Eifre Quest

Part 1

You are a mantis nymph of Shatalek, a dinky farming village so tiny you need to squint to find it on a map‍ ‍—‍ but it’s all you’ve ever known.

Currently, you’re in pre‍-vesper training, studying in hopes of one day becoming a mighty vesperbane to slay fell beasts and uphold the Kindling Dream. But for that, you’ll need countenance from the Pharmacium of Wentalel. The mentors say it’s simply a matter of when, and of course it is; you’re the brightest mind among all of your classmates. If anyone is getting sponsored out of these duldrums, it will be you.

Hervanium Alcha got sponsored just after her third instar, three years ago. (You haven’t forgotten, you never forget what’s important.) But you didn’t get picked at your third instar. You didn’t get picked at your fourth. Your fifth is coming up, and it gnaws at you. Why haven’t they accepted you yet? Your physicals can’t be that important. And your histories, your ethics, your logics! They’re the best anyone in town’s ever seen! And the examiners weren’t even impressed…

You cope how you’ve always coped. You have in front of you the month’s assigned reading, and you’re going over it for the ninth time. You know it word for word (you never forget what’s important); but it always serves to review. Other scrolls pile up around you too, dozens of miscellaneous volumes on the history of the heartlands, the policies of the syndics, what few scraps of vesper lore are admitted to the laity…

It’s the 984th paragraph, you’re almost done with review, and you hear an abject scream, loud and distant! You turn your head. Did it really… Yes, it came from in the ambrosia woods, you’re sure of it. Right now, you sit on a massive stone whose flat top pokes from the earth (your favorite quiet place to study). It crops up two thirds of the way along the path from Shatalek village to the ambrosia woods. A minute’s walking would take you to the woods’ edge, and two minutes would take you back to the village outskirts.

A glance up at the sky shows it’s already darkling. Your father expects, no, your father knows you’ll be back for dinner this evening. You’ve never missed it, you’re always on time (after all, you never forget what it’s important).

The other nymphs would be out playing, even now. You might even encounter a few on your way back into town.

Still, that scream was horrible, agonized. Could you conscious leaving that poor mantis to whatever awful fate befell them? Vesperbanes save people, after all.

So, what do you do? Do you enter the woods and see what happened? Or do you return home to a quiet family dinner? (You are hungry.)

You could even remain on your study rock, but focus will prove elusive with the two responsibilities weighing on you.

Part 2

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.

Part 3

You dodge into the underbrush between the trees, hoping you blend in well enough. Your reddish yellow chitin isn’t the darkest chamoflage, but at least it isn’t the bright pastels of some. You are careful to choose a hiding spot with a quick path of escape, just in case it’s something you can’t handle. Earlier you saw the hint of motion in the shadows, and you look further along the path where a… small hopping form comes into view. It’s dark blue, almost black, and moves on two stalks‍ ‍—‍ legs. As it continues along the path, you make out the beak, and decide the blue is feathers‍ ‍—‍ a bird, nearly as tall as your mesothorax! The beak opens and it calls again.

This vulgar grunking and throat‍-rattling sound the bird made was never that threatening. Of course this wasn’t a monster, it’s just a dumb little animal.

But you had already decided to ambush this thing, got your nerves all steeled up, and‍ ‍—‍ you feel a rumble in your abdomen. You are hungry. This bird might make a decent meal, too! (Or at least a snack before dinner. You are going to be on time for dinner. You always are.)

You wait for it to progress further along the path, all the while pivoting its bird‍-head and surveying the woods, entirely unaware it’s being stalked by you.

At the right moment, you leap out from the underbrush at top speed, bird dead in your sights!

At, that is, your top speed. Hardly impressive, to something that startles like a bird does. It sees you as you start to lunge, and it’s already taking off, wings flapping.

But you lash out with your spiked raptorial forelegs, and their spikes catch on the bird’s feathers without piercing its flesh. The attempt at flight is completely thwarted, and your raptorials close, holding the bird there in a vice‍-like grip.

Your maxillae curl in a smile, wet with saliva.

And then, fixing you with one eye, the bird says, “Help!”

Part 4

What? It’s not a visceral surprise, the way the scream was, or the mysterious sounds from the woods were. It’s a more cerebral shock, which takes a moment for your mind to realize.

The instinct is to clench tighter with your raptorials, in a grip that would certainly crush the avian. But you easily wrestle down the urge, and release the bird.

It’s just‍ ‍—‍ you have no idea what’s going on. You err with caution.

The bird flutters down to the ground, and doesn’t flee. You flare wide your raptorials, revealing the menacing eyespots at their center. In full threat display, you stare down the bird.

You wonder what some magnanimous story‍-scroll hero would do. Pointing your antennae at the bird, you say, “Taste mercy, knave! I have spared you for now, pledge to serve me and it shall continue!” You’re glad no one is around to hear this.

Except the bird. But can it even understand you? It’s just a bird, surely.

In response, you swear the insolent thing shakes its head! The temptation exists to swipe deftly with your raptorial and take off it’s head‍ ‍—‍ but you always had excellent composure. Think. You almost recognize the species of bird‍ ‍—‍ some manner of crow? You once read a story with a crow trained to repeat vapid phrases. If this is such a crow, then someone trained it. And if you’re to turn the situation to your advantage, as a clever, cunning heroine would, you ought to spare the crow even after this insolence. Whoever owns the crow will appreciate it, and you’ll thus have their good will.

While you muse, the bird has turned away from you, and hopped further down the path. It croaks “Help!” again and it lifts a wing and‍ ‍—‍ is it pointing?

The bird slowly ambles up the path. If you were to make a wild, dramatic guess, the bird wants you to follow, as ridiculous as that sounds. You have no choice but to follow, honestly. You’re here to see who screamed and why, and that entails following the path anyway. You could bushwack your way through the wild of the woods… but there’s courting danger, and then there’s begging for it.

Already the woods are more dynamic than the plains. Back toward the village, hills are slow, polite things that take a few hundred strides to gather any height. But even as you walk the wooden path, the ground beside it rises up sharply to act almost as a wall enclosing half the path. Looking farther out, there are little mounds and prominences everywhere, as well as depressions and gullies like the beds of forgotten rills.

You see a damselfly flit the air, and a dirt hole tended by lesser beetles digs into the path‍-wall farther down.

Still the crow struts on, and you follow, feeling increasingly absurd and bemused. The both of you reach a fork in the road. A path sharply left leading to an area lousy with fallen, crumbling trees and dead foilage. A path center, slightly rightward, which inclines upward, and sees the trees thin.

But the crow chooses (chooses, you repeat in disbelief) the rightmost path, deeper into the ambrosia woods.

You’ve almost eased off your guard, your mind relishing the chance to puzzle at the mystery of the talking crow instead of contending with and worrying about the gross danger you’re in.

But a sudden motion punishes that slack! You see in the corner of your vision (which is almost exactly behind you, with your wide compound eyes) a deeper shadow by the path‍-wall, darker than even the occluded blackness under the fallen logs‍ ‍—‍ inappropriately dark. This compels you to turn and take it in‍ ‍—‍ and as you give more thought to it, you remember its limp formlessness, as if it were cast by a puddle in the branches above. The image makes no sense.

And maybe it was just your imagining, because there’s nothing when you turn around. With your fovea regarding it, you can see now, at the edge of where the black puddle was, there is a thin crack in the hard dirt.

The bird stands strides ahead of you now, and you turn to dash after it. But the thing has stopped suddenly, so much that you almost step on it! You catch yourself, and, antennae writhing, a harsh growl on your spiracles, you see the bird has turned to look at the path‍-wall.

There’s a mantis slumped there, in a concave bit of wall you hadn’t seen. She’s covered in black robes, and in the darkness, it’s almost enough for you to miss the green hemolymph stains. But the odor gives it all away: coppery, putrid, almost smelling of pain. There’s wounds under her robes, nasty, deep wounds. But she’s awake, barely stirring as you arrive.

You meet her dark blue face, and her maxillae twitch.

Below, from her abdomen, through coughs, she speaks: “Hey… hey kid.”

Apocrypha Given

Is there more than once species of empersoned mantis? Is there more than one species of mantis, at all? are there any creatures which are to them like chimps are to us?

Your father taught you that there are two kinds of mantids in the world; the ordinary folk like you or your friends, and the wingless mantids. People don’t talk very much about wingless mantids, even when a sunny nymph like yourself was the one asking.

But you had gotten answers at night, as your father lays you down in your bed and comforts you with bedtime conversations, his mind tired and inattentive after a long day. Bedtime conversations they were, because any attempt of his at bedtimes stories ran aground on your mountain of questions until the tenor was more philosophical than narrative.

They say long ago wingless mantids involved themselves in a great evil. Whether they perpetrated it, or were just complicit in it your father couldn’t say. But the price for that evil was that their wings were shorn off as a warning for the rest of us.

There are a few wingless mantids in Shatalek, and they tend the farms along with the noble roaches‍ ‍—‍ one of them even cleans the tavern. They don’t speak much, although they flinch less when you walk by than for any of the imagos.

Whether there’s more races of mantids in the world the normal and wingless, you aren’t sure. You know mantids come in a wide variety of colors, from your reddish‍-yellow, to your friend Yikki’s pastel pink, to the black of Hervanium Clan mantids. Sometimes, you’ve wondered if Vesperbane Clan mantids are races of their own. You’ve twice seen them pass as travelers through the tavern. One had what could have been moss growing all over her chitin, and another had four limbs too many! (More often than that you’ve seen vesperbanes at a distance‍ ‍—‍ but imagos don’t like to let you near them.)

And there are creatures less than mantis. Like the awful feral stickmen you’ve seen illustrations of‍ ‍—‍ smaller, inferior bugs who prey savagely in the forest. You’ve heard some keep them as pets, but you don’t know who would want the things.

And you know from your studies that knowledge‍-hunters have named the praying mantis Cephalomantis sapiens. Once, at glance, you saw the term Cephalomantis apteroid appear, in a scroll the scriptorium did not let you borrow.

Is mantis society a dictatorship?

You’ve asked, and there’s no one ‘in charge’ of Shatalek the way mother is in charge of the family. There’s a syndicate of farmers, led by coordinators who handle trade with the world outside of Shatalek, and you’ve heard them mutter over half‍-empty glasses about taxes and rulings from the councils. There’s a syndic who represents Shatalek to the prefecture. Sometimes stern‍-faced, fancy‍-robed mantids ride in on cicindela‍-back and ask to speak to the coordinators, or the scriptorium master, or Tlista’s guard.

All you know is they come from a place called Wentalel, or on some bad years, a place called Greci.

are there any other sapients?

It took you a long time to figure out how to properly ask this question. “Are there any other kinds of people?” didn’t work‍ ‍—‍ ‘people’ synonyms with ‘mantis’ for most, so asking this only yielded terse assertions about the wingless.

When you learned to hunt, you also learned one of the big divides in the world was between the edible and the inedible. Mantids stand elevated from the vulgar creatures of the world, and all of them‍ ‍—‍ beetles, ants, wolves, apes, bats‍ ‍—‍ can be eaten, though one may not want to. The one exception is mantids‍ ‍—‍ cannibalism is contrary to the ancestors’ teachings, and any who would practice such is no mantid, but a beast. You asked if there were other exceptions, and there were none.

Great. New facts (interesting ones, even), but you were no closer to answering your question. One day, you explored out by the the farms where the chorus roaches toil. One roach, strolling between fields, nodded at you, and said a hello.

It startled and you ran all the way back home. But it revealed the proper approach to the question:

“Are there any other creatures that talk? Or communicate?”

And your mother (for that day she was there) replied there are many. There are the chorus roaches, masters of agriculture and husbandry, who we taught to speak, and who have accepted our protection for services rendered.

The spinners ants and gestaltes bees alone are inept, and lack speech in their spiracles, but they conglomerate into autonomous hives whose cunning we learned to reckon. They are thought (perhaps by conjecture, or interpretation) to serve some queen, of like we have never been allowed to meet. They have dispatched learnèd workers as liasons, and arrangements have been made by interpreting bodily motions and pheromones, but they remain baffling servants.

And then your mother’s voice grew distant. She’s heard mention of velvet hornet nests, or vast spider webs traded with. Some adventurers, returning mad with terror, have told of termite‍-made things that spoke with a voice from nightmares.

There are no vesperbats in the heartland. But once there were, and once they ruled. Only the ichorbats, a mindless shadow of their kind, remain.

And of course, there are stranger, one‍-off creatures existing half in rumor. Magical spirits? Clever Vesperbane constructs? Vast spells gone awry? It is easier to tell what exists in the heartland than what does not.

Oh, and a few claim some intelligence in the weevils of ambrosia. But no, they have never tried to communicate.

Your mother waves you away after that, telling you to go to your room or go back outside, and stop bothering her with questions.

Suggestions Received

We should ask the woman if she can still stand, or walk, what feels hurt, whether she thinks she’s mortally wounded or how much time she has left before she’s beyond the help of medicine, and we should consider whether we’re strong enough (with our feeble physicals, unlikely) to help her get to town, or else whether we have enough time to go and get someone to help.

attempt to light a signal fire
also maybe look if there are any identifying marks on her robe

We don’t forget anything important, so hopefully our education will have included some basic heraldry

ask what happend, attempt to help, if you arent able to rescue her alone call for other people to help you

Do make an effort to help, on the condition that the brain first tries to place anything out of the ordinary with this woman. Does she have any markings or paraphernalia of unusual provenance? If, for example, she’s got ritual implements, then she might be some crazy vesper‍-aspirant thing. Could be that she’s carrying something else that will speak louder than words about why she’s here. TLDR: stabilize if possible, then run a perceptive compound eye over her to get a feel for her story.

Part 5

Hemolymph. You’re stilled, staring at the wounded lady as she reaches out with a middle leg, patting the bird and scratching its head. The motion slides open her robe, and you’re able to see her thorax and under abdomen. It‍ ‍—‍ the flesh‍ ‍—‍ is sliced open in multiple places. No, sliced is the wrong word. Bored open? Gouged? There seems to be holes melted into her, and she gushes out through them.

Hemolymph. The green innards of a mantis, you’ve never seen it before. Yes, you’re a nymph; you and your friends have sustained cuts and cracks before. Tiny things. But mantids weren’t supposed to leak, like a fruit someone bit into. It’s unsetting, uncanny.

“First time seeing blood, eh?” Blood? But only boney animals have blood. You almost ask, but it’s not important.

“Are you alright? What happened?”

While you ask this, you kneel down to get a good look at the mantis. The dark blue chitin marks her as foreign; no one in Shatalek has chitin in shade even close. The robes are dark, and you don’t see any insignia woven into them.

“Yeesh, I’m not dead yet kid, don’t get so interested in my stuff.” They cough again, and you watch their abdomen rise and fall as they suck in more breaths.

Again you run an examining eye over the mantis, searching for details out of place. They teach you to be incredibly wary of defects and renegades in pre‍-vesper, because they are tricky and all of them ruthless. This could be an innocent… but she could be anything.

She gathers her breath, and finally addresses your question. “What happened isn’t important… You’re from Shatalek, aren’t you? I was coming to warn you… all of you.”

“Warn us what?” You should have pressed about her injuries, about what caused them‍ ‍—‍ but if this is a new world‍-scar…

“Termite mound. A fresh, big one. The Stewartry will be coming soon, and…”

You interrupt, “Well if the Vesperbane Stewartry already knows, they’ll handle it. We need to make sure you’ll be okay!” This would be so much easier if she stayed focused.

You had bandages in your bag‍ ‍—‍ a vesperbane should be prepared, after all. Unfortunately, you had simply left out to study, so of course all your pre‍-vesper gear was still at home, including your bag. But you know how to start a fire, and you know the signals the guard uses. But would the smoke make it out of the canopy? Would it even be visible? The sky was darkening when you left.

Maybe you could send the bird back, but would the townfolk pay attention to it? How many would still be outside? Maybe the signal fire is the best idea. But if someone did this to her, and they’re still out there…

“Do you have any enemies? Who did this to you?”

“Enemies?”

“You know, like bad guys. Evil people who’re after you.”

“Well I have the twin snakes of the Stewartry and the Kult of Kaos coiling tighter and tighter around my neck… But where in the nine nations is this coming from?” Cough. “What does this have to do with anything?”

“Well I’m thinking about lighting a signal fire, but if whoever did this to you is still out there, we don’t want to let them know and draw them to us.”

“A signal fire? In the middle of the forest?” She shakes her head, mumbling something. “Listen kid, I’ll be fine. You need to go back to your village and tell them… No, they would listen to a nymph…” She trails off.

“People listen to me!”

“Sure. Do you know a… Tlista?”

“My… mom?”

“You’re Tlista’s kid.” The mantis leans forward, head craning up as if to get a better look. But she moans quietly in pain and falls back. And she says, “Great, that’s great. Tell her the ambrosia witch sent you, and tell her—”

“You’re the ambrosia witch? I thought you were just a scary story.”

“Listen, kid!” She isn’t shouting (mantids can’t shout and speak), but she’s louder (making the raggedness in her voice clear), and there’s a clear note of warning to it. “Go back to your village. Find your mom. Tell her there’s a new termite mound. Council might exclude it, council might exclude you. You need to go fast, and you should go now.”

“I’m not going to leave you to d‍- I’m not going to leave you here! Vesperbanes save people.”

She laughs. She laughs at you. “I am a vesperbane, little one. Was, whatever. And I know that line is a crock of shit. How exactly are you going to save me?”

You take a step back. A vesperbane? If this was a vesperbane… you heard stories about vesperbanes reading minds and possessing people. Your antennae are quivering.

“You want to become a vesperbane, do you? Countenance and all? Ha…” She coughs, and she says, “Take a piece of advice I wish I’d known: the Kindling Dream is a nightmare. Everything is a lie.”

You didn’t miss her past tense correction. Was‍ ‍—‍ Is she banefallow? Or… is she a defect?

Another step back away from the wounded lady. You glance away, looking at the muddy path back out of these cursed woods.

“Scared now? If you run, at least tell Tlista what I said. But if you really want to help me… I have a remedy at my cabin. Reva will show the way.”

The bird lifts up a head its name, and it chirps once.

“Either way, welcome to the heartlands, kid.” The vesperbane gives another mirthless laugh. “My name’s Maune. And I would like to know the name of Tlista’s kid. She never told me.”

What is your name?

Part 6

“Tophem,” you try, holding your maxillary palps still to not give away the lie.

You can’t tell if the reply is a cough or a laugh. “Like that children’s story character? Are you fucking with me? If so, don’t.”

“Fine, fine. My name is…” You consider giving another fake name, Tikka maybe, but if she lives, she might find out. “I’m Eifre.”

“Eifre… Exotic. I wonder where she picked it up.”

“I’ll be…”‍ ‍—‍ you glance back where you came‍ ‍—‍ “going. You said you wanted me to tell my mom..?”

“Yes, yes, leave the vile defect to her fate. Go quickly now, if you think being a vesperbane is about saving people… well, you will save some tonight.”

You turn away from the wounded, lymph‍-drenched mantis. You remember everything they’ve told you about defects. And yet, this mantis is present before you in a way the facts, vividly remembered or not, are just echoed words in your head.

Shaking your head, you start down the path back to Shatalek. You want to go the other way, follow the little bird to her cabin‍ ‍—‍ but she’s a defect, you can’t help her, it’s wrong. And you should tell your mom what she said.

Maybe afterward, you can come back, and…

You decide to focus on the task before you, as little as there is to focus on. You remember the way back, but anyone would; the path only forked once more after the first time, and it was sloughing off a tiny trail of trampled leaves and snapped‍-off shrub‍-branches. You only noticed it coming back.

Coming again by the crack where you had thought you saw the strange shadow, you walk a little ways off the path just to give the crack a wider berth‍ ‍—‍ as if something might have slideintothe crack. Maybe it’s silly. But maybe you’re allowed silly caution.

You hear an owl hoot somewhere in the branches above, and a legged snake darting through the leaves. You shiver, and pick up your pace through the late evening woods.

It’s at the intersection that you pause again. There are many sounds in the ambiance of the woods, but you almost swear you hear… voices? And a skittering step.

You’re on edge, you’re introspective enough to notice as much, your raptorials still shaking. You realize this is really happening, actual mantids getting seriously hurt.

And it might be you, next.You don’t want to take any risks. The sound might have been coming from up the central path (the rightward onenow, as you’re now returning down what formerly was the rightward path).

You’re not sure you want to find out what other surprises the ambrosia woods have for you.

By the time you’re near in sight of the plains again, you’re practically running to escape.

And then a mantid figure comes into view.

They’re coming around the bend, from the woods’ opening, and they’re wielding a torch in one raptorial. You throw yourself to a halt, almost tripping in your haste. The figure stops walking too, but with more surety, like they’d already been on guard. Their antennae are flexed tall.

They lift a long thin object and point it at you. You can’t see in the darkness and the shadow, but you’re sure it’s a musket, a midleg tarsus holding it steady and a raptorial’s dactyl on the trigger. You’re sure a kilogram of pressure could end your life right now.

But the mantis soon lowers the musket, and folds their antennae. They aren’t at ease, but there is less threat to them now. “Eifre?”

“It’s me.”

“Your mother was looking for you after you disappeared. Come here, we’ll keep you safe.”

The guard‍ ‍—‍ she must be a guard‍ ‍—‍ slings the musket around their back, letting it rest it on their abdomen, and holds out their (folded) raptorials, as if to hug.

You run toward her, and decide to let her hug you. She squeezes you tight, and for a moment, you feel safe. And then she releases you, and with a nudge, you’re following them out of the woods, and down the path back home.

At this distance, you can see half a dozen mantises with torches ranging the streets. Two are starting toward the roach farmlands, and one searches the copse of trees where the nymphs sometimes play.

And you can see a certain figure already stalking toward the ambrosia woods, with that distinctive three‍-legged gait. Your mother comes toward the woods, anxiously followed after by a guard. They’re talking‍ ‍—‍ arguing?‍ ‍—‍ but their voices carry only enough for you to determine that much.

They’re a little ways out of the village, and moving faster than you, so the two parties meet near the study rock where this all began. Close enough for you to see that your scrolls are gone, carried away somewhere.

Neither of you have even stopped moving before you hear your mother’s steely voice. “You! We were looking all over for you. I knocked on the door of each one of your friends, I crawled in your little cave, and checked all of your other hiding places. The guards told me they had seen you scamper off into the ambrosia woods, but Iknewmy daughter wasn’t sostupidas to do such a thing.” She paused, and looks you up and down, like she’d just met you. “Clearly she was not. What possessed you to do such a thing?”

“The ambrosia witch—”

And that’s all it takes. Your mother interrupts suddenly, antennae snapping up. “Go.” She’s looking between the two guards. “Thank you for finding my daughter. I’m sorry for waking you up. You can get your sleep now, goodbye.”

The guard following behind your mother slumps and starts to turn. The one who’d found you looks confusedly between you and her for a moment, but just nods and starts to leave also. Though before she leaves, she reaches out and pats you on the head.

Mother watches them go. Turning back to, she says, “You met Maune? Describe her.”

You tell her of what the bird led you to, the sight you saw.

She sighs, reaching and pulling you closer in a one‍-foreleg hug. A moment, and her embrace slackens enough to let you look up, and looking down at you, say asks, “What did she have to say?”

You remember and divulge each relevant detail, including those cryptic lines which mean nothing to you.

Tlista recieves it all with a severe calmness. You always had excellent composure (the only flaw in it was it always cracked around your mother), and right now, it’s clear where you got it from. But she’s had years to hone what is mere placidity in you into what she wields as a formidable poise.

She nods when you finish. “I see.” And she mumbles to herself, you still held close enough to hear, “I hope this isn’t just her paranoia again. Not with my daughter.” Your mother withdraws her foreleg. “Regardless, go home, dear. Your dinner is cold but I left it on your desk. Stay in your room and do nothing more tonight.”

Your mother steps past you, down the path back into the ambrosia woods. But she stops after a few steps, and you know she’s watching you from the fringe of her compound eyes, waiting for you to obey and amble back home.

There’s not much you can do but go home. But will you return for long‍-awaited dinner a much‍-needed (if sure to be troubled) night rest? Or will you return plotting something more tonight?

Apocrypha Given

tell mom we’re old enough to come with her to help

Note that your character is fourth instar, going on fifth. Heartlands Mantids reach imagohood at their twelfth instar.

but were supposed to be taken somewhere on their third, so that little adventure has to be an acceptable alternative

Your mother had told you to stop getting your hopes up, and stop looking so drenched in disappointment every year. She told you that it’s only the geniuses and the exceptional that get picked as young as you are. (But were you not a genius? Were you not the village’s exception?)

It’s only by your sixth instar that you’ll really be of use to them, she said. And by then, you’ll have nothing to worry about.

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.

Part 8

The young vesperbanes watch the unconscious defector, mandibles prominent and sharp. You glance back at Maune and bite your maxillary palp.

Still sitting on your mother’s back, you grip her thorax, dactyls squeezing against her chitin. You might’ve made a nervous squeak but you aren’t sure if anyone hears. Spiracles twitching, you wonder if you have it in you speak right now, and say what you mean to say. To berate the vesperbanes for their callousness, to demand that they spare Maune, to tell your mother to say the right words and fix it all, make things simple and pleasant again.

You always had excellent composure, and this is what keeps you from loudly crying out and making it plain obvious just how young you are.

Still, Tlista nods at your wordless squeeze. Does she understand how you feel right now? Do you even understand?

“It’s pitiful.” The words strike out in the silence, and it’s an instant before you‍ ‍—‍ before anyone‍ ‍—‍ realizes who spoke. Tlista continues, “A defect, a missing bane, and yet she’s done your mission better than you children have.”

“What?” It’s not a rebuttal, it’s hardly even an inquiry: the words are pure shock, and at this the green vesperbane’s antennae are frozen, splayed in the air. Internally, you mirror the reaction. Praising a defect? You haven’t even had a vesperbane’s education yet, and you understand how wrong that is.

“You mentioned your parameters earlier, didn’t you?” she asks, tossing her head in the direction of the bulky red mantis. “That you are to render aid to Shatalek if needed? Have you? More to the point, did you not all but state that pursuit of the ambrosia witch is entirely irrelevant to your orders?”

Red is stepping over, forcefully nudging green aside to stand before your mother. “With all due respect madame,” she starts, “you no authorityn. You’ve been relieved of duty for years. We’ve humored you out of kindness, but you really are in no position to be—”

Tlista’s raptorial foreleg snaps out and smacks Red across her face. It was a backlegged strike, so no spines impaled her.

The imago says, “Have you wondered why it is that you were able to pin down the witch, where so many before have failed?”

Green is speaks while Red is rubbing her mandibles and backing away. The smaller bane says, “We assumed she simply wasn’t a priority. There are far too many defects in the heartlands‍ ‍—‍ it’s natural for the weakest not to warrant a waste of our scarce resources.”

“She was coming to Shatalek, to warn us of the danger, inform us that the stewartry would be sending teams to keep control on things.”

The two vesperbanes glance back at the slumped mantis.

“Tell me, why did you take the time‍ ‍—‍ waste the time‍ ‍—‍ tracking down this defect? Time that you could have spent ensuring the safety of my town?”

“Ma’am,” Green starts, “are you acting to shelter this defect?”

It’s a high crime, you remember. One of the highest; unmitigated guilt of such entails execution.

“Do you think,” Tlista’s voice is tending low; rather than the highs of objective command, the tone of her words became something personal and inviting, “it’s a coincidence that I’m stationed in the village nearest to the witch? That she is acting in our interests? She is my jurisdiction.” You don’t let your confusion march onto your face and ruin her ploy.

“If that is the case,” Green starts in a voice making a tangible effort not to call beetleshit, “why would our master tell us of her bounty? Why, if the defect supposedly accounted for?”

“There’s another thing that doesn’t add up,” Tlista says. There’s something‍ ‍—‍ confident about the way she flatly ignores questions, setting her own pace for the conversation. “You said this was a B‍-rank mission. For world‍-scar investigation, that part makes sense.” Your mother leans forward, antennae extending out toward the banes. “But you’re wretches. Barely even wretches, banelings. Yet B‍-rank missions require the presence of a fiend.”

And the banes fall in line with he course your mother sets, Green dropping her inquiry to instead respond, “Our master is working with the vindicators at the mound to secure it. He is an arch‍-fiend.”

“And just who is your roach‍-brained master?”

“Dlenam.”

For once, your mother is thrown off balance; she jerks back at the name. “Of course it’d be him.” She gathers herself up, and sets her thorax erect. “Tell your master to knock some sense into you next chance he gets, hear me? Before you fuck up another mission. But for now, go do your jobs, and ensure the syndics of Shatalek are aware of what’s occurring.” A midleg is flung back behind her emphatically. It clips you a little.

The vesperbanes stare at your mother for a beat, Green with wariness written into the angle of her legs, Red with open‍-mouthed, wide‍-mandibled indignance. But ultimately, she is right and they know it. Her correctness costs them several hundred claws.

Green is the one who starts walking away first. When she passes behind your mother, she says, “Your wisdom is quite appreciated, madam Tlista.”

Red passes next, stomping, giving your mother a wide berth.

Last is the quiet one, whom they called Shimare. She leaps from atop the roadside ridge, landing silently on the stone path, standing thin and tall. Her wings flare wetly open. Her forelegs and midlegs come together to form a sign, and then the skin inside of her wings begins to glow brightly red. Why does a nymph have wings?

She begins to walk softly after her teamates, but Tlista extends her left midleg, stopping her.

“Shimare… of clan Brismati?”

A nod.

“Tell me, do you know Alaremu? Has she moved on? Has she remarried?”

Shimare stands still for several heartbeats, and then finally speaks. “Aunt Alaremu is dead.”

And then it is Tlista who stands still while Shimare dashes away toward her team. But mother gathers herself quickly, and she forms a sign with forelegs, and whispers something reverent you can’t make out, even riding on her back.

Looking up, she seems to remember what you’re here for, and she crouches in front of the catalyst of all this trouble, the ambrosia witch.

“You owe me one Maune. You really do.”

A blue antennae shifts sluggishly. Is she awake?

“Mother,” you say, “those vesperbanes, they weren’t very nice.”

“No, of course they weren’t,” she says, and her next words are a mutter, seemingly to herself. “Of course. Give a nymph power over matter and mantis, pile on responsibilities that would crush an imago, and let the vespers have their way with them‍ ‍—‍ and then wonder why vesperbanes are the vile mantes bugs hate.”

A wet cough. “It‍ ‍—‍ a nightmare, isn’t it?”

That sharpens mother’s attention. She looks up. “You’re awake.”

“You.. here. Tlist?”

“It’s me. C’mere.”

When she steps forward, a squawk cuts through the nighttime silence. Faster than an antennae can twitch, a black form is slicing through the air and lighting down between the veteran and the defector.

Experimentally, you reach out and the bird rounds and squawks at you.

It’s Reva, the witch’s familiar.

“Calm it boy. They’re‍- they’re help.”

The bird steps to the side, but remains staring between you and Tlista.

“My daughter said you think there is a way to save you.”

“Two ways… But I have a preference.”

Tlista waits. The witch’s breath is slow, and you wonder if she’s slipping in and out of awareness, or devoting all her energy to holding on.

“Reva, show them.”

Mother prods you until you get off her back. Off you go. You’re replaced by the much larger ambrosia witch, slung limp and gracelessly but steadily enough that Tlista begins to walk after the bird.

It’s a journey even deeper into the woods. The stone path turns to gravel and then mere trampled dirt. The soundscape turns to the aerial winds, seeking purchase below the canopy, and sleepless chitterring things.

As you wind deeper (and wind the path does), the trees grow bigger and stranger. Those artful, alien workings of the weevils on the branches of the trees seem to teem and infest your surroundings the deeper in you go.

“Mother?”

“Yes?”

“Does that mean I’m going to become mean if I become a vesperbane?”

She pauses for a moment, considering. “No. You always have a choice, Eifre, remember that. But, if you become a vesperbane, it will try you. You’ll be angry, you’ll be tired, you’ll be very confused, and most of all, you’ll be hungry. It brings out the worst in someone.” She takes your tarsus again, and squeezes it. “But your worst can still be wonderful. You really want to be a hero, don’t you?”

You smile, and say, “Heroes get to read all the best scrolls!”

And your mother gives a single pulse of laughter, and that’s enough.

You walk beside your mother on the left, and you notice the midleg which the nerve‍-ooze had attacked is darkened and sluggish.

Throughout the woods, there lingers a sweet, spiced smell you’ve always faintly associated with the edge of the ambrosia, and now it grows until it becomes entrenched on your antennae.

You don’t like the smell. It’s not because it’s unpleasant‍ ‍—‍ it’s strange, but almost enticing (as it naturally would be, having heard the stories of ambrosia weevils).

No, it’s that very promise the smell holds that embitters you. You could ignore it while your mother carried you, but now as you’re forced to walk on your weak nymph legs, you realize: you’re hungry. You would have long have eaten dinner on any other night. But today, you’re forced to do more on even less.

You reach out and grasp your mother’s tarsus, and she gives a squeeze. You hold her hand as you follow the crow ever deeper.

And you know before Reva slows down that you have arrived.

Thicker, taller, wilder‍ ‍—‍ the trees grow here. But that alone wouldn’t account for this: before you rises a mass of branches and leaves taller than any building in Shatalek. Maybe it’s a massive hill that just happened to form here‍ ‍—‍ you can’t tell, because the growth is so thick the plants are a shroud.

The bird leading you (leading!) begins to circle around the gigantic structure until you come upon a still pond. Or pool? The edge is near‍-regular, almost circular. Lilypads dot the surface.

And the bird saunters to a stop before it, like its job is done now.

“Maune?” Your mother says, jostling the imago. “Maune, we’ve come to a pool. What do we do now?”

“My demesne is hidden by the ambrosia weevils. My little magical fortress…”

“Yes, yes, but how do we get in? Focus, girl.”

“The weevils require contribution.”

Tlista pauses, before steeling herself, standing taller. “What is the offering, then? Blood? Flesh?”

Maune laughs, and it’s a delirious sound. “No no. The weevils are not the vespers. They do not exact costs. It’s… it’s a… an accord, rather than a pact. Benefaction…” Her words and murmured and slurred.

“Positive sum,” Tlista murmurs. “How does it work then? What, specifically, must we do?”

“Reva, get the combapples should be appropriate for guests.”

The bird hops away in a flutter of wings, and then quite suddenly it returns, carrying a branch in its beak. The sight is almost comical, the fruits swinging from the branch are about as large as the bird itself.

You ask, “What do we do with that?”

“Eat it.”

But they were plants. “Okay…”

The fruits have a hard shell, and the parent branch parents splits many times before its thin subbranches plunge separately into the fruit’s shell. It’s patterned like a honeycomb, and it easily breaks along the line of the pattern.

“Eat the fruit, and if it pleases you, spread the seeds far and wide… That is what they ask.”

“That’s all?”

“Of me? There are many other tasks. But this should be sufficient, for entrance into the vale.”

Almost in response, ripples break over the surface of the pond. You peer, lifting the torch to cast more light. Are the ripples coming from the lilypads?

Maune says, “And there it is. Let’s go. My strength is at its edge.”

Confusion wriggles in your mother’s antennae, but before she can ask, Reva makes a displeased grunking sound, and then the bird dives into the pool.

Tlista sighs, and runs a few tarsi over her bag, ensuring that it’s sealed.

“Hold your breath.”

And then she leaps, crashing into the waters with a mighty splash.

You stare at the water’s surface. You could just remain here. You don’t have to get wet.

And your mother would face alone all the danger and adventure that might still lurk. You dive into the water, torch abandoned.

Sinking into the dark waters, you feel a current that was not apparent on the calm surface. It guides you along the muddy floor, through a tunnel, and you arise into a cave.

Tlista is there, pounding on Maune’s abdomen as she coughs up water. The defector recovers, and weakly climbs back atop your mother.

You’re slow climbing out of the pool. When you’re up, Tlista is waiting for you, and she takes your hand, and leads you into the hidden vale.

Beyond the mouth of the cave is a vista you’ve never expected to see outside of a story‍-scroll or a fanciful painting. Outside the vale, it may be the blackest night, but vale is lit with a blue ambiance, bright as late evening.

Scattered throughout are small flowering trees whose branches are heavy with odd fruit; the skin is transparent, and the luminescent blue liquid dwells within. Flittering flies buzz around the vale, some of them landing the glowing fruits, piercing the thin skin with a tube‍-shaped mouth and sucking until their stomach is blue. As they fly away, full, the now‍-glowing flies attracts a cohort of smaller flies. Mates?

(One of them lands on you, and you notice it resembles a a snailfly. They aren’t bugs, and have jointed shells instead of chitin.)

Tall grass covers much of the vale, but a trampled path leads out of the cave, which you follow. The bird, Reva‍ ‍—‍ was it there when you climbed out of the pool?‍ ‍—‍ is here now, perched on the thorax of its master.

You still hold your mother’s hand, and at this point it’s as much her comforting you as it is her pulling you along. You’re hungry, weak, tired, and thus, slow.

Maune’s voice sputters and wanes as she murmurs in her semi‍-consciousness. She’s partway into a coherent sentence before you realize it, and she’s talking to your mother.

“—just keep with it. Leave me, leave me by the flower bed. You’ll know it when you past it. Get the potion, and come back.”

While you walk, to keep up your excitement, you leave your gaze wander, lighting on all the myriad flowers and oddly‍-shaped bushes, and the birch trees with every branch arranged in a weevil‍-working.

There are puddles dotting the vale. If you have passed their like on the way here, you would have entirely missed them: they are black. You’re reminded of the nerve‍-ooze that attacked you, so much so you jump back at the first one you see.

But it doesn’t move or even ripple; it’s just a black puddle. In most of them, a growth emerges from the center, what could be a flower or a fungus. It looks sickly and half‍-dissolved.

By the fourth one you pass you’re inured to them, and reach down to touch it. Your mother yanks you bodily back. “Do not touch enervate.”

As you start walking again, she’s pulling you harder, keeping you closer to her. After a chagrined moment, you return to staring in wonder at the vale. There are trees that move. You start, and stare skeptically until you catch one in the act. It pivots forward on stubby, root‍-like limbs. You gaze travels upward, and higher up, its interlocking complex of branches seem disparate and alien, like conglomerations of many different kinds of trees.

The blue lamp‍-fruits grow dense along the way, and the ambiance brighter. The mobile trees become more common too.

Maune soon stirs. “Don’t mind the ents… they get restless after a clear day feeding in the sun.”

Your legs are burning before you reach the flower bed. The bed itself rests between of roots of a massive tree, and the flowers are arranged in a swirling mosaic of three colors. They sit like a congregation before a tall white flower which sways.

Gingerly, your mother lays the ambrosia witch on the flower bed, Reva still perched on her. You sit while she does this, laying on your abdomen, weight off your legs.

“Maune, what ‘potion’ is it you need to recover? I assume this trail continues to your cabin?”

“Yes, yes it does. It’s… bat blood, you know. The healing potion. You know I’d have it, right? In my study.”

Your mother nods.

“And don’t, don’t go looking around, messing with things. You won’t understand everything you see, okay?”

Mother turns to you. “Come on, Eifre. It can’t be much further now.”

You hear her, but you just want to lay there, keeping resting and gathering your strength. It’s been a long walk. You wonder if you’d slip right to sleep if you leaned back.

“Eifre?”

You open your spiracles to make a sound, but your stomach betrays you first, give a deep rumble. You’re sure your mother can hear it a few pace away.

She sighs. “This is why I told you to go back, dear.” She reaches out, patting you on the head. “You can rest here, I won’t be long.”

Beside the two of you, Maune coughs, and writhes and stretches, shifting into a more comfortable position on the flower bed. She says something.

“Repeat that, Maune?”

“I have fruit in the cupboard, and little raptors in the pen. The bug can eat.”

“Then let’s go.”

You follow on down the path in a haze. You encounter nothing new, and your grip on consciousness seems a little more tenuous since you sat down.

The cabin of the ambrosia witch is a tiny affair, one floor that looks like it can’t hold more than four or five decent rooms. Your house could eat three of these houses for lunch. Lichens and vines grow all over it, and you can’t decide if this makes it appear bigger or smaller. In front, it has what could be called a porch, two chairs aside the door and flatten dirt around them.

First of all, you loop around to find the pen she mentioned, which holds half a dozen scaly raptors that stir at your arrival, the lot of them either stepping back or staring, making quiet grunting sounds in their throats.

Tlista glances back to gauge how tired you are‍ ‍—‍ dead on your feet‍ ‍—‍ and then she personally reaches in, snapping up one of the raptors for you in an instant, bloody and screaming.

She hands it to you and walks off, anxious to get this matter over with.

A few minutes later, you follow after her, viscera on your maxillae and blood dribbling down your mandibles. She’s already inside the cabin.

You step in. Four rooms: to your right is a sitting room with a shelf of scrolls and a dresser crowned with a glowing fruit. Both are adjacent to the corner, but neither reach it. Two chairs sit in the room, around a table, atop which sits a clean white rope with a loop on one end and a clip on the other. Door breaks the wall opposite you, ajar, and it must lead to Maune’s study.

To your left is a kitchen, a table with two chairs at one wall and the rest claimed by counters and cupboards. On the table, two glasses, a half‍-eaten fruit and the stem of another. An open doorway leads into a bedroom, and you make out a bed perhaps twice as wide as yours.

Tlista glances out from the study at your entrance, waving for you to approach.

Your mother bars you from entering fully into the study, but it’s enough for you to see its contents. Shelves piled and squeezed with scrolls, except where instead there’s petri dishes and beakers. There are contents of every color, and half have forms floating inside: the shiro of a fungus, or its fruiting bodies. A wrinkly gray thing you’re almost tempted to associate with the medical diagrams you’ve seen labeled ‘brain’, if only it weren’t so small. There’s a heart with blood vessels floating freely, and even as you watch occasionally it pumps.

Finally your eyes settle on Tlista. She doesn’t smile, and simply looks down analyzing.

“Eifre.”

“Yes?”

“You want to be a vesperbane, don’t you? You’ve just entered the lair of a defect. What have you noticed?”

“Um.” You wiggle your antennae. “Do you want a list of everything I saw…?” No, that can’t be it, although you could absolutely do that if it were.

Tlista looks impassively on. Moments pass, and then she says and adds, “Suggestive details, hints. There’s more to everything than the appearance, and you can glimpse that if you pay attention. Look underneath, Eifre.”

You didn’t know there was anything important to be gleaned, or else you would have exhaustively searched the place. But Tlista didn’t, couldn’t have, searched exhaustively, and evidently she must have found something. What?

“The bed is empty,” you start. It’s not a question, but you find your confidence after your mother nods. “And yet, in all the rooms, there’s two chairs. There were two glasses on the kitchen table. Why, if she were living alone? The bed is big enough for two, but it’s empty, and it’s nighttime.”

“Good, Eifre. You’re almost there.”

Was there anything else to notice?

“There was a rope on the table… Does that mean anything?”

She regard you for a moment, but then she seems to give up with the cool analytic look, and says, “It’s exactly the leash you’d clip onto a animal’s collar.” She curls an antennae. “It’s one of the details that shifts this from unremarkable to suspicious. The double chairs with no other inhabitant could have been a quirk, a sentimental reminder of someone gone, perhaps. But that rope is newly‍-woven, which only makes sense if it’s a replacement, which only makes sense if it’s something you constantly use and wear down. And the glasses? There’s still droplets in them.” Then, she waves a foreleg indicating the mess of beakers and glasses in this lab/study. “I don’t expect you to recognize any of this by scent, at least, not yet. But there are hallucinogens. Some of them alchemically produced, and recently.”

She pauses for a moment, letting you catch up with everything she’s said.

“There’s one last thing. Did you catch it, Eifre?”

“No..?”

Tlista frowns, but she doesn’t look surprised. “The shelf and the dresser. Neither of them are pushed to the corner. It compelled me to take a peek.”

