Eifre Quest

When you next awake, you half‍-​expect to have been nymph‍-​napped to some dank attic, or be chained up in a villain’s basement. But you’re still wrapped in the softness of your blanket. Strange dreams, of heroes and candles and spiders, linger with you.

When there’s a tap on your thorax, you startle fast, swinging out a raptorial to smack against your assailant.

And when you pull the blanket fully off your eyes, you see that it was your father. The pale red mantid just gives a quick laugh. “It’s time to wake up, Eifre.” Having succeeding in waking you up, he’s climbing down from your room.

This is your room in the sense the space is yours, but it’s not really separate. Your house is a wide open space, an archipelago of platforms with little tarshold bridges between them. Most‍ ‍—‍ including yours – have a guardrail you can easily climb onto, though your father says not to do that.

When you look up, you can see your mother and father’s room, its platform surrounded by a black curtain. You asked, and it’s a special amalgam that’s really good at blocking sound. There’s a guest room on the same level, opposite, but no one’s ever used it.

Your platform is close enough to the ground that you won’t break anything by falling, but you don’t want to fall.

And you don’t want to climb down, either.

So you walk onto to a small suspended platform. Three rods rise up from the edges, with rope going through loops at the top of each rod. All three meet in the middle to twist into a big rope. The big rope goes up into a box above that bites into the rope to keep the platform from fallling.

You flip a switch on the box, and it stops biting.

The platform falls freely, sending a thrill in your core. You brace after a moment, and the platform reaches the end of the rope with a taut sound, and the platform then bounces up and down for a bit. You’re laughing.

(The floors all have these hoists because, while tarsholds are great for climbing, you really don’t want to try carrying tables or chests up them.)

“If you keep doing that, you’re going to break it,” you hear your father call. “I let you sleep in, so you don’t have time to play around.”

You turn to the sound of his voice, and start over toward the breakfast room. Father is sitting alone at the table, and there are only two perches prepped with plates and bowls.

Only two. “Where‍ ‍—‍ where is mother?”

“She wasn’t here when I woke up,” he says with a roll of his antennae. “But I don’t right know where she is.”

“She’s not here?” you ask. But really, he already answered; it’s more of an exclamation.

What could have happened? Could someone have hurt her? Maune had been mad when you left… and she knows secret ways into town. She wouldn’t, right? Your mother doesn’t seem to like this Dlenam mantis either – could he have done something? Or maybe the termites? The weevils?

“I have to find her,” you say.

“Now, now, Eifre. Your mother was very clear when she got home last night. I know you’ve had your adventure, but she wanted me to make sure you stayed here, ate breakfast, and went straight to prevespers. Now sit, and be sure to eat your miltgrain. It’s good for you.”

Take a deep breath and think. Had she even made it back here? You hope, but you know it’s a hope. If she had‍ ‍—‍ was it odd for your mother to have gone somewhere in the morning? No, not exactly. But the timing of it makes a difference. After everything that happened, it’s hard not to feel she should have been here, to remind you everything is ok.

Slowly, you walk over to take your place at the table, staring down at your breakfast: boiled lizards piled on soft honeyloaf crumbs, a bowl of miltgrain flakes, and, to drink, sweetened roach milk. On the lizards, you smell a kind of spice your father prefers; at first it stung your palps, but you can’t taste it anymore.

You stare, hesitating to touch the lizards.

“Are you tired? Well, maybe this can be a lesson about staying up past midnight. Please do eat up, you’ll be late for prevespers if you take too long.”

It’s not like training is so scheduled you’d miss anything if you come a few minutes late. And if it were, it’s doubly unlikely to be something new to you.

You nod, and eat.

“Oh and dear? If you see your mother, ask her about my quilting board. I haven’t seen it in a few days‍ ‍—‍ she must have moved it to the cellar, but I can’t find my key anywhere. I swear I left it on the table,” the last sentence is more of a mumble.

It’s what he says as you’re heading for the door‍ ‍—‍ bag slumped between your prothorax and abdomen, the fancy shirts your mother has you wear slipped on. (Your bowl of miltgrain, still half full.)

“Maybe you moved it and forgot?” you reply. “You always forget stuff.”

“Easy for you not to forget things, not having a lifetime of other things to remember,” is his rejoiner. “Take care, girl. Stay safe today, alright?”

You wave as you make for the door.

