Eifre Quest

Part 10

“I can’t say yes,” you tell her. But you can’t deny you feel a secret shiver at the prospect of actually learning something, anything‍ ‍—‍ not that you could ever, ever, tell any living being that, not even a roach. Illegally becoming a vesperbane? Tutored by arenegade?Even if no one would ever figure it out…

Maune makes some low cluck of amusement. “Of course, kid. Saying yes right now would be the act of a damn fool, one I know Tlista wouldn’t raise‍ ‍—‍ and one I certainly wouldn’t teach. I was expecting you to say you’ll consider it and sleep on it,” she says, rising to a stand. “You should know, I have my ways into the village. Seen that small little valley, hidden behind the copse of thick ferns? I’ll wait there, every night for… let’s say five nights. Come there when you decide you want me to teach you. And if you’re too scared, well, leave a note saying as much. If you’re feeling merciful.”

You can’t help but nod your head. Your antennae are slumped, and it’s not just indecision informing your words. It’slate, and you won’t make monumental decisions about your future while this low on sleep. “I can’t say no right here, right now?” You can’t help but ask. The witch just‍ ‍—‍ assumed you wouldn’t. Why?

“Youcould, but you know my offer is too good to be dismissed immediately. You’re openminded enough, and you know I’m giving you more respect than the stewartry has or will. Than your mother, even.”

You don’t grant her any confirmation. You lift a tarsus to tap your labium in a thoughtful gesture, and you say, “I just have one question. Whyisthe Kindling Dream a nightmare?”

The ambrosia witch gives a grand sigh. Not one particularly beleagered, but seeming almost anticipatory, like a deep breath taken in anxious preparation. Her antennae curl up into spirals, and she looks down into your eyes.

“Nothing is a coincidence. Nothing in this world is meaningless or mistaken. All the injustices that persist, all the suffering that imbues this land? There’s always someone who had the power to put things on another path, but preferred this one. For every death and every atrocity, there’s someone at fault.” There’s an energy to her speaking that wasn’t here before.

You twist your antennae, mandibles working. You aren’t sure how this tracks or where she’s going.

She continues with, “But I digress. You know the story of how the first arthropod alliance fell? The constant tumult and war of the sundered states period?” You don’t have a chance to begin a languid nod before the witch takes your tired sluggishness for a negative. “You haven’t heard it before? That‍ ‍—‍ supposedly‍ ‍—‍ hundreds of years ago, a wingless maiden laid a secret ootheca in the north, and annointed it with the blood of the white dragon? That it hatched the six nymphs of the dream, and they traveled the heartlands for years healing the broken and the cursed?”

“Well…” you start. “We aren’t really religious. It’s not a story my father ever told, but I’ve heard people mention the nymphs. They… seem important, but no one ever gives a consistent answer. They saved us? Or they would have saved us, but they failed? Or they wouldn’t have failed if it weren’t for the welkinists?”

“The exact story doesn’t matter, it’s all nonsense. I don’t even know if the nymphs really existed. I don’t care. The point is what’s attributed to them, the Kindling Dream. After some years of ascetic wandering and seeing the state of the heartlands, the story goes, the nymphs‍ ‍—‍ several instars old at this point‍ ‍—‍ began to believe the heartlands needed something more, and preached as much. They gathered a cabal of prophets and haruspices, and they all claimed they spoke for the vespers. Claimed that by the vespers, all shall align. The Kindling Dream was supposed to be a final unraveling of the oppressions of the Second Dominion. Equality among all races, liberty unfaltering, and a peace that would last.”

You nod. It all sounded familiar, even presented in that tone of humorless derision. She spoke with the cynicism you might expect out of the dour ladies at the tavern, hunched over some foul smelling drink. Maune clasps her raptorial forelegs, and continues:

“That’s the story they’ll tell you. They’ll say the Pantheca is a memorial for the nymphs of the dream, bodies were sundered with lightning before they reached teneral. They’ll say that every day they’re‍ ‍—‍ we’re‍ ‍—‍ striving to bring forth the Kindling Dream.” Maune lets her words settle with a measured pause here. Then she opens her raptorials.