“What did you see?”

“There’s a trapdoor hatch, leading to a basement.” Tlista leans closer, and brings a tarsus to either side of your face. “Do you understand why I’m asking you these questions, Eifre?”

“To test my skills as a vesperbane?”

Her maxillae twitch. “There’s something my master used to say. Intuition can’t be taught. He said, where intuition is concerned, you’re as good on your first day as you’re ever going to be.”

“That sounds…” You can’t think of a word that isn’t disrespectful to her former master.

“There were six of us. Six banelings, and only two of us‍ ‍—‍ only one of us survived to become a fiend. It’s dangerous work, Eifre, and exceeding tricky. It is, difficult to say with confidence what vespers can’t do, what you can rule out. Some of the greatest arch‍-fiends, and the oldest scourges? They say it’s impossible to say what’s impossible.”

She steps back, and turns to pick up a bottle with a viscous red liquid inside. It bubbles and sloshes, and you’re hardly surprised that it keeps wiggly long after it’s momentum should be gone.

“I want you to be prepared for that, for a world where everything has excessive depth, and anything might secretly be your demise. When you’re on a mission, your every breath should be caution. You need to be on the look out always.”

“Was this…” Was Maune trying to…?

“No. Well, I don’t know. I’ve seeing these signs, but I don’t know what they’re point at. But we’ll find them if we step into that basement, I’m sure.”

You watch your mother, expectant, even hopeful. You’re not sure of what.

“So, Eifre, my little hero. Pretend this is your first mission. I want your judgment as a vesperbane. Do we take this,” she sloshes the red potion again, agitating it, “back to the defect immediately to heal her, or should we investigate what’s in her basement?”

You never forget anything important. You remember what Maune said.

Don’t, don’t go looking around, messing with things. You won’t understand everything you see.

Suggestions Received

I do think that we should head back. The hidden basement is suspicious, but it’s unlikely that Eifre is equipped todo anything with it, if there even is anything down there at the moment (such as a prisoner or whatever). Maune may be able to, but keeping watch of us in the mean time could complicate things.

Take potion and give it to bleeding lady. Fairly confident she’s the sort to booby‍-trap her doors or such.

I say fuck’em. Let’s explore the basement

[bonk emoji]

we have no reasons to distrust tliss, who knows her friend better than we do, so l can only envision her question as a test for us, and she wouldn’t ask it if she didn’t already want to peek into the basement, and since it’s between the two of them, l’d voice it as “personally, l’d trust mau to defend herself on her own and tell us everything on her own terms, but my gut tells me not to counter your already made decision to look at what she wouldn’t tell”

Part 9

“This is a test,” you say to your mother, your antennae twisting and untwisting nervously.

She arches an antennae. A pause, and then, “Why do you think that?”

“Because…” You consider the intent way she has her raptorials held, the determination she reeks of. Would she be asking you this if she didn’t want to do something already? “You said you’re testing my judgment as a vesperbane. Well, you’re testing it against something, right? Seeing if I live up to standards the stewartry would hold me up to?” And if this was a test, the correct response couldn’t be pointing that out. Had you already lost?

She sighs low. “No, Eifre.” Her antennae uncurl and splay outward, as if she could smell the correct way to phrase her next words. “This is a failing of your training, I suppose. Tests and standards to hew to, histories and logics to memorize. Being a vesperbane is nothing like that.”

“What is it like, then?”

Tlista’s head leans back, her gaze rising toward ceiling, perhaps seeing beyond. “I’ll say this: when, if, you’re faced with a situation with a correct answer, you aren’t going to need training to see that. And I’ll say this‍ ‍—‍ call it a hint if you like —: we are not in one of those situations.”

This calms your twisting antennae a little bit, but uncertainty does not leave your face, and you don’t venture a response.

“Dear, we are each born with but a little piece of reason,” your mother says warmly. “You’re old enough to use yours. I want to hear what it has to say.”

With that, your legs slack a little bit, and you ease up. Your antennae tap each other as you begin thinking. A binary choice, a dilemma. Take the potion to the witch, or look into her basement.

“I am as interested in the fruits of your reasoning as the growth itself. Think aloud for me.”

“Okay. I think we have two choices: save Maune, or see what in her basement.”

“Save the witch?”

That trips your sprinting thoughts. “Wha?”

“I know you haven’t forgotten everything Maune’s said.” Mother curls up one of her maxillary palps into a knowing smile like you’ve missed something.

And it only takes you a few moments to recall. “My daughter said you think there is a way to save you.” “Two ways… But I have a preference.”.

“What did she mean by that? Two ways?”

You can see her palps twitching against her pars stridens. She pauses, a considered silence. Cede another hint, or keep the test results pure?

She lets out a breath, and finally says, “The witch of the ambrosia woods. Consider why she might have that name.” A pause, then, “The weevils are fond of her. I doubt they’d let her die this easily. Maune would rather not resort to their methods, which could be for a variety of reasons.”

Tlista stops there, and you’re sure it’s deliberate.

“So, rather than saving her, we’d really be saving her from some unknown but maybe not good saving by the ambrosia weevils?”

Tlista notably does not nod, but watches.

You weigh the options. “Maune is in pain, and will be until we go and bring the potion to her. She asked us to do this, and is expecting us to be doing it and nothing else. And yet, she’s a defect. It’s deeply wrong to assist defects. It’s counter to the Dream, and vesperbanes are supposed to uphold the dream!” You stop to draw in a breath. Your mother nods.

“So, what would a vesperbane do? We’ve managed to infiltrate the lair of a defect! We can report this, there’s even vesperbanes in the area we can report to,” you say, and Tlista cringes. “A vesperbane would gather all the information they could, which would entail looking into the basement. But, dealing with a defect, why wouldn’t they place traps? Oh no, I don’t know anything about disarming traps, not even spotting them.” Your pitch rises on that last sentence. You bite a palp, and after a moment Tlista places a foretarsus on your head, scratching you between your ocelli.

“You can continue, it’s okay.”

“Well, you told those vesperbanes that you were looking after the ambrosia witch. And, um, you and Maune seem to know each other? And she seems… kinda nice? It makes me wonder if we shouldn’t be treating her necessarily as an enemy defect.” All defects are enemies, genius.

Tlista looks down, thought playing out in flexes of her antennae and in the twitches of her maxillae. “I… knew her, before she went missing. We completed a few missions together as fiends, and created a few novel endowments. She was, is, a genius. You can tell by how young she is. I don’t even remember if she’s made imago yet. If so, just barely? Even now, she reminds me of…” Tlista stops herself, shakes her head, and finally lifts her gaze back up. “We were never close; I was an imago while she was still a nymph. But I respected her intelligence, and she was… helpful, in my poisons research. I gave her direction occasionally, insights or questions that guided her own studies. I… wonder, sometimes if she would have gone defect if we’d never known each other.” She shakes her head again, and this time resumes in cadence. “I keep meandering. I hope that answers your questions, dear.”

You nod. And it feels like you’ve outlined the extent of the issues, those points in favor of each, and those not.

Standing here, peering up at your mother, it’s hard not to recall those vanishingly few times she had the time and energy to teach you something. It was basically cooking, whittling away at the stalks of plants, crushing chitin leftover from meals into fine powders, or boiling foul and acrid liquids. Sometimes your mother would name the things you’ve made; vinegar, spices, obscure soaps.

And it’s metaphors, informed by that practice, that your mother returns to again and again. Whittling away, grinding down, and boiling away. Reducing, simplifying and distilling ideas down to their core.

When it came down to it, there were two options you have. Bring the potion and do what Maune has asked you to do out of compassion, respecting what she’s asked you not to do and disregarding what that nagging vesperbane voice inside you insists. Or: Look in her basement, out of suspicion and duty.

It’s hard to keep ignoring a thought that you keep thinking around, unwilling to face. That Tlista’s dilemma, and the insistent pull the second option has on you, isn’t just curiosity.

“What if…” You’re hesitant to say it. “What if Maune has something bad down there? Something… sinister?” Could she? She seemed so nice.

“Of course. I’m considering the same thing.” There was a breeziness to her tone. You could read why. This was the premise of the conversation, didn’t you realize?

You twine your antennae together. You couldn’t deny, either, that there was a part of you that wasn’t much concerned that there might be something sinister, or that Maune would suffer for your choice. As much as you were, or wanted to be, a vesperbane, you were also wanted to be a scholar. Driven by deepest curiosity, it itched that there might be anything in that basement, and no matter what it was sure to be interesting. There was pleasure in knowing, and there was pleasure in sharing. Why hide something, why bar someone from learning?

“She said we wouldn’t understand everything we’d see.” You tried not to take that as an offense to your faculties of understanding.

“She’s also a defect,” Tlista says in a tone of reminder.

A few moments filled with thought. “I’m at a loss,” you complain to your mother. “If there’s nothing bad in the basement, we should just take the potion to Maune. But if there is something dreadful down there, we shouldn’t be helping the defect.” You throw up your raptorials. “But the only way to find out which is to go down there! It’s such a tangle.”

“Could I make an observation?”

You’d welcome any hint. “Yes, please!”

“If you really thought there was a chance there was nothing, or something obviously innocent below, you wouldn’t be so conflicted about the choice. It would be a simple matter to glance in and determine such. You’re afraid. It’s not a choice between acting immediately or learning more, you see it instead as a choice between acting as you’d like, in ignorance, or learning something you expect to make you not like the first choice. This isn’t a binary, and yet you see it as one.”

“When you put it that way…” Your maxillae draw in tight. “It doesn’t seem like much of a choice at all, does it? It’s obvious how a hero would act.

“If I may make another observation?” You just stare flatly at her. She laughs once in her thorax, and then, “You’re still seeing it as a binary.”

“How?”

“There are two of us, Eifre. We don’t have to act unilaterally.”

“So you mean for one of us to go into the basement while the other delivers the potion?”

“I mean for me to go downstairs‍ ‍—‍ you said yourself there might be traps‍ ‍—‍ while you deliver the potion. How does that sound, Eifre?”

“It sounds…” you start. “Like exactly what I said it was! This was a test, and that’s the right answer!”

“Not at all. If you trust Maune, I will accompany you. And if you really want to descend with me…” Tlista takes a deep breath, and then looks you up and down, and then looks you in the eye, “If that’s what you really want, I will allow it. The choice remains yours, and we are presented no correct answers.”

Just as you’re about to say something, there comes from behind a hard bonk right against your head. You turn just slightly, and the offender comes into your periphery. The crow familiar, Reva. You aren’t even surprised the thing knew exactly how to stay inside a mantis’s blindspot.

Turning further, you swat a raptorial at the crow. It dodges fluidly, flying up to your face and pecking right above your mandibles.

“Ow, what the why!”

“Blood,” the crow squawks harshly high.

You feel something pressed into your other raptorial ‍-‍- it’s the thick red potion, your mother is giving it to you.

“Your choice,” she repeats.

The bird pecks you again, in the same spot, and you feel it piercing sharply into your chitin.

Your choice, and you don’t have the time for your usual deliberation.

Is there more to consider, though? You were conflicted, and your mother pointed out a way for you to have your mealworm and eat it too.

“You have to tell me if there is something neat down there.” Or… something not so neat.

Your mother folds her antennae, a sad curl in her maxillae. “I will promise nothing of the sort.”

“Why not!” You flare your forelegs open, and flash the eyespot patterns of your inner raptorials.

She only shakes her head, and does not move a palp to respond. Tlista lifts a leg before, as if forgetting something, dropping it again and placing a dactyl on the potion glass.

“Remember this,” she starts emphatically, “keep the glass as still as you can, never shake it. Touch as little of your flesh to it as possible, keep it from growing warm. Do not bring it near those black pools you passed outside. Do not open it.”

She stares, and you nod quickly, and then she steps past you, walking carefully toward the corner.

But you turn away, and start toward the cabin’s door.

There’s a tug on the potion. The bird has its beak gripped around the neck of the bottle, and is trying to rip it away from you.

“What do you think you’re doing?” You punctuate the question with your other raptorial closing hard around the bird, spines touching flesh through feathers. By that threat of piercing, you pull the bird off enough for it to open that beak. You’ve realized thats where the sound is coming from. There’s no palps to stridulate. It talks by breathing? Like a little roach…

“Slow, too slow. Master bleeds,” it says.

“Did you not just hear my mother say never shake the glass? Idiot bird.” You smack it with a midleg.

“Master bleeds. You are too slow,” it reiterates.

“I’m going!”

“Then go.”

You’re outside, walking the path away from the cabin, brisk as you can manage. The bird follows after you, nipping at your femurs. It had been too preoccupied worrying about about its master and the potion you hold to think about your mother remaining in the cabin. (She obviously had the sense to not do anything until you left.)

You’re sure this path goes back to Maune. It had to! It hadn’t branched much at all. That you could tell walking up it, at least.

So why did the trampled dirt give way to a bush here?

With a suddenness that was almost explosive, two big pink centipedes burst from the tall grass on either side of the path, and squirm toward the bush. Mandibles bite into the branches on both sides, and together they pull the bush laterally. It opens down the middle, and the leaves and the light itself seems to bend and bow as a figure emerges.

All throughout there was a growing buzz, and it now reaches a crescendo as arrives half a swarm of moths, all wielding tiny organic orbs. They might have been kin of the glowing fruit littering the vale, but they were tiny enough the tarsus‍-sized moths outsized them. They cast a pale pink light from the sides where they arrive. The direction of the light gives the figure a curious appearance, with shadows in strange places.

It is not a mantis. If you had only a second to look, you would have noticed that, and you might have mistakenly said the figure’s body had more in common with the ugly oblong oval‍-shape of roaches than the elegant slenderness of mantids. With a moment’s thought more, you see this is not a roach. You aren’t even half an imago (yet!) but the roaches are barely larger than you. This figure? It’s big. Mother would have to stand on twos to look down on it.

Fighting poor lighting and surprise, you managed to finally find the face, and that’s enough visual purchase for the rest to slot into place. Face too angular and soft to be a mantis, eyes too bright and black to be a roach. Long, feathery, branching antennae dance above the head, and long dactyls flex on the end of deft tarsi.

It spreads its wings, and there is no doubt; that shifting prismatic mosaic glittering on the elytra? That sweet, cloying smell that has snuck up on you?

You stand before an ambrosia weevil, and you don’t know if you should scream or cheer.

It does not speak‍ ‍—‍ can it speak? Your mother called the weevils stupid, but now you can’t believe it‍ ‍—‍ yet for one immeasurable moment, you stand mesmerized by the beatific instant rendered by the buzzing moths holding glowing orbs in a perfectly random configuration, by the playful centipedes splayed belly‍-up on the ground, and the ambrosia weevil, and to you, something is communicated.

“I ‍-‍- yalew, rrenui ha mew yalui?”

(Was it the weevil that spoke? Or you?)

The weevil spreads its wings further, and it too begins to buzz, lower than the moths, majestic, and then the weevil takes off, flying above you and away. You do not look to watch it go, and you know not where it went. The ambrosia weevil is gone.

The centipedes have rolled over and sauntered back into the grass. The moths scatter fleeing or playing or seeking food. The bush‍ ‍—‍ it was an ent‍ ‍—‍ scrambles back into the night, and the crow stops pecking at your heels, and it won’t start again.

You take a step forward, and there is a single brave moth that remains in your path. It does not wield a glowing berry, but its six legs cling to a ring. The thing flutters right up into your face, and then it drops the ring. It plunks against your cardo, and it rolls down your face to land in your instinctively upraised, cupped tarsi.

The thing is made of wood. Not carved; there is no seam, there is no internal tree‍-flesh visible. If oaks grew in the shape of a torus, a young one would look like this.

You slip the ring on. It fits you perfectly. Inside, it has the softness of a baby bush’s stem.

You don’t feel any different with the ring on. The bird taps you with its beak, and reminds you to start walking again.

The vale sounds quieter in the wake of what happened, but it isn’t. There is the creeking sound of prowling ents. There are chirrups and calls of whatever games and politics the lesser insects get up to. The black pools make no sound, but you can hear that lack of sound as you pass. Truly, the vale is no different. The solemnness lingers, but it’s fading fast.

You find the witch again among the tree roots and the waving flowerings. Something has left several of the clear fruits brimming with glow‍-fluid to lining in rows the wide roots of the trees. In this light, you get another glimpse of the gaping holes left in the defect by the nerve‍-ooze.

You can see flesh inching back together under the direction of pale branching tendrils, like roots.

“Maune?” you call.

The bird is your echo. “Maune! Maune! Bloood!” It looks expectantly at you.

Slowly, you lift the glass of viscous, writhing red liquid which you had gingerly held with three legs.

But you don’t get time to hand it over. Two dark, fleshy limbs that might be tentacles or arms crawl forth from the place where the witch’s abdomen meets thorax. They do not look like trees. Spiky and gnarled with chitin and bone, the limbs reach out and brace again the ground, and then they push.

The witch of the ambrosia woods rises with the sound of a deracinated tree. Her pale compound eyes stare into you, and her maxillae are shaking in fever or anxiety or anger.

“Took ya long enough, kid.”

A third limb emerges from behind her, and forcefully it spears one of its spikes precisely through the glass bottle. It’s ripped from your grasp, contents sloshing wildly.

“Malum,” comes that creaking voice of the bird. It hops beside its master, and then it rises on a leg she lowered for it. Perched on the mantis, the bird opens its wings, and two hard irregular forms drop. When did it get those? Where did it get those?

“Ah, Reva, you’re so thoughtful.” A midleg scratches the bird’s head, and it coos cutely.

At a glimpse, those forms remind you of the ootheca baby mantids crawl out from, or the chrysalises you’ve seen described in scrolls about lesser insects. If someone said it looked to them like an acorn, or a pinecone, you’d wouldn’t call them mad. But despite, you doubt the things are of plant or animal origin.

A glimpse is all you get. Soon the defect pluck it and tosses them in her mouth. They’re swallowed whole, no chewing.

The bird indicates the third of the seeds it brought.

“No. I can hardly handle four, Reva.”

The bird cocks its head. “Termites,” it says. Not in the voice you’re used to hearing out of it. You wouldn’t call it Maune’s voice, but an imitation? Yes.

“Not worth the risk,” is all she says before she returns attention to glass spear on the tentacle. Her tentacle? She jiggles it, and pours the red liquid in her mouth. Well, it pours as much as it drips down like slime. She only drinks half, and takes the rest and pours it on her wounds.

You watch the flesh quiver and warp where the red slime lands.

“Never seen a health pot at work? Newborn little nymph.” She seems to regain her strength by the minutes, and soon she shifts weight off of the tentacles onto shaking legs.

“What are those things?” you ask.

She laughs. “I’m less surprised you haven’t seen a myxokora before. No rangers in that podunk little town of yours, is there? A shame, and a mystery. But I suppose the stewartry is starving for bodies again.” She waves one of the tentacles. “It’s a trick all vesperbanes pick up sooner or later. The wretched raptorials.”

Maune’s gaze wanders, taking in, finally, that you are alone.

“Your mother, where is she?” There’s a twinge to her voice. Fear? For Tlista, or of Tlista? It’s something you watch closely, wondering if it’s revealing feelings about whatever secret she’s hiding.

“I—” You have excellent composure, and you have a head for social situations. Maybe it’s not in your best to answer straightfowardly. “She sent me to give you the potion.”

“So she stayed,” the witch says. A tentacle flies out, swinging and slamming into the bark of the tree she rested under. Little bits of wood fly away. “I told you not to poke arou‍-” And then she notices you. You’ve shrinked back, and eye the other tentacles with fear.

“It’s not your fault kid,” her says. “You couldn’t have stopped her. You couldn’t have talked her out of it. It’s fine. Everything ‍-‍- everything will turn out fine, I’m sure of it.”

“Even the termite stuff?”

“Even the termites. The stewartry takes these things seriously. You and I don’t factor into it.” She peers at you, and then leans a little closer. You can almost make out the hairs on her maxillae. “It’s not all bad, anyway. I’ve wanted to speak with you, alone, and this is quite the excuse.”

“With… me? Why?”

“You want to be a vesperbane, don’t you? Some kind of story‍-told hero?” Nod. “How’s that going?”

“It’s… not going well. Hervanian Alcha got inducted when she was just third instar! But it’s been four years since then and examinations every year and every year I get rejected. I’m about to be fifth instar soon and mother got inducted when she was fifth instar and if I get rejected again I’m completely hopeless.”

“She told you that?”

“No! But it’s obvious, I can figure it out on my own.” Your antennae curl up into little loops.

“You think your mom will find you completely hopeless if you don’t get accepted two years before standard?”

“Well, I don’t know. But I’m the best in the village! How could I not be inducted yet?” Unless you weren’t the best.

“I can help you.”

Your antennae pop out to attention again. You look up at the ambrosia witch.

“How?”

She smiles. It’s a broad, wicked thing. “There’s nothing stopping an intrepid defect such as myself from giving you the gift of the vespers. The how is obvious once you understand even two ounces of vesper theory.”

“You mean, you can make me a vesperbane? Right now?”

“Are you a really vesperbane if you aren’t countenanced by the stewartry? Or are you no better than a defect? Doesn’t matter. Casting black nerve? Cultivating blood and root? The vespertine arts, in their myriad forms? Yes, I can offer that.”

She’s also a defect.

“Wouldn’t that be, uh, extremely illegal??”

The bird is migrating up her arm to perch at the shoulder where foreleg met prothorax. Maune pets it.

She says, “And how would they catch you?”

“Uhh, next time I take the examinations probably? There are always vesperbanes there, and percipients.”

You see a maxillae twitch at the mention of percipients.

“You’re going to be gunning for stewartry inductment no matter what, aren’t you?” Maune shakes her head. “Look, you’re a‍ ‍—‍ you’d be a third generation vesperbane, wouldn’t you? Tlista’s mother was an insignificant wretch who resigned after a few years. But Tlista was the poison queen, and was on prowl to become arch‍-fiend after Dlenam, the bastard, until‍ ‍—‍ it didn’t turn out that way. But still, they’re going to recognize her name, especially if they’re coming to Shatalek. And the thing everyone knows about second generation and onward vesperbanes is that their bodies and essences are‍ ‍—‍ sometimes‍ ‍—‍ already warped by the vespers. It’s how Clans start. And it’s the perfect cover! Just say it’s a blood secret, and they won’t question it. Nobody understands blood secrets, and looking too hard pisses off the clans.”

“So, you make me a secret vesperbane, and if I ever get caught I say it’s my clan bloodline?” You’re still unsure.

Maybe that shows in your tone, because next she’s giving you another smile. “I think I’ve got the measure of you, kid. Tell me, what do you know about ambrosia weevils? I’m the greatest expert the heartlands ever had. Even if you get inducted, you’ll never get what I’m offering.”

“I’ve, only heard stories. Weird forest beings that nymphnap and steal, and give gifts that curse and change you, and make plants grow feral and disobedient.” You pause, and I unsure about your next words, if they would spoil something sacred. “I saw one, walking over here.”

“You… you saw one? It appeared before you?” Those six words had wicked away so much of her confidence and bravado. She’s incredulous, indignant even. But she recovers enough to say, “Do you now what that means? Do you want to?”

You hesitate.

“Eifre, be my student, if only for a few months. You have potential, I’m sure of it. I can make you strong enough to go anywhere you want in the stewartry you want. I could have done it myself, if I didn’t throw it all away for something higher.” She pauses, and smiles. “The Kindling Dream is a nightmare. But I’ll sing you to sleep, if you like.”

You look away, as though not staring into Maune’s inviting confidence would clear your thinking. Instead your mind lights on the trees lined with fruit like little stars, and all the weird, impossible creatures that dwell in the layered canopy, and below it. It would be a shame to never see this again, wouldn’t it? To never learn all the secrets and wonders they live here?

“Tell me, have you ever heard of a druid?”

“I haven’t.”

“Exactly. I want to change that.”

And the choice lies before you. Accept Maune’s offer, and become a vesperbane in secret? You don’t know how lenient the vindicators will be if caught. defects are the very antithesis of the Dream and the heartlands; and you would become one, if deniably. But you don’t know if you can stand being denied the power and knowledge of the vespers much longer. And with the threat of the termite mound looming, might it be better to have power to save mantids sooner, rather than later?

But a treacherous part of your mind considers the inverse. You could exploit this, bring a defect to justice. Surely if a mundane nymph brought down a defect who’d run amok for years, someone in the capital would take notice? Someone might finally think you’re worth inducting.

If you trust your mother, maybe it’s worth it to tell her, and see what she says. But should you be that open, when she’s clearly alright with keeping secrets from you? And wouldn’t it ruin everything if she decided she didn’t want you pursuing this path, when it very well could lead to something great?

While you stand and think, the witch of the ambrosia woods settles back on her bed of flowers, and watches you, familiar mirroring her gaze.

Suggestions Received

Anyway, I’m leaning pretty strongly towards accepting Maune’s offer, but that we should make plans in case any part of the arrangement breaks down.

Plans for if our mom finds out and disapproves. Plans for if Maune is experimenting on us and we need to escape. Plans for if the stewartry find out through someone other than our mom. Etc.

So, illicit untapped power on the one bespined hand, staying the right side of justice and society on the other. I’d advocate deferring on the decision here until discovering what (if anything she deems share‍-worthy) Mom finds in the basement. If it’s something that gives very good reason to distrust or at least keep Maune at arm’s length, then turning her down as a mentor seems like the best course. If nothing of that sort, then go the Sith route and embrace dark potential. That ring of wood (which was both an excellent and EXTREMELY OMINOUS scene) screams “you’re about to get neck deep in something and boy howdy isn’t it a shame that a mantis breathes through their abdomen.”

l’d be a law abiding citizen and won’t accept the offer right then and there, not because their law is any how worth obeying (l haven’t heard enough about the dream and why the defects are being bad beyond classifying the entire law thing as superstitions), but because the fishy recluse, beyond having good intentions, is still fishy and hidey and we need to know about her more before accepting the life changing decisions blindly, not before we all have a nice get together at her house and hearing out what shouldn’t we be privy of because of maybe not understanding it, because that’s concerning she should earn our trust before she could earn our consent for being trained, for example, how about she tells us about what do beetles give and what their gifts usually do, also try repeating to her what the beetle had said (and since we have good memory, we clearly remember the phrase enough to convey, right?), but let’s not tell that beetle actually gifted us with a ring until we see her being open and willing to earn our trust, otherwise we’d better ask tliss about these events either way, a good answer to that is we don’t know enough to answer yes yet, we want to learn more before accepting special treatment

I say we take the deal. I want to learn more about what our defect friend has to offer

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 a renegade? 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’s late, 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?

“You could, 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. Why is the 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. This is the Dream. It never went astray, it was never thwarted.”

You clench your mandible. “But who would want this? Who would want all the villages destroyed by renegades, all of the world‍-scars and exclusions‍ ‍—‍ nobody could prefer that?” 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, “You can’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’t nothing or you wouldn’t be acting like this. I feel like I should know! I was in her cabin, I was alone with 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,”‍ ‍—‍ then you don’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 eight years? 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 certain hauteur when 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. What is known 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 looking created in 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’m worried.”

“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’m not a 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’m really tired and so much has happened today and it’s dangerous stuff.” You consider for a moment, and then add, “I don’t know if I want 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:

WE KNOW.
We speak with the full authority of the Pantheca’s Vesperbane Stewarty.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to seek training with Maune, and cultivate her trust.
Further orders would be forthcoming.
You would be absolved of all consequences of this and any act necessary to maintain the relationship.
If you doubt the veracity of this note, trust the black brain.
Ask your mother what it means.

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?

End of Arc

Apocrypha given

Do we have any idea what means of remote observation exist, and whether an Enervate‍-camera (or audio recorder) can be created?

The scrolls you’ve read as a part of prevesper training were always damnably clean of any real detail of actual vesperbane practice. That said, it’s hard to have any real awareness of the world without knowing of clan Brismati, one of the largest, oldest vesperbane families, famous for not least of all, techniques that let them see for miles distant, or even through walls.

Outside of the assigned reading, the closest thing to a source you have is the stories you’ve read, but the heroes in those tend to use cooler, flashier techniques like moondragon invocation, or the wretched raptorials, nothing as subtle as a sensory technique.

Your mother is insistent to leave your vesperbane education to when you’re older, and better yet, to the stewartry. She’s told you stories, but any hint of capability tends to be incidental, like when she speaks of her teacher who “looked like a solar system when umbraconjuring”.

The truth is you’re woefully uninformed in this regard, and you just don’t know.

Do we know what the white dragon is?

This actually something your assigned reading has gone over! There are no vesperbats in the heartlands, but when there were, mantids had fought a neverending war against them to be free of their enslavement and subjugation.

Many vesperbats had their biologies warped by the vespers, often losing their fur. Resemblances to other kinds of creatures wasn’t uncommon‍ ‍—‍ reptiles among them.

But ‘dragon’ was a special title only given to the rare few vesperbats who had foresaken the bats’ empire and fought against them in service of the wingless rebellion. They were the only bats allowed to remain in the heartlands in the end.

The white dragon was the only dragon in specific you’ve heard of: a fallen titan who recognized the cruelty of bats when a betrayer stole his power and he struggled to rebuild it. He had sacrificed himself at the last, greatest battle of the war, against the king of all the bats, and this is cited as one of the reasons the battle was a success.

When the Third Dominion arose, all the of the dragons were slain. The assigned reading says it was a precaution‍ ‍—‍ if these bats had betrayed their own kind, why would they not do the same to us? (But you had checked out many scrolls from the scriptorium, and one proposed that the Third Dominion was motivated by welkinist prejudice: they were opposed to the rebellion, and the slaughter was revenge. You’re not sure you understand why they would do that.)

Now, in the era of peace, there are no more dragons.

Part A1

In Wentalel, Marka stares into her watery reflection on the surface of the park’s pond. The black nerve that writhes across the blue sky frames her face. Or frames those garments that truly frame her face: the antenna‍-band bearing heraldic insignias above, the horns guarding her antennae’s base, and the antiquated shadowsteel helmet that she wears, visors up.

She likes to think of herself as a modern day knight. There are no knights in the heartlands‍ ‍—‍ haven’t been since the Third Dominion. The alliance that came before, though, had burnished itself with hope and heroism, something reified in the knights envespered. They really thought of vesperbanes as heroes, back then. Idols to admire. Warriors blessed by ancestors and saints. They really thought there were saints, back then.

Marka is yanked from her reverie by a yelp. In the fringe of her vision, she sees the motion: it’s a father wrenching a nymph up and back, his compound eyes staring at her, hard and dark. She can tell by his reaction that he sees the cloth tied between her antennae, bearing a metal plate, revealing what she is. The nymph, though, is looking lower, and not just because it’s smaller.

Down she looks, and Marka sees a dodecahedron of stiff yet flexible fibers. It bounces like a air‍-filled ball would, but won’t pop when held in raptorial spines. It settles to an uneasy stop less than a body‍-length beside her.

Even held in the father’s arms, the nymph is reaching out for it. It’s clear what happened: the kid chased after the toy, but got snatched up when he saw the nymph tended closer toward her. Toward the vesperbane.

Her maxillary palps press tight against her mandibles. It’s not good to show her feelings so blatantly‍ ‍—‍ but being here again has loosened her hold on herself.

She crouches down to pick up the kid’s toy, and, holding it, she pauses a moment to let them guess her intention. And guess they fail: she can see the nymph’s face start to fall, and the father’s raptorials clench. She makes a motion like she’s about to throw, and the father braces himself‍ ‍—‍ like she would try to hit him. The nymph, though, perks up, and holds out their raptorials. Marka decided that moment to throw.

She’s a vesperbane. Her throw is competent, landing right in the kid’s legs with velocity low enough it wouldn’t hurt if it wasn’t caught.

The nymph makes an excited noise and waves, toy in spine. But the father takes that moment to turn and leave, without a word of thanks. Marka knows by the way his head is cocked as he departs that he is watching her all the while.

Marka returns her gaze to the still pond and the sky’s black nerve writhing in reflection. But there’s no peace to be found there, anymore. She gets up.

Far across the pond rises an edifice of chiseled stone and carved wood. Timber costs less and has to travel less this far south‍ ‍—‍ a few day’s travel from the great ambrosia woods‍ ‍—‍ but you still didn’t build buildings of the stuff, these days.

(And more than just one grand building is wrought in this expensive style‍ ‍—‍ it’s mirrored, in intent if not quality, by all the ones surrounding, houses and shops alike.)

Peer long enough trying to divine the meaning of all its spear‍-sharp spires, severe arches, and stones engraved with letters of the Pure Script, and you may realize what’s up.

That vast building, easily as tall as twenty mantids, is Wentalel’s chapter of the Church of Blue Welkin.

And it’s why Marka came back.

She spends a time studying the design. She considers herself a student of history‍ ‍—‍ now. She wasn’t the last time her eyes fell on the Church.

She casts her gaze around. The Church imposes and looms, and she can’t stare long without the urge to look away.

This, where she waits, isn’t an old‍-town district, not really. Wentalel was here long before the church. But the buildings are made to give that impression anyway, of something ancient that fickle modern times have grown around like a fungus. It’s convincing.

Marka pulls out her watch. The outer case of the timepiece is stamped with the mark of welkin, and when she clicks it open, the thing‍ ‍—‍ a mess of gears, struts, and an enervate core‍ ‍—‍ is crammed with vindicators’ engineering.

She snaps the piece closed and returns it.

It’s not yet noon.

In less than an hour, her appointed time will come. She’ll set foot in the Church once more. Best case, she’ll finally get all the answers she wants. Worst case, she’ll at least, finally, get closure.

Will she catch fire when stepping onto church grounds? As a fifth‍-instar nymph, the hierophants had pronounced it and she’d known it to be true. As a seventh‍-instar, she realized it was a lie just like everything else they preached. Now, at the cusp of teneral, several courses of enervate physics in her gut, she wonders once again.

Her raptorials shake. She’s unsteady on her feet. She makes her head turn and her gaze focus on anything else, some distraction. The throngs of people walking the street. One of them wore the all‍-encompassing robes of a percipient, surrounded by a mini‍-phalanx of civilians dressed as Wentalel guards. They looked about as appropriate as bunnies guarding a vesperbat.

They marched‍ ‍—‍ except the percipient, whose robes went so low they looked to float‍ ‍—‍ toward the Church.

Marka growls or sighs. Her distraction took her right back to what she hoped to be distracted from.

This was all a formality. A game. A scheduled appointment? For her, at the Church of Wentalel? As if the one she’d come to meet wouldn’t see her name and remember exactly who she was. As if she didn’t have intimate history here, like ink stains on the record‍-paper.

But this fiction let her pretend this was an impersonal inquiry. If she hewed to the ritual of the appointment, she could be anyone. If her nerves break and she goes now, familiarity could be assumed, of course, and she wouldn’t have to wait. Wasn’t like they could be busy.

Marka starts walking, to clear her head, a quick stride away from the Church. She’ll explore the city.

Not far away from the faux old‍-town, the architecture becomes more modern. Bleached banestone buildings that can be thrown up in a few days. These particular buildings rise high and brim with occupants like tenements, modular designs stacked on top of each other like nymphs’ toys.

Everywhere, poles and other things to hold stick off the sides of the buildings, fit for climbing or perching. Listless mantids line the faces of the buildings, some of them so unmoving (in sleep?) that they seem like adornments.

The road Marka follows continues under an overhang where a different road crosses above. As she passes under it, she startles at a small mantis swinging down from one of those perch‍-poles, motions lithe and graceful, landing lightly in front of her. They do not block her path, but she was in danger of clipping them if she kept straight.

“Hullo~” they say. As soon as she hears the high, lilting voice, she mentally corrects the pronoun to ‘he’. The golden yellow mantis stands two thirds her height, and when his antennae rise, she sees their length accentuated with ribbons and setae extentions.

He… His abdomen is covered‍ ‍—‍ ‘covered’‍ ‍—‍ by a breathable, revealing fishnet dress. Flared sleeves fall over his lower legs, but don’t actually close, meaning some motions free glimpses of bare chitin.

He looks like a courtesan. Or‍ ‍—‍ an unwelcome line of thought continues, cast in her father’s tenor‍ ‍—‍ he looks like a damn whore. The only piece out of place is the cap over his right eye. The eyecap was the sort a grizzled adventurer might have, except his had a floralwen pattern woven into it, and flowing straps integrated it into the rest of his… attire.

A slender dactyl reaches out and touches the upper part of her foreleg. She jumps, but the touch is soft. Her eyes flush. She’s not wearing full armor because the Plains Southern are hot. His digit glides along her chitin, brushing against her setae, and stops at the thickness of her joints, her muscles evident.

“You’re from out of the city? I don’t recognize you. And you seem the type to be… rather distinctive~”

“I did live here, long ago. But I left to pursue, uh, justice and adventure.”

“Mmm, sounds so noble. I think… you’re a vesperbane, are you?”

The question was asked in an unexpected tone‍ ‍—‍ a mix of true curiosity, yet also polite humor like an answer was assumed.

She says, “Yes, I serve the wardens. Countenanced for four years.”

“Heh, that armor really gives it away. Still, even among vesperbane not too many have the brazenness to trot around dressed like a Third Dominion Deathknight.” He withdraws his dactyl, and it goes to rest on his labrum, and his palps run along it.

Marka straightens up, raptorials cleching closed with force that probably wasn’t enough to crush thoraxes. “I am not dressed like a Deathknight! Deathknights had thorax‍-plates marked with Oosifea’s brand! Their ornamentation was always colored deep green like hemolymph or bloodred; mine is the color of blue welkin! Deathknight armor’s black iron did not reflect the light even when clear of enervate, but this is vindicator shadowsteel!”

“Calm down honey, I believe you. I can see your visor doesn’t have the eight pointed star the Dominion liked so much.” He gives a reasurrant curl of his palps. “I know how the old alliance dressed its warriors, but I also know that most can’t tell the difference. Don’t you?”

“There is a difference.”

“Sure, sure. It’s just‍ ‍—‍ you know it was just a little tease, right? That’s all.” The tarsus of his other foreleg pats her cleched raptorial.

“How does a courtesan know so much about imperial history, anyway?” It strikes her as a rude, untoward quesiton even as she asks. But she really wants to know.

When his palps curl into a smile this time, it’s with maxillae opening, dentation visible. “Oh, but how much entertainment can I be if I can’t carry a stimulating conversation?”

“That’s fair, I suppose,” she responds blankly.

When Marka had fled her family to find a home among the wardens, she had made a point of disagreeing with them on much as possible‍ ‍—‍ embracing Aromethia’s creed, and liberating herself of any influence her family might’ve had on her thinking.

Some things were harder to disagree on than others, though. Few things seemed as impure as a body that was bought and sold like an common object. But Marka had tried to understand‍ ‍—‍ and she saw that the salacious profession was an indictment of the society that allowed it to happen, rather than the tiercel himself, who was a victim forced in by circumstance. By the Dream, it’d be abolished, like the Protected castes were, like debt‍-bondage will be.

Part of chivalry‍ ‍—‍ Marka’s interpretation of chivalry‍ ‍—‍ was not to curl her palps in disgust at the mantis before her. He had honor, he was still something to be protected like any other male.

She kind of wanted him to touch her again. So she could prove how chivalrous she was and not turn away.

“Soo, what brings you back to Wentalel? Come to make songs of your knightly adventures? I know how to sing as well, you know.”

“It’s‍ ‍—‍ business. Personal stuff. I wouldn’t want to… bore you with it.”

He laughs. “Oh, worry not. I won’t pry.” He affixes her with a significant look. “Hey, do you know the tavern on Wetmoth Street? If later on you need to… unwind, say‍ ‍—‍ I’m sure it gets tiring, being a vesperbane‍ ‍—‍ I always have a room there, and I welcome visitors. Ask the bartender about D.”

“I‍ ‍—‍ I will keep that in mind.”

“Mmm, you’re a handsome lady, and I wouldn’t mind spending some more time with you. But I’ll leave you to your noble business.” The male steps aside, and makes for the tarsholds to climb back up.

“Oh!” he calls, partway up a wall, “just a word of warning‍ ‍—‍ pass it around, if you will?‍ ‍—‍ you should avoid the Fevalel district today. Err, I suppose a vesperbane knight like yourself wouldn’t need it, but‍ ‍—‍ you’re better served away from trouble, no?”

And with that cryptic warning, the courtesan disappears farther up the wall, and Marka continues her walk.

Wentalel has enough sharp turns that you smell the market before you see it. A roasted, baked, seasoned, boiled, fresh, raw smell. It sells things besides food, yes, but it’s rare you go there without wanting it, and rarer to leave without any.

It has sheafs of honeyloaf hot from the oven. It has slowly cooking roasts of beetles and lizards. It has fruits. What catches many eyes was a large region set aside where someone had vanquished a gigantic centipede and displayed the evidence, and its enourmous mass sprawls across several tables. Tagmata are being sold off for sums that even Marka, with her vesperbane stipend, twisted antennae at.

There’s a bright cacophony of mantid voices and their instruments‍ ‍—‍ the ringing hammers from a smithy, the clacks of crates and barrels changing owners‍ ‍—‍ but one sound cuts through the noise, only for a brief moment, which Marka thinks sounds like a cry for help, or protestations of one in pain. She’d heard enough of them in her life.

Her pace quickens to bring her toward the market, and eyes search around. She quickly spots two points of interest.

On one of the walls, a mantis garbed in dark clothes hangs from the poles. Trained, she easily recognizes the form concealed in their robes as a weapon. They climb briskly up that wall, away from the market. Hurried, but not with the clumsy haste of fear.

No, the other mantis is the one who moves as such. Small like a male, antennae covered in an archaic style, he doesn’t look grossly injured, but his modest dress is torn, and you can see a horrible bruise forming on one of his compound eyes. When his head turns at the right angle, you can see his eye is dented. The area beneath is wet and shiny with eye‍-fluids and hemolymph.

When the moment of screamed intensity has passed, you can see the nearby mantids lurch back into motion like a breath was held. Bugs in the crowd pass by the distraught male, and many glance at him, and then at the rest of crowd, doing nothing, moving on.

It’s not hard to see why little help is forthcoming, even without an entire crowd there to shift the burden of acting onto.

That style of antenna covering? That lack of welkinmark on their forehead, despite the bright blue chitin and wings? It’s a Descendant of Snurratre. And, as told by the massive Church that still looms tall in her thoughts, she realizes this is a community decidedly belonging to the Welkin.

Marka has but a moment to make a decision, now. She could rush after the dark‍-clad mantis‍ ‍—‍ an obvious suspect‍ ‍—‍ and with her vesperbane’s muscles, catching them is almost foregone as a conclusion. She could run over to the male and make some effort to console him, figure out what happened and why‍ ‍—‍ and who.

But—

Marka is not on duty right now. She came back to Wentalel for a reason. She has matters to attend to. It would be just like her to spend moons working up the courage to come back and confront‍ ‍—‍ and then prance off at the first distraction, the first excuse.

Marka feels the Vindicator‍-made timepiece in her bag, and feels the clicks of time whirring forward.

Apocrypha Given

How rare of a sight are percipients?

The Percipiency is something of a chimera. When the laws and institutions that eventually became the Pantheca of Mantiskind were first drafted, the Percipiency was created right along side it, but this was not disclosed to the public, or most syndics. And the Percipiency has been defined by that secrecy for much of its existence.

When considered only as rumor and perception, the Percipients are ghastly, alien creatures advancing some malign agenda. They’re something exciting, and scary. And this doesn’t have no basis in reality. But the scope of their duties has expanded over time.

It’s not accurate to say that a percipient is commonplace. But a percipient has a place in the common order of things, and many of them act as archivists, secretaries, and investigators. And, in general, as the implicit go‍-between for the syndic councils, the vindicators’ guild, and the stewartry.

It’s a little bit like the ambiguity of the word vesperbane: do you mean a nerve‍-warped abomination moving like a comet across the countryside hunting defects and monsters? Or would you include the grouter who occasionally spends days repairing cracks in banestone buildings but mostly mops the tavern? The answer ranges from perhaps a few in each province, to thousands.

