowers his forelegs. The frown on his face and droop of his antennae make it clear that the inaudible brush of his palps as he looks at the red nymph is ‘I’m sorry.’

Makuja stands alone against the euvespid.

If only she had something to turn the tables. She looks down at her sides. Nothing happens.

Makuja is still holding her knives, her mind still running to think of some way out. But the euvespid starts talking.

“Pitiful dizplay. Even curzed and parazitized, you are no more threatening than a zmall bird. We zeek to be unthreatened, and I am zatizfied. You may approach my miztrezz.” The euvespid attends to Awelah, moving at her with quick darting steps, and touching a dactyl to the paper beneath her. ⸢Deactivate!⸥ The ropes retreat, and Awelah can pick up her spear.

She turns once more to the euvespid, gripping tightening, and her intent is easy to read.

The wasp lifts a leg, her tarsus holding a page pointing at her. An impulse of massive force hit the nymph, and she is sliding across the ground, mud decorating her cloak.

“I told you I am unthreatened.”

“Who are you?” Makuja asks.

“What is this power?” Awelah speaks haltingly from the ground.

“I am Klepé. I am a writer.” The euvespid starts to walk off.

“Seals. You’re a sealscribe,” Ooliri brushes. He glances at a tilting Awelah, and explains, “The euvespids have recipes for special paper and special ink, and draw circuits of enervate. You,” he asks, “can you — could you teach us?”

“A cannibal who wishez to read book of Mother Zhadow. To mix her wisdom with parazitez. A very very dangerouz thing.” Klepé’s tone had gotten lower, the buzz harsher until it was hardly intelligible as Panthecan. “No. Never again.”

Awelah is picking herself up off the ground. “Are you Lady Earth​-​shaper?”

The wasp’s wings flutter, as if from some kind of excitement. “Of course not. Do you think your kind would beztow such an honor on mine? To a ztinging wazp? No. Ridiculouz.”

“You mentioned a mistress,” she says “are they the Earth​-​shaper? Could you take us to them?”

“Where do you think I am to go? Follow me, larvae.”

Ooliri looks to Awelah, and then to Makuja. “Should we follow them? We still don’t know what they want, and we’d be at their mercy.”

“It could kill us either way. That kind of power… let’s at least see if we can have any of it.”

“Euvespids are sapient, Awelah. They’re not an ‘it.’ ”

She could kill us, then.”

“Are they a she? Eusocials don’t… have babies unless they’re the queen, and the ones that… give the babies tend to stay around the queen, so the rest are kind of… neutral? That’s what I read.”

“She could be a queen,” Awelah replies, brushing some mud off her cloak.

“Well, they aren’t sitting on a throne with a paper castle up around them, so…”

“That armor might as well be as impenetrable as one.”

Makuja interrupts. “We could just ask.”

“Oh right.” Ooliri darts forward, closer to the wasp leading them. “Are you a boy or a girl? Or neither? What’s your gender?”

“My what?”


A pond ripples atop a hill, down which waters flow softly toward the creek. The ‘master’ sits at its shallows, a wrinkly brown lady whose amadou dress is dirty with splashes of mud. Above her head, her thinning antennae are pale as if from faded pigment. A plain black cloth wraps around her compound eyes. At the edge of the stream, she is digging out clay.

There’s no reaction to their approach.

“Um, madam? We don’t mean to startle you —”

“Startle?” The lady laughs. “I could feel you coming for a hundred paces.” She has stopped her digging with a little trowel, and waves at the euvespid. “Don’t mind Miss Klepé. The little one has a habit of attacking anything that comes near me. She meant harm, but you have her respect now.”

“Respect? She called us pitiful.” Awelah grinds out the word.

“Not killing you is how she shows affection.” She picks up her trowel again, and pierces the clay. “Now if you mind, I don’t have the time left on this plane to chitchat with eighth instar nymphs.” Despite the dismissal, her tone is light and carefree. “So leave me. Go play ball or somethin.”

Purple antennae flare and golden antennae extend outward; indignation and curiosity, respectively, at her guessing their age without even being able to see them.

“We just wanted to know —”

“Don’t care. If you want to yammer at me, pick up a trowel and help me gather clay.” She waves at Klepé, and the euvespid hefts a scroll, mere paper held like it weighs a great deal. She unrolls and fingers the page, and a moment later black nerve flows across the page, covering it until the symbols and patterns are completely obscured. Three tendrils emerge, and the wasp pulls them like strings; on the other end are trowels, deposited a moment later on the ground.

Ooliri watches the display in fascination. Makuja, though, is the first to step over. She bends down to grab a tool and begins work. Ooliri is next. Awelah remains standing.

“Look,” she says. “We’re looking for someone. We just need a pointer to where to find them, or whatever else you know. We don’t have time to do charity work.”

The old mantis doesn’t react, just seizes the hands of the nymphs, directing them to pluck weeds and rocks from the clay, and depositing the mass into a pot of water to be further processed.

“Are you from a village? Do you have a cabin around here?” It’s Ooliri asking.

“Why would I need one? This land is all the home I need. Has been for years.”

“Do you get lonely?”

The lady laughs again. “What do you think this clay is for? Eating? The house​-​mantids like the little pots to hang around.”

Awelah grins satisfaction. “So you do know of a nearby village! Have you ever heard of Lady Earth​-​shaper?”

A moment, and then the lady sighs and says, “Child, are you too stupid to notice I ignored you but not your boyfriend?” She shakes her head. “Moons above, what was Uvema doing? You’d think one of her daughters would have raised you smarter than that.”

There’s a moment for Ooliri to give a worried glance at Awelah, and for Makuja, without a glance, to drop her trowel. Then the spear is in Awelah’s grasp, and she’s lunging — into Makuja’s forelegs. The vice of one wraps around Awelah’s thorax, and the tarsus of the other is going beneath her head to press the flat of a knife there.

An instant later the euvespid is there with buzzing wings, a tarsus grappling the pale nymph’s dark antennae and yanking her back.

The old lady placidly continues digging, as if nothing had happened.

“How is she doing, by the way?”

“Dead,” Awelah scratches out. “Both of them. All of them.”

“Except you?” The old lady finally pauses work, and looks up at the pale nymph, despite her covered eyes.

“Except me. A mistake they will gravely pay for.”

“Such fortune is so rarely blind error.” Planting her trowel particularly far into the ground, she adds, “The shadows of this world hide many secrets. In every depth explored, a depth unseen remains.”

“Are you implying—”

But the old bug is already saying something else. “Honarari, Geleche, Mewla…” A sigh. “Tragedy. Grand tragedy. But I suppose cowards always outlive the brave.” The murmured tone of her last sentence makes it clear she isn’t talking about Awelah. The pale nymph still scowls, till, as if unable to maintain it, her features fall into a wet frown. She recognized the names of her uncle and aunt — and her mother.

“H​-​how did you know my family?” is what she asks.

“We are in Duskhold, are we not? Or close enough. Are the people here not enamored with the service of noble Asetari?”

“We aren’t noble.”

“No?” With an odd smile on her palps, she says, “If my memory remains… did Uvema not fancy herself a queen? Queenheart, that’s what they called her.”

In a plain tone, Makuja looks at Awelah and says, “Would that make you a princess?”

Ooliri notices the old lady looking at Makuja, and finally comments on it, “How are you tracking our positions so well? Aren’t you… are you blind?” He looks over to the Klepé, wondering if she is some kind of guide or assistant. (By now, with no pale nymph about to attack, the bug had left the elder’s side. She stands before the pond, sword panted into the earth and gazing into the shallow water, contemplative.)

“I can hear just fine, thank you. And smell!” She points at Awelah. “You smell of old friends.” At Makuja. “You smell like death.” And at Ooliri. “And you stink of the Pantheca.” Then the lady reaches out, touching his head before questing upward for the antennae​-​band strapped there. She touches the plate, then remarks, “But this is not yours, not quite. Curious.”

“Look, lady. We’re trying to find a village. Where do you go sell your clay pots?”

“I don’t want for money. It’s a story I don’t believe in, pieces for a game I’m too old to bother playing.”

“Answer the question, please.”

A shaken head. “It’s thataway. But you can just walk this stream, follow it down to the lake. Any stream. They all join with Entcreek eventually, and Wisterun lies up along its banks.” The old lady makes a gesture of looking at the black and yellow bug, who gazes solemnly into the shallow pondwater. “Really, I reckon if you asked nicely, my dear here would scrawl a compass for you.”

From where Klepé stands over the pond, she snaps out an antennae. “Truthz of poizon and zhadow are not toyz for larva to amuze with. I do not ‘zcrawl’ for anyone’s convenience.”

“They’re this far south and looking for the lake. The nymphies might miss the horizon without a guide.” The old lady’s laugh sounds like a single wheeze; then there’s a moment of pause, needed for her tone’s pivot to sober concern. “We should help, shouldn’t we? If they have finally gone and burnt what Uvema built, if this girl is all that’s left… She wouldn’t want her legacy lost in wilds, wandering into a ’teater den or worse.”

A euvespid foretarsi descends, splaying in front of a bag bound by black cords. With a snap of the dactyls, the cords move and a roll of paper slides from within, into her waiting palm.

“Appreciate it, dear. Do you remember the stink of the deeper dam? Should be enough left to point at it, no?”

The smell of Klepé’s ink of choice is like poison. She replies, “Know that I am fit to write without azziztance.”

The lady’s voice becomes a creaking whine. “But I’m getting old, losing track of the years. Maybe’s it’s all gone without my knowing it. Maybe we’ve had this talk before and my memory’s going. Have some patience for an old bug?” There’s a smile the mantid’s face, leading them to wonder if this is irony, a joke between the two lost on strangers.

Awelah has other concerns. “How do you know my grandmother? Who are you?”

“Just an old lady with no family to name, as you can well see. To Uvema… I suppose I was no more good than an old memory, in the end. But… I must prefer myself forgotten.”

“Give me a real answer,” Awelah says.

“Then give me a real effort.” The old lady grabs the pale nymph’s foreleg in a tight grip, and thrusts it back at the ground, digging its trowel into the clay. “Klepé, my dear, are you any closer to done? I am weary of these children.”

Sitting on the ground, the euvespid claws at the page firmly held in two midlegs, darkness gathering in her eyes. No response comes, but the lady does not seem to expect one.

“The town this compass would point us towards, does Lady Earth​-​shaper live there? Or people who’ll tell us how to find them?”

“Of course not! That bane’s never been seen since the act that gave them the title. But they’ll have plenty of stories and superstition, if that pleases you.”

“We want to actually find them!”

“And why should you succeed where others haven’t? What drove you here?”

“We need a teacher, someone to train us and make us strong.”

“You’re nymphs. Shouldn’t you be playing with sticks and swimming? Save the throwing your lives away till you’re older.”

“We’re old enough to be vesperbanes,” Awelah says.

“We are vesperbanes,” Ooliri corrects.

“Married to the chimerae of twin hungers so young? Tragedy, grand tragedy.” A pause. “Why not bother the ranger who routes this part of the country? Why not go to a stronghold and enlist yourself among the hundreds of other doomed nymphs?”

“We have enemies. People have tried to kill us, and if we show ourselves publically, they’ll try again.”

“And this supposed Earth​-​shaper won’t? And if they don’t, what’s this ‘training’ supposed to get you?”

“Power. I have to become powerful to fulfill my ambition, to kill a certain bane.”

Makuja nods. “Likewise, I must be stronger to carry on my master’s will.”

Ooliri glances down. He was, as usual, the odd one out. “I want… knowledge. I hope that maybe, maybe I could bring my brother back. And everyone else. All the arts in the world… there has to be a way.”

The old bug’s face hardens. “Foolishness. Utter foolishness.” She looks to Awelah. “When a mantis sets out to slay a terrible monster, commits themself to that path, even when they succeed, the number of monsters there are has not decreased.”

Awelah forces a laugh. “That’s stupid. I’m going to kill far more than one, old lady. Already have.”

The old lady gives a sigh that seems to wheeze terribly out of her body. She looks at the pot of water where the clay they collected sits. “I’ve told you what you wanted to know. I’ll call this a fair trade. Take the seal, leave me, and go look for your Earth​-​shaper.”

Awelah clicks mandibles and stands up first, then looks to the other nymphs. Makuja sets down her trowel, but tilts her head at the old mantis. “You’re the Earth​-​shaper, aren’t you?”

“I’m an old lady who makes pots while death takes her time with me.” She holds out a foreleg, and the euvespid darts over (with a roll of paper secure in one tarsus) and she grasp it, pulling her mistress up. “I’m blind, and I’m barely fit to walk on my own. No, child, I am not what you seek. All I can offer you is wisdom. And I can see how it’s valued.”

Makuja nods, and stands beside Awelah, who takes a step away.

When the old mantis is steady on six legs, the euvespids closes to stand before the nymphs. She produces a thick roll of wasp​-​chewed papyrus. “Thiz is zimple enough for even a chimera to operate. Pour upon your zhadow, and will crawl where you must go. Never more than ten gramz. Never at the edgez. Never on the other zide. Do not tear it. Do not get it wet. Do not even look at it without calm intent. It may last one dance of the red moon if you do not toy with it.”

Unrolling the sealscroll, it appears blank save for a circle and a three symbols in the center. With how thick it is, and the wax that coats its edges, doubtless there are other pages beneath. Klepé places a dactyl upon one symbol, and black nerve rides down the digit. When it hits the page, it is drawn outward, riding a curve over the paper and at the perimeter, it begins to turn to cloudy mist, lost as if evaporating away. The euvespid points at edge of the three symbols. “Lake. True north. Myself. If you meet with danger and burn this seal, I may avenge againzt whatever killed you.”

Awelah is the one who takes it, passing her trowel to a midtarsus. She makes a seal and puts her own finger to the page. It’s as if the paper has drawn the black nerve out of her itself. Seeing it work for her as it had the wasp, she rolls it up, tying it closed with an offered cord.

“Thank you so much.” It’s Ooliri who says it. The boy looks between the old mantis and the euvespid with palps tapping nervous. For no reason the other two can discern, he asks: “But um… you mentioned you give people some of the things you make, right? Pots and stuff. If it’s okay… is there a chance you could give us one? I’d like an, um, a big one.”

Klepé has palps in a flat line. Almost responds before she glances to her mistress, and sees the old lady give a smiling nod. “Az you dezire.” Then she takes out a scroll that unfolds so wide she can just barely hold both ends. The ritual of fingering, and a flow of enervate so powerful each of the nymphs feels a slight tug toward it. Then Ooliri has a shiny glazed jug, and carrying the awkward thing reduces his gait to something of a waddle. We have canteens. What is he planning?

After the three nymphs have turned and started following the stream down, Awelah gets the last word. She calls out. “Oh yeah, have you seen a direhound around here? If not, then maybe you should be careful of it.”

“That thing?” Klepé’s inmantid voice carries from behind them. “Yez. I have fought it.”


That night, they still hear it howling.

A Spar and a Specter

That night, they slept without the security of the cave they’d grown accustomed to. It was in a field near a hill, and all the security they had was boulders and a few trees. (Trees, not metataxites.) For Awelah, she slept here and remembered her second night after the wispfall, sleeping in bedrolls just hours before occupied by now​-​dead pawns. She remembers killing them. She doesn’t sleep well, but you never sleep well the first night in a new location. Still, the memories don’t help.

She wakes up with the sun — perhaps the subtle sound of Makuja leaving to gather breakfast had awoken her. Regardless, she’s up. She approaches Ooliri’s bag to wake him, and has the sudden image of standing before a pawn asleep, moments before she had thrust her spear forward.

They’d all had orders to kill her. Awelah has sworn to kill a certain bane, and along that path there’s sure to be more regrettable deaths than the stupid pawns of a cruel mercenary — she knows just who she’s after.

No, she thinks. There will be no regrettable deaths. Because she shouldn’t regret, so long as she stays true to her ambition.

Those pawns had killed roaches. Killed them and roasted them like prey. How could she regret avenging that?

It’s morning and she’s safe in a camp with her allies. She looks around, eyes pigmenting to refocus. Awelah decides to let Ooliri sleep.

After her fight with Klepé, mud still clings to her cloak. Her cousin’s cloak, which had secured her escape from the ruins of Duskroot, and across the wisp​-​occluded countryside. She has to clean it. The water from the creek is also muddy, but less so once strained through a bit of cloth. She climbs a tree, and her heartbeat slows while she rubs dirt out of her cloak.

Despite the focus on her task, she catches the bit of movement — Makuja’s return. She watches as breakfast is made. When the work concludes, the pale nymph hops down from the tree. She’s frowning as she approaches the red nymph. There’s an emotion like a shadow beneath her thoughts. Like a shadow, its details are obscure, unnamable to her.

Makuja is walking to Ooliri, to awaken him, sleeping beside his barrel, and that’s when Awelah intercepts her. The intent look of the last Asetari is what has her pause; the palps themselves working without making a sound. It’s a moment before Awelah articulates her words.

“I killed a lot of your teammates,” she says. “I know you’ve sworn loyalty to us, but did you ever want to… avenge them?”

“No. They failed. They were flawed tools, in the end. I only cared about one.”

“Your master,” Awelah guesses.

“I wake up in the morning, and I’m halfway through making meal before I remember I’m serving you and not her. I wake up forgetting she’s gone and this isn’t one more mission.”

“I can’t forget.” Awelah’s voice is quiet but hard. “Don’t have that luxury. Every night I dream of how each of them died. I remember every detail, experience it.”

“I dream of the people I’ve killed,” she says. “Do you?”

“Sometimes,” is all she commits to. “The only mantids I’ve killed were your teammates.”

“Do you ever…”

“Regret? No. They were obstacles in my path. They stood in the way of my goal, and that’s all that matters.”

Makuja nods. “We fulfilled our purposes. It’s good that a tool does its work. But perhaps it’s good also if that work doesn’t need to be done. Ooliri says everything deserves to live. So, at times, I think about them… alive.”

“I’m not a tool. You wonder about them living like it’s an idle thought, but you don’t care, do you? If I were you, my purpose would be to avenge them.” Then she pauses. “But to avenge your master, you’d only have yourself to go after, wouldn’t you?”

Then Awelah is on the ground.

Makuja punched her. She’s walking away, now.

“Get back here. That was a cheap shot. Give me a real fight. Makuja! Fight me!”

The departing figure doesn’t turn around.

No one needs to wake up Ooliri, now. He’s sitting up, looking around confused. With Awelah, he eats in silence, repeatedly shooting glances at her.

When he finally speaks, he’s interrupted. “Awelah, you —”

“I’m going to fight her,” she states. “It’s training. Sparring. Real vesperbanes do it all the time. Would you prefer I sparred with you?

Ooliri sags, and bites a mushroom cap. “Don’t hurt each other, then. No spears, no knives.”

“We aren’t stupid.” Then, with that established, “I’m going to kick her abs. Don’t need weapons to do that.”


Awelah is waiting outside the camp when Makuja returns. Ooliri went out to retrieve her, and there’s a tight curl of her antennae at seeing Awelah regarding her with raptorials open.

“If we must,” she says. “Are we doing this formally?” She isn’t looking at Awelah. She is unstrapping a few knives and placing them at the base of a tree. Awelah wonders if that’s really all the knives she has.

“Of course not. We didn’t become vesperbanes to do formal duels.”

Still, Awelah bows, and Makuja reciprocates. Then, the fight begins.

The pale nymph charges, and the terms are set immediately. Awelah is bigger, older. She has more reach, and her punches hit harder. Smaller, quicker, Makuja dodges, crouched lower than Awelah can comfortably reach. When the bigger nymph takes the bait and kicks, Makuja jumps out of the way, spinning when she lands — her nimble legs sweep across the ground behind her. Awelah has to abort the kick, jump straight up, to avoid being flipped on her side.

Then Makuja strikes, a raptorial foreleg flying out to snap around one of her arms. Awelah hops back.

She starts making tarsigns.

And Makuja strikes again, lunging forward with another raptorial snap. The Asetari is interrupted, and no projection comes to her aid.

“You made the same mistake yesterday. This time, I’m not covering for you.”

Awelah only grunts in response, throwing a trio of jabs to make Makuja dodge back, resetting the terms of the fight. It’s almost a reprise; the following exchange pushes Awelah back once again, and again she tries the tarsigns. Again interrupted.

“It’s not going to work. Is it the only tactic you have?”

Makuja always struck Awelah as one to take her foes down silently. But this?

“Are you taunting me?” she asks. Then, “You’re not taking this seriously.”

“It’s a spar. To make us stronger. How are you to improve, if I don’t tell you what you’re doing wrong?”

“Tell me if I’m doing wrong after I win,” Awelah says, and swings her forelegs down to smash Makuja. It’s an easy maneuver to dodge, but it buys the pale nymph some space. She’s backing up further, but the red nymph is on her again, reaching out and grabbing her cloak to stop her. The thing starts to slide off one of her arms, and Awelah kicks back, pivoting to resist Makuja’s force. The two actions combined see her turning round, and stepping away. The hold grows untenable, is released, and now Makuja is coming after Awelah. It’s a short chase.

Awelah angles for the nearest tree, and breaks into a run. She doesn’t know if she can outrun Makuja, but she can make it to the tree. She doesn’t stop, and starts running up the tree with Makuja behind her.

The red nymph is stopping short, but Awelah is already kicking off. Her next move has two components. Makuja will be jumping out of the way, to avoid the bigger nymph landing on her, but she won’t be expecting the cloak. Awelah slides it off the other arm, and the heavy thing lands over her opponent’s face. The smaller nymph did make it free of her obvious trajectory, but her foe still lands at her side, and promptly tackles.

It’s wrestling, but it’s wrestling done with Awelah’s mid​-​ and hindlegs. It lasts for several moments, Makuja is split between needing to slip out of Awelah’s hold and pull the cloak off it. When she rips it free, Awelah is backing away from her in the shade of the tree. She’s smirking.

Makuja lunges again, and Awelah dodges, maneuvering around her. The Asetari throws out her hand, but it’s nowhere near hitting Makuja. Then Awelah is reaching out as if to grab for her neck. It leaves her open to a counterattack from her.

But before she can make another move, she feels the chill beside her. In the blurry fringes of her vision, she sees the blackest shadow.

While she was under the cloak, Awelah completed her projection. The last Asetari holds her by the throat while her enervate is poised to touch her. She recalls what even a little bit of the stuff did to the bodies of animals. Deliquescence.

“I think I win.”

Makuja flinches away from the projection placed so close to her. Enervate never felt nice to be around. She doesn’t contest Awelah’s victory.

She asks, “Your earlier attempts, were they some kind of misdirection? Shaping my expectations?”

“If I could end it that easily, I wouldn’t complain. But I was right, wasn’t I? You were underestimating me, thinking I’d fall into the exact same trap as yesterday.”

Makuja inclines her head.

“I was going to be a vesperbane since the day I hatched. I know a few things about tactics.” Awelah reaches out and touches a foretarsus to the projection, unblowing the bubble, and Makuja is released from the unpleasant vibrations.

Ooliri watches the dispelling with undisguised interest, curiosity overwriting his concern and disappointment at Awelah’s tactics. Before the boy can say anything, she’s speaking again.

“What about you?” She means Makuja. “Why are you holding back? Not just today — it happened yesterday. What happened to the bloody wing​-​claws you stole from your master?”

Makuja brushes her palps against her pars stridens and makes a sound. She turns to collect her knives.

Neither quite heard her, and it’s impossible to say if the words they missed were “I don’t know” or “I can’t.”


“Why do you have that barrel, anyway?” Awelah asks Ooliri. Her eyes are on the unrolled seal Klepé had gifted them, revealing the way forward.

Beside her, Ooliri still carries the awkward thing with both forelegs as they walk the road beside the creek. They had waterskins big enough, and a water source near enough, that there wasn’t serious worry they’d run out.

Still, as they walked, Ooliri occasionally darted out to look at the creek, as if checking something. This was the only hint as to what he was planning.

“I’ll show you if I figure it out,” he says. “You still have the rope my… old team had, right?” Of the three of them, Awelah carried the most of their supplies. She confirms with a quizzical nod.

Makuja looks up from where she walks behind them. In a low tone, she asks for some rope. Before Awelah has a chance to dig any out of the bag, Makuja tenses. They all look forward, hearing it, seeing it.

Sprinting toward them, it grows larger. Each of Unodha’s dogs had been outfitted with overlapping plates of yellow bones, like a mammalian exoskeleton. The last of them has those plates cracked and dark with dried blood, and each bounding leap of the beast produces a loud rattling as the bones hung loose over a newly gaunt frame. The sound comes ghastly, like the rattle of a snake before it’s your death, or yes, a skeleton arisen from a grave to skulk and haunt.

Overcast as it is, the world waits engulfed in clouds’ shadow, and in the dimmed afternoon light, all environs rendered misty and vague, it feels appropriate to witness a horrible specter.

“There’s three of us and one of it. We can do this,” Awelah says.

“Are we running or are we fighting?”

“Fighting. Let’s end this.”

The sight of Awelah working through tarsigns is familiar, even if she would never let the signs themselves become so.

It stops fifty strides out, slowing bound by bound until it’s creeping forward, the rattling of its bones now a low ostinato.

The wetness of a submerged eye shines from behind its skull. You can tell it’s looking at Ooliri, and then to Makuja.

Then it growls, head low.

Makuja draws a knife.

It barks, high and loud, and lunges forward, distance halving in a huge leap. The many cracks in its armor are dark with many shadows, the largest of them like a dark portal, almost square.

Awelah casts her projection about then. She gestures, and the black figure drifts forward to the direhound.

The growling stops and it jerks back from the projection. Awelah’s mirror doesn’t stop moving, and the tenor of the growling changes.

They smell blood.

“It’s getting bigger.”

“That’s… they couldn’t do that. Not on their own — Unodha told me her spell alone could trigger it.”

Ooliri, holding his baton securely, takes a step toward the hound. It glances at him and then back to the projection.

“We need to run.”

“Are you scared—”

“No. I’ll explain. Make it flee from your projection, then catch up with me and Ooliri. Cross the creek. Run to the treeline.”

Makuja grabs Ooliri to yank him in the right direction, and with that impulse given, he’s running after her to hop down the walls of the creek, then cross the waters. Dripping water, Makuja drags herself up the other creek wall with stabs of her raptorials.

When she looks back, Awelah is still trying to get a hit on the bone​-​dog with her spear. But it’s too focused avoiding the projection. Beside her, an impact kicks up dirt — Makuja’s knife, thrown to get her attention.