“It’s ’pedeshit. Thisisthe Dream. It never went astray, it was never thwarted.”

You clench your mandible. “But who wouldwantthis? Who would want all the villages destroyed by renegades, all of the world‍-​scars and exclusions‍ ‍—‍ nobody couldpreferthat?” Who possibly could?

All she deigns to say is, “When it comes to plans, simply look at who benefits and assume it was the intended result.”

You flare your spiracles, but the witch is speaking still.

“There are answers I could give that would shatter your world. But if you still intend to become a stewartry vesperbane, if you really want to go down that road, it’s better if you don’t know. I’ll leave you with a piece of advice. When you’re climbing your way up the ranks, you’ll learn about a thing called pharmakon, and you’ll get curious. You’ll want to get to the bottom of it. Don’t. You might end up like me, heh.”

“Okay,” you say, not really meaning it, “but another question, what‍ ‍—”

She startles, and jerks up one of her wet red limbs that might be tentacles, and points behind you. “Your mom is coming. We should drop all this deep, traitorous talk.” Her voice gets cautiously lower. “I shouldn’t have to tell you it’s better if Tlista doesn’t know our plans, right? Her head’s always been clearer than most of her peers, but you can only be so heterodox if you go on to to be promoted as fiend.”

And just as she said, your mother returns with forceful, definite strides that crush plants in her wake. She comes to stand in front of the ambrosia witch, regarding her. Her maxilae are working, and her abdomen is still, as if holding a breath, like the words to come are a broken toy she needs to fix before she can say them.

Maune watches all of this, and her antennae curl back into tight, defensive spirals. She sees something in your mother’s stride as confirmation.

Maune preempts whatever she’d have opened with. “You always were my second in being damnably curious.” Her posture shifts, drawing in on herself minutely. “But it’s not the curiosity that’s the problem, is it? It’s what you do after.” While you have to look up to meet eye with her, she has to look up to meet eye with your mother.

Tlista looks away, and it seems rhetorical, rather than in weakness. She says, “They call it the path of erosion for a reason, Maune. You can’t have forgotten that lesson. Are you really so attached to the vespers? Do you really think they’re worth clinging to so tightly, at this cost?”

“I have oaths sworn and projects I have to see through. I need the vespers with me for them. I can’t give up like you did.” She pauses on that, and then, “Youcan’t have forgotten the lesson on ethics. Any means for the greatest end, remember? I do what I have to, in the best way I can.”

“Projects?” Tlista spits the word. “How long have you been out here, six years? Eight? It took the flourishing scourge less than three. You act like you’ll be the next, and yet—”

Maune stabs two tentacles in the ground on either side of her. They lift her up high enough that she can stare down at your mother’s statue‍-​esque visage. She speaks quickly, and she only says, “Get out. Now.”

But this isn’t just anger or indignation‍ ‍—‍ you note the faintest tremble behind her words, a shake in her legs. And you remember her urging you not to look around. Whatever she didn’t want you to find‍ ‍—‍ finding it revealed a crack in her confidence. The acknowledgement has her recoil, like one with dark‍-​adjusted eyes exposed to too bright a light.

Tlista sighs and turns to you. “Eifre, we’re leaving.”

You’re startled enough that it’s a second before you react. Getting to your feet, you wave at the ambrosia witch as you turn towards your mother.

“Don’t wave.”

Maune isn’t looking at either of you as you leave. Her gaze is somewhere distant in the sky. She strokes the sleeping form of her raven beside her.

You’re lagging behind Tlista as she stalks out of the vale, toward the pool you entered through. It’s not a minute like this before she stops and picks you up, letting you ride on her back.

When you’ve dived through the water and arrived back in the forest proper, you finally feel it’s time to ask question on the top of your mind. Even as tired as you are, the warring drives of curiosity and trepidation combine to give you more energy in putting off asking questions than you had had while walking. But eventually, you manage:

“What did you find in Maune’s basement?” After a silent moment, you add, “C’mon, I asked you to promise to tell me.”