And you jolt when you see the front door’s unlocked. Even sleepy, you know better than to leave the door unlocked. But it would track if someone had already left this morning. It’s still just hope, but hope with wings.

Outside, the sun already bears down on Shatalek. In the sky around it, black nerve is driven to the horizon by its radiance.

You walk along the dirt roads of Shatalek. Empty space stretches far around your house, but buildings huddle closer together near the heart of town.

Along your way, a big mantis lifts a midleg to wave. She’s one of the guards, and right now pushes a wheelbarrow of dirt, raptorials occupied holding the grilles.

Not a lot of bad stuff happened in Shatalek, so guards mainly hunt or stand around looking stern, or, like this, help out around town with odd jobs.

Further along, you hear a peal of laughter above you, and glance to see nymphs running along the roofs of houses, playing vesperbane. In cities, things are packed tightly enough this is the faster way. Not in Shatalek, and it’s only even possible if you’re daring enough to lunge from one house to the nearest.

Other nymphs can have fun doing this, but you don’t really have the agility for it.

So you settle for the next best: you cut diagonally across people’s yards. While you doubt you’ll miss much being late, the mentors give praise and pats if you aren’t.

(When cutting across yards, you spot a symbol woven into a curtain in a house’s back window. An eight‍-​pointed star surrounded with wings. A bad symbol, you remember. But the scriptorium won’t let you check out the scrolls you could look up its meaning in, not until you’re older. You quicken your pace out of this yard.)

It stands not at the center of town, but close. A big, important building, with pillars and all. Most of the adults go here twice a month for big meetings. (With muttered complaints, in the case of your father.)

Passing tangential to it, you almost miss them in your periphery. A redish yellow mantis, three legs on the ground, clad in baneleather.

Tlista.

“Mother! You’re ok!” You’re sprinting at her, stridulating as loud as your palps manage.

“Hello again, dear. Of course I’m okay. Or, did you fear the worst when I wasn’t there? Ah, I’m sorry to worry you.”

You run over to her and hug her leg. “Where were you?”

“Out. With the way things are it‍ ‍—‍ I couldn’t just stay lying down. And I slept awfully anyway‍ ‍—‍ waking from nightmares I don’t need to return to. So I did a circuit around town, to make sure it was safe.” You nod; Tlista is your town’s protector. She said she didn’t lead the guards, when you asked. But they all listen to her. “Good thing, it turns out.” She glances behind her, at the important building.

“Why’s that?”

“The banelings listened to me, unfortunately. Came back here, tried – tried‍ ‍—‍ to explain things to the syndic advisor. It seems his majesty Dlenam never deigned to come by, so this was first she heard of it. The nymphs did so bad a job as messengers that they had the poor lady thinking the town was about to get eaten. She was packing bags when I got here.”

“Why would the town get eaten?”

“I don’t think the banelings understood what termites are or mean, and a syndic assigned to the far fringes of the Pantheca certainly doesn’t. So you have two sets of misunderstandings to untangle, and I don’t care to, now that I’ve set the record straight.”

“What would happen to this town, if the Stewarty doesn’t save it?”

“That’s a different question than what’s going to happen‍ ‍—‍ the Stewartry is competent, and any explanation should take that into account. But if you’re asking for curiosity’s sake, it depends on the exact class of mound emergence. Not all are the same.” Her palps cross and uncross while she gets the words ready. “Rendering the landscape uninhabitable with umbral fallout is the most common outcome. Given our location, deforesting this segment of the ambrosia woods‍ ‍—‍ and with it, taking away Shatalek’s main export‍ ‍—‍ is also likely. Things more specific, and less likely than that, I can’t say. Termites are one of the topics where more information is restricted than accessible.”

“If I ever become overscourge, I’m getting rid of all restrictions!”

“Some things are secret for a reason, little bug.” Tlista pats you head. “Anyway, I think I’m not the one who should be lecturing you right now. You’re on your way to prevesper training, aren’t you?”

That was why you left the house instead of staying asleep.

“Then I shouldn’t hold you up. I’m sure last night was exciting, but… Please don’t run off unattended anymore. If it happens again I don’t know if I can… I want to keep you safe, Eifre.”

“What if someone’s in danger again?”

“Then come to me. If you really want to help someone, then finding someone older, more capable than you is how you make that happen.” Tlista looks away. “With that said, I think I’m going to walk you there, just to be sure.”