Unable to stridulate and be heard across the creek, unwilling to yell through her spiracles, Makuja gestures wildly for Awelah to get over there.

She doesn’t, not until the red nymph palms another knife. Awelah snatches up the already thrown knife and throws it back like a kind of revenge, but it lands handle​-​first against the other wall of the creek, kicking up dirt and burying itself in a little avalanche of the stuff.

Awelah starts running. Unlike the other two, she leaps directly from the top of the creek, landing hard on the rocks of the other bank. With a small limp, she climbs the other wall.

“What under the stars is this about? Why—”

“Follow me. We need more distance.”

Awelah scrapes frustration, and stomps the few strides Makuja wants. The red nymph gestures at a tree and starts climbing. Awelah stares for a moment, then sighs and follows.

“Look.”

At first, they see only the hound back away from Awelah’s inert projection.

“Can you command it from here?”

At a gesture, the projection drifts forward toward the disengaging dog.

“Dispel it.”

“I’m not your—”

“Dispel it and I’ll explain.”

Awelah makes the projection instead drift towards them. It’s not any faster now than before, and it’ll be a minute before it reaches them.

“Start explaining.”

“It wasn’t just the strange behavior of Vilja that set me off — I saw it, attached near the flank. A sensor tag.”

Awelah doesn’t know what that is. Her projections arrives, and Makuja shivers. The thing is dispelled while she explains:

“Sensor​-​banes can track them from far away. Someone is following that hound.”

Purple compound eyes look away from her, and toward the road they’d just left. The direhound — Vilja must be its name — is canting off perpendicular to the road. It reaches the other treeline and disappears into the foliage.

Then other motion catches the eye: three figures charging over from farther down the road. They move with speed that might be vespertine, and little more can be made out, certainly no antennae​-​bands. The three are of disparate builds, one with the bulk of a female imago, another slender like a young lady or older tiercel, one that could only be a nymph. Several long forms are strapped to the back of one, but before Awelah can analyze further, Makuja is pulling her down from the tree.

“Bushes. We need to hide.”

Mantids had a wide field of view; to ensure they weren’t spotted, they hid where the new arrivals were obscured from them, and they saw no more.


Hours later, they peek, and the three mantids are gone.

Two Techniques and a Beetle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Maybe you used too little?”

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

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

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

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

“Could the sensor sense us sleeping?”

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

“I’m not weak.”

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

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

Ooliri frowns, and looks away.

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

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

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

“Do we have anything to dig with?”

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

“You should return it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

She tries something new.

Focus. Wasp. Louse.

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

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

Fine, then.

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

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

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

⸢Umbral Body Projection!⸥

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

“Can we eat this thing?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ohh… I’m sorry.”

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

“Woah!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Still hunting that cicindela?”

“It’s got to still be around.”

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

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

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

“I’m going to track it.”

“Alone? Shouldn’t we get Makuja?”

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

“What about the vesperbanes?”

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

“Maybe. It all seems so tenuous.”

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

An Elusive Wolf, a Relentless Wolf

Heat from their fire and shelter from the old tree had kept it from them, but after days now of unbroken sunless overcast, a chill is rising in the land, while drizzle and damp air is falling. As Awelah departs into the woods, she wonders if the fog is gathered thickly enough for her spear to stab through it.

Proximity to the creek couldn’t have helped, when it comes to how bad the fog got. As she walks Awelah hears it rush over rocks and slam into mud. The waters are dark, and it isn’t just shadows. The creekwater isn’t safe to drink, not so soon after a wispfall. A wispfall in the mountains behind them, where all this water is runoff from? Still, enervate is sensitive to temperature — it didn’t get hot, not in the way matter does, but it nonetheless didn’t stick around after boiling.

Ooliri had remarked that it’s odd the water remained so enervated. Black nerve seeks denser matter, and sand is preferable to water. Emusa, it turns out, had noticed the same thing. She’d determined it was an excess of water​-​affine enervate in the wisps. Something like that. It’s far beyond the lessons Awelah had thus far retained. Affinities were a distraction, anyway. That much she knew — the Asetari are above such things. Were above such things. Will be above. Ugh.

Awelah is reprieved from distracting thoughts soon after, when the taxites clear and in their absence, moss thickly overtakes the ground. Soft and growing, it didn’t keep tracks as well as mud, and she gives up following through, and starts fanning out, checking the perimeter of the clearing, and then any mud patches within, for anything to follow. The haphazard search pattern means that when she feels the relief of at last finding more tracks, it’s dashed seconds later as she realizes they are her own.

Doesn’t matter, she thinks, I don’t need this to be so easy. She is a hunter. The mantis uncurls her antennae, short things from which locks of gray​-​purple setae curl off. She runs dactyls through them, combing away dirt and dead hair.

When she extends them again, she lets her eyes pale as she focuses on the world in scent.

Diamantids had eyes better than any other kind, so it’s just efficient for Awelah to focus on what she sees. But as a nymph, Awelah had spent so long playing with her family’s roaches. There was a type of game played in basement rooms with none of the torches lit. Noble roaches had longer, more sensitive antennae than diamantids, and even with all her experience, Awelah had been a handicap on any team that had her. (Once, Awelah had asked her dad to have her antennae cut in a way to make them more sensitive — he had pat young Awelah and told her how pretty her antennae were, and how it’d be unbecoming for a bane line Asetari to look like a roach on top of all the things the clan already says about us. She didn’t get many chances to play with the roaches after that.)

She’d learned enough, though. To your antennae, everyone is a bright lamp, illuminating the world in ‘light’ that traveled like something thrown instead of instantly. Your antennae didn’t have lenses like the dewdrops on mantid eyes, so everything was mixed together and unfocused. Lingering, too — as if everywhere you held your antennae, it gazed upon photographing chemicals that’d sat exposed for too long. You have two antennae, though, and so much length. It’s like a string of these photographs, each subtly different.

The image of scent had foremost the expected elements — of wet vegetation and mosses crushed or split open by her steps, of trace enervate which seemed to sting even when so faint, and the pheromones of lesser insects — but behind them all was the putrid, metallic, unnatural scent she seeks. She doesn’t think anything could mask it — direbeasts and bloodbanes didn’t always stink so strongly, not when resting, but active ichor metabolism did. Those erotyles had fought back, it seems, and the dog had doubtless licked the blood in its wounds.

Awelah waves her antennae through the air, and the world seems to gain new a depth. She feels the diffusion of the oldest scents, and aligns her antennae right along that gradient. Her surety only grows in her next steps. Her hopes were unfounded, and her fears hold true.

Her prey is still here.


Far to the west, and earlier that day, Makuja leaves the camp in the opposite direction, and she too walks along the banks of the creek, distracted in the depths of her thoughts.

She hears Awelah call out — to Ooliri, perhaps, who trusted her more. Attention, not alarm, and what would Awelah want attention for? To brag about another successful hunt?

There’s a briskness to her pace, and a tension in her tightened raptorials. She doesn’t want to go back to the camp, to talk to either of them. She’s felt this before, when another pawn had done something to get a satisfied nod out of master and so she killed something or gathered some rare poisonous flower, and reminded her who the most useful was.

In a practiced motion, the red nymph tosses up a stone, and casts it into the dark waters of the creek with vespertine force. It feels like she let out more than just the black nerve that fuels the spell. She wants to do it again, see the stone smash apart against the streambed.

A technique she’d discovered — not invented, such a simple permutation of signs had to be something well known for centuries. There’s more to getting it right than just the order of the signs, though. She’d spent hours to figure that out, getting it down to consistency, and then —

“Why would I need to fling rocks? I have better techniques.”

And the Asetari did. Throwing rocks, and creating an autonomous projection — who would choose what Makuja could do? It’s simply a worse tool.

What did she have that could compare to what the Asetari could do? (She knows exactly what the answer is, and that makes it worse. “Do you know the tarsigns for the wretched raptorials?” she’d asked Ooliri. And the boy had no idea.)

The creek isn’t a straight thing. It curved when it ran into the old tree they camped in, and here, upstream of that, it’s winding to the north. The metataxites have grown more numerous around the red nymph as she walks on.

Makuja is in the middle of imbuing the next stone to cast when she hears the sound of branches bending, sees the movement in between thick trunks.

The Asetari wasn’t lying or embellishing, then.

Ahead of her stands a cicindela — a wild tiger beetle.

If I can catch this…

She wants to see that look on the Asetari’s face even more than she wants to see this rock crack open against the earth. A glance down finds the near​-​forgotten thing already splitting and liqued from partial imbuement. Hmm.

She knows tarsigns aren’t needed. Nervecasting with or without them is the difference between digging with a shovel and clawing at the ground. She doesn’t want to do anything big, though, and doesn’t know if there’s a sign for what she wants.

Whatever discharged enervate into her palm… can it go the other way? Can she un​-​imbue?

She knows what it feels like for black nerve to flow into her tarsi. Maybe if she focuses on that sensation, or imagines some kind of pull.

It doesn’t all come back, but she sees — and feels — the enervate escaping the rock, and new coldness seeping into her, slithering up her forelegs. She doesn’t know the right word — pulling, pumping — but she draws the stuff further up her arms, as if to return it all the way back to her abdominal core. But the farther it gets from her hands, the more her control frays, and by the time it’s descending her thorax, she’s not sure if gravity isn’t doing most of the work. No matter — perhaps this way, it’d be quicker to expel later.

Makuja shakes her head and looks up. The cicindela is still there, long legs lifting it up where it licks the algae from a metataxite’s shelf​-​like limbs.

Makuja is patient. She would watch, poised for the right moment to strike.

When the beetle’s head turns, and its forward​-​facing compound eyes would no longer catch the red nymph, she slips into motion. Swiftly lunging across the ground, she feels the returned enervate in her thorax. It feels different from that which had not yet left her. Then, as if gravity continued its work, the enervate flows into her legs as they bend and straighten, and it settles there.

Makuja stalks the cicindela as it trots directly away from the creek. She is silent, unseen, and by all rights, the tiger beetle should be hers to capture.

She didn’t do anything wrong. She’s sure there could have been no error on her part. And yet it all goes wrong anyway.

The tiger beetle spooks. Its antennae flare straight up, and then it bolts to the west.


Making tarsigns took time, Awelah is learning. The fight with Klepé had been sobering, in that regard. She’d applied the lesson in her next fight, but even though she’d won, she’d sat up reflecting, and decided she had learned the wrong lesson. Making tarsigns took time, yes, and knowing that, you have to adapt your tactics to that momentary time commitment — or did you?

Umbral body projection isn’t like the other spells that they had in their arsenal. Why should Awelah take the time in a fight to cast her projection — why, when she could have it out before the fight even began?

The technique had many more tarsigns than bane blast or apparently the spell Makuja had invented. (Why is Makuja of all mantids inventing spells! Awelah had been a bane for longer — hours longer, but still. Is she falling behind this soon? Why couldn’t Awelah invent spells? “Why aren’t you as quick as your cousins, Awelah dear?”)

She felt the projection growing inside of her, the spellform taking shape and she reached the sign which seemed to push it further, making that cold sensation envelop her body. She tries holding it for longer — that’s the sort of thing Makuja did, isn’t it? But after a second it starts to feel almost painful, and she stops.

When the voluminous shadow of her projection is flowing out of her, she sees it waver before it fully fills out. Is that new, or had she never paid attention to it before?

The pale nymph gestures to her shadow, and when she aligns her antennae to her quarry’s scent​-​gradient, her projection is hunting beside her. (Asetari are never alone, they said. She feels alone.)

She catches two very similar scents, both faint, both putrid ichor. One is the old trail she’d followed until now, and the other is new, as if it had drifted to her on fortunate winds. She decides this is a good sign for how close she’s getting.

The trail goes north, now, and takes her uphill. She hears the bubbling of a rill. A new stream is rolling down this hill to meet the creek she’d followed.

She breathes deep, and becomes aware of her pounding heart. The smell of blood had gotten so strong as she nears the crest. There is no doubt.

At the top of the hill waits a pond, textured with ripples from the subtle drizzle. There’s something else putting waves on the surface, though. Fog​-​hidden on the far side.

A muzzle kisses the water’s edge, and a tongue laps greedily. Then stops.

Awelah again stands face to face, eye to eye, with the dread that had haunted them for half a black moon’s phase. The bone spurs are no less sharp, the muscles no less sculpted mechanisms of death, and those eyes… Unodha had trained these things — they could learn. Is there enough of a mind staring back to take pleasure and satisfaction in the hunt? To face them with malice?

She will not be paralyzed. A gesture, and the projection seeks toward the hound. The head lifts and it’s barking. Awelah starts moving, circling the pond. She goes right. The direhound looks to her. It barks again. Her spear, her safety, is tight in her grip.

The projection drifts to the left, the goal to flank the hound. There’s an obvious problem, though.

The direhound gazes at the approaching projection, chill coming with it. The water below is drawn up toward it.

The direhound takes a step back. Then it looks back at her, as if it understands that the pale nymph is the source.

Awelah is halfway around the pond by now. The hound runs away from her, not the projection. Once it’s gone below the hilltop, Awelah can’t send her spell blindly after it.

And she had told Ooliri she wasn’t hunting it, just making sure they were safe. So she sighs, folds up her spear, and starts walking south, back down the hill, toward the creek.

The direhound, meanwhile, flees west.


Ooliri has looped a long piece of rope twice through the harness he’d earlier tied around his barrel. At the far end of the rope, he is making a similar knot, the rope twice looped around either end of a log he found that isn’t yet rotted.

His idea is coming together. Hopefully, it’d all be set up by the time everyone gets back. Then he could at last demonstrate it. He hoped they’d want a demonstration — it would be time not spent traveling or training, and maybe after so much curiosity and secrecy, the truth will just be disappointing, boring, and they won’t care. Awelah would go back to practicing, and Makuja back to finding new ways to use her powers, and his work wouldn’t matter.

Ooliri didn’t have clan abilities or so much skill and experience. He hadn’t had Oocid’s raw genius or Fihra’s determination. At best, he had some ideas. He hopes it will be enough.

Finished with the log, he looks at the barrel. Now for the next step. The obvious way to do it would be to empty his waterskin and use that… but so many trips back and forth to the creek daunted him. Could there be another way?


Having lost the tiger beetle, Makuja settled for easier prey. The first thing she found was a stinkbug. Its offensive stench wouldn’t be a problem after cooking it… but she wonders if it’s worth bothering at all.

She has her antennae out, evaluating the pungent odor, when a new scent reaches her. Ooliri would be scared. Awelah would be on edge. Makuja… Makuja feels nostalgic.

“Vilja?” she calls, as loud as her resonators can manage. She calls again, but doubts it’s needed — he would have no trouble finding her with this stinkbug here.

Is it all a misunderstanding? Or an understanding, rather? Somehow, Vilja had survived the battle. Before, Awelah and Ooliri had been targets. Now they live and master is dead. Is finishing the mission not the logical course? Ooliri and Awelah fear him, rightly, but Makuja had never been a target.

When he bounds in from the east, bone armor rattling, the red nymph is far more at ease than he is. He growls, circling in toward her.

“What’s gotten into you, boy?”

By the time Makuja accepts that something is wrong, it’s too late. She looks into his eyes, and knows she is the target.

Vilja lunges, teeth bared, and Makuja is too surprised to dodge. She does turn, and teeth sink into her foreleg instead, and chitin palpably cracks.

“Viljaaa! I’m the one who used to feed you. Don’t you remember?” She almost feels the bite loosen. (Is she imagining it? Hemolymph loss can’t have gotten to her already.) But he bites down harder, and shakes. She’s jerked like a toy. “Don’t I taste… familiar? Vilja?”

Vilja doesn’t release her, but she can’t die like this. She has to… to… What can she do? Her dominant arm is the one bit. It’s held fast. She can’t make tarsigns. She can’t reach for her knives. Yet she has to free herself.

She starts to pull away, feeling her heart racing. Her legs are bending. And then, something forgotten makes itself known. The enervate that had sunk into her legs sinks further, reaching the extreme of her feet.

At this point, she knows well what it feels like when enervate compresses before a bane blast. She squeezes, pressing down on that coldness. And then, she splays her feet open in a mimickry of the release sign.

Makuja flies. She is thrown up by the force of the blast, and she feels so free. When she lands, it’s clear she hadn’t gone very high or very far — but even these precious two meters feel infinite next to being so close, so tightly held.

Her hand closes around a rock. She throws it up, prepares her spell — but when she looks at Vilja, master’s good boy, she still can’t bring herself to point at the head.

Vilja had been knocked back by the force of her unexpected vespertine leap. He’s on the ground, but about to recover.

Her eyes catch on the black tracking tag. In that split second, she takes aim, and the rock blasts out at the tag. It smashes against the bone, close but missing, and cracks start to spread. She can only hope it’s enough for him to get the tag off on his own.

She only had the time for the one spell. Vilja is momentarily knocked back down by the impact, but finds his feet and starts after Makuja again.

The woods around them are thick and it’s not five running strides before Makuja is at a metataxite’s trunk, crouching. Another leap gives her height, and then she’s scrambling up the shelf​-​like outgrowths.

The red nymph catches her breath even as the direhound below her growls, and scratches the skin. She stares at that maw, so hungry for her. There are sores lining the gums, weeping blood that mixes with the spittle, and she knows that blood is mixing her own in that terrible bite that flows and drips even now. Why should that bother her, though?

She knows what flows in Vilja’s veins, what made him. Master’s blood — and that blood is hers, now. Why should she fear it?

Makuja had seen the signs enough times, and recalls the most basic of hemotechnic arts.

⸢Ichor Form: Mending clot!⸥ Her wound closes, the blood turning to gel​-​like solidity and then crusting into a cicatrix over two long minutes.

Vilja goes nowhere. He stares up at her in the metataxite, knowing she has to come down, sooner or later.

Makuja looks at her legs. Did she?

But how had she managed that leap? Is the regurgitated enervate necessary? How would she consistently get enervate all the way to her legs, if moving it through her torso is so hard?

For that… she has an idea.

Focus. Release. Black nerve in her hands, she slowly brings her tarsi together. The closer they get, the more conscious she is of a certain pull. Enervate attracts enervate.

Good. She starts to retract, pulling the enervate back — but only in one arm. Her other hand, she brings it over the cold sensation in her arm. Enervate attracts enervate — so like this, she can drag the enervate into her legs.

She was prepared for this to take so long — but the exercise is helped along by her own growing ability to direct enervate within herself. Then, once black nerve lies in both midlegs, Makuja brings her hands together once more.

Louse.

This sign doesn’t act on the enervate in her legs — it always molded its product in her core, which then flowed out when released. But enervate attracts enervate.

Adjusting her position, Makuja splays her midtarsi, and drops the louse sign. No longer being molded, the enervate must flow somewhere — and there is more enervate in her legs.

That’s how Makuja finds herself blasting out of the metataxite. She’s aimed at another, and her forelegs reach out and hug the new taxite, squeezing so she doesn’t fall.

Vilja growls and chases her to the bottom of her new reprieve. But there’s nothing he can do, except hope she messes up and falls. And she might — it’s a new, improvised technique. But if she’s careful, and minimizes her use of it…

The creek is nearby. If she can get to the other side, she’ll be safer. So Makuja starts plotting a path, to climb from taxite to taxite where she can, and to blast​-​leap where she must. She can do this. Makuuja brings her hands together.


Awelah returns alone. More alone, with her projection now dispelled. Her antennae are curled up, but having extended them for so long, they suffered a fair amount of the drizzle. The dampness has done awful things to their look.

Ooliri spotted her from high up in their tree. The gray nymph is clambering down the ladder and racing over to her. His excitement is tempered by caution.

“You made it back! Did you… you didn’t encounter it, right?”

“Do you think I wouldn’t survive a run in with that pup? Yeah, I found it. Scared it off.”

Ooliri droops antennae. “But you said you… nevermind. We’re in danger, then, aren’t we?” There’s a disappointment mixed in with the fear.

“Do you think I can’t do it again?” Then Awelah scowls when she doesn’t get an affirming answer. “Look, did you see it come here?”

“No…”

“Good. It didn’t run off in this direction, and if you didn’t see it, it must have went clear. We’ll be leaving soon enough, anyway.”

“About that,” Ooliri starts. “There’s something I had wanted to show you — that I want to do, and it might take some time.”

“You finally revealing what’s up with that barrel?”

“Yeah. But I wanted Makuja here too…”

“If she’s got solitude hunger, let her eat it. Why should we wait for her?”

“Well… I guess it’ll be hard to keep it hidden if you’re here so… well, how much do you know about enervate theory?”


Makuja slipped. She had managed it twice more, and the last jump before she would have made it, she slips.

No matter. The enervate is still in her legs, and the direhound running at her is excellent motivation.

Makuja had fallen on the wrong side of the creek, and runs to the edge, crouching as she makes the louse sign, and blast​-​leaps.

It’s a good thing she picked a narrow part of the creek to do this. Her raptorial bites into the dirt at the edge. To her right, the soil is disturbed, made unstable. She starts to slide, before she throws the arm forward again, gaining purchase further up, with the security she needs to start climbing up.

Vilja comes to the edge of the creek. But he doesn’t have any enervate powered leaping techniques — that Makuja knows about. The hound growls, and Makuja has no reason to stay. She starts along the creek, veering away for cover behind foliage.

Several minutes later, when she hasn’t seen the direhound for any of them, Makuja slows, abdomen flaring for breath. Diamantids aren’t creatures of stamina. Arete helped. Some.

Makuja’s heart slows, the danger passed, octapamine and adrenaline both fading. She feels her master’s blood stirring within her. Fading now, as pumping slows.

As she walks back toward the camp, Makuja has only one thought she keeps returning to.

She wants to feel it again. Tension making her muscles burn, her heartbeat faster than she can count, her blood alive.

She needs it.

Experiment and Application

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

“Until the bowl fills up,” Awelah notes.

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

“Okay,” she says. “What’s this for?”

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

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

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

“This is my idea. It’s… a scale.”

Awelah looks between the barrel and the boy.

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

“And then…”

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

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

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

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

“Yes! If… if you want, that is.”

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

“Help you with that?”

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

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

“Fine.”

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

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

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

“Now, uh, can you cast it?”

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s… huh.”

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

“It’s what?”

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

“What?”

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

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

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

“I’m not a tube.”

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re… welcome?”

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

“You’re saying it’s a balloon.”

“Well…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s the answer?”

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

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

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

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

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

“I just… it comes naturally.”

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

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

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

“What?”

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

“Then I suppose I’m different.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Awelah starts to make the signs, but Ooliri interrupts.

“On the scale, please?”

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

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

“It felt like less.”

“Could you have put more into it?”

Awelah thinks for a moment. “No.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

But there’s two of them.

“I think you’ve created a new spell.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In defiance, Awelah casts another projection.

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

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

“But still effective.”

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

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

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

During her break, she has a new idea.


“What are you doing?”

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

Makuja is back.

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

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

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

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

“Experimenting,” is Ooliri’s answer.

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

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

“Not while you’re hurt.”

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

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

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

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

“Are you going to get any closer?”

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

Awelah laughs. “Fine then, let’s go.”

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

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

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

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

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

When Awelah hits the wrong foreleg, Makuja hisses.

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

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

The pale nymph only has room to duck.

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

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

Then, it feels wrong and cold.

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

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

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

Awelah is making tarsigns.

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

⸢Volatile Body Projection!⸥

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

Makuja has a second to feel dread.

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


“I can’t believe you did this.”

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

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

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

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

Awelah glares, and Ooliri cringes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Makuja leaves; no more words are exchanged.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s the plan? Can—can we run?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I think I’ve got one more in me.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Can we eat it?” Makuja muses.

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

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

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

“I’d rather not.”


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

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

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

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

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

Awelah and Ooliri share a glance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

High above, her hammock sags.

“Must be tired. I know I am.”

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

Listening to it, Ooliri makes an entirely unwelcome suggestion.

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

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

Aaawelah…

Oooliri…


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

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

An Occluded Path

Occlusion. Safety is occluded by tension, by the sudden absence. Certainty is occluded by questions, doubts, the most dependable part of their morning ripped away. Clear thinking is occluded by the vestigial fingers of poor sleep pressing against their mind.

For Awelah, though, those fingers slip away as a thrill of urgency and motivation comes, a problem to solve, a new hunt beginning.

“Look around. Let’s see what tracks we can find.” A vesperbane would be trained to avoid leaving tracks in a way a direbeast would not. Her next fear, after the diamond​-​shaped prints, would be three sets of distinct tarsus​-​tracks.

Eyes darken and focus as a closer search unfolds. Despite the dark occlusion of their moods, the sky above them is pock​-​marked with breaks in that days​-​long overcast that had shadowed them. Shafts of dawn light shine as the sun rises. In uncaring contrast, today is bright.

Maybe it’ll be easier to find her, then, Awelah thinks.

Makuja is a light step, but her weight falls on muddy soil, so her tracks remain. In face of the evidence, an oddly dreaded third possibility fits where others have failed.

She left alone. Of, one assumes, her own will.

“She didn’t say anything to you?” Awelah says.

Ooliri shakes his head.

“I know her scent. Follow me.” Her messy antennae uncurl, extending out and sampling the air. Feeling the ghost of an old gradient that agrees with the footprints, the pursuit advances.

“I’m… surprised. Tracking is a bit of a… masculine thing, isn’t it? No um, no offense.”

Ooliri, even at this instar, isn’t quite yet all that different from the girls. His antennae are longer already, though. While length isn’t all that matters, his sense of smell surely outsteps her own in sensitivity.

Physical sensitivity isn’t all that matters, either, though. Olfaction isn’t just given to you. A certain skill lives in how Awelah moves her antennae, learned from observation and correction. A certain kind of focus in probing apart scents, and a theory of wind and diffusion to make sense of them. Ooliri, it’s quite possible, has never tried or learned.

“I don’t think it’s too masculine to know how to hunt,” is her reply.

Ooliri nods — since speaking, his face had been a little bit scrunched up, worried his words had been too careless.

By scent and by sight they are led to the creek​-​ravine. There’s two large dents in the ground at the edge and the trail led right to them. Awelah, without yesterday’s headache addling her thoughts, puts two together with this one.

“That’s how she did it.”

Makuja had been so evasive, so agile in that fight, and seemed to be preparing a spell she never cast.

“What did she do?”

