Eifre Quest

Part A2

“Excuse me, sirrah?” Marka is calling out as she trots into the crowd.

Marka’s route had taken her to a minor vantage point over the market, and to enter it proper, she descends a ramp. At a glance, the crowd is splitting around her, and she ups her pace.

The Snurratre mantis does not react to her calling, and she repeats it once and the distance closes and there is still no response.

Up close, this male looks like a drying flower. Chitin old and unpolished, his hair‍-​like setae falling out. There’s a slight tremble to those legs not resting on something, a tremble she’s seen in aunts and grandfathers.

Just as a drying flower wouldn’t register the sun, the male reacts not to Marka’s approach.

“Sirrah? Are you alright?” She has crouched down, eye level with him.

Marka is speaking fast, and she frequently breaks‍ ‍—‍ the attempted‍ ‍—‍ eye contact to the check the crowd, and gaze off toward where the fleeing mantis had climbed away.

Oh, she’d much rather bolt after them, chase them like a avenger incensed. But the personal element seems about as important here‍ ‍—‍ and, really, Marka has a vesperbane’s speed and wits. She could very well achieve both.

If this male wasn’t so unresponsive!

Marka reaches out‍ ‍—‍ and this finally prompts a reaction. He recoils. Palps drawn back, like disgust. But it couldn’t be disgust‍ ‍—‍ what could prompt that? Marka had been sure to bathe before her appointment.

The voice is rough, but from emotion or age?

“What do you want?” he asks. “You look like a welkinist. But that antennae band‍ ‍—‍ no, you don’t even have that much honor. You’re… a vesperbane.”

“Yes. Countenanced by the wardens, four years of service. I noticed you cried out‍ ‍—‍ I’m here to help.”

He spits and he scrambles back and he pulls together his robe/dress. He says, “I don’t want your help.”

“Why not?” She looks again to the wall and she grinds her mandibles. “Please, don’t be so difficult.”

It is the wrong thing to say. He shakily lifts up a raptorial, as if to defend from a coming strike.

“I’m sorry,” the vesperbane says. “I just want to help.”

“Is this your first step before you name a price, or take further measures to protect me like that last vesperbane? Or am I just a signpost for you to read and locate violence?”

“Again, I only want to help.” She’s repeating herself so much‍ ‍—‍ why is nothing getting across?

“But your help is not freely given. It never is, from your kind. I will not accept it.”

“I’m not going to charge you money. I’ve enough money.”

“And I have no children left for you to take, vesperbane. I have nothing left, nothing but debts.”

Marka almost jumps, almost smiles. Could this be a thread to pull on? “Debts to whom?”

“Debts to you, and‍ ‍—‍ debts to them. Have you come to collect, as well?”

“Them‍ ‍—‍ the mantis that was fleeing, were they the one that made you cry out? Who are they?”

“My wife knew them. Ran with them. She’s‍ ‍—‍ She cannot pay, now. And whatever she did, whomever she owed, that’s fallen to me now. I only wished to keep my house in order. I’ve never had a job, and now none will have me.” He lifts a digit, and wipes at the bodily fluids beneath his bruising eye.

She can hear his breaths, unsteady, heavy things. He reaches beneath his head in the manner of a habit, like Marka reaching for her timepiece‍ ‍—‍ if he wore a necklace, he would touch it now. But there is nothing there.

“I’ll deal with them. They won’t bother you again.” Marka stops, and smiles. “They won’t bother anyone from now on, I promise you. I’ll bring back whatever they took.”

“No,” he responds. “No. Do not kill mantids in my name, vesperbane. Do not put me in your debt.”

“I’m simply here to mete out justice.”

Marka stands up. She’s heard what she needed to hear, and those are the last word that need to be said. Now she will go and, as a knight would, set wrongs aright. Recover that necklace, and anything else they might have been taken.

Could this exchange have gone better? Was there any comfort to be given, after he recognized that she was a vesperbane?

She’s just barely able to hear a response coming after her as she walks away.

“Does the world need more of your kind’s justice?”

Marka crouches, and leaps very high into the air.

When it is said that Marka has a vesperbane’s speed, what exactly this means can vary. Speed is a simple advantage, and centuries of banes have stiven to be ever faster.

A muscle is a bundle of fibers, anchored to exoskeleton. If every muscle fiber flexed at once, it could tear tendons from chitin like grass blades plucked. But a vesperbane pulsing with the blood of bats can effortlessly heal torn muscle fibers and buckling chitin. This is low hanging fruit and common to every vesperbane.

