Eifre Quest

Part 7

Your mother stands between you and the ambrosia woods. She waits for you to spin cerci and leave, so she can brave whatever adventure still waits in the woods, alone.

“No.” You could do as she asks‍ ‍—‍ or seem to, and sneak out and creep back into the woods. But why should you have to slink around, when you ought to be deemed ready to become a vesperbane any month now?

Tlista turns round in a single fluid motion, her footing sure on the stone road. Behind her, her wings flex‍ ‍—‍ not in full threat display, but lifted just a bit. Her antennae uncoil and her maxillae spread.

You understand, for perhaps the first time, why your mother has the reputation she does. She is the image of the dauntingly built vesperbane lady‍ ‍—‍ eight heads high with her prothorax upright‍ ‍—‍ which inspired the cowardly mix of fear and respect the other villagers regarded her with.

But you always had excellent composure.

You continue, “Would you have appreciated it at my age, if you wanted to help, if you could help, but you were brushed aside just because you’re not old enough to respect? I know you were an early initiate. You told me.”

You have your raptorials fold closed, held low under your prothorax. Your antennae are held at an angle almost parallel to the ground: low, where your mother’s are high. You don’t go so far as to bow, but you hope this offsets your insolence.

She says, “I was initiated during my fifth. I was not a vesperbane at your age.” Her wings twitch in rhythm with her words. Her spiracles are squeezed tight, pitching her voice an irritatingly high tenor, rather than soothing bass.

“Oh…” you say. Then, in that curious voice you’ve harrowed your father with, you ask, “Is it that non‍-​vesperbanes have nothing to contribute?”

Your mother flinches at that, her first reaction that lies entirely outside your model of the situation. Your antenna flicks in instinctive confusion.

Meanwhile, Tlista does not snap out a response. She is the sort to honestly consider her response rather than leaping forth on the first impulse, and she takes time to think. She’s used to being given such time.

You clench your raptorials, and try to resist your next action. It’s a gamble, and could ruin your backup plan. But you have a head for situations and it could work. Trust your instincts.

Sighing through your mouth, you then say, “You know what? Nevermind. I’ll just go home. And stay in my room. And do nothing else tonight.”

She knew, you rationalize to yourself once the words leave your palps. You’re sure she knew what you were planning.

Dramatically, you turn around. You lift a midleg—

“Enough, Eifre. Come back here.”

If it wasn’t obvious manipulation before, the cocky grin, which you can’t get out of your palps now that you’ve won, would have revealed it all.

You dash over to your mother, and she embraces you, a foreleg falling around your prothorax but her right raptorial is open, spines on either side of your mesothorax, but no force behind them.

“You would have come back here either way, wouldn’t you? This way I can keep an eye on you.”

She lifts you up, over her head, and you slide down into the valley between her thorax and her abdomen. Her legs hardly need to adjust to the added weigh. You kick the bag slung around her abdomen, the bag she always carries, and wonder if it weighs more than you do.

She says to you, “Be useful and hold my torch, okay?”

Finally, carried by your mother, the two of you start back towards the ambrosia woods.

“Why was the crow able to talk?” you ask. “It didn’t even seem like it was only repeating sounds! It was almost, intelligent.”

You feel a hitch in your mother’s walking. It’s slight, and she continues on only slightly slowed.

“Familiars,” she says. “The stewartry has experimented with using vesper magic to uplift and empower animals.” A raptorial lifts to just below her face, a dactyl tapping on her labium. “I believe it was twenty, thirty years ago that they declared a moratorium? Citing the danger, the suffering it causes, and concerns that it was or would become Exclusion‍-​worthy.”

“So it’s a magic talking bird? That doesn’t… How does it work?”

“I don’t know everything, dear,” she says, and it sounds like it stings. “Familiar theory is restricted, and far outside my specialty.”

You sigh exaggeratedly, (since she can’t see you pout). “Fine.”

If you had been a veteran vesperbane, you doubt you could have stopped yourself from delving into the topic. Moratoria and restrictions already sound like vexations.

Tlista’s voice reaches again for that higher, unaffectionate tone. “You realize this is what makes her dangerous, Eifre? That lady is a defect. You don’t know what she’s capable of.”

“I’d have a better idea if you answered my questions better! Surely you know more than three sentences about familiars.”

“It’s been years, honey. Regarding a subject I was never that interested in.” You don’t relent, not just yet, and your request lingers in the ensuing silence. “Okay, okay,” your mother continues, her tone unsteady, making your worry she’s just making something up. “It’s a crow, right? Crows are cunning creatures. Remarkably so, even. Whatever techniques they use to create familiars, a target already intelligent must’ve have helped allow it to succeed. It’s a not a surprise she has a familiar. With the lack of morals or oversight intrinsic to being a defect, it must be something the lot of them experiment with.”

You hum at this longer response. You aren’t satisfied, but you’re close enough.

Onward she walks into the ambrosia woods. Quiet soon envelops the two of you, perhaps owing to the irritation hinted in the clench of mother’s mandibles.