“Did you catch it yesterday? I hated that she cast that spell at me — so much I didn’t think about how. She used her middle legs.”

Ooliri nods slowly with a frown, not unappreciative of the knowledge, but failing to see the relevance. Then he looks back at the dents in the ground. “Explosive force. If directed under her… clever. But we can’t cross that gap.”

Awelah knows that. She’s looking from this edge to the other side. At a loss, but knowing the answer would be found. She wouldn’t fail.

Ooliri looks too, but his thoughts stray outside the confines of what lies in front of them. They still have rope, after all. Could they—

Then Awelah jumps. “Feel that?”

“No?”

“The wind changed. It’s coming from…” Awelah looks down the creek. “That way.”

“What do you smell?”

“Makuja smells… heavy. And she’s been exerting — running, maybe.”

“Or, or fighting. Do you think…”

“I don’t smell the mutt. I would. I don’t smell any hemolymph either. I don’t expect violence.”

“But you sound so…”

“She wasn’t in a good mood yesterday. You sense that? It’s worse. It’s… Let’s go.”

Awelah, anxious to move, closes the distance the only way available, even as Ooliri looks back to the creek, wants to remind her that maybe they should close that gap first — but the pale nymph is already quickening to a jog, and needs to catch up.

The word on the tip of her palps, that she refused to say, was ‘familiar.’ You couldn’t read all the nuances of a mantis off of pheromones, but sadness had an odor, an aroma. Bitter, or spicy, or… there is a certain twist to it, a scent unpleasant, yet very much not aversive, like lead.

Awelah wouldn’t be running if she hadn’t felt despair of this depth, this pungency, before. Years ago, it was a stale autumn day in the Asetari compound. She’d learned that mommy wasn’t going to be a vesperbane anymore — she learned it from a distant pair of cousins, from the rumor mill, instead of directly. She couldn’t find her mom, only her dad. She confronted him, he told her where to look. She found her taking a deep bath, and only the sound of her daughter calling brought her out.

Ooliri knows none of this, only that he can’t keep pace with Awelah, nor what would have her concerned if she can’t smell an enemy.

The wind had come from down the creek, but it is only down as the water far below flows. The hills get higher. At least the vegetation is clearing. The gorge gets wider, deeper as they go. Above, the peak of the incline lies on the other side.

Ooliri only catches up when Awelah stops. Awelah stopped because she spotted Makuja. She’d be hard to miss, now.

The sun rises in the east, and the creek runs east. She’s shadowed there, alone on the highest point around.

“What is she doing?”

There’s only an answer to give because, at that moment, she does something. Perhaps she saw them.

“Running.”


Makuja is observant. Makuja is patient.

She’s been to the edge of the gorge. She’s calculated the extent. She’s not going to make it.

She doesn’t calculate the way the gray nymph does it. She feels. She’s done the boosted leaps enough times now to know how far she goes. She had picked just the right part of the ravine to cross over, where it was thin enough she landed. The gorge in front of her is not that. She’s not going to make it even with a boost. Unless her calculations are wrong.

Makuja is patient. She stares at the wide gap below her, where the incline of the hill abruptly drops off. She’s eyeing the distance one more time. Sometimes she doesn’t feel the success or failure, not immediately. She’s patient, and can wait for her calculations to reach unoccluded certainty.

Makuja has killed. So many times, she’s stood poised, knife ready, but not feeling if she was going to make the cut. To be sure it would kill, to be sure they wouldn’t struggle, retaliate, raise the alarm, she could wait. She is patient.

She had done the same to Awelah — waiting, and not knowing even as she moved the knife if she was going to make the cut. Why, then?

“There’s not a best time to fire an arrow,” she recalls her master telling her, not long into her apprenticeship. “You can wait on the wind, wait on the target, wait on your own damn nerves. You wait for a better time, and there’s no best time — but there is a worst time to fire an arrow.”

“When?” Her voice had been higher, then. Her mind slower, too, not catching that she’d been all but given the answer.

Unodha had sharp teeth, and even palps that looked fit to bite.

“Too late,” she says.

Makuja starts running.


“She’s heading for the edge. Is she going to jump?”

Awelah’s face is set hard, even as her antennae continue to move. “What do we do?”

They are far from the opposite edge themselves, and even if they weren’t… it’s a long way down. How could they catch or stop her from this side of the gorge?

“My technique is all we have,” Awelah says.

“How? Do you even know it can move fast enough to get to her in time? If you do… can it push with enough force? What would you accomplish — you might kill her yourself! We don’t use techniques like that on allies.”

“We have to do something.”

“I don’t even know if it’s safe for you to try. Remember — remember how you screamed yesterday?”

Awelah puts her forelegs together and Ooliri snaps a tarsus out to pull them apart.


Her heart is beating faster, faster. Her blood is stirring in her every extreme. It is alive, her capillaries like the tendrils of some greater thing.

Her heart is beating faster, the resting rate feeling like the tides in their agonizing slowness. Now, her blood can move, and each pulse, each thunderous impact of her legs, feels things speed closer to how they should be.

She is so close.


Across the gulf, they see the red nymph running faster and faster, gravity accelerating her. Then she moves even faster than that — it must be her technique.

When she reaches the edge, she jumps with no tarsigns. Their eyes are magnetized to her form as she sails through the air — for fear of where they’d go if they traced their trajectory.


Not all of her is occluded by the overwhelming sensation of blood flow. Her eyes are in front of her, still eyeing that gap, calculating even as her legs bend.

She’s not going to make it. Not with her momentum, not with the power of her leap.

It still feels like flying. The other edge is so far away. She wonders if birds feel always like they are falling.

She looks down. It’s so far. Vesperbanes heal fast, but puddles don’t.

She remembers things. So many things come to her so quickly.

She remembers asking Ooliri a question.

She remembers the night this all began. Appraisal. Investment. The power she felt, from somewhere deep within, somewhere beyond, somewhere vespertine. Her blood lived almost as it does now, but more. That night, she had felt so much like her master. She was dead, but Makuja would be a worthy heir. Wouldn’t she?

She remembers her master. The first time she thought she had lost her, only for Unodha to rise from the ashes. Bow gone, dogs dead, she still had weapons. How must she have felt, then? She doesn’t know. She must have no idea. She isn’t worthy. Her master is dead and she’s a useless tool. How must it have felt to fight her, killing fear spilling forth, death unstoppable? She knows that better, in this moment, the ground coming up closer, inch by inch. Her true worth would be evident, in the end.

She remembers asking Ooliri a question he didn’t have the answer to, as she approaches the other edge, and sees that edge get lower. She goes below, and she is going to slam against the ravine wall and die.

She remembers asking Ooliri a question and then, she doesn’t need the answer.


Gravity works fast, and at this point, Awelah would not finish the tarsigns in time.

Makuja had tried to kill Awelah, and then did it again. Why did she care?

“I don’t — I don’t know why.” It’s Ooliri.

“Do you know what I said, the day we had our first fight?” Awelah’s voice is nervous​-​fast. “That if she wanted vengeance, there’s only one mantis to go after. That in her place, I’d want vengeance.”

Awelah lets the enervate she’d started molding disperse into herself. Makuja hits the top of her arc, and begins to fall. Awelah starts running, anyway, like there’s something she can do.

Maybe she can jump off the edge herself, use the force of the bane blast to descend faster, catch her, and then…

She has felt a bit numb, for many days now, everything she cared about, all that grounded her, gone. Being so reminded of her past, old emotions coming back, feelings, has her rawer and off​-​balanced. She feels the same confused panic a younger Awelah felt.

But little Awelah didn’t pull her mother out of the bath — Mewla had come out herself.

The pale nymph stops, stumbling, because Makuja has wings.

“Ha​-​ha.” Ooliri’s laugh sounds more like a cough. “One—one of the last things we said, she had asked me. ‘What are the tarsigns for the wretched raptorials?’ and I didn’t know.”


Her heart is beating faster, faster. It feels like she might burst. She sees the wall getting closer, closer. The pressure of her blood is immense with nowhere to go — would she pop like a fruit when she hits the walls? It all came back to death. All of her plans were literally crashing around her. The outcome she’d calculated when she jumped is being realized — she isn’t going to make it like this.

Her blood is so tight, her death is so close. If only she had the power, if she were worthy, useful.

The pain almost doesn’t register. A red gush bursts from her side, and the spray of blood doesn’t stop. The volume increases, and the droplets are joined in one mass suspended in the air. It’s clotting, the red congealing to solidity, and then transforming as blood does not. Tightening, knitting together like muscle. It happens so fast, it feels so hot.

Her blood is alive. She has control, shaping the form, controlling it, grasping that feeling of death, controlling it. How did Unodha feel, wielding this technique? Certainly not afraid of death.

Her blood, her myxokora, takes the form of those thick claw​-​arms her master had. Smaller, for her frame and lesser blood volume.

They have the reach to extend, hook around the edge of the gorge. She does hit the ravine still, but she holds steady, and pulls herself up.

She rises to see her two teammates running at her. She rises, her blood exulting, alive, and the world is occluded no more.


It’s hard not to feel threat, approaching a bane with monstrous limbs of gleaming blood. The unease they feel is palpable, but Makuja does not attack. She pants, and her myxokora flex and bend in the way an idle mantid’s antennae might.

“What were you thinking! You could have died.”

“If I died,” — she looks at her myxokora — “if I could not manifest my master’s myxokora… then what use am I alive?” Her new growths extend out to their full length. “I was thinking I would prove myself. And I did.”

“You were worth something either way.”

“You knew,” Awelah says, stepping closer. “You didn’t expect to die. You could have told us.”

“You would have stopped me.”

“Of course we would have,” Ooliri says.

Something in her phrase triggers a memory. “What happened after you left, yesterday? You started acting different then.”

Makuja looks between them, and her wretched raptorials flex, as if she briefly considers something unsavory. (How often did she consider such things, when there was nothing to give it away?)

“I encountered Vilja. He bit me. His blood — master made him. It was her blood. My blood, now.”

“Why would you keep that secret? It’s important.”

“The direblood must be affecting your mind.”

“No,” Makuja takes a step back, and it’s not clear why until her myxokora lunge. “You don’t feel it. You encountered Vilja. You cast one spell and he runs. I encounter Vilja. I nearly died, nearly didn’t escape with my life. We encounter the centipede. With one spell, you brought it death. The best I could do was nothing, nothing but grant you time. Useless tools are to be discarded.”

“You’re not useless. You just said it — you survived. You helped Awelah! Do you think we could have made it this far without you?” Ooliri looks at Awelah.

“You may as well have thrown all of us off the cliff with you.” Awelah’s voice is low, almost unheard, palps tight.

“I knew. I had these claws on that night, but never drew them again. Against Klepé, against you. I stole this inheritance, but couldn’t use it. Against Vilja, I felt close. I felt it in my blood. I needed something more, to be able to bring it forth.”

“The esoteric component,” Ooliri says, drawing glances. He explains, “Sometimes, a technique takes more than knowing how it works, the formal component, or the signs, the tarsal component. But you must have figured it out, the esoteric component of the myxokora.”

“Phagein,” Awelah says, unbidden, perhaps without meaning to. “My… cousin told me. She couldn’t do it until… it’s like the legends. Mantids stole the vespers from the bats by killing them and eating their entrails. And our first endowments, the technique the bats could never learn, was the wretched raptorials. Mantids are hunters, and the myxokora are the ultimate hunting tools,” she finishes. “But you did it, that night. What were you missing until now?”

“As I fell, I thought about Unodha, and what she had that I lacked. She was… fearless.”

“A predator,” Awelah finishes.

Makuja nods. “Exactly.” At her sides, the red flesh has pulled closer. Inactive, it begins to sink back into her body.

Ooliri is frowning. “While I don’t think this was the best way to figure it out,” he starts, “Well, now that we have, we could, maybe, test it some? Although that might mean…”

Awelah smiles, mandibles almost visible. “Hunting.”

Ooliri almost looks like he wants to change his mind. But they wouldn’t always get lucky, if they encounter something else like a direbeast or erotyle or a sapiovore. At this point, it felt more like when.

A Pursuit Concluded

Water flows downhill, so on past the gorge’s crest, the land declines. Sharply, too. The creekwater rushes through rapids, and the three nymphs interlock arms to safely descend, half​-​falling, half​-​stumbling from plant to plant, hanging onto trunks or stems. In the process, they uproot one fern. On this side of the hill, more metataxites creep up, even with the angle. (Perhaps the great lichens were eeking out where the trees had more trouble.)

They sought what they could not find above: level ground. It’s a ways before the steepness stops, and still longer before the arboreals thin enough for their purposes. Ooliri sits by the side, marking segments off a rope. “I want to see how long they are,” he says. They are going to test the wretched raptorials.

Makuja nods, and looks towards Awelah sloughing off some bags. The pale nymph’s load is lighter, owing to her injuries — something that presented a recurring source of argument, the Asetari arrogating loads that Ooliri would have to negotiate down.

The red nymph goes to stand over in the clearing, and her partner follows after a moment. They bow to each other.

“Don’t try to kill each other this time, please.”

Awelah has opted to start the fight at the same distance as the last one, not forgetting about Makuja’s other new trick. The issue unforeseen, however, is that this initial distance gives Makuja the liberty to pick when the engagement really starts. The red nymph has gained adeptness, tarsigns coming quicker as she dances around the bigger nymph. The fight proceeds, and the rhythm is once again different.

It’s, all told, not fair. Awelah still aches from her injuries, limiting the strain her prothorax can take (ruling out most use of her raptorials), and without the Umbral Body or Volatile Body (techniques that would only not kill if they missed), she has no advantage to match Makuja’s spells.

“I can stop,” she says, after pinning Awelah to the ground. “Stick to only martial arts.”

The Asetari is torn between asserting that she doesn’t need her to, and the fact that she does.

If their spar were broken into rounds that end when one of them hits the ground, three more rounds pass. Two more end with Makuja victorious, and with the last one, Awelah seizes victory on account of Makuja stopping to stare at her side, looking strained, expecting something to happen.

Even that upset doesn’t impart enough suspense to hold one’s attention forever. Ooliri, where he sits at the edge of the clearing twiddling his rope, leans down onto his raptorials and the soft moss, and nods off into a light nap.

When he comes to, they’re still at it, Awelah looking dead on her feet, swaying, Makuja hardly looking better.

With a frown, he stands, and walks over. “Um, Makuja? I understand your… intense desire to practice your new spell, but, well, we need to save some energy for traveling. And defending ourselves, if we encounter hostiles.”

Awelah, sighing through spiracles, stops and folds into a sit, stretching her legs and lying them down.

When her foe stops, Makuja falls to the ground. Not (wholly?) in despair, but perhaps because the momentum of battle was the main thing keeping her on four legs. “Am I cursed? I had it again. I felt it. And now…”

“If,” Awelah starts, taking a moment to steady her voice. “If the missing component was the mind of a predator, then a spar was the wrong way to test it. You aren’t fighting me like a hunter.”

“Reassuring, at least, I hope?” Ooliri says.

“Perhaps we should try to kill each other, then.”

“We should get moving. If we can find Lady Earth​-​shaper, if we can get a teacher, they’ll surely know how myxokora manifestation works.”


Further on, they’d covered enough land to reach the road they’d spotted in the distance, yesterday. It leads southeast, and they take it. The flatness reprieved them of climbing logs and hills, cutting through ferns, and the enveloping fear that a new (or old) monster would come all asudden out from the occlusion of foliage.

Mud pooled between the stones of the road, and in long tracks at the edges. A consequence of the flatness, puddles litter the ground all around. Had it rained harder, on this side of the hill? Ooliri makes a game of hopping from stone to stone on parts of road where the puddles dominate. Awelah loops around through moss, and Makuja walks straight through. Ooliri learns well what opaque muddy puddles can hide when he slips on a stone, and plunges into water that might be half a meter deep.

When they break sometime after midday (it’s hard to tell; despite glimpsing the sun, the clouds hadn’t gone anywhere — was it too much to hope it a sign of clear weather coming?), Awelah makes the suggestion that if Makuja can’t kill her — she had sworn loyalty, after all — then perhaps hunting game would be appropriate of a predator.

While they wait, Ooliri’s (emptied) barrel floats unsteadily in a deceptively deep puddle while he tries to balance on top of it. Awelah polishes her spear. Seeing the instrument, Ooliri wonders how much of her suggestion had been genuine, and how much covered for the fact that she couldn’t effectively hunt on her own, given her injury.

In the minutes they wait, Ooliri points out the calls of katydids early in the season. In a fit of pique, Awelah tries to imitate them — and then Ooliri gives his own attempt, higher and more accurate. It becomes a competition, then. There’s bird calls to imitate, too, but they don’t stridulate. Awelah stops suddenly, when they have company, but Makuja is silent, mandibles out, focused in a hunting mood.

Makuja returns first with a small longicorn nymph. Then a large crow. Then a variety of digging beetle Ooliri couldn’t identify.

“Don’t you think that might be enough?”

Makuja doesn’t respond.

“No luck with the technique, I take it?”

The most fractional nod.

“I have an alternative theory,” Ooliri starts. Makuja finally meets his eyes. “You’re just tired. Whatever it took to activate that technique, you don’t have enough of it to cast it again. Maybe you’ll be able to tomorrow?”

Awelah extends antennae out, and gazes into the woods around them. “So, how are we going to start a fire when it’s as wet as it is?”

The question cut right to a more distant concern. Since starting down this road, they’d seen no trees larger than saplings. Given their load, carrying firewood had never occurred to them.

“Well, conk should work just as fine.” Ooliri gestures to a metataxite.

“I hate the smell of burning conk.”

“You never got used to it?”

“Lucky you,” Makuja murmurs.

It’s a pitiful fire that they make, and Awelah only ends up cooking the crow. She takes raw bites of the beetle, and ties up the longicorn for later.

“I wonder if the smell of that is going to lure something to us.”

“Then we can eat that too.”

Further ahead, the flatness is broken up beside the road, where boulders and logs sit. They must have been pushed out of the way, to clear a path. A sign, the first they’ve seen, stands nearby.

Wisterun, 30 km →

“Hey, we’re on the right track! Maybe we’ll finally be able to sleep on something other than hammocks or bedrolls soon.”

Ooliri goes to run along the boulders, and while Awelah is detouring around the deep tracks in the road the passage of the debris left, she sees another sign — or the remnants of one. It’s blacked, burnt with a branching pattern to the scorch marks. Had it been struck by lightning? It must have rained harder out here.

As the journey continues, they’re on the lookout for trees to sleep in. They find metataxites, giant ferns, and even the occasional locust​-​leaf bush which usually took a vesperbane to grow and maintain. The longer they sustain this attention to the aboreals, the more aware they become of an inconsistency, a certain pattern. In patches, they saw taxites large enough it’s fair to call them ‘full height’. These patches stand separated by long stretches of land where the aboreals are much shorter — younger — and so shrubbery and weeds claim the expanse. It’s all like some second​-​growth forest, but intermittently.

Ooliri is the first to comment on it. “If we’re approaching a town or village,” he says, “you’d expect to see, before any of the settlement itself, farmland.”

Makuja gives the fields a closer look. “It’s derelict. It must have been abandoned long ago.”

“If we came all this way for an empty village, I’m gonna…” Awelah trails off. “What would we even do then?”

“The old lady said she gives clayware to the bugs in a village.”

“She’s old. She’s nuts. Maybe she’s been around so long she doesn’t realize it’s been years since her last visit. Or maybe she just forgot they all packed up and moved.”

“A town doesn’t just pack up and move, though,” Ooliri counters. “We haven’t even seen the town, we shouldn’t get lost speculating.”

“Maybe this was a trap,” Makuja says.

“No speculating!”

“Danger must be anticipated.”

Not long after that, they see the first house, in a sense. From only construction, some inferences come, even from this distance. A mantid’s house is something vertical, of platforms to be climbed, like a tree inside and outside. A roach’s house is squished, flatter, with fewer windows.

Ant houses aren’t much more than a hole in the ground. The dirt is raised around it, from excavation or an expansion in size, and inside it’s undoubtedly labyrinthian. Outside, you don’t see much more than a colorful woven tarp to be thrown over the entrances in case of rain (it’s not thrown over the entrance), and intricate flags and banners raised to declare just whose hole it is.

They walk on, see more holes, and the various cloth adornments that remain look harshed by the elements, all soaked and muddy, torn, rotting away.

“Maybe,” Ooliri suggests, “it’s not all the way abandoned, and the ants are all hiding in their tunnels?”

“We saw ants yesterday. It could make sense.” Awelah has a tone awkwardly amassed of unease and ambivalence.

“All signs point to total abandonment,” Makuja says. The matter of fact statement stabbing a hole in their hope.

“I guess it can’t explain why the flags are… like that. The ants really like their weavings, don’t they?”

Before the conversation can continue, Awelah is shushing them.

“I smell something.”

“Him,” Makuja says. “Vilja.”

Awelah unfolds her spear. Ooliri grips a baton.

“Which way?”

“I only catch a hint. North, but it’s unclear how old or which way it’s moving.”

“Maybe it’s looking for other prey, now. We can’t be the only thing it ever goes after.”

“It doesn’t pursue us like a normal predator. It’s,” she pauses to find the right word, “obsessed. Scared of my projection, yet it keeps coming?” She shakes her head. “Stay alert.”

Other than slowing when they pass near woody patches, staying aware doesn’t hamper their speed by much — diamantis have a wide field of vision, and there’s not much overgrowth in the abandoned fields.

When they round a blind curve in the road, it’s there. A recurring fear waiting with utter patience.

Bone scrapes against bone as it rises from where it had sat, and slow steps are taken in approach. It gives three barks, ringing out in the emptiness around them. Those bloodshot eyes land on Ooliri, Awelah, and finally on Makuja. Then it starts growling.

Shifting her spear to a midleg, Awelah brings her foretarsi together.

“No,” Makuja says. “Allow me.”

Even as she says it, she doesn’t know exactly what she intends. She could fight Vilja now, with a renewed hope of winning.

But did she really want to hurt Vilja? Even after he bit her, she remembers.

No, she couldn’t. Should she let Awelah go ahead then? Or could she…

Unodha never taught her ⸢Blood Wolf Howl⸥, and a spell so advanced, a signature technique, couldn’t be something she’d easily learn even if her master still lived. But she pulses with her blood, and so does Vilja. There has to be some lingering connection. She knows firsthand what it feels like when the spell is used, and she’s in control, she’s powerful, now.

Does she remember what it looks like when her master would cast it? The tarsigns, different entirely from what she’s learned. More interlocking, tighter. In her memory, only one configuration is seen clearly enough she could hope to recreate. She hopes it means something.

One tarsus wraps around another, squeezing it, and the dactyls of the other rise despite, like a candle flame, or a water spout.

The whale sign.

She steps forward, and with each step, each bit of proximity sacrificed to the direhound that had nearly killed her, she feels her heart beat faster. Not fast enough. Not fast enough for it to truly be alive.

But she recalls the sensation, the pain she had felt as Unodha used the technique on her, as the first step of the plan that had killed her master. She feels her pulse in the bitemark that still remains from yesterday, even as the wound scars over. She squeezes her tarsus tighter.

Will this blind flailing of a technique do anything? She steps closer, betting her skin on something clicking. The direhound hasn’t taken another step, isn’t growling any more.

She breathes in, and her blood eagerly sucks up the fresh air. She moves her palps. “Begone,” she says. She breaks the sign, and bravado turns to caution as she jumps to her back up plan. Familiar seals. Focus. Louse.

But the direhound makes a sound, a… whining? It’s backing away, red eyes looking from her to Ooliri, to Awelah, and another bark, and then it turns. It runs off, the sound of old bones softening, occluded by the foliage. It runs north, at an angle to the road, off into the overgrown fields.

Makuja smiles. It seems the Asetari isn’t the only one who can scare off direbeasts so simply. She turns her small smile to the nymph in question, but Awelah has a deep frown that only deepens as her antennae work. Her eyes are on the fleeing hound.

“It doesn’t act like a predator at all,” she says. “I scented it to the north. If it could track us, the shortest path to catch us was not that. We can’t outrun it. Looping around like that only makes sense if—”

“He wanted to intercept us.”

“It was waiting for us. I can believe it — ambushes are a natural tactic. But something about it, with everything else…”

“Feels… It feels like we’re being herded. All these days, looking back… this was never a hunt, was it? If it wanted to hurt us, it could have. If it wanted to eat us, it would have given up.”

“Meaning, whatever is going on, something doesn’t want us continuing down this road.” Awelah looks southeast, down the procession of more abandoned tunnels and dead flags.

“We could turn back.”

“Backward is closer to Vilja.” Makuja places a hand on her melanized scar. “Forward means farther from something that has hurt us, and still could.”

No one wanted to go chasing after the direhound. Onward they walked, and hoped solace awaited them in Wisterun. Ooliri seems most shaken by the encounter, and stays close to Awelah.

“It’s evening,” Makuja says. “It’ll be dark soon. Still no trees.”

“We could stay in one of the antholes.”

“Sleeping in abandoned tunnels when we don’t know why they were abandoned is a stupid idea.”

“We could block the entrances, prevent Vilja from entering.”

“It’s spooky but,” Ooliri says, “it sounds safer than sleeping on the ground, or in a small arboreal.”

“If we up the pace, maybe we can reach Wisterun before it’s too dark,” Awelah says.

“I’m not sure I want to go there when it’s dark.”

“Why not?”

The discussion continues without anything new being mentioned or decided. Awelah turns Ooliri’s earlier ‘no speculation!’ back around at him, and at one point, someone suggests they dig their own hole. The conversation spirals into a weary, absurd back and forth that at least gets some laughs, eases some tension.

Above them, the sun might be closer to the horizon than the midpoint, but not by much. The way forward twists a bit, and the mud has dried enough that Awelah is able to kick a stone down the road. Then Makuja is pushing a stone forward with her new technique. And then Ooliri is showing Makuja how he finally managed bane blast, though it takes a false start for him to pull it off.

After the centipede encounter, the team is starting to get better at noticing when the absence of sounds is giving something away. Dimly, they notice the absence of katydid calls, or bird chirps.

Far along the road, they see tarp set over a makeshift shelter held up by bundled fern stems. A camp? Is the quiet due to hunters, perhaps?

They smell the hemolymph before they get close enough to see what died. The smell is old, has diffused throughout the area. Right now, the wind is behind them, and their smell is carried ahead.

They see the furry form moving. It’s fast. Its shrill screech cuts through the field.