With more study, though, one can alter the structure of the muscles themselves in the name of force. One can reshape their chitin and endocrinology and grow an unnatural excess. If one were particularly daring, one could try dispensing with biology entirely, try to construct something more artificially effective‍ ‍—‍ an approach, granted, one sees more among the percipients than the vesperbanes, when one sees it at all.

Marka, however, has studied the purest art of vesperbanes. Enervate is physics, not biology‍ ‍—‍ governed by rules rather than tendencies. Scrutable rules. And the fourth rule of enervate physics is that nerve‍-​repulsion is proportional to energy density over the cube of distance.

For this reason, Marka’s back is lined with black pores, which correspond to holes in her armor. Black nerve exudes from these pores while behind them, a chamber fills with dense, compacted enervate. The secreted enervate thrums full of energy squeezed into it through chemical combustion. Energized, it repulses the mass of enervate in the chamber. Chamber‍-​bound enervate is anchored to her body, but the repulsive enervate is not.

The result? Propulsion.

There’s a few problems with this‍ ‍—‍ mantids are heavy (around a dozen kilograms) and that repulsive enervate? It’s gone. You can’t recover it, drawing it back would undermine the very force they’re intended to impart. And its repulsive force is not reserved for the chamber‍ ‍—‍ it repulses itself: in seconds it will dissolve into a fine mist, and you fly far away.

Bottom line, this technique is expensive. Enervate is a finite resource.

A less obvious fact is that 5 meters per second won’t tend to stay 5 meters per second for long‍ ‍—‍ there’s an impediment called atmosphere. Air resistance gets quadratically worse the faster you go. But the sixth rule of enervate physics is that enervate attenuates incident forces.

Marka coats her armor with enervate, and air that hits it not only fails to impede her, but the mass is engulfed by her enervate. She’s learned a technique which allows her to direct that mass behind her, and fire it off alongside the energic enervate. That’s rule seven of enervate‍ ‍—‍ element preference. Presented with a denser material, the engulfed nitrogen is shunted in favor of metal.

About a kilogram worth of mass is in a cubic meter of air, and and a good chunk of that’s getting tossed out behind her several times a second.

Now, this level of fine manipulation isn’t free‍ ‍—‍ it costs energy as well. But it doesn’t cost enervate, which makes it more sustainable.

Marka estimates she spends about half a kilogram of enervate in that initial burst‍ ‍—‍ out of the five kilos she keeps in her soul. She burns a few hundred, maybe a thousand kilocalories.

(Is using enervate techniques above a civilian crowd dangerous? They are in broad daylight, and Marka starts out high enough above the crowd that the hot sun sees the mist of repulsive enervate grow transparent and dissolve into nothing before gravity takes it. When enervate’s energy density gets too high, it fissions to simpler forms‍ ‍—‍ the simplest being harmless to mantids.)

All of this reasoning and calculation is very much an anathema to speed. So none of this goes through Marka’s head. It once did, though. Now it’s all trained and rote.

While the vesperbane descends in an arc toward the far wall, she slips out her timepiece and checks‍ ‍—‍ for all the frustration of that conversation, it had taken at most five minutes.

Marka lands forcefully, her momentum causing the pole to crack but hold. She’s leaping from tarshold to tarshold and pole to pole now, scrambling for the tops of buildings.

In the time that’s passed, a civilian could cover a few hundred meters. Less, given the terrain‍ ‍—‍ but even that didn’t matter. A truly careful runaway would have their trail twist all around, snaking behind visual obstacles to foil a late pursuer like herself.

Would they be truly careful, though? It’d require having seen her in the crowd, realizing at a distance that she was a vesperbane, and making the leap of logic that she intended to do anything. While already having back turned, climbing away, and probably not till now having any prior thought of such a threat.

Think, Marka. What is her problem, simply stated? She does not know where the mantis went. (She likes thinking this way, imagining her concerns as equations she simplifies, terms canceling.)

How can she reduce or eliminate that uncertainty? Asking the fearstruck mantids staring at her if they’ve seen anything? Scanning the rooftops for signs of passage?

Or just looking: southeast of her, at‍ ‍—‍ she estimates‍ ‍—‍ maybe eighty meters, a mantis with a head poking above a wall on someone’s roof that is designed like a porch.

It’s the mantis, the probable assailant. Same dark clothes, same yellowish eyes, same impression of a concealed weapon. (Her eyes were sharp, if not Brismati‍-​sharp.)