“And I refused. Please, don’t worry about it, dear.”

The path turns into tight incline here, and your mother holds you tight as she climbs up.

You say, “It’s clear that it wasn’tnothingor you wouldn’t be acting like this. I feel like I should know! I was in her cabin, I wasalonewith her. What was it? Was it bad?”

“I’ll… I’ll tell you when you’re older, Eifre.”

“…Fine. I’ll remember that!”

“I know you will,” she replies with something almost like a laugh in her tone.

“Fine,” you repeat. “If you won’t tell me your secrets,”‍ ‍—‍ thenyoudon’t have to tell her yours‍ ‍—‍ “then you have to answer my other questions! It’s only fair.”

Here, the reaching branches of trees encroach on the path. At first, Tlista pushes them out of the way, only for them to snap back, scratching her or you. Eventually, she pulls out out a small knife that does not shine in the torchlight, and cuts down the offending branches as they come. Watching this hurts, somehow.

“I’ll answer some of them,” is her eventual reply.

You give her a hard poke in the back of the thorax.

“I’m sorry, but that’s just how some things are. You know this.”

All too well.

“First, did you say six or eightyears? Maune looks like she can’t be older than tenth instar! She’s not even imago yet.”

There’s a hitch in Tlista’s stride. “Why do you think that?”

“She doesn’t have any wings? I didn’t see any.”

“Eifre,” your mother starts.

“…Yes?”

She contorts a bit to pick you up in her raptorials and holds you gently so that you’re looking into her face. A tarsus pushes up your chin so that your gaze goes higher than her eyes.

“Do you see what’s on my frons?”

It’s a marking you’ve seen between the eyes of most mantids. A symbol that looks like an upside down cup bulging at the sides with a flared lid. Inside of it, another, smaller symbol that looks like two right‍-​side‍-​up cups pushed together until they fused. You recognize them as archaic symbols from the old imperial alphabet.

“Did you see it on Maune?”

You don’t remember anything like that.

“It’s the welkinmark. Winged mantids have it, except for the half‍-​winged who have a different symbol. Wingless mantids don’t have this.”

“Oh.”

“Please be mindful of that, Eifre. It’s not a mistake you should make.”

You nod. You won’t forget.

With that confusion out of the way, you can ask the real question: “Is Maune‍ ‍—‍ Can we trust her?” You nearly said ‘I’ instead of ‘we’.

“Well, no. If you’ve spent enough time with her, you’ll know she has a… particular view of morality. She’s special among renegades, in that she seems to care about mantids‍ ‍—‍ sometimes‍ ‍—‍ and she seems to want to do the right thing. But she is a renegade for a reason.”

“What’s that reason?”

“I don’t know. Her tribunal was a secret, swift affair. But she always had a fascination with ambrosia weevils and their arts, and mantids have tried to exterminate them for a reason. She was, is, a haemotechnic and‍ ‍—‍ it would be better if I didn’t broach the details of their reputation until you’re older. And she always had certainhauteurwhen it came to secrets and classified documents; she wasn’t above bribing, stealing, or breaching security when it came to accessing knowledge she felt entitled to. There are plenty of ways someone like her might go renegade, many would say, many did say, it was always only a matter of when.”

Nothing specific, and nothing that really gives you a strong reason to distrust her. If anything, it’s almost an endorsement. And, yet, none of that explains what Tlista might have found in the basement and reacted to as she did. Pieces are still missing.

You don’t press. Your current hope is that you’ll have better luck trying many different tracks and drawing together a picture on your own. “And the path of erosion? What is it and why do they call it that?”