They smell direblood. They see the size of its claws. Closer, the thinness of the muzzle, the bushy tail, puts a name to the creature.

It’s an anteater. A direanteater.

And that smell, those unmoving forms in the camp, must be the ants they saw yesterday.

The blood​-​crazed anteater is closing fast, and Awelah brings her tarsus together and weaves the seals. Ooliri doesn’t stop her.

The Asetari finishes, and opens her hands.

Nothing happens.

She has the time to run the tarsigns through one more time while that shrilly scream sounds again and still nothing happens. They stand face to face with a direbeast bigger than Vilja, and the spell that had saved them from the hound, from the erotyle, from the mantis​-​eating centipede, has failed them.

Death in the East

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.

End of Arc 2: An Eastward Pursuit

A Distant Dark Lake

A little nymph cries over a great dark lake. Her abdomen heaves with sobs and so much effort as her frail legs push paddles. Her boat is just large enough to contain her. It stutters along with each slow cycle of her paddling. The oars splash water that’s as black as if it had fallen in one of those evil wisp​-​storms. There is no reflection at all.

The waters ripple and churn on their own, and it pushes her boat off​-​course. There are other boats and they are far away. She can see their lights and they are so very small from here.

She has a torch for light because it is night time. Is it yet bed time? Even later? She cannot remember if she has a home, if anyone is waiting for her.

She cries. It would be awful to be alone in this great dark lake. Then her cries louden.

It’s worse: she isn’t.


Lake Wisterun seeps into the cracks of the land, that vast murky mass of its waters at length dragged eastward through the veins of Entcreek. The liquid skin reflects the sky, and that sky is lightening with the veiled and cloudy dawn which is by now so familiar to this land. Yet the lake is not thereby illuminated. Beneath the slowly lifting mists, and below the surface the winds sing waves across, the waters extend down with three depths.

First is the mirrored depth of the sky, rank upon rank of clouds drawn together and hanging expectant, faint as a wave​-​riddled reflection. You can see far beyond those clouds, as little more than a hint, the moon Tenebra, a blot on the unseen sky, as it nears its darkest, most expansive phase, tendrils casting shadows on the clouds.

Second is the mundane depth of the waters themselves, impenetrable for the muddy inflow of the creek. Bugs have boasted of boating far from the shore and descending for minutes without touching the bottom, but many tall tales surround the Lake Wisterun.

The last depth is that abstract, imagined depth of secrets fleetingly known from details that surround. How it roils under the waxing moon, how the damselflies and red​-​feathered ducks explore the fringes but dare not light near its heart, how the fishermant’s wife disappeared not one moon ago.

But if that is its depth, then it must be distant from the surface. From here above, it is just a lake, and it is majestic when viewed afar from the watchtower outpost.

“Ain’t it the prettiest sight in the whole county?” Boleheva says, standing on the outpost’s balcony. She has her raptorials outstretched, the entire lake encompassed between them. Lake Wisterun is big, and at this distance, it took a big mantis to have legs long enough to do this. “Leaves me awaiting this stop on my route every year. Wond’rful patch o water, right wonderful. All so long as ye don’t drown in it.”

“Have people drowned in it?” Ooliri asks.

“Just once, since I started working this county. Townsbugs ain’t forgettin it soon though.”

“No one’s planning on taking a swim,” Awelah says. “We’re only here to find information about Lady Earth​-​shaper. That’s all.”

“I wouldn’t mind taking a swim,” Ooliri says. Then he glances at his newly bandaged arm, and perhaps thinking better of it, corrects to, “Or maybe a ride in a little boat.”

“There will be lilypads and algae worth sampling. Leaving without visiting the lake would be a waste.” Makuja perches on a railing that encircles the outer platform of the watchtower, yet she faces inward rather than admiring the view. Being a few strides away from the ranger, she is positioned to have both the yellowshelled imago and a green nymph close to her focals at once. She watches with stillness and perfect balance. When she moves, it’s a minute adjustment of her head, a glance toward the spiralling stairs that accessed this platform. A mantis is climbing up now, burgundy head already visible, abdomen held up to cradle as it carries something.

He’s clicking his mandibles; he has heard them. “Don’t mistake your stay in Wisterun for a luxury visit, nor a mercenary venture. Not yet. Right now, you three are unknown threats to be evaluated, motivations and backgrounds to be accounted for.” Yanseno had a metal cup of water he’d held over a fire downstairs and poured bitter brown powder into. It floats in the air, the umbral darkness around one tarsus the only thing holding it up. The cup rises, aromatic steam wafting over his palps. It almost seems an unspoken reminder: with just as much effort he could pull out one arquebus strapped to his back.

“Yeh. Don’t reckon you’ll be out of our sight till we’ve got yer names in writing.” Boleheva turns away from the balcony, and takes a step toward them, as if she’d awaited Yanseno’s return.

“They seem nice,” comes a mellow voice. Quessa had stood at the other side of the balcony, gazing with pigmented eyes at the sunrise over lake Wisterun. “I believe in them.” She has a smile when she’s stepping after the vesperbane ranger.

“I’ll save my credulity till I know exactly what I’m believing in.”

“Why save it?” Awelah asks. “We could just tell you right here.”

“Ain’t no point,” Boleheva says. “We’re not ants but we’re not moonbrains neither. Sit pretty till we’re at my desk and Ruby can keep note of what yer claimin.”

“Can’t Yanseno do it?” Quessa asks. “He has a perfect memory!”

“Look, I can’t allow that. You know this.” She looks at the green nymph, then, with the palp​-​swipe of one who misspoke, corrects herself, “He knows why.”

“Because I’m a maverick, and an umbracog at that. You don’t trust me.”

“It ain’t that. You’re—” She stops. “It’s about what the gold will think. I tell them I got my report from a distorty, and then? They toss it out and ask questions. Better get it done with tradition.”

“A report?” Awelah’s posture has straightened. Antennae​-​fluff rising up, she asks, “Who are you reporting to?”

“We’re in Windborne, girl. Take a wild guess.”

“Solaroch. Nearest stronghold,” Yanseno supplies.

Ooliri is nodding. Makuja is impassive, and only Awelah looks like this is new information.

“I’m not handing my secrets off to the first hold that asks.”

“Bah. You are. Keeping quiet ain’t an option, but this going smooth instead of rough is. I’m not asking your life story, and don’t need to hear it. I do need to hear what good reason there is for you lot nabbing the headbands of three good banes of Windhold. If I like your reasons, we might even be friendly after that.”

“Then we have every reason to arrive with haste,” Makuja says. She breaks her stare, now, eyes tracing the line from up here to the lake, as if calculating the distance.

Team Duskborn and their escort, had arrived at this outpost last night, when the clouded sky above grew too dark to continue a trek through the wilderness. They slept here under the promise of reaching Wisterun in the morning. Boleheva had awoken first, before the sunrise, at length roused the rest of them to witness the sunrise Boleheva wanted to show. Quessa had slept the hardest, last to awaken. Now, it’s time to move on.

“Wait,” Awelah says. “We can’t go to town yet. We still haven’t done anything about…” she trails off, waving a tarsus toward her face. “I can’t be recognized. Not if I’ll have more killers looking for me when we get there.”

“Hm? Only new faces here are a few Dusky migrants who lost their huts to the wisps, and the bees. Bees’re already leaving, ain’t they? Bah. If there were hired killers skulking around town, I’d know. I’m the ranger! You think I’d let them blot you out?”

Yanseno is taking a sip of his hot drink. When he lowers the cup and swallows, he regards Awelah. “You’ve made us aware of this situation.” He reaches behind himself. The purple nymph tenses, and the red nymph brings her hands together. He keeps his guns behind him. But the burgundy imago is turning, revealing what he retrieved from downstairs: a pile of cloth, straps and metal bars. His tarsus closes around a bit of cloth, and passes it to Awelah. Cloth doesn’t throw well, but the dark aura around Yanseno’s tarsus speaks to some assistance.

The black cloth fits around her mandibles and face, tying secure at the back of her neck. The fit is loose enough to move her palps, and speak a bit muffled. She’s given gloves, too. Clad like this, she didn’t need an antennae​-​band to look like a bane.

“You have a cloak, so wear it. With that, maintaining anonymity is up to you.”

“What’s the rest of that for?” Ooliri asks, eyeing the mass of straps. From where Yan had retrieved the mask.

“Heh. Didn’t give this tower a close look, did you?”

This tower they’ve climbed is so much banestone scaffolding, six pillars rising in a hex with crisscrossing supports between them. Inside the hex, secured to the pillars, a staircase spirals steeply up. Set atop a hill, the tower rises even higher still, and at the top lay three stacked floors, stocked with supplies. Yanseno had just come up from one of those rooms.

Boleheva, standing at the threshold between the outer platform and the interior where the nymphs now perch or stand, is pointing to another edge of the platform. “This is an old vesperbane outpost, ye know? The ranger before me had this tower propped up, and then he ran a rope from here right down to the gates of Wist’run! Crazy fella.”

“A zipline,” Yanseno supplies. “A faster route to town than the footpaths.”

“For y’all.” Boleheva taps her abdomen. “I’m too big. Ol’ ranger was smaller than I, and one of those harnesses might snap with me on it!”

“Has snapped. I saw you fall. A good little laugh.” Yanseno takes a sip, perhaps hiding a smile.

Ooliri darts to the railing, looking down the distance they’d be falling. “Is it safe?”

“Everything is unsafe. You should be well acquainted with the dangers of traveling the wilds by now. After all, if that direanter had a babe, the father’s out there. The direhound too, if it isn’t yours. Everything is unsafe. So ask instead if it’s worth the risks.” (Makuja straightens at the mention of Vilja.) Yanseno puts down his cup, and steps toward the outer platform. “Myself, I’ll be fine without a minute more in these woods. For you, it’s your choice. Walk with Boleheva, if you must. But decide quickly. I’ll be going.”

“Ye know tiercels,” Boleheva is saying with one antennae curling up. “Too delicate for these harsh wilds.”

Because he is walking away, they don’t see Yanseno’s reaction to this.

“So, which will it be, nymphies?” Boleheva asks.

Makuja is glancing to the ranger first of all, but Ooliri is the one who speaks first.

“Awelah should go with her.”

The red nymph frowns. “Why?”

Ooliri’s tone has a certain sharpness to it, speaking to the red nymph. “Her injury, you know. Your thorax is still sore, isn’t it?” Awelah stares, then gives a nod.

“What happened to her?”

“Got hit with some enervate. Nothing big.”

“You didn’t ward it?” Yanseno asks, glancing back.

“What?”

“I sensed you were a blackbane of some development. Was I wrong?” Yanseno asked. His eyes on Awelah, coupled with the labrum raised, exposing just a hint of mandible, makes the evaluation latent in his regard evident. He’s probing Awelah’s abilities.

There’s a pause, and Awelah’s palps tap in thought. A dilemma underneath is: keep her secrets, or boast? She says, “Of course I’m a blackbane. And I’ve learned two forms: bane blast, and my clan’s technique: umbral body projection. I’d prove it, but…” She frowns, tossing a scowl at Makuja, and finishes, “It’s… painful when I try. The injury.”

Yanseno laughs. Awelah frowns, but before anything else, the dark red imago is making a few tarsigns.

Familiar tarsigns.

⸢Umbral Form: Umbral Body Projection!⸥

Aura flows smoothly out of his forelegs, and takes on his shape, darkening until this umbraform stands before them. Shadow​-​Yanseno waves, then puts his forelegs together and dispells himself.

“Nothing clan secret about it. It’s a standard enough technique. Nobody uses it because it takes too much rhiza to mold, too much umbra to cast, and what’s the point? Might as well just sack ’em with a melter ball. All around more efficient. Maybe your clan’s got around that.”

“You’ve never heard of my clan?”

“Nope. Should I recognize you?”

“The Asetari are the founders of Duskroot. Our will is divided but undiminished — the astral projection technique creates autonomous spellforms that are controlled, yet independent.”

“How interesting,” Yanseno drily states. He turns to take a step toward Awelah, and then lifts a tarsus, and points it at the pale nymph’s head before jerking it upward as if from a gun’s recoil. “Boom. If I was out for your head, you’d have given me all I needed. I told you your anonymity is up to you — you’re going to have to try harder than that to keep it.”

Awelah frowns. Her palps move wordlessly for a moment, stumbling over how to respond. “If I can’t trust you…”

“I don’t trust you. Not yet. So don’t get familiar.” His eyes drop to the girl’s thorax. “About the injury, though, just sounds like your coils got damaged by the blast. I’m a sensor. Might give you a look, see how bad it is — if I get recompense. Think about that, while Boleheva walks you to town.” Yanseno’s eyes leave Awelah, and roam over the other nymphs present. “Hope that little episode gave you enough time to decide what you’re doing. Who needs harnesses?”

“I think,” Ooliri starts, “I might walk.”

“But it’s fun,” Quessa says. “It feels like flying. It’d be sad to miss out on it.” Her antennae bounce, and she smiles. Ooliri reciprocates, and wonders if she’s smiled for any of the other, or if he’s that much special, for now. His antennae rise at the thought.

“Quessa was scared her first time, too. Got over it quick.”

“Was I?” she asks. “Oh, right.” The addendum is slow and flat, absent recognition. But soon she’s skipping over to Yanseno and grabbing two of the harnesses, glancing down to inspect them. She passes one to Ooliri. The material is old and worn baneleather, with metal buckles.

Makuja glances at Awelah, then drops from her perch. “Larger groups walk for longer. We should get there quickly.” She walks to collect a harness for herself.

On the platform, Yanseno is attaching Quessa’s harness to the zipline’s trolley. Two ropes glide down over the forest in parallel, and the trolley secures to both of them.

The trolley’s wheels roll down the line, steady and unslowed by the friction that mere sliding would entail. When Quessa is released to fly down the length, she soars forth with a laugh stolen by the wind, and she flaps her raptorials like a bird.

Ooliri stands with tightly folded forelegs. He looked over the edge once, and resolved to keep his eyes pointed upward after that. Nerves breaking, he opts to go after Quessa and get it over with.

As the harness slides over the gray nymph, Yanseno decides he’ll be the last to go. “You kids will find some way to get it wrong, or freeze up worrying you will.”

Ooliri settles with some fidgeting, harness attached to the zipline trolley. Behind him, Makuja is sliding the leather straps over her.

Of the four zipline harnesses that leave the watch tower, three make it to the gates of Wisterun.

A Final Stretch

Like the umbral filaments spilling from Tenebra, trail lines extend out from Wisterun, a small point whose influence magnified it. Around the town farmland fans out, starting not far from its walls of mud, stone and wood. The farms are delineated and crossed by those trails. Not roads: they lacked the stiffness and symmetry of the roads a diamantid would put down. No, the reason for these trails is only seen as Ooliri flies closer. Ants, dozens of them swaddled in colorful clothes, along them marched in ranks or, here and there, wandered alone.

Above him the zipline buzzes as the wheels roll down the wire. Ooliri listens to that sound waiting for a creak or snap. His eyes scan the cable. Can he see exposed strands and wear on the wires, or is it just anxious pareidolia? Quessa had gone down just fine. Yanseno had been confident, and Ooliri is already halfway down now. Below him the metataxite forests they’d traveled are thinning, giving way to civilization.

Wait, had Yanseno been confident? “Everything is unsafe,” is what he said.

Still, Ooliri’s strapped to the thing now. If he put up his raptorials in front of his face, then maybe he won’t have to repeatedly scrutinize the cables for fault, and won’t wonder just whether it’ll hurt more to fall down on the conks of metataxites or onto a wheatfield. But if he lifts his raptorials, that means they won’t be holding fast to his harness, and he likes having something to hold onto. Instead, he can just fold his antennae over his foveae…

“You did it!” he hears Quessa chirp. “I told you it’d be fine.”

Ooliri moves his antennae from where they wrapped around his compound eyes. The trolley stopped moments ago. He lowers his legs and they land steady on the stone​-​cobbled platform. Roped fern​-​stalks fence off this platform, and he turns his head a little to get Quessa’s green face in his sightlines.

“That was…” Ooliri stops. He doesn’t want to disappoint her, so he searches for a way to put it. “Better than running into another world​-​scar in the wilds. Maybe—maybe I could get used to it.”

Quessa smiles, and then glances away. “Boleheva might take some minutes to run here. Do you want to wait over by the gate? I think I know one of the ants! But that one’s not supposed to be on guard duty. Or was it otherwise? Maybe that one was reassigned.”

Ooliri glances up at the now​-​distant tower pointing up over the woods. “Shouldn’t we wait for Makuja?”

“Should we? She…” Quessa had a tendency to just stop, palps tapping her mandibles where another mantis might stutter or pad with ‘ums’ or ‘wells.’ “…seems scary.”

“She is scary. But most of that — most of that scariness is for our enemies. You saw her fight that anteater right? She saved our lives there.” Ooliri rubs his bandaged arm. “Yanseno seems scary too. But, to you, he’s nice, isn’t he?”

“He is…” Quessa extends an antennae over, which brushes quite close to touching him. “Do you have a father?”

“Had one. He’s—gone now.”

“Oh. Do you miss him?”

“Every time I go home.” Which, Ooliri realizes with a start, he hasn’t, not for several shades. Would he be there right now, if this mission hadn’t fallen apart? “Oonserta taught me everything. I wouldn’t be half the vesperbane or have any idea what I’m doing without him.”

Quessa nods. “Yanseno is just like that.”

Ooliri wonders why she hadn’t just said the maverick was like father to her. He thinks about asking, but decides not to. This silences the conversation for a moment.

“What were we talking about?”

“You wanted to talk to one of the ants, I think? And avoid Makuja, because she’s scary. But I explained how she’s protective​-​scary, like Yanseno.”

Quessa looks away, toward the ants milling around by the gate, and her antennae bounce up. “Yeah, there! The One Who Bites Water. He showed me some of the tunnels.” Looking back to Ooliri, she says, “I’d like to wait over there? At least until Yanseno gets back. There’s something… I think I wanted to say to that one.”

“Maybe. I’d like to meet an ant.” Ooliri glances back at the tower, and sees a mantis riding down the zipline. Makuja?

Quessa starts walking, and Ooliri plots out an approach. He could tell Makuja to wait here for Yanseno while he goes with Quessa, play it off as a way to make sure the maverick knows where to find them?

The gray nymph watches the image of Makuja smoothly getting larger and clearer, witnessing the descent from the other perspective. Where Ooliri had fidgeted and covered his eyes, Makuja rides down with antennae waving like short banners behind her.

She’s not all still, though. About halfway down, she turns. Is she leaning to one side? Why?

The distance obscures it, but peering closer, Ooliri sees her center of mass is lower — and there’s not just antennae trailing behind her now. Those are the straps of the harness!

Snapping one by one, Makuja holds onto the trolley as her support gives out — but at this speed, with this suddenness (and, Ooliri thinks, with that terrifying height beneath you), her grip cannot be steady.

Ooliri cries out in alarm, and it stops Quessa in her tracks. He turns to her with paling eyes. “We have to do — something, don’t we?”

“I think…” Quessa looks up, antennae spiking as she sees what’s only a blurry image in the fringe of his rear vision — that dreaded inevitability. “We need to wait for Yanseno. He’ll do something.”

Far from Wisterun’s gates, above the woods, Makuja falls.


Ooliri thinks I’m weak. Awelah watches the gray nymph slip on his harness as she steps down the steep stairs. Everything she’d done and endured, and one hit from Makuja makes them think she can’t bear putting on a starsdamned harness.

Her smaller form slips past Boleheva on the stairs, making the big imago stop with a quiet “Woah there.” She takes the stairs two at a time, and with the height of each step, she’s vertical enough to nearly flip over.

The stairs are spiraled, winding inside the six pillars of the watchtower, and when she reaches the spot above the landing, she jumps off the side, hitting the ground with sandals audibly squishing in the mud. Her legs bend enough till her abdomen smacks the ground and forced a pained exhale. By the time she’s recovered, Boleheva is stepping onto the landing.

“Goin with all the hurry in the world, ain’t ye?”

Awelah pats grime off of her, and with two false starts yanks her feet out of the mud. “Let’s go.” She walks off.

“You leadin’ the way, girl?”

Awelah points up to the zipline. “Unless you lied about where that’s going, I know which way it is.”

“Fair enough.” Boleheva leans her thorax forward and trots up to the pale nymph’s side. “Still, if you’re so hasty, might as well climb on. I’ll get us there fas’er than anything. Could even beat the maverick up there, I bet.”

The Asetari clicks her mandibles. “I don’t need to be carried like a hatchling.”

“Look, no one said that.”

“I have legs, that’s my answer.”

“Ye don’t understand it. I’m a bloodbane. Compared to my myxothews, you ain’t got legs.” She points back behind her. “I could climb that tower with one arm free and three grown imagos tied to my back, and still reach the top. I could run to Wisterun without stoppin for breath if I need to.”

Awelah looks away, and she walks faster.

“Is this about yer pride?” Boleheva asks, catching up with her one heartbeat later. “You think you’ll look like a baby if yer friends see you carried around? Fine, maybe. Ye know ’em better than I. But what do you reckon they’ll think if they have to wait an hour for you to get there?”

The conversation halts there when a small startled longicorn leaps from the ferns, darting across their path, long antennae frenzied in fear. Awelah, almost on instinct, turned to track it. But there’s no use hunting; Boleheva had some ration bars they’d ate this morning, and she surely had more.

The feet of many bugs had worn this trail, and that alone would have it easier to follow that the pathless wilderness on their way into this prefecture, but the metataxites and dewy ferns around them clear up twist by turn. Somewhere out there, Awelah recalls, that direhound is still creeping about. She isn’t finished with it. Clenching her raptorials, she longs to continue that chase. Nothing she can do about it right now, but she resists taking her mind off it. Awelah would be — is — a hunter, and she wouldn’t let her prey be forgotten, nor escape.

Above her lies a clear sight of the zipline throughout, and at some vantages could make out the distant raised roofs of the multistory Wisterun homes.

Glimpsing that distant settlement, a comment of Boleheva’s returns to Awelah.

“You said there were Duskhold refugees in Wisterun?”

“Ye.”

“Are there any… are we — am I the first Duskroot vesperbane you’ve seen? Since the attack?”

“An attack? A bane force attack? Thought it was bad weather, or a world​-​scar. But no, no vesperbanes seen till you three showed up. Maybe one of the kids is a pawn, but I doubt it. Ask Yan, he’d’ve seened it.”

“They attacked my clan, and all of Duskroot. I made it out alive but, I can’t be the only one.”

“Every detail you let slip makes me want to hear the full story. Don’t want to hear it twice, but if you’re not going to—” The ranger stops.

Above them, Makuja descends the zipline. Awelah doesn’t know why this merits attention, until she looks up herself, and sees it.

“She’s gonna fall. Bloody pits, and there’s not a chance to catch her.” Boleheva parts her eyes from the red nymph holding on to the zooming trolley, and regards Awelah. “Look, girl, there’s no time for stubbornness now. Climb on, or I’m leaving you here.”

Awelah doesn’t hope Makuja is injured. But if she is, and if Awelah were there and the former mercenary needed her help…

The pale nymph doesn’t wrap her forelegs around the yellow imago. Her lower four tarsi clutch the rope of Boleheva’s outfit, and she folds up her raptorials in front of her. Not a moment after, Boleheva lunges into motion, with speed that’d make Awelah’s running a standstill. The acceleration jerks the passenger, and forces her to hug closer to the ranger to not be tossed off.

Awelah had heard stories of vesperbanes in the northern swamps, or the forests to the south, who could cross the country in the treetops, never setting foot on the ground. One wonders if Boleheva had learned from them, as she jumps off metataxites, using their trunks or shelves to launch herself forward. The verticality is needed to clear bits of shrubbery and soar across some gullies, but, if the way even the larger the aboreals are left shaking in her wake, Boleheva needed to keep most of her weight on the ground.

Their first step is to walk perpendicular to the zipline cable, seemingly at a tangent to wherever Makuja had fallen. But once Boleheva crosses under the cable, she can follow its length as the hills wind down to Wisterun — this would have to intercept Makuja’s falling place.

“Is that it?” Awelah calls out.

Boleheva slows before she responds. With the blur of motion easing, the pale nymph can look closer. There’s a telling crater of crushed moss, but Awelah had seen something else: a certain bit of leather lying at the edge of the clearing.

Climbing off, crossing the field and then bending down to pick it up, Awelah’s doubt vanishes. It’s a torn set of straps that would have been the harness, at one point. There’s blood on it.

“She must have dropped this. I can track her scent — do you know anything about tracking?”

“Most o’ my problems come right at me. So no. If you think you can find her, by all means.”

Awelah looks back to the harness.

“You can leave that, though. I can get a new one made, that one’s clearly trash.”

Bloody harness falling behind them, Awelah and Boleheva set out in search of Makuja.


The Silverbane would have simply panicked. The Asetari would have flailed for a way forward and found nothing. Of the three of us, Makuja thinks, there is none more suited to once again face death. The thought is a still image in her mind as her foretarsi fail and she plunges into open air.

As she looks down at the dozens of meters that yawn between her and the ground, it’s not that she doesn’t feel fear. The weightless acceleration, the wind tearing at her antennae​-​fluff, the aboreals limbs that don’t escape comparison to sharp weapons… no, she feels the nearness of death with her every sense. Yet just yesterday she stood at crippling height with nothing beneath her. This reprise is instead exhilaratingly familiar.

Faster, faster.

Like before, the gush of blood presages her myxokora, and it still hurts. But the blood knits together, and fibers become muscle become limbs and claws. How would they be best used? Catching hold of an arboreal might see them ripped right off. But if she put them beneath her, cushioning her fall? With how the liquid muscle formed and reformed, permanent damage couldn’t be a risk.

The other option she wielded, her blast​-​jumping technique, would require so much more precision. There’s barely any mass to the air, and if she tried blasted with nothing beneath her — throwing a knife straight down might give her as much thrust.

She started forming the tarsigns anyway. She doesn’t bother conducting the umbranerve through her midlegs; her raptorials would do just as well. Better, if it gave her even a hair’s more precision.

Her plan would play out best on flat ground, so she abandons the thought of catching an arboreal. The size of her myxokora limbs gives her room to adjust trajectory. She aims for a clearing, but at the speed she’s going, forming tarsigns at the same time, there’s no chance for ideal circumstance.