The path deeper is familiar to you. The tall, stately trees line the pits and mounds of the forests’ expanse. Here and there in the trees you can see the unattended, almost art‍-​like workings of ambrosia weevils, as whorling branch‍-​masses. They have a haunted, daemonic appearance in the darkness of early night.

Familiar too is the small ridge of dirt forming a wall to the right of the muddy stone path. Ahead, you remember, the road forks in three. You’re near the witch.

Nor have you forgotten the crack, where you saw for a moment the strange puddle‍-​shadow. You left it out of your retelling, unable to account for it. But now a worry crawls back to you.

The crack is in sight. You reach out to tap Tlista, tell her what you saw. And then things go wrong.

Tlista’s reflexes are such that you’re reacting to her reaction before you even apprehend what’s happening. She is leaping back, and you’re jerked off her back. You would have been launched into the blackness of the night forest, but mother’s reflexes are exquisite, and her midleg and hindleg (!) grab onto you before you leave her reach.

Then you’re finally able to look. Tlista’s current configuration is best described as contorted. You’re held in her right mid‍-​ and hindleg. She still stands on her left hindleg‍ ‍—‍ standing on it a alone for one unbalanced moment, before she twists (lifting you up higher) and planting her left foreleg down on her right side.

And the reason for all of this? Her left midleg should be illuminated by the torch you carry. Instead, there is a black mass beyond her coxa, so dark it seems to lack form.

That instant of clarity passes, and time marches forward in confusion and chaos. Tlista is hopping to the side, a placing you safely atop the ridge beside the road. You hear her hissing in pain. The black mass on her midleg writhes and pulsates. She’s slapping the leg down on against the stone. “Get off,” she scrapes, high like a bat.

She shakes her leg like one might to get a feral dog off. And the black mass seems to constrict, bunching together before it pours off her, plummeting with a viscous, soundless splash.

“Don’t like the taste of me, huh?”

She kicks the pile of black with a foot. But the mass ignores her now, and instead flows toward the ridge.

Toward you.

“No you don’t. Not my daughter.” She reaches into the bag slung against her abdomen and snatches out an oblong capsule bigger than her tarsi. It snaps open with a click, and inside ripples a wet metal. Gingerly she presses the capsule toward the black mass (now starting to flow up the ridge; you back up, only half distracted watching Tlista).

But the black mass stops flowing. Mother pushes the capsule nearer.

You’ve played with magnets before.

The mass flows into the capsule with the liquid metal, and compresses to fit. Bubbles of air form and pop as its volume decreases. Sometimes instead it’s sickly fluid that bursts from films and spills out like pustules.

You stare as your mother seals the capsule once more and places it in her back, and then she leaps toward you. Reaching out for your tarsus, squeezing it, she helps you back onto her back, and you hold on tight.

“Wha… what happened, mom?”

“That’ll be the rule six or seven of enervate physics. Element preference. You’ll learn it in the inculcatoria. The short of it is, pure enervate is attracted to matter, but not equally; the denser the material, the stronger the attraction. And my little bit of mercury is heavier than any biological element.” She pats her back. “That foul creature was not pure enervate, but it wasn’t sufficiently not enervate for that to matter.”

You squeeze around her prothorax, and she gives an affectionate hum.

“Why did it attack us? Why did it come for me?”

She folds her antennae. “Give me a moment to think?” she asks. And you do.

She walks on, maxillae twitching and antennae working. You two come to the triple fork, and she pauses there. You point to the correct path. Eventually:

“You said the witch mentioned exclusion? As in, a council exclusion?”

Nod.

“Then here’s my theory: the stewartry is already here. That creature I captured is a nerve‍-​ooze. Oozes are… unfortunately easy to create, for reasons I’ll not get into. They have a pitiful bit of intelligence, but it’s a enough to train, and oozes are the best scent‍-​trackers in the whole heartlands. And stealthy‍ ‍—‍ you saw how it was right upon us before we noticed it? But I digress. The ooze is evidence of stewartry involvement. Almost proof. I know exactly one bane who specializes in nerve‍-​oozes.”

“She did call the stewartry a ‘snake coiling round her neck’.”

“Part and parcel of the defect life. But regardless, the picture this paints is that the stewartry suspects Maune’s involvement in this mound emergence, and the ooze was sent to kill her.”

“Kill her, not me!”

“It has a pitiful intelligence, remember? Its whole world is scent. You touched the bird, and you stood quite close to her. Vesperbanes have a pungent stench if they don’t hide it, and its sillage lingers.”

They gives you pause for a moment, then you’re more questions: “How’d it even have her scent?”

“You saw her yourself, didn’t you? It’s visibly obvious she must have fought it‍ ‍—‍ or more than one. It must have found her, but she must have scared it off, and it let itself be scared off, because once it’s found her once, it has her scent.”

“Okay. So your theory is, the stewartry sent the ooze to kill—” (“Or weaken.”) “—the witch because she’s behind the termites. She fights off the ooze, and it flees to lick its wounds, then comes back to finish the job‍ ‍—‍ except it thinks I was her.”