“There are certain… requirements to becoming and remaining a vesperbane. Votives. The stewartry‍ ‍—‍ and organizations countenanced by the stewarty like the wardens or the maverick commission‍ ‍—‍ can provide an easy, or at least easier, route of fulfilling those requirements. But when you’re an outlaw, even mundane needs become an effort. What shops and what taverns will serve you if they can pick your face out of a wanted list? Food is a primal need, and the hunger is worse for a vesperbane.” You don’t need the reminder. Maune’s raptor was nice, though not an entire meal. But your mother is still speaking:

“When the choice is between going hungry or petty theft, which to choose? When the choice is between facing execution because you were found out, or cowing your witnesses with a little violence, which to choose? When you’ve been a renegade for years and your vespers grow ever more fickle and demanding, would you lose the bit of power you still have? You’ve already gone this far to hold on to it.”

She’s making broad, flowing gestures with her free raptorial, and even the one holding the torch indicates. She’s saying, “Water flows downhill because it’s the path of least resistance, and it erodes the world in its wake. When you’re already an outlaw, one crime further is easy. When the costs of doing the right thing are all upfront, it’s easy to turn away from it, again and again until the deferred debts choke you. That’s the path of erosion, and it swallows vesperbanes and spits out renegades time and time again.”

Now, her voice is lower and mellow, like a coda. “You’ve heard me say it before. We turn nymphs into banes too damn young. I don’t think Maune was ninth instar before she started making the choices that would ruin her life.”

“Is it on purpose?”

“What?”

“Is there a path of erosion because someone wants there to be and they prefer for it to be that way?”

She’s a little startled by the question. “No. No, it’s just the way the world is, Eifre. It couldn’t be otherwise.”

Next you ask, “Are you tired of talking?” It happens to your mother and father sometimes. You’d be asking questions and before you were halfway down your list they would stop answering and say as much.

“No, tonight’s excitement has got me too worked up for me to be anywhere near that. I assume you have more questions?”

“Yeah!”

“Lucky guess,” she says. “Well, what are they?”

“Um, next one was‍ ‍—‍ you mentioned a flourishing scourge. Who were they and what did they have to do with Maune?”

“Theiona, the flourishing scourge, was an heir to the Thimithi clan, one of the great clans, but also one of the forsakers. They were firewalkers, and they were at their peak late in sundered states periods. Thimithi was always a clan of mavericks and eccentrics, but the flourishing scourge was notable even among them. Aside from her talent‍ ‍—‍ she had made arch‍-​fiend before her tenth instar, a true genius. She founded the Pantheca side by side with Eothi. When Eothi became the first defect, they disappeared for three years. Even the vespers couldn’t say where they had gone. When they returned, they revealed that they had journeyed deep into the ambrosia woods, but they would say nothing more. No one thinks it’s a coincidence, though, that when they returned they were a master of an art no one, not even one of their ancient clan, had even conceived of before.”

Tlista brandishes the torch in high in the air in a dramatic, silly gesture that makes you laugh. “It was called the flourishing flame. More technically, it is ebonform, a tenebrous wood that grew as it burned. It didn’t take long for them to become a scourge after that.”

A moment, and you ask, “What happened to them?”

“The curse of extinguished flame. As went so many of that clan.”

“So the magic fire is gone forever…?”

“Not quite. First of all, the technique relied on the blood secret of the Thimithi clan‍ ‍—‍ already a restriction‍ ‍—‍ and ebonform was, forgive the pun, fiendishly difficult. So much so that the flourishing scourge had never succeeded in teaching it anyone. Not that there were many Thimithi left to teach. It was always destined be a rare thing, especially once she died. Many think she had bore a daughter‍ ‍—‍ if she did, not much is known of her. Like most clans, Thimithi is secretive about their heirs when they are young. But she was rumored to have had a double blood secret, one that gave her an innate affinity for the flourishing flame. Whatisknown is the field of massive, enervated spires that the Thimithi clan once called home is now the ebony forest exclusion zone, and it’s populated only by faint, wandering flames that flee from mantid approach like deer.” She paused for breath at the end of all that. A moment later, she jostles you. “You get all that? Sated your curiosity?”

You mumble something that’s taken as a yes. She had spoken it all in the tone of storytelling, and it makes you sleepy by association.