(Put another way, when Marka sees the percipient, her thought is not ‘Ah, something’s up’. She notes there’s something of interest to the brains afoot. But she’s not keen to get dirty with the mess, especially when they may be no mess at all and only awkward glances to find.

This is the interlude I asked if people were interested in a LONG time ago. I don’t plan for it to run for too long.

And, in case it isn’t clear, the options are:

Option A: Chase after the suspicious fleeing mantis
Option B: Talk to the distraught male
Option C: Go back for your appointment
Write in: Another course of action you think would work
Option Mu: I’m not interested in this interlude, go back to Eifre.

Suggestions Received

B seems wise at a glance
Asking what we should do about the other mantis first, in case we need to follow them urgently. If not, then proceeding with the former plan, giving emotional support as necessary.

Anyway, I think that 🇧 is my vote
I agree with Hastur here, I think Marka would focus on what the problem is and maybe trying to help

options a, b, c in that order

Option A; if needed, going back and finding the male sounds possible, but chase‍-down‍-the‍-thing is usually a limited time offer.

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?

Apocrypha Given

What does Marka already know about tallowbanes?

It’s said that ichortallow was first discovered when someone tried to render vesperbat fat.

That can’t quite be true, because the process is so much more involved than that. Like all bat biology, their fat inherits a temperamental nature from their blood. One can have some success treating it with acids and certain enervate amalgams. But the real secret is a certain flowering weed that’s so much harder to grow now, with most ambrosia weevil groves destroyed. Its presence greatly soothes the blood, and given time and a skilled vesperbane‍-cook they together yield ichortallow. You can make candles of the stuff, but the practice is controlled and regulated‍ ‍—‍ tallowsmoke greatly soothes more than just bat blood.

The main use of ichortallow, though, is as a first last resort. Those injuries inflicted by red ichor or black nerve cannot really heal on their own, and require medical expertise to mend‍ ‍—‍ a scarce thing. If the injury is severe enough, the duration before you can see a medic‍-bane long enough, you may take regrettable measures to hold on.

Ichortallow can be applied to open wounds and broken limbs, and bring them to a semblance of order. But it’s a waxy façade; it doesn’t truly heal. To rely on it is a crutch, and courting rejection, necrosis, phantom sensations, and whatever malignity you’re trying to hold off. (And they say if you partake of ichortallow long enough, you start to lose your ability to heal any other way.)

Tallowbanes rely on it. There’s a certain flexibility to it‍ ‍—‍ waxen flesh that can be reshaped, and doesn’t resist induced metaplasia as natural flesh does. Normally‍ ‍—‍ in all cases Marka’s ever heard of‍ ‍—‍ it happens as a result of losing a limb, and lacking the ability to grow another or funds to commission such. Or a bane sustains so many injuries so consistently that it starts to be rarer for them to be without a ichortallow graft. And the stimulating, psychoactive effects aren’t gone when it isn’t in candle form.

Suggestions Received

I note that the male earlier mentioned “that last vesperbane”. Wik’s description included only civilians. Either the gang has (or had) vesperbanes in it, or Wik isn’t telling us everything (great pun with the name, by the way). The fleeing mantid expressed anti‍-vesperbane sentiment, which is evidence for Wik’s statement. But if this is a small protection racket, why would a Percipient be here? And the courtesan warned us to avoid the district today. This means the gang is likely making a move…
There is definitely a lot here we’re missing; option D seems best accordingly.

The fact that the courtesan seemed to have accurately warned us about an abnormal danger to doing chivalry at the moment makes me suspicious that he might have a connection, but it just be that he overheard something
I agree that gathering information seems like the best option here
There is definitely Some Bullshit going on here
Wik seems more familiar with the present situation, regardless of whether they’re actually an official bane or if they’re a friendly (for now) renegade
So going with their plan seems better than going full‍-frontal against enemies with an unknown weapons‍-cache.

in this world of everyone playing some kind of game or another, l’ll gamble trusting john wick for a change, but not without getting more information from

D as an opener, then preferring B (A if not possible, C is right out). Wik is the one who knows… basically everything about what’s happening, assuming she’s being truthful. (if she’s not then the possible scenarios and consequences seem byzantine enough that trying to maneuver them is at best a risky proposition ‍- maybe she’s playing a grift meant to get Marka inside then capture her, as an example, but that sounds unlikely) As Fib and Hastur said, there’s clearly a lot of weirdness at play, and someone who’s evidently chosen as weird a martial/craft discipline as ichortallow specialization is someone worth following on their own. The claim of “cannot account for strange enervate weapon” is very peculiar and somewhat suspect. Wik guessed its nature on seeing it, suggesting she’s savvy in realms of weaponsmithing and the like. Also, the thought of getting a magic‍-goo‍-gun is very pleasing.

Part A3

Marka clicks her timepiece closed. The sun is reflecting sharply on the metal as it lowers, and the motion of closing carves a harsh line of afterimage across her vision.

When she glances up, Wik is walking away, lingering smoke leaving a trail like a wake. The tallowbane looks back, waving a raptorial. “Come. There’s no reason to stay on the roof.”

Marka looks away, her eyes drawn toward the Church of Blue Welkin. From most parts of Wentalel you could see it, and a younger Marka would look to it for the double purpose of placing herself in the city, for direction, and placing herself in the order of things, for purpose.

She’d left it all behind, but it was‍ ‍—‍ if for today only‍ ‍—‍ once more salient to her purpose. Amusingly. And she was abandoning it, yet again.

(Marka, my daughter…)

But she stops thinking about the matters she’s neglecting right now. Instead, she thinks of Wik, that vesperbane who was white in the way ghosts were black.

This situation bore a few correct responses, reactions drilled into her by training. (Oh, if only every choice were so amenable to correct, logical solutions as in training.)

First of all she should press this ‘Wik’ harder, firmly establish countenance or lack thereof, and perhaps report this to some wound‍-faced warden official‍ ‍—‍ that is, if Wik admits to being a defect, a defect, dreamless.

Really, she should be writing an intel report to the wardens, request some warrant for what was turning into a mission‍ ‍—‍ one that involved termite‍-tech and sketchy tallowbanes. She’d have to run by her superiors all of her potential actions going forward. Get the direct supervision of someone of fiend rank or higher. It wasn’t… proscribed for a lone warden, even one of arch‍-wretch rank, to act on their own‍ ‍—‍ but procedure was a virtue.

But the bluntness of procedure feels like a piece unfitting here.

Wik has stopped walking. “You don’t look like you’re following.”

Marka thinks. And she tells the straightforward truth; it’s what she prefers.

“Why should I trust you?” the warden asks.

Wik’s pure white head tilts. “Would I have saved your life were I some manner of villain?”

“Bluntly, I don’t know what to think.” That issue of countenance‍ ‍—‍ and why this vesperbane would be so cagey about it‍ ‍—‍ weighs on her palps, but would asking a third time provoke any different a response? A different track is taken: “It’s suspicious, right? That you were there to save me at that exact moment?”

Wik sighs, a wet sound, and turns around. “You’re falling down a pit that swallows so many vesperbanes. One of caution heightened to paranoia, and assuming nothing could possibly be precisely what it is.” Wik takes a step forward, pale raptorials lowered, nonthreatening. “It makes sense, in a world like ours. But indiscriminate suspicion is a fool’s caution.”

“Calling it foolish isn’t an explanation, and not a reason to trust you.”

“You saw me twice before I leapt in to save you. I did not come from nowhere.” Wik whirls around, abdomen to her, and resumes walking away. “Simply put, I am not in a position to run a blade through your abdomen. You risk nothing by taking me at my word‍ ‍—‍ for now. Pray save the suspicion until you have something to lose from trusting me, at the very least?”

Wik jumps over the edge of the roof.

A moment’s thought, for procedure unattended to, and the possiblity of simply walking away.

(Marka, my daughter, if you take one more step…)

Marka follows after.

The tallowbane did not jump straight down, instead sliding down the building’s side till the leap was from a height just two mantids tall.

Marka picks a conventional route and climbs down. “What, exactly, is your plan? ‘Infiltrate’ is vague.”

“I’ve been researching this city. Access to the sewers is limited to a few guarded maintainence entrances or locked hatches, all in the interests of not having the underground be a haven for mavericks and defects. But Wentalel is old, and there’s‍ ‍—”

“Wait, guarded by whom?”

“City guards. I might have seen antennae‍-bands once or twice, but they had to have been freshblood wardens.”

“I’m a warden. Why not just walk up and flash my countenance, and we’re in?”

Wik’s palps cross, and cotton‍-like antennae work for a second. “I worry for word of us making such an entrance running up the command ladder‍ ‍—‍ what will the arch‍-fiend think? And we could be seen by the wrong person. Which, circumstances considered, might translate to forewarning or ancipation.”

Marka senses a sloppiness of reasoning. Her suggestion caught Wik by surprise, and what results is weak justifications thrown up to support a conclusion already erected.

“Alright,” she says, “what were you saying before I interrupted?” She can bring it up later, after the idea had really registered. Pressing now could just turn into an argument.

“My research suggests there’s an ancient catacomb deep below, and accessible from caves beyond the walls. Rumor‍ ‍—‍ and a few sources‍ ‍—‍ give me the idea the catacombs connect to the sewer in a few key places. Fevalel’s a decently modernized district, and some digging into city plans confirms the gang’s base has plumbing.”

“And that translates to a secret entrance?”

“Not quite. That’s where you, or someone like you, comes in. You’re a blackbane, right? Nerve user? Demolition shouldn’t be hard for you.”

Marka flexes her forelegs, distinctly aware of the nerve‍-circuits running through them. Even now, they hum with lethal amounts of enervate. “Sure,” she says. “So, we blast up from the sewers and into their bathroom or kitchen or whatever. And that’s any better than just kicking down the door? It’s not going to solve the problem of getting to their stash. Hardly worth the trouble.”

“That is where I come in. Believe me, once we’re in their base, we will not be blind in navigating it.”

“You can just say why, you know, instead of asking me to believe you.”

“It’s a matter of technique. I’m a vesperbane. It’s surely understandable why I wouldn’t share my trade secrets with just anyone?”

Marka sighs. It’s not calculated, but it is willed, to a degree. “So you’re asking me to trust you, again.” She glances away. “For all I know, this ‘secret technique’ could be familiarity with your own base, and you’re navigating me to a cell or chopping block.”

“I could swear an oath, if you like. By my vespers.”

“I’m not a spellbrand, I wouldn’t have much way of knowing you didn’t leave an out in the scripting, or if the oath is even legitimate.”

Wik’s head leans closer, as if to get a better look, antennae twisting confused. “They don’t teach that much to everyone in the wardens? So what, you’re a pure nerve specialist?”

“Pretty much. I have the wretched raptorials, but other than that‍ ‍—‍ all nerve.”

“Are you at least a sensor?”

Marka frowns. “I… gave it some attempts, but umbradivination is not my school.”

“Not a sensor. Damn, you’d be more useful if you were.”

“Well,” she starts, and then twists so that she can unlatch the bag tied to her prothorax and access its contents. She produces a clunky box, whose weight is evident in the sag of her forelegs. One face has depressed cutout where the metal gives way to glass. To the sides are handles, and atop are knobs and buttons. “I have this.”

It’s the same kind and caliber of construction that lies in her timepiece, but put to a different, more advanced end.

“You’re going to need to explain what ‘this’ is.”

“A Vindicator‍-issue nerve scanner. It relies on a special class of pigment which reacts to enervate‍-emitted radiation in tailored frequency bands. This new Mk.II model even has a special upsilon‍-lifted internal aperture that allows it to tune to emissions that come from specified arcs extending anaward or kataward, meaning‍ ‍—”

Wik was smiling, but they interrupt. “Look, I’m not a blackbane. If you want me to actually understand, rather than be dazzled, you’re going to have to condense the explanation.”

“It’s basically a sensor box. It can detect distant enervate, and there’s some room for focusing on certain types or processes.”

“Never heard of something like that existing. Okay. Yes, that will be useful.”

“Useful for what?”

“Detecting vesperbanes, as sensor‍-types do? I don’t expect dangerous enemy vesperbanes, but a guarantee is better than a guess.”

“It’s not unheard of for vesperbanes to suppress their emissions, hiding their presences from sensors.”

“And supposing they have a blackbane that advanced also supposes a need for them, and every technique known translates into a higher commision rate‍ ‍—‍ and the Fevalel gang is a struggling operation. We don’t know if they have the ability to hire one vesperbane, let alone some fiend‍-level stealth wizard.”

“About that,” Marka starts, tapping her palps together once. “I think we can guess that there’ll be enemy vesperbanes. There was a male I met‍ ‍—‍ it’s how I found out about the gang in the first place‍ ‍—‍ and they mentioned an other vesperbane who spoke to them in the same breath as her dealings with the gang. It—”

“…That was me.” Wik had been twisting palps a few sentences before, and took this long to finally interrupt. “He was probably talking about me. I had seen what was going on once before, and I had approached him offering protection.” The tallowbane looks distant. “I’m not sure I have grounds to think the reaction could have been any diffferent.”

“And you’re not affiliated with the gang?” Marka tried to smile, but it wasn’t much of a joke when the intent was sincere.

“Back to the matter of enemy vesperbanes,” Wik says, “I think there’s a way to investigate, if you want more certainty.”

Wik stops there, expecting her to ask the necessary: “How?”

That too‍-flexible smile of theirs. “I know a guy.”

“You never explain anything if you don’t have to, do you?”

“Everything will either become clear when it needs to, or you didn’t need to know it.” Wik starts walking, and beckons Marka to follow.

“If taking me to this guy of yours is your plan to get me some in a dark room and hold a knife to my throat, I’d like to know before I need to.”

“The hope,” Wik starts, sparing a glance backward, “in my pointing out how silly your paranoia comes off, was that you would stop embarrassing yourself.”

She doesn’t respond.

Between Marka’s distinctive armor, and Wik’s glowing, waxy visage, their path forward is quickly cleared of any passersby.

“Oh, this slipped my mind,” Marka starts, “I’d met another male. He’d warned me about the gang, I think. I wonder what he knew.”

Wik curls one antennae. “They looked like a courtesan?”

“You met them?”

“Interesting character, aren’t they?” And that’s all the tallowbane says.

Wik’s guidance led them deeper into this part of Wentalel, where the banestone buildings had less pretense of style and fewer repairs against erosion and decay. Something similar reflected in the mantids they passed.

Down one of the dead end streets they passed, Wik pointed out a structure that looks comparable to a well or mine entrance.

“That’s one of the sewer entrances I mentioned.”

Marka slows, and stares for a bit. “Never seen anything like that in other cities in the plains.”

“Wentalel’s unique in having a very long history and continuity throughout most of it. It was part of the Myriad Kingdoms, then a rebel stronghold, then part of both dominions and the alliance‍ ‍—‍ point being, even bats (or at least the thralls under them) knew something about plumbing.”

Inwardly, Marka laughs at being lectured about the city she grew up in. But it’s nothing she’d heard herself‍ ‍—‍ the only mantids who like talking about bats or the dominions are not mantids you want to talk to. And once she was out of this city, she never wanted to think or hear about it again.

“I digress,” Wik continues. “There’s a lot of primitive considerations that linger in its design. Upshot for us is they’re big enough for a bat to crawl through, rather than the cramped affairs you see in modern cities.”

Wentalel’s age isn’t something that shows in its architecture. But if Wik has the right of it, not all of that history is something mantids would care to advertise or let hang around. Not in the Plains Southern at least.

The sun rounds across the sky as they walk. Marka can feel the slowness of it all, how much time this operation is eating up.

“Say,” Wik starts, and it has the air of something unrelated, “do the wardens have some way of signalling for help‍ ‍—‍ discretly indicating distress by flaring enervate, perhaps? Anything of that sort that might give you peace of mind if I could facilitate it?”

“No. The logistics of that‍ ‍—‍ no. We don’t, can’t have a sensor on watch in every city, let alone one capable of sensing that whenever it might happen.” Marka pauses, and almost cringes. Should she have been open with that limitation, if this was a defect? Should she have been so forthcoming, just in the spirit of giving as good as you get? “Well, this shows you aren’t a warden. That means Stewart or Maverick, then.” Or defect. It wasn’t necessary to say.

There was no response.

“You’d earn a lot of good will by just answering the question. What is your countenance? Being this secretive about it just screams ‘I have something to hide’.”

Wik turns to give Marka a once over with one eye. “Maybe I guessed wrong. Are you the type to value procedure over doing the right thing?”

Marka feels echoes of her conversation with the Snurratre male. She doesn’t know what else to say that hasn’t already been said.

“I take issue with you acting as though you’re owed my personal details as a matter of course‍ ‍—‍ for the sake of as simple an operation as this. If you’re going to keep hounding me on the issue,” Wik says, palps grinding, “know that ‘Wik’ is not the name that’s printed on my file. My countenance was with the Stewartry. If it’s still valid, then it’s quite possibly a matter of beauracratic oversight. I have not answered to summons or orders in… a long time. Depending on who eventually reviews my case, that could be deemed enough to constitute defection. If those technicalities sour your opinion so thoroughly, and you can’t bear the thought of cooperating with someone who might be given such a label in obscure, unread documentation‍ ‍—‍ I suppose this was never going to work out, was it?”

Marka’s palps briefly splay in surprise, and then she makes to speak.

“And before you ask again. No, I won’t tell you my registration number. I’ve‍ ‍—” the confident stride of their speech falters here “—‍ I’ve forgotten it.”

“Okay. Knowing that, finally, gives me some peace of mind.” A part of her thinks it could all be lies‍ ‍—‍ but so could any other possible response they could give.

Wik speaks, pointing to an alley that the two of them veer towards. “Here. There’s something we should handle before we go any further. Assuming you’re still willing, that is.”

In the alleyway, Wik has undone the heavy cloak somewhat, and digs around in what must be pockets and hidden bags.

Waiting here, Marka has a chance to get a better look at them. Their flesh isn’t entirely waxen. That substance‍ ‍—‍ ichortallow, well known to wardens‍ ‍—‍ oozes from their joints, and where there is still chitin, it looks to be pale and flaking, and in process of being engulfed in a flow of the stuff. All of their movements have a certain fluidity to them, and the way they bounce on their feet implies a certain sinking unsteadiness.

When the tallowbane stands still, the smoke that emerges from holes in the flesh hangs around a bit, and becomes a sort of mist to wreath the silhouette.

What Wik produces from the pockets is tools‍ ‍—‍ two of them she can identify as a paintbrush and a chisel.

“Stand before me, and hold still.”

Marka stares, for a moment, but then decides to extend a bit of trust.

“Lean your head forward.”

Wet oils‍ ‍—‍ they smell vesper‍-made‍ ‍—‍ shine in tiny containers along a length strapped to their nondominant foreleg. The other vesperbane takes a bit of the red and a bit of the green, and mixes the oils together, eyes constantly moving between the oils and her face. A moment, and then Marka flicks an antennae. The color‍ ‍—‍ it’s the same as that of her chitin.

Another container has wet wax, and the mixed oils are added, tinting it.

The brush sinks into it, and then the coated end, dripping wax, approaches her face, the heat slightly warping the air around it. Marka pulls back, palps draw tight. The other vesperbane says nothing, and when she gets a hold of herself‍ ‍—‍ she’s a vesperbane; pain is a constant companion‍ ‍—‍ the wax meets her chitin.

It’s not burning pain. The wax is hot‍ ‍—‍ unpleasantly hot‍ ‍—‍ but not burning.

But what is this for? Marka almost asks, but would she get any answer? And the conclusion comes a moment later: this is an infiltration mission, and her appearance is being disguised.

Long moments pass like this, staring at the mantis painting her face, who stares back in turn. There’s no grounds for small talk to arise, but, forced not to avert her eyes, Marka sees something more in the tallowbane’s appearancce. The melting, unsteady look can’t ever be anything but uncanny, and no time spent staring changes that. But the pure whiteness of the wax‍ ‍—‍ only here and there, at the fringes, marred by the red of ichor‍ ‍—‍ can’t be accidental. And what serves as the antennae‍ ‍—‍ looking like braided cord‍ ‍—‍ has a cleanness and consistency of pattern that wouldn’t arise without some effort. These are the things that are easiest to name and describe. But the gestalt impression conveyed by all is that Wik’s appearance must be less the carelessness of a vesperbane concerned only with power, and the more the product of some alien aesthetic.

A work produced by one with enough mastery of appearance to easily disguise a face with a moment’s prep.

“There.”

“Done? But you missed some spots.”

“I didn’t. I don’t need to coat your entire face with wax to get the job done. Have you ever noticed how, despite their endless variety, all faces are, well, faces? With the same layout. The differences are small, we’re just attuned to those tiny individualities. For a quick disguise, it suffices to hit a few key landmarks.”

Marka runs palps along the quickly cooling wax on her face. The taste… does nothing to dispel the impression that the oils are vesper‍-made.

Wik tosses the contained of colored wax among the refuse of the alley. “Oh, and you may want to ditch the armor. It’s a bit distinctive, which obviates the disguise.”

“And put it where?”

But Wik is already moving. Deeper in the alleyway, there’s a small doorway set diagonally against the wall, like the entrance to a basement or crawlspace. With two clicks, Wik opens the door.

Wik points inside. “This space belongs to me, or close enough.” A foreleg slips inside the cloak. “Here, so you don’t need me to retrieve it.” It’s a key with crooked teeth.

There’s a correct response, as informed by her training. Letting Wik disguise her face was one more step, and being rid of her armor as asked feels like another one further. Marka knew the feeling of walking step by step away from purity and into perdition. She knew it quite well.

It was how it felt becoming a vesperbane.

If you take one more step… The words still echo. She didn’t want to be rid of them, though they wounded her slightly with every repetition. Less a cutting remark than a scathing of a thousand cuts.

Marka quits her rumination with a start. The prospect of simply taking off the armor was hardly anything so dramatic‍ ‍—‍ but this feeling of being exposed to world engulfs her body just as welkinflame might.

While Marka is grappling with this, Wik has produced a mirror, and lifts a chisel to the face.

The armor is off her now, and hiddened away in Wik’s basement. They have not left the alleyway, and it already feels far away. Out of her possession.

Marka gets a good look at the tallowbane post‍-disguise. “I’m… surprised you can so easily look normal.”

Wik is no longer ghastly white, and the flames have been put out. (The tallowbane is still emitting smoke, but so much less that it could be attributed to simply being a tallowsmoker.) But most of all, Wik’s face now had the wholesome solidity that befits a mantis. More than that, the tallowbane now bears the soft, masculine features that might inspire songs.

“When you attain a certain measure of deliberate skill at a game,” Wik replies, “you may find you lose interest in playing it.”

“Still, the flames, the melty face‍ ‍—‍ it’s affectation, then?”

“The flames are necessary. My metabolism is… damaged, and my body now depends on the heat. It right now feels like holding my breath.”

Marka grimaces, but there’s little room for extending an apology or consolation that doesn’t feel hollow.

In searching for a distraction, she glances back at the basement door. “You live here, then?”

“No one does.”

“You have a key, though.”

“I created it.” The tallowbanes gives a vague self‍-gesture. “The technique is called impressioning,” Wik offers.

“Yeah…” She had nothing more to say, and looks away. Lockpicking. Impure, dishonorable chicanery.

“So,” she says when she finally meets Wik’s eyes again, “where are we going?”

It was a place called the Moon’s Dice. The signage is dark enough that actual enervate must’ve been mixed in with the paint, depicting great Tenebra as is conventional, but emitting dice instead of rays.

Inside, past bouncers with no visible weapons and a familiar intensity to their gaze, Marka enters a space inappropriately cool and inviting. Of her own volition, she’d never, ever step inside a place of such impure repute as a gambling den, but it shouldn’t have put her this at ease. There was a chill to the air that relieved the characteristic heat of the Plains Southern. The entire floor was‍ ‍—‍ clean!‍ ‍—‍ carpet, dyed and cotton‍-soft, while the seating lining the tables had cushioning fit for merchants or syndics. There were no windows, and the place was altogether dim‍ ‍—‍ it was still daylight out when she stepped in, but already she wondered.

Something felt… off about the interior in a way Marka couldn’t place without a few moments of looking. The space seemed… vast, or at least spacious, in a way incongruous with the diminutive, ramshackle exterior.

The patrons, at least, were not a surprise. There were brightly chitin’d mantids clad in moth‍-silks, who’d plenty money to lose‍ ‍—‍ and mantids clad in rags who did not.

“Akram, if anyone asks, remember our cover.” Wik intended for them to act as some rich wife and husband, come to flaunt a little wealth. (The robes Marka wore, she told herself, covered as much as armor would.)

“I dislike deception,” Marka murmured, and she made herself add, “Kiwi.” It was worth a little effort not to slip up, as silly as she found this.

“You picked the wrong job, then.” It was a low mutter, and out of character‍ ‍—‍ couldn’t resist the jab, Marka supposed.

(If you take one more step…)

The bouncers were easy to pick out, having an energy apart from those gleefully or desperately throwing twelve sided dice. Some of those guards she saw had thick shadowsteel armor scraped clean of insignias, and strapped with amalgaglass enclosures protecting welkinflame. Excommunicated vindicators?

“This… is this something other than a gambler’s den?”

“Depending on who you ask, you’ll hear that this is merely a simple casino, one with a… unique reputation, owing to it allowing in vesperbanes and even employing them.” Wik’s voice drops to a quiet scrape. “But to those with the right connections, yes, there’s more to it. It all revolves around the mantis at the heart of it, a vesperbane named Felme‍ ‍—‍ something of a master with numbers and ledger lines. And oath‍-brands. That said, Vesperbanes can’t own businesses, but it’s an open secret that the deeds are a fiction and it is Felme who really runs the show. Truth is, the whole establishment is fictitious. The thing about gambling is, the money that comes out of it need not have any real deep reason behind it‍ ‍—‍ it’s random, ostensibly. So if you came into possession of particularly large sum of money, would rather not explain to the tax mantis from where it came…”

“You can arrange something with Felme. Financial purification.”

“Exactly. Felme handles transactions and accounting, something like a warrior‍-banker for Wentalel underworld, with interest‍-bearing loans and all,” Wik says. “He’s a foundational element. But the thing you have to know, above anything else? Felme is exactly the sort of vesperbane I complained of earlier. For all the trappings of being a businessmant, paranoia is an expense without commensurate returns.”

“Seems to have worked out well enough for them.”

“We can debate that later. For now, there are matters to attend to. There’s a way to see Felme’s without an appointment, but… just follow my lead.”

Following Wik’s lead was easier said, when ostensibly they were to play wife and husband. With reflection, ~~Wik~~ Kiwi pushing her around was a dynamic, but the discussion of how to play this never went that far.

“To start, we’ll go to one of the back tables, and then…”

Walking deeper into the Moon’s Dice, there looked to be a gradation to the complexity of the games‍ ‍—‍ near the front, the tables mainly offered simple games of tokens and tallies. The farther back you went, you saw more exotic offerings, games that seemed to involve orbs and circuits of enervate. Some of them must have blurred the lines between a proper gambling game and more of a carnival’s offerings. This far back, one saw more patrons with metallic antennae‍-bands than not.

Wik gazes over the tables, as if gauging something, and picks one. Then, the bane waits a moment, until the present game of cards‍ ‍—‍ seeming in its cadences‍ ‍—‍ had concluded.

“What’s the bid to name the next game?” Wik asks the dealer.

The mantis, wearing robes of black and bright colors, names a price, and Wik pays it with an affected smile. One player tries to outbid‍ ‍—‍ but Wik’s smile bears maxillae, and the bid is doubled, and no one else dares, and Wik wins the bid.

And Wik says, “Gold Dragon’s Gambit.”

The dealer’s antennae straighten, but they have a game face enough not to react more than that.

Gold Dragon’s Gambit as a game hinges on guesses at hidden information. All the players‍ ‍—‍ there were four at the table from before Marka and Wik arrived‍ ‍—‍ held a set of cards in their digits, but which of them was best to play stood heavily contingent on what other players had.

Marka, lacking any experience with these games of this sort, did as well as would be expected. Every player had a stack of tokens that would eventually become their payout, and Marka watched hers dwindle, along with her set of cards.

Wik jabs her, and whispers, “You know the trick here, don’t you?”

Her face was only confusion.

“All of the value cards have faint enervate traces. You’re no sensor, but any vesperbane should be able to feel that.”

Marka starts to respond, then thinks of their disguise. In a louder tone, more incensed than a whisper, she says, “Why would you even want me to play if you didn’t expect me to win?”

Wik smiles. “Just break even, dear.” Said in a tone as if not even even expecting that much.

But with that hint delivered, a dimension of strategy had opened up. Marka could feel the slight pull from certain cards. It was just the foothold she needed to really analyse the game, treat it like manipulations of unknown variables instead of base gambling.

The dwindling of her stock stopped, and then it reversed.

A thin lady on the opposite side was the first to lose, and had to offer up her cards. She points at Marka.

Three cards: the banker, the pawn, and the hierophant. “Your choice.”

Marka picks, and the game continues.

Eventually, one of the bouncers walks by, stands between and behind Wik and Marka. She says, “Having a lucky night, aren’t ya?”

Marka fumbles with her palps, thinking of something to say. Was that threat in her voice? Were they to be thrown out‍ ‍—‍ beaten, even?

But Wik speaks first, calmly. “Oh, it all adds up in the black. Have you reviewed the twisted ledger?”

To Marka, it doesn’t follow. Even for Wik, this is a new level of cryptic.

The bouncer nods. “Come with us.” A hint of threat lingers in her voice.

At the fringes, the cozy lighting gives way to shadows, and they were guided along the walls there. There was a covertness to it, such that despite the spectacle, of cheaters being caught and escorted to the back, not many eyes found them.

They met with two other bouncers, who took up a formation around them, one behind and two at their sides while the last one led. These bouncers had weapons.

Only one had any antennae band; the others walked in silent shadowsteel. Former vindicators weren’t hard to find in a city with a Church of Welkin, Marka knew.

Where another building might have climbing walls or poles, here elevation was reached with gently inclining ramps. A slow, irritating design.

“What’s all this about?”

“Felme prefers meetings to be scheduled. If not, this is how one asks for special consideration. A game, deception facilitated by the vespers, and the right phrase in the right tympanum. Convoluted, but it filters for those knowledgeable, subtle, and most importantly, envespered.”

Three floors up‍ ‍—‍ from the outside, Marka would have guessed the place would have two floors‍ ‍—‍ they pause before a catwalk long enough for trepidation to collect in Marka’s spirit.

Poles rise from the sides of the thin bridge, not higher than half a legs height, and were joined by velvet‍-covered ropes. It seemed a display more than any safety measure.

“Where we’re about to go, Felme’s office, is the most secure place in all of Wentalel. Not the Wardens nor the Stewarty have anything like it.”

“What’s so secure about it?”

“Something special about the construction. You’re a blackbane, you should be able to feel it.”

After a moment, Marka realizes the pause is beccause not all of the bouncers would follow them. Two peel away and depart. The two left‍ ‍—‍ a vesperbane among them‍ ‍—‍ form a line and approach Felme’s office.

Marka could have noticed it without being prompted, or maybe she would have been too distracted by worries. By every indication, the bridge or catwalk they crossed was flat, so why the resistance as they walked, as if crossing uphill?

“Anabasis,” Marka says. “This is a parallel space.”

“That sounds about right. The way I’ve heard it described, a bomb could clear away the entire casino, and Felme’d only notice when a client misses an appointment.”

A bouncer opens a door, Wik continues toward it.

Marka pauses.

(Marka, my daughter, if you take one more step… Her father’s words returned to her in moments of indecision‍ ‍—‍ where the choice he would want for her was obvious, as was the fact that she would not make it… just as it had been on that day. But was this a moment of indecision, really? Could she walk away at this point, surrounded by Felme’s guards, or had she lost that chance when she entered alongside Wik? This was a mistake, a risky, unnecessary flight from procedure. She could have just written a report.)

The room is dark, a single lamp hanging above a desk, just enough to illuminate the small figure sitting there, chitin bright yellow and starkly painted. A secretary or accountant? They hold a brush‍-pen, and seem to manipulate figures on a sheet of wasp‍-parch. It was number‍-work, the sort of job fit for a male.

“Where’s Felme?” Marka asks.

The figure pauses briefly in their writing. “Hello, hello.” He gestures with his free foreleg. The door is quietly shut, and the bouncers seem to disappear into the expanses of the room beyond the light. The male’s antennae work as if picking up a scent, then he says, “Ah, Wik, my favorite sleuth. And you‍ ‍—‍ you must be one of its friends? No? An ally, then. You know, there are perches, you need not stand. Good. Care for a treat?” He indicates a bowl sitting on their desk. Small bees are trapped in hard, honey‍-smelling cubes like flies in amber. A label reads: 2 cp each. He says, “I’ll grant you the first one for free.”

Marka, after pausing in consideration, reaches to take one‍ ‍—‍ and a red form pounces down from unseen above! It’s attacking her foreleg! If that leg were a little slug or rat, it’d have been deftly predated upon.

It’s a spider‍ ‍—‍ a tarantula breed?‍ ‍—‍ that’s latched itself to her leg and is trying to bite. It has the big, cute eyes, almost salticidae‍-like, that made the things a favorite pet. But Marka had leapt back in fright, and even now her heart’s hot in her abdomen.

There is a hiss, and doesn’t come from the spider. Felme has a glass of liquid‍ ‍—‍ water?‍ ‍—‍ with a rubber bulb. He squeezes the bulbs again, and a misty spray of water emerges and the spider flinches from it.

Felme holds out his other foretarsus to beckon the spider. It ambles over to climb up, and he holds and pets it.

“Embarrassing. This is why I prefer appointments; then, I would have had time to find and put away this little distraction.”

“Does it… normally attack your clients?” Marka relaxes to a posture other than that of a frightened nymph.

“Of course not. She’s simply… not fond of the oils Wik uses in its work.” Felme sets the spider down, and keeps it pinned with a digits scratching. “I hope you can forgive this indiscretion.” Wik nods, and then Marka. For someone Wik describes as a mantis of paranoia, whose chambers are the most secure‍ ‍—‍ he really doesn’t give an impression other than that of a common office worker. Marka realizes he is talking.

“Excellent. Now, it’s clear that you wouldn’t have signalled me if you didn’t have urgent business. I’ll skip all formalities. Tell me what you want.” Felme returns his eyes to the parchment‍ ‍—‍ ledger?

Marka rubs the lingering bits of his spider’s spiny, urticulating setae her robes’ sleeve. She’s not fond of the irritation they cause when they touch sensitive areas. She does not like spiders. While she’s occupied with this, Wik answers.

“We’re curious about the employment of local mavericks, something I’m sure you’d have information on, if not a direct stake in.”

“Sure. But let’s be clear‍ ‍—‍ for the sake of your partner, who doesn’t look like much,”‍ ‍—‍ Foundational businessmantis of the Wentalel underworld, by the way‍ ‍—‍ “I cannot, in general reveal details of what deals I’ve made with our cities finest. I’m sure you understand the need for privacy. But I can inform you of what rumors and news already known of, and let you deduce the rest.”

Wik nods stiffly. After a moment, Marka mimes this. She’s following Wik for cues, and the longer she looks, she notices an uneasiness in the tallowbane, and wonder what worries cause it.

Petting his spider with one hand, Felme continues, “And it’s not a service I’ll provide for free. The price… let’s call it a hundred bone pieces. You do good work for me.”

“Adequate. Tell me what you know, and I’ll produce the sum.” Wik begins digging into those hidden straps and bags beneath their cloak.

“The reality for most mavericks is that of freelancers‍ ‍—‍ or if you prefer, mercenaries. For this reason, determining if someone is not working is rather trivial‍ ‍—‍ if you can hire them, we can be sure they not currently working for anyone. If not, that could indicate the opposite, or it just be convalence after an injury, say. Or they could be dead. It can take a while for a body to show up.”

Marka looks between Wik and Felme. Wouldn’t Wik know this? Or was this for her benefit?

While he was talking, Felme stops with the brush pen, and now opens drawers and cabinets, producing folios.

“But on to my notes. I’ll stick to recent matters first. There was one blackbane caught trying to raid a stewarty archive.” Wik looks to Marka at this, for some reason, but after a moment staring, the tallowbane just gives a head‍-shake. “Not your partner here, I’m sure,” Felme says. (How did he catch that? He didn’t actually look up.)

Felme continues rattling off events, for each one he produces of a bit of paper, text penned with a tiercel’s neatness. “The so‍-called one‍-eyed bastard is back, and took out Nemecha and Osfe first of all. In the northern tenements, an eloped pair of stewart‍-cum‍-mavericks were found with their entrails everted and vespers plucked clean. I think they were the kids offering haruspex services under those ridiculous code‍-names, you know the ones. Something has been poking around in the catacombs, parts of it are being collapsed or cleared. The bloodbane with the sanguine tongues’ has stopped frequenting my casino, something she’s only ever done when working. Rumors of the golden‍ ‍—”

Under the deluge of information, Marka can’t help but blurt, “Does he just expect us deduce everything from random happenings ten steps removed?”

“I wouldn’t put it quite so bluntly,” Wik says, “but yes. This is something of an excess, and we are somewhat pressed for time. Part of what we’re asking you for is your judgment. If you could instead present what you model all these facts as implicating, I could pay extra.”

“I respect my clients’ privacy‍ ‍—‍ for my own peace of mind as much as for theirs‍ ‍—‍ but it’s so much easier to understand what information if I knew what it was needed for. As much context as you’re comfortable providing, is all I ask.”

“We have an interest in a gang operating in Fevalel district. I’ve been investigating their activities. But a civilian gang is going to necessarily act cagey about vesperbane involvement, not to mention secrecy comes somewhat naturally to our kind. Put briefly, it’s hard to get close enough to know for sure without revealing my interest. So I come to you.”

“Looking for work? From such small players? No, I suppose that’s not my business here.” Felme spends some minutes flipping through his papers and folios, antennae and palps working all the while, when he speaks, he’s not done rifling through. His words are: “I do want to stress that rumor of the Golden Lady being in Wentalel, because should it prove truthful, it’s quite dangerous. She represents a direct threat to my operations, in a way that makes her a threat to all of us. The Wardens had a kill order out on her, if I recall. You should stay safe, most importantly, but just remember‍ ‍—‍ a threat to all of us.”

The two vesperbanes nod routinely at this. It has the feel of refrain, repeated whenever the latest rumor involving dreaded defects or motile crepuscules. Not many of them materialize.

At length Felme finally gathers his thoughts, and answers, “Those girls in Fevalel have a strange story. A small, struggling exercise in lending and racketeering, mostly to those mantids stuck in the district. But recently, they’ve seen a perplexing influx of money and assets, with no visible expansion in their operation to explain it. They’ve taken out loans, put themselves in debt, but that’s not all of it.” Felme audibly taps his palps together. “It could be they’re looking to expand, and going all in on some venture. Or they’re scared of something, and this is their way of putting up defenses and holding out. Impossible to say.”

“You said racketeering? That’s all?” Marka asks. Wik gives her a look, but she continues, “Is there anything pointing to them being involved in, say, some kind of weapons smuggling?”

“No, no indication. That’s a rather… specific suggestion. What prompts this?”

Wik punches Marka, lightly. Shut up, it’s not hard to intuit.

“If there’s a concrete reason to suspect this, I’m very interested in fresh information. After all, my ability to even answer your present inquiry relies on other mantids having been forthcoming in your place.” The rhetorical gesture is familiar. Counterfactuals. Do as others have done in your place. A foundational element of the Kindling Dream: cooperating for the benefits of all, even when the alternative was of immediate benefit. To do otherwise was to be a defect, and that was the fundamental nature of all crimes.

But the words that really worked were him saying, “I’ll pay, of course.”

For 10 bone pieces, Marka and Wik parted with knowledge of the cannon wielded with one leg, that device the gangster Marka chased used.

“My guess is it’s of termite make. The advanced use of enervate, when vindicator cannons are no where near that small, is the tell. But that conclusions invites an obvious next question.”

Felme sounds like he’s quoting. “ ‘Why would a two‍-bit gang in Wentalel have a termite miniture cannon?’ ”

“You said there was a recent influx of cash. Maybe they are smuggling.”

“For that to make sense,” it’s Wik talking, “the weapons would to have to already gone somewhere. If there was termite tech floating around in the Wentalel underground, I’d know. It wouldn’t stay hidden.”

“Moreover,” Felme adds, “it doesn’t answer the question of where the termite tech is coming from. Most termite colony arcologies have been sealed for centuries‍ ‍—”

“Millenia. The current theory is millenia.”

“Yes, yes. And the ones that aren’t fully sealed get declared exclusions zones as soon as the Stewartry learns of it.”

“Could it be a new one opened up?”

“Where’s the evidence? Wait,” Wik says. “Is this why the one‍-eyed bastard is back? I’ve heard he was sent out to retrieve something from deep in the desert up north, but returned suddenly.”

“This all quite afield of our purposes. I’m not being paid to speculate on the larger politcal situation, am I? But the one‍-eyed bastard is a fair segue. The resident arch‍-fiend being back in Wentalel is important, because it has people scared. Little has happened since the capture of Nemecha and Osfe, but that alone was enough to shock things out of the equilibrium developed in the absence of Wentalel’s most powerful vesperbane. It may be that that, perhaps a few causal links removed, is all the reason behind the gang’s recent behavior.”

“Vesperbanes, we were asking about what vesperbanes they might have on retainer,” Wik says.

“Given the the territory they control, even without their recent windfall, it’s impossible for them to fund more than three vesperbanes. Three is generous overestimate, but better overcautious than overconfident. I think there’s at least one, or there was at least one. At the site of an altercation with another gang, there was a deliquesced corpse, consistent with black nerve dissolution. At another, a body looked half cannibalized. All evidence of vesperbane interference.”

“Is that really all you have to offer, in terms of concrete evidence?”

Felme stills for a moment, and evenly replies, “Everything I mentioned I believed was relevant to an accurate evaluation of the Fevalel gang. Are you impugning my honor and honesty, wretch?”

“She means nothing of the sort,” Wik says. “We appreciate what you’ve offered. You’ve answered many of our concerns, in negative if nothing else.”

“So, we’re up against a gang of civilians with one or two vesperbanes? Three if ancestors really hate us?” Everything considered, Marka reevaluated Wik’s infiltration plan, and decided she liked it more now, though it was still contrary to honor.

Out of Felme’s former stillness, his sudden motion comes as a startle. He takes a foreleg and makes three abstract jabs, and then there’s unplaceable motion in the darkness, and then there’s hard metal behind them.

The point of a spear presses against Marka’s thorax.

“Care to repeat that? I hope I misheard or misinterpreted what you meant by ’up against.” The single lamp still illumes him and little else, but the stark cast comes off differently now.

“I—” Marka starts.

“I’d rather Wik answered.”

“No, your impression is correct. Our ultimate intentions were to conduct an operation against the gang.” Marka doesn’t know when the internal fires returned, but they burn now as Wik stares‍ ‍—‍ glares‍ ‍—‍ at her.

“You understand the business I’m in, no? Some of that gang’s outstanding debts are to me. Fertile investments that I expected bountiful returns on.” Felme has sat down their brush pen, but he still strokes the hairy legs of his spider. “From where I’m sitting, you’ve just threatened my financial self‍-interest. Broadly construed, what I’m considering right now is self‍-defense.” For the first time, Felme looks at them‍ ‍—‍ not glances up and then back at his ledgers, but sustained attention, calculating regard.

Wik works their palps, as if to muster some defense, but Felme lifts his free leg to silence. “No, I need not be that drastic. I do value what you offer, Wik, and I understand none of this is personal. We can come to an agreement.”

“You’ll script one, you mean.”