Your mother lowers a foreleg, and you grasp her much larger tarsus with your own. Together, the two of you start walking. With your argument thus punctuated, you have to stop thinking of retorts. Unmoored from that, your mind drifts back to the events of yesterday.

“What’s on your mind? You look pensive.”

“I, um, I was reading this… story, and in the story the hero hears this line, and I thought it was kind of strange? ‘Trust the black brain.’ Do you know what it means?”

Tlista freezes up. “That’s a phrase… I’ve only heard it once in my life.”

“When?”

Before Tlista responds, she looks all around, then pulls you off the road, behind a tree. She’s speaking in low, important tones. “I suppose I had to tell you this story one day. It‍ ‍—‍ it was years ago. Before your ootheca was even layed. Maune… had made an offer to me, and I was more credulous then, and I was considering taking it. The night before I would, I met them.

“It was a percipient. Dark robes with gilded trims, a hood that covers their eyes, a mask that covers their face, but nothing covering their mandibles. Percipients… It’s hard to convey their strangeness, if you’ve never met them. They are a sort of mantis… you only ever see them at the fringe of the crowd. If you ever seek to speak to one of them, by the time you make your way over, they are gone. In their presence, you always feel watched.

“So I met this percipient‍ ‍—‍ obviously, their sudden appearance spooks me‍ ‍—‍ and they spoke quite briskly.

“‘Do not,’ they said.

“So I said, ‘Why not?’ Like I knew what they were talking about.

“‘It leads to ruin. Trust the black brain.’ That was their response.

“And they turned to leave after that. A foreleg gestured toward a table in my room, and there was a small vial there that I hadn’t put there.

“I was trained in ichorcraft by the stewartry, I was beyond able to identify the concoction. It was a certain medical serum, an intense cocktail of drugs designed to purge or purify.

“I looked back to them with questions. They only nodded.

“They left with four words in parting: ‘Act for her sake.’

“When I drunk that serum… I said it was a cocktail‍ ‍—‍ I was sedated, sleeping for twelve hours, and moving with speed that could be beaten by a slug. When I awoke, I vomited up blood intermittently for an hour. Black nerve drained from my soul, leaving umbral wounds on its way out.

“When a medic was called in and saw to me, it revealed something I never would have expected.

“I was gravid.”

She gives a broken smile. “Between the vespers, the bat blood, the enervate, and the poison‍ ‍—‍ so much poison‍ ‍—‍ my body was… not an appropriate place to grow life.”

In a whisper, she says, “…Really, it was a finely honed weapon for ending it.” Returning to a normal voice, she continues, “So I would say, if you‍ ‍—‍ if you’re reading this… story, and the hero is hearing that… Well, I don’t like to spoil things, but if she doesn’t listen, well, what you’re reading is a tragedy.”

“I don’t like tragedies.” If anything could happen in a story, why pick bad things?

“Only some do.” She twists your antennae around a dactyl. “Was that all that was bothering you, Eifre?” She’s walking back to the road, and you follow.

“Well, there was another thing I was thinking about. Do you know of any techniques that could used to spy on people? There’s the Brismati, but‍ ‍—”

“Eifre,” she starts. “this is a fallacious line of thought. You’re better than that. Show me that you remember some things. Do you remember how many mantids live in the heartlands?”

“Around thirty million?”

“And you know how many of those are vesperbanes?”

You… don’t actually. The exact number had never been listed in any scroll you read. You recall many passages bemoaning the scarcity of vesperbanes, and how volunteering to supplement that meager force was the mark of a true hero.

“It’s only in the tens of thousand, dear. The number fuzzes depending on whether how you count mavericks and new recruits, and the fact that at least a tenth of them will be dead by harvest on a good year. But it’s somewhere on that scale.” She gives you a look. “That’s one vesperbane per five thousand mantids if you’re being generous. Do you know how many of those vesperbanes belong to any clan at all?”

You just shake your head.

“You’ll be cutting that number down to another eighth, or perhaps a third if you’re loose with what you’re calling a clan.” Tlista curls up her antennae. “Look, I’ll cut straight to it: there is, at most, around four or five hundred Brismati mantids. In total. Not all of them are active vesperbanes, and not all the ones that are, quite frankly, are even worth the title.” She waves her forelegs. “A few hundred Brismati, in the entire heartlands. That’s not the number you would guess if you go by how many superstitions civilians‍ ‍—‍ and some who call themselves vesperbanes‍ ‍—‍ are scared down to their wits that a cabal of Brismati are spying on their every move.”