Moments later, a tree branch scratches across her wretched raptorials, wood snapping and muscle bleeding. But it’s her cue that the ground is near, and it’s time: Makuja makes the sign of release.

At point blank range, she would have gotten the most thrust, but timing like that is nothing but a wish. She lets go at a cautious distance to the ground.

⸢Bane blast!⸥

Black nerve erupts from her tarsi. It pushes her, and it pushes on the ground. She slows, and her forelegs bend back as she gets low enough to see pebbles, in time for her myxokora to be her cushion. To the feeling of muscle crushed beneath the force of seconds of freefall, blood bursting from its folds, there’s only one response Makuja can muster: the loud, harsh cry of a wounded animal.

The nymph wrests control of herself, rolls onto her back and goes silent. Her myxokora writhe and flex. They recover from their brutal compression with a speed that reminds her why the mantids of old thought of bat blood as animated by some principle surpassing natural life.

Ripping the leather harness off her, Makuja eyes at the tears and the age of the leather. Had it been ill fortune that she fell, or malicious design? The harness falls into her myxokora’s grasp, and the red claw curls tightly closed around it. She squeezes. If this had been an attempt on her life… how vulnerable are experienced vesperbanes to a knife in their sleep?

Yanseno called himself an umbracog and a sensor — so her attempt would be no more than an elaborate request for death. Makuja’s only way forward would be fleeing, if she and her team were under true threat.

What would that threat be? No one present showed any awareness of Kuon’s plans — except, what could reading an umbracog accomplish but misleading oneself?

Movement behind her. For all that she delved deep in thought, Makuja’s eyes remained sharp, her entire body pulsing and ready to act. The ferns had shifted behind her, and the red nymph snaps around to see.

White and green and every accent between the two patterns the cloth’s maelstrom of color — so attention​-​catching you see the attire before you see what wore it. A spinner ant, gray chitin around pure black eyes. The head is a sleek square and short setae rise in the center like a mohawk. Below, mandibles chew on the encircling cloth the way a nymph might chew on a shirt. Palps pull at the thread and antennae fold down to rub across it.

(To Makuja, it’s a mild sight. The ant, however, had pulled away the fern and witnessed a vesperbane, dark aura wafting off her forelegs, bloody clawed limbs bursting from her side, and a labrum raised to exposed mandibles — every kind knew the sign of a diamantid ready to kill you.)

With one high “Eep!” of a chirp, it runs, and Makuja gives chase. The ant dodges around metataxites, weaving evasion in the twists and turns of its route. An ant could run for longer than a mantis, maybe even faster than a nymph like Makuja, but she works enervate into her legs as she moves. She plans a surprise for when the ant thinks it has closed to a safe distance.

Was it coincidence that the ant showed up right after what may or may not have been an assassination? Perhaps. But Makuja has questions the ant can answer, and if nothing else, she needs directions to Wisterun.

Where the small ant passes without issue, Makuja slides through mud, offbalance until a myxokora thrusts out to push off the ground. Steadied on her feet, Makuja has lost sight of the ant. But her waving antennae catch the faint sulphuric odor of alarm pheromone; the ant was kind enough to mark a trail.

All told, it was a momentary chase. There’s another chirp seconds later, and Makuja has one moment to wonder why. It shouldn’t be a surprise. As a rule, the eusocial kinds, spinner ants least of all, do not work alone.

The red nymph rushes forward and breaks out onto earth denuded enough it must be a trail. Four square heads turn her way, each a muted dark shade, and each shawled by garrish frayed fabric. The ant she pursued is panting, cringing inward as other ants move to surround it, a defensive formation. Two spinners rear up at her arrival, lifting forelegs into the air as their rear legs scrape some harsh warning. The third follows a moment later.

Makuja is undaunted and faintly annoyed by the threat. Facing the three ants arranged into a vague arrow pointed at her, shielding their winded comrade, she calculates. Her thorax leans forward and her weight falls onto her midlegs, whose tarsi splay and release the umbranerve she’d molded.

Deescalation would take too long, she thinks.

The vesperbane blasts forward, and her angle takes her to the left, toward the ant who’d been last to respond. Her myxokora lifts to put a wall between her and the lead ant while her raptorials close around the ant’s forelegs.

The ant scrapes high — surprise and fear more than pain, because she doesn’t apply pressure enough to break anything. Makuja lifts it up, and even as it kicks, twists it around so she holds it around the alitrunk against her thorax. She palms a knife, and presses it to the ant’s neck.

At this range, at this angle, her myxokora or even her raptorials could be more deadly, more damaging. But the knife sends a clear message. The ants halt, the lead stumbling backward at the suddenness of her appearance. When the ants recover, the lead is wordlessly buzzing at her.

Makuja didn’t know what Boleheva or Yanseno planned, and there may be nothing she can do, no control she can exert to change it. She didn’t know if her teammates are safe, or if some new danger awaited them past the town’s gates. But she does know that a little pressure could kill this ant, and she knows the ants before don’t want that. It’s a little bit of power, and with that leverage she gets a little bit of control in how this plays out.

“Take me to Wisterun. Now.”

A Wisterun Welcome

“It’s all under control,” Yanseno says, his harness lifted off him with a single swipe of his aura​-​wreathed tarsus. It drops to the smoked conk platform beneath them, forgotten. “I sensed Makuja moving, chi​-​nrv burn suggestive of active bloodletting. Mending, or her myxokora are out. I signaled Boleheva to tail her.”

“Is she okay?” Ooliri asks. “Why not tell her to help?”

“Your girl’s agitated. Don’t trust that brute to handle a sensitive situation, not when it’s her fault.” Yanseno glances at the gray nymph. “I get the impression she isn’t the most stable of your group, is she?”

He thinks of Awelah. “Well, it’s more…”

“Of a competition? Yeah, I could see that.” Yanseno shifts his eyes to the distance as he slips a raptorial into his trenchcoat. A moment later, he’s palming a dark ball. Ooliri wants to call the material glass — it has all the trappings of vague translucency, the only problem is the images suggested in refraction were unlike anything actually present. A dark plain without trees, without clouds in the sky, the scape dotted with twisted scleritomes. Ooliri doesn’t even need to ask before the bane is explaining, “Sensor ball. Easier, cheaper than doing it with endowments.”

“Could I use it?”

“Nope.”

“Erm, is that no as in you won’t let me, or no as in it wouldn’t work?”

“Both. Don’t want to clean your umbra sig off the glass, and you don’t have the control needed to sense much of anything, nor the training to understand what you could sense.” A chill comes, underscoring the words, and the glass darkens. Yanseno looks out in the direction of the tower.

Fringing the town is foliage whose consistency of height and spacing suggest they were planted. The expanse is like a second wall around the town. Yanseno peers into it. Paths aside from the big main road out of town were winding affairs cutting through the arboreals — ants were fond of mazes and he supposed this is another. Meant he couldn’t see Boleheva or the kid coming through. But he’s a sensor. He waves to the boy. “Let’s go face the mess coming this way.”

Ooliri’s about to ask what’s wrong, but as the sensor is stepping directly over the fence (rather than going through the gate), an ant clad in dark blue and green rags is scuttling up. Little feet kick gravel out of the way as the ant approaches. That one pokes Yanseno with an antennae. There’s a high​-​pitched stridulation. One leg taps a sheet held by mandibles.

“Not now.”

Ooliri comes up behind him to give the ant a look. Seeing Ooliri, this one turns and presents the sheet. Slips of cloth are pinned to it and strings are drawn between the clothes. Each of the tag​-​like bits of cloth has a word sown onto it. As Ooliri peers, an antenna taps on a word, and then rides a string to another tag, taps that, and so forth. This one is rubbing legs against its gaster all the while, stridulation pitched higher than a diamantid voice — and after a moment, Ooliri realizes it sounds almost like words. So different from a mantis’s palps, the ant must be unable to pronounce most words of Panthecan, only simple articles. The words on the cloth are all nouns, and parsing them together with the chirps, Ooliri realizes it’s communicating, as simple and odd as the implied sentence is.

“Hi! [Vesperbane] has [attention] for [[pleading]]?” It taps vesperbane one, the other antennae pointing at Yanseno. Attention is tapped twice, and it repeatedly taps pleading as Ooliri stares.

“I think he’s busy right now. He might be able to speak with you soon?”

This one continues fiddling with the strings as Ooliri speaks, rearranging the tags with a speed he can’t quite follow. Ants have awful eyes, he recalls, so he isn’t sure how they could use the tags if they could even see the sheet in front of them, which they can’t. Unless — those words are sown onto the fabric. Is it feeling the bumps and telling the words apart like that? While Ooliri muses, a new sentence is readying, and interpolated with more chirps.

“Buh, buh. [Inquiry] of [smallness] with [promptitude].”

A quick and simple question? “Our friend might be hurt. I think he’s worried about that right now.”

“Hmp. [Mirror] of [colony].”

What? Mirror… the same? Did colony mean ‘us’? “Your friends might be hurt?” Ooliri asks, even as it clicks. “Oh.” He glances to Quessa, the green nymph with antennae drooping and a growing frown. “Do you think they’re…”

“That one expected an arrival?” Quessa asks, looking at the blue​-​ragged ant rather than Ooliri.

“Uu. [Emptiness] of [knowledge] as [[delivery]] to [fullness] of [knowledge] as [[returning]]. Not [returning]. So [emptiness] as [return]. So [attention] for [scouting] and [foraging] of those ones who [return].”

Before Ooliri can tease out what that means, Yanseno calls.

“She’s here.”

Even without the sensor to confirm it, the energy of the ants crowding and passing the gates changes. The first to react are the ants waiting on top of the wall, bigger bugs tightly clad in black, with bulky mandibles distinct even from this distance. They stand on four legs, antennae stretched out into the sky, and, with a twitch as if catching a scent, drop to sixes and move. Meanwhile, the ephemeral flow of ants in lines up and down the trails slows, changes direction. Grouped in threes and fours, those who carrying bags or carted wheelbarrows stop and look around, while the ants with empty backs don’t dawdle, gathering into a massed crowd.

A wall​-​mounted ant has traversed to a wider platform and, half obscured by a railing, it takes a mallet and strikes it twice against a small gong. The sound carries farther than their stridulation would, yet near enough only those outside the gate clearly hear.

Around them, they can see the ants who had pushed barrows reach into them, and retrieve farm tools, passing them around. Big, black mandibles lift the tools as improvised weapons.


At first, Boleheva’s acrobatics had been impressive. The staid banes of the Asetari clan were much more inclined to walk at speeds that could only be called a procession, and even in duels, it played out so much more like a game of sworder draughts. Awelah grits her teeth as the thought of her clan leads to its inevitable end point. But she wouldn’t cowardly deter her thoughts to spare herself. She wouldn’t forget this pain.

“Holdin’ on real tight there, aintcha?”

Awelah only grunted.

At first, Boleheva’s acrobatics had been impressive. But with every creek or pit leapt across, every metataxite kicked off of, Awelah had to hold on tighter to not fly off. She was a vesperbane now — why force her to clutch tight like a child to their mommy? (Though if Awelah were still that child, would she ever let go?)

When the acrobatics stop and Awelah need no longer cling, her first thought is that she wants to keep going.

“Why did we stop?” She doesn’t see Makuja anywhere near her.

“Looks like someone needs our help. Lift yer eyes.”

Awelah sees it, then, up in one of the ferns. An ant clutches its topmost fronds, bending them toward the ground yet still hanging meters above it. Some of the branching stalks look to have slipped in between loops and ribbons of cloth that all spinners wore, holding it there. The ant is wriggling a bit now, having seen them. They hear dissonant chirps — distress.

“I got ya, little one.” Boleheva pick Awelah up and sits her down — with some difficulty, as Awelah twists and pushes away her tarsi.

“We don’t have time for this,” the nymph says.

“Shouldn’t take more than a wee minute. Longer if ye argue.”

“Makuja might be hurt. This ant looks fine.” Awelah looks around, then glances for prints in the mud. “It has friends in the area, doesn’t it? It’d have too. Ants are a hive race.”

“Think a bit before you speak, eh? We saw where your girl fell. Ain’t there — means she must’ve gotten up and moved. Can’t be too hurt, and this anty might have seen her. Now quiet.”

As she gets closer, grabbing hold of the fern, a pronounced size difference is highlighted — the ranger’s foreleg is longer than the ant, and only a bit thinner. Jostling the fern a little, the yellow bane looks the entrapping plant up and down.

“Hold tight a moment, friend. I’ll get ye right down.”

Awelah hears a bit of fern stalk crushing as her grip tightens, and her other foreleg is drawn back. Boleheva exhales, and the foreleg shoots forward, slamming into the fern below her grip. The thing shatters, hard green splintering and brown oozing out. The ant cries out, jolting, as Boleheva lifts the whole giant fern with her other foreleg, bearing the weight just a moment before the other foreleg turns it to a two tarsi grip. Steadied now, Boleheva carefully rotates the severed stalk, so that the ant is right side up, and lowers it to the ground.

“There ye are, right as ye wish. Before you go, can I ask how ye got like this?” Simultaneous with speaking, Boleheva is waving at the pale nymph, dactyls curling to beckon her forward.

The ant chirps slowly, eyes downcast. “Wugh. [Bat​-​bug : red, black] who [screams] had [threat] and [command]. Urm. This one who [hides] in [fern : big] has [expense]. The ones who [read] have now [duration : longer] for [arrival : later].”

“You make much of that, girl? Don’t know much formic myself — Ruby usually handles things with the locals.”

Awelah’s family’d had a few spinners; they’d woven their robes. She didn’t know them well — hard to talk to spinners if you can’t read — if you couldn’t read for years after than your agemates could. When older, she had dealt with them formally, at the point where playing with the servants would only lead her to long evenings in the sitting room with father. (Awelah waits for the stab of loss, and this time it does not come.)

To the imago, Awelah only clicks her mandibles, palps curved in a downward frown as she scrapes, “This is a distraction. It’s here to waste our time.”

Boleheva glances between the ant and the fern. “Threatening my people, tossing them up in ferns.” Vesperbane eyes could get so much darker than laymants. “Just as I said, there best be a damn good reason behind your behavior.”

Awelah meets that hard gaze, and wonders what in the gulfs Makuja is doing.


“While I’m normally not one for heroics,” Yanseno starts, “you’re making that a difficult habit to keep. Haven’t even stepped into town yet and you’ve already got a knife to innocent bug’s throat.”

The maverick had met her, stopped her right where the path to Wisterun opens up. She says, “Ants don’t speak fluent Panthecan. Those I encountered mistook me for some danger, made an intimidation display. If I was attacked, it would not end well for them, so I ensured they could not make that mistake.”

Yanseno glances to the knife she holds to the ant’s throat — something one might mistake for danger — and opts not to comment. Instead, “Can’t blame them, myself. Not when you stink of killer fear. They were made to be scared for their life.”

Red antennae fold at that, fluff furrowing. The kid hadn’t realized it? She says, “Nevertheless, faced with the choice to entertain their threats or not, I chose the option that gave us both what we wanted quickest.”

“How selfless,” Yanseno mutters. “It was pointlessly rash. Because you were scared too, weren’t you? Fallen from a height that might’ve killed a laymant, might’ve crippled your friends, you survived, but it shook you up, didn’t it? Hate that it happened, but I need you calm.” Not waiting for a response. Yanseno chooses to make a tarsign, for all that he has control enough to not need it. ⸢Nouform: Calming Draft!⸥

Makuja’s antennae splay out. Her grip on the knife and the ant slack enough for the ant to wriggle free. The ant walks up to one of this one’s companion, who wraps two legs around that one in a hug.

As Makuja’s myxokora unknit and drain back into her body cavity, she asks. “What was that?”

“Simple nouspell. Easy way to get someone calm fast.”

“You manipulated my mind?”

“Does a splash of cool water manipulate your mind? Not much more to it. I could show you the spell, pretty low level stuff.”

A momentary palp​-​tap — she’s considering it — but she shakes her head. “A lethal accident which may have been an attempt to kill, and you’re forcing me calm? I will not be distracted from this.” What went unspoken — the kid wasn’t subtle enough to leave it unimplied — was that this action is just what an assassin covering their tracks would go for. Mighty suspicious, ha.

Yanseno says, “Sure. I’m not stranger to paranoia myself — it’s a survival skill in this business. Don’t mistake my cool head for a cocky dismissal of the possibility. This could have been deliberate — there could be killers in every shadow, and sometimes there are. But it’s weak evidence for a faint hypothesis. It’s about proportion, kid. Don’t let mere bad luck get under your skin like this.”

“Mere bad luck,” she said it as if, after hearing the words, she needed to spit them back out.

“Who’d need that much setup to take out a bug no one will miss? Course it was bad luck — the incompetent cause more trouble that the malicious. Boleheva doesn’t use the zipline, and that bane might get nothing done if she didn’t have the wardens holding her to it. Nobody but her pets do inspection of ranger equipment around here. If this is what’s got your suspicion hackle’d up, I wouldn’t want to see you glimpse a scarecrow at night.”

“The hypothesis is more than faint.” First Vilja attacking her and only her, and now this? Perhaps this is how the Asetari feels. Makuja glances to the thickening crowd of ants as thoughts work through her antennae.

Yanseno listens to the unspoken. “Don’t want to share what you’re thinking in front of a crowd?” he asks. “Maybe you know something I don’t; save it for later. Now, I can see Bole getting here. She’s gonna be pissed when she finds out what you did. I’ll go smooth things over with her. Keep your knives in your sheaths while I do that?”

Yanseno turns from Makuja, flicking his attention down to his sensor ball. The end of the conversation is punctuated by a wave passing over the ants that surround them.

Outside of Wisterun spawls a kind of lot, a flatten expanse of packed dirt and gravel, with workcarts and barrows parked by the wall. The ants present aren’t enough to fill the lot by any stretch — perhaps a dozen, pressed closely enough together they take up even less space. Tightening mandible​-​grips on their improvised farming tools, the ants press closer to Makuja.

Yanseno glances up from his black orb. “Unless I need to stop a lynching first?”

The answer comes from one of the bigger ants. This one’s word​-​sheet is much smaller, the antennae​-​pointing less graceful. The chirps are deeper as it conveys, “Aa! [[Threat]] to [colony] from [bat​-​bug] who [stabs].”

Another, smaller ant behind that one supplements: “[Disjunction] of these ones will [attack] or the one who [breathes : black] will [attack].”

The big ant, again, underscores it with, “[Colony] will have [defense]. Aa!”

The chorus of ‘aa!’ is repeated by other ants, becoming a mantra.

The burgundy bane lifts a foretarsus to rest on his head. But he doesn’t need to say anything.

“Wait!” high​-​pitched mantid voice comes from behind him — Ooliri and Quessa are trotting forth from the smoked conk platform. Ooliri has his notebook out, held in one tarsus. “This is a misunderstanding.”

(As he scans the crowd for an opening to slip through, the sensor mutters, “Wouldn’t that require an attempt to understand?”)

Quessa takes the lead, mellow voice quiet but insistent. “Please don’t attack our guest. She is our ally, and yours!”

“Feh!” a small ant says, pulling a new tag out from a fold of cloth. “No one who [threatens] in [alliance].”

Quessa looks around. “Who was the one who came to us earlier?”

“You called him the One Who Bites Water, I think?”

“Right.” She scans the crowd once more, and picks out the one clad in blue and green. “You! You had something you wanted to ask?”

“An expected arrival,” Ooliri provides, “messengers, you were waiting on them, weren’t you?”

“[Affirmative].” A head bobbing slowly, as if in immitation of mantid expression.

“They’re dead,” Yanseno puts it simplest of all. “Got ate up by a direanter in the old farms.”

“But it’s dead now! We killed it!” The green nymph points at Makuja. “She killed it. If not her, we would have never been lead to it. If not for her, it wouldn’t have been weakened and distracted enough for us to land the final blow.”

(Another quiet comment from Yanseno: “Laying it on a little thick there, ha.”)

“Most importantly,” Quessa continues, raising her foretarsi, bringing them together, “if not her, I wouldn’t have been able to read some of the ants message — and store it with one of my teacher’s technique! I can tell you of what the ant wished to say! But his rank of the spell can only store about a page of text, I’m sorry, I saved what I could.”

She had been making tarsigns — now she completes them. For release, she brings a finger to her head, and presses it between her ocelli. ⸢Nouform: Poet’s Recital!⸥

“Ooliri, if you’d hand me the sheet?”

A page torn from his notebook falls into her heads, and a bit of charcoal.

She begins writing, and as she writes, she says, “I will tell you — but only if you stand down, and thank our guest for what she’s done for you.”

The biggest ants who had formed the frontlines of the mob glance to the smaller ants behind them. The ants chirp like a choir of birds, looking among those beside them, weaving and unfurling the threads of their head​-​clothes and rubbing antennae against the cloths of others.

“Thank her? For this crock of spidershit?” With that exclamation, they knew: Boleheva, at last, had arrived.

(One ant among the crowd reacts to this, the one called Bites Water looks to the ranger, the look becoming a stare as this one hisses faintly.)

Yanseno only smirked, as if something had come together. Addressing the ants, he says, “If it makes your decision any easier, act as though Makuja is in our custody already. Your ranger can attest. It’s his jurisdiction, but if the Entcreek colony has objections… I suppose you’ll be fine explaining this intervention to the Stewartry?”

The ants are quiet now and black eyes glance dartingly at each other, elbowed antennae drawing back in apprehension. The ant in blue and green takes this moment to step forward. This one scuttles up to Quessa, poking her with an antenna. “Baa, this one who [remembers] has [message] for [[pleading]]?”

“Of course!” Quessa smiles, and then it falters a moment after. “I… may need to cast the spell again. It… may have slipped from my mind.”


As the ants gather around Quessa, and Yanseno is thus at last freed to continue over to Boleheva, Makuja instead glances to the one mantis who hasn’t spoken. The Asetari, coming up behind the yellow imago. Makuja finds the pale nymph is already staring at her.

Yanseno points at Awelah and gestures for her to scram. She frowns, says something unheard from this distance, but the imago only repeats the gesture. Makuja’s approaching, beckoning her teammate over.

“Asetari.”

“No​-​name. Why did you do all this? Are you,” she stops, and then continues, “did you get hurt again?”

“I needed to do something. I’m fine. That’s not important. What is important is,” Makuja stops, and glances around before starting to walk around the perimeter of the lot. She continues, “that we can speak with some privacy.”

Awelah lifts her labrum. “What do you want?”

“My fall — I still don’t know if it was an accident.”

“You did it on purpose?”

Makuja lifts her own labrum. “Boleheva, or Yanseno, could be conspiring to kill me. My fall makes it more likely. What do you think? You were with Boleheva — did you notice anything?”

“Boleheva was surprised, concerned. Nothing about her suggested wanting to kill, let alone being capable of hiding it.” She clicks her mandibles as punctuation.

“But it was her harness.”

“Why use the harnesses, though? Boleheva could kill you in one punch.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. It’s a poor choice of weapon — it did not work. What constraints would birth that approach? My theory is only one of them wanted to kill me. The benefit of the harness is that it looks like an accident.”

“Probably because it is.”

“Do you think we’ll survive assuming the best? I wish to be prepared, and need only know if you’ve seen a thing I haven’t.”

Awelah bites a palp. Then, “I have.”

Makuja frowns, pausing as if worrying Awelah would reiterate her disbelief. “Tell me.”

“You’re too much of a killer.”

The red nymph lifts one antennae.

“Your training, your thinking, it’s fit for assassination, not a fight. You try to kill bugs with one sudden move. So you think this was that one careful move, aiming for the heart. You assume it failed. But in a fight, you’ll throw punches you don’t expect to land, and certainly couldn’t end the fight. You jab to probe the defenses, to set up a better attack.”

Makuja glances at the pair of vesperbane imagos, having their own private conversation.

“Just… Don’t just pick apart the failure. If I thought this was enemy action… Figure out what opening you gave them, and what follow up is coming next. That is, if you aren’t just punching a sandbag.” Awelah starts to turn away, but reverses to add: “Thing I’d wonder first… why target you? I’m the one with teams hired to kill me.”

That hadn’t been their mission parameters. But Makuja doesn’t correct her. “Recall what their first impression was, from us fighting the anteater.”

“Oh,” Awelah says. “So they’d think you’re the strong one.”

“It’s not inaccurate, is it?”

Awelah turns around fully this time. “I see.” She tooks a step back, then took quick steps toward the two imagos. They follow after Quessa and Ooliri had gone to the gates, to ask the ants to please open, and Awelah catches up.

Makuja walks forth alone as they finally approach Wisterun.

Suspicions and Sermons

The first impression one has at finally arriving in Wisterun is… disappointment. The few dozen towering mantis homes upthrust from the creekside look like the entirety of a tiny village.

The gates of Wisterun are slabs of smoked conk held together with hard mud. As the slabs close behind them, they start forward onto rock​-​studded dirt from which weeds arise. The towers are placed with all the logic of trees in an old growth forest — an image completed by the catwalks stretching between them, suggested a parallel canopy of bridge​-​streets. Below them, the streets weave around, winding, width waxing and waning abruptly.

These streets pulse with intermittent activity, yet the townspace is more absence than presence. Still, groups abound: mantids, most wearing only metathoractic shirts and abdomen sheaths dyed earthy shades, while at their feet roaches scurry, wearing hats and boots. Ants march, some in their familiar swaddling, yet those often lead larger ants that look naked in comparison. One heavy, horned beetle tugs a carts behind them. And so on throughout the space visible from entering the gate — which was at least a quarter of the town.

Awelah is looking around. “Is this it? Where’s the rest of the town?”

“The sign said ‘welcome to Wisterun’, so…” Ooliri, at least, shares her bemusement.

“My clan’s compound was bigger than this.”

“Including the training grounds?”

“Yes. Fine. Maybe there weren’t as many houses but… this is tiny.”

“I hatched in a village not much larger than this,” Makuja murmurs from behind them. “Home to a mine; the mine is barren.”

Looking back, Awelah lifts a skeptical antennae. “What did Unodha want with it?”

“Hunting legends of lost treasure. I told her where to find it.”

A single nod. “Ah, so that’s why a real vesperbane would bother with you.”

For a second, Makuja halts. Before that thread of conversation could continue, Yanseno cuts in from the front:

“Heartening to know I’m not alone in being used to the real cities. But your intuition is on point, Awelah. Wisterun has a few roaches, some mantids — but it’s an ant town. And why would spinners build a town you could see? Not even just ants living down below. You’re in perhaps one of the larger towns in the prefecture, if you look underneath.”