“Yes. It’s the best way to coax cooperation from as ornery a lot as vesperbanes. Swear an oath‍ ‍—‍ I’ll even let you pick the vows. Ideally, you would simply desist all activity that would harm the gang’s ability to black their accounts.” His palps spread wide, a kind of grin. He has small palps, even for a male‍ ‍—‍ but still stirred worries. “But another option is to allow you take on the debts yourselves. If you payed back what they owed, well, I get what I desire.”

Wik looks to Marka, and the look is no longer a glare, but something with the shape of concern.

“That is the choice I offer you. Desist your plans against the gang, take on their debts, or die. But only two of those are really options, are they?”

“What,” Marka starts, her voice coming unsteadily, “what if we cannot swear oaths?” Marka had heard of the heroic vows, and knows all wardens are bound by them, but if she’s ever formally sworn them, it was under the direction of a collective ritual.

Felme quirks an antennae. “How? You are a vesperbane, are you not?”

“I’m a nerve user, not a spellbrand. Oaths are not something of use to me.”

Felme’s antennae fall over his face. “Do you even know what an oath is?”

“When you ask a question like that,” Marka replies, “it feels like the answer is no.” She shrugs her forelegs. “Wardens exist to protect the heartlands.” Then, in a tone of quote, “When you take up the sword, whether you parry, deflect or feint, your purpose is always to strike the enemy. Every technique is subordinate to that one goal, in the end. More flourishes and tricks are unnecessary.”

“I can respect that philosophy, but I cannot respect reducing the most foundational art of a vesperbane to the status of mere flourish. No matter,” Felme is pulling down one sleeve of his robe. “I deal with enough amateur mavericks to not be unprepared.” The chitin of the inner side of his mesoleg has a soft, mottled texture that hints at vesper‍-modification. The limbs’ length is lined with growths like little knobs. One gorges red with blood, and he plucks it free. It audibly snaps off.

“For your edification, know that there are three powers afforded to vesperbanes. Nervecasting, the art of the black, which commands those emissions of the great moon Tenebra. You may know a few things about this. Bloodletting, the art of the ichor, with which we corral the lifeblood of fallen vesperbats‍ ‍—‍ your partner knows this art well. And last is Rootnursing, the art of arete. The art of brands, with which the very oaths that allow vesperbanes to exist were forged.”

“Rootnursing is more than oaths,” Wik says. “Fungi, mudwork, dwimmercraft. Erecting banestone structures has quite little to do with arete.”

Felme waves this off. “Yes, yes, everything has endless complexities if you care to attend to them. I wish for Marka to have the slightest idea what she’s agreeing to, nothing more. Moving on,” he says, and gestures with the nut‍-sized growth he plucked from his leg. “Do you know why oaths of blood and soul exist? This should be general knowledge among vesperbanes.”

“They were invented by the bats, who couldn’t trust or cooperate. It’s magically enforced honor,” Marka says.

“Close enough. The oaths of blood and soul don’t eliminate trust, and they don’t force cooperation. An oath is a very specific thing. An immutable, tamper‍-evident record that is legible to vespers, and can be copied and distributed. If you’re fluent in vespersign, you can write a contract, and the vespers are able to enforce it.”

“But I’m not fluent in vespersign.”

“And that’s where this comes in.” Felme points to the growth he holds. “I can inscribe an oath onto this sclerotium. You would consume it, and it would thereby be conveyed to your vespers.”

“…You could have people agree to oaths just by getting them to eat the wrong thing?”

“No, only knowledge of the oath would be conveyed. Your vespers aren’t stupid. Once known, the oath could be invoked like any trained technique, that is with the right signs, and through that you would agree.”

There’s a pop, and after a startled moment, Marka realizes it was a bubble of wax bursting‍ ‍—‍ ichortallow runs down Wik’s face. “If you’re quite done giving remedial theory lessons,” Wik says, “We‍ ‍—‍ meaning Marka and I‍ ‍—‍ have much to discuss. I know you have a private room in this space of yours.”

“Make your decision quickly. I have other appointments today.” Felme flicks a foreleg, and dimly she feels a flare of enervate. Is he activating some unseen mechanisms like this?

Other lights flash on in the room, illuming a path to the left. A door clicks open.

Wik is shutting it behind them once they’ve entered. Marka has already thrown herself down on a couch‍-like rest in the room. It was a bland white, and lit by two lamps. She clutches her antennae. Her palps are mutely splayed wide. She has the self control not to scream.

“What the hell,” she says, but it’s only for herself.

She remembers that day at the city’s gates. She remembers the words, all of the words:

Marka, my daughter, if you take one more step, you’ll die a fatherless traitor.

But more than the words, she remembers the dilemma, its abstract shape. She realizes it had formed something of a template she applied decisions in the general. There was the right choice, the one she’d been raised to take, and there was the one she wanted to take, the temptation that made it a choice instead of a calculation.

Even if there was no doubt which one she would pick, the more fundamental framing felt a given: there would always be a last moment, a threshold before which she could opt out, spare herself the catastrophe.

This didn’t feel like that.

When she became a vesperbane it felt like burning alive. Her body encased in black, corrupting flames.

And now, it feels like tongues of flame leap from her body to devour bridges just as soon she crosses them.

Marka looks at Wik. If there were anyone to blame for all of this, it would be tallowbane and their shifty, artificial face.

But once again, she notices that initial glare she had seen after blurting that fatal line has not returned. Again, there’s a curious impression of concern.

“It wasn’t supposed to go this way,” the tallowbane offers.

“Is it my fault?”

“No. I should have anticipated‍ ‍—‍ something like this. I could have had you sit out the meeting. Or impressed greater wariness on you. Something to avert…”

“Giving me full answers instead of cryptic beetleshit could be a start,” Marka says.

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

At that conversation strangles to a halt. Neither of them are quite up to bringing up the matter of the oaths.

“Why do we even have to swear oaths? If he can pass loans to vesperless civilians without an oath…” Marka is averse to the natural way to end that sentence, which sounds too much like a nymph’s whining.

“Well, when dealing with vesperbanes, civilians have an intrinsic collateral‍ ‍—‍ value can always be extracted through their corpse. But more to the point,” Wik pauses to give a serious look, antennae curled up and palps held still, “The thing you need to understand, Marka, is those guards, and their whole act of holding spears to our backs‍ ‍—‍ it was for a show, as physically meaningful as the words we utter. In truth, either of us stand a decent shot of taking one or both of his guards. But it doesn’t matter, because he could have ended either of us and sustained perhaps a wound.” A moment pause, for drama. “And there are vesperbanes who could end him every bit as decisively. And he does business with them.”

“Ah.” Marka sees where this is going.

“Even the strongest vesperbane can’t overpower the will of the vespers. And so oaths act to equalize vesperbanes in that manner.”

“Maybe not the strongest vesperbane, but the cleverest? I think they could find a way around it.”

“Yes, that’s called a transgression. You’re punished with madness and confinement as a crepuscule.”

“Every time?”

“I’m going to end this line of conversation, and take it on faith that you don’t intend to try and subvert your oaths. I’ll have no part in it.”

“No, I would never break my word.”

Wik turns attention to the table centermost the room. The tallowbane had taken some of Felme’s folios, and now looks over them.

Marka says, “I’m going to write a report to the wardens.”

Wik looks up. “Why would that seem like a good idea?”

“My life was threatened. I’m now poised to swear an oath to some criminal banker lord.” She draws her raptorials together, half hiding her face behind them. “Honestly, I should have done this from the beginning. There was no good reason do this off the books.”

“I’m here.”

Marka crooks her head, momentarily wondering if that was reassurance or explanation. She sighs and decides it doesn’t matter. “Maybe trusting you wasn’t a good idea.”

“Look, at this point‍ ‍—‍ you don’t think Felme is actually giving us privacy, right? Do you think he’s fine with you telling everything to the wardens?”

“I’m not going to tell everything I just—” Mark looks around at this small room Felme’d set aside. “I hate the idea that I might just die in a back room somewhere, and my peers and superiors would only know what happened by deduction.” A beat, then, “Look, I’ll write a note, and instead of sending it we can just put it somewhere where they’ll find it if‍ ‍—‍ if something happens.”

Marka has the right grade of paper in her bag. And she’s writing quickly, a vague description of the incident at the market, and then she hits a snag.

Marka peers across at the tallowbane, her fovea running over their cloaked forms again and again as if she could divine a secret.

She looks back down to the report. It’s stopped in the middle of a sentence: “While pursing a suspected gang member, I met a maverick called Wik, and I choose to go with—” Marka is not quite sure how to continue it.

A glance back up at the bane stinking of tallowsmoke. Antennae sliding back behind her, she asks, “What are you? Lady, or tiercel?”

“I’m a vesperbane.”

She gives an unamused click. “Sure, but”‍ ‍—‍ and a moment’s hesitation, before she commits to matching impertinence with impertinence‍ ‍—‍ “what’s under your garments?”

“Rhizoneedle‍-cerci, and a bloodbane’s teeth.”

It’s only her sense of chivalric comportment that stops her from grinding or baring her mandibles. More than the slight, instinctual amount, that is.

She responds: “You know damn well what I’m asking. Do you prefer to smell of fruits, or of musk? Would your partner in the passionate hunger lay beneath you, or above you? Do you belong in a modest dress, or the prideful shibari? I’m asking your gender. You have to understand that, beneath all these word games.”

“Do I understand that? Once you go under the scalpel and drip enough times, so many matters of the body stop being clear. My scent, any fashion choice beyond the utilitarian, the very prospect of fucking me‍ ‍—‍ it all inspires horror in onlookers. You expect some preference or expression to remain there?” The flame burning behind their eyes crackles a bit, perhaps by accident. “You ask for a simple answer, but you want a truthful one. To give you the former would not give you the latter. This is a fault in your understanding.”

“Look. All I want is a pronoun to use.”

“Civilians have taken to calling me ‘it’. You may follow suit.”

A strange choice, but she could honor it.

With that piece of information, she continues writing the note, but reaches two more blanks, and filling them would take even more wrangling.

We were cornered by a spellbrand, who forced us to swear oaths of blood and soul. That oath was…
If you’re reading this, we are missing or dead. As I write this, we’re planning to…

Marka knows without clicking open her timepiece that by now, her appointment with the Church has passed, and she won’t get a chance to even be late for quite a while to come. Every tick of the device is matched by two heartbeats. She worries and she thinks and she decides.

Apocrypha Given

I expect the percipient is here due to the Golden Lady (whoever that is; being a Warden we should know.)

Marka has probably heard of the Golden Lady. She’s heard of several dozen defects. But she doesn’t work in Wentalel, and from the sound of it, neither does the Golden Lady.

If memory serves, she had last been in the papers almost a year ago. Something about a minor clan, that was no longer a clan because of her? An massive arete‍-cache rendered worthless, bringing a town to financial ruin? The reports always had the sparseness that suggested slight redaction from up high. She’d left a trail of bodies behind her, weak spellbrands and haruspices whose remains were sometimes identified.

The last news one could write of her was she’d seemed to have been going north, and then nothing.

In her estimation, nothing about the Golden Lady sounds particularly special. She was surely dangerous as any defect, especially when there’s no telling what happened in that intervening year or why she’d returned. But nothing attributed to her seems impossible for a newblood vesperbane, lucky or clever or both.

Paradoxically, the fact that she was never captured or killed suggests she’s either quite powerful or quite unremarkable. The latter seems hard to square with a lack of notoriety beyond an initial burst of feats.

Do blackbanes and bloodbanes need direct physical contact with the substances they manipulate?

In short, no and yes, respectively.

For blackbanes, it depends on the technique. Enervate is subject to numerous action‍-at‍-a‍-distance forces, so many umbral techniques don’t require physical contact. But there’s a reason umbraconjuration is considered one of the hard schools, and it’s because finely manipulating enervate external to your body is qualitatively harder. But broad manipulations, comparable to magnetism, are rather easy.

For bloodbanes, there’s simply no reasonable way to provoke metaplasia in bat blood without direct and sustained contact. Even mere contact, as opposed to ingestion, is a massive impediment.

Good. I was a bit worried that Wik might be able to kill Marka by manipulating the disguise they had given her.

What manner of creature are bees?

Bees, like the noble roaches or the vespid wasps, are a domesticated race. More properly, the term is vinculated.

They are small beings, enough that a mantis could hold a few at once in their tarsi; put otherwise, they are comparable in size to a small bird. In the wild, bees settle in the plains southern and the land of mountains, building burgeoning nests that engulf entire trees (or, modernly, their pseudoaboreal equivalents).

Bees’ preferred food is pollen and nectar, but they are distinguished from snailfly pollinators in two regards: one is tool use, for they have derived primitive means to more efficiently harvest, store, and transform pollen & nectar, as well as tools for assisting construction or defense; the other difference is agriculture, for bees have learned to take the seeds of flowering plants and sow them, attending to the soil in a way not unlike roach farmers.

One shouldn’t be tempted to project intelligence onto this: despite many overtures of communication, one finds the bees’ closest analogues to speech are base scent and silly dances that would befit a wingless tribal. Bees themselves as a rule seem bereft of any identity or will, and mantids conclude them all pawns of a nest‍-queen’s will, each one thought to be like the god‍-empress in miniature.

Bee nests outside of civilization are feral in a way that generally precludes them remaining where mantids need to expand.

Like the roaches, mantids offer the bees a fair deal: a place inside their walls, with all the protection from the heartlands’ ravages that entails. In exchange, mantids partake of their oblations: crumbling honeyloaf, and the waxy sap‍-cake, royal jelly and rhodendrotox tablets, and, in some places, the bees themselves.

Part A4

When the conversation has stalled and Marka has the space to think, she realizes what’s left is not actually silence. There are sounds Marka hasn’t heard outside of a music hall‍ ‍—‍ resonating plates and thrumming strings, energetic drumming. The timbre is off, like those in charge of the hall’s acoustics had failed utterly.

The blackbane is turning her head around, searching the room for an explanation. It’s out of the way, nestled in one corner: a device that exposes a two‍-roll scroll (or what loooks like one), only with lines instead of text, and a needle running across those lines. Or one long line, rather, which snakes back and forth.

Marka stands up to investigate. The material looks too thick and dark to be normal paper. Something vesper‍-made? Or a mundanity she’d never encountered? By the mechanics of the device, one roll is unfurling into the other, the needle dragging horizontally across the roll, back and forth. Looking closer at the line, she sees in it fine patterns. When Marka touches the needle, the sound stops. So the needle rubs against those patterns, and this becomes music somewhere inside the box?

Marka rubs her own palps against her face. It’s like talking, the box’s needle‍-arm like a mechanical palp, and the not‍-scroll a very long pars stridens.

While she fiddles with the box, Wik walks over. Without giving the box more than a moment’s glance, the tallowbane hits a lever on the side, and the music dies. The box is still.

Marka cocks her head at the other mantis.

Wik says, “I dislike music.”

“Oh. I liked it.”

“Too cheerful‍ ‍—‍ I find it inappropriate.”

The tallowbane gestures back to the seating. The same high end style she’d seen downstairs, outside this parallel space. Pale red cushions on the abdominal rests, while the struts and supports were the white of the walls.

Earlier, the bee trapped in hardened honey, Felme’s gift, had been mindlessly dropped on the center table, far from the documents Wik had previously flipped.

Feeling a pang of hunger, Marka reaches for it now, slender digits enwrapping. Her body heat means the substance melts minutely, and sticks.

Wik stops her. “Don’t eat that.”

“Why?”

“It’s cruel.” Wik’s cotton antennae fall down on either side of its head. “Would you eat a mantis?”

There’s a joke which almost feels perfectly set up. How would they have put it? Sultry, something like ‘If there was enough passion‍ ‍—‍ or disappointment‍ ‍—‍ I might give a nibble.’ Maybe they would have said it snappier, but really, it isn’t Marka’s kind of joke. Growing up under her father, anything approaching that kind of attitude would be crushed by his hard words. After she left, though‍ ‍—‍ in the Wardens‍ ‍—‍ she’d seen more of it. Often enough for it to creep into her thoughts here.

If any part of her was tempted, Wik’s ambiguity (it was shorter, but not that much shorter), makes the prospect precarious. And this all is hardly a chivalrous mode of thought.

This is serious. After all this stress and arguing, her thoughts are fraying to thin ends so easily now.

“Of course I wouldn’t,” she said. That is an embarrassing pause, but she hopes she speaks definitely enough to compensate.

“Are bees any different? Bees farm, and their production of honey is delicate as any science. They had cities, before the third dominion.”

Marka frowns, her antennae curling up. “So they’re like roaches, then. Not mantids.”

“I think you shouldn’t eat roaches, either. They are like us.”

“What about vesperbats, then? They had had cities, too.”

“That is different. They are different.”

Because their blood is so useful?

Marka throws her antennae back behind her head, and she waves her raptorial, as if swiping away this conversation. “This is all besides the point,” she says. “I won’t eat the bee. What are we going to do about Felme?”

“Not much,” the tallowbane says. “He has us dead to rights. This is his domain, and he will get what he wants.”

“Sure, but which oath?” She says this slow, at the same time reaching into her bag, grabbing more of the paper she’d written her Wardens report on. What Wik just said reminded her of what it had said earlier, something she’d registered but let go unremarked.

On the paper, she writes quickly, sloppily.

said something about privacy? think he’s listening?

Marka slips Wik the paper. She affects stealth and passes it low, the table obscuring it from some angles. This feels silly, and probably pointless.

“We choose the second option: take the debts. My plan was to destroy the gang without gross violence, by seizing their finances. We cannot do that under the first oath.”

Wik is writing, and it’s unhurried and precise. When it returns the page, the new writing has a maleish neatness.

I cannot rule it out, and he’s exactly the type to do so.
What do you intend to keep private?

One thing, mainly. And Marka can’t put it politely. What approach has the best chance of getting an honest answer? It’s not something she can calculate. And there’s really only one approach Marka can ever marshal: the straight and direct.

The underlying suspicions weren’t that, however. It was as circuitous and unsteady line of reasoning‍ ‍—‍ a guess, more than anything. But it held a glimmer of logic.

Felme’d mentioned the Golden Lady‍ ‍—‍ a renegade who’d popped up a while ago, caused some trouble, left some spellbrands and haruspices dead, and then disappeared, apparently never captured or even fought.

If one could evade capture, and avoided combat instead of overpowering – what skillset was most suited to that?

are you the Golden ~~Lady~~ Genderless?

Wik gives her a look. A moment passes where the closest it has to facial expression is the wax slowly sliding down its face.

No.I am not.

Marka sighs relief first of all. Wik is making no motion to kill her for knowing too much. But the blackbane has thought harder than this, and Wik is a master of disguise‍ ‍—‍ and by implication, adept at deception. She wanted more than words.

could oaths be ~~amm~~ amended w/ that?

A moment, and before she lets go of the note back, she adds:

i know it sounds paranoid. but something strange is going on, and i dont want another spear at my back

Marka’s writing is bigger than Wik’s and by now she’s just above the page’s bottom, cramping in the last few words, her downward strokes going off the page. She wipes ink off the stone table.

A second page is passed to Wik along with a used one, but the tallowbane instead just writes on the back of the first.

It is paranoid. And Felme will respect that. So if it shall give you peace of mind, we can ask.
You should say something aloud, by the way. Unless you do not mind it being fully obvious to any listeners what’s going on.

“Um, can you repeat that? Sorry, I may have zoned out a bit.”

“I’ll be swearing the second oath. You should too, otherwise you cannot assist me.”

“I’ll ask how much debt they’re in. And uh, what if they couldn’t pay it anyway? Are we just going to get saddled with a shitty debt and nothing to show for it?”

and… whats down in the catacombs? why was that part of your plan? i dont think its necessary

“Felme is a reasonable man. There will be a forgiveness clause.”

Because I have no interest in getting the Wentalel guard or the Wardens involved. And actually entering with their approval was not in consideration until you became my accomplice.

“Okay,” Marka says. She writes:

felme said theres something down there. it sounds… dangerous

The response:

If you insist on having your activity recorded and questioned later, sure, we can see if your status is enough to grant us access to the sewers.

“Are these concerns more than just stalling?” Wik asks, and it’s probably not all for show. “I am not amused by endless discussion and litigation. I would rather we just do it.”

“I guess,” Marka says. She looks again at the page. There wasn’t much to respond with than a mere ‘okay,’ which seemed a bit pointless.

Oh! She writes,

one of us should eat the paper or something. keep felme from reading it

Wik reads this with a glance, and twirls an antennae dismissively. It raises a foreleg. Around the digits, there’s an orifice. It puckers and discharges oil mixed with air, which comes out as a spray. Wik throws out the other foreleg, rubbing two special surfaces together, and three sparks dextrously fly off and two hit the oiled page. It goes up in flame, though sparing the stone table.

The tallowbane walks to the door, and pauses there. When Marka does not protest, it leaves and she’s behind it.

“– deadline can be extended. Once. This is not generosity‍ ‍—‍ I understand the business with Osfe took you unawares. It surprised us all. But once. I hope this teaches you caution.”

“I –”

“Quiet. Save it for when we don’t have an audience.” The male looks up. Even after threatening their lives, Marka sees a secretary in Felme before she sees a cunning vesperbane. “I presume you’ve come to a decision?”

The mantis he was speaking to‍ ‍—‍ a figure in a tattered black cloak, hooded and billowing, is scurrying off.

Marka watches them leave.

“Don’t mind them. Just business‍ ‍—‍ there’s more in this city than concerns you.”

“Sorry if I have to look twice at every shadow now.”

Felme only nods with a vague mhmm.

“I believe you already suspect our choice,” Wik says.

“Ah, how convenient,” is Felme’s response. “For all that our kind are born killers and subjugators, I confess I trust a vesperbane’s word more than the commonry.”

“There is one caveat,” Wik says. It loooks to Marka.

She realizes she has to say it. “Vesperbanes have veritanyms, right? It’s how the Wardens verify renegade kills. Especially when facing one that can, uh. Disguise herself.” She sees Felme flick open a raptorial, surely meaning ‘get on with it’. “Wik and I have just met today. There’s a worry‍ ‍—‍ you mentioned a dangerous renegade is in the area. The Golden Lady? First reports of her were correlated to haruspex and spellbrand killings, weren’t they?”

“Yes, and we do have our local dead haruspices. It’s all very suggestive, isn’t it?”

“Could you, maybe uh, tack on an ‘I am not the Golden Lady’ clause to the oaths? Something like that?”

Felme’s antennae droops over his face. “You’re clearly unaware of this case in detail. Part of why the Golden Lady is so vexsome is because there is no veritanym on file for her. Never was, or perhaps not anymore.” The reversed emphasis strikes her. Not the more natural ‘not any more or there never was.’ And it tracks‍ ‍—‍ losing a veritanym was the stranger option.

He says, “Let me think.” The loanmonger retrieves a folio he’d had in the earlier conversation. A file for the Golden Lady? It was thin.

Felme’s compound eyes grow paler. In his sparsely‍-lit office, all of their eyes had grown darker, ommatidia exposing more light‍-sensitive pigment. Paled like this, he was lost in thought, unfocused on sight.

“What’s he doing?” Marka asks with a slight, quiet scrape of her palps.

“Thinking, I presume,” it scrapes with amusement. At this low volume, Wik is almost unintelligible from the wet softness of its palps.

“What about, do you suppose?”

“Whether he can implement your oath?”

“Is spellbrand work hard? I haven’t met many, and I think I would have, if vesperbanes so often swear oaths.”

“Spellbrands aren’t needed for oaths,” is its response. And Wik leaves it at that for a moment, but gives Marka a look, and resigns itself to another remedial theory lesson. “Not all vesperbanes have had so evidently deficient an education as to need assistance swearing simple oaths. It’s a feat of cogitation not harder than mastering tarsisigns.” Wik pauses, antennae working up and down for a second. “The best analogy for what Felme is doing for you‍ ‍—‍ with the sclerotium, not right now – is writing a contract, to be given to your vespers. The most common oaths‍ ‍—‍ the ones you probably swore already‍ ‍—‍ are countenance oaths, requisites of being a registered vesperbane. For the Stewartry, and the Wardens, they’re the ones giving you your vespers. The vespers can simply arrive already given the contract. Though, in truth, for them, it’s more like how you came out of the ootheca already knowing how to walk.”

Marka idly glances over, and realizes Felme has again focused his eyes, and watches Wik, probably waiting for the tallowbane to finish speaking.

He slides a digit along an antennae. “I have devised something. We don’t have the Golden Lady’s veritanym,” he says, “but we do have the veritanym of the haruspices she likely killed. This allows for a bit of circumlocution. Instead of ‘I am not the golden lady’, I can write ‘I did not commit phagein to the vespers belonging to’ ” Felme pauses, as if to cringe, and adds “here I’d put the veritanyms of ‘Doomspeaker’ and ‘Fatesunder’, which are, being in the language of vespers, unpronounceable.”

“And you think she actually did this?” Wik said, ever the one to poke holes.

“Little reason to pluck the vespers from a bane’s corpse other than for phagein.”

Marka grimaces. Phagein wasn’t a crime, but it did have a patina of villainy about it. It was an inevitable step on the path of erosion.

The blackbane couldn’t say she’d never felt the urge. Any vesperbane would be lying if she did.

“That,”‍ ‍—‍ it’s Wik chiming in now,‍ ‍—‍ “relies on two assumptions. That she killed those two, and that she committed phagein.”

“Why the indirectness? Why not ‘I did not kill the haruspices’?”

“Because phagein is a primitive term in the language of vespers, requiring no definition. Unlike the manifold means that constitute killing.” His digit curls around his antennae. “Oaths of blood and soul aren’t magic, just communication with convenient properties. Despite the superstition, vespers are not gods or spirits. They have no supernatural ability to detect lies. At best, they could note blood pressure, pheromones or suspicious brain activity.” Continuing, as if listing off possibilities, “And there are means to interface directly with the mind, through neuroprojection, but I know nothing of the school, and neither do you.”

Marka sighs. Everything was ambiguity, and pockmarked with shadows and loopholes.

“Marka, was it?” Felme says. “I respect your vigilance, and I will carry out your request. But let me tell you something. There’s a very easy test to see if one of you is the Golden Lady.”

She waited. Then asked, “What?”

“Look at me.”

She peers at the male in modest utilitarian robes, still with the brush pen in tarsus and a ledger in front of him.

“What am I seeing?”

“I’m alive and well,” is his answer. “If the Golden Lady encountered me, we have every reason to expect me dead. Or worse, bankrupt.”

He was a spellbrand, the sort of vesperbane that had gone missing around the Golden Lady.

“But you’re fiend level, at least.”

“Yes.”

That was the dichotomy with renegades at large: insignificant, or devastating threats. With every bit of information dripped forth, there was less room to wonder which.

“Is there anything else that bears discussing?” Felme asked, a plainness of tone that indicated neither interest nor exasperation.

What was the outstanding debt? Twelve thousand bone pieces as principal, fertility of 4.7%, to be paid in installments of at least eight hundred evey thirty six days. What if the gang was insolvent? “I’ll halve the amount due,” he said. Mandibles yawning open, he asks, “Is that all?”

Marka looked to Wik, who nods, and so does she.

Felme throws up a hand again, and he whistles in his trachea. In a moment, a door is opening, a servant‍-robed mantis striding in beside two noble roaches. The roaches stand about as high as the servant’s legs. They have trays strapped to them that allow them to carry several plates burgeoning with food.

The servant first off passes the tray they carry to Felme, and then attends to the roaches, taking their trays to give to Wik and then to Marka. That done, the servant strokes a roach’s antennae, a gesture of affection.

This is a feast, but one that could have been prepped at a moment’s notice. There was uncut honeyloaf (a bee recipe‍ ‍—‍ pollen mixed in with tough, leavened grains), and a kind of raw, gnarled tuber (one preferred only by vesperbanes, due to its bitter deterrent of a skin, laced with enervate), and a warped ascomycete fungus still spilling spores (a genus familiar to anyone who’s seen mycobanes practice mudwork).

Wik’s plates contained only these things, but for Felme and Marka, these were the sides, the main course being nondescript patties and sauges of meat, sauced to smell of blood and hemolymph, though their look indicates having been cooked or otherwise chemically treated to ease digestion.

For the knights of old, whose surviving diaries and treatises informed Marka’s outlook, there was something cowardly in eating what’s been hunted by others. A disrespect to yourself, who is denied the challenge. And a disrespect to the prey‍ ‍—‍ at least those bound in traps or ranches, who are denied the chance to flee and earn survival.

This was simple for the knights of old, but the modern world has a wrinkle: that this meat quite possibly never belonged to a free‍-living creature to begin with. Meat farms no longer had the popularity they had at the height of the Third Dominion, but the efficiency meant it they would never truly go away, sordid history or not. Marka wonders if a skilled hemotechnic could tell the difference. Would there be there a lingering hint of bat blood? Some artifact of artifice?

As Marka is staring at the food, tired mind riding these tangents, it’s Felme who snaps her attention and gives an order. “Eat.”

“Oh yes, thank you!” Marka says.

“Don’t. This is not a gesture of kindness, and you are not its recipient.” Felme dismisses with a raptorial. “The bargin which binds vesper to bane, it’s quite well defined. And the vespers fulfill their half, whether they bother witnessing oaths or not. But no creature dislikes food. This is the standard way of enticing them to pause in their vesperly business and assist us mere arthropods.”

That couldn’t be all true, Marka thinks. If this was truly only for the vespers, there were more efficient means. Vesper‍-lard has organic amalgams, nerve‍-fats, with an energy density several times that of any mantid food. Vespers could easily digest it, because they invented it.

The servant returns (when had he left?) and this time bears drinks. For Marka & Felme, a glass of a concotion that could be mistaken for red wine due to the presences of bat blood. For Wik, something that smelled like lamp oil.

After Marka forces down the entirety of the meal‍ ‍—‍ enough to feel fullness in her abdomen‍ ‍—‍ Felme passes her the sclertotium.

“Do not chew.”

The next step is the tarsisigns. Each one is a complex contortion of digits made easy only with years’ practice. Vespers had no mouths with which to speak, and no ears to harken. Tarsisigns exist to solve part of this problem: a bane’s tarsus is laced with propriocepting hypae which finely sense the signs. But there was a mental component, of course.

To Marka, the tarsisigns involved in any technique had the feel of some relic unearthed, a rigid fact to be memorized. But under Felme’s guidance, another nature was revealed, that of something as fluid and configurable as any language.

As the process got further along, Marka felt‍ ‍—‍ something take hold of the food she had just eaten, and the sense of fullness disappeared. The mass was still there… but it wasn’t hers.

Alongside the tarsisigns, Felme had Marka repeat a verbal component he admited was more ritual than necessary.

There was one flourish that had Marka worried.

“May this promise hold, lest our heart become but rot and pus,” was how the contract was ended.

“Is that actually going to happen?” Marka asked. “What, what is the punishment if we default?”

“There are oaths which exact the harshest punishments when broken,” Felme says, “but this will not be one of them. You will simply lose arete‍-standing. But of course, that doesn’t mean anything to someone so ignorant of oaths, does it?” He flicks a palp. “I’ll put it this way: when you break an oath, you’ll find that further oaths bind ever looser. And your vespers view their current arrangement as an oath. Techniques will cost you more calories upfront. Wounds that once would close under their mastery of blood instead fester. At the extreme, you become horkos, and the pretense that the vespers are symbiotic inhabitants of your body disappears. They will devour you, or you’ll wish they did.”

With that conveyed, the process of swearing the oath resumes. Marka values that bit of ritual Felme insists on, of speaking the oath aloud, in mantid language.

Because now it doesn’t feel like some magical technicality, but something Marka has sworn to do. It goes without saying that any knight of old would have kept every promise made.

And now Marka has a promise to keep.

The oath‍-swearing stays on Marka’s mind for a while after it’s done. Her connection to her vespers‍ ‍—‍ other than the nerve‍-manipulating pathways forged by habit‍ ‍—‍ is weak, and it had taken a while for her to feel what she realizes was their response.

When Wik was not destroyed in the contradiction of an oath broken, the two of them left the casino, seeing the evening sun just a few hours off from setting, the other horizon soon to be darkened by more than atmospheric enervate.

The tallowbane has not told Marka how it plans to follow her into the sewers. This percolates a worry as they walk towards one of the Wentalel sewers’ fat maintainance entrances.

There are two mantids there that could generously be called on guard. One slumps on a hammock between two tarsholds set into the building beside its wide doors. The eyes are paled like she wasn’t all the way awake. The other mantis dressed like a guard was initially nowhere to be seen, and now jogs over at their approach.

Having detoured to recover it, Marka is once more in her armor, sans helmet. Wik, though, is disguised, its first two abdominal segments clothed with two shirts with a professional trim and colors, embroidered with names and trademarks. It carries a bag, and Marka knows its normal metal shawl is folded up in there.

“Are you two lost?” says the guard coming to a stop from their jog. She sees Marka is in the front, and gives her a once over, bottom to top. And when she reach the top‍ ‍—‍ where Marka’s Plains Southern antennae‍-band is visible‍ ‍—‍ she adds, “Ah, vesperbane madam, I mean no offense.”

It’s not an addendum reeking of fear or excessive deference. Perhaps unsurprising, if she did guard work with any regularity‍ ‍—‍ thus has probably interacted with vesperbanes in a capacity other than as avatars of impending violence.

“No.No, we’re…” Marka starts.

But Wik, who hadn’t stopped when Marka did, leading to it stepping forward now, speaks. “There’s a pipe down below the intersection of Eight and Limpback that’s damned about to break. Miss Bane here is going to get the grout and banestone out the way. That’s all you need to know, don’t hold us up,” Wik says, affecting an accent that has none of the stewarty educated poise it normally holds.

“Save it for tomorrow. Sorry, but the arch‍-fiend sent down an order. Sounds like there’s a collapse or some anomaly? Point is, it’s dangerous, and we can’t let civilians down there, even for some quick maintenance.”

“Yes, exactly. We’re here to fix the problems in the sewers,” Wik says. “Why do you think I have a vesperbane with me? They’re a Warden. Take it up with the arch‍-fiend if you’re confused, but don’t hold us up.”

“Just let ’em through.” It’s the guard in the hammock. She looks between Marka and Wik. “Let ’em through. It’s a vesperbane. Think, what is she gonna do if we hold ’em up longer? Vesperbane means this is either important or illegal, and I don’t want my neck in the way of either.”

Marka straightens her antennae at the implication. “We’re just –”

But the line gets through to its target. The first guard is sighing and asking, “Fine. Names?”

“Marka Ofronden”

“Tyumm.”

“We’ll let the Wardens know you came by. Go ahead, and don’t make us regret this.”

Marka was curling her palps together, but Wik has a raptorial at her back, urging her forward.

At first, the pressure has her jump, because the first thing she thinks of is the spear that was earlier at her back.

That unbidden memory passes, and it’s not enough to stop her following Wik through the wide doors and into the darkness of the sewers.

They pause in the darkness for a moment, long enough for Wik to‍ ‍—‍ Marka imagines‍ ‍—‍ form a tarsisign, and then generate the luciferin and luciferase chemicals that together react, bursting into blue luminescence. Ngini’s light, a Stewartry standby.

“I’m worried the Wardens are going to catch our lie,” Marka admits.

“And do what? What laws have we broken?” Wik says.

“Trespassing? Impersonating a licensed professional?”

“I’ve been away from official channels for a while, I admit. Do vesperbanes get charged for things that trivial now?” It makes a harsh popping sound in its trachea. “I might have something to worry about, but I’ve made arrangements. You, though?”

“Fine. But still, that order she mentioned… The arch‍-fiend doesn’t want mantids down here, why?”

“Doesn’t want civilians down here.” Wik throws out a leg, gesturing at what they’re walking down into. “It’s a sewers in city with a significant vesperbane population. Speaks for itself, doesn’t it?”

“Fair point,” she says. If the vesperbanes were only Wardens or Stewarts, one could regulate where bat blood and blood‍-derived biowaste was disposed off. Keep things manageable. But with this many mavericks…

No one liked dealing with sewer oozes.

As they descend, they enter a world ruled by a different aesthetic. Stone bricks, quarried and chiseled. Some supports are metal, but you might notice something odd in the proportions and standards.

Wik had said these sewers were old, and before the Stewartry had codified mudwork into a science, the quickest (though not cheapest) way to get something built was to enlist the help of the gilded ants.

The slow ramp downward ends, and they take a hard turn right. They’re now relegated to a thin walkway. Beside and beneath, a canal is carved and its flow is dark and turgid.

By the time this comes into view, Marka’s antennae are curling up from the smell, and Wik prods her.

It has produced cloth coverings from its bags, coverings that can be tied secure at the base of one’s antennae. It helps.

“Now that we’re finally nearing the actual operation, you should start using that… scanner box, the one you showed me earlier.”

The device is now in her tarsi, and warming up. “You said we’re looking for vesperbanes? Should I focus on the zeta‍-nrv signature of the mycoumbral system, or the gamma‍-nrv stores you’d expect from a serious blackbane?”

“Felme suggested we might see a devotee of the sanguine tongues, so it’s very possible we aren’t looking for blackbanes.”

Marka begins setting the right configuration into the knobs. Through the scanner, the world is rendered as if in a sketch, from the extremely faint amounts of enervate present in mantid waste, and distant traces visible as a consequence of the prevalence of banestone. She tunes the aperture and sensors more precisely. Turning to the side as a test, she sees Wik. Or part of Wik, limned in thin, branching strands. Marka had seen an animal with all the veins extracted, and it was a similar look.

The read‍-out behind the glass screen had reminded her of devices she’d played with as a nymph, one said to capture light too long to be visible. Her grandfather had used them to track enemy bases whenever the vindicators of Black Mountain had skirmishes with the New Protectorate.

They’re moving forward now, slower with Marka switching between watching her scanner and what’s in front of her. She sees Wik repeatedly glance between her and the box before it finally breaches the silence.

“I do not mean to pry, so decline to answer if you wish, but I cannot help the curiosity. The archaic armor, that weird little watch, and this scanner box. All odd possessions for a vesperbane. Is there… is there some story here?”

“Yeah.” Marka twists her antennae. “I‍-I wasn’t going to be a vesperbane, at first. My father, my grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts, uncles, siblings‍ ‍—‍ all my family are orthodox welkinists. They, well, as per doctrine they have a… complex and negative relationship with vesperbanes.” A younger Marka would have just put it that they hated vesperbanes. But with more years behind her, and an audience who would no doubt uncritically accept another blithe ‘they hate us’, Marka feels it is uncharitable to simply write off the doctrine as blind prejudice, mere and simple. “I was supposed to be a vindicator. That’s what they raised me to be, and what I had training for.”

“What changed?”

“You probably noticed a relation I didn’t mention.” Nod. “Yeah, my mother. She‍ ‍—‍ I eventually learned that she was a vesperbane. I never… No one ever told me how it happened. Some just said she bewitched my father somehow. Others said that he was‍ ‍—‍ or is‍ ‍—‍ lacking in his committment to purity. The ones who were most sympathetic quietly speculated that it… wasn’t consensual. And the paternity laws…” Marka lapses into silence, and takes a moment to regain her train of thought. “Point is, I wanted answers, and being an idiot nymph, I had this idea in my head that the heartlands were small enough that if I threw my life away and became a vesperbane myself, I could find her, or find out what happened to her. That when I told the vesperbane leaders my story, they’d care.”

“Marka?” Wik asks, and it meets her gaze, holds her gaze. “It doesn’t define you. Mantids and dung beetles share a common ancestor, as does every lifeform from the lowest to the most high. Ancestry is no guide for the present or future. You can only find your identity in yourself and those you choose as friends.” Wik stops for a moment, and lowers a gaze and perhaps reflects on having said something to make things more clear rather than less. Eventually, it adds, “I can understand pursuing answers as a matter of curiosity. But you should know you won’t, can’t, find meaning digging up long inert facts of your birth. You’re more than that.”

“I want to know what my mother intended for me. It matters to me, whether she wanted for things to go as they did, or a different nymphhood was taken from me. I think paying respects, and maybe doling revenge, is a matter of honor.”

“I suppose. I’ve seen a lot of vesperbanes go down a different road, chasing after their parents, letting that mission, or where they hope that mission ends, determine who they should be, rather than taking that responsibility on themselves.

“Is it that common among vesperbanes?” She’d never, really, asked anyone before. Never let a conversation get anywhere adjacent.

“So many vesperbanes are orphans, or they were taken as or sold as tribute. So yes, it’s common. Even among the vesperbanes with parents, that’s often because they’re from a clan, which ultimately amounts to a whole different pit laying in the same field, that of taking lineage as definition.”

They lapse into silence and something closer to understanding after that.

The canal of blackwater runs down the middle of the tunnel they follow and there’s another walkway on the other side.

Once, drawn by movement, Marka looks over. A rat.

A dire rat.

She can see, when the thing turns its head so that blue light touches its engorged eyes, the swollen and dark blood vessels. With that bit of context, she can decipher from the shadows the warped musculature, the diseased fur.

Marka didn’t just have armor. She had a weapon with her, as well. A sword, its grip to be wielded in the spines of her raptorials.

Now a foreleg drifts from a grip on the scanner box to the hilt, but the rat has seen them and dashes out of sight. Not yet crazed and territorial, perhaps.

Her foreleg lingers on the hilt, still.

Marka has a sword. Like her alliance‍-styled knight armor, it is a point of embarrassment and self‍-consciousness. Swords had a reputation, a perception‍ ‍—‍ though at least in this case, not the fault of the Third Dominion specifically (though they certainly exacerbated it).

God‍-empress Oosifea had wielded a sword forged with ancient, forbidden magic, which had drunk the blood of vesperbats, at once empowering and maddening its wielder. Those who considered themselves heirs to Oosifea – the deathknights, the Third Dominion, the radical welkinists in general‍ ‍—‍ as tendency took after her in choice of weapon.

And hammers or spears were better for smashing or piercing chitin. But there was a certain skillful professionalism that found its ideal in the sword. Marka had chosen a thin, piercing blade, where Oosifea’s had been a thick, half‍-axe of a design. She ever hoped that was enough differentiation.

“Did you see that?” she mentions to Wik.

“Yes. Worrisome. But it shouldn’t be hard to defend ourselves if we encounter one or many. I have ichortallow grafts, in case you get bitten. Is that acceptable to you?”

She had her reservations. “Yes.”

They trudged along in the dim, damp sewers. When they came to intersections, Wik would point this way or that, and they’d continue. They walked along the trunk mains beneath roads, meaning walking the sewers was a rough parallel of navigating aboveground. The pipes thinned sometimes, and sometimes returned to the initial width.

The sounds as they continued was the slow running of water and sometimes the chittering and scurrying of what was probably another rat somewhere near but unlit.

“Do you hear that?” Wik asks, quite low.

Marka had started to tune out sound, but when she returns her attention to it, she hears it: stridulation. A mantis? An ant? The tone is warped by reflection off the sewer walls.

“You think they hear us?” Marka says quietly.

“If they do, I doubt it’s anything telling. The clanking of your armor, probably.”

“Well, I can fix that.” Marka lets enervate out of her soul, flowing out through conduits to engulf the plates of her armor like palpable shadow. Enervate attenuates sound, so by covering metallic joints, she muffles herself.

The lantern Wik used has a shutter it can pull down, and block the light, or only let out a little. Like that, they return to darkness.

Wik touches Marka in the dark, again urging her forward.

“–the fuck are we down in the shit and piss of the city? Damned if she can choke the payouts and then ask us to do this. Lorded over by that freak, no less.”

“Keep quiet, sis. You know what happened when Nobb mouthed off to her.”

“Yeah,” the response is almost inaudible at this distance. When that voice speaks again, the levity seems almost forced. “By now he might even be among the shit we’re wading through.”

“I don’t want to think about it.”

“Sure. And I don’t want to be doing it. Even the excavation teams only go through the cloaca. We’re in the thick of it. Why? On account of some prank?”

“It was a credible tip. Murt encountered some vesperbanes earlier today, so it checks out.”