Oh, and they jump startled when she looks over.

That part of her that yearns‍ ‍—‍ as any warrior yearns‍ ‍—‍ for challenges droops antennae at that. After all, this could have been a challenge if the mantis had but hid.

(But that’s a petulant complaint.)

Marka chases.

What conveys speed? The cheap banestone cracking and flaking under her feet? The feeling that her antennae might be ripped from her scalp, until she thinks to damp the forces there? She spreads her wings to maneuver through the air. She leaves a dark yet fading trail of enervate behind her‍ ‍—‍ it’s a like a shadow stretched and lagging through the air.

In covering the distance to the assailant, the vesperbane touches down twice, and otherwise spends her time propelled through the air.

She gets there, and realizes the mantis has dropped down. Street level, and alleyway. They’re running back, the opposite direction of her arrival. She smacks herself with an antennae‍ ‍—‍ going too fast to see much but blurs, she misses this.

Part of it’s superior ability, but part’s just a vesperbane’s lack regard for injury. While the other mantis had dropped down in steps, hanging on the poles, she simply drops.

Now, the mantis has some sense. They disappear around a shop’s corner.

The chase proceeds in fits and starts; the vesperbane now pauses at every fork and intersection, glimpsing a black cloak, a trashcan knocked astray. But the inevitable waits like the alpha‍-​rune highest on a clock’s face, and each of these pauses is just the clock’s leg swinging a tick closer.

(The pursuit of dark cloaks running leads her astray once, and she loses a moment chasing after a mantis with the wrong dimensions and wrong smell. Moving briskly in the right direction, though. Why?)

There are mantids that are witness to all of this. The first few times, she stares at them, hopeful of a single leg raised indicating, or a mumbled “they went that way”. But nothing is offered.

Now she’s as near as she’s ever come, cornering them at a ladder. They hang near the top, now slowed in their tiredness.

Marka decides now to conserve calories and enervate, and makes for the base of the ladder with legs in place of technique.

They’re near the top by the time she’s at the base, and seem to be struggling‍ ‍—‍ raptorials thrown over the top and thus most of their forelegs hidden. Can’t pull themselves up?

Marka begins to climb.

The mantis finally speaks.

“Vesperbane, eh? And a dumb one, clearly. If you’re from out of town, why don’t we give you a foreigner’s lesson in how we take to snooping banes!”

Marka sees the assailant hasn’t yet climbed all the way over the edge. She glances below and around her, if perhaps they’re waiting on friends to show up. In her visual fringe she sees them shifting‍ ‍—

The world is a great clang, and darkness.

She doesn’t know if she lost consciousness, but she fights through bleary focuslessness and pulls herself up. She can feel the slosh and crawl of bat blood in her head, tending her injuries‍ ‍—‍ something a little bit more general than coagulation.

Pieces click together. A glance downward catches a brick of white banestone, cracked slightly. And, casting attention to it, she feels the dent in her helment.

Yikes. She removes it and she’s sorry to be without it‍ ‍—‍ but she’d forego metal poking into her chitin.

Was this all a ruse? Tricked by a civilian…

She draws in a breath.

It’s not accurate to say she’s instantly up the ladder, or that she’s even unusually fast considering her earlier speed. But the singular focus she now has changes the way time flows. She can feel the black nerve coating her armor starting to dissolve under all the energy that’s flowing into it‍ ‍—‍ a reflection of her emotions that could only be possible in an advanced nerve user. Deliberately, she stops this.

The chase once more resumes.

The mantis is more talkative, now. “That should have left you out cold. But there’s nothing should about a vesperbane, is there? Nothing right.”

It’s all rooftops and wallsides, now. They change the elevation often enough that it’s never a straight shot to them. They pass into an area where banestone façades are covered in colorful public murals. They pass into a district where they sag.

(She again catches sight of the other dark cloaked mantis, but this time doesn’t get confused.)

The assailant tries more stunts. Bursting through a window to shortcut through a building. Kicking down guardrails and rolling some big container on wheels off a roof, then jumping off the thing in mid‍-​air. They throw a mantis at her, once. She gently returns them to the ground, selling them time.

What energy! She sees them sipping from some vague flask‍ ‍—‍ and she knows there are potions that could give even a civilian this stamina.

Still, they have to be nearing their limit.

“You don’t know what you’re messing with, little vesperbane.”

Was this their last stand? A rooftop stretches between them, its surface made ugly by rain.