As they walked, streets felt even emptier in practice; they never worried about running into anyone; mantids would look up and glance at their antennae​-​bands and clear a path. (Though roaches and ants often cleared way for mantids as a matter of course). The nymphs wore bands too, but not real ones.

(There had been an argument about it. “It’s fraud,” had been Boleheva’s insistence when wearing the Windborne bands was suggested. “It’s practical,” was Yanseno’s rebuttal. The compromise was cloth painted with blood: where an official band would have a insignia plate, there’s had a twisted, linear shape (symbolic of a vesper), inside of a sphere (like new moon Tenebra, or a soul kernel), and branching filaments around it (like veins or roots). It suffices to identify them as vesperbanes — an impression Ooliri’s bandaged arm and Awelah’s masked face only underscore.)

A few buildings behind them, they see the first evidence Yanseno was right: a hole digging into the ground, rounded conk slab acting as the lid. They’d seen other lidded holes before, but this time an ant is moving the cover out of the way; the fact that it’s a hole clicks.

“Are we going underground?” Ooliri pokes at the ground with the exposed toes of his sandaled feet. “Where are we going?”

Yanseno glances to the big yellow bane beside him. “The syndics were kind enough to hand this one a whole office right in town hall. Big fancy desk and everything. Doesn’t even know how to use one.”

“I can stand on my desk just fine, don’t shade me.”

A golden antennae lifts, then a glance back to see that the ranger is smiling. “Was that a joke?”

“Course it was. Am I stupid? Course I know a desk is where you sink yer blade when yer not using it.” The smile turns to a laugh now.

“This isn’t time for jokes,” Awelah says. “Answer the question. Where are we going? Where is town hall?”

“Who are ye to be ruling the talk? I’ll joke as I please.”

“Town hall is in northside,” Yanseno says. “But we might be stopping by a tavern, first. There’s one at the edge of gateside. Drop off your bags and such — you’ll be here a few days, won’t you?”

“Yeah, probably,” Ooliri says.

“No. We need to get Boleheva’s report out of the way as soon as we can, no use stopping along the way.”

“Easy for you to say,” Makuja says. “You aren’t carrying anything.”

“I carried plenty, before you—”

“There’s six of us,” Ooliri says. “Maybe we could split? Leave someone to handle the bags?”

Quessa looks up. “I can do it. I’d be happy to.”

“You’d probably forget half of them,” Awelah says.

“But I don’t forget important things!”

A violet antennae arches.

Before that continues, Makuja clicks her mandibles. With a glance to the burgundy maverick, she asks, “You mentioned northside and gateside. Those are districts?”

“Entcreek splits this town in half, pretty much, going southeast, and the incline that the river is riding means one end is up higher than the other. This is gateside, we’re west of the river and at the low end. Northside is east of the river, higher up. Main way into northside is the big bridge just over the little tiered waterfall. To get there, we need to dip into hillside before crossing over.”

“What’s the other quarter?”

“Mudside. Where most of the roach burrows sit,” Yanseno said. At Awelah’s frown, he adds, “There’s a ladder up to northside, but a roach isn’t much of a climber, and the south bridge is rickety, in disrepair or slumping ’neath the waters more often than not, so getting in or out of mudside typically means wading through the earthy shallows. ’Swhere the name comes from.”

“Why not do something?” Awelah asks with some indignation. “Why make them swim through mud.”

“If you ask the administration, the roaches like the mud.” Yanseno bites a labial palp, teeth combing through the fluff its little beard. “Probably can’t even afford it, between the Stewartry, the Pantheca and the grand colony all taking a cut.”

“Speaking of burrows,” Boleheva says, “you see there any runners around? Need to let Ruby know I’ll be by the hall. She’s got the key.” Her eyes roam over the throngs of people milling throughout the down. “Ah, you! Yeah, you!”

Her dactyl singles out to a lone roach, pale green chitin like some newborn plant. Antennae jolting upward, the bug looks around, left and right, before realizing it must be them the ranger has singled out. Glancing up at the vesperbane ranger, eyes staring at the bloodiron plate of her antennae band, the bug’s legs bend downward into a slight bow.

“Run a message for me, kindly? Ye find Ruby of Redbane, ye tell her I’m back. That’s all.”

The roach’s voice is a halting song. “Madam, is there someone else you could ask? I don’t know—”

“Just ask around, should find someone who knows her pretty quick.”

Ooliri watches the exchange with a frown, but as the roach asks for a description, he feels a hand on his shoulder. That small — it must be Makuja. He jumps, a small yelp from his spiracles. When he turns to see mere inquisitiveness on Makuja’s face, his frown takes on a tinge of the apologetic.

“There was a question I asked you earlier,” she says, and the loudness suggesting the words aren’t just for Ooliri’s sake. She steps back, expectant gaze implying Ooliri would follow.

When he does, she’s asking, “Is this about the myxokora? Sorry again that I didn’t know what you needed.”

“I figured it out on my own. It’s all I needed.” Makuja’s voice is low, but Ooliri’s doesn’t reciprocate.

“You could ask Boleheva about it! I saw her using myxokora of her own yesterday.”

“No, that’s what I needed to speak with you about. I’m not sure if I trust Boleheva. Not when her harness nearly killed me.”

“I thought it was an accident?”

“I’m wary. Now that I know the ants were just fools, there by coincidence, and Awelah assured me Boleheva let nothing slip in her time with her, I am considering if it is just shadows I’m seeing. But I didn’t survive by lowering my guard once it’s been raised. There are those who seek to kill us.” Even Vilja is among them, now. “Now that we know the zipline takes us right outside of town, I wonder why we had to stay overnight in the tower. It means there was time to set this up, if needed. The ranger was even the first awake. This could all be coincidence — but if they wanted to take us out, I would be the one they’d start with, and by making it look like an accident, they would have all the doubt if they fail, in addition to attacking from an unexpected angle, one we aren’t prepared for.”

“It’s not… well, I don’t want to say we expected it, because we didn’t, but Yanseno was warning us before we got on, right? I was worried I would fall the whole way.” Ooliri curls up his antennae, looks away and then looks back. “I’m not… I hear you when you say that people want to hurt us, and this is something it makes sense for them to try. But Boleheva? I don’t see it, I’m sorry.”

“Why not?”

“We know the sort of bane who’s out for Awelah — your master was a maverick from the Bloodweb Stronghold. Boleheva is a warden for the Windborne Stronghold. And she’s… I can’t see her scheming like this.”

“Yanseno, then. My other suspect, and a maverick.”

“Maybe. Umbracogs are kind of spooky. But… maybe you’re thinking too narrowly? Yanseno mentioned other bugs are responsible for maintaining the watchtower. Could it have been them? A third party… maybe they weren’t even targeting you! If Windhold won’t cooperate with the mercenaries, then killing or crippling one of them would be a win, too. And no matter who fell, there’s little enough trust that they might blame us. And if we’re fighting among ourselves, then we’re distracted from them— you could be playing right into their plans with your suspicions!” When he shakes his head, his longer antennae swing widely. “I don’t know what’s going on. But I think the Wisterun banes are on our side — and if someone out there is behind this, well, they’ll have a next move, won’t they? I hope we’re ready.”


“As Brillen returned from afar, she wept, for the lands she had known as a nymph had been turned to naught but ash! All of the houses, all of the fields, all of the blessed possessions, but ash! Her family her friends, all whom she knew, but husks! You don’t know desolation like that. None of us do. And imagine! For Brillen, the mother of the blaze itself, she then knew that if not for her work, none of this could happened. It could have been prevented. So she thinks to herself, it should have been prevented. For if not for her, none of this tragedy. And it could happened very well anew — did she not have a duty to prevent that? So she contemplates.

“But while she still lived, the spirit of the ancestors beyond arose to speak to her, scolded her of that foolishness. She could not give up, they exclaimed it to her! But why shouldn’t she, if she had lost everything? She asks this, begs for an answer. But the ancestors were silent, then, quite silent. I’m sure you’re all familiar with that. But Brillen listened. She had faith! And thus she persisted.

“Imagine. Months of living, surviving without shelter, with all plants around turned to ash, prey frightened away. It was torment! But Brillen persisted. Her spirit burned with determination, and at the change of the season, she was graced once more with the presence of ancestral spirit. They spoke to her…”

It is a thin road, blocked on once side by a sheer slope that ferns clung to with exposed, eroded roots. Before that wall, A mantis with silken blue robes and a pointy hat, wide​-​brimmed with tassels, gesticulates to a crowd of mostly other mantids, about twelve of them, with three roaches scattered amongst, huddling by the legs of mantids.

“What’s the hold up?” Awelah asks. The imagos were leading them, slowing as they approached the crowd.

“Seems like a street hierophant, peddling welkinist flyshit by the sound of it,” Yanseno says. “I wonder how many more sentences she can go before the politics comes in.”

“…and Brillen demanded to know why the ancestors had ignored her plea for counsel, why subject her to such a fate alone, so terribly alone! Their response? Do you know what they said? Why this burden was hers alone to bear? Just as great heat hardens our weapons, sloughs them of slag — just as the sculptor’s violence reveals the beauty within — this great privation of Brillen was needed to grant her exalted purity. Today we call her Brillen Fire​-​starter, the mother of blazes, we have remembered her for centuries. She lives for​-​ever, and do you think that immortality would be hers if we were weak? If she had given up? If a season in a scorched wilderness all alone was too much for her?”

The speaker goes quiet now, raptorials folded up as her eyes survey the gathered mantids. She begins nodding. “No. She suffered, and she was pure, and she was rewarded. None of you have lost everything — none of you have endured such hardship. Your burden, no matter how your back sags in carrying it, is a load you are well​-​equipped to carry. Bear it proudly! Bear it with strength! The ancestors would not want to see their children weak. The fires of welkin are for those with dignity. Foul oblivion awaits those who shrug away their duty.”

By now the banes are a few steps from the edge of the crowd. It’s a semicircle around the speaker, but skirting around its perimeter is not enough to get through, when the other edge of the street is the back of a building.

Awelah says, “Are we going to stand here and listen to all of this?”

“Eh, it sounded like she was windin down,” Boleheva says. “That one hates bein interrupted.” The confident stride of the ranger’s voice had a hint of some subdued quality to it now.

She continues: “This world is a challenge, a proving grounds. We are diamantids, each of us E’yama’s children! All this world thrusts upon us — wispstorms, anteaters — are nothing we cannot overcome. But that’s not what we do, is it? We seek the foulest of assistance!”

(“Here it comes,” Yanseno says, scratching a bearded palp. “Credit at least, took a full minute longer than I expected.”)

“Vesperbanes. They abduct our children and call it tribute! Use them as pawn when they don’t kill them outright! Dazzle us with their weapons and war games, call it protection. We tell ourselves they are necessary, the price we pay for safety. No! Vesperbane kill mantids just by existing, and their apologetics are no more than a jeweled wasp leading a roach into the tip of its ovipositor.” A tarsus goes up to adjust the hat, and the brim lifts. The mantid’s eyes go up, and at last catch sight of Boleheva and Yanseno. “Here they come now. And there’s more of them! Missus Boleheva,” she drags out each of the four syllables like a mother scolding, “have you attained permission to bring more of them from the council? No you have not — I would know if you had.” The angle of her head lowers, addressing the crowd again. “Tell me: will you allow our dear ranger to taint the purity of this town with more of her kind, or will we stop this?”

Boleheva speaks simultaneous with a sigh exhaled. “Tempit, yer council will get yer report as soon as Solaroch does and no sooner. These ain’t recruits. Let us through, kindly, we have business to attend to.”

“Ha!” This artificial stridulated laugher is Tempit’s response. “A vesperbane’s word is worth less than nothing.”

“I can swear it on my true name, if ye like.”

“You and your minions will take yourselves no further. Good people of Wisterun, show her that our will is not something she can so flagrantly ignore!” She throws her arms out, and it’s the signal the crown in front of her has to move. It’s not unanimous, and it’s not coordinated. A few of them regard the vesperbane with something — not sympathy, none of them are sympathetic — indicated only by a frown and folded antennae, the exact tenor of this consideration perhaps unique to each onlooker. But those objectors are moments later obscured by the advance of those who heeded Tempit’s urging. Facing them now is a chitinous wall of bodies, whose frowns are so much clearer in their meaning.

Yanseno lifts his labrum, mandibles visible. “Did you burn out all your wits sitting in front of a welkinfire, Tempit? Preaching survival, yet not realizing that standing against six vesperbanes is giving up on life more than anything else.”

“Oh? And you seem not to realize how hard your stewartry wants to keep its image of amicability. Flagrant assault on a laymant is not something it’ll look past. But I suppose that copper headplate says all that needs to be said about your regard for the law, doesn’t it?”

“Look, look. Yanny was just speaking hypothetically, we ain’t here to menace you.”

“Then turn around and show your pawns to the gate!”

“I need them in my office for a statement. If you knew what we’re dealing with, you’d know I didn’t have time to let the council give one of the infamously swift decisions.”

“You can get their statement outside the gates while you wait for that decision. I’m sure we’ll look kindly on your trying to circumvent—” The tirade, short or brief as it would be, is cut off:

A gunshot rings out, resounding off the walls around the road. A plume of dark smoke announces the source — and Yanseno is handlessly opening an arquebus to load more bullets and powder. He says:

“I’m not kind enough to make empty threats, or waste more bullets. The next shot’s going in a mantis if I’m still standing here in ten seconds. Clear a path.”

Dark, implacable determination wells in the brown eyes of Tempit — but the hierophant is not the target. This demonstration sparks fear in the gathered mantids, and it spreads faster than fire. They scatter, more than half of them bolting away in the next seconds, and the another quarter backing up slowly. Determined or not, one mantis is not sufficient to block their advance.

“You’ll be hearing from me later. This will not stand.”

“Assuming in the meanwhile you don’t try to stare down something else that tops you on the food chain. Stay safe, Tempit.” There’s nothing pleasant about Yanseno’s smug smirk.


Mantids had already been avoiding them due to the antennae​-​bands, but the gunshot cleared the streets. Except for one dark green mantis drawn over by the sound, who only runs faster when their eyes catch the headbands. Over their thorax, they wear a vest of thick cloth gambison and they have a musket strapped to their back.

“Boleheva, madam!” The mantis raises a raptorial and outstretches it in salute. “The constab sent me to run for more watchbugs, but you can help us too, can’t you?”

“Spit it out, darling. Town pays me enough that any little mess the watch could handle won’t cost much extra.”

“There’s trouble at the tavern by the creek,” they say. “Get there quick — there will be blood.”

A Debt Uncollected, a Demand Unfulfilled

A gunshot. Who died? Has he found me? Does he know?

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

Her forelegs tighten, wrapping around — empty space? Where is she? There is supposed to be a hug here. There is supposed to be comfort now. Where is — I’m alone.

⸢Nouform: Calming Draft!⸥ At this point, the signs are habit. She could do it signlessly.

“I’m not alone. I’m strong,” Quessa whispers to herself.

The technique is misnamed. It isn’t calming. More like stillness, all cognition and desire sucked out as if by a swarm of oskeila. It’s like suffocating, if you didn’t need to breathe. Quessa doesn’t fight it anymore.

The green nymph has backed away unknowingly — now some strides behind from the other banes as her breathing and heart slows to rest. She sees a gray nymph turn and look till he finds her. Yellow antennae outstretch as he steps forward.

“Are you alright?” Why is he asking? He cares? He’s — a friend?

She smiles. Rubbing the frills of one auricle, she says, “That gun was right beside me.”

(They had actually been walking some ways behind Yanseno. She forgot.)

“Your tarsus — there’s a penumbra,” he says. He’s seeing the bits of gas​-​like enervate encircling her hands, lingering after the spell.

An awkward nod. “Yeah, I just,” she stops. And now it’s a pause. Why is it so hard to finish the sentence — to tell him she casts the calm draft on herself sometimes? The sentence dies, and there’s no transition. “Look what I can do!”

She pumps umbra to her hands, mixes it with what’s already there. Feeling the burn as aura expands outward, she points at Ooliri’s head and it’s like blowing bubbles. The spell is unstructured.

“Ah!” Ooliri is stepping back and rubbing his eyes, needing a moment to shrug off the slight mental perturbation. “What was that? A — a nouprojection? Isn’t that supposed to be really advanced. Like, fiend stuff?”

Quessa paused. Again, it’s hard to respond. At length, she shrugs. “Yanseno is a good teacher?”

“I guess it’s not so surprising now. You did cast that memory spell. That spell, do you think — could you have a perfect memory if you got really good at it? Is it very hard to learn?”

“It’s…” she starts. “It’s like keeping a stack of paper on your head while there’s wind. Or keeping a round little bird egg balanced there. It rolls off but if you try too hard to keep it there, you crack it! It’s distracting. And it takes a while to change or look at it. So not like memory at all.”

“So it’s kind of like a clay tablet stuck in your head?”

“I… Yes, that’s a fine description.”

Quessa. The nouprojection comes as a half​-​remembered scrape in the back of her mind. She recognizes the voice. Right, there are other people here.

“Yanseno wants my attention.” Quessa shifts her gaze and looks beyond Ooliri — the crowd has cleared now, the pointy hat​-​lady walking away and some bug with their own gun is talking to the yellow imago.

“Seems like Ooliri’s stolen your heart,” the burgundy bane says when they rejoin.

Who? Quessa meets his eyes, and follows his gaze to the golden​-​fluffed nymph, placing the name. “Oh, right.”

Beside her, his antennae jolt out. “No, we’re not—”

Yanseno pats his shoulder with a foretarsus and squeezes. “You and me are gonna have a chat.” Looking to Quessa, he says, “You’re gonna go with Boleheva.” For her benefit, he points. Beside her, the other nymph’s antennae are creeping higher and higher up in alarm. “Before she does that, though, boy, give her your stuff.”

At this, Ooliri trips over himself explaining: “It’s not, we’re just—”

“Calm it. We’re splitting up, is all. Quessa offered to take care of your bags, remember? Boleheva can carry the rest, and she’s heading there to quell what barfight or other has people spooked. Best if the townfolks don’t see too much more of you till the syndics give their oh so crucial approval.”

“I’m going alone? With the ranger?” Quessa asks.

“Just how it is, baby girl.”

“Here.” Ooliri is unstrapping his bags. Then he’s pointing out one with with an anteater scratch. “Be very careful with this one. It has the, uh, blood in it.”

Giving him a salute, the green nymph takes the bags, regarding the scratched up one with careful attention.


“Ye’ve got till ten to open this door, or I’m knocking it down. I ain’t payin for it either.”

The ranger had ichor in her veins, hardening her chitin, strengthening her muscles. It meant that when she wanted to be loud, a laymant simply couldn’t match her. Quessa takes a step back from the volume. The reply, muffled by the door, is unintelligible.

“Ye ain’t gotta get gone. I talked to ’em. Ye just gotta step out a minute and talk to these fine folks. They had some questions for ye.”

Quessa frowns.

Earlier, there had been no scene when they arrived at the Mercure Ale. A pair of tame cicindela chewed on dried moss outide, roped up a few paces from the rickety trap door of an entrance. Those ridebugs were suggestive, she thought — perhaps as a first step, they could search for bugs with the leather chaps fit for riding, or whose boots lacked the patina of mud you couldn’t escape when walking in this weather.

Or, perhaps, as soon as they step in and observe the tavern illuminated by pale sunlight striking a contraption of mirrors, they find the only bugs standing tall are two mantids in all black rope​-​robes, clean and symmetrical, their compound eyes each obscured by dark wraparound glass. They stand taller than anyone here except the imago beside her, with bulk at the edge of what could be natural for a mantis. Former vindicators? Quessa frowns.

You can smell them against the backdrop of the tavern (unwashed bugs, alongside pungent brews and fresh honey). Altered hormones (the likely source of such bulk) mean altered pheromones.

Together, the two mantids advance with sharp strides that attack the distance between. One has antennae whose fluff swirls away, an inappropriately gentle shape for a mantis with metal lining her raptorials. There’s business in the smile she gives the yellow imago. “You must be the ranger. My salutations. We have a warrant of inquiry for the bug you may know as ‘Mogs.’ Can we beg your assistance?”

“Bah. Common law is no concern to me,” the ranger says with the confident disregard only a warden could manage. “If you want my help, pay for it. I’m here because I’ve a contract with the people of Wisterun, and you ain’t from around here. Speaking of,” The yellow imago can take her eyes off the black robed mantis as soon as she’s done speaking to them. (Quessa still watched intently, anxiety tight in her curled fluff.) “Who runs this place? What’s the trouble? Would I be prejudiced to guess it’s these strange ladies?” The volume of her voice resounds in the half​-​underground chamber. It draws the gaze of the few patrons — ants, roaches, and a few mantids — who hadn’t already been piqued by the scene before.

The swirl​-​fluffed mantis waves a foreleg. “I assure you, madam vesperbane,” the facade of politeness hadn’t wavered, but is there a touch of brittleness, now? “Our interests are aligned. Mogs, in fact, is the source of the commotion that brought you here.”

Drawn by the yellow imago’s raised voice, a dirt​-​red mantis is climbing up a descending ramp.

“Ah, there ye are! I recognize ye. You own this place, yeah?”

“You’re thinking of the One Who Argues the Stars — that one has the deed. She — that one isn’t here right now — but I do represent.”

“Right, right. So what’s the problem?”

“Mogs. Hid from these two, and when they found him she kicked up a huge fuss, grand ol argument could be heard across the bar. Raptorials came out — miss Seta tried to break it up, and Mogs had a batdamned knife. Ran back to his room, locked the whole thing up and by the time I got the master key, door’s barricaded. Bloody barricaded. Get her out. Don’t care if she can walk by the end of it, do what you have to do.”

The ranger drums a closed fist against prothorax as salute. She walks off with Quessa behind, and the rope​-​robed mantis nods.

Now, the ranger has counted to five. She stops, and says, “Ye know I’m getting in no matter what, dontcha? You can’t keep me out, so your choice is how much of my time you waste, and whether you really want to do that.” Then, “Six. If I hear you moving whatever you’ve got in front of the door, I’ll stop counting.”

There’s a scrape. Then, when the door opens, a diamantid stands, a shell pattern of light gray against brown. Much shorter than the yellow imago, she’s either a late instar nymph, or wingless. There’s a bit of her compound eyes that’s discolored, bruised. (She looks familiar. Has Quessa met her before? So many bugs in this town look familiar, though.)

“You snitched me out,” she says.

“Friend, I don’t even know what there is to snitch.”

“It had to be someone from the city. Must’ve been you or that gun toting bastard.”

“Town’s big enough you’ll have a time lookin. How about I help you get started? Follow me.”

The gray mantis frowns, and that curve’s mirrored in her antennae. “Those collector bastards still out there? You working for them?”

“They asked for my help and I told them no. Not from Wisterun, not my problem.”

The gray mantis still doesn’t move. “Not from Wisterun myself.”

“I’ve got business to attend to today, girl. If you don’t start walking I’ll pick you up myself.”

“I’m moving, I’m moving, just gotta grab some stuff.”

“Ye gonna be able to carry all your stuff out with ye?”

“Not a chance.”

“Then ye’d have to come back, wouldn’t ye? Let’s go.”

When the gray mantis finally emerges from the room, she’s got a tarsus full of loose objects — claw and bone pieces, slips of paper, an objects that glint like metal. (Is there a knife among the mess?) Her prothorax is bare, while a patchy cloth garment falls over her lower thorax and abdomen, parting in front like the bottom half of a coat. She’s slipping objects into the inner coat pockets.

“Quessa, hold up the rear.” Behind the ranger, the green nymph nods without responding. “So, Mogs, what’s the story here? What exactly brought these strange ladies after you?”

“Debt. Owe some people some stuff. Thought I’d lay low for a bit, I’d get the money together, just needed some time. But someone snitched me out. Don’t got it all yet.”

While she’s talking, Quessa spies something fall down as the gray mantis tries to stuff the bones and paper and metal into a pocket. A ring, the tiny metal band falls to the dirt floor with a small thump. The light gray mantis doesn’t pause talking — doesn’t notice.

Behind him, Quessa bends down to pick it up. She’ll hold onto it till this conversation’s done, then give it back to her.

“So you borrowed all this money without a way to pay it back?” the ranger says.

“Oh fuck off.”

“Can’t do, not while I’m still on the job.”

“Vesperbane, huh. You flappers must be loaded. Help me out some, mant. You’re supposed to help bugs, arentcha?”

“Get a job, friend. You want money, you gotta earn it.”

“Sure, if money’s all this was about. You think I’m going be around next shade if these bastards aren’t satisfied with what I put together? You ain’t doing charity, you’re saving my life.”

They’re on the ramp now, and the ranger doesn’t respond before their head are poking over the top. The gray shelled mantis looks up, glimpses the eyes behind dark glass turn around to watch him.

“Oh, see how it is. You never cared a hair on your head, did you?” The gray mantis turns, but before she lifts a leg, a bigger tarsus is wrapping around her foreleg.

“Come on now, we’ve gotten this far.”

The gray mantis looks down, meets Quessa’s eyes. She goes still, says nothing. The expression regarding her hardens into a scowl. The mantis stops resisting the ranger’s pull, and the bigger bug guides her up the ramp, crosses the distance to the big pair in rope​-​robes. They hold up a foreleg, and the ranger pauses.

Addressing the gray mantis, the swirl​-​fluffed one says, “And what do you have for us now, hm?”

The ranger takes a step back.

The light gray mantis starts pulling paper and bones out of his pockets. “Look, it’s what all I have—”

“It’s not nearly enough, is it? You can count, yes?” She hooks a dactyl under the gray bug’s labium, pulls the head upward to look her in the eyes.

“Just give me a few more days, I’ll make something happen—”

“You have one shade from tomorrow. Very generous of us. We’ll come see you again. Then, I expect, we’ll need to take you to explain this to the Chief Strategist himself.”

The other robed mantis speaks now. “Have her empty her pockets. I heard clinking.”

“Ah, are you holding out on us, Mogs?”

The gray nymph twitches her forelegs back into her pockets, produces the metal. “I was going to sell these—”

“It matters not. Our appraisal will trump anything you’d find in this backwater. Hand them over.”

The gray mantis passes them over one by one — then stops. “The ring. There was a ring.”

She turns around just in time to see Quessa’s antennae jolt in surprise. “You! You tried to steal it from me.”