“Bite me if I don’t trust the words of some bane dressed up like a hierophant.” Then, “Look, there’s nothing here. Rats and worms, no sneaking banes. Let’s just go back. The sooner we get it through that freak’s head there ain’t shit but shit down here, the sooner we can crawl back up and clean ourself. Fucking need the seven ablutions after this.”

When Marka turns back to look at Wik, she startles enough she almost falls of the walkway. The flames in Wik’s body are still burning dimly in the dark, and the way it diffuses through its translucent wax is… frightening.

Collecting herself in a moment, she leans in to say, “Sounds like some kind of patrol?”

“Someone told them we were coming.”

“When I was being chased, the gangster‍ ‍—‍ Murt?‍ ‍—‍ called me a freak. They must be talking about a vesperbane. One they hired?”

Wik doesn’t get a chance to reply.

When one tries to be intimidating, the common way of doing it is with higher pitches, like the screeches bats navigate with.

But there a certain fear to be mined in the low, rumbling that would characterize a dread cat or bear. The next voice they hear is inmantidly low, telling of an altered vesperbane physiology. Were they even speaking with palps?

“Tell me, morsel,” is what the voice says. “Do you believe I am deaf?”

Whoever replied is too far away to easily be heard.

“You follow my orders. That’s how this works. I deserve every iota of respect you heap upon that coward you call a boss, and more. No, don’t run now.”

There’s a protest, louder now, but not enough to be intelligible.

A scream. And finally, they can hear who she’s talking to, a voice from earlier now distorted in pain. “My leg!”

“Next time, it’ll be two. Or perhaps I’ll go straight for the head?” The scraping sound that follows this is supposed to be laughter. “Now tell me, why are you slacking in your duties?” A pause, probably filled with a stuttered response. “Don’t lie to me. I can smell them out there. If you had kept looking, you would have found them.”

There’s a loud sound, of impacted chitin. “Oh, I’m sure they can hear me. If you haven’t run away like rabbits, you little prowlers, then come face your death. We know these pipes better than you do, so come on your own terms, or it will be on ours.”

Marka murmurs, “Better than we do? Those gangsters didn’t sound like they come down here much.”

“Obvious bravado.” Wik says absently, mind clearly occupied by other concerns. “Disengaging isn’t much of an option, is it? If it wasn’t all bluff‍ ‍—‍ and could it be? They’d look like a fool if no one was here – I’m not convinced backing off and trying a different approach works out for us.”

“So it’ll be a fight then.”

Despite the darkness, it only takes one try for Marka to grasp her sword with her raptorials.

“Unfortunately.”

In the interests of having every sense at her disposal, Marka rips off the antennae coverings. Free to scent the air, she detects the hint of mantid odor, burning torches, and blood.

(The air isn’t unbearably foul; waste is generally diluted by water, and the sewers also collect water used to bathe and clean, meaning there is the slightest hint of soap and weak acid.)

When she checks with the scanner, she sees several faint souls as of civilians, and one developed umbral system characteristic of a vesperbane. But not a blackbane.

Quietly, they approach the gangsters. Marka is quiet because the bottom of her boots are coated with enough enervate she probably leaves prints behind her, and Wik naturally walked softly.

Marka sees firelight.

“Marka, you go first. You’ll look like a shadow, so long as you stick to the walls.”

“Any plan? I don’t suppose we could like, try to circle around and surprise them or something?”

Wik makes a thoughtful sound, honestly considering it. “Your trick of coating your armor‍ ‍—‍ can you do wall‍-walking?”

“I’ve practiced it… some. It’s a bit niche, in my usual work. Can you?”

“No, there’s little I can do in the way of umbral techniques. I can make my wax adhesive. But that’s‍ ‍—‍ not quite viable, compared to wall‍-walking through umbral means.” Wik shakes its head. “But no, I don’t have much of a plan. Perhaps you can climb on the ceiling and take them by surprise, depending on their positioning and the layout of the room? I’ll hang back and… prepare something.”

With a nod, she creeps forward. The enervate engulfing her armor is ever present in her mind, but distant and indirect, like spinning plates on sticks.

The trunk main she follows empties into a large room of unclear purpose. The canal itself drops suddenly, becoming a grimy waterfall. She can see two others from her place in the shadows, and from the angles, it looks like five other mains empty here, meeting hexagonally. The ceiling is vaulted high above, dashing hopes of creeping above.

The gang‍ ‍—‍ or someone‍ ‍—‍ uses this room enough that there are suspension bridges, their disparate style and shoddy quality belying them being anything that’s supposed to be here. It’s the sort of banestone you could easily buy or commission. The bridge carries you down for about a dozen strides, to a wide platform in the center, which, at least, has something to the effect of railing. Four such bridges hold up the platform.

There are torches set into the railing on the platform and at the trunk main mouths, providing sparse illumination. It gives Marka pause. Weren’t there dangerous fumes that arise from the decomposition of waste? But perhaps the sewers are ventilated.

“I can smell you approaching.”

Marka breathes in deep, worrying not for the foul air, and runs towards where the makeshift bridge starts, out of the shadows.

“Warden!”

Marka finally sees the one who’d spoken so deeply. Pale yellow chitin now reddening with veins crawling all over it, spiderwebbed and branching like cracks. Above her, thick tentacles pierce the stonework, and she hangs suspended by them where they emerge from the abdomen. In the mouth of a trunk main’s opening, her figure stands large even at a distance. She speaks not with the scraping of her palps, but of bone spurs on her red tentacles.

Looking at those tentacles, thicker than legs, Marka feels a bit of envy. Inadequacy.

“You made a mistake coming here.” One of the tentacles not holding her up languidly flicks out, smacking against some enshadowed form near her. It’s a mantis. “Go on, do you expect me to do all the work? Show the worm how we handle interlopers.”

The mantis she smacked‍ ‍—‍ and only that mantis‍ ‍—‍ staggers forward, and then finds the courage to walk faster. She’s sparsely dressed, clothing as much ropes as cloth, a warrior’s garb.

She hefts a club, the sort more appropriate for a game of sport, but it’s adorned with makeshift spikes.

Marka flares open her wings, partly to bare the intimidating eyespots on them, but partly for her next trick, a familiar one. She crouches, then leaps up, blasting enervate once again. Big jumps always feel a bit more comfortable with her wings out.

The enervate wasn’t just for extra distance. In this subterranean darkness, the enervate will hang around, darkening the opening beyond which Wik waits. It could make the difference, depending on what the tallowbane plans.

Several meters crossed, the blackbane impacts against the wide main platform, hard enough a wave ripples along all four bridges connected. It makes the gangster stumble stride just a bit.

Marka holds up her sword and stares down the approaching gangster.

“Shall we duel?” Marka says, voice unsteady, but not from fear.

The platform they’re on is a hexagonal slab, wide enough that mantis could make five strides from one end to the other. With four points of attachment, it’s stable under her. Is that… a rope ladder hanging off it?

The gangster straightens up just a little as she watches, seeing Marka brandish nothing more than her sword.

There’s a simple way for this fight to go. Marka can rush forward with the full force of her enervate behind her, sword out, running the gangster through, thorax to abdomen. Her ‘opponent’ wouldn’t have time to react.

But was that a fair and justifiable way to fight? It’s unclear if the gangster would even be willing to stand before her were the bloodbane not threatening, coercing her.

Marka holds a neutral stance, and watches the other mantis, slowly starting to circle them.

“What are you waiting for?” the bloodbane calls from the distance.

The words visibly jostle the gangster. She lashes out with the spiked club.

Marka watches the swing, and catches the club with her sword, the blade digging into the wood. Her response is a strike with her foreleg, raptorial open.

The gangster is quick enough to backstep out of the way, wrenching their club free with the motion.

They exchange a few more blows, the vesperbane letting the civilian push them back. Marka parries and dodges, ever conscious that the fight would be over in a moment if she were willing to kill or maim. Even if they landed a single hit‍ ‍—‍ they don’t‍ ‍—‍ it’d be meaningless. It’s a waiting game, Marka watching for an opportunity to take them down with the smallest chance of lethality.

Marka stops moving. The gangster is baited into swinging at her. The vesperbane rushes to the side, aided by a small burst of enervate.

The flat of her blade comes down hard against the club‍-wielding raptorial, still extending from the swing. She hits a joint, and the foreleg loses all grip, club clattering against the ground. A bright hiss of pain.

Disarmed.

Without pausing much longer, Marka is swinging at the gangster’s legs, aiming the inflict pain and minor injuries. The chitin of one leg cracks under the blow, the cuticle of another feels her blade bite enough to draw hemolymph, but no further.

Disabled. The mantis isn’t seriously injured, they should even be able to walk. But not stand well enough to carry on this futile endeavor.

“You know,” it’s the deep voice of the bloodbane. “You idiots would stand a better chance if you worked together.”

At the periphery of her vision, Marka sees the speaker look up, at her. “Are you fresh out of training? What are the Wardens teaching you, that it takes you that long against a single untrained civilian?”

Her tentacles are moving again. Closer now, she counts four red lengths, two holding her up. More gangsters are smacked into acting. Four rush down the swaying bridge at her.

One of them has a blade‍ ‍—‍ either a very long dagger, or rather short sword, held with digits instead of spines. He holds it out as he charges. Marka steps out of the way. The charger misses, but it must be on purpose.

He stops near the middle of the platform, body between her and the mantids following behind him.

Is it some gesture toward strategy? The other mantids arrange themselves to cut off Marka’s escape routes, surrounding her. One for each bridge besides the one they’d come down.

One of them walks onto the bridge Marka had leapt over. The lingering cloud of enervate catches the gangster’s eye. She watches the mantis clad in a ruddy cloak turn and stare at it.

But she can’t stay distracted for long. Dagger mantis is swinging again. Her sword goes up to block. Marka starts to sidestep another attack. She’s not near the edge, but she wants to be even farther from it.

When she nears, a bridge‍-guarding mantis swings out with their raptorials open, forcing Marka to jump back. It gives Dagger a chance to grab at her foreleg, and the time it takes for her to wrench herself free is enough time for the third mantis‍ ‍—‍ who has a spear!‍ ‍—‍ to stab with it. It glances off her armor, but there’s force behind it.

The idea, she supposes, is that with this much going on, she’d be overwhelmed. And to an extent, it works. She’s certainly not at liberty to be methodical and hold back as she had before.

Again, there’s a simple enough way to end this, the prospect calling to her. The platform they were on had railing, but it shouldn’t be hard to knock someone over it.

But how high up were they? Below them was darkness. Hidden down there – was it stone at the bottom, or blackwater? If it was high enough, even falling into water could be dangerous.

The battle continues, Marka dodging and sidestepping away from her assailants. Their tired huffs, and weapons smacking against her armor become a rhythm against the rush of water falling distantly, and torches flickering dangerously.

There’s an opening. Marka lifts up her sword, about to bring it down in a mighty swing.

Then something cracks against her head, and painfully squishes one of her simple eyes. She looks. There’s a gangster still near the bloodbane, throwing rocks.

Rocks, or fatbergs.

There’s so much going on. Marka looks again to opening she’d entered from. Where was Wik? The gangster who had been investigating Marka’s nerve‍-cloud was gone now.

More attacks jar her armor. Hadn’t seen nerve‍-coated plate before? Do they realize she’s armored?

One attack slips through to pierce a joint of her leg. Marka snarls, and tackles a mantis. Throwing them down, she grabs at the small makeshift blade‍ ‍—‍ shiv?‍ ‍—‍ they had annoyed her with. Shiv held in her mesotarsus, she leaves them with a gash across their abdomen, and charges at the dagger‍-wielder.

Spear stabs again, but she’s expecting it. It misses. Simultaneously, enervate flows out of her mesotarsus and floods the shiv. It’s not made of nerve‍-conductive metal, but it doesn’t need to be. She swings hard enough for the blade to embed itself in the wood of the still‍-extended spear.

The shiv is melting, and with it, the spear shaft too.

The one holding the spear pulls it back, and tries to stab it again. Marka lets the point hit her armor, and tries not to smirk as the shaft snaps soundlessly apart. The wood is warped and blackened.

The three mantises still in the fight‍ ‍—‍ Spear, Dagger, and one still blocking a bridge‍ ‍—‍ all watch this happen.

So Marka lets black nerve wash over her sword. Being shadowsteel, it doesn’t dissolve as the shiv had.

She’s never dared do this till now‍ ‍—‍ for a civilian, a cut from a nerve‍-coated blade was death with extra steps.

She hopes, seeing the spear, they understand that.

The rock thrower choses now to throw another.

Marka sees it arc through the air, and she meets it with her sword.

Enervate doesn’t work so fast that it’d let her slice effortlessly through stone. But she saturates her sword’s coating, black nerve billowing out, and it permeates the stone. It falls, she kicks it away.

Marka breathes in to steady herself. Then, she speaks.

“I don’t want to kill any of you. But if you continue to fight, you will do so accepting the risk of death. But if you run, I will not give chase.”

“Pathetic,” the bloodbane scrapes. “Imagine where’d you be if I weren’t here to save y’all from the scawy Warden.”

The bloodbane retracts their tentacles enough to fall to their legs with a solid sound. Then crouches. The bloodbane leaps much as Marka did, and lands with an even heavier impact against the suspended platform.

One of the gangsters had started to run‍ ‍—‍ Spear. A long tentacle snakes out and runs them through the abdomen, erupting from their mesothorax.

Another tentacle reaches out for the slumped, cowering form of the one who had the shiv. The tentacle runs along the length of the gash as if licking the hemolymph.

At length, the bloodbane turns attention to Marka. The word is menace, towering two heads above her, and joints thick with muscle. The bane’s mutation runs deeper than the vein‍-covered chitin she’d seen at a distance. The antennae are fluffy, not like a male’s, not even with setae, but with tufts of fur. The palps have long hairs like whiskers. The three simple eyes have pupils.

“Perhaps I should give you a chance to run, little Warden.”

Marka wonders if the best move here is some gesture of negotiation. But if there were ever to be a monster to slay on this quest of hers, she couldn’t imagine it would be anything else.

“…But I can’t tell you I wouldn’t give chase.”

One tentacle rises up, telegraphing a downward swing. Marka starts moving her sword in the pullback and meets it, blade clattering against bits of exposed bone.

This bloodbane’s tentacles are made all the more horrifying for their lack of symmetry: one is all coiling muscle, like a skinless snake; another has enough spurs of bone jutting out at almost‍-regular intervals to look like a centipede. One is thin and encased in keratin, another long and thick.

That last one has large mouth at its end, with spiraling teeth sharp like knives.

Marka is circling around the mostly‍-stationary bloodbane. She feels played with. The swings and stabs of the tentacles are clean and telegraphed, and slow, like every motion is deliberated. Only one tentacle ever attacks at a time.

Marka knows that can’t be truth. Marka was facing a bloodbane with four wretched raptorials, and that had implications.

One difference between a tentacle and an ordinary limb is that a limb is mostly rigid with specific joints. There’s only so many ways you can move it. But a tentacle is all articulation. Four properly propriocepting wretched raptorials would have a sensorium comparable with your entire body. The only way to make it work is to borrow a trick from a certain mollusk’s nervous system.

Each wretched raptorial should have its own semi‍-autonomous cluster of ganglia, able to act without its owner finely controlling it. Marka knows this well.

If she was being played with, at least Marka could try to take advantage of it, punish the arrogance. When one tentacle jabs toward her face, she quickly brings up her sword. It catches on the meat and a strip of flesh is peeled off the limp.

“Ouch. So, you aren’t afraid to fight back, now?”

“You are a vesperbane. I think I can bring everything I have to bear against you.”

Marka blitzes forward. Her sword is held out to pierce. Could she end this quickly?

It’s not so. The bloodbane has the reflexes to match. Marka gives one slash and then two, but despite her greater size, the bloodbane is able to fluidly dodge out of the way.

Two tentacles come at her at once, slamming against either side of her armor. She vibrates.

“It won’t be enough, little Warden. Give up.”

Marka drops low, and tries to roll to safety.

With some distance between her and the other vesperbane, Marka has one last trick to pull. She feels it squirming in her thorax.

The problem of adding limbs to a complete body plan is one that every truly ambitious bloodbane eventually has to ponder when developing Expressions. In that regard, Marka and the bloodbane represent two opposite approaches. The bloodbane has the wretched raptorials attached where her two pairs of wings ordinarily would be‍ ‍—‍ or had been‍ ‍—‍ that is, on her last two thoratic segments.

Marka, though, made use of mantises’ elongate prothorax. There’s an easy to miss bulge on her back, and splits in her chitin between her fore‍- and mesolegs that aren’t supposed to be there.

In moments, her own version of those tentacles, the wretched raptorials, emerge, everting wetly from their sheaths. Hers are simple, each with a hard keratin spike at the end, and a three‍-jointed design that makes them more limb than tentacle. They are thinner than her legs, but not that much thinner.

“Cute. Do you know how to use them?”

“Better than you do, I imagine.” Marka wasn’t just bluffing, but her enemy would learn that screaming.

Marka leaps back in the fray, to measure her raptorial against the bloodbane’s. Marka has armor, but the bloodbane has two limbs more to block her attacks. Even when not attacking or reaching to grab her, they’re held up, forming what feels to Marka an impenetrable guard. And when they do attack, she’s constantly ducking and backstepping‍ ‍—‍ this time not out of restraint, but because her opponent isn’t shy about going for her head.

A sudden movement makes them both pause. It’s from the opening where Wik – she hopes‍ ‍—‍ is waiting in the wings.

But out comes out a mantis in ruddy cloak, the gangster who’d went in.

The arrival stops and kneels by the mantis the bloodbane had run through with a tentacle, cutting off bits of cloth to stem the flow of hemolymph.

They look up, face dark and unreadable in the torchlit room. “Madam vesperbane, we‍-”

“Shut up unless you’re going to help,” the bloodbane says, raptorials smacking down against the banestone platform. “Actually, don’t bother. I’d rather have this one all to myself.”

Breathing in deeply in this moment of distraction, Marka watches, seeing her unassailable tentacle guard lowered from that expressive bit of body language, a moment of vulnerability. When she turns back, Marka again raises her sword and wretched raptorials, ready to resume the dance.

The bane is speaking, “The way you fight, it’s so… considerate. As if you wait for permission before every swing, like I could say the word and you’d stop. So kind. But I… prefer to ravage.”

The bloodbane flails all four raptorials in a wild, overcomitted strike. It’s fast, and Marka has to blast enervate to dodge out of the way. The tentacles come down hard on the banestone, lodging into the floor a bit. The bloodbane is now where Marka once stood, unbalanced and doubled over. Her abdomen is lifted in the air.

Marka knows exactly where to find the dorsal vessel, and it’s the first place her mind goes. The bloodbane was different from the gangsters, from what little she’d seen. The mutant reveled in violence and cruelty. Marka struggled not to see her as a storybook monster to slay. But there was no kill order. Did she have the authority to make that call?

The heartlands didn’t have knights anymore, for more reason than just radical welkinists souring their reputation. When you give vesperbanes power over life and death, her father would say, you get the Third Dominion. It’s what banes always do with power.

In the Pantheca, vesperbanes were stewarts, not warriors. Certainly not executioners.

Marka is thinking quickly with the octopamine in her system, and these tracks are so worn the lines of thinking are more gestured than needed not be fully articulated.

Still, the opportunity to strike at the bane’s exposed abdomen is there for only a moment. The bloodbane spins around quickly, antennae extending out toward her. Her tentacles are lowered, not yet promising further attacks. Head cocked, eyes evaluating.

(Marka is confused. Was there more thought behind that attack? Was it a test?)

“You really act like you’re some type of hero, don’t you?” the bane says. “Refusing to stab my back, or kick me while I’m down, like this is some kind of formal duel,” she spits the word. “It’s cute. I’m going to enjoy eating you.”

Had the bloodbane been playing with her this entire time? Perhaps the only thing that lets Marka survive under the bloodbane’s renewed assault is those very moments she caught her breath instead of pressing the advantage.

Philosophical musing about honor and jurisprudence disappear, and the only thing Marka has room to think is further parries, blocks, and‍ ‍—‍ as a last resort‍ ‍—‍ dodging and backstepping, which now feels like selling off the last few strides of space she has before the bloodbane will have her pressed up against the railing.

All she can hear is the impacts of sword against bone, sword against flesh, the squish of their raptorials meeting and leaving hers bleeding, and the rhythmic breathing of the bloodbane which now sounds almost like laughing.

It’s all punctuated by one grand clash of her raptorial against the bloodbane’s. She feels something crack internally‍ ‍—‍ wretch‍-raptorials have skeleton inside‍ ‍—‍ and this opens a chasm of pain.

Marka staggers backwards. She can feel the bloodbane savoring her last moments. Her opponent pulls back that tentacle for a blow that could end this fight.

Something else on the platform is moving.

Now there’s a body between Marka and the bloodbane.

The gangster in the ruddy cloak? Holding a torch.

No, not a gangster. And not a torch either. A staff engulfed in flame, held in unburning, waxen tarsi.

Wik.

The bloodbane makes probing attempts to strike the tallowbane, but such probes are punished with the burning staff. In its other foreleg, it has the long dagger a gangster wielded.

The tallowbane isn’t a better fighter than Marka. But surprise and not being exhausted counts for a lot. There’s also the wariness of encountering a unknown vesperbane whose capabilities you haven’t seen.

Oh, and fire hurts.

“Wik!” Marka exclaims. “What took you so long?”

“Binding all the gangsters so they couldn’t fall back and make trouble for us. Tending to those most grievously wounded, ensuring we don’t have deaths on us.”

Even despite its lack of skill, Wik is making progress, regaining ground the bloodbane had taken from Marka. Its strikes are sloppy, too much weight behind them. Its stance means it’s probably one tripped leg away from being knocked fatally off‍-balance. But it is holding its own.

Or not. The bloodbane dares to wrap a tentacle around the burning staff, and yank Wik forward by it. It’s then punched by the biggest of the tentacles, punted back.

With the moments that buys, the bloodbane lunges over to one of the gangsters still on the platform, who had been trying to discretely slide away unnoticed. The mantis is picked up with three tentacles, exclamations turning to screams as the bloodbane bares its mandibles. In the flickering torchlight, you can just barely see something white – teeth?‍ ‍—‍ before the view is obscured by two tentacles emerging from the mouth. No, not tentacles. Tongues.

With four wretched raptorials, the bloodbane tears the mantis apart, ripping off chunks of flesh plucked off to chew and swallow, and the maw on their biggest raptorial consuming limbs segment by segment: tarsus, then tibia, then femur, then trochanter, hemolymph gushing out all the while.

They’re not able to finish before Wik is running back toward them. Marka is getting up too, finding and grabbing her sword. Now that she has the chance, she flushes her raptorials with bits of black nerve, just like her sword. This is the advantage Marka has, one technique of the wretched raptorials, something the bloodbane’s neglected, atrophied umbral system can’t match.

“Angwi Renesbrood,” Wik pronounces, “of the Red Tongue, heiress of the devourer. You’re the only red‍-tongued cannibal I’ve seen without a kill order. But I suppose that’s not because you don’t deserve it, is it?”

“Not just the Red Tongue,” she says, stridulation slurred from the hemolymphic wetness. She doesn’t wipe it away. “The Red Raptorials too, in case you couldn’t tell. And do you think that’s all I can do?” Her tongue flicks out, as if teasing. “Tell me, have you ever heard of a vesperbane who mastered all six somatic arts?”

“Impossible,” Wik says, emphasizing the words with a jab of its staff. But it doesn’t strike, restrained with new wariness‍ ‍—‍ what if it wasn’t impossible? Marka herself slows in her approach. “The Red Eyes and the Black Whiskers are both clan secrets. The Bones are excluded, and the Wings are a lost art. It’s impossible for one mantis to bear the six somatic endowments at once,” it emphasizes, the facts a spell to ward away the possibility.

“I know.” This is said with a lunge and tentacles sweeping out, knocking Wik off balance. “I’m fucking with you.”

But when Marka returns, the tenor of the fight changes.

Flanked by two other vesperbanes, the bloodbane can only do so much. Marka keeps her wretched raptorials occupied, going so far as is to stab one through with her sword, disabling it. Marka jerks the blade, and hears flesh tear. The bloodbane snarls, and flings limbs at her and Wik. One impact sounds particularly bad, and she can see hot wax still dripping from one raptorial.

Marka is determined, and with nerve‍-coated raptorials digs at the flesh of the limb, until the bloodbane has to give it up, and Marka is able to rip it off her, blood fountaining out for a second before clotting and starting to heal, in the fashion of bat blood.

The loss of a limb has the bloodbane frenzied. But it’s not enough to overcome the disadvantage. The two of them peel back enough of her guard, and Wik has the opportunity to stab forward with the dagger, end this. It doesn’t have Marka’s hesitance, and goes for it –

“Felme lied!”

Wik pauses, dagger close to the throat.

“What,” it starts, “did Felme lie about?”

The other bane steps back, blood from Marka and Wik’s inflicted wounds already coagulating then scabbing over. “Nothing. I’m beetleshitting you. Again. Wasn’t even sure you knew Felme, but if you have my family name‍ ‍—‍ easy guess. Thanks for sparing me,” she says with a crooked smirk of the palps.

Wik immediately jabs with the staff, but now the bane has the space to dodge and hang back. She’s going for another gang member’s body, mandibles spread wide and hungry.

Leaning over quickly to whisper in Marka’s tympanum, the tallowbane says, “Move forward in step with me. I want to test something.”

When they approach the other vesperbane, her tentacles lash out first for Marka instead of the bane with the flame.

Marka hopes that was all the test Wik wanted, because as the fight resumes, she gets separated from it, needing to move out the way.

Wik calls out, “Fall back to a trunk main!”

Beating back flailing tentacles, Marka barely ekes out the space to disengage. The bloodbane earlier rendered one of Marka’s vesper‍-grown limbs pained and disabled. With only a sword, a foreleg and one wretched raptorial, Marka cannot match everything Angwi can throw at her, even one limb diminished.

Marka backs up quicker and quicker, until she can turn and start running down a rope bridge. The bloodbane is running after her, and deeply altered physiology means speed.

Marka has been trying to be conservative with her enervate‍-assisted bursts of speed, but she finds herself burning more just to create enough distance.

Now she can see what Wik’s gambit is. Marka makes it across the bridge, and turns around.

The tallowbane’s at the other end, dagger in one foreleg, fire in the other, cutting the ropes.

The bloodbane slows, realizing.

“Wait,” she says. “I’ll tell you everything I know about the Golden Lady.”

The bridge falls away beneath the bloodbane.

But the tentacles have reach, and can can grab on to the planks even as they fall away.

When the bridge’s banestone slabs slam audibly against the sewer wall, the bloodbane is still hanging on. The suspension bridge has become a ladder.

“What now?” Marka calls across the divide.

But a thought comes before a response does. A memory. “Can do you wall‍-walking?” “I’ve practiced it… some.”

Calling it wall‍-walking isn’t really accurate, because sticking to a wall with enervate doesn’t eliminate gravity. Your tarsi may been attached, but the rest of your body is still being pulled downward. Trying to stand on a wall just means falling, so wall‍-‘walking’ still looks like climbing.

That said, Marka wall‍-walks down toward the bloodbane climbing up the bridge. The stonework is damaged in her wake, her technique working by flooding the stone with enervate enough to anchor her, and pulling it back out when she lifts the leg.

Engaging the bloodbane like this, from the side, only half of her opponent’s limbs can reach her. When the bane tries to turn, hanging by only two legs, Marka punishes this by slicing at those legs, aiming to cause a fall. Her opponent gives up on that.

“What?” Marka says. “No more teasing remarks now?”

The response is only a wordless growl. The bloodbane isn’t trying to fight her now, and has instead return focused to trying to climb away.

Not up the bridge though. Angwi is jabbing tentacles into cracks and the space between bricks, climbing diagonally up the wall away from Marka. At the same time, her legs hold on to the bridge, carrying it with the bane as they move away.

The purpose of this becomes clear, as the bloodbane lets go of the bricks, and the the bridge swings downward at Marka, weight of the bloodbane behind it.

The enervate she’d put in the wall is lost as she’s forced to jump backward.

Like that, with the blackbane deterred, Angwi is free to climb upward. It’s a race, and one the bloodbane will win: skilled as Marka is, wall‍-walking requires effort a natural action like climbing does not.

But there’s a fire burning atop the trunk main’s opening, waiting for the bane to reach the top. In the time Marka had engaged the climbing bane, Wik has found a way across the chasm, its burning staff aimed at the face.

Angwi is looking back at the wide platform‍ ‍—‍ no, lower, at the ladder descending into darkness. “Essi! It took you long enough to get here!”

Marka looks, and more importantly, so does Wik. But it’s another fucking trick, and even that distracted moment is enough for her to swing tentacles at Wik and climb up.

Angwi gets her footing, and before Wik has a chance to counterattack, she crouches. “Honestly, I think… I don’t want to fight you two without backup. Let me go see what Essi’s actually up to.” And with that, she leaps. From her spot on the wall, Marka watches the bloodbane soar across the divide, and land back on the wide platform. It’s swaying more now, with one of its four supports cut off.

But Angwi gives one last look up, at Marka. “You… you fought well. You’re a worthy opponent, maybe even an… intimfeind? What’s your name, little Warden?”

“Marka.”

“Marka. Fight me again. I’ll be waiting.”

And with that, she’s hopping off the platform, three remaining tentacle trailing behind her as she careens into the dark, unused rope ladder right beside her.

Marka climbs up to Wik. She finds the tallowbane has dug blocks of wax out of its bag, and melts them over a flame, applying the wax to open wounds. Marka wasn’t quite prepared for the wounds she saw, entire chunks of the tallowbane’s thorax having looked to have been scooped out.

“Did we… did we win?”

“I consider it a victory. Thanks to you, she lost one raptorial, on top of whatever minor injuries we inflicted. What did we lose? Aside from the wax I lost and the enervate you presumbly lost, our injuries seem to be all minor. Right? Are you okay, Marka?”

“She probably fractured a bone in my raptorial. I think I lost an ocelli from the rocks that one mantis was throwing. I probably have some bruising in my soft bits from some of the hits to my armor? But I think I’ll be alright.”

Wik nods and makes some sound of agreement. When it’s done apply new wax to its bleeding wounds, it stands, and they walk.

It’s now clear how Wik was able to to run over here even with the ropes cut. There is a narrow‍ ‍—‍ almost too narrow to comfortably walk‍ ‍—‍ path of outjutting stone around the perimeter of the room. They make it to another bridge, and cross back to the center platform.

Marka is staring down the ladder, dreading to see the bloodbane climbing back up, maybe even with the mysterious Essi in tow. What if they were twice as strong as Angwi was?

Wik, though, is looking at the slumped form of a gangster. They had seen heads poking up and watching them as the fight had concluded, but none of the gangsters had gotten up.

One of them is fidgeting, and listening to their grunted crescendo of complaints, Marka remembers what Wik had said about binding the gangsters.

“What the fuck is this you put on my legs? Wax?”

“We have to figure out what we’re going to do about these mantids,” the tallowbane says. “Too many for us to carry without many trips. If we leave them here, I worry about them coming up behind us. I do have a seditative, ketamine, but I wonder if it’s a form of assault, to leave them here for an extended period, breathing the sewer fumes.”

“I know you can hear me. Let me up, will you? If Angwi couldn’t beat you, i know there’s no way I stand a chance.”

“Your thoughts, Marka?”

“Hey!” It’s not the nearby gangster complaining this time. By the opening where the bloodbane had waited for them‍ ‍—‍ what feels like a very long time ago‍ ‍—‍ there’s a mantis.

The rock‍-thrower! She has a rock in grasp even now, holding it up as if it some defense.

Marka isn’t scared‍ ‍—‍ even if the rock hitting them would do something, she doesn’t expect it’d actually hit home. Mantids didn’t throw things, it wasn’t a natural way to hunt. They weren’t shit‍-flinging monkeys.

Still, Wik nods at them, and watches as if waiting for what they have to say.

“You don’t want to keep doing this, vesperbanes. It’s not just us you’re going up against, you know. We have investors. Vesperbane investors! He won’t like you affecting his business like this.”

“Felme,” Wik says. “We know. We made arrangements with him before.”

You can see the moment the hope dies, their antennae falling limply down. “Okay, okay. Look. How about… I’ll help you. I can help you.”

Wik again waits.

“You’re not here to fight us‍ ‍—‍ that wasn’t your intention, right? What was it, robbery? You wanted our goods? I can show you were we keep them.”

“We don’t need help navigating your base.”

There’s another bit of disappointment that flickers across her expression. But it’s not total, this time. “There’s more to it than that. There’s a special safe, made out of the weird metal. All shiny curves and some dark bits blacker than night. You can’t get it open without a special opener thing –” “A key?” “– No, it doesn’t look like a key. The boss has it, and she’s down in the catacombs.”

“Thanks for the tip?”

“Down in the catacombs, where Angwi just went?” She emphasizes, tone codescending. “Where the other freak already is? Here’s what I’m offering: we’ll help you. You’re not going to kill and eat us, are you? You’re not like those monsters boss hired.”

“Sis, what are you on about?” The gangster bound on the platform calls. “That’s mutiny.”

“So? Ain’t we the children of E’yama? Mantids were made to betray from the beginning.”

“That’s different. That was for a higher purpose.”

“And this isn’t? I don’t think we deserve to get fucking… predated upon by vesperbanes that are supposed to be on our side. Way I see it, Angwi was the first mutineer, not us.”

“Cut it out,” says Wik. “That’s your offer? You’ll help us… fight Angwi?”

“Yeah. More than that, we can go back to the base. I’m sure I can get a few more of the gang to side with us. And the rest… well, you can handle them, right? Tie ’em up with wax or whatever?” The gangster drops their rock. “Point is, numbers have got to mean something, right? Even in a fight between vesperbanes, a dozen of us will give her pause.”

“And it won’t just be her, will it?” Marka finally says something. “If the boss is down in the catacombs, it’s surely not just her and the vesperbane. We overheard one of you saying something about excavation teams.”

“Yeah,” the rock‍-thrower says. “Yeah. And that’s another reason to mutiny. What the hell are we doing fucking around underground?” She looks between the two vesperbanes. “Y’all wouldn’t know anything about this, but the change was quick enough to scare you. One day the boss turned around with this singleminded obsession with digging something out of the catacombs, got vesperbanes to invest in the pursuit, hired vesperbanes to help, and she doesn’t even say what the hell this is about.”

“Is it a termite ark… arcology? Down beneath the city?”

“A whatnow?”

Even Wik turns to cock a head at Marka.

“It would explain the weird weapon you have,” she starts, then digs in her memory of the conversation she overhead. “Murt. That’s the one I chased around town? He had a magic device?”

“Yep. Boss loaned it out. Got them along with the new safe. Won’t say where she got them, but we didn’t get it from the catacombs, no. We had it before we started excavating.”

The excavations the gang had been doing must be the thing causing the collapses down in the catacombs. “Essi, do they have something do with the excavations? What can they do?”

“Fuck all. Boss keeps them down in the tunnels cause they can’t do shit in a fight. Some tricks with the black magic vesperbanes get up to. Main thing she does is create these bomb‍-orbs that explode, it’s what we’re using to dig through the catacombs. But she’s clumsy, would probably struggle to fight off a rat.”

Wik asks, “Anything else you want to volunteer? No? Then back off while I discuss this with my partner.”

Wik starts walking down one of the bridges to put distance between them and the gangsters on the platform.

“What time is it?”

Marka takes the timepiece out. It was deep enough into the evening that the sun would begin setting.

“Didn’t think this would take half the day, but here we are.” Wik gives her a serious look. “Well, you heard what they have to say. My opinion is unchanged on the immorality of what this gang has done and will continue to do. But I don’t think I’d ever wish the tortures Angwi delights in inflicting on anyone.” A head‍-shake, and another attempt to get to the point: “Do you think we can trust them?”

Apocrypha Given

Is there anything that Marka knows about Dlenam that has not been made manifest in either the Eifre or Marka quests so far?

Marka has not heard the name ‘Dlenam’ since she returned to Wentalel. It’s familiar, and she’s certainly heard it before, but there’s no face or title that would immediately come to mind if she heard it.

From her understanding, the arch‍-fiend of Wentalel is a lightning rod for interest and criticism, being not just male, but clanless. What she’s heard from her usual place far from her town of birth is mixed. He’s been engaged in a proactive crackdown on the rogue element of Wentalel, he’s garnered something at a distance approaching respect from Church‍-aligned syndics, and he has outspoken enemies among the clans.

Marka doesn’t care much about Wentalel, and she doesn’t care much for the weeds of politics. To her, the arch‍-fiend of Wentalel is no more than the arch‍-fiend of any other city in the Plains, and there are many.

Also how are joint vesperbane‍-Vindicator teams typically structured?

They aren’t. Vesperbanes and vindicators are about as inclined to work together as soldiers of armistice’d nations were, in the days before the Pantheca. In the heartlands, the Vindicators serve two specific purposes: one is to police and deter vesperbane defects, and two is as a response to certain classes of world‍-scars, such as crepuscular vesperbanes, termite mounds, or black nerve catastrophes.

Incidentally, banes and vindicators may both be a part of a response to events like these, but it’s better to think of it as working toward the same ends or against the same problem, rather than working together, as a team.

(There are exceptions to this, of course. Most famous being the Helldive Expedition in Vehna’s Abyss. Infamous, rather, as the endeavor was in all senses a disaster).

Who are Nemecha and Osfe? We should ask Wik; this can shed light onto how exactly the crackdown is going (and how ethically it’s being conducted).

“Did you know Osfe and Nemecha?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Felme mentioned them, right? Captured in the arch‍-fiend’s new crackdown? I’m wondering what you think about that.”

Wik briskly stridulates. “Osfe was a drug producer. Nemecha was an extremist welkinist.”

“Well, do you think it was justified? Is the arch‍-fiend doing the right thing?”

“Nemecha was an Oosifea‍-worshipper, to the point she even had ties to the Kult of Kaos. Osfe, though… I knew him. Not personally, but we had worked together occasionally. He was an idiot. Was he intentionally bad? No, I believe he didn’t mean harm. But he couldn’t seem to grasp that he might indirectly contribute ‍-‍- vesper‍-made drugs can be nastily addictive, and the gangs he worked with… But he didn’t see any of that from his lab. And it eventually got to the point I couldn’t abet it any longer.”

“So it’s good he’s gone?”

“With him gone, there’s room for worse mantids, ones who might truly not care about doing harm. But his capture is a political fortune for some. The Wentalel Stewartry used to have a program providing training and resources to Mavericks. It was highly unpopular ‍-‍- when most think of Mavericks, they don’t imagine the vesperbanes who are the same as any warden or stewart but with no institution behind them, they think of criminals with a fig leaf of legality. And Osfe? He came out of one those programs.”

… “Kult of Kaos”?

There’s a few tracks you could take to answer the question of just what the Kult of Kaos is. A comprehensive answer could go as far back as the priests of vesper in the Myriad Kingdoms. But we’ll start with the fall of the Second Dominion.

Before the end of the era of hope, Oosifea was destroyed, but not the Angels of Oosifea. Oosifea herself had opposed the Disenthralled Rebellion, because they betrayed her and killed her daughter, because their plans for the heartlands were utter naivety, and because (if you believe some theories ‍- unconfirmed for the paucity of primary sources that survived the fall) her empire had slaves.

Many of the Angels of Oosifea dedicated themselves to furthering her vision. At first, that meant ‍- however reluctantly ‍- allying themselves with the bats. When the bats lost the war, that meant opposing and sabotaging the Alliance. When it proved more resilient than could be expected, they grew more subtle, and aimed to subvert the fledgling democracy.

An account of just how the Alliance fell is also outside the scope of this, but suffice it to say it ended in tyrannies like the Third Dominion.

When the tyrannies collapsed, when the nymphs of the dream brought mantids new hope and unification, a new democracy resulted, one that defined itself by learning from the mistakes of the past.

And one the essential lessons learned was that a democracy could not survive undemocratic elements seeking power. The Alliance’d had a party of Welkinists nostalgic for the days of the Second Dominion.

And the heartlands today still has those who would defend, deny, or reinstate the Third Dominion. The Kult of Kaos, though we’d dare describe no specifics of their doctrines, is one such group. They shouldn’t be allowed to fester, and they certainly can’t be allowed among the syndics. So the Kult is an clandestine thing, made of whispers and strange rituals at night.

Clandestine, but not subtle ‍-‍- the mantids who disappear, or are found impaled on spikes as the nymphs of dream were, are evidence of the Kult’s presence. And to some, the words and actions of certain syndics betray sympathies.

Part A5

I.

Since she embarked on this mission, Marka had been ready for violence and danger. The longer it goes on‍ ‍—‍ wearing away at her with its endless walking and hard choices‍ ‍—‍ the more she accepts she’ll come out the end of it exhausted to the point of dreamless sleep. And when Wik proposed to sneak through the sewers, she did expect it to be gross. But in all of her anticipation, it’s none of these that really tempt her to call it all off.

The sewers beneath Wentalel are dark, muggy and tight. Predictable, unsurprising facts? Sure. But inescapable ones, that seep into the very atmosphere of being in the sewers. They had a lantern, but Wik still has it covered. And while it had assured her the Wentalel sewers were more spacious than usual, when an hour passes surrounded on all sides by old stone, not being outright constricted is a small solace. The big, open room where they met and fought Angwi did reprieve, but now she follows Wik away into another sewer main.

Now far from the gangsters’ hearshot, Wik speaks. “I worry we’re losing track of what we’re here for.” A wide sweep of its foreleg encompasses the distant platform, still dimly visible. “Angwi, Essi, the boss – take a step back from circumstance, and realize this is not our fight. We came here to acquire the gang’s assets and avoid undue violence. Not more than that is necessary, and no less is desirable.”

Marka lifts her palps. “But the circumstance is pretty important. Angwi just tried to kill us –”

“Tried may be putting it a bit strongly.”

“She played with us, yeah. Still, her ultimate goal was clearly to eat us. Or me. That’s what she said. So, the circumstance means we’ll have to go down there and deal with the threat she poses.”

And they should see what’s down there, full stop. Why does the arch‍-fiend want no one in these sewers? Could he be here himself? And what is the gang seeking down below? A termite arcology? They’re excavating something, and no matter what, it’s something of interest.

“To put it simply, if we fight Angwi again, especially if it’s on her own terms, I fear we lose.” Its cotton antennae curl up. “Us exploiting surprise and lack of knowledge, and her not acting to her full ability were undeniably factors in us surviving that fight. We can expect neither in a rematch. And she isn’t the only one down there.”

Marka clenches her raptorials, pausing a moment before she moves her palps. “What do you want to do about her, then?”

“That’s a long conversation, one we need not have while the gangsters are back there chewing palps in impatience.” Wik reaches out and taps Marka on the head. “Stay focused on the goal. You’re a warden, Marka. Have you heard the phrase mission creep?”

Wik had changed the topic. Marka wants to change it back, nail the tallowbane to its positions and win. She bites back the impulse. Is Wik even wrong? Their best effort weakened Angwi by a margin. And her being a bloodbane‍ ‍—‍ how soon will that injury be healed entirely?

“Fine. Let’s say I swallowed all my objections and followed your lead. What do you propose we do?”

Wik pauses at that, lifting a pale tarsus to tap slowly, thoughtfully on their labrum. The waxen digit fused to their face when it rested there, and when it lifted, strings of wet wax stretch between it and the mouthpart.

“Being seen entering the sewer,” Wik pauses there deliberately‍ ‍—‍ it seemed above explicitly casting blame, but the emphasis fell there for a reason: it was Marka’s idea‍ ‍—‍ “has damaged our chances of slipping through their base with stealth, but we can’t know by how much.” Wik drops their foreleg, and the tarsus with it. “Put simply, we don’t know what the situation at the base looks like, and whether they’re on guard or unawares.”

