Eifre Quest

You twitch an antennae, a small part of you almost feeling almost… annoyed. You’d chosen this rock specifically to get away from loud obnoxious mantids screaming at you. But before this distracts you any further, you stop, and you breathe, and you release the unnecessary feeling, letting it flow away and out of you. You always had excellent composure.

Vesperbanes save people, and it’s your duty to endeavor to help. Even if it’s a jarring interruption to a relaxing study. You know what the storyscroll heroes would do.

Standing, leaping from your study rock, you aim toward the ambrosia woods. You give a parting glance‍ ‍—‍ your scrolls are safely weighted down, and no one could see them from the village and try to come and steal them.

(One of those scrolls was a introduction to geology that you’d picked up out of curiosity. It’s thick reading, and not your main interest, but you’ve gotten far enough in to identify the stone as andesite, flecked with tiny black crystals. It was a bright fact gleaned on a otherwise dark day, and you remember it fondly for that reason.)

As you turn back toward the looming woods, a whim strikes you and you holler a sound, loud through your abdominal spiracles, hoping to reassure the imperiled mantis. It comes out low and strangled and you’re too embarrassed to try again, and instead you hurry toward the woods.

The grasses grow taller and darker as you draw near. You see a snake slither by, half‍-​hidden in a clump of bushy ferns. Clicks and buzzes of lesser insects grow audible as you dash down the muddy stone path into the ambrosia woods. The bushes and shrubbery get steadily thicker the farther you get from the village, but the transition to woodland is sharp. Pale trunks shoot up from the plains like knives, and in such numbers they’re like a wall. The path continues into the woods, but bends tightly just inside.

A wooden sign is nailed to a tree, former words faded under the weathering of years. You make a few letters: ‘AMBROSIA WOOD‍ ‍—‍ T RN B’ …Or is it ‘T RM E’? Impossible to say.

One reading comes obvious to you. Turn back. The temptation is there, for sure. You know what’s said to inhabit the woods: witch‍-​roaches, evil druids, termites! And you know what’s known to inhabit them: ambrosia weevils, the eerie, fickle creatures whose dominion over the woods keeps mantids from prying the depths, let alone settling there.

This was stupid.

You’re a fourth (almost fifth! but still fourth) instar mantis nymph. You have the frailest physicals among all the nymphs in pre‍-​vesper. Vesperbanes save people, but you aren’t a vesperbane. You were deemed unworthy twice!

If you go back to village, you could ask one of your more fit peers to accompany you (Yikki would love the adventure, for sure). Or you could do the sensible thing, and ask an imago! Or just forget all this…

It’s a small voice in your head, but it speaks to worries that were already there. And yet, the duty, the conviction, the bravado that had brought you this far is still there, in fact they might even be outvoting the worry—

But then you hear a sound. It’s a low noise, a rattling and grunking whose like you’ve never heard. It strikes you still with visceral fear, as the reality of danger finally presents itself.

Is this the monster already coming? Are you next?

Any other would be completely paralyzed, but you always had excellent composure.

Do you turn abdomen and run back to the village? Do you stand and face what’s coming? Maybe you could even hide‍ ‍—‍ could you ambush the monster? Or would that just make you easier prey?

Just visible, a dark, enshadowed form stalks closer.