“No, I only—” But when Quessa lifts her foretarsus to show her holding the ring, it’s all the confirmation she needs.

The gray mantis leaps, back end of her half​-​coat fluttering behind her. The yellow imago starts moving, but a mantis can cover a lot of ground in a lunge.

Rising to her feet, she looms over Quessa. She slaps her foreleg, making the nymph drop the ring. Quessa stills as the bug pinches the dirt to pick it up — then scowls, saying, “Bet this isn’t all you tried to pull, eh? What else did you nick?”

The light gray mantis reaches out to snap open the bags Quessa carries — the golden​-​fluffed boy’s bag! It’s important. And the other bug is reaching into it.

Quessa grabs at the riffling hand. “Stop that.” The bigger bug swings, forcing her foreleg back. Quessa grabs again, this time with a raptorial vice. And the response now is a punch, shoving Quessa back. The hands clutch at the important bag, and the strap slide over her clothes as it’s pulled off.

Quessa lands steady on her feet. “Put that down.” It’s the last thing she says, as her labrum lifts and she feels uncertainty sliding away like old skin, each heart pulse an octopamine thrill.

Yanseno’s trained her well. She forms in the six tarsigns in two seconds.

⸢Ion Form: Stinger Strike!⸥ She feels the acidic charge in her veins, bleeding into the enervate gathering in her hand. She throws it, hitting home a heartbeat after it leaves her grasp. An extreme electrostatic charge, it’s enough to make her scream, to burn her flesh and make her antennae stand on end. And it’s enough to make her mad. The gray nymph rises, rounds on her.

And Quessa doesn’t tremble. More tarsigns — this one took more control, for a weaker effect (she wasn’t Yanseno, she couldn’t nouproject effectively in combat.)

⸢Nouform: Psi Blast!⸥ Penumbra gathers in an aura around the black nerve that flows from her tarsus to her foe, and it strikes home, delivering disorientation, confusion.

The mantis staggers, but by this point, there’s no escape from the yellow imago coming up behind her.

“That’s enough. Yer lucky to live after trying something like that. Let’s walk on back to my office and we’ll talk what the consequence of this should be.” Then for a moment, she sets the steel in her tone aside, as she looks up to address Quessa. “You intact, darling? Good. Sorry I wasn’t able to stop that. She won’t give you more trouble now. I trust you can book the nymphs a room on your own? Right. Take care now.”

Quessa breathes. Her labrum falls to hide her mandibles, and she trembles. What have I done this time? Have I messed everythig up again?

She kneels to check the important bag, and examines its contents.


“Remind me, what were your intentions here?” Yanseno rubs a bearded palp as he regards Ooliri.

“Um, sir.”

“Why you’re here. Right now, all this fuss is about Boleheva pulling a report out of you three — and she sure is taking her time, ain’t she? — but that’s not why you came here. Run that by me.”

“Well…” Ooliri glances back at the two nymphs walking a ways behind them, giving them some distance. Giving each other distance, too — Makuja and Awelah walked far enough apart a cicindela could charge between. “Between the three of us, there’s a lot of things we want to achieve, and we don’t share all of it. As a team? Well, we’re trying to find Lady Earth​-​shaper, trying to get strong enough to stay safe, and trying to figure out just — what’s going on.” At the last moment, Ooliri supposed Awelah might want some secrecy there.

Yanseno nods. “And about none of that means staying in Wisterun, does it? ’Specially since the so​-​called Earth​-​shaper is long gone. A shame.” The nod turns to a shaken head.

“Well, is there a reason you want us to stay, sir?”

“Ha. I don’t care if you slam the door on your way out. Still, Quessa’s my responsibility, get it? And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, since you’ve only known her for a day. Although, you have spent the night with her—”

“Um.”

A good​-​natured click. “The love stuff is all teasing, just so I don’t got you worried. I know that’s none of your interest just yet. You don’t even got the equipment to do anything.”

“W​-​what.”

“Anyway, what I’m saying is — does Quessa seem happy to you? She tries, but I’m an umbracog. She isn’t as easy to read as most, because — doesn’t matter. Point is, you make her smile. Guess I just want to say — I appreciate that. While it lasts, ha.”

“It could last,” comes a low murmur of a voice. Awelah, coming up behind Yanseno from the other side. “You could teach me to cast Umbra Body Projection again. I’d stick around for that.” (Ooliri catches Makuja shooting her one of the red nymph’s scarily neutral looks.)

“And just why would I do that?”

Awelah stops walking, palps lifting up.

“Don’t got time to do charity work, even for someone of as noble inbreeding as yourself. Sorry your folks aren’t still around to hand you techniques. They had an obligation to you, but I don’t.”

The street they walk is empty but for themselves, and a trash beetle darting from an alley between houses. The thing pauses to look at them. When it hears Awelah’s scrape of frustration, it’s gone in an instant, dropping its discarded fruit skin.

“It’s not about charity. I don’t want a teacher because I deserve one, I need them to set right a certain injustice, and destroy those who committed it.”

“Personal vengeance, then. Sure, maybe you aren’t just an entitled clan brat, but so what? Afraid I still don’t have inclination to help you along your personal quest.”

Awelah stops walking. She reaches out with a foreleg, catching Yanseno’s shoulder and pulls him aound to face her. The maverick glances at the hand touching him, as if deciding among a dozen ways to kill it.

She says, “You don’t care that a vesperbane could slaughter a clan and suffer nothing for it? This isn’t about vengeance, it’s justice.”

Yanseno takes Awelah’s hand, squeezes enough that something pops, and lets it fall. He holds her gaze for one second, then flicks an antennae as if forgetting it. “Nothing?” he says. “Do you even know what vesperbane you’re talking about? Do you know that Windhold isn’t running their own investigation, sending their own hunters after them? Have you thought this plan one step farther than your antennae reach?”

Awelah looks away, embarrassment (for her plan, for her action) flushing her compound eyes.

“Do I care?” He lets the question hang. “Quite frankly, no. Hate that it happened, but this is the heartlands, kid. The Pantheca of All Kinds United. We get a tragedy every damn shade. You either stop caring about them all, or you take a stand again and again as the tide grinds you away.”

The only law in the heartlands,” Aweah murmurs, as if quoting something. “You want me to become just like her.”

“You think you’re different?” Yanseno smirks. “You don’t care that wrong was done, you care that it happened to you. I could just as well turn your question around: do you care about all the little tragedies? Would you stop to set something aright, not for your sake, but for justice?”

“I’m not heartless.”

“Easy to say that, it’s the right thing to say.”

“If it were true,” Awelah starts. “If I proved it to you… Would you train me then?”

“Ha. As if I wanted another brat to take care of.” Yanseno turns around.

Awelah stands there a moment. All that, when he never would have listened? Mandibles click together as if trying to bite. “What do you do that’s so important?”

“For your sake, I’ll refrain from the obvious quip.” Yanseno walking at the led, takes a turn that cuts off Ooliri in the process. (The gray nymph steps back, apologizes) Yanseno is pointing out a looming tower. “Almost there. But you asked what I do? Already answered that, didn’t I? First thing I told you was I’m a maverick investigator. Peculiar shit out in this countryside.”

“What’s there to investigate in a town this small?”

“Heard of the lakehead incident? No of course, you just got here. But you’d probably hear whisper of it if you spent five more minutes here. Not much else to talk about. But the short of it, fisher’s wife drowned. Since someone died, there’s the question of liability — vesperbanes are supposed to protect, after all. Council wants me to find that it’s Boleheva’s fault, and thus deduct their stewartry dues, while Boleheva wants me to find that it’s outside her domain. I’m getting paid either way, so I don’t got to worry about conflict o’ interest. Well, unless Boleheva or the council all keel over dead.” Then Yanseno stops walking. “But anyway, we’re here. Take a moment to admire the arches and pillars. Helps if you imagine you don’t have ten more impressive buildings back where you’re from. That’s my tip. Actually, take more than a moment, since we’re gonna be waiting here for Bole and her roachservant.”

“Can’t we wait inside? Wouldn’t mind stepping out of this mud,” Awelah says.

“Insist and you shall attain — don’t take that as a general lesson, though.” Yanseno takes one step forward then frowns. “But there’s someone else here.” He looks up. “You’re made. Show yourself.”

From behind one of the stonebrick pillars, a tall tiercel of white shell steps out, ribbons trailing behind him.

“You aren’t quite Boleheva,” he says. Then his eyes shift off Yanseno, to Team Duskborn. “But you… you’re Ooncerta’s son. And you’re from Bloodhold. And you…” He’s looking at Awelah. “Are you trying to flee Duskroot? What an opportunity!” He steeples his hands, smiling as he steps forward.

A Stifling Protection

How many bugs could a direhound kill?

Ooliri — Ooliri of all people — was able to knock down one of Unodha’s dogs with his baton. He had his brother’s help, sure, but then it took one stab from Firha to finish the thing. (If his recounting is right, that is, but would Ooliri have embellished killing something?) Awelah shakes her head. So, Unodha’s dogs had to be something a town could defend itself from without needing vesperbanes’ help, right? The danger of direhounds is that they come in packs, anyway. There’s only one left, now.

Yet she had watched that very hound undergo that same muscle​-​crawling enlargement its master could provoke — all on its own. Something Makuja had thought was impossible without a spell, Unodha’s own spell. Was that direhound casting a spell on its own? But it’s impossible for a direhound to be host to the vespers, wield the vespertine arts. Impossible for any direbeast.

But not a myxogoth.

Awelah tightens for a moment, remembers where her spear is. That was impossible right? Just an obscure myth? Maybe Unodha dying had disrupted whatever hold she had, sent her spell into misbehaving. Awelah breathes in, abdomen rising.

Did it matter? Myxogoth or miscast, what would Awelah do?

Yanseno insinuated Awelah was selfish — willing to enact personal justice and nothing more. He had to be wrong, and she had to show him that.

How many bugs could a direhound kill? Awelah wondered. Now, she asks a better question: how many bugs can I save by acting?

Awelah drops from her perch in Boleheva’s office, feet sinking into the carpet. Carpet, and this town hall has dirt floors. No layer of grime dwells in between the cloth fibers, nor discolors its red and light gray pattern. Well, except for the dirt Awelah’s sandals are tracking now. She looks up, where a red roach is waiting at the threshold. Her large maxillae are crossed.

“Finished your fascination with the floor? You’ve been sitting there far too long. It’s time to go.”

Awelah nods, mind far from the floors or the roach secretary. What would she say to Ooliri, to Makuja, in order for them to act alongside her?

“Be a dear and tell your friends to get lost with you while I close up. It’ll save me some breath.” Ruby closes the door.

Reaching the two other members of Team Duskborn means walking past Yanseno. Right now, he’s calling over to Mogs:

“Look,” he says. “I’m not gonna be your minder. I’m letting you off the hook, just get back here tomorrow, right?” Yanseno balances the black glass of his sensor ball on one dactyl, another dactyl grazing it, spinning the orb. “Remember: I’m a sensor, so it’s not a question of whether I’ll find you, it’s how much of my time you waste. And I charge by the hour.”

The pale nymph walks on past. Ooliri is beside the maverick, but Makuja is perching by the door. If Awelah can get the red nymph on her side, Ooliri will come along too.

Or truly, she didn’t even need to go far. Ooliri stands and starts trailing after Awelah just as she passes.

“Do you know what’s going on?”

Awelah waits until Makuja is in hearshot of her low murmur. The red nymph’s head turns, auricles flaring.

“The direhound is back,” Awelah says. “We need to finish it.”

“You say we, but you mean me,” Makuja says.

“I can still use my spear.”

Ooliri turns to her at that, maxillae opening, His palps ghost his file, perhaps considering avenues of objection — you shouldn’t be using your spear, he could say, or we shouldn’t be doing something so dangerous. But Ooliri takes a different approach: “We shouldn’t do it alone. There are other vesperbanes here.” Then he stops. “Would Boleheva even need our help? Is — is this what she left to do? Then it doesn’t seem like she wants us to—”

“It’s our fault,” Awelah says. “We brought it here. It—”

She doesn’t get a chance to finish, because Yanseno has stopped his conversation with Mogs, and in a single stride, crossed the distance to stand behind Awelah.

“What was that?” he asks.

“It’s following us,” Awelah finishes, her voice not raising nor her dictation quickening, as if in defiance of Yanseno’s intimidation. “Hunting us. If we go out there, it’ll seek us instead of the bees. We can save them.”

“You’re very important, aren’t you?”

Awelah scowls.

“Look, everything you said might be true. Might explain some things. But you forgot what I said this morning. Mother anteater means father anteater. I watched Boleheva read the letter. She wasn’t thinking about a direhound, she was thinking about a direanter.”

Direbeast is all she said, Awelah recalls with a spike of embarrassment. Awelah taps her palps, but no response materializes.

“Then we shall not be getting in her way,” Makuja says. “Boleheva can hunt the anteater, and we can find Vilja.”

Find, Awelah notes. Not hunt, not kill, not even stop.

“You aren’t getting in her way, yeah.” Yanseno says. “You’ve got a room at the inn, and I’m taking you there.”

“Why do you care,” Awelah says. “Let us take out the direhound. If you think we can do it, we get rid of a problem. If you think we can’t… that also gets rid of a problem, doesn’t it?” There’s an edge that creeps into her voice.

“I gave you the wrong impression, didn’t I?” He shakes his head. “I don’t care about every tragedy I see. Takes a hard heart. But I’m not heartless. I’m not going to let a couple of fresh fevered kids throw themselves at the world when you — literally! — can’t cast a spell to save your life.”

“So come with us, then,” Makuja says. “They can be the bait, and you and I will be the teeth of the trap.”

“I don’t work for free. Right now, the extent of the problem is some howls in the air at night. Direhound hasn’t attacked anyone besides yourself, and you say it’s got a special grudge against you. There’s easier prey in those woods, and I think the dog will do the smart thing, at least till it catches a whiff of you. Boleheva will be back tomorrow, and there’s nothing breathing down our necks to do something tonight. Relax a little — would think you three would be anxious for beds after shades stuck in the wild.”

Yanseno starts toward the door. Behind him, Awelah is mumbling. (Her voice is quiet, but can he hear anyway?) “Does someone have to die before you’ll do anything?”


Ooliri climbs down the trap door. The tavern, with a shuttered look from shafts of sunlight, has a bug sitting at almost every table. The whole room seems to pause when the vesperbanes enter, heads turning, voices quieting. The mood is… expectant. Do they think we’ll do something?

The quiet means they hear the distant patter of steps, see a green nymph climbing up from downstairs. With timing that perfect… Ooliri frowns.

“Did she know when we’d arrive?”

In front of him, Yanseno glances back to reveal a quirked palp. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Nouspell?”

Yan clicks mandibles, then nods. “No need to answer if you’re quick enough to figure it out yourself, ha.”

The pale nymph is beside Ooliri. “You said you could read minds,” Awelah says. “Does that mean you know that — know what I’m thinking?”

Yanseno points at a spinner ant. That one is draped in cloth, colorful stands woven across the surface of the cloth, but it’s… hugging? kissing? It’s touching another ant, and there’s no convenient sheet to read off of. “Way the myweft is woven means something. Can you tell me what it says?”

“No.”

“But you can see it, can’t you? Make out the different strands and symbols? Why not tell me what it means?”

“I don’t understand antscript.”

“Every mind is its own language,” Yanseno concludes. “Being a connectique means being a code breaker for a script with no translator. I’m not bad at it, give me a few sessions and I could answer your question — but like I keep saying, I charge by the hour.”

Awelah breathes out at that.

“Still, don’t need any special insight to know you plan on sneaking out tonight, right?”

The green nymph has crossed the distance, stands before the maverick with a smile now giving way to puzzlement. “Why’s that?” Quessa asks.

“Awelah still wants to risk her life against a direhound for no good reason, and I haven’t prevailed sense on her.”

She glances at the pale nymph and gives her a smile. “That sounds heroic!”

“Not if it’s ineffective and unnecessary,” Yanseno says.

Quessa tilts her head. “What if I helped?”

A sigh, almost completely muffled by his trenchcoat. “Not you too.”

The green nymph frowns, but before she can reply, her gaze lowers, looking past the imago. At the entrance he stepped through a moment ago, a new bug is at their heels. Quessa smiles.

“Bites Water, was it?” says the maverick. Looking back at the girl, he says, “This one was asking about you earlier.”

“Right,” she says. “There’s something you can help me with, in fact! But,” — she looks at Awelah — “I should probably show you your room? They didn’t have one with more than two beds, so there’s a cot—”

“Not it,” Awelah says.

“Nor I,” Makuja says.

They both look to Ooliri, his golden antennae twisting. “Can we rotate, at least?”

Yanseno, having lost interest in the conversation or seizing the opportunity to ditch the nymphs, has stepped over towards the bar where a dirt​-​red mantis glances up. “Looks like I’ll need something with energy,” he starts.

After that, Ooliri turns to see the green nymph waving to him — she and the other girls have slowly started walking, and the ant steps along with antennae working. They advance and there’s silence, at least until they reach the ramp, and then Quessa is whispering.

“I can maybe help you three sneak out, if you still want to. But if we do this… I can’t tell you the plan.”

“Why not?”

“Yanseno can’t read my mind, and I’ll know if he tries. It’s safer! Also, I can be cool and mysterious. All the strongest vesperbanes have secrets,” she says.

“So we just have to trust that you mean it and you’re not just going to tell him behind our backs.”

“He’s not your dad. If he finds out, he’ll stop you, and he’s already stopping you, so what’s the worry? He isn’t going to ground you if you get caught.”

“But will he ground you?” Ooliri asks.

They turn down a bend in the tunnels beneath the inn, passing by doorways — one is open just a crack. Quessa keeps moving in the lead. “Maybe. But if we pull this off, won’t he be proud? I think he can’t be too mad if we take down a direhound. You will be able to take it down, right?”

Ooliri frowns, antennae folding unsure, and to his surprise, Makuja mirrored his uncertainty. She gave no obvious tell (of course she wouldn’t), her antennae still and her eyes steady. But her hands closed into fists and she gives no answer.

Awelah says, “Of course. You have that spell you used to paralyze the anteater, right?

Quessa stops walking, but it’s because they’ve reached their room. She opens the door, then passes off the key.

She glances to the One Who Bites Water, who has been following in the very back, a little awkwardly. “Wait out here, okay?”

The ant chirps, walking forward and poking the green nymph with an antenna. The chirps continue into a stream as this one bends feelers back to point at the sheet. Because this one is facing Quessa, they can’t read what’s said. Quessa is nodding. For the benefit of the other nymphs — Ooliri’s palps are about to buzz with questions, she explains, “The ant librarian invited me to speak with them. I think that’s significant? Though it’s unclear if it’s a friendly visit, or business.” She shakes her head. “But that’s not important right now. C’mon, I’ll show you the room.”

The hinges creak as their door opens. The interior is bright with the blue glow of Ngini’s light — a Stewartry standard. Not surprising that a vesperbane could buy it. But what did the other patrons use for light? Ooliri wonders. Torches? Lanterns? Would smoke be an issue? Or maybe there are more slits for sunlight.

“I left your bags inside, but… there’s something important I’m forgetting.”

Ooliri gives them a once over. “Well, you didn’t lose any of the bags? So it’s not that.”

“Why is that one open?” Makuja says.

“Mogs attacked you,” Awelah says as the red nymph pads over to the bags sitting on a crooked table.

“Master’s blood is gone,” Makuja announces.

From the look in her eye, how deftly her fingers close the bag as she’s not looking, head snapping around with speed to track Quessa’s anxious steps backward — her hands are empty, but there didn’t need to be knifes there for the threat to be present.

“I don’t think Quessa is at fault,” Ooliri says, interposing himself between Quessa and Makuja. “It must have been chaotic, stressful and happened so fast Boleheva would have taken her away before Quessa could say anything. Right?”

Quessa gives the nod of one petrified. Her palps don’t move, like she can’t bring herself to say anything. She raises her tarsi, starts making signs.

Makuja starts forward at this, but Ooliri lifts his bandaged arm to block her. He shakes his head at the frowning nymph. Ooliri recognized the signs, the aura flowing toward her head.

Awelah interjects, then, “She said she forgot something important. Sounds like she would have told us if she had remembered.”

“It doesn’t add up. She’s taught by Yanseno, who forgets what he wants to forget.”

“I’m still learning! I’m just not as advanced as I should be, please believe me! I’m… trying.”

Makuja frowns. Quessa cringes inward at the expression, so she turns her frown toward Awelah. “You propose Mogs took it. Yet what use would she have for fiend blood?”

“I’ll help you get it back! I promise.”

“Start by helping us hunt the direhound,” Awelah says. “You were telling us what you brought to the table. There’s that stunning spell — anything else? Can you read minds like that maverick claims he can?”

“I don’t really know anything about nouprojection, sorry.” (Ooliri quirks an antenna, but no one is looking at him.) “Yanseno says people will trust me more if I keep it that way.”

“Well, you can’t do much with direbeast’s heads anyway. They don’t have nous like bugs do.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Awelah waves. “Anything else?”

“I could… get some supplies? Yanseno has a lot of them. But… I need a plan. So… could you tell me about this direhound? What exactly are we going to heroically slay?”

Awelah and Makuja start talking at the same time. They stop, look at each other, and Ooliri takes that moment to begin. Quessa smiles at him.


Quessa left them to go consult with Bites Water in her room. She returned half an hour later, said nothing about the plan, only carrying them plates of food Yanseno had ordered for them. Honeyloaf, hippo meat, bitter​-​skinned tubers and fungal sacs dripping with slim. It was about as much food as a growing nymph would eat in one day, not one meal. But they are vesperbanes — the vespers had to eat, too.

So, while Team Duskborn waited to hear anything substantive from their accomplice, Makuja perched on the edge of her bed, eyes pale, antennae drooped, and breathing regular. Each inhale drew air into her air sacs, as the breath flows through the branching throats that lined her body.

Makuja’s thoughts are like a river, flowing yet no boat navigated across the waters. Only a natural course.

Her heart beats, not faster, but slower and slower. She feels the weight of food in her gut as it melts bit by bit — how much had bat blood already warped it? Thanks to it, she knew, her digestion is faster, more efficient as it turned food into more energy. Faster, efficient, but its most important adaptations were not for her sake.

Makuja slowly bends her tarsi into signs which are not the signs of nervecasting nor the signs of bloodletting. It belongs to the third vespertine art: rootnursing.

Master had taught her arete​-​binding so long ago. The first step is relinquishing a portion of the meal just consumed, and granting it to your guests. These signs she made now are an invitation to begin.

Once accepted, formation begins. Now, her heartbeat accelerates as the vespers call upon the metabolism of red ichor to fuel the ritual.

Simultaneously required is a process that is only analogous to breathing, but identical to the ritual which renewed her enervate after depletion: beta condensation, in which the umbra diffused within the air is drawn into her core as if by invisible inhalation. Tarsigns unfold, and her coils shape themselves, vibrating with sparse dustings from her enervate stores, and she feels the coldness come. Just like dew from a cloud collector.

⸢Vesper Form: Arete​-​binding!⸥

It is the marriage of life and death, even as evening marries day and night. The vital warmth of bat blood and the deathly chill of black nerve, unified and intermixed, the reaction yielding dense fat held within the vesper’s roots. Arete, the fuel of a bane’s every spell.

Makuja takes a deep breathing once more, and begins the signs anew, starting a second casting. She doesn’t even get a chance to finish the first step.

Quessa’s knock is loud and hurried.

Through the door, they hear, “Yanseno wants to see you, now.”

Awelah gets the door, because Ooliri is just now looking from his book. At the threshold, Quessa is bouncing from foot to foot. “I promise this isn’t part of the plan. I don’t know what’s going on.”

Awelah folds her raptorials closed. As Quessa turns to leave, the pale nymph gives one look backward. “Coming?”

Makuja is already on her feet, and is second out of the room. She wonders if she’s imagining some disappointment as the enervate from her aborted ritual is withdrawn from her coils.


“There the demons are! What foulness have you come to wreak upon this town? Don’t think your utter mischief has gone unnoticed.”

A loathsomely familiar pointy hat is present when they ascend the ramp. She’s jabbing a foreleg in their direction as if Yanseno were not already looking right at them.

Makauja calculates if she could throw a knife and knock the hat clean off. If something’s securing it, perhaps it’d take a fair amount of force.

“Look, give them a chance to speak,” they hear the maverick say as they cross over the distancce. “Do they even know what you’re accusing them of?”

“They must know very well! That something this unseemly has occurred the very day we suffered a doubling of your number is evidence as clear as crystal! I won’t be taken as a fool.”

“Since she’s not explaining,” he starts, “I’ll get you up to speed. There’s been a break​-​in — vandals struck at the church, trashed the place, and… remind me, was anything stolen?”

“I would have to check and thoroughly. I came as soon as I saw — lest this trial go quiet and these miscreants evade capture.”

“Right, so that’s the story. The Wisterun Church of Blue Welkin — which, I remind, is all the way on the other end of northside — was vandalized. Do any of you know anything about that?”

“You’re asking them?” Tempit says, throwing up forelegs. “Do you not have percipient training? I was led to believe you did. So seize the confessions from their minds.”

“I’m watching them right now. Utter bafflement is all I see.” He looks to the green nymph standing to the side. “What about you, Quessa? Is this what you get up to when I’m not looking?”

“No, sir, of course not!”

“Right. These aren’t who you’re looking for, sorry to disappoint, madam. I’m afraid you’ll need to keep looking for a reason to get rid of them.”

“Can you not apprehend them until we’ve established the truth?”

“Sorry, but they’re not even suspects. Tell me, did you look for footprints, ask around for witnesses, anything? That’s where you’ll want to start.”

“You’re the much​-​vaunted investigator we’re paying so much. On behalf of Wisterun I bid you to find the ones responsible.”

Yanseno looks between the nymphs and the hierophant.

Behind Makuja, Ooliri makes his way forward with a finger raised as if to add something.

“Drop it, kid. Don’t think you’ll make anything better, no matter what you could say.”

Ooliri droops.

Addressing the rest of them, Yanseno says, “Look, don’t go anywhere while I’m gone, okay? As you can see, you’re making trouble for me without even doing anything.”

As Tempit leads him off, she speaks with the tone, if not the volume, of a mutter. “Boleheva will regret what he’s brought today.”

Imagos gone, three eyes turn toward Quessa.