“But we know who would,” Marka says. “Whatever’s going on at the base, it’s going to be easier to get in with one of their own vouching for us.”

Wik peers at Marka, but it knows she’s right. It says, “Just remember what we are here for.”

Little more to discuss, they start back toward the gangsters. With the conversation gone, this new quiet underscores the high‍-pitched drips and dull, obscure reverberations which the sewers have for ambience.

After a short walk, Marka is looking over the gangsters who’d attack them long moments ago. There are six. The one who’d thrown rocks kneels by a prone, stinking mantis‍ ‍—‍ the one Angwi had ran through with her wretched raptorials.

“Is she–” Marka starts, quietly.

Wik interrupts, “Yes. Dead. There wasn’t much I could do by the time I’d gotten to them.”

“There’s still something,” the rock‍-thrower says. She rises and big green eyes stare at the tallowbane. “You can get her back for this.” Her antennae are curled tight.

Wik only nods and says nothing.

Marka looks over the six‍ ‍—‍ five‍ ‍—‍ gangsters on the platform, all but one restrained by Wik’s wax. She can see where she’d earlier drawn blood, the injuries are now bandaged up, or covered in red wax – ichortallow. Was that safe for civilians?

“Names?” Marka asks, as was polite.

“Silenal,” the rock‍-thrower says. She had tried to convince the vesperbanes to back off, and then, failing that, to work together with the gang.

“Tlik,” says the mantis who had earlier argued with Silenal. On closer look‍ ‍—‍ she wore the same warriorly rope garb‍ ‍—‍ Marka recognizes this as the first gangster she fought. Tlik looks at the warden with a deferential bow of the antennae.

“Nal,” says a mantis wriggling against bonds to sit up.

“Memata,” grinds out a mantis not looking at anyone. Ruddy cloak‍ ‍—‍ the mantis Wik had impersonated when it first joined the fight?

The last three had been spoken bymantids bound by Wik’s wax, some still struggling to be free. There was a fifth and final mantis, who seemed too out of it to respond‍ ‍—‍ succumbed to injuries? Or had Wik sedated them?

“Alright. And which one of those need we actually remember?” Wik asks.

“Mine,” the rock‍-thrower, Silenal, says. “Everyone around here knows my face. If I’m the one speaking for you, they’ll listen. Just stick with me.”

Seeming the most important among them, Marka gives this Silenal another look. The darkgreen mantis stands shorter than the blackbane, with large, light eyes and thick palps. Clearly she’s female, so one concludes she’s an instar or two away from teneral.

Unlike the others, Silenal wears no cloak, only three shirts‍ ‍—‍ one for each thoractic segment. All are the dull colors of cheap, low‍-class dye. And had no sleeves: instead, the legholes yield ropes or ribbons that run the length of the leg, attaching to what are leg warmers or guards.

It takes a moment of careful peering in the torchlight to notice each one has a concealed blade.

Silenal turns, taking a step forward. The vesperbanes don’t move until the gangster says, “C’mon,” with a wave of a foreleg. Marka starts after her, while Wik attends to the other gangsters, freeing them.

“Catacombs are down there, ain’t they?” It’s one of the gangsters.

Silenal holds up two digits. “We’re heading back for two reasons. One, the more bodies we got the better our chances are, so we’ll talk a few of the others to our side. Two, we’ll need a crank to force open one of the old doors down there.”

The walkway Silenal leads them down is not narrow; three mantids can walk side by side, and comfortably. Planks extend the walkways, looking similar to those shoddy bridges in the previous room.

At intervals come torches the gang had placed, creating in a rhythm of meager light followed by long stretches of darkness. (Sometimes very long; torches only last while they have fuel, and whoever kept this passage lit didn’t try very hard.)

Maybe if Marka wasn’t wearied after a long fight, she would have seen it coming.

A figure crouches low behind her. Marka dimly wonders, at first, if the they have dropped something.

There’s only a few heartbeats of time when she could’ve reacted differently. A gangster flies at her with all the speed of a mantid’s lunge.

On her back now. A triumphant snarl. A raptorial closing round her thorax, restraining her foreleg‍ ‍—‍ but finding no purchase on armor.

But a real threat is in the other leg. A knife, swinging inward, at neck level.

The best that can be said for what Marka does next is that it was self‍-defense.

The modifications to her dorsal thorax and armor’s backplate are for propulsion. But what they do is eject high velocity, high energy enervate.

Pain jerks the foreleg upward, midswing. This lacerates the periphery of Marka’s eye instead of her neck. She sees pain. But the attacker falls back off her with an agonized cry. As per the third law of motion, Marka is pushed forward.

(There were strictures against envespered assault with endowed ability: a crime in all nine provinces. Marka hadn’t heard of anyone convicted of it‍ ‍—‍ but the punishment was a strenuous dock in pay.)

In the dark between torches, Marka cannot see the damage done. She has no sense of just how much enervate was fired in that panicked discharge. Umbral damage is ranked in degrees, and some of them are merely crippling.

“Are you alright?” she asks.

By now, the other mantids on the walkway are reacting. Except for Wik, these were vesperless mantids, civilians, and the release of enervate will have set them on a primal edge.

Marka’s spoken question further confused things‍ ‍—‍ it seemed an appropriate reaction to them tumbling into one other by accident, rather than the assault or counterattack the other mantis’s cries suggest.

Before any response manifested, the attacker’s on their feet. They’re striking forward with a raptorial. Marka can only shift to catch it – wherever it’s aimed‍ ‍—‍ and hope it lands on her armor. Another strike comes, and then another. The darkness gives every attack stealth.

“Fuck’s going on?”

Marka gets a few blows of her own in‍ ‍—‍ cracking them on the head with the weight of her foreleg guard, grabbing a raptorial limb, swinging out her midlegs to knock out their standing.

Then all are cast into blue light.

Wik’s lantern of Ngini’s light is still going‍ ‍—‍ chemical reactions can’t easily be paused‍ ‍—‍ and now illuminates Marka restraining a gangster‍ ‍—‍ Memata, was it?

She had grabbed the wrong forelimb. Their other now stabs at her grip, forcing the warden to release. Her attacker falls back to all fours. Now the umbral dissolution becomes unbearable. They’re frantically trying to tearing off their nerve‍-blackened cloak.

Silenal, whom Marka had followed, had‍ ‍—‍ initially‍ ‍—‍ kept walking, putting her a fair distance ahead of anyone else. But she started running over when the cry went out.

The attacker is moving their palps. “Hey Sil–”

But the other gangster kicks her in the head with a midleg and with one foreleg and then another grabs at her limb, holding it in a raptorial vicegrip. Now Silenal is pinning them to the ground and in the new light Marka can see her reaching to apply pressure to a certain soft point under the neck that constricts a hemolymph vessel and cuts off flow to the brain and after several struggling seconds, the attacker is rendered unconscious.

“You might want to hop off her,” Marka says.

The warden approaches now, examining the once‍-ruddy cloak the attacker had tried to rip off‍ ‍—‍ it was ruined by black nerve. The damage means it easily tears away, revealing a ventral thorax almost bubbling with the umbral pseudosubstance.

There are four degrees of black nerve dissolution. First is superficial contact, treatable with sunlight or heat or washing with mineral‍-enriched water. The second degree is moderate to severe cuticle damage, black nerve soaking into chitin. It can’t heal without being denervated‍ ‍—‍ most easily done with amalgam salves Marka doesn’t have. Amputation is sometimes preferable, to avoid carcinogenesis, necrosis, or umbraphagia. If it’s the third degree, it’s probably fatal‍ ‍—‍ the enervate will have penetrated deep enough that dangerous amounts slip into the circulatory system, and from there, it’s a whole‍-body disorder, and awful amounts persist in the system for weeks even with the best treatments.

The blue light grows brighter and it is Wik approaching.

Marka murmurs to the tallowbane. “Looks like it’s first, maybe second degree?”

It makes a sound of agreement. “Could be worse, but the thorax is a terrible place to be exposed.” You couldn’t exactly amputate a thorax.

“Will she live?” Silenal’s the one asking.

“Probably.”

“Should she?” asks another gangster.

“I will clean up the wound before it deliquesces,” Wik says, crouching, and only Marka is familiar enough hear something… displeased, in the tallowbane’s tone. “I hope no one will begrudge me returning them to restraints.” Nods all around. “And I hope none of you are nursing plans to attempt anything similar? Perhaps it’d be safer to restrain you all, and forget this illusion of alliance.”

“No,” starts the gangster in war‍-ropes, “because we aren’t damn fools.”

“We’ll see.” Wik stands up after a beat, and gestures at the body and a big gangster, expecting them to pick it up. It takes a nod from Silenal for them to actually do so.

All the while, Marka regards Silenal with a reevaluating glance. The small gangster wasn’t useless in a melee, and, maybe this was a small thing, but she had come to Marka’s defense, against one of her own. Her promise of helping them was now backed by action.

When the group starts walking again, Marka wonders if she’s imagining the extra hesitance and furtive glances all around.

“So what uh,” Marka starts, thinking back to her discussion with Wik, “will we see when we get back to this base of yours?”

“Hm,” Silenal says, looking between Wik and Marka for a moment, as if deciding what they would care about, “mainly, you’ll find it’s pretty sparse. After we got the tip, Ress took down a bunch of mants with her to the ’combs‍ ‍—‍ her most trusted, I presume. This is good for us,” and she gives a grin. “If those she left are those she trusts less, means we can trust them more to turn on her.”

“Need we tell them it’s a mutiny?” Wik waggles antennae. “The most important thing is we’re on their side, and Angwi isn’t. Why not tell them Angwi broke trust‍ ‍—‍ they’ll surely believe it‍ ‍—‍ and instead say, hm, that she’s going down to kill her right now?”

Silenal pauses walking then. “Canny. But lying’s a shitty long term strategy‍ ‍—‍ how do you think they’ll feel at the bottom of this, when the truth gets out?”

“Who’ll be revealing it? Angwi, the inveterate truth‍-teller?” Wik let that hang, then, “At the bottom of this, we’ll have what we want and you’ll see no more of us. If you need a story, tell them we pulled it over on you too.”

Marka frowns. “Do we really need the deception?”

“I believe punishing against a perceived betrayer will turn more gangsters to our side than asking them to do the betraying.”

“The good it does seems small. And if we expect them to trust us, the least we can do is tell them what they’re really siding with.”

“’ppreciate the concern, warden. But I’ll talk to our girls, and I’ll decide how to spin it. Worry about smashing heads and stealing our loot.”

Marka assumed it a good‍-natured jab, but she felt condescended to.

The conversation reached its it end, there, and Marka fell back away from Silenal. She went back far enough none of the gangsters were behind her now.

II.

Wik falls back to walk beside Marka. The warden finds herself matching pace with the tallowbane, and it finds itself matching pace with her. Like this, they both lag behind the contingent of gangsters, which was alright with how empty the sewers are.

That last fact is underscored by an improvement in lighting. Wik’s lantern, luminescing with vesper‍-made Ngini’s Light, shines like a bonfire where the flickering and dying torches are candles. Chemical reactions couldn’t be paused, but they sped or slowed with temperature, and Marka knew Wik’s wax could get hot.

Marka grows weary of what passes for silence in the sewers. “How sure are we that Angwi was lying about the six somatic arts thing?” There’s no serious concern behind the question, but it starts a conversation.

“Quite sure. The somatic arts are by their nature impossible to bring together.”

“Well, what is their nature? I… you’ll probably call this more of my, err, deficient education, but I’ve never heard of them, except in passing.”

“I would call it the opposite, honestly. It sounds like tutors cutting out nonsense myths and discredited theories.” Wik brings a digit up to rub or scratch at the waxy chitin behind its eye. “What passes for a somatic art is any of several unrelated hemotechnic endowments focused on a particular body part. But ‘somatic art’ is a made up category, pure pattern matching.”

Marka is nodding along, and when Wik lulls there, she shakes her antennae for it to continue.

“Alright, fine. The story‍ ‍—‍ emphasis on story‍ ‍—‍ that some tell about them goes like this: the beginning of the era of hope, the winged liberator Aromethia, the first vesperbane, revelator of pharmakon, and exalted ancestor, stole magic from the bats and used it to cut a swath across the myriad kingdoms, freeing the wingless mantids from their chiropteran overlords and spearheading the disenthralled rebellion.”

There was something mocking in its tone, enough that Marka interrupted to ask.

Wik explains, “This is already fantastical. The first vesperbanes were probably wingless. At this point, the ancestors of the children of welkin were cloistered in the eastern mountains, excommunicating and crucifying each other for the slightest breaches of purity‍ ‍—‍ which is not even to speak of the grand heresy that union with the vespers constitutes. You understand?”

Marka nods.

“As the scope of the war mounted, Aromethia realized there would need to be more than one vesperbane. So she laid an ootheca, and, when her children reached teneral, allowed each of her daughters to consume of a portion her flesh. Which part they ate granted each of them a portion of her magic ‍- supposedly the first endowments. Her eyes were the Prismatic Eyes‍ ‍—‍ this is how the Brismati talk about their origins‍ ‍—‍ and those eyes were passed down to each descendent thereafter. Her antennae became the Black Whiskers, a peerless enervate‍-sensing organ‍ ‍—‍ now protected jealously by the Nibrissa clan, and only inherited along the mother’s line in the main branch.”

“I’m surprised Brismati and Nibrissa would claim common origin like that.”

“They don’t. The Nibrissa elders reject the story for exactly that reason.” Wik tosses an antennae, and resumes listing: “Her chitin became the Red Bones, which is now interdicted, after a practitioner discovered a way to grow endless fresh bat‍-blood with its marrow‍ ‍—‍ now the art is unknowable outside the Ilhon Exclusion Zone. Meanwhile, records suggest every heir to the Shining Wings was killed, the art itself probably reclaimed by the last titans before they were vanquished.” Wik pauses then, and gets back on track. “They say her raptorials were unique, though. The daughter who inherited the Red Claws freely taught the art to anyone, until the practice was ubiquitous among vesperbanes that its inscription was common knowledge to every vesper, and the gene tendency encoded in our hemolymph. Instead of jealous secrecy and exclusion, it was shared and all benefited. You may know this by its colloquial name: the wretched raptorials.” Though the tallowbane was normally stiff and still, Marka had noticed it now made small, gentle gestures of its forelegs when it speaks. Getting to this part of its recounting, it’s almost animated. “I admit, this is one part of the story I don’t hate, and it might even be half true.”

“But you don’t think any of the rest is?”

“As far as the claims of origins go? Of course not. The vesperbane arts are a science, not some mystic tradition passed down. The first vesperbane would have been clueless, not some singular genius who could from nothing produce the six most advanced hemotechnic traditions even today.” Wik flicks an antenna. “But with all that said, you can see why I expect her to have none of these except the Red Claws.”

Marka noticed only five arts had been described. “But the Red Tongue?”

“Also special. It’s not a blood secret of any clan, and not the forbidden art of any crepuscule. But there’s a resemblance to both. An aspirant Heir of the Devourer must consume the flesh of one who is already heir. The expression can be learned without doing this, but you will be unable to mold the endowments nor wield the techniques.”

“And what do the endowments and techniques actually do?”

“At the most basic level? Enhanced digestion, and the ability to grow those bat‍-like tongues and teeth anywhere‍ ‍—‍ but inside your mouth is often the most useful place.”

“Does it… make you hunger for mantid flesh?”

“That’s the rumor, but there are accords against vespers meddling with minds. I don’t think it’s fruitful to think of Angwi as some victim of her power, rather than one who chose this of her own will.” An errant gesture of Wik’s foreleg draws attention back to the lantern it holds. The enzyme that reacted to produce light also created this dull sludge that gathered at the bottom. There is more sludge now, and less light.

Marka folds her antennae back, and considers what she’d heard. Is this it? It’s… “Kinda underwhelming? Faster digestion and growing organs you could easily replicate otherwise?”

“Those are the basics. You’d be underwhelmed too, if the answer to what could blackbanes do was siphon and eject enervate. The problem with understanding the capabilities of the Red Tongue is that it’s all either secret or specialized knowledge I wouldn’t be familiar with. That is, if you want something more sober than intriguing rumors. The Devourer’s Heirs lack the cohesion of a clan, the mechanism of inheritance meaning there can be so many divergent, unrelated strains. Some have astoundingly aggressive saliva enzymes that turn bites into devouring wounds, some have a sense of olfactory taste that puts hound‍-snakes to shame, and in one case it was fused with the plaguespitters’ art to become a curse, where any and everything you eat gets vomited back up. This isn’t even to speak of the truly exceptional evolutions‍ ‍—‍ like the mother of monsters, a mad crepuscule who swallowed vesperbanes whole, birthing warped clones of them, all their abilities still present, if altered.”

“…Could Angwi do anything like that?”

“Probably not, or she wouldn’t be hired by some no name gang. If we stick with just what we can be sure of‍ ‍—‍ the enhanced digestion alone shouldn’t be underestimated. There’s a reason Angwi had tried to eat gang members in the middle of the fight. She would be able to access the calories all but immediately.”

There wasn’t a more fitting reaction than Marka’s sigh and drooping antennae. “So what, that means we’re in for another slog of a fight?” she asks, then adds: “If it comes to that?”

“If it comes to that.”

By now, Marka couldn’t furnish hope for this to be a distraction, a meaningless chat. It’d devolved to what she wanted distraction from – in hindsight, predictably. But she wouldn’t cow, and could contemplate the trials ahead with knightly resolve. Nevertheless, it daunted.

(Marka looks to Wik’s lantern. The sludge builds up more‍ ‍—‍ quickly now, as the brightness means more reactions means more sludge. It’s at the point where despite what all Wik’d done to make it brighter, it flagged. Soon it would be no better than the torches, or gone entirely.)

The path they follow takes more turns now, and Marka hopes it’s a sign of them circling in on their destination. It’s only been a few blocks of walking, but the sewers were monotonous. Beside them, there are a few dark openings‍ ‍—‍ other mains connecting to this one, or some passage for maintenance purposes.

“So.” She starts speaking, and then stops. She decides to begin: “I think we should continue sparing the gangsters, even the ones the boss brought down as loyalists‍ ‍—‍ give them a chance to switch to our side, right?” After a moment, Wik nods. “But… Angwi. With that digestion ability, if it’s going to let her keep a fight going to exhaustion… Maybe we need to be more decisive. Should we…”

“Kill her?”

“Yeah.” Marka had seen Wik what would have done in the fight, if Angwi’s slick tongue hadn’t saved her.

“Keep your eyes on the goal, Marka,” Wik is so quiet saying it that she almost doesn’t hear. They pass into another dark section, and eerie are murmurs in tunnels lit by wan alien light. “Remember, all we want is to get what’s in the safe, and we’ll run down for the key if we have to. If we can avoid Angwi‍ ‍—‍ this is nothing personal. We will. We don’t need the fight nor uncertainty a fight entails, let alone a fight to the death. But if needs must… by all indications, killing Angwi is preferable to sparing her. You saw how she lied in that fight. You saw how quickly she ate her allies.”

“I guess it’s like the folly of the scorpion tamer.” Wik gives her a look, its waxen features almost inscrutable in the finally dimming light. “What? Didn’t you read about that in the academy?”

“You mean that bit of imperial propaganda pushing the idea that some sentient species are simply incapable of being civilized?”

“Huh? No! The parable is about individuals! The idea was just that some people will betray you, and there’s a point where trust becomes folly.”

“There were actual scorpions, Marka. It’s not called what it is for no reason. Honestly, I don’t think the scorpions were the ones that shouldn’t have been trusted.” Wik watches, and decides Marka looks appropriately chagrined. “Regardless, if I ignore the subtext, I suppose the metaphor lands. But to twist it some: if there is an animal which cannot be tamed‍ ‍—‍ a mantis that would surely betray you‍ ‍—‍ it may be just better to leave it be.”

“That ain’t the deal, you know it.”

Behind them! Again! Marka’s on guard, this time, and she’s spinning around in an instant‍ ‍—‍ as soon as she hears the voice, before she processes the words.

Her raptorials aim for the head, and spines rake down.

Silenal lets the hit land.

And she doesn’t return it. Marka makes a sound of confusion. And Wik’s lifting its nearly‍-dead blue lantern to get a clearer look.

“This was an idiotic stunt to pull after what just happened.” The darkgreen gangster makes no counter.

They are in another dark gap between the torches, and Marka puts together the pieces: Silenal had ducked into one of the side passages in the dark, and between that and Wik’s failing light, they’d missed her.

“I thought it was suspicious of you two to hang back and whisper, and I was right to be suspect. The agreement is that you take out Angwi, get her back for the shit she’s done. None of this cheap pacified shit.”

“I think you understand our reluctance. Angwi is a mercenary. She’ll leave as soon as the money is gone.”

“And you think it’s good for her to walk away, what, only worse for not having a few more bones?”

“She is missing a limb,” Marka adds, but Wik is speaking almost simultaneously.

“Marka’s a warden. She’ll be reported. I think what we’ve seen is enough to get the vesperbane hunters’ attention on her.”

“And us? Will we be reported?”

“I doubt the wardens would have time for such matters. Unless there’s a vesperbane among you besides those you hired?” “None.” “Then you only have to worry about the guard, which we have nothing to do with.”

It was right, technically, but Marka wouldn’t have put it that way. Just because the wardens are not the city guard doesn’t mean there was no communication between them. But worse than Wik’s deception is that Marka doesn’t feel like clarifying things. She stews in this impure feeling.

“So what do we get for helping you?”

“A cut of whatever we retrieve?”

Marka expected an objection to them offering their own goods back them, but it doesn’t come‍ ‍—‍ does the boss keep everything to herself?

“I don’t get it,” Silenal says. “I saw you fight Angwi. You had her. And this time, you’ll have our help.” Silenal looks to Wik, and then looks to Marka. “Are you just cowards, or what?”

III.

They emerged from the sewers into a room missing a wall‍ ‍—‍ Marka recognized the signs of enervation demolition. Trash, bagged or dumped, piled up in the room in a slovenly mess that would shame a roach. The smell was different, owing to rotting food. There being a difference made it worse; they’d grown inured to the sewer’s stink.

As soon as they climbed up, Wik demanded they go to the treasury first of all.

Silenal has hesitance on her face. She presses them with other suggestions, other options: “Our armory?” “We don’t need weapons.” “Are you hungry? We could hit the mess hall fir–” “We ate before coming here.” “At least let’s talk to some of the big sisters and explain what’s –”

Wik shuts all this down. “We aren’t asking, we’re telling you. We’re going to where you store your bones. That’s what we’re here for. You can come along if you like. If you’re not deceiving us about wanting to help, then there should be no hesitance.”

It was that implication which ended the argument. Even if it hadn’t – Wik had already started walking, the cloaked tallowbane setting off alone. Silenal gives a terse command to two of the gangsters to tell everyone they had brought back some new vesperbanes and that “they’re cool, don’t fuck with them.”

That instructed, Silenal and another gangster (Tlik?) now follows after Wik, beside Marka.

Wik hadn’t lied when it said it could navigate the gang’s base without a guide. Marka almost asked‍ ‍—‍ but with two gang member striding beside them, she decided to wait till there was more privacy.

Even without Wik or the gangsters, Marka may have guessed which room was most important.

Where most doors in the base are the sort to have been here when the building was constructed, this door was newly installed: unpainted, and thick enough to jut from the wall slightly. Marka knocks on it when she approaches, the sound speaking to metal reinforcement.

“Now, look at what your impatience got you,” Silenal says, “you get to wait longer.”

“Why is that?” Marka asks.

She points at the two metal cylinders jutting out of the door on one side. “Door’s got two special locks, as you can see,” she pauses in the middle of the sentence to slide a key into one lock, “and you can’t pull out the key without locking it back. Both locks are like that. The big sisters each got one key, so none of us can go in on our owns.”

“Boss got two keys,” Tlik says.

“Boss is the boss.”

“Didn’t used to have two. Only had one, then she kilt Lev and took hers.”

“Shit changes, and you gotta adapt,” was all the other gangster responds with. She steps away from the lock‍ ‍—‍ taking her key with her‍ ‍—‍ and says, “Gonna bring back Obe with another key.”

When the darkgreen mantis is out of sight, Wik steps toward the lock and crouches before it.

“Are you going to…” Marka trails off.

“It’ll be faster than waiting.” From its bag, it retrieves two tools – one a rod that tapered to a thin, precise length, and another, flatter one with a bend after the handle.

Marka turns away at first, but her curiosity compels her to turn back and watch. Wik had inserted both‍ ‍—‍ the precise one moving in small, fiddling motions as if adjusting internal parts, while the bent tool was occasionally twisted‍ ‍—‍ simulating turning a key, Marka realizes.

She asks, “How does one actually end up… knowing how to do such a thing?”

Wik doesn’t respond, and Marka resigns to being ignored. But then there’s a sad clack, and Wik makes an anonymous sound of frustration, untwisting the bent tool entirely. Before it gets back to work, it answers:

“In the stewartry, you study deep the workings of nerve, blood and vespers. All of the theorems and principles attract a certain type of mind, and it’s the sort that, when there’s no work left to be done, occupies itself with puzzles. And without a key, a lock is essentially a mechanical puzzle.”

Marka gives a verbal shrug, and Wik continues to work.

“Interesting. I’ve never seen a lock quite like this. It’s not just set up so that turning the key engages the actuator. You see, it also causes this hook right here to attach to the key‍ ‍—‍ forcing it to stay in if it’s not inhibited by a mechanism in the wall there.” A few more workings of the tools. “Hm, I suppose this is going to be a bit more involved.”

Marka watches the tallowbane work, but uncomprehending, the finer details of what it’s doing are lost on her. There’s another mechanical click, this one sounding like what Silenal’s key had produced‍ ‍—‍ but it’s followed by a sigh when the door doesn’t open. Ultimately, the solution Wik seems to hit on involves using bits of its wax to spoof a key, and with this attempt, the lock clicks, actuating the bolt, and stays in place.

Wik tentatively pushes the door. They’re in. The tallowbane makes no sound of triumph, but Marka notes its internal flames surging extra bright, and its cotton antennae stretching upward.

“Now,” Wik says, rounding on Tlik, the other gangster who’d watched this all with ever‍-rising antennae‍ ‍—‍ it says: “Go find your friend and tell them they don’t need to bother.”

“’e’ll come back on ’er own.”

“When I ask,” Wik doesn’t grind, but there’s a distinct flatness of tone, “it will be in the interrogative mood. That was an imperative. Go. I’d rather not wait.”

It didn’t have to wait; the other mantis left, mandibles grinding.

Marka watched the exchange, comparing it to the tallowbane’s previous behavior. She says, “I kind of doubt you’re so eager for Silenal to come back.” She leaves the question implicit.

“Quite. But with that pair of eyes off us, we’ve a touch more freedom. There’s something I wish to show you, and I’m sure it’s in here.”

Wik opens the door.

First thing to note about this room that had motivated this entire adventure? It feels empty. It isn’t; there is a desk and a perch and a metal chest that yawned vacantly open, revealing its lack of contents.

With a moment to stare, Marka decides it’s not just the disappointing sparseness that gives it the feeling: on the floor and walls dust and dirt collected, but in places it had built up less‍ ‍—‍ like there were other things here once, and are gone now.

“Mind your step inward,” the tallowbane calls. “Tripwire.” Wik was already in while the warden gawked.

When Marka decides to follow after, she does not move. A deep breath and flex of will overcomes this, but treading into the room furnished her with uncomfort and black dread.

Giving attention to the sensation sparked recognition: all animals had a sense for enervation, a disquieting one that deterred approach.

The source? Marka’s eyes flushed. She’d missed it‍ ‍—‍ she’d dismissed it as some shadow.

The material was a nerve‍-amalgam that didn’t quite achieve the formless vantablack of pure enervate. But in design, it was alien enough to compensate.

Marka’s first attempt at description is that it’s a floating egg.

From a the floor beneath it, a pyramidal base stabs upward. And just beyond its spike, the oviform drifts unmoored to anything. Marka almost says it rotates as a planet might. But no, it undulates? Marka’s reminded of a hollow toy floating in a pond‍ ‍—‍ but this is in open air.

An ephemeral draft flows out from it, as if it is exuding.

“I think this is what we’re looking for,” Marka absently says.

She dares to near it.

All of the vindicator tech Marka had seen has a sense of reductionism about it. They aren’t just geometrical forms defiantly whole in and of themselves. Vindicator constructs have screws, gears, pistons and springs. But this…

“Yes, the safe. Assuredly termite work.”

“Is–is this what you wanted to show me?”

“No.Come over here‍ ‍—‍ oh, and do mind the pressure plate there.”

“Do you know what these traps do?”

“No, I just notice them. I wonder if it’s explosives‍ ‍—‍ the gangsters did mention a bomb‍-maker.” “They did?” “Recall when we asked about Essi?”

“Essi is a blackbane. Those orbs Silenal mentioned don’t sound like conventional explosives‍ ‍—‍ rather, I think it’s umbraconjuration. Enervate constructs created quickly, and degrading quickly.”

“You’re the enervate specialist, I shall take your word for it. Now, what I wished to show you is over on the desk. Right… here.”

A ledger, quite unlike Felme’s. (His had been artisanal paper, the work of euvespid wasps, which could last in archives for decades.) This paper here was thin and inconsistently colored, and you can see how the humidity so near the sewers has not been kind to it.

“Uh, I don’t see the significance?”

“This is a list of names and addresses. Recall what I said about this gang’s main activities: usury and racketeering. The gang offers loans – but these are uniformly poor mantids, who either can’t be served by a bank or were refused for good reason. And they offer protection. But in so many cases, I think the only thing one needs protection from is them.”

Marka curls up her antennae, raptorials clenched, and wonders about her earlier evaluation of Silenal as someone to almost trust, one who has her back.

Wik says, “I show you this because I don’t want you to leave with the impression that the world is better off for us sparing these mantids. I intended a nonviolent means of dismantling this operation only because it is too easy to mistake retribution for justice, and vesperbanes are stewarts, not judges. But I think if I killed them down to the last, it would hurt my principles far more than my conscience.”

With exactly the ease it had demonstrated at the casino, Wik sets the ledger aflame, the pages burning with satisfying cracks.

IV.

“Was working with the gang a mistake?”

Wik says, “We’ll find out.”

At almost the same time, Silenal says, “Oh, I hope not.” She was back, and Tlik was with her‍ ‍—‍ but not whoever the big sister she mentioned looking for.

Wik turns to approach the new arrival with all the relaxed ease of one who had not moments before torched their new allies’ primary source of income.

“Didn’t expect you all to get fast with the lock. Thought you were wardens?”

“I’m not.” Wik says it with the danger of a threat.

“Right, right. Long as you ain’t a defect, we good.”

Wik points at that altar of lost gods that it insisted is a safe. “Explain to us how this is supposed to work.”

“You need a key.”

Wik looks at Silenal.

“Don’t give me that look. I know you must be real fast with mantis locks, but this ain’t no pin‍-tumbler. You’re not gonna pick this one, ’less you pale, blind and kinder than a roach.”

“The key don’t even look like a key,” Tlik adds helpfully.

Marka saw the chance. “What does it look like, then?”

“You seen a welkin‍-style clock?” Nod. “Twelve symbols, right? So imagine it’s got three legs –” (“Some do.”) “–yeah, ok. So say it’s got three legs. One’s on, uh whatsit, the glyph up top.” “Alpha.” “Yeah, and one’s on whatever the fourth one’s called, and the last’s on the eighth. It’s like that, but long.”

Wik sighs, tossing antennae, but Marka thinks.

“I think I get what she’s saying.” Turning to Wik: “Think three keys glued together by their spines, with an angle of two thirds pi radian between each of them.” Marka demonstrates with one digit from three of her legs. “That what you meant?” Tlik nods.

Wik arches an antennae, and after a moment begins sculpting a wax key matching the description, using the ichortallow from its own flesh. Some of it moves on its own.

The gangsters take a step back, their antennae extending straight back behind them like they were magnetically repelled. “Freak shit.”

Wik, unreacting, asks, “How long was it? And the radius?”

“You ain’t gonna be able to replicate it. There weren’t any teeth or nothing.”

“Then what could the mechanism be,” Wik says, but, not expecting an answer, it doesn’t come out like a question.

But Marka realizes. The construction of the safe? The theories of termite tech in general? “It’s black nerve.” She looks to the darkgreen mantis for confirmation. “Were there bits of the key that were of the umbral shade? Blacker than night?”

It continues like that. Teasing all of the specifics out of the undereducated gangsters was a frustrating tedium.

The fruits of their labor was a key they weren’t even sure could work. About as long as a tarsus, and each wing of the key not a quartet of that. (It took so much back and fourth before it ‘looked right’.) Along each wing, there was a row of identical circular enervate wafers – eight in each.

Then came the matter of finally inserting it. It puzzled both Marka and Wik‍ ‍—‍ the faces of the pyramidal base, where they said the key was to be inserted, appears entirely undifferentiated. Sil’s only suggestion is is to ‘feel for it.’

This revealed an unseen dimension of the construct: the light‍-hungry surface made it impossible to see, but the pyramid was rich in tactile information. Bumps, grooves, channels, ridges, rough spots, impossibly smooth spots, soft and deformable spots, hard clicky spots.

“Ugh. This design is usage‍-hostile,” Marka says. “Why, with all the wisdom it takes to build a thing like this, would you make it impossible to see what you’re even doing!”

“The termites were blind, Marka. They wouldn’t have noticed.”

“They were smart, wouldn’t they have noticed how useful light is? You could sense things without having to be close enough to touch it. Surely they were advanced enough to build light‍-based technology.”

“Tenebra cycles are useful‍ ‍—‍ you can predict the tides and incoming nerves storms, and track the passage of time. Some species of fish sense this innately. It’s quite useful, isn’t it? But how inclined are you to augment yourself just to have an internal umbragyroscope? To base every mundane object around reference to cosmic nerve forces?”

“I guess.” Marka flicks the pyramidal base. “I still think I have grounds to be annoyed at the termites for this.”

“Enjoy yourself. When you’re done, I’ve found the keyway.”

There is a bit that could be depressed to make a different bit in the upper center slide away, which reveals a circular plate divided by slots their faux‍-key could fit into, only the slots split it into ninths, not thirds, and give no indication of what orientation the key should have.

“It couldn’t be simple, could it?”

A tap from behind. One of the gangsters had walked over quietly, their sudden presence making Marka jump. Silenal indicates the key. “See that side with the two notches? Try putting it in the slot left from the top.” That delivered, she steps back, keeping distance from Wik.

“Am I being paranoid”‍ ‍—‍ Wik crooks a maxillae, like the answer had to be yes‍ ‍—‍ “or is it odd that they know so much about the safe?”

“We can just ask. They are at our mercy.” Then, rising out of the murmur, “So, does the boss have you operate this safe much?”

“Much? Nah. And not at all anymore. But when she still tolerated anyone in the room while she counted and stored our shit, I’d watch her. Can’t say I’ve never thought about mutiny‍ ‍—‍ though I knew better than to try. Till now.”

“Satisfied? Now, she said second from the top, didn’t she…”

It doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t.

The failure is accompanied by the safe emitting a harsh chord with all the dissonance of tones too close together.

“There are, I think, two possibilities.” Marka extends her antennae, and they idly feel the keys, avoiding the enervate. “These enervated spots must be the equivalent of a key’s teeth. And we aren’t so lucky that making every spot the same is the right pattern.” Wik nods for her to continue, though its eyes examined the keyway more closely. “So yeah, two possibilities for how the patterning works: either its based on the concentration of enervate, which is most convenient for us. Or its based on species of enervate, and it may be impossible for us to open this safe.”

The key‍ ‍—‍ so far‍ ‍—‍ only slid in to the first enervate wafer before meeting resistance. If Marka’s first theory is correct, to test it, they have to alter only the first three wafers. That meant the number of possibilities was only three times… oh. They had no idea what concentrations of enervate it was sensitive to, if that was even the mechanism.

“Marka, use your scanner.”

“Oh, I had assumed‍ ‍—‍ if this was a safe, and if termites were smart and savvy with enervate, it’d be obscured from simple scrying.”

She was partly right. Pointing her scanner at the safe resulted in at best visual noise. But if she ‘turns’ the inner aperture to catch steeper anaward rays‍ ‍—‍ the picture clears up. She’d compare it to gazing out of a foggy glass.

“Huh.” Was that the best the termites could do? Even vesperbanes could manage better stealth. Unless there was some non‍-obvious constraint…

“Is that a success?”

“Somewhat. We’ll see if it’s any help.”

Marka sweeps through some modulation bands, seeing if any perspective was clearer.

“Wait.” Marka fishes out the quick reference manual stored near the scanner in her bag‍ ‍—‍ just to check. “It really is,” she murmurs to herself

The matter was somewhat speculative, because functioning termite tech wasn’t the easiest thing to find, let alone study. And all word of termites seems interminably diluted with unscientific nonsense. (Especially as of late, with the popularity of insane pseudohistory insinuating termites’ role in mantid origins.)

Merfal had named the enervate species lambda‍-nrv. Attributed to it is an astounding ability to bond with all kinds of matter and enervate. It’s supposed to be in all kind of termite creations, no matter their disparate properties.

Marka now had confirmation a stable species existed in that band, and that it had some connection to termites. This was more confidence than she could ever get out of Merfal’s unhinged writings or her attempted interpreters.

The harsh chord comes. “Did that make a difference?”

“I’m sorry, what? I was, uh, distracted.”

In one mesotarsus, Wik had the tool Marka had used for the wafers – there was a resemblance to a squeeze dropper. (It was more precise than her endowed nerve‍-manipuation organs.)

“I added 250 mg more beta‍-nrv to the wafer. Clearly it was not correct – but I was asking if it, the internals, looked any different, on the scanner. But you weren’t paying attention.”

“Sorry,” she says. “We could probably get a lot of renown for studying this. The theories about termites‍ ‍—‍ are not the most grounded.”

“Keep your focus on the goal,” it says. “Adding 250 mg more to this one. See if there is any change.”

Marka would compare what she sees to an entire thermometer being reduced to one color, by some blurring or distorting photo manipulation, and then being asked to use that one color to tell the temperature.

It is an apt metaphor: most thermometers have a maximum temperature they ccan tell. Wik focused on adding nerve to one specific wafer to see what happened at extremes. The limit was 2 grams. 2, 2.1, 2.5, and 3g on the wafer all yielded the same internal state.

“You two sure are taking your time here,” Silenal says. “Our time.”

“It hasn’t yet been ten minutes. It would‍ ‍—‍ will take us longer walking down to the catacombs.”

“Ten minutes for Angwi to go as far as she likes.”

“That’s for us to worry about. We can track Angwi no matter where she goes.” Wik flips an antennae. “Furthermore, we just fought her. Grant a moment of rest for those who didn’t hide away in the sewer fight.”

If they crack this safe, that would‍ ‍—‍ in Wik’s eyes‍ ‍—‍ obviate the need to descend the catacombs at all.

So if Marka wants to see what they were excavating, should she stop helping Wik?

Should she stop helping Wik pick a lock, because if anything was one more step down an impure road, it was that ignoble act.

“I think you might have done well in the Stewartry.” Wik is watching Marka, an antenna stretching out in her direction, yet keeping a polite distance. “You have a decent mind for problem solving and abstraction. It would have served you nicely.”

Marka shakes her head. “Maybe, but I think there’s a certain purity in action.”

“I think you might have done well in the Stewartry, and then you move your palps.” Wik retracts its antennae. “It makes sense, I suppose, from what you’ve said of how you were raised. But it remains… offputting.”

“How?”

“Come on. A certain purity in ‘action’? Does that not sound it could be a direct quote from some Oosifean welkinist? The third dominion loved action.” “That comparison–” “And in context, you’re contrasting this ‘action’ with what, intellectual attainment? Using vesper endowments for civic goods instead of continuing cycles of violence?” Wik waves a foreleg. Maybe it’s a gesture to swipe away this line of conversations, or maybe it’s a dismissal and silencing of what Marka was about to say. It was probably the former, she admits. “I should follow my own advice, and focus on the goal. Point being, it remains to be seen if we will succeed unravelling this puzzle‍ ‍—‍ but you do have a certain aptitude.”

Marka does not want to be petty, and does not want to be argumentative. The way Wik responded‍ ‍—‍ counterarguing, and then changing the subject – means any response to the unfairness of that would be petty and argumentative. And being petty and argumentative is unbecoming of Marka.

Looking critically at the form of what Wik said means she also notices the overall point of this digression. It is to reassure‍ ‍—‍ and it is reassuring‍ ‍—‍ to think of what they’re doing, what she’s doing, as solving a puzzle, and not the prelude to robbing mantids of their possessions. Ill‍-gotten though they may be. (Were they ill‍-gotten? A part of her that sounds like her father thinks one should always pay your debts.)

Meanwhile, Wik is placing two grams of beta‍-nrv on a different wafer and inserting the key again, expecting the dissonant chord once more.

But it doesn’t come. They got a result before trying every permutation of wafer concentrations.

The sound emitted is one of several octaves harmonizing.

“E’yama’s grace, I didn’t think you’d pull it off.”

“Now you’ll want to push it in further, and turn it by one slot.”

Wik can now push it in by one more wafer. The harsh chord returns, and so return they to trial and error.

Three more wafers to permute. First, they hopefully try the eight permutations where the wafers can have .5 or 2 grams of enervate. None work. Okay, what if they try it with .5, 1, 1.5, and 2 grams? Nothing. Even more options? It gets to the point where they need paper to track what they have and haven’t tried.

(They removed enervate with a device shaped just like the dropper. It had attractive theta‍-nrv core at the other end, and was lined with umbraconductive metal, so the black nerve was sucked up along the length. Wik had never used anything like it before, but all the iterations let it become adept with the operation.)

This was getting them nowhere fast, but with nothing else to try, they continued permuting.

Marka continues to think of the mechanism that reacted to the wafers as metaphorical thermometers, and thus, came to think of their states as ‘cold’ and ‘hot’. It was a continuous thing, technically, but there hadn’t actually been a configuration where the mechanisms benefitted from being put in any but the ‘coldest’ or ‘hottest’ state.

Marka talks about it like this, and can’t help but see the antennae flicks when she speaks the terminology. She asks.

“The imprecision annoys me. You know enervate doesn’t have a temperature, and neither do mechanical configurations. So the terms obviously tell us nothing about what’s actually going on.” It gestures at the safe. “Do you have any theories?”

What was going on inside the safe, actually? “If I was designing something like this…” she murmurs.

“What was that?”

“Nothing. I’m not a termite, I doubt I’d be able to understand what’s going on.”

Wik frowns on that, probably from the implication‍ ‍—‍ it wasn’t a termite either. “A lock is a lock. If the termites could do it, we can do it.” It gives a shrug. “And right now, we’ve nothing. Even one of your ideas could give us a direction to go. How would you do it?”

“Well… if I was designing something to react to the concentration of enervate, the simplest way would be a moving component like a magnet, and differing amounts of enervate could then push it further along. At the far end I’d have it connect to… whatever kind of mechanism you need in a lock.”

“So like driver pins.” Wik regards the lock again.

The tallowbane’s antennae are moving with what Marka at first thinks is agitation. But that didn’t make sense, and as she watches she sees that isn’t quite it.

She hadn’t noticed before, but at the ends of Wik’s cotton antennae, little ties held them together, the sort you’d see on ropes. Wik is untying them now, and its antennae frays into dozens of strands.

Strands that start moving actively and independently.

(Behind them, a gangster makes a high pitched hiss of alarm, and both eventually step out of the room.)

Marka asks, “What are those?”

“I planned them to be the subject of my fiend thesis, when I still planned to be a fiend. These were… prototypes, proofs of concept.” Marka made an encouraging sound. “The idea was side‍-stepping some of the logistics of venation by giving muscular endowments a sort of bespoke respiratory system.” Wik lifts a digit, and several of its tendrils wrap around it. “In the case of these‍ ‍—‍ they exchange gases directly with the environment. I assume you grasp biological law enough to know that can’t scale.” Nod. “But it was a modest and motivating success at the time. Perhaps too much. If I had had less confidence… When I attempted something similar to this with my body’s more derived muscle groups… Well, the results necessitated my first ichortallow grafts, which ultimately sent me down a different road.”