“Don’t fall asleep on me, please.” She gives you a pat. “Up for holding the torch again? Good. And I assume you had another question?”

“Um…” You mentally run back over the conversation with Maune, thinking of any other points of confusion. It’s slow going. Eventually, “Oh, are‍ ‍—‍ were the nymphs of the dream real?”

Tlista is silent for a moment. Then another. Eventually, “Could you maybe ask an easier question, dear? Maybe ‘who were the sanguine age mantids?’ Or ‘what was Karkel’s scathing remark?’ Or even ‘why do vespers do… anything they do’? Anything that I that might only take a few decades and more savvy than the master knowledge‍-​hunter have, please.”

“Well, do you think they were real? What do you think of the Kind—”

Tlista stops very suddenly, and the timing doesn’t match anything you said enough to be a reaction. Before you can register anything, you’re in her raptorial grasp, and then you’re on the ground, and her voice at your tympanum says, “I’m still here. Keep walking.”

When you turn, you don’t see her, only shifting shadows and quiet rustling in the branches of the trees.

You keep walking, and then you hear a voice.

“Help? I know I heard voices. Please, I’m stuck!”

You recognize the voice.

The alarm in their tone kicks you into moving faster, which, now, is almost normal walking speed. It’s not long before you come across the source.

Even with the torch, you can barely make out the pink chitin or the ornate tibia processes in the dark of the forest, but you know this nymph.

“Eifre? There you are!”

“Yikki?” It’s one of your friends from town. “What are you doing here?”

“I… Can you help me down first? I’ll‍ ‍—‍ I’ll explain.”

You step closer to see what has her stuck in the first place.

It’s one of the weevil‍-​workings you’d seen scattered all over the forest on your walk in. The thing looks a strange, contorted arrangement of vines and branches, almost like some artistic creation but without lookingcreatedin any way. It gets more baffling the longer you look at it, when start to notice contradictions with basic laws of plant limb growth and branching. You’re reminded of nets and spider webs, looping things.

It completely surrounds the helpless nymph within, and it’s like the vines and branches grew around her.

You reach out to feel the branches and see what you can do to get her out. On the tarsus of one of your raptorials, the ring the weevil gave you is still tightly encircling. You remember this now despite not having thought of it since.

A minute of pulling and shifting passes. The only sound is grunts and squeaks of effort‍ ‍—‍ no cracking or ripping can be heard.

At the end of it, the strange working no longer entraps her, and it’s something Yikki seems amazed at, still staring at the weevil‍-​touched plant that had held her. She says, “I guess it’s like a tangled rope, harder to get right the more you struggle.”

You open your mouth to make some reply‍ ‍—‍ but it’s interrupted by a figure emerging twitch‍-​quick from the dark and grabbing Yikki in their raptorials.

It’s your mother. Her maxillae are bared in threat, and her voice is harsh and high, but not without her characteristic calm and polite restraint.

“Who sent you? Was it Dlenam?”

“Who?”

“So you came here on your own? When? Did you have any unusual feelings or thoughts prior to deciding this? Can you recall prior events with no absences or unusual fuzziness in your memory?”

Yikki gives a cry and shrinks in Tlista’s grip. She blurts, “Please I just wanted to see what Eifre was up to I wasn’t trying to do anything bad I don’t want to get in trouble.”

Your mother relaxes her maxillae a tad, and she sighs and says, “My apologies, I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ll ask again slower, what‍ ‍—”

“Mom, what’s going on?”

She glances momentarily at you. But she answers. “Between the renegade, the termite mound emergence and whatever caused it, and the… particular arch‍-​fiend we have overseeing this mess, I’m suspicious beyond considering this intrusion a coincidence.” She pauses, hesitating, but admits, “I’mworried.”

“I think,” you start slow, trying to be careful in your wording, “that it’s plausible? You had most of the town out looking for me, right? Other nymphs would definitely find out‍ ‍—‍ they were probably already out playing. Why wouldn’t they get curious?”

“And wander this deep in the ambrosia woods, getting past the guards who I left out watching the village?”