They lift an object. It’s small, bearing a big silly cylinder with a hole, and it’s pointed at her. She hardly slows, but does idly wonder. Still, even a fat brick to the head couldn’t stop her. Civilian versus vesperbane‍ ‍—‍ what worry is there to be had?

Her mind, dimly, recalls the look of a cannon or musket, civilian devices, and that thought stays with her, pressing, for all of the moment she has left.

And then, black nerve fires from the device.

The world seems darker.

And quieter.

Wings are suddenly spreading wide. Digits run through every technique she has to slow it down. Anything that could redirect the silent black mass.

It’s no species of enervate she recognizes, she can feel that.

The massive impact comes…

And it’s all wrong. It’s hot, it’s wet‍ ‍—

And it came from her side.

A figure‍ ‍—‍ one she had twice mistaken for the assailant‍ ‍—‍ had tackled her.

The assailant, meanwhile, had stowed away the absurd device, and they flees.

“They’re getting away!” Marka shouts on impulse‍ ‍—‍ and then wonders if that’s the point. She is being pinned down, after all.

“I know.” Of course this mantis does. “And I know where they’re going.” Oh. An… ally?

The voice has something liquid to it, not just in its flow, but what gives an impression of wet appendages or orifices spreading with pops and flicks, closing with squelches.

“Who are you?”

“A vesperbane, like you. I am also seeking justice.”

“Countenance?”

Silence.

Her voice is firm. “What is your countenance and registration?” Marka doesn’t like being pinned by an vesperbane she knows nothing about.

“I am here to help,” the figure say. “Do you want my directions?”

“Who. Are. You?”

“Call me… Wik.” Looking down, eyes flushing. “Excuse me.” Wik stands, and Marka gets a good look.

Most of Wik’s body is concealed by a thick cloak that hangs heavy. (Marka had felt how heavy it weigh, when Wik had her pinned. Was it sewn with metal?)

But that’s not her focus, now. The eyes seem to glow, like there’s little fires behind them. The chitin‍ ‍—‍ ‘chitin’‍ ‍—‍ is milky white, like wax. It melts like wax, too.

A tallowbane. And one more advanced than she’s ever heard of‍ ‍—‍ if it’s not just the head that looks like that (and wouldn’t that be the last thing transformed?)

It’s become a habit, now. Marka rests a digit on her timepiece, and feels the vibrations of its twisting gears. Time slipping away‍ ‍—‍ that time being distance between them and the criminals, that time being her appointment coming and going, and that time being hunger born of this exertion.

But she’s not going to decide just yet. Looking back at Wik:

“Tell me what’s going on.”

“That mantis you chased after was a member of a gang running in Fevalel district. I don’t know why or how she had that device‍ ‍—‍ was that termite tech?‍ ‍—‍ but regardless, the gang is a bit player, largely running protection rackets and usurous loans. It’s heartless stuff, and I want to put a stop to it.”

“What kind of gang are we talking?”

“Small players, like I said. I’ve scoped out their hideout. Shouldn’t be more than a dozen civilians there, worst case. Angry, fighting type of civilian, but we’re vesperbanes. And if the stupidity which almost saw you killed right here wasn’t your usual style, then I believe we can get in without risk, and without ever losing the option to get away.”

“Just civilians? You’re sure?”

“It’s within their means to have some maverick thug on retainer, but I can’t imagine there’s much else to account for.”

“Can you account for that device?”

“…I cannot.”

“So what are you proposing? We run in, tear down their operation, get back what was stolen, and call it done?”

“Not at all. I am going to infiltrate. Unnoticed, ideally. Access their base from underground, enter their treasury, and remove all their illicit assets. They don’t have allies enough to come back from something that. They’d be done. Simple, without violence and risk of killing.”

Wik gives Marka a significant look, eyes running along her armor.

“I wish I could say a plan like yours is a surprise coming from someone looking like you do, but I cannot.”

As Marka weighs out her decision, her digit rests on her timepiece, and she feels time clicking forward.

So, what will Marka do?

OPTION A: Argue her case, and push for her straightforward shock and awe strategy.

OPTION B: Concede to Wik, and follow their lead in infiltrating the gang’s base.

OPTION C: Try to get the location from Wik, but ultimately refuse to cooperate, attacking the base on her own.

OPTION D: Be cautious, and refuse any plan until you figure out more.

With regards to Wik, how shall she treat them? Suspiciously, friendly? Deferential, domineering? What opinion might she have of them?