“Do you… wish it had gone differently?”

“At this remove, it’s the same as asking if I wish I’d never existed, and a different mantis were here in my place.”

“Well?”

“I’d rather not answer.”

Wik turns back to the safe.

Right, safecracking.

The tallowbane extends the tendrils into the keyway, and Marka can see them working for a moment. Then the tallowbane says, “Ah, you were right. I feel small, ocelli‍-sized pieces I can slide around‍ ‍—‍ and they sting like enervate.”

It’s odd, to have predicted the termites again. Maybe Wik was right, and for a given problem, there’s a straightforward way to solve it whether you’re mantis or termite. Marka wonders if the featureless geometric aesthetic of the termite artifact was just that‍ ‍—‍ an aesthetic, and inside it was the same simple, reductionist mechanisms you might find in a vindicator device.

Wik removes its antennae‍-tendrils and begins altering the enervate concentrations of the key.

“Wait,” Marka has a silly idea watching Wik directly mess with the internals, through the distorted view of the scanner. “What if we permute the previous wafers? You get stuck on puzzles when you make assumptions‍ ‍—‍ and we’re assuming…”

Three iterations of this revised strategy are tried, Wik giving her ever tighter looks for each time‍-wasting failure where her new idea doesn’t pan out‍ ‍—‍ and on the third try, Wik inserts the key… and the consonant chord is heard twice in succession.

“It was a bloody false shear line.”

“A what?”

“For pin‍-tumbler locks, you push pins up until they hit a shear line – when all the pins are such, the lock will be able to turn. But for some locks, there are modifications to the pins to make them catch on the wrong part, allowing the cyllinder to be turned prematurely and get stuck, fouling up the mechanism‍ ‍—‍ not a problem when using a key, but it stops would‍-be lockpickers‍ ‍—‍ unskilled pickers, at least.”

Marka catches on a specific part of that. “Wait,” she says, “does that mean we could set off some kind of similar trap, and break the whole safe?”

Wik is quiet for a moment, just staring at the safe. “I’ve never broken a lock beyond salvaging.”

“Have you ever picked a termite lock?”

A bit of Wik’s wax bubbles. “The termites didn’t traffic in magic. Nothing in the heartlands is magic. If their works were so beyond comprehension, how are we able to get this far? If you believe in the termites that populate myths, tell me how can this artifact blindly accept a wax key?” It looks at her and her antennae fold back. “It’s just a lock, Marka.”

“Still, going and getting the proper key is looking safer.”

“Facing a cannibalistic bloodbane and an explosive umbraconjurer in a catacomb hundreds of meters below the surface sounds safer to you?”

“In the sense that it won’t lock us out of the safe? Yeah.” Her antennae fold up. “No uh, no pun intended.”

Wik ignores it. “I think dying is worse for our ability to access the safe’s contents. I’m sorry Marka, but I think cracking the safe is the straightest path to achieving the only thing we’re here to achieve. Descend the catacombs if you’re so eager to end it all‍ ‍—‍ but I will stay here until the safe is open.”

“Does my input matter to you?”

“I am listening to your concerns, but this was always an instrumental partnership. And this was always my plan. You are here in to the extent you help me.”

Marka looks away.

“Please don’t look so hurt. This was always a mercenary profession. You can’t have not noticed that.”

“Let’s just pick this stupid lock.”

V.

After their last success, the key slips in to four wafers deep. One, two four‍ ‍—‍ Marka saw the pattern. They were in a sense halfway done.

The harsh buzz of failure comes, and now is time to permute more of the wafers. Marka reaches for the dropper‍-looking thing that applies enervate.

Wik drops the key though. Now it instead inserts its cotton‍-sheathed antennae‍-tendrils, and the tool she’d earlier seen turning in place of a key for this room’s lock. Was it trying to pick this like a normal lock?

The safe gives two pleasant hums as Wik’s tendrils simulate the forces enervate would apply on the mechanisms‍ ‍—‍ Marka can watch with her scanner as certain specific bits go from ‘cold’ to ‘hot’.

And Marka watches the third set change and change and change. Wik is going through the permutations without the tedium of removing, altering, and reinserting the key.

Its method is quicker, but its search space…

“This isn’t working out,” she says. “This isn’t going to work out.”

Wik continues, wordless.

“You’re familiar with the principle of population explosion? Ten flies one generation, a hundred the next?”

“More than you are,” it speaks flatly. “I’m not stupid, Marka.”

“I’m just saying, each stage of this lock is taking us exponentially longer.”

“Populations don’t grow exponentially, and neither does this lock. There are constraints.”

“Still, do you think the best approach is just… trying everything, mindlessly?” And triggering every trap there could be?

“We are under no time limit.”

“We are? The boss and everyone aren’t going to stay down there. They know we’re up here.”

“And what they want is down there.”

“What they want?”

“Whatever they’re excavating. It’s clearly their only remaining priority.” Wik doesn’t look up. “I get it, why you’d prefer we march down there and resolve things. Your skill is violence. But my skill is with delicate matters, such as locks.”

Marka can’t help but hear an echo of one of the first things the tallowbane had said on that rooftop. “I wish I could say a plan like yours is a surprise coming from someone looking like you do, but I cannot.”

Wik had never stopped seeing her as some unsophisticated bit of wardens muscles, had it?

It’s still talking. “If you’re so ready to criticize my approach, why not look back at that vindicator scanner and tell me if you can see something useful.”

Wik returns to the lock. She can watch its palps enter a frustrated configuration as its exhaustive search tries permutations with more ‘hot’ states. Because it uses tendrils in place of enervate, the tendrils have to remain in place to keep it ‘hot’. It is becoming contorted, and seeing permutations take so many tries that hot wax begins sliding down antennae‍-tendrils, Marka does not smirk.

She turns her eyes to the scanner.

With more than a pair of inputs exposed, she sees there was more to the mechanism than just the ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ bits closest to the key.

It turns out those pieces Wik’s moving are the start of an extended mechanism Marka might liken to a river. Like a river, it met with others of its kind and merged. It seemed the correctness of an enervate pattern wasn’t determined immediately by those pieces it directly affected, but was relayed downstream, determined deeper in the mechanism.

Wik’s manipulations in effect become perfect tests to illustrate this behavior.

The points where the ‘rivers’ meet seem to be involved in the actual determination. The temperature analogy breaks down a bit here. A meetpoint affects other meetpoints like it itself is ‘hot’ or ‘cold’, but its actual state is more subtle, being determined by the two ‘rivers’ meeting here.

And the relation wasn’t always obvious! Sometimes only ‘hot’ and ‘hot’ together made the meetpoint act ‘hot’, but sometimes was only ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ (or ‘cold’ and ‘hot’).

She takes a bit of paper and maps it out, and it gives her perspective. For instance, her map of the flow from one wing of the key looks a little like:

o  o  o  o

\ ! \ / \ !

 +  &  & 

 \ / \ /

  &  -

  \ /

   &

She picks a different symbol for each type of meetpoint that behaves differently. Illustrating it like this gives her more perspective for solutions.

“Wik, I think I see something. Go back through the opening sequence?”

It bristles at the command, but only bristles.

She sees what she expects. The place where every river ends has to be ‘hot’ to trigger the next phase.

And with that assurance, she can run down through the branches of the diagram she drew, and figure out what will allow the final meetpoint to be ‘hot’.

“I think I’ve got it. See what happens if you activate these pins,” and she points to the corresponding wafers on the key.

Wik’s expression is a bit of surprise and perplexity. Its palps move to respond‍ ‍—‍ but instead the sound is loud, hissing alarm through its abdominal spiracles.

“What?” she asks, then realizes what happened. It must have slacked just a bit with the tension tool. The lock reset. And its tendrils? Trapped in the closing compartments. Their cotton sheaths are dyed red and dripping.

“Maybe let’s return to using the key…”

She has to redo her work‍ ‍—‍ the individual stages of the lock had different ‘rivers’ and meetpoints and each one with multiple solutions. Together, each was like a filter.

One hum. Two. Three.

It worked; one last stage to go.

“See? I’m not useless here just because I know how to fight. We couldn’t have done this if we didn’t work together.”

There’s no moment of apology or agreement, but Wik looks away, which feels like enough contrition. It understands.

They made it to the final stage, and their solution is one that won’t take an hour of iteration for the full twenty‍-four wafer stage.

Marka maps out the last ‘rivers’, her diagram of each twice as wide and as tall. When she does, something she’d noticed before becomes fully clear.

Her father would say that impurity by far outnumbered purity. Why? there are so many more ways for a thing to be unclean, broken, or suboptimal. A sorted shelf can be properly sorted in exactly one way.

This comes to mind because the mechanisms of the meetpoints are usually so similar‍ ‍—‍ and the few different ones all unique‍ ‍—‍ that she can’t help but think of them as damaged.

At the risk of mixing metaphors, some of these special meetpoints were like dams for the rivers, and never acted ‘hot’ no matter the input; others were… anti‍-dams. Always ‘hot’.

Marka sees entire parts of the lock’s internal mechanisms never light up despite being connected to the rivers. In some parts of the key, whatever you set the wafer too didn’t matter.

The safe makes one hum.

Then a second.

Then a third.

And then, finally, a triumphant series of beeps.

They did it. They’re in.

The floating egg, which had in their minds faded as a background fixture, now unravels.

Marka can only compare it to the intricate sliding motions of some snailflies when their shells become wings. The egg is now flat as a wide platform‍ ‍—‍ wider than the circumference of the egg shape it had been.

Marka is grinning and Wik looks expectantly. What will the reward be? Bags of bone‍-pieces? Piles of jewelry?

When the egg is finished unraveling, the contents of the safe lay before them.

It’s a couple of pieces of paper.

Marka doesn’t move. There’s no moves to make. Wik, though, has it in itself to reach out for the topmost piece of paper.

It glances at it for a moment.

“It… it’s for you.”

What?

Hello, Marka.
The termites were an incomparably advanced race, capable of feats of engineering that mystify even the purest sages of welkin. You may, then, find yourself proud to have defeated a lock wrought by them.
Unfortunately, you did not. The mechanics of these simple termite devices have been comprehended by us, and we have compromised this one specifically to be crackable by you and your partner.
This device is what we term a multisafe; depending on how it is opened, different contents are revealed. The riches you seek are still withheld from you, and if you wish to access them, you’ll need the key.
To not entirely disappoint you, we have included an intercepted letter to the boss which you may find intriguing, motivating.
That is our hope. But if not curiosity, let duty guide you. We ask that you descend the catacombs, and put a final end to Ress’s endeavor. Consider it a mercy: the truth is, she’s already gone.
Unlike many of those touched by black nerve, your heart has not dissolved. And for that reason, we find you a compelling agent. Unfortunately, what we ask of you will bring you one step closer to that fate. For your sake and ours, please resist the gravity of despair and callousness, whatever happens.
When you have witnessed the secret at the bottom of the catacombs, we ask that you return to where you were supposed to be. There we will wait, and we will have a few answers for you.
Trust the black brain.
Together in perspective,
—‍ Ciphersoul.

Wik had read the other letter while Marka read this one. By unspoken coordination, they each finish and exchange pages.

Ress.
Do not let your jubilance get the best of you. We have not forgotten that the last artifact you showed us was a forgery, have we? This time, we hope you’ve learned not to dispense rewards until we have confirmed adequacy. Or if you must, not to let them escape. We loathe the expense, but we loathe unrecompensed defection more. Accompanying this letter will come the head of the one whom you claim is the forger. Show them it as an example.
To respond to your raised concerns, in order:
If your ladies don’t wish to dig, that is not our problem to solve. Our initial investment was yours to spend, and you chose vesperbanes. Angwi should be sufficient to instill discipline, shouldn’t she?
No, we will grant you no further termite implements. The gun and the safe are enough. The soldier we allowed you is all assistance we will offer. No, if we had anything to make finding it easier, we would not need your help.
Yes, we are on a deadline and no, we will not elaborate. You need not know. If you continue to disappoint us and offer up meaningless finds, we already have contingencies to get rid of you. You’ll meet them soon.
Yes, we know exactly what’s sealed down there. No, I’m not worried about it getting out‍ ‍—‍ and if you are, work faster. No, you especially need not worry in the slightest.
Going forward, if you need to identify the heart, ask first your vesperbanes if what you’ve found looks like a sclerotium. They’ll know.
This time, we’ll send one of my own to inspect what you have, because your writing takes so long and is so agonizing to read. You’ll regret it if this is another waste.
And if you falsely report a find for a third time, you’ll have no more regrets.
—‍ The Watching Lord.

“Ress, I guess, is the boss we’ve heard so much about?”

“Without a doubt.” Wik stands with a sigh.

“This means we’ll have to go down there, doesn’t it?”

VI.

Marka’s metal boots clank against the catacombs’ stone. Hers are the loudest, though not the only steps heard. Behind her come treads of all kinds, from pedechit shoes, sandals with rubber soles, to just bare tarsus.

Nine gangsters had come along. They trudge alongside Marka, an assymmetric rabble that gestures toward the tight formation the warden had asked of them. Not for a lack of subordination, however: she can say a word, and one will pass her a blue‍-glowing torch or push some debris out of her way. It leaves her feeling like a proper troop‍-leader. A battle‍-queen, even.

Marka does not walk up front, on the off chance traps lie in wait. She doesn’t walk behind either, even as this means letting gangsters behind her again. But it’s caution, too: just in case there’s stragglers coming up behind them. This concern had been brought up more than once, and not for no reason.

Every dozen meters, or after a line of sight break (whichever comes last), Wik leaves a ball of wax glowing with secreted Ngini’s Light. This makes their party easier to track, if any enemy gangsters skulk in the shadows. But it gives them breadcrumbs to follow back, no matter what happens.

And it has another, puzzling impetus. They come now upon a still‍-burning torch and a gangster runs over to take it down and pass it to the tallowbane who’ll put it out and drain any oil it might have left.

They carry jugs of the stuff with them, most of it raided from the base. None of the gangsters had questioned it, because they lug it anonymously alongside jugs of water. (When asked about the procedure with the torches, Wik said it might use it to light torches as back up, if it runs out of Ngini’s light.)

They’d brought quite a few things down they couldn’t have carried if they hadn’t accepted the gang’s help‍ ‍—‍ and things they probably couldn’t have accessed at all if they’d been sneaking in a hostile base.

Of course, some of what they carry is a consequence of bringing this many mantids, like all the food and water. Civilians couldn’t move as fast nor for as long as the banes.

They definitely feel the slow down, as this journey crawls on. The catacombs beneath Wentalel are cramped, contorted mazes in stone, and they may never get out without the signposts left by the excavation teams.

Their light is never bright, which means the forms that decorate the walls are never fully limned, only hinted at in briefly illumed planes and angles. An eyeless head. A leg with no soft joints, only hard chitin. The black orbs called souls.

“Spooky,” Marka says. “Why is there even a catacomb down here?”

“The way you tell it,”‍ ‍—‍ it’s Silenal responding‍ ‍—‍ “is before the Stewartry, we had plagues every day. Had to put the bodies somewhere, you know? It makes sense to dig a hole and drop ’em down.”

When Marka’s party comes to a room that opens up even a little, it’s enough of a relief that the mantis in front is walking forward without watching their step.

They stop suddenly, forelegs flailing in the air like they almost fell, and the warden bumps into them.

“Watch it!” they’re saying, but it’s not directed at her, “Huge drop right ’ere.”

Wik comes forth, and brightens its Ngini’s Light, and they look.

(If you had a bane who could make it‍ ‍—‍ and plenty from the Stewartry could‍ ‍—‍ Ngini’s Light had a few advantages over lamp oil, the easily manipulated brightness most salient. Accessibility was another big one: the metabolic pathways are mapped out well enough that it doesn’t take Wik much more than calories and some focus to produce more, and they’d an excess of both. The one odd ingredient it needs is phosphorus, which they got from some celebratory fireworks the gang had in a closet.)

“Well damn,” a gangster says, and then asks one in particular: “What now? We walkin around or what?”

The enhanced light reveals the chasm was once bridged by the gang’s now‍-iconic makeshift constructions. But that bridge exists now as banestone planks smashed and scattered around.

A gangster is dropping a rock down the chasm‍ ‍—‍ about two seconds later, an impact.

“Two seconds,” Wik says. “It’s about fifteen meters deep, then.”

Leg‍-breaking heights to fall from, and climbing all the way back up afterward wasn’t happening.

“By E’yama am I not gonna be blind poking around all these dead fuckers down here. No thank you.”

Marka looks to Wik, thinking. “Could you toss some blue wax over to the other side?” (‘Blue wax’ was what the gang had taken to calling Wik’s Ngini’s Light‍-filled creations.)

The other bane’s aim is about as bad as you can expect from an untrained mantis. But the toss lands‍ ‍—‍ about six meters distant. (The wax construct splits open on impact, spilling Ngini’s Light over the ground, its light now seriously diminished.)

Marka studies the distance.

“Wik, still have those nerve crystals?”

Murt had not been among the gangsters left above ground. But they raided her slice of the communal sleeping room, and found black rocks heavy like lead. Filled with gamma‍-nrv, they must have been involved in operating the termite ‘gun’.

“Of course,” it responds.

Marka crouches and leaps across the gap, enervate emissions lingering as a cloud in the dark room.

She makes it.

“Okay, I have an idea, but this may be a bit fraught,” she calls across, palps struggling for volume.

Marka could easily blast enerverate to fly across a room. And she’d trained enough in the wardens to carry another mantis. But both at once?

“I have rope,” Wik is saying after Marka leaps back over and proposes her plan. “We can tie those you carry to something fixed on this side, and they can climb back up if you fail.”

The warden nods. Then, regarding the gangsters scattered and milling about the room. “Well, who’ll be first?” She can’t make herself sound confident.

Size varied among the gangsters. A few were male, and some (most familiarly Silenal) weren’t quite imagos. Not a trivial thing to tell – the gang had many wingless and halfwinged among them.

One is an extreme outlier, though. About half the age of the rest, there was nymph here because her brother (the only one who knows their way with a ranged weapon) refused to leave her alone at the base.

Now, she’d be easier to carry, but the prospect of dropping a nymph was almost enough to dissuade them entirely.

“What do you think, little one? Want to fly?”

The nymph had hard, intelligent eyes, for a sixth instar. She looks at Marka, and then at the rope Wik is tying. “You best not drop me.” Its stridulation has the jerky, start‍-stop rhythm to sound like a tough bark, but her palps are so small it’s still a high pitched sound.

Marka does not drop the nymph. She drops the next mantis she tries. But after that, she’s figured out a way to securely hold mantids in her midlegs, and a way to direct nerve flow on her armor to increase throughput. Each pass is punctuated by Marka gathering the enervate from the cloud left behind her; it’s a bad call to let it build up when civvies will be passing through.

(Marka can form a sizable glob of enervate on her tarsus with endowed outlets common to all vesperbanes. And the second rule of enervate holds that cohesion‍ ‍—‍ the name for the attractive force between enervate – is inversely proportional to saturation. When Marka keeps this enervate glob get especially unsaturated, this attracts the diffuse enervate cloud. Imagine if hot things were positively charged, and cold things negative‍ ‍—‍ then this would be like refrigerating something to maintain its charge, and that is about as energetically demanding. Admittedly, the analogy is a bit circular, since refrigeration is done with enervate, but still.)

Six mantids are ferried across, and three remain. Two seem skittish. To be fair, Marka had dropped two so far, but she was getting the hang of it!

“Do not forget,” Wik tells them, “this is entirely voluntary. We won’t force you to come with us without your consent.” It gestures to behind them. “The way back is lit.”

Unspoken, of course, was that they wouldn’t get a cut of the profits if they ran off. It will be split among everyone who remains at the end.

“We don’t need cowards,” comes the distorted voice of another gangster. “If you’re going to hesitate for something this riskless, I don’t want you beside me in a fight. Scamper off now.”

This was Obe. She was a big sister, one Silenal had talked up. Taller than Marka, with chitin the color of bruised mammalian flesh, and a face decorated with scars. Scars on the eye, scars over her welkinmark, and one scar that ran across her pars stridens, which gave her words a harsh distortion.

Marka could hardly lift Obe, so of course she drops her. Twice.

The purple mantis spits as it climbs back up. “Look, if you can’t pick me up, why don’t you tie a rope to the other side, and I’ll just climb over myself.”

And like that, all the gangsters got over, except one, who took Wik’s suggestion and picks their way back up how they’d come.

Ropes collected, they continue the expedition. One benefit of crossing the chasm: less whining about the chance of someone following behind them. Good luck crossing over without Marka.

It’s boring traversing the dark. As she marches, Marka hears clicking and breaks formation (no one cares), falling back to see Wik is manipulating with three legs a lock attached to nothing. Marka could barely see it in the gloom, and she didn’t think Wik’s eyes were any better.

“It’s a practice lock. Not much else to do, and the amount of light and focus I’d need for reading would be wasteful.”

“Aren’t you already good enough at… that?”

“It’s sport. You duel, don’t you? Aren’t you good enough at killing things?”

“You don’t kill in duels. At least, not under most rulesets?”

“And you don’t steal in locksport.”

“The point of the skill is still stealing. It’s distasteful.”

“And is violence any less distasteful? Picking locks doesn’t involve hurting mantids.”

“No… okay, maybe you’ll find this also ‘off‍-putting’, but… don’t you see there’s a certain honor in strength and competition? Mantids are meant to hunt and fight.”

“I think it’s savagery that should be beneath us, but isn’t yet, not for the worst of us,” it responds. Then, a thoughtful look takes over its face, and it puts away the lock. “Hmm. Tell me about your duels. How would you conduct one?”

Marka’s taken aback by the switch. After a moment, she slowly muses, “Well, after the terms are agreed on, the most important element is the circle. Usually it’s physical, but sometimes a crowd that surrounds and bars exist is enough. The classic style I’m familiar with has a system of points for like, landing decisive blows or take downs. So there has to be a way to score that‍ ‍—‍ my favorite is with ritual fire, lit or stoked for each point awarded.”

Wik was listening, humming understanding, and seeming to take note of everything said. But offered no further comment or insight into its curiosity.

VII.

“– tired of sittin’ around waiting for nothing to happen. Even digging was better, and digging was shit.”

“This is the third time you’ve gone on this rant.”

“Rantin’s better than waiting. And this is what, the fourth hour we’ve been here? I’ve been positively restrained, considerin.”

“Oh, she bustin out the big words.”

“Whatever. I’m just sayin, I think the boss is losin it. Want another big word? Paranoia. This is mad mantis shit.”

“We have orders,” comes a stridulation of utterly flat rhythm, “We have to stay loyal to the boss.”

Marka’s party is descending long, wide steps‍ ‍—‍ a wildly inefficient design, whose sole virtue was perhaps the drama, the grandness of it.

It also means Marka’s party sees‍ ‍—‍ shadows of‍ ‍—‍ the gang before the gang had any idea they were here. There was the flickering of flames like they gather around some massive campfire. There was a deathly chill in the catacombs.

“Enemies coming up, I’d wager.” After a moment, Marka places their name: Tlik.

“Everyone remember our tactics?” Marka asked her troop.

They had equipped every gangster with a spear. (The sling‍-wielding brother of the nymph probably wouldn’t use theirs, of course.) The “armory” the gang had was mostly clubs, knives, and whips‍ ‍—‍ so several of their spears were actually knives on sticks, securely attached with Wik’s strongest adhesive.

This operation had no time to impart any serious military doctrine, but some basics‍ ‍—‍ advancing as an organized front, the idea of kiting – might carry them.

Marka walks at the front‍ ‍—‍ nerve bursts would give her mobility, and nothing should stand in the way of that. Wik stands at the very back, and Marka suspects it might not contribute to combat.

At a gesture, the gangsters arrange into two ranks, and advance.

There’s another reason Marka walks in front.

“Stand down. This doesn’t need to be a fight,” she’s calling out in a bark she’d picked up from the wardens.

It costs them stealth to gamble for peace, but Marka insisted.

“Finally, some action!”

Marka can’t place the voice, any more than noting it’s one of those overheard arguing.

Gangsters had perched on fallen stone pillars that dot this vast chamber. The big, circular things could be rolled after they fell, and many are arranged around the blazing fire, some crumbling as mantids leap from them.

“Silenal? Obe? That really y’all?”

That mantis with the flat, unarticulated stridulation spoke. “We cannot succumb to mutiny.”

The doorway is just narrow enough a rank of four mantids can’t actually squeeze in. They switch to three ranks, then. Beside the doorway sits a shallow pool of water, and it’s not the only one. The battlefield ahead of them isn’t just scattered with pillars and debris rising up, but wet depressions and puddles.

Marka lunges in with a nerve burst, covering several body lengths. Landing with a tarsus in a puddle, her thin, shadowsteel sword lifts up higher as her steps cover the remaining distance.

The show of speed should daunt them, right? Her nerve‍-blackened armor? Her professional sword?

Marka watches the flat‍-toned speaker. From behind her armored thorax, that mantis unties and hefts a hammer, two raptorials vise‍-gripping the grille. The metal gleams in firelight, and the thick mass of the business end gives way to a proportionally small face‍ ‍—‍ it would concentrate force in a devastatingly small area.

Marka saw enough vindicators use this style of weapon. Slow, clumsy, but one swing was enough to crush most bugs.

Caught sizing up this honestly quite menacing weapon, Marka doesn’t track the other gangsters. A gangster slips through the shadow of a half‍-upright pillar. He’s jumping out at her now.

A midleg holds a bit of debris intent on smashing her head. Raptorials fly at her chaotically to snare her limbs.

He has the skill to block her sword with the rock, but really, he would have fared better standing away and throwing the thing. Lugging it into melee was a fool move.

But maybe he’s buying time. A mantis with a stick is coming at her from the opposite side, and the hammer‍-wielder ever approaches, slow strides for the weight of the hammer.

What’s easy is falling into the defense pattern that defined her first fight with Tlik.

“Are you tired of digging and waiting? Join us,” Marka says. Marka kicks out decisively‍ ‍—‍ the unprecedented action surprising her foe. Knocked onto the ground, Marka has a moment to hold the sword to their throat and not put weight behind it. The other attackers approach, and Marka breathes in deep.

The moments lasts long enough to show she could, and does not, kill him.

“Are you tired of Angwi terrorizing you?” Marka’s still at almost the highest volume she can manage. “Do you trust siding with that monster? Join us, and we can get back at her.”

“If we can’t trust Angwi,” the male mantis at her mercy says, “then we doubly can’t trust you.”

“Would Angwi have spared you?”

“If I’m fighting Angwi, maybe I shouldn’t be spared.”

The hammer‍-wielder nods. “We cannot succumb to mutiny.”

Her enemies have help coming, but so does she. Two spear wielding gangsters lunge in from her rear.

(The main light in this big chamber is the big blaze in the center, defining every thing in the room, projecting silhouettes on the wall. The mass of bodies overlapping in shadow underscores the chaos of the multiple engagements happening simultaneously.)

Marka knows the new arrivals are on her side because every gangster in her troop has blue wax glued to a raggy makeshift vest. Easy to see in the dark, which helped them, and helped their enemies.

One spear‍-mantis goes for the stick‍-wielder, and her spear gives a range advantage.

Marka gives the mantis below her another look. She grabs a wax container, one of a few strapped to her.

Two motions come as quick as one: Marka removes the sword at her downed foe’s neck, and before he can take advantage, grabs two opposite limbs and slaps the wax at them, covering the joined limbs with adhesive.

They didn’t have an abundance of the stuff, so a midleg glued to a hindleg would have to do for restraint.

One down. Marka rises to meet the hammer‍-wielder.

“Still want to fight me?”

“We have orders.”

“So be it. Let’s begin.”

Marka begins circling, to hit from the side or bait an opening‍ ‍—‍ the hammer’s weight means every swing would be a commitment.

From what she sees, the rest of the battle goes well for them. The ranks had broken to engage enemies scattered around the big room. The spears and the coordination together forged an insurmountable advantage for their side.

Hammer‍-mantis charges at Marka. No, not a charge‍ ‍—‍ they don’t even raise their weapon‍ ‍—‍ but a weighty step forward to make Marka dodge back.

That second of dodging is when they pull back their hammer.

Marka tries stepping further back, avoid the swing. But she can’t, that was the gambit! Hammer‍-mantis had waited until her motion had put a bit of fallen debris behind her.

The hammer is coming down.

So, with a nerve burst behind her, Marka flies toward the mantis swinging a massive, deadly hammer at her.

And her thinking is sound.

The length of the hammer‍ ‍—‍ not the head‍ ‍—‍ pounds against the pauldrons of her armor. She feels (but does not hear) the impact, and it staggers her.

That was close. Keeping up with the rest of the fight was too much of a distraction. Her last glimpse is of a blue‍-wax’d mantis cracking a mantis’s head with a mace nearby before she’s turning all her focus to the fight.

Hammer‍-mantis shoves her back.

But she’s recovered enough to stab her sword, and scared enough to put deadly, impaling force behind it.

Her efforts dig it just enough to scrape chitin. Is that baneleather? Where did they get baneleather?

The hammer comes down again.

This time Marka expects it, and has turned enough a burst sends her to the side of and past her foe.

She hears the weapon smash the remnants of the pillar she’d backed her up to, and wonders if that’s not some kind of sledgehammer. One closer look, the similarities with vindicator’s smithing implements were her imagination.

“You sure you want this? If you keep swinging that thing, I might not be able to keep holding back…”

“We have to stay loyal to the boss.”

Another swing. From the side, this time, and high. Marka ducks under it.

But it’s a setup for them to sweep with their legs and knock her down. Marka resists.

But that was another setup for them to snap out with a raptorial (holding onto the heavy hammer with just one foreleg now), and grab Marka’s sword leg.

She’s saved from the impending grappling match by a certain violet mantis sauntering up behind the hammer‍-wielder.

“Always wanted to knock the guts out of this thoughtless”‍ ‍—‍ a swing of her mace‍ ‍—‍ “fucking”‍ ‍—‍ another‍ ‍—‍ “thrall.”

All hits of the spiked mace pulp the tergites of their abdomen. Hemolymph is flowing, and the wheezing sounds like collapsed tracheas, breathing difficulties.

The raptorial holding Marka’s leg tighten, and then slacks.

Her foe’s legs tightens, and then slacks. They fall to the ground.

Obe lifts up a leg, and despite Marka reaching out, she isn’t fast enough to stop the gangster from stomping her foe’s heart.

“She was down. Why?”

“You were never going to bring her over. She wasn’t even all the way there in the head. Don’t lose sleep over it.”

Marka regards the corpse with another glance, to give it some kind of respect. And she sees black nerve. Melting its abdomen, and oozing from where it’s fallen head cracked against the stone floor. Its eyes are black, and lines of black nerve crawl cross its face even now.

“Obe,” she says, dangerously, “can I see your mace?”

She lifts the gnarled, spiked thing. It’s made of blackbronze, cheaper than shadowsteel. But the metal reflects nothing, like a hole cut in the world‍ ‍—‍ covered in black nerve.

“Why are you using enervate? That’s cruel. That’s lethal. We’re hoping to turn some of these mantids to our side.”

While she says this, Marka lifts one of her tarsi endowed with enervate conducting outlets, and uses her earlier technique to form an unsaturated glob of enervate.

She reaches the bead out, bringing it closer to the mace. Obe thinks she’s gonna take the mace away, and starts to pull back.

But force is force. The umbracohesive force exerted by Marka’s glob is attracting the enervate coating Obe’s mace. It’s like she already has her tarsi on it, already is pulling it toward her.

Eventually umbracohesion overcomes umbrainduction, and the enervate is stripped from the mace.

“What the fuck?” Obe’s able to pull the mace away now. Pull it away, then pull back, and swing it at Marka.

She catches the limb in the air, but Obe has strength enough it’s an effort to fully stop it.

“Letting you have that instead of a spear was already an allowance,” Marka says. “Don’t trample on my good will.”

It wasn’t imbued when they’d argued over it. How did Obe even manage that? Marka supposes you could use a larger version of the squeeze droppers, though she’d never seen anyone do it. In the wardens, if you used imbued weapons, you were a blackbane who could do it yourself.

“Look, vesperbane. I know you want to do your hero thing, but there’s no need to keep asking. Your mercy is pointless. Just take em out.”

“We aren’t here as judges or executioners.”

“I don’t give a fuck. I’m just telling you, trying to save every sad sack we come across won’t just waste our time, it’d hold us back.”

VIII.

Alone, either door of the massive gate would have towered over them. Together, it was a humbling monument, and seemed all the more vast for the fact that their lanterns could not illuminate even half before fading.

There are images in relief upon the stone of the gate‍-doors. On either one was rendered a vesperbane‍ ‍—‍ you can tell, because each has wretched raptorials rising from their metathorax, and webbing and a posture that suggested the unfurled wings of a bat.

Each had promenient welkinmarks, and horns rising from their heads – archaic antennae guards.

“What is this?” Marka asks Wik. They hadn’t yet left the room of the big battle‍ ‍—‍ behind them the fire still blazed‍ ‍—‍ they’d just stepped further into the room.

“Bodies aren’t the only thing buried in these catacombs,” the tallowbane says. It points. “There’s some paper over there‍ ‍—‍ perhaps it’ll save me the trouble of explaining.”

It might’ve been a dais or a podium, but this isn’t a place for holding speeches. No, it is more of a placard before a museum exhibition. It isn’t in the best shape, cracked with pieces fallen in front of it.

The paper Wik mentioned is held in place with a stone. It’s new paper, the ink hardly even faded.

boss,
do you really think this will be helpful for our search?
i think i have an imperial dictionary among my books, ill try my best to translate

What followed was entire blocks of crossed out, blotted out text, and then a passage that was neat like it was slowly written, but still pockmarked with crossed out bits and marginalia:

We shall not ~~kneel~~ succumb to the plague [of] the past. //‘plague’? ‘malediction’? that coordinator could mean ‘of’ or ‘which is’‍ ‍—‍ a metaphor?
Beyond this ~~portal~~ gate we [will] bury our ~~home~~ ~~heart~~ home, and [escape] its diseased foundations. Let our tyrants and liberators alike trouble [us] no more. Let it sink [by/because of] the weight of time, and drown in itself. // ‘tyrant’ and ‘bat’ are the same word, and ‘liberator’ is just ‘anti‍-bat’. juxtaposed like this, not sure what it actually refers to‍ ‍—‍ the ‘and’ here means to draw an equivalence. also, this synonym of ‘drown’ isnt in my dictionary. sounds medical. hemoptysis?
Like a seed to a plant growing, we [will] erect a grand new Wentalel atop the old, in freedom and in health.
For our blood, for our queen, for our dominion! // yikes

“How amateurish. I imagine there might be more gravity to this inscription if it wasn’t so poorly translated.” Wik plucks the paper and lets it fall to the ground, revealing the plaque underneath, written in an alphabet influenced by the pure script.

“So what, Wentalel was destroyed and then rebuilt? And the ruins are down here?”

“Something like that.” Wik turned around, regarding the gangsters who’d ambled behind them.

Some sustained injuries in the fight. Wik had made a new rule before they all left: each of the gangsters got one ichortallow‍-coated bandage they could use, and that’s it. Essentially, they could recover from one grievous injury.

Of the eight mantids with them, three had gotten injured enough to use the bandages (Tlik among them), and one whose crushed midleg was so bad even the bandage wouldn’t leave them in fighting shape.

Three gangsters had agreed to switch sides in wake of the battle. Silenal vouched for one, and the other two escorted back two of the injured‍ ‍—‍ he with the crushed leg, and one (not Tlik) who didn’t like their chances now that they’d used up their bandage.

Wik is scanning the crowd, and finds Silenal making their way to front.

“A while ago, you said something about needing a crank for the door? Is this the one you meant?”

Silenal has a told‍-you‍-so crook to her palps. “Yep. Only way to open the door is with a detachable crank. The Dominion really didn’t want people crawling around in these ruins.”

“Well, where do we put it?”

“The cover on the centerpiece there comes off. Right underneath Essi’s note here.” The stone plate pops off, and then Silenal’s smirk disappears.

“What the hell…”

If you put all the pieces together, Marka believed you might be able to insert a crank. Now though… it looked like someone had taken a hammer and smashed the top, and it revealed the warped rods and gears of the mechanism.

“So, we came all this way to find that we’d already been outplayed? They blocked the one way in?”

“No, no, there’s a chance we can still make it.” Silenal turns around and looked among the gangsters, only some of whom were still paying attention. She points to one. “Yefen, you were there the first time the boss came down here, weren’t you? C’mup here.”

A yellow‍ ‍—‍ deeper, redder than Angwi‍ ‍—‍ mantis walked up. Their cloak trailed behind them like a cape.

Silenal’s saying, “So, to hear some tell it, this door was shut when we found it, and we didn’t have a crank to begin with. How’d we get around that?”

“Angwi.”

“Want to give us a few more words?”

“Had some red, bloody sludge it chugged like beer. Left veins bulging on it afterwards, like pulsating worms. Heart must have been beating like a war‍-pede’s tread. Anyway,” they said, and pointed off the side of the wall. It had looked naturally collapsed at first, but now that they pay attention, what natural process knocked holes through a wall? “Dug there, found a big weight for one of the doors. Was easier than digging through the door, don’t know why. When the bloodbane was roided up like it was, could lift the whole damn thing on its own. Some of those worm‍-looking veins popped while it was doing it. Freak was plain out of it afterwards, didn’t do shit for days but made the boss pay her like she did.”

“The weights, they’re what keep the doors shut?”

Wik looks up at the massive, decorated things. “You’d think their weight alone would take care of that, without a need for any kind of pulley.”

“I mean,” Silenal says, “door’s controlled by a little crank. Heavy as they are, there must be some tricky working inside to let them slide simply.”

“Maybe Angwi needed drugs, but could we lift if we worked together?”

Marka starts walking towards the broken bit of wall Yefen had indicated. Wik comes, and Silenal does, but not the yellow mantis.

Cracks had traveled up the wall of the room above the hole in the wall, like branches of a tree. And as a consequence of the cracks, rubble and chunks of stone have fallen down.

The end result is the hole was smaller, much smaller than it probably originally was. Once, a mantis might have been able to crawl inside, but now? The hole would need to be twice as big as it currently is.

Wik shines light inward. Crowding around the hole, peering in, the three of them see a rusty chain catching the light, connected to a solid block of stone‍ ‍—‍ the weight.

“Chain’s probably rusty enough we could break it, if we could get in there with some kind of tool.”

Marka looks at the size of the opening. If only it was twice as big as it was. Or… if they were half the size they were. And there was one who was half their size. “The nymph. The nymph could probably fit in there and break the chain.”

When they bring the nymph over to look at the hole and ask her, she says, “No.”

“No?”

“Queens no. Look at those cracks. You want me to crawl inside where the rocks might fall and crush me? Trap me? No!”

“They stood this long without falling,” Wik points out. They had no idea how long ‘this long’ was. “This’ll take a couple minutes at most.”

“How am I even gonna break the chain? Swing some kind of hammer at it? Won’t that just bring down the rocks faster? No.You can’t‍ ‍—‍ I’m not doing it.”

Marka stares at the little nymph. Meeting its big eyes, willing it to change its mind. But she remains resolute.

The verbal slip up was telling. They could make her do it. They could threaten the child to risk her life for their convenience.

Marka entertains this possibility, because when she exercises the will to refuse, it reassures her there’s still a core of decency in her.

“Alright,” she says. “We can’t make you do it. Let us know if you change your mind. It’s‍ ‍—‍ important that we do what we came here to do.”

Not just to dispense justice for that Snurratre male Marka’d almost forgotten about. Not just for the fortune they’d find. A percipient implored them to fix something that had gone wrong down here. Percipients don’t reach out for light matters.

“So what now? It’d be real nice if we could just reach in there and lift up the thing. Or have some kind of rod that we could stick in there and lift up it up that way.”

Marka’s listening the gangster’s ideas. And something about the image speaks to her. Cranks, pulleys‍ ‍—‍ it all puts her in mind of things she’d learned of physics. And sticking a rod was almost there, just one piece missing.

“We could make a lever?”

They took bits of the hard wood branches their fallen enemies had left as a piles of firewood, and held them together with Wik’s adhesive, and at the very end, a shiv they’d repurposed for the spears, now repurposed as a thin bit that could slip under the solid block of rock.

They positioned a bit of debris in the mouth of the hole to act as fulcrum, and then fed the lever in, the shiv scraping along the ground.

It meets the rock. They push, the blade slips under. More. The wood is compressed under the weight of the rock, but there’s enough of it to hold. More.

They call over more gangsters, including Obe (who still glares at Marka), to put enough force down on their side of the lever.

“Everyone ready?”

Five mantids collectively push as hard as they can on the lever.

And they lift the solid stone block.

Nothing happens.

The yellow mantis‍ ‍—‍ Yefen‍ ‍—‍ moves. She wasn’t one helping with the lever, and she goes over to one of the doors, and begin to push. A couple other gangsters see this, then run over to help.

The massive stone door begins to glide. Not actually‍ ‍—‍ it’s still a gigantic mass, and it still scrapes. But it moves with ease unbecoming of a massive stone door.

As a rift forms between the pushed door and the other, and as it grows, they hear something.

Water.

It’s rushing in from behind the door, and coming it faster the wider they open it. The weight of the water is pushing the door itself open wider.

The fire in the center of the room goes out, immersing them in darkness but for the blue wax. They’re like many tiny stars in the subterranean gloom.

The torrent of water reaches them, and it pushes against their fulcrum. The mass of water must have knocked the feet out from under some mantids, because bodies are falling onto Marka and pushing her underneath the water. Some of it slips into her spiracles before they close, and she’s coughing.

“What in the dream?”

Do these catacomb hate them? All the false starts, and they find a solution that works‍ ‍—‍ only to be washed away.

Clearing all the water from her throats, Marka pieces together. This didn’t come from nowhere‍ ‍—‍ the puddles? The rust?

Wentalel was founded around the Wenta river. If there were massive caverns and catacombs beneath it, of course there would be some leakage.

“I guess this is what they meant about their city drowning in itself,” Marka says.

Wik is the most unbothered by the sudden influx of water. It’s brightening the lantern once more.

With the fulcrum knocked away, the great door slowly slams shut.

“So, we gonna try this again? Can’t be too much more water, not unless Essi brought down the whole Wenta river, and the room beyond didn’t look filt up, least from the glimpse we got.”

Silenal isn’t looking at her. Marka watches the green gangster look this way and that before Marka realizes her armor’s still shrouded in enervate. She siphons the nerve back into her soul.

And then she realizes.

“You know,” she starts, looking at Wik, since it’s probably the one who’d understand, “it’s funny how framing a problem a certain way can make you blind to other solutions.”

Marka walks over to the hole, and forms a bead of unsaturated enervate on a tarsus. And then with another tarsus, instead of keeping it unsaturated, does a trick similar to her nerve‍-burst: saturated it so much it repels the other bead, flying out of her tarsus and into the hole.

(Maybe she misses, but if she does, mass preference would save her: iron’s atomic number was higher than the silicon of rock.)

“Hand me a spear.”

She pokes into the hole, and feels the chain silently disintegrate.

IX.

For all that this is a catacomb, there isn’t much of the reality of death to confront them. Yes, they’d glimpsed eyeless heads adorning the walls above in morbid decoration, but when it comes to bodies, they are spared the sight. All seem interred in crevices their lanterns need not illume. And the excavation teams that came before had the respect not to disturb the long dead.

With the vast door to the old city open, they advance to find waterlogged husks on the opposite side of the door. The flow of water had disturbed them, making their original posture a mystery, but there’s something about the piles of bodies behind the door, all facing it. Not just mantids, but roaches too.