“But I saw a Brismati yesterday! You were there!”

“Eifre, dear, there are so many things you don’t understand. Here’s the most important thing to know: only outsiders call them the Brismati. The truth is, the clan is ancient, dating thousands of years back to the era of hope. There isn’t a single Brismati clan left, it’s fractured into several tenuously related branches. And those branches have refined different applications of the sanguine eyes. Some have a perfect visual memory, and some can comprehend the details on a mote of dust. Only one branch has its focus on viewing things from a long range. And the branches that don’t? You can expect the average member to see a dozen, maybe two dozen meters with their eyes, and that’s only when they’re active, something that’s a constant energy drain. Now, the truly dedicated and formidable‍ ‍—‍ and, of course, the lucky‍ ‍—‍ might, with long training, come near several dozen meters. But anyone that good, and certainly anyone from that singular, sparse branch bearing with kilometer‍-​long eyeshots‍ ‍—‍ which little Shimare is not‍ ‍—‍ they will have their abilities far too highly valued for you to expect to meet them anytime soon. They, quite simply, have better things to do.”

You cringe, and look down. “It sounds like you’ve had to say that a lot.” You know well most hate a common question repeated‍ ‍—‍ so you strive for the uncommon. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, the Brismati get it a lot. I just know‍ ‍—‍ knew one quite well.” The correction comes with a flinch. “I’ve heard the explanation a few times, is all.”

“Was it.. the aunt you mentioned last night? Alaremu?”

“Yes. My sister in blood for… a long time.” You don’t even need to ask – Tlista readily continues, with the wistfulness of reminescence. “We were both students under the bastard. There were six of us, and we, me and Alaremu, were the two to graduate from Moonspire‍ ‍—‍ or rather, I graduated for the both of us. Those eyes of hers meant her test answers… need not be her own.”

Your maxillae are open wide. “She cheated?”

“She felt she had to. The Brismati‍ ‍—‍ particular the Nen‍-​brismati – have a problem of defining themselves by their exceptions. The Lakons, the Yuklis. Everyone is educated to become a genius. But you can’t raise a nymph with that expectation.” She gives you a look you don’t understand. “Really, she wasn’t vesperbane material, not at her core. Which means it’s… tragic, that she stayed out there and I came here.”

Your antennae droop. “I don’t like how this story ends,” you say.

“Life is that way, sometimes, dear.”

“I hope mine isn’t.” You’ll make sure it isn’t‍ ‍—‍ strive with heroic effort to make everything turn out happily and better.

Your mother looks at you‍ ‍—‍ sees the look on your face‍ ‍—‍ and smiles.

Now, you’ve asked both of the questions you dare to say. Maune and Yikki – you won’t broach. So you decide, last of all, to finally deliver on what your father had asked. (You hadn’t forgotten, just prioritized differently.) You tell her.

Her mandibles make a clack sound, and she sighs. “If I don’t wait till this evening to do that, he’s going to be insufferable about it. Especially if he’s enlisting you as a little harbinger.” Tlista looks out ahead of you. “It’s a short walk there. I suppose I should get this done as soon as I can‍ ‍—‍ remember what I said, okay? Be good.”

Your mother hugs you, and starts off. She glances back once, then continues.

Shatalek is small enough there is a single schoolhouse where all enrolled nymphs‍ ‍—‍ drooling babies younger than you, and subadults too – are taught altogether.

This is part of why you learned so little‍ ‍—‍ you’re side by side with nymphs learning to read and write, and those any older and smarter tend to get pulled away more and more often to work, and eventually stop coming entirely.

As you approach the schoolhouse, you realize you were wrong.

Any other day, you’d miss nothing being a little late.

Today? Guests stand in the schoolyard, beside the mentors. You know the red mantis, the green mantis, and the mantis with strange eyes.

Dlenam’s students are here, and talking to the nymphs.

Everyone’s here. All three mentors stand to the side, two chatting together. And the nymphs you know by face and name, listen with rapt fascination. You see Remna, Wesk, Tullene (unfortunately), and…

Almost everyone is here. The present of everyone else emphasizes an absence. You scan the crowd twice, three times. Among them, you see no pastel pink mantis among the nymphs.

Where is Yikki?