“I wasn’t lying! I really had nothing to do with this. The plan I hatched with Bites Water was for that one to convince the ant librarian to come and personally ask for our presence — that’s how I thought we’d get past Yanseno. The ants are grateful, but they wouldn’t commit crimes for me.”

“I believe you,” Ooliri says.

“Do you have any idea who would break into the church? Would a church even be locked?”

“Why assume anyone did? Perhaps she vandalized it herself to frame us.”

“That seems, well, like a lot of trouble for something that wouldn’t work.”

“Yeah,” Quessa says. “Yanseno would see right through it.”

“Doesn’t matter. We were all here in the tavern, so it has nothing to do with us, right?” Awelah says, and the rest of team duskborn nods. “So, what’s our next step?”

Quessa taps her palps together for a moment, then answers, “Bites Water told me about a passage through the tunnels of hillside that will let us get out without being seen at the gate.”

“Right, so if we don’t find the direhound, we can get back here and no one will know we left.”

Outside, night has fallen. Four nymphs depart, to brave the wilds of the heartlands, and no one else will know where they are.

Twilight for the Sky Below

In Duskroot or, she imagines, even Solaroch — in any proper stronghold — lanterns would line the streets, casting the pale yellow light of luciflies or the chemical blue rays of of Ngini’s mix. In a town like Wisterun, though? Can they not afford a few banes to put up lights — or is it just that roaches and ants didn’t need it?

Twilight now, distant sunrays still touch the sky, reaching out from below the horizon with red and purple fingers. The streets are empty above Awelah’s eye level — most mantis imagos must have turned in for the evening already. Below her eye level, smaller bugs fill in the flow. Roaches liked the evening time, and ants didn’t mind.

“Did we, well, do we have anything to make torches?” Ooliri asks. He’d been eyeing the advancing shadows with unease and bemusement that seemed like a less guarded mirror of Awelah. He looks at her, and then at Makuja behind them, then at Quessa beside him.

Awelah’s looking around too. The shifting glances, in place of any real response, is answer enough.

“That could be a problem,” Makuja says. “It will be night by the time we find Vilja.”

“I could do something with rifts, maybe. Or maybe I could start a fire if we find some conk or wood to burn,” Quessa offers.

Awelah glances at the green nymph. “Rifts?”

“You know, like in a riftstorm.”

Awelah glanced upward.

Ooliri says, “When too much energy saturates enervate, it has to go somewhere, and if the enervate can’t just disperse — if it’s all drawn together into wisp clouds, or if a vesperbane is molding it — then, well, you end up with rifts. Enervate radiating so much light it shines as it cools. Emusa said it’s kind of like, well, lightning.”

“Not a very efficient way to make light,” Makuja says. “Burns energy and burns enervate.”

“I have good umbra control!” Quessa says. “Yanseno says I use a really tiny amount of enervate in my techniques.”

“You’d have to,” Ooliri murmurs, “with the techniques you use.”

“What was that?” The green nymph frowns.

“Oh, sorry.” Ooliri is looking away, looking, momentarily, at anything else — Awelah, Makuja. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay,” she says. Her frown melts away after just a moment.

The quartet walk west through gateside, passing tall mantid buildings interspersed with tunnel mouths which ants — and, rarely, a roach or two — climb in and out of. The main streets are wide enough to bear carts, and between them stretch little footpaths, like regularly​-​trafficked alleyways. It’s when passing by one of those that Makuja, at the rear of the party, pauses.

By the alleymouth, she listens, eyes lighting on the back of a mantis, familiar in their bare, greybrown prothorax and coat hanging about their lower legs. This imago stands before a mantis leaning against the wall, antennae sagging.

“—pain, or lower spirits, then I’ve got just the thing! Imported from a ’esperbane stronghold, exclusively supplied! They call it the archonsblood elixir. Brewed from a single drop of a dead god’s blood — it grants vigor! Youth! Power! And it could be yours,” she says.

The speaker is cut off by the lower rubbing of the leaning mantid’s palps. They didn’t speak with the same volume, and it doesn’t carry.

“No, no, it’s quite legitimate, I’ll assure you. Saw the banesproof and everything. I paid six bones to get my spines on one bottle of this stuff — I could let you have it for twice that and it’d still be a mighty tight deal.”

Another reply, shorter this time.

“Stock’s low, very low — you turn this down, and you ain’t getting another shot. Do you even have a plan for the leg of yours? My archonsblood elixir would fix you right up! I’ll knock it down to eight bones, just ’cause you need it

Makuja had heard enough. She’s bent low, a small silhouette blending in the shadows off the alley mouth. Ahead of her, the other nymphs had noticed her absence, and doubled back. Quessa walks at the front, and the green nymph’s stride takes her out in front of the alley as returns to Makuja, her look frowny and inquisitive. Makuja’s lifted labrum gives her hesitation. White eyes meet green, and Makuja has one question: “You said Mogs riffled through our bags, didn’t you?”

“I think so,” she starts, ending indefinite. She glances to Ooliri, who nods. Then she says, “Why do you ask?”

Makuja looks back at the greybrown mantis, a knife in her hand.

“No murder,” Ooliri says. “Don’t hurt anybody.”

The knife disappears into a sleeve. “Of course,” Makuja says. “We’re on a mission right now.”

She gives Mogs another, final glance, but now, the greybrown imago has turned around. She’s not looking at Makuja, though.

Mogs is looking at Quessa.

You,” she scrapes. She takes a step forward, eyes dark with pigment, gaze trained intently on the green nymph.

Narrow focus, no environmental awareness. How laic. Muscles stretching with vespertine speed, Makuja appears from her occluded spot and swifts over the distances to Mogs. This movement catches the imago’s eyes. By the time Mogs looks, the red and black nymph already stands before her.

Makuja doesn’t have a knife out. It’d be a waste, she thinks. I’d need to clean the blade.

Mogs has gone still. Paling eyes take in Makuja, her makeshift antenna​-​band, and then the gaze darks back to Quessa — where Ooliri and Awelah have stepped forward.

Makuja reaches out, wraps a tarsus around at the dirty glass bottle Mogs had been waving around. Her grip is tight, and Mogs is jumping enough she can’t keep hold of it.

“The payment,” Makuja says, “is having time to run.”

Mogs brushes palps in a unintelligible murmur, scowls, and takes a step back. When nobody moves, she turns and starts out of the alleyway. Mogs is glancing back — at Quessa, at the mantis leaning against the wall — and then gone.

“That’s one way to tell ’em to fuck off,” the mantis leaning against the wall says, their voice quiet, with strain as of suppressed groans.

“You’re hurt.” By now, Ooliri has had time to enter the alleyway.

“It that obvious?”

“You smell like hemolymph,” Awelah says. “So yes.”

“What happened?”

“Stepped on an ant,” they say. “Big fucking ant, must be a soldier or some shit. Fucker gave me a nasty bite and was shaking me till a little one came over and calmed it down. With how many bigs were around and eyeing me I prolly owe my life to that bug.”

“Can I see the bite?” Ooliri has a foretarsus unspooling a bit of bandage from his other arm.

“Heh, it ain’t a pretty sight, kid. But I guess you’ve seen worse if you’re banes.” The imago pulls aside the cloak draped over their shoulders, revealing two puncture marks near the base of the prothorax.

“I could try to heal it, if you want?”

“No.” The answer is fast and firm, louder than anything else they’ve said.

“Right, I’ll just — wait, did you say no? Why?”

“Don’t need no debt. Wouldn’t be bleeding out in an alley if I could afford fuck or all. And I’d rather bleed out in an alley than be in a bane’s debt. Don’t got anything to take, I promise you.”

“Well, I don’t want to take anything,” Ooliri says. “I just want to help.”

“Sure, sure.” Their eyes flicker up. “And how convenient you don’t have a plate to swear on. Vesperbanes don’t do charity.”

Ooliri frowns, antennae drooping down.

Makuja watches this, and sighs. “You don’t realize,” she says, “that he’s been a vesperbane for a few shades. He doesn’t know anything. He’s soft enough to want to do it for free — and naive enough to not even think you’d expect him to ask for recompense.”

They arch an antennae, giving Ooliri another look. “So you are just nymphs.”

“Only him,” Awelah says. The pale nymph pushes forward, inserting herself in front of the red nymph. “And you’re wrong. You do have something valuable — something we want. Ooliri is willing to heal you… if you tell us everything you know about the ants that did this, first.”

The alley mantis clicks their mandibles. Slipping the cloak off their prothorax, they say, “Nah. You heal me first, and if I like the way it feels, I’ll see what I remember.”

Awelah holds the imago’s eye for a moment, frowning, then nods. Stepping aside, she lets Ooliri approach.

Makuja had seen the Asetari’s genuine frowns often enough to sense something missing from this one. Had it been an act? Exaggerating their desire for information to negotiate a seemingly equitable exchange — for the laymant’s sake?

Whatever the Asetari’s intent, the desire for information had been an exaggeration, not a fabrication. As Makuja watches the Silverbane struggles to make the signs for ⸢Serum Form: Pure Healing Palm⸥, some unseen struggling playing out in his conflicted face, she pays it now mind. Instead, she’s treated to the curious and ever more frequent sensation of thinking the same thing as the Asetari.

Why are so many soldier ants gathered? Why are they out where a mantis could encounter them?


Watching ants move reminded Ooliri of watching his uncle weave. So many threads running in parallel or cross over and intertwining without losing that greater sense of order. If the ants are the cloth, he thinks, who is the weaver?

As Team Duskborn, plus Quessa, walk west into hillside, the amount and proportion of ants has only climbed. Still climbs, for they see more and more tunnel doors replacing the mantid towers and roach burrows.

Ooliri realized it’s probably not a coincidence, or even a design. It would be hard to build a house on terrain this uneven. It could be leveled, of course — that only took one earthnurse to manage. Or you could just leave it for the ants.

“We’re being followed,” Makuja says. Quessa had warmed up enough to let the scary nymph walk beside her now, so everyone can see her slow, can follow her gaze back and spot the red​-​clothed ant flanked by two big soldiers.

“Isn’t it, uh, usually better to not let them know you know? In the stories they say ‘don’t look.’ ”

Makuja hums. “Perhaps it were vesperbanes following us.”

“That’s not fair.” Quessa frowns. “I think the ants could also kill us.”

“Easily,” Awelah says. “There are a lot of them.”

There are a lot of small ants, who look even smaller swaddled up in their cloth. Still, those tailing aren’t the only soldiers out — the injured alley mantid’s tip had turned out accurate, after all.

Around them, there are big, sparsely clothed ants following after their smaller conspecifics, like loyal pets. The soldiers were big — the disparity is like that between a roach and a mantis. Being mere nymphs, these banes are just about the soldiers’ size.

“Maybe they’re not all soldiers,” Ooliri says. “Not all of the majors are, I think. There are so many different kinds of ant. But they’re all one species. It’s weird.”

Awelah’s eyes are on one of westward majors. “I recognize the look from this morning at the gate. Look at those mandibles. They’re for hurting. With everything else happening… it’s not a coincidence. Can’t be.”

“We should ask!” Quessa stops walking, and the pale nymph bumps into her abdomen. The pale nymph gets batted again when the green nymph spins and starts back toward their pursuers. Awelah glances away from the bouncy nymph to Makuja. Quietly, she asks, “You got an escape route planned?”

Ooliri clicks his mandibles. “You should have more trust in her.” He breaks away to more closely watch the exchange with the red​-​clothed ant.

The soldiers stand with waving antennae and, as if having inspected Quessa to their liking, take a step back while the chirping small ant advances two steps.

The green nymph brings her hands together — the soldiers jerk down to watch them, tensing. But she finishes in a moment, and black nerve trickles forth to form a tight orb which then glows, faint light shining forth. When the light hits Red Cloth, antennae fold down to cover small eyes. Adjusting after a moment, the light lets Quessa read the ant’s message in the waning evening light.

“Ho! [Bat​-​bug] has [approach] of [colony]. [Inquiry] for [purpose] and [mother].”

Quessa frowns deeply when this one finishes. It disappears after a moment. “We came to meet with the One Who Bites Water. We came for an audience with the One Who Shapes the Sky Below.”

“Bah. [Bat​-​bug] has [business : none] with the One Who [Shapes] the [Sky : Below]. So [begone!]”

“That’s not true.”

Makuja looks down at the ant. “Do you even know anything about this sky​-​shaper’s business?”

Quessa nudges the red nymph, stepping in front of her. To her, she whispers, “Please don’t get us in trouble.”

The ant indicates, “No [bat​-​bug] nor One Who [Bites] [Water] has [station] for [speaking] of One Who [Shapes] the [Sky : Below.]”

“We—”

“Nai! [Silence] of [bat​-​bug.] This one is [reporting] of [intrusion].”

Ooliri glances at Quessa. “Is that bad?”

“Nai! [Silence].”

The soldier ants make a sound that’s lower​-​pitched, harsher. Between them, the ant has unfurled a length of cloth and is licking it and biting the threads. After moments of this, the ant whistles high. Ooliri fans an antennae and catches a sharp smell.

In response to the whistle or the smell, a new ant breaks off from the greater weave. This one stands before Red Cloth and nods in dereference. The licked cloth is offered and taken, and then six legs are scurrying off, deeper into hillside.

Watching the others watch that one go, Awelah asks, “Is there a reason we’re waiting around here on… whatever this is? With all respect,” she says, eyeing the small ant. “I don’t care about whatever misunderstanding this one has.”

Rather than the green nymph, Red Cloth answers: “[Bat​-​bug] is [detained.]”

Makuja lifts a skeptical antennae.

Quessa says, “We’re going to use their tunnels. So I think it’s only polite to respect their will rather than just barging in.”

Awelah sighs, resigned to waiting. Makuja is folding her legs beneath her and begins doing… something (arete​-​binding?) that unsettles the ants. Ooliri tries asking a few questions that Red Cloth only answers with “Nai!” Then he tries the soldiers, and these two only grunt. Quessa gazes out to the forested horizon and the slowly arriving stars, inscrutable smile settling on her face.

It takes minutes for another ant to arrive, bearing the response. Red Cloth chews on it, then chirps an unintelligible sequence of prepositions. No one can clearly make out the words on this one’s cloth. Quessa gets jolted out of her reverie and reminded of what they’re doing by Ooliri, then she casts the light again.

“[Expectation] of [bat​-​bug] at [intersect] of [Passage : Rocky, Bare] and [Tunnel : Crooked, Center].”

“Is that an… address?”

“Would you mind guiding us there?” Quessa asks.

“Nai! This one who [patrols : honorably] has [duty : important!] [Bat​-​bugs] not [important.]”

Makuja folds her antennae.

But she doesn’t even move her palps before Quessa blurts, “Please don’t.”

Red Cloth pats the other small ant on the head. “This one who [delivers] can [guide] the [bat​-​bugs.]”

That one — draped in pink and blue cloth — turns to the nymphs, jolting as if startled. This one lowers into a bow, antennae dipping low before indicating, “Um, hi. [Safety] for [pleading]? [Guidance] for [eater​-​bug], [swiftness] of [guidance], [correctness] of [guidance]! This one [promises.]”

The swiftness is impaired somewhat by the ant repeatedly glancing back at those who follow. The correctness, they can hope, is unimpaired.


They spot a familiar ant in blue cloth at the intersection of Bare Rocky Passage and Crooked Center Tunnel. They’d been half​-​blind following the pink and blue ant, but here at the intersection, fresh torches burn, and the One Who Bites Water stands under the flickering light of one.

This one is busy with… kissing? Another ant has mandibles and maxillae wide, pushing against this one, interlocking. Their antennae pairs are wrapped around each other.

The two ants abruptly break it off when the arriving nymphs, side by side, take up enough of their field of view. Bites Water turns to them, a foreleg wiping this one’s mouth. This one’s partner slips away, and a moment later is pulling another ant into a kiss.

“[Apologies] for [failure],” Bites Water indicates. “The one who [Shapes] the [Sky : Below] has no [arrangement] for [extraction] of the ones who are [Quessa].” Then, the ant looks up, looking between them as if realizing who this one is talking to. “Err, wha. The ones who are [Quessa] have [arrival]? But [arrangement] was [failure].”

“We got lucky! Yanseno was pulled away, which let us slip out. So all you need to do is show up the way out.”

“Uh,” Bites Water chirps. “This one had a [arrangement : alternative.] It has [commencement : already.]”

Quessa frowns. “What did you do?”

“You, who are [Quessa], are [hunting] the [beast] of [blood]. But [beast] is [threat : possibly] for [colony]. So this one [persuaded] the One Who [Shapes] the [Sky : Below]. That one has [arrangement] for [defenders] of [colony] to do [hunting].”

Behind her, Awelah hikes her antennae, as if finally getting the answer to a question.

Quessa is shaking her head. “Bitey, that was a terrible idea.”

Ooliri nods, imagining those mauled bodies of ants, only rather than an anteater’s maw gnawing the chitin, it was a direhound. Still he says, “But it was only his idea. He’s not the one who authorized it.” Blues eyes look to the ant. “People keep talking about the One Who Shapes the Sky Below like they’re very important. Are they… your queen?”

“Ha, wha, haha. The one who [Shapes] is a [weaver] of [wisdom.] Our [mother] is She Whose [Womb] is Our [Lake]. Not [weaver].”

Partway through, there’s a whistle from an lighted alcove of the intersection. Bites Water finished speaking with shorter chirps and faster antennae jerks.

“This one [wastes] the [time] of those who are [Quessa]. You are [expected].”

“We aren’t Quessa,” Awelah says. “We are Team Duskborn.”

“What are we expected to do?”

“The one who [Shapes] the [Sky : Below] has [desire] to [weave] you.”


Every ant they have seen so far has fidgeted and fiddled with the cloth that wreathes them. The One who Shapes the Sky Below sits on a raised cushion and this one’s head is engulfed in a mountainous mass of cloth, myriad in colors, and there’s enough that it’s unclear if this one has a bigger head or just that much cloth. Two big torches on the wall behind cut ever shifting shadows from the angles of the face.

Before this one kneel two others, and here this one again is distinguished: forelegs reach out to the other ants, plucking and twisting their personal weaves with the same idle ease another ant would manipulate their own cloth.

As they arrive, the ant clad in the colorful cloth looks up, and the small black eyes settle on Awelah. The ants who kneel also turn and look, even as the One Who Shapes the Sky Below continues to pull on their strings. But one looks toward Quessa, and one looks toward Makuja. They chirp and antennate, and Ooliri can hardly follow what’s said.

To Awelah, the sitting ant conveys, “You, the one who [leads] the [Duskborn] has [intention] of [hunting] the [direhound], yes?”

To Quessa, the right ant conveys, “The one who [disgorges] [affection; attention] for that one,” (an antenna flicks towards Bites Water) “You [mark] the [trails] for the [messengers : lost] of [messengers : dead]?”

To Makuja, the left ant conveys, “the one who [menaces] our [colony] and [insults] our [patrol] has [presence : unwelcome]. So [kneel], and have [possibility] of your [stench] of [disrespect] will [waft].”

The ants all speak in different octaves, each stream of sound distinct,and each carefully timed not to overlap, like a grand bit of counterpoint. It still takes the nymphs addressed a moment to untangle their individual messages. The One who Shapes the Sky Below sits above, still pulling and twisting the threads and it’s hard not to feel impatience in the curl of this one’s palps, those mandibles yawning open.

Quessa responds first. “That’s correct, honored ant.”

“Your [message; trail] is [incomplete; lacking]. So [lead] us to the [remainder; truth].”

“I… there is no more. I could only store a summary of the contents.”

“[Summary] is [inadequate.]”

“It’s all I have.”

“[Bring] the [weft; message] in [entirety].”

“I can’t. We burned all of it with the bodies.”

“Then you have [inflicted] a [deprivation] upon the [library]. [Deprival] of our [wisdom; property].”

Quessa looks away.

Beside her, Makuja is having her own conversation. It had started earlier, with her response: “Was slaying a threat to your colony not enough?” Her legs remain straight, unkneeling.

“[Sufficient] for a [recompense]. Our [majors; brutes] will not [tear] the [limbs] from your [body]. That is all. You have no [right] of [walking] our [halls.]”

“You were called a weaver of wisdom. Are these threats very wise?”

“Your [blood] is as [oil] in [burning]. You would [alight] just like a [candle]. The [library] has [wisdom] of [weaknesses] of [vesperbanes]. [Nymphs] are [unfrightening]. So [kneel], or [begone].”

Meanwhile, Awelah was last to reply. “I will hunt the direhound and protect Wisterun. That is my purpose tonight.”

“[Colony] will [hunt] the [direhound]. You will [assist.]”

“I don’t think you should risk your soldiers. This isn’t a wild animal, it’s a direbeast. It might even be more than that. Leave it to us.”

“[Duskborn] had [time; shades] for [slaying] this [beast.] You have [failure].”

“We haven’t tried, not really. Now that we’ve coming for it… that dog stands no chance against us.”

“[Dog] against [nymphs : four] has [chance]. [Dog] against [majors : many] has [less].”

“I don’t believe it.”

But at this point, the ant to the left was lecturing Makuja about how well she burns, and the One Who Shapes the Sky Below inclined her head to make Awelah listen. Then, this one only adds, “[Blood] of [beast] is [blood] of [bat], and we will [burn.]”

The One Who Shapes the Sky Below lifts her forelegs and claps them together. The two ants turn round and lower themselves again, now almost prone, immediately silent as the weaver has no intentions for them. “This one has [completed] the [discourse]. No [more] is [necessary; desired]. The verdict is one,” — antennae point at Quessa — “You will [serve] the [colony] for your [deprival].” Antennae point at Makuja. “Two, you will [serve] the [colony] or never [befoul] these [halls] again.” With antennae for Awelah, this one concludes, “Three, you will [serve] the [colony], or [leave] the [hunting] for us.”

Following all of that made Ooliri’s head spin. The three ants spoke with rhythm and unity, like the weaver was conducting a symphony. Is two ants even the limit? What could a wise weaver do with a whole crowd of ants?

Still, Ooliri frowns. “I feel a little bit left out here,” he says.

When the weaver looks over, Ooliri at once regrets seeking this attention.

“The one who [[asks]] is like a [grub : hungry]. And this one is no [nurse]. The [young] are [annoying : always], the [drones : especially]. You will [follow] one of your friends.” Regarding the rest of the nymphs, the weaver pats a kneeling ant on the head. “This one will [guide]. Those who [serve] the [colony], [follow] the [troops.]” The One Who Shapes the Sky Below looks beyond them, and whistles for the attention of another subject.

When one kneeling ant, clad in golden brown, rises and approaches them, the tone of this one’s voice is wholly new without the weaver ‘conducting’ them. “Hi! [Following] in [line : orderly] for [pleading?]”

Like that, the Duskborn and Quessa are led west beneath the hills, to where the troops wait.


As they followed on into the dark ant tunnels, spooked repeatedly by the dark forms scuttling just beyond the light, Bites Water follows after them. Their guide has mandibles full with a torch, so it has fallen to that one to explain.

“All of these tunnels are big,” Ooliri notes. “Even the majors aren’t that tall.”

“The [Pantheca] has [law] that all of [space : public] must be [accessible] for [eater​-​bugs].”

“If this is a public space,” Makuja says. “Why were we detained?”

Bites water tilts head. “You are not [eater​-​bug.] You are [bat​-​bug.]”

As they walk on, Ooliri and Makuja have a few more questions, but Awelah is concerned with the hunt. The One Who Shapes, they’re told, had secured two troops of six soldiers for this operation, and there would be two minors — the term for small ants like this one — there to manage them: Bites Water, and their guide, who this one calls the One Who Rides Upon Fine Sands. These two would be those managers.

“You are going to be in command?” Awelah asks, looking this one up and down.

“This one is [assistance]. Our [commander] is the One who [Hungers] for [Spears].”

The bug in question, they find, wears cloth of a stark black on white. Only one antennae brushes over this one’s cloth: the other is severed at the bend. When they arrive, the One Who Hungers is manipulating the plain cloth worn by one of the soldiers. The ant waves them off when they approach, so the nymphs sit and wait. The other soldiers aren’t quite idle: about half of them are being kissed by ants with greatly swollen abdomens.

They all stand in a field with the Wisterun wall looming above them, and ferns swaying in the late evening breeze. When the commander finally makes time for them, three of them can’t understand. As if compensating for the antenna nub, this one’s style of conveyance has grown dextrous and quick, almost spider​-​like in the angles and distances covered.

Quessa follows, then engages the ant in a back and forth that excludes the rest of them. At times their interlocution is punctuated by her pulling out and presenting objects from her bag. Afterward, it falls to her to explain what’s up to Team Duskborn.

“This one came to tell us the plan, and ask what we have to offer.”

“Well?”

“What’s the plan?”

“I told that one what you told me about your abilities, and we worked out how to fit us in. We’re going to split up,” she says. “Two teams: pursuit and… and capture, that was it. You and you,” she says, pointing at Awelah and Makuja, “are going together to find the hound, scare it, and chase it toward us. I’ll use my technique to paralyze it and give the ants a chance to net it, douse it in oil, and burn it. Here,” Quessa passes some… bottles? Awelah grabs them, though Makuja can’t see them clearly. “I took some of Yanseno’s gunpowder from his gun chest to make these. They explode! It’ll scare the hound, and also hurt it. And if nothing else, we can hear it and see it, so it can be signal. No wait, these are supposed to be the signal.” She pulls out some more objects of a paper coating. “These will be really bright, and we’ll see it if you throw them up. Throw one if it’s coming. Throw two if it’s, no, throw three, if it flees. Throw two if you need help.”

Makuja intercepts Awelah, slipping in front to take the paper bombs. “I’m better at throwing.”

“Right, okee.” Quessa gestures behind them. “The ants back here will keep the fires lit. Whatever happens, we reunite here. Everything understood? The One Who Hungers isn’t the most patient, they’ll be leaving in a moment.”

The gray​-​shelled, yellow​-​fluffed boy following behind, breaks off to join the commander’s troop.

Makuja and the Asetari walk off, side by side. Team Duskborn is splitting up, setting off in a night​-​darkened forest to hunt the wolf that howls their names.

The girl without a family name lifts her labrum, feeling the rough paper of the explosive in her hand and the hilt of a knife in her other, and the cold power of black nerve within. Her toes dig into the soil, and she grins as her heart, gently, beings to pulse faster and faster.

To Trap Your Hunter

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.”

A Murderous Misdirection

“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.

End of Arc 3: A Wisterun Welcome