Mother nods.

“But that would mean the stewartry is already here!”

“You’re not wrong, little nymph.”

Both of you look up.

There’s a young mantis in front of you, at least seventh instar with pale green chitin and light blue robes adorned with an insignia (an axe crossing with a spike‍-​lined tentacle)‍ ‍—‍ symbol of the Wardens.

And her midleg wields a blade glinting in the torchlight.

“You aren’t right on every point, of course, and where are you are it’s a bit more complicated.” She stops, seeming to catch herself. “But alas. This is a B‍-​rank mission and not for civilian eyes. I’m going to ask that you turn around and go home, and this is not a polite request.”

But the mantis isn’t alone.

It seems, just like when the bird led you, you came upon the witch’s resting place suddenly. As before, you can just barely see the indentation where she lies, further along the ridge.

Even aside from her, there’s another: a tall, red mantis with a bulky build, a bow and a mace visible on their thorax. She’s looking hard at you, and she says, “Wait.”

The red girl steps forward, antennae working. “Shimare, read.”

There’s a motion sudden motion above: a third mantis crouched atop the ridge, looking down at the witch. At red’s command, the last vesperbane jerks eyes over, and regards your mother intently. There’s something off about their compound eyes‍ ‍—‍ they are a mess of color, orange, cyan, purple, white in swirls and dots, and almost gleaming in the torchlight. You swear the pattern might be shifting.

“Tlista of a Shatalek.”

There’s a pair of gasps from back at ground level.

“It is her.”

“The poison queen?”

The green mantis closest to you straightens up their thorax, and draws in their maxillae respectfully. “My apologies, Fiend‍-​dame! We mistook you for a civilian.” Their gaze drifts upward. “Is this your… daughter?”

Your mother says, “I came here to investigate a defect sighting in the ambrosia woods, and claims of termites. I’m representing Shatalek, and I aim to ascertain its safety.”

“Understood madame. Do you wish to see the creature…? It’s somewhat, grisly.”

Tlista simply pushes forward, brushing past the vesperbane, and turns before the ambrosia witch.

The sight is no less sickening a second time, but you withstand it. The wet hemolymph has hardened somewhat now, and smell has waned.

But it’s still a mantis who looks… broken.

“As I said,” the green mantis is continuing. “Your theory was astute, given your info, but inaccurate. Our mission is to solely secure the perimeter around the mound emergence, and inform the coordinators of Shataklek, and render aid if needed.” Green glances to Red.

“Our head happened to mention, however, the bounty on this animal here,” she says, pointing a dismissive foreleg toward Maune. “Too small to compel the hunters, but it’s a fair few hundred claws. And it’s small because she’s a weak one‍ ‍—‍ easy to take out while on another mission. A nice bonus.”

You speak up. “I‍-​is she…” You can’t finish the sentence.

“Oh no no, just unconscious. When she wakes up, we’ll give a light interrogation, enough to provoke a confession, and then we’ll chop‍-​‍-​”

A grunt from green. Red lifts a single antennae, confused.

“She’s a nymph.”

“And? She’s what, one, two instars under us? If she’s following in her mother’s wake at all, no use playing coy with the truth.”

They’re going to—

They’re going to kill Maune.

You take a deep breath. It… it wasn’t a bad thing. The mentors had gone over it. It was necessary for the safety of the theca of mantiskind.

You remember all of the figures. The Plains Southern had 7,437 major settlements. Defects were responsible for 1,286 settlements being uninhabited, Excluded, or destroyed so thoroughly only maps remember them. And that’s aside from the constant plague and predation that are synonymous with the presence of defects. Because the ones who destroy villages don’t last long. It’s the ones who linger like parasites, who lightly and methodically, but no less foully, intrude upon the Kindling Dream, that mulct the highest cost.

And yet.

Maune wasn’t evil, was she? She tried to warn your village, she nearly died (…will die…) trying to help. She was on some sort of speaking or first name terms with your mother.

(If you had gone to her cabin instead of running back, gotten what she needed to heal, might she have been able to evade the stewartry vesperbanes?)

What can you do now, though? You look around, at your mother’s pensive visage, at the light, haughty vesperbanes. At Maune, twitching gently at the cusp of awareness.

These vesperbanes were deferring to your mother. Can you use that? If you asked, if you objected, you’re sure your mother will care enough to argue with the vesperbanes for your sake, try to convince them to spare the witch.

And if they wouldn’t change their mind? (If your intelligent, eloquent mother somehow failed to get through to them?) You saw your mother in a fight. You heard the tone they talked about her in. These “vesperbanes” were nymphs, barely older than you. Your mother could take them in a fight, couldn’t they? She’s a veteran! And what else might she have in her bag?

But maybe it’d be a good thing for the world to shed one more defects. The stewartry wouldn’t have a bounty on her head for no reason, would they? You could just, not say anything.

You hear scratching and shaking in the trees.