“I’m gonna be a vesperbane!” Yikki says, drawing confidence from your defense. “I gotta be sneaky.”

Tlista spares another glance toward you, and relents, releasing Yikki. She doesn’t stop watching her, and her antennae never curl nor her raptorials relax.

“So… what now?” the pink nymph asks.

“We get the both of you back home and in bed, and I take care of some imago business.”

That sounds… great, honestly. This adventure has gone on for long enough.

“Can I still ride on your back?”

She sighs slightly. “Of course, dear.”

“Ooh, can I? I don’t want to walk.”

An antenna twitches. “I’mnota pack‍-​beetle.”

“Aww.”

You curve your maxillae into a tired, silly grin, and turn to Yikki, saying, “Well, in that case, want to be camping tonight?”

The sigh isn’t slight this time. But the ploy works, as unhappy about it as Tlista is, and after a little lifting and more than a little shifting and arranging, you’re holding the torch and you feel yourself almost drifting off the to rhythm of Tlista’s stride rising and falling, Yikki at your back.

Your experience of the rest of the trip back to Shatalek involves wandering, sleepy thoughts, limned vivid in your semiconsciousness, instead of anything you could see or hear or note about the forest passing around you.

At the town’s edge you meet with a inappropriately energetic‍-​looking villager bearing a torch and watching the path.

“Um, madam Tlista, I think we can make our way home from here. You said you had business to attend to?”

Tlista doesn’t respond, looking to the torch‍-​bearer with a nod.

After the both of you are sat down, she’s off, cutting a path through the grass that’d take her to the tavern.

Yikki waves to the imago your mom left you with, and tugs you along. She’s moving fast enough that the torch‍-​bearer, not willing to run or ask you to slow down, instead resigns to giving up and watching you make your way home. Near the edge of their earshot, she slows down.

You say, “You had mom put us down early for a reason, didn’t you?”

There’s a cringe, an twist of her mouthparts, as she says, “Yeah. I wanted to ask you something. If that’s ok?”

You’ve spent so long rationing questions that you’ve long broken the habit of asking to ask. But you don’t comment on it, and only nod her along.

Yikki’s looking at the ground as she starts, “I noticed how you’re so far ahead of all of our training mates, and now you’re going off on adventures on your own and… I want to help you? Punch monsters with you, and unravel mysteries like real vesperbanes. And maybe you could teach me some things?” She looks up at you, hopeful. “We’re friends right? This is a thing friends would do right?”

You consider it, and it takes a long, awkward moment to produce a response.

“Can I answer tomorrow, Yikki? I’mreallytired and so much has happened today and it’s dangerous stuff.” You consider for a moment, and then add, “I don’t know ifIwant to go on these adventures.”

Yikki paused for a moment, surprised. “That’s not a no?”

“It’s not a yes. I just need to be able to think before I can decide.”

“Alright. I guess I’ll be going home now?”

“Bye Yikki, have a good night. Don’t let the bedslugs suck.”

The last few steps of the day pass in a daze. Your father is in the front room; he fell asleep waiting for you. When you get back in your room, you don’t even bother to touch your dinner.

But you get one last jolt of clarity when you arrive at your bed to see a note written with glistening squid ink on fine, artisan wasp‍-​parch.

The first thing that jumps out at you is what must be an insignia you don’t recongize: a stylized, wrinkly object divided into halves, except for a compound eye floating in its center. The text reads:

Ugh. Add yet one more complexity to the burgeoning mess of today, what’s the harm. You would scream, but that would wake up your father and then you would have to explain‍ ‍—‍ so much.

So you hide the note under your bed, and then you collapse onto it. Sleep welcomes your long awaited arrival, and your dreams are adorned with consideration of plans, theories, and choices.

Will you be meeting with Maune soon?

Will you bring Yikki into this mess, or refuse and keep her safe?

Will you accept the Stewarty (if it’s the Stewarty’s) mission as some kind of secret undercover agent?

All most of all, what is going on?