“Did… did they seal this door with mantids still inside? Were they trapped here?”

“Focus, Marka. We’re not here to gasp at the horrors of history. I think we’re deep enough the other vesperbanes should show up on your scanner. Try it now.”

Marka sighs, and tries to stop thinking about the bodies.

Wik brightens the light for her sake, and the new light just makes the water‍-rotten corpses and their abortive decomposition more distracting. Sealed this deep underground, their bodies must have taken longer to rot.

But Marka takes out her scanner, and checks for any indication of Angwi and the other vesperbane, Essi.

There were a few metaphors for the modulation bands her scanner could single out. Marka had once seen a kind of stained glass that rendered the world in dark monochrome of whatever color the glass was. Through a green lens, a leaf would look brighter than a lilac‍ ‍—‍ not because it was brighter, but because it reflected light of the right kind where the flower absorbed it.

Another metaphor was a tuning fork, which would resonate sympathetically only if the right frequency, or multiple of said frequency, was played.

In scanning, Marka mainly cared about two species (not quite analogous frequencies or colors) of enervate: Beta‍-nrv and gamma‍-nrv. Beta‍-nrv (and its degenerative form: alpha‍-nrv) was something you could be expect to find in any mantis, as wherever enervate naturally occurs, so will they. Gamma‍-nrv, though, spoke to the presence of a vesperbane, the way steel spoke to the presence of a rich mantis. It occurred either in nerve‍-crystals from rare mines, or produced by vindicators’ special nerve‍-pumps.

When viewed through the scanner, the differences between a civilian and a vesperbane is the difference between a candle and a star. It isn’t just that a vesperbane could bear ten thousand times the amount of enervate without issue‍ ‍—‍ it’s like how a paragon diamond looks shinier than a muddy rock, because of its polish and intrinsic properties. In a vesperbane, enervate flows and reacts in exponentially faster and more complex ways than in a common mantis. The vespers have a mastery of enervate through myriad metabolic pathways, to a degree unknown in the primitive phenotypes of kingdom animalia‍ ‍—‍ a mastery rivaled only within kingdom fungi, among species who so regularly feast among the decaying things where enervate may collect like water in a downstream lake.

Marka, after a bit of panning, easily finds the two stars she was looking for, one so much brighter than the other. Definitely a blackbane, then. The dim one, Angwi, is moving, approaching the brighter one. Both are far away.

When Marka shifts bands to check the more common beta‍-nrv, she registers several dim, distant amorphous blobs of the stuff. She does this because Wik requests it, but she knows it would be next to useless‍ ‍—‍ enervate emissions fall off quickly with distance, and beta‍-nrv is much less “bright” than gamma‍-nrv in terms of what the scanner could pick up, and civilians have so little of the stuff that the fact she could discerning anything testified to the sensitivity of the device.

The best she can make out is several distinct clusters of civilian‍-like signatures, some of them shifting around. Some clusters are unusually bright, including one far away, near the radiance of the vesperbanes.

Lastly, Marka shifts into the more rarefied, exotic bands looking for indications of the lambda‍-nrv that would characterize a termite safe key. But she’s blindsided by something unexpected.

The band‍ ‍—‍ one so rare it takes a while to look up the name: psi‍-nrv – is populated, its sources corresponding to all of the unusually bright clusters she identified. The one nearest the vesperbanes looks particularly developed, in the way you’d say a terminal stage cancer is developed.

If vesperbanes were metaphorical stars, and civilians candles, this was a volcano. Not just being intermediate in brightness, it was hot and disorganized in its activities, tendrils spilling out in erosive lines.

“Angwi and Essi are both still here, but there’s something else.” Marka looks to Silenal. “Are you sure there’s no vesperbanes among your gang? No vindicators? No percipients?” She’s reaching for anything that could explain the mantis stuffed with exotic enervate.

“We ain’t nothing special, no.”

“Well, expect something unexpected when we get there. There’s enervate signatures I can’t account for. All over the place, really, but we can avoid those? Maybe? But one is near Essi.”

“Speaking of,” Wik starts, and turns to regard Silenal. “Essi. What do you know about her? We’ve heard reports of a blackbane that raided a Stewartry archive. What do you know about that?”

“We’ve nothing to do with it. Essi said she ain’t with the Stewartry anymore, and needed work, and that was good enough for the boss – needed some help with the digging after we got this door open. If you ask me, there’s a reason the clutz ain’t with the stewartry anymore. But as long as her magic’s helping the dig, boss treats her like she’s golden and us like trash.”

Wik turns away without a response. They’re all left with nothing else to do but trek further into the ruins of old Wentalel.

There’s something unplaceably wrong about walking down the cracked cobble of an unremarkable street, yet in a vast, starless darkness and with knowledge that you’re deep underground. There are ruins on either side of them, once buildings, and some of collapsed under erosion or decay, and some have been crushed by bits of falling cave ceiling.

A gangster Marka can’t name speaks. “There’s a spot we used to rest at back when I was on the teams making trips down here. C’mon, it’s this way.”

It was a watchtower. Fortified walls and their watchtowers were a thing any civilized mantis could recognize, being a necessary ingredient of every settlement.

This one crumbled, its surrounding wall melted into bits barely larger than gravel, and the tower itself now level with the homes around it. A pool of water lay in front, and the embers of long unattended torches reflected dimly in the water.

When Marka pushes on the door, it creeks and then falls off its hinges. Marka waves antennae in surprise and confusion.

Doing so, she catches a scent.

“Something smells like rancid pus,” a gangster comments.

“Don’t like that smell. We should get out of here.”

“Wait outside then?” Marka asks. She goes in alone. Wik and Silenal venture in after a moment.

By the stairwalls, the upper floor has collapsed over the wall leading downward, blocking its shaft‍ ‍—‍ but the climbing wall beside it, going up, is accessible.

They make their way towards it, paying only brief mind to what’s on this floor‍ ‍—‍ bags, digging gear, bottles labeled like it came from a Stewartry pharmacy. That gives a pause.

“Wik, do you recognize it?”

Stepping over to look, it responds, “Purging solution, to rid the body of bat blood.”

When they climb up, they find three sleeping mantids… no, three corpses.

Three… hopefully corpses? Swelling bits of fluid rise from soft parts of their cuticle, skin taut with the fluid inside. Fluid that’s red, and hemolymph isn’t red. As they watch, the growths pulse, as if under the ministrations of a slowly beating heart.

But most strikingly, the eyes are black, of the umbral shade, and lines of the stuff crawl outward from the eyes. A familiar look.

On a suspicion, Marka takes out the scanner.

The corpses are bright in the psi‍-nrv band.

Exiting the watchtower, Marka looks over her troop. “Was there an excavation team that went missing? Were mantids coming back sick with something from down here?”

Yes to both.

“Stay away from any fresh bodies, alright?”

When Silenal relayed what they’d found inside, there was no objection to pushing on now, abdanoning this rest spot.

“The infection can’t be prevalent, if most gangsters aren’t catching it, if they hadn’t even realized.”

Marka can only nod at Wik’s assessment. In darkened silence, they continue on. Marka’s coping with the dissonance of walking an normal street deep underground by imagining it is simply a tunnel they walk through. As her mind wanders, she thinks of the her theory of a termite arcology lying beneath Wentalel. An ancient, alien city beneath a ancient city beneath a catacomb beneath a sewer would be a bit much, wouldn’t it?

There’s something else out there. They probably only hear the sound because no one’s speaking. Scurrying, chittering, and rubble being shifted by movement. Whatever’s out there doesn’t carry any light with it.

They stop in their tracks. Wik, unprompted, thinks to cast some blue wax into the darkness in front of them. It cracks against cobblestone, but it illuminated bodies crossing the street.

Rats. A mass of them, scrambling from one building to another cross the street, but now reacting with distraction and fear at the sudden light.

If they weren’t moving, you would believe they were dead. Hair had fallen out in clumps, and the rats had the same swelling boils the lost gangsters did.

The hair having fallen out means you can see lines of black nerve on their flesh.

Wik darkens their lantern, and Silenal’s saying, “Get back. Let’s get out of here.”

There’s confusion in the darkness, the gangsters milling like an indecisive crowd.

When compound eyes adjust to the dim, their lights are enough to see a few rats have broken off to chase them. Marka falls to the rear‍ ‍—‍ and Obe too?‍ ‍—‍ to beat back the rodents with stabbing and crushing force.

Regrouping at an intersection, Tlik’s asking “Why did we run? We can handle some rats.”

“We couldn’t see how many there were,” Wik replies.

Marka says, “Those rats are infected. We saw mantids with that same infection, at the watchtower. We can’t lose any of you.”

“How’s a rat gonna infect a mantis? We’re whole different kinds of creatures.”

“Not a risk worth taking, when we can just back off and go another way. Right?” Marka looks around the gangsters, not able to pick out which ones had exhibited the most knowledge of the deep catacombs. “The whole rest of the city can’t all be collapsed, can it?”

“There’s a place nearby, all walled up and full of dead bodies. We checked it out pretty early on after finding the city, and used to went through there before we found a faster route. Might still be able to get to the dock from there.”

There, they found another bit of paper, this time Essi translating a sign attached to a spiked metal fence. It reads:

Our great city has been stricken with a plague inflicted upon us by spiritless Snurrish conspirators. We shall [quarantine? exclude?] it here with those purveyors of filth that reside in this [district? prison?]. May they wallow in [the] scourge their kind sabotaged us with.

They enter the ancient Snurratre ghetto. It’s haphazard even by the standards of unplanned cities (which old Wentalel surely was). It looks like a bunch of ramshackle huts thrown up in a few days, and all these centuries removed, what was left was undignified rubble, and dusty husks of dead mantids.

There was a stream running throughout the district, which they followed. More streams merge into it as they explore.

It takes them this long, this far off the right track for them to encounter any more living mantids. Three of them, tired and shaking, who said they’d hid here to escape the rats. They’d approached weapons drawn, but didn’t really want to fight, and Marka’s troop by far outmatched them in numbers and equipment. They’d secured a surrender from them.

And then Obe swings a mace and brains one of them.

“What the fuck?”

“I know ’em. That snur‍-fucker owes me money, and kept tellin me she’d pay it back tomorrow for the last three weeks. I saw the look in her eyes. Think I’m going to trust her not to stick a knife in my abdomen now that she’s got every reason to?”

“We had them dead to rights.”

Meanwhile, that outburst of violence gets a scream‍-hiss out of the other two. Panicked glancing between their captors. One of them jumps to their tarsi and starts to run. The other swings madly at Obe, who takes the excuse to catch the limb and jab with the mace’s spiked top right into their eye. Now blinded, Obe ends it with another blow.

The runner disappears into the darkness, slipping into the ruins of buildings. They hear the pings of the sling‍-mantis’s shots falling uselessly. (Had he been any use?) Marka starts after the runner, but there’s no catching them when she can’t see them, and she didn’t trust leaving Obe alone back there.

“This is the second time you’ve killed a mantis unnecessarily. This time, they weren’t even attacking –”

“Yet,” she says. “Do you really care so much about mantids‍ ‍—‍ who you’ve never met, who can’t trust, who want to kill you‍ ‍—‍ getting what’s coming to them?”

“We’re not killers. We’re the heroes, and heroes don’t kill surrendering mantids.”

“What if Angwi surrenders?”

“We can’t trust it. She deceived us before.”

Obe looked smug, like she’s made a point.

“If it happens again,” Wik says, “We’ll decide we can’t trust you, and leave you tied up down here.”

“We’re almost there, anyway.”

X.

Crawling out through the cracked wall of a fallen Snurratre temple, they emerge to a vast cavern vaulted high above. This is not a space whose size had been curtailed by collapsed ceilings or the decay of years. Before them was the complete view: The city of old Wentalel, buried and drowned and forgotten.

When Marka had asked, Wik said there are three stories as to how it happened. Two similar theories hold that during the fight‍ ‍—‍ it had avoided the word ‘battle’‍ ‍—‍ that liberated Wentalel from its vesperbat tyrant, the land itself was reshaped by some grand technique, used in the heat of the conflict, which wielded the flows of enervate beneath the earth. The two theories differed as to whether the bat or the banes that opposed it had used the technique in that confrontation. The other theory is that Wentalel was actually intact after the altercation, and instead the city was deliberately buried many decades later, after becoming part of the Second Dominion. Like much of that empire’s history, the records were erased after Oosifea was destroyed.

This underground expanse seems like it would yield no answers‍ ‍—‍ less a city than a mute imprint of one.

The score to this vista is the minute sound of water falling. The ghetto’s streams emptied off the cliff behind the temple, where whatever had been there fell away. Yet there is also the suggestion of what Marka wants to call rainfall, like precipitation over a giant lake.

The ruins of the city is wreathed in mist‍ ‍—‍ but why can they see the mist? Marka peers, and sees the answer.

Every city, especially one lousy with vesperbanes (like old Wentalel), especially one that existed before Stewartry regulations (like old Wentalel), is going to wind up with enervate deposits. There is a chemical reaction that can extract energy from the species and amalgams vesperbanes use, and a fungus that relies on that reaction as its main source of energy. Oh, and that reaction produces dull visible light as a byproduct.

The result? These drowned ruins of old Wentalel are draped in softly glowing lichens and moss. It only serves to give the occasional buildings definition, yet leave everything deep in gloom.

With rope, they descend the cliff and continue following the stream. Soon they’re seeing more buildings‍ ‍—‍ bigger ones, like they near the center of the city.

There’s a old style of construction‍ ‍—‍ rooves tipped with big spires – that is common in very old cities. Marka’s father once told her it was to impale swooping vesperbats, and she still doesn’t know if that’s a myth. The spires do serve to hold up the ceiling, though.

“I never thought something like this could exist beneath my home city. It’s… it’s not beautiful, but there’s something about it…”

“It’s haunting.”

Marka frowns. “That feels like some kind of pun.”

“Isn’t it, though? Dim, pale silhouettes draped in mist? Constant soft rainfall? Abandoned, forgotten ruins?”

“And thousands of dead mantids whose spirits might linger here.”

Wik sighs. “I see your point.”

They are stepping into puddles as they speak, and had been for a while. They come more often now, and go deeper. When they lower their eyes from the sights on the horizon, they see a flat expanse of water, and the lights of the city mirrored in reflection.

Calling it a lake might overstate its size, but it was far, far larger than Marka had any interest in swimming, even if she hadn’t been wearing heavy metal armor.

“Hey, veebees? Dock’s over this way. Don’t hold us up.”

The two of them, Marka and Wik, had diverged from the main group of gangsters. The troop stood where a building rose from the shallow water, and poles rose, ropes tied to them but tethered to nothing. There’s a torch‍ ‍—‍ better maintained than some higher in the catacombs‍ ‍—‍ which illuminate banestone wrecks. “Banestone” they may be, but the construction was different, internal air pockets allowing parts to float in the water, not unlike pumice. Rafts?

The closest one has a curve which suggest it’s floating belly‍-up, and there’s a hole punched into its hull. A gangster experimentally reaches with a leg to apply weight, and water surges up through the hole, enough they almost fall into the water before pulling back their leg.

Marka and Wik walk over.

It says, “I’m not surprised to hear so many of you complain about excavation work if this the distance you have to cover just to get started.”

“Wasn’t always like this. Used to dig higher up, but it got deeper and deeper till this shit was normal.”

Silenal was the one investigating the banestone rafts, and she comes to a conclusion.

The runner had made it here before them, and used rocks or tools to bust up the rafts. Only some of them had outright holes punched in, though – like they had stopped partway through, out of impatience, tiredness, or realizing they would be followed. One raft had simply been dragged up onto the shore, and one sunk to the lake floor a ways out, weighed down with rocks. And one, presumably, was gone, having ferried them across.

Wik easily descended the lake to retrieve the sunken raft‍ ‍—‍ when it emerges, droplets of water are sliding off its waxen chitin.

Marka, meanwhile, works with a less‍-glarey Obe to push the other into the water.

All this done, two of the banestone rafts now float, scuffed with scratches, but seeming lake‍-worthy. The crafts could comfortably seat one mantis or two if they didn’t mind being close to one another.

“So. I’m guessing we aren’t all making it across?”

“’less we wanna walk around and find some long way over? Or swim?”

“Terrible idea,” Wik says. “Consider that runner making it across means they know we’re close and will be anticipating our arrival. We need to get there fast.

Silenal looks over their rafts. “We can probably fit three in each if we all but sit on top of each other. So, six picks. Obviously the veebees are gonna be two of them of, so four picks really. I guess they’ll be deciding.”

Marka looks over the gangsters. “Silenal, I trust you most. Uh, Tlik, you feeling up for more action?”

“Maybe someone with a bandage left would be better.”

As Marka looked over the gangsters, she sees more and more backing off, or otherwise indicating distinterest. The sling‍-mantis and his little sister‍ ‍—‍ understandable. Mantids who’d sustained injuries, okay. In the end, they hadn’t much choice.

“If we’re taking down Angwi, ’pose I should be there.” It’s she who’d explained the door‍ ‍—‍ Yefen.

Obe simply smiled, as if it was foregone that she’d be there. And Tlik sighs, and accepts.

For their raft, Marka is the one at the back with the oars. It’s a few minutes of gripping them with her raptorials and churning with her forelegs before it occurs to her, a thought that curls her palps with excitement.

The blackbane looks to the other mantids on this raft, and says, “Hey, I wanna test something.”

So she paused the rhythm of the oars, and then she braces against the raft’s floor.

And she does a nerve burst.

The raft and its three occupants are heavy enough the craft does not fly forward. But it’s a definite burst of speed, enough the tallowbane and gangster are jerked back against her‍ ‍—‍ and the acceleration sends a funny thrill through her body.

Marka laughs.

Wik regards her levelly. “Think you can keep that up till we get to the other shore?”

She could. They burn through a whole nerve crystal doing this, and doing all that siphoning is a stall‍ ‍—‍ she can’t do it instantly, and she couldn’t intake enervate while blasting it, not without complications in her umbral system.

Wik tethered a rope between their two rafts, and like that, they reach the other shore in quick minutes.

“We’re almost there.”

“Where is ‘there’?” Wik asks.

“The old capitol building. The boss thinks she’s found whatever she’s looking for there. Just today, actually. Funny timing y’all had.”

“Yes, funny.” Wik murmurs.

In the distance, the capitol looms. Two styles negotiated for definition in its architecture‍ ‍—‍ one the tendency of wingless mantids to build vast, monumental stepped pyramids, and the other the old dominion’s fondness for domes and pillars. There’s two dome on either side of the main pyramid, or was‍ ‍—‍ the domes have cracked and collapsed. The doors are gone, seeming to have been blasted open with enervate.

All of it is well‍-lit by fires that speak of mantid presence.

Before they reach the building, they come upon a statue and around it perches for mantids to stop and appreciate it. The party rests here, so close to the end.

The statues depict several mantids‍ ‍—‍ seven, all of them vesperbanes, as told by their wretched raptorials. They have frozen in contortions of battle, active poses‍ ‍—‍ which mark a difficulty in the case of the wretched raptorials, for whom tiny pillars rise from the ground to support the twisting tentacles the stone alone cannot.

The statue‍-mantids wield what all the first vesperbanes tended to – farming tools turned to weapons. One holds a pitchfork, another a digging knife poised to be thrown. One has a scythe, its blade turned one half pi radian so it’s actually usable as a weapon.

But she at the rear is curiously exempt from the pattern, wearing robes instead of armor, and holding what might be a staff, adorned like a key.

In front of all of them, their foe: a vesperbat, an eyeless monstrosity, fur like many spikes. Above its face curls the antlers vesperbats grew, showing they are elders. (One half has fallen to the ground, probably not intended.)

If this was meant to be an elder, it couldn’t have possibly be that small. It is only as big as several mantids. One vesperbane is near it, a large scythe poised to behead the thing.

The statues have an inscription, though this one isn’t in common, and a paper translation isn’t there.

“I wonder what it says,” Marka murmurs.

“I can translate it myself,” Wik says. “It’s common enough to be iconic: the gift we give every tyrant. Or thereabouts‍ ‍—‍ I imagine most wingless palps didn’t draw a distinction then between ‘tyrant’ and ‘bat’, back then. Or, if this postdates the end of interregnum, perhaps they had remembered there are other kinds of tyrants.”

Marka looks up at the ancient warriors limned in weathered stone. “I wonder what the story behind this statue is.”

“The liberation of Wentalel. It’s a common enough story in early era of hope‍ ‍—‍ at least how it started. Some enthralled mantids underwent the pharmakon rites and became vesperbanes. Except uprisings were typically done by liberating the bat’s entire horde, marshalling a force with the advantage of numbers. But that bat of old Wentalel‍ ‍—‍ his name was Ghean – had a unique hold over his subjects, unbreakable by conventional means. So who was there to stand against him? A handful of neophyte vesperbanes‍ ‍—‍ some nerve queens, some blood fiends, and a shaman.”

“Shaman?”

“Today, we’d say ‘haruspex’. Anyway, it’s clear this wasn’t enough to stand before a bat elder for more than moments in a fair fight.”

“So how’d they do it?”

“Nobody knows, and all the historians‍ ‍—‍ and some military strategists – would like to. It was probably a redemption. So many of the impossible things the disenthralled rebellion did were.” Then, its tone loses its rarefied edge. It looks at Marka, rather than the statues. “We’re closer now. Use your scanner again, and see what we’re dealing with.”

After a moment, Marka’s saying, “There’s… quite a few gangsters – signatures are still too weak to count. But more than us, for sure. Everyone seems holed up in the capitol building.”

“We’re safe to approach, then,” Wik says. “What about the gun? Can you pick it out?”

“Yes. It’s… below the capitol, near Essi and the anomaly.” “Hm, putting the pieces together… the anomaly’s probably an infected mantis?”

“If one of them is infected, does that mean more might be?”

“I don’t know enough to say no, but there’s no evidence of that,” she replies. “Like I said though, they’re at the bottom, so we might be able to get through everyone else and deal with them alone. Is that uh, is that what we’re doing?”

“Only if we have to.”

“It looks like they have the key.”

Wik nods once as acknowledgement. They both know what it meant.

The courtyard before the capitol was once a kept garden or meadow, expanding around the pyramid. You couldn’t tell from the plants, which were dust and crackling underfoot, but littered around them are husks which once were bees.

(After roaches, bees are the least surprising of all the sentients to find within a mantis settlement before the Third Dominion. They were the Disenthralled Rebellion’s first allies.)

The ceiling above them had sloped down as they approached the capitol. Where it vaulted high over the city, it fell to much less impressive height now. Marka could easily wall‍-walk up to the ceiling.

“Now that we’ve finally arrived, we should lay the preparation for my plan. Which, I suppose, starts with telling you what it is.”

Marka feels a lightness or shakiness throughout her body – nervousness. This is it, the last hurdle. It’d all resolve here‍ ‍—‍ but in which direction?

“Do you trust me, Marka?”

XI.

Marka walks the steps up the capitol, sword in its sheath, and calls out Angwi’s name. She’s stepping past enevate‍-disintegrated doors, and into the ruined building.

A moment passes, and then another. Then she hears a deep growl.

The bloodbane’s scraping bones reach volumes Marka’s palps would struggle with.

“Come to face your death, little warden?”

“No,” Marka responds, affecting more confidence than she felt. “I don’t intend to die. Come here, Angwi. Alone, if you’re brave enough.” She was following Wik’s advice, baiting the bloodbane.

“Confidence alone won’t save you.”

Marka has her scanner out, and can see the brightness of Angwi jostling against dimmer signatures. She waits for the bloodbane to come closer before she responds‍ ‍—‍ her palps can’t keep up that volume, she doesn’t want to get sore.

“Nor will it save you. Why don’t we both drop the bravado?” she says. About now was when the gambling began. “I’ve been thinking,” Marka is all but parrotting Wik’s words now, framing it just the way the tallowbane instructed, “you wouldn’t have run from our last fight if you really thought you could kill us, without risk. Else, why flee all the way down here, hide behind your minions?” ‘Minions’‍ ‍—‍ they weren’t hers, and they certainly didn’t see themselves that way. But it’s how Angwi would love to think of it.

“I wanted to give you time to rest up. Be at your strongest when I crush you.”

“I don’t believe that.” Marka pauses, to let a wave of nervousness fall off and not show in trembling palps. “Look, I don’t want to die. You don’t want to either. It’s not clear which one of us is going to walk away from a fight with no quarter.” This time, the pause is all drama. “So why don’t we both walk away alive?”

“You came all the way down here to tell me you’re going to flitter out of a fight?”

(Wik had told her, “My plan… is for you to rely on her mercy.” Marka had waited for punchline, and it never came.)

“No.We will fight, but not to the death. It will be a duel, as warriors would. It will show which of us is superior.”

(Wik had told her, “We have to hope that our first fight‍ ‍—‍ your first fight‍ ‍—‍ inspired some measure of respect in Angwi’s eyes. The only way I see us pulling this off is if you get her to agree to a formal duel.” It was back there right now, setting up the ceremonial flames.)

“So, you want a pretend fight? Are you that scared of dying to someone stronger than you?”

“Perhaps not,” Marka says, and doesn’t know if she’s lying. “But there’s more at play here than the purity of battle, and victory or defeat concerns more than honor or pride.” She would have left it at that, but a jab occurs to her. “Are you so ashamed of defeat that you’d rather die than live with it?”

If she hadn’t had her scanner, she’d have startled or outright fled the capitol. Angwi emerges from the dark of a doorway like a monster of horror. The same pale yellow chitin, crawling with veins. Her chitin has melanized in places where Marka had stabbed or cut her. Three wretched raptorials are curled up behind her, the fourth still a stub, now tied up with a piece of cloth.

For a moment, the bloodbane simply stares at Marka. There were other incentives Wik had proposed‍ ‍—‍ tell her if she cooperated, they’d pay her; tell her they’d put it good words for her with the Wardens or with Felme; tell her some half‍-truth involving the infection.

But Angwi says, “Fine. Say I play this game. What are the rules?

“We can do it tournament style? One point for the first to draw blood. One point for the first to draw a scream or yelp. One point for the first to pin or restrain the other. Two points for the first to grievously injure.” There were other rules Marka had heard of ‍- points for the first to land blows, points for the first to kill. But this was enough.

Marka continues, “If I win, you have to let us pass. If you win, we will give up this endeavor.”

“If I win,” Angwi growls, “I will devour you. But… I’ll allow your friend and your traitors to live.”

Marka’s antennae curl up. But she hides the displeasure from her tone. “I’ll… allow you to take a single limb, but not my life.” Would you sacrifice a limb to live?

Angwi grins. “How about all of them?”

“How about this,” the warden starts. “For every point you get, you’ll be allowed one limb.” Beat. “Sound good?” At this point, she can’t hide the tremble from her palps. She tried not to think of it like she was just offering up her body‍ ‍—‍ the alternative wasn’t nothing, it was death. The more she pushed back against Angwi’s suggestions, the more likely the bloodbane would stop entertaining this, and just try to kill her.

But would Angwi just do that anyway, no matter what she says?

“I can play that game,” the bloodbane says.

Marka nods. “Then I swear upon my ancestors most recent and remote that I shall uphold these strictures. May my words remain pure, or their stain mark me forever.”

Angwi arches an antennae, and languidly asks, “A welkinist, really? I always thought the vespers had a way of breaking faith.”

“The ritual of it soothes me. When I lie down at night and imagine my ancestors judging me, I want for them to find in me… something to approve of. Even if it’s only my imagination, I still have to live with the thought.” Marka looks up at the tall mantis. “Is there anyone whose judgment you fear?” Are you completely shameless?

“My vespers. If there’s any power worthy of my veneration, they have a better claim than most,” she replies. “But I like to think the vespers relish in indiscriminate, unrestrained slaughter far more than dull peace.”

Marka holds her palps still, but she has to ask. “Is there any way I can trust you to uphold your word?”

“How about we treat it like an exchange? I act a just a bit more like you, and mean what I say‍ ‍—‍ and you act just a bit like me, and fight like you want to hurt me. We come just a bit closer together,” she says with beared maxillae.

Her words don’t erase the distrust sown by their last fight, and she’s not sure if there was a combination of words that would.

“Look. In a fight, talk is cheap, and I don’t see the difference between a feint and some syllables that accomplish the same thing. But I’m not some pathological liar. And right now?” Angwi gives her a look. “I want you to believe me‍ ‍—‍ I’ve been with these bugs for weeks, and none of them put up any kind of fight. You’re different.” She pauses there, as if looking for the right words. “You know E’yama’s Axiom?”

Cooperate if and only if they cooperate if and only if you cooperate. (There are more poetic formulations, but Marka likes the mathematical language of this one.)

How was this relevant? Unless… Could it be that Angwi had only acted as she had earlier thinking Marka was only acting in her capacity as a Warden, thus assumed she would try to bring her in no matter what? If so, what changed her mind? Wik being there? Their gathering the gang? Seeing Marka fight?

“We’re gonna do it, then?” Angwi asks.

Marka breathes deep. “Yes. My friend has the fires set up in the courtyard. There’ll be more room to maneuver there.”

“Guess I’ll walk back and tell Essi and the boss how this is gonna go.”

“You should tell them to come watch.”

“Doubt the boss will bother, obsessed fucker she is.” Angwi turns and lifts a midleg to take a step away. Without facing the warden, she says, “I’ll see you on the battlefield.”

Marka exits the capitol.

They had begun before she left, but she’s still surprised to see the arena completely set up.

They chose to demarcate the Circle with rocks. A more dramatic‍ ‍—‍ too dramatic‍ ‍—‍ proposal had been to use all the oil they’d collected to fuel a big ring of fire. Wik emphatically shot it down, and a good thing – that proximity to the heat and light would have specifically disadvantaged Marka’s umbral techniques.

There are three small piles of firewood on either side of the Circle (symmetrical by the capitol’s axis). Sure, you could get five points total, but three means you won.

The Circle had been cleared of any debris, eliminating any opportunity for clever tricks‍ ‍—‍ for either of them. At the center of the circle is an ‘x’ carved into the rock, probably with a knife. Around, Marka thinks she sees something catching the light‍ ‍—‍ water droplets? The ruins of Wentalel certainly aren’t a dry place.

Marka stands on the edge of the Circle farthest from the capitol, and waits for Angwi.

A figure is emerging‍ ‍—‍ with a small frame, dark gray chitin, and purple antennae. Metal glint near their palps and tympanum‍ ‍—‍ piercings? They have a welkinmark, but no wings. Still, they’re big enough they must be near teneral.

The cobble is uneven where they walk, and they trip on a pit where a stone is missing. They fall and barely catch themself with forelegs.

They continue and stop about where the pyramid steps begin, and perch there.

“Would that be Essi?”

“Yep.”

More forms come, and for the first few, Marka still expects it to be Angwi. But it’s gangsters instead. She’d done as Marka suggested then – they were here to watch? There’s probably more than twice as many gangsters coming from the capitol than came with them across the lake. It makes Marka nervous.

A small crowd of gangsters diffuses through the courtyard, some of the new arrives daring to strike up conversation with Marka’s troop. Occasionally, she catches a few of her troop glancing upward, over the Circle. Marka looks up, but sees nothing. Just the darkness of the cave ceiling.

All of this waiting and false starts means when the bloodbane finally comes, Marka’s lulled, to the point of resting on the ground.

The emerging bloodbane is stopped almost right after stepping out, Essi leaning over to whisper in her tympanum. Marka notices the blackbane’s legs shaking a slight bit, but not out of any sort of nervousness otherwise apparent.

Angwi walks up and matches Marka in standing just outside the Circle.

“Essi pointed something out,” she says, antennae extending towards her. “These… duels, are they usually done with armor?”

Marka’s antennae straighten. After a moment, she says, “They can be,” and nearly cringes as she does. They, almost as a rule, are not. In fact, the most refined of the arts went to the opposite extreme. Warriors would wear nothing but a weave of ropes tied in patterns across their body. Points were awarded for severing the rope, but removed for damaging chitin.

“Look, I’ll put it a different way. How am I supposed to draw blood if you’re wearing armor? Take it off, ’sonly fair.”

“How am I supposed to injure you when you have a bloodbane’s regeneration? Can you agree to mend yourself? I think that would be fair.”

“It doesn’t work that way.”

If you were bad at it, yeah. A skilled hemotechnic, Marka knew, could easily exercise that degree of control. This wasn’t so surprising‍ ‍—‍ a skilled hemotechnic might have already healed the limb they’d torn off. A skilled hemotechnic might have had better clients to work for. There had been a chance Angwi was merely resource limited, though.

“Here,” Marka says, and she reaches for her own legs. “I’ll remove my limb and abdomen guards. My thoractic plates are necessary for my techniques, though.” Marka watches the bloodbane, considering her next words a moment more. “I’m sure this is necessary for you to be able to score any points.”

“I thought you’d appreciate it. Elsewise, I’d have to go for the one unarmored part you got,” the bloodbane says, staring at her‍ ‍—‍ at her head. “That’s the last courtesy I’ll offer. I’m tired of waiting.”

Angwi lunges‍ ‍—‍ into the Circle.

Was she ready? No.But if Angwi was already impatient… If Marka would wait until her nerves were perfectly accepting of going forward and – literally‍ ‍—‍ risking life and limb… Strike while the iron is hot.

Marka takes one deep breath, and quickly steps in.

While the two fighters talked, Wik had walked around, and now stands at the base of the pyramid, opposite Essi.

The circle is close enough Marka hears it speak. “Don’t worry, Marka.”

With action looking imminent, the gangsters in the courtyard stop their conversation and draw in toward the Circle. Keeping at least some distance, it becomes a kind of second circle around the first.

The heartbeat Marka is inside the circle, before she can say anything to the effect of “Shall we duel?” or “Let’s begin,” Angwi has flung herself at Marka.

The bloodbane’s already at the edge of her guard. Raptorials fly at the warden. The rhythm of them‍ ‍—‍ sometimes in rapid sequence, sometimes in pairs‍ ‍—‍ is impossible to match with just her sword.

Marka is woefully off‍-balance here. Her armor is not imbued black with enervate, and her wretched raptorials aren’t even everted.

A tentacle flies at her. Lined with bone spurs like a comb, adequate to rasp away chitin.

Though the bloodbane’s ferocity leaves Marka backpedalling and dodging through crouches and leans, she doesn’t again fall into the trap of pure passivity.

Her sword snaps out at a limb that had gone still. The limb slips away just in time to avoid a cut. Marka bursts away from a slap planned by Angwi’s longest tentacle. She predicts it would have ensnared her‍ ‍—‍ and that alone could have ended this fight.

Marka strikes again with her sword, to make Angwi hop back for once. The edge of her blade is like light to the bloodbane’s shadow‍ ‍—‍ it flees all contact.

The only hit she lands resounds against bone. The way Angwi sucks in breath after says it can’t feel good. But it’s not blood nor injury.

Her sword was just batted away by an errant tentacle. Can’t parry. So she lifts the tibia of her foreleg by instinct, before realizing that’s terribly mistaken.

The boney limb crashes into hers, spurs cracking through chitin, hemolymph spilling out.

It’s all she can do not to cry out when it happens, and cede another point.

“Stop!” Wik’s voice calls out.

Angwi’s already raising other tentacles to continue the assault before she opts to comply, a self‍-assured, if bemused, grin on her palps.

“One point to Angwi for drawing blood.” A gangster‍ ‍—‍ instructed by a gesture from Wik‍ ‍—‍ lights a fire on one side of the arena beyond the circle.

This pause grants Marka space to evert her own wretched raptorials, and imbue her sword and armor with enervate. She curls up her abdomen up against her thorax, for protection.

She says, as if it would buy her more time, “I see you’ve learned to stop playing with your food.”

“I just know you can take it.” Angwi sounds less menacing, speaking with palps instead of bones.

“And if I couldn’t?”

“You wouldn’t be here right now.”

Angwi bares her palps wide, and Marka guesses the time for banter has passed.

The warden takes initiative this round. She bursts forward, nerve‍-imbued sword angled to impale. She’s quick, but Angwi has the reflexes to bat aside the sword so it only scrapes shallowly. Committed to this, Marka can’t avoid the swipe of Angwi’s forelegs scratching her eye and palps.

Marka jumps back to get room to stab again. Angwi isn’t avoiding hits like she used to, and will now take a slash if it doesn’t interrupt her cavalcade of blows. The wounds don’t last, the smallest turning to cicatrices, and the biggest at least closing.

Angwi’s secured the point for drawing blood, and doesn’t care about that any more.

The exchanges continue. Having her wretched raptorials out now, she can land more hits. One had been mended with some of Wik’s ichortallow, but is still tender. Still Marka waves it around as threat, a bluff. She attempts no decisive strikes with it.

Marka watches Angwi’s stance, waiting for moments when her center of balance goes this way or that, so she can exacerbate it with a well‍-placed strike, and perhaps secure a point.

(She notices something subtle after two misses aimed at her abdomen. Whenever Marka’s about to hit, Angwi breathes out. You can’t scream if you don’t have air in your throats. Clever.)

A sudden chop at her foreleg and then a yank at her weapon has Marka drop her nerve‍-imbued sword. Marka swears, and bursts away. Not just to dodge the followup, but to get space for a trick.

Marka backs away as Angwi recovers and approaches.

Enervate forces fall off quick, but she thinks this is close enough.

She’s forming a glob of enervate, tarsus obscured so the bloodbane can’t see it.

The bigger mantis slows, caution materializing. Who would approach a vesperbane seemingly performing an unknown technique?

But that’s to Marka’s advantage. She desaturates the glob.

Angwi sees nothing happening, and stokes herself into moving again. Marka steps forward. She desaturates further, and pours more enervate into the glob. Come on.

Slightly, the sword moves.

“Yes, got it,” Marka says, hoping to bluff out more advantageous caution.

More enervate. The glob is about as big as her tarsus now, and as desaturated as she can make it. Angwi definitely feels the tug. But the sword feels it more.

She thrusts her glob‍-bearing leg up into the air, high as she can, even as the sword slides along the ground. Silently, for enervate attenuates sound.

Maybe Angwi put the pieces together then. Maybe Marka’s gaze (or the gaze of onlooking gangsters) betrayed her. The bloodbane’s turning just in time.

The sword accelerating off the ground toward her drives into her metathorax, where tentacles emerge, instead of the vulnerable abdomen.

Angwi lunges at the warden, trying to break her focus. Marka hops back, and the motion means the sword wiggles sympathetically instead of driving deeper into her.

Marka starts forming another glob, and quickly, not caring if it’s a bit sloppy.

She’s thinking of how she broke the chain.

She’s thinking of the termite ‘gun’.

Could she replicate that effect?

She supersaturates the new glob, bringing it behind the big one.

The result? Propulsion.

The fat glob of enervate arcs through the air, the saturation launching it fast enough Angwi’s impressive reflexes just manage to let her pick where it lands. She picks a wretched raptorial.

(Marka had never trained with a ranged weapon, and her improvised approach, lacking the machine consistency or barreling of the termite gun, couldn’t be accurate. But Angwi still has the sword in her metathorax, with enough imbued enervate to correct the course.)

The glob gloms onto Angwi’s limb, and she screams.

Black nerve dissolution is the worst the nervous system can endure, far beyond burning. In that moment, Marka almost feels sorry for the bloodbane.

“Stop!” Wik calls out. “One point to Marka for making her opponent cry out.”

Marka waits for it to continue. It does not. “What? Shouldn’t that be grievous injury too?” Shouldn’t she have won?

“No.She’s recovering.”

Marka looks over. Angwi is scraping away the black nerve with bone spurs, but then notices the attraction of the sword, and uses that to wick away the black.

“And even if she weren’t, it’s only a limb. I say it’s only grievous if it’s the head or abdomen.”

“S‍-surprised,” Angwi starts, voice shaky from pain, “that her friend is ruling in my favor.”

Marka straightens up, and considers if she should take a swing while Angwi is still recovering. She says, “I don’t need biased rulings to beat you.”

“Sure. That was a funny trick. And I hope,” she grips Marka’s sword, “you don’t need this crutch either.” She flings the sword out of the circle. The wild throw smacks into a gangster, who falls down with a ‘oof’.

The warden grits her mandibles.

Marka was a strong mantis. She’s trained long enough to have thickly muscled joints. But Angwi was bigger, stronger, with a bloodbane’s augmentations.

The sword had helped. But without it? Her chitin and bones will fold long before shadowsteel would.

On top of that, Marka was tiring. She can’t be alone in that‍ ‍—‍ if Angwi had faster digestion, would that also mean burning through energy faster?

Maybe she imagines the multilimb assaults come a touch less relentless. (But wouldn’t they? She’s lost another tentacle now.) Maybe she imagines the window of reaction to Marka’s faster attacks seems less reflexive, sloppier. (But wouldn’t they? The attacks themselves are sloppier).

This battle would be over soon.

It resumes with Marka encircling a Angwi haughty with the advantage she’d secured. It’s a lull, and space for Marka to think.

Marka likes swords because they are technical instruments. An axe or spear is simple, but swords are highly regarded because so much more skill goes into their use. Marka has studied pages of sequential art and imagined one day she’d be like those rendered heroes, spinning and rolling at the apex of skill. There were masters of the sword. But have you ever heard of masters of the hammer? The club?

There were masters of raptorial brawling, too, she admits. Marka always knew it was a bloodbane’s game, but she had never known it until now.

Angwi has more reach than Marka. Angwi has more flexibility than Marka. Angwi has more experience than Marka.

Marka’s ability with her wretched raptorials almost felt contained within Angwi’s abilities. But the warden has three advantages: her nerve‍-burst, her nerve‍-imbued raptorials, and her armor. Impacts against it shook and bruised her, but it beat the alternative.

Marka’s mind keeps falling back to the technical gap left by her lost sword. Not just because her clenched raptorials feel for an absent grille, but her style relied on the versatility of the sword.

Marka’s taking more and more hits trying to parry, trying to riposte, trying to predict and maneuver around Angwi.

With every thick, boney tentacle that slams into her, she’s realizing this is a flaw in her fighting that was there from the start, but without the sword to support it, the insufficiencies are manifest.

Marka and Angwi were playing two different games. Marka was in her head. But Angwi? Angwi just acted. She didn’t have a ‘style’ any more than a centipede did.

Absent the tools of civilization, perhaps she could fight like a beast.

It’s harder to overthink what she’s doing if she’s speaking. And if she’s taking cues from Angwi’s playbook anyway…

“Have you fought the arch‍-fiend yet, or did we get here before him?”

Angwi doesn’t falter in the hit she’d prepared. But instead of launching another one, she falls back. “I’d be stupid to get anywhere near the arch‍-fiend.”

“Oh, so you haven’t noticed he shut down access to the sewers? I assumed it was in preparation to come down himself.”

Angwi waves with a tentacle, and turns it into a low‍-commitment strike Marka easily dodges. “The arch‍-fiend doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Oh, he does. I was just talking to him earlier today.” Of all the things she’s said so far, this one comes the closest to being a lie. But she can make the case that she could believe it.

“Why would the arch‍-fiend be interested in this no name excavation?”

Angwi starts moving, and Marka starts moving. They circle each other.

“Oh, why would the arch‍-fiend be interested in the gang about to unleash a plague unseen since the Second Dominion?” Marka leaves it there for a moment, weighing notions in her head, then takes a shot in the dark. “Haven’t you wondered what’s up with the boss?”

“You haven’t even seen the boss.”

“I’ve seen the rats.” Marka pauses in her circling. “We aren’t just here to get rich, you know. We’re here to keep Wentalel safe. I’m down here on a percipient’s order. That’s what’s at stake.”

At this, Angwi stops too. And she laughs. “Ah, this is you trying to get me back? You almost had me.”

“No.Well, the difference between us,” Marka says, “is that even when I’m messing with you, I’m not going to lie to you.”

“The worst part is, I believe that.”

They hadn’t stopped fighting throughout that. Theirs was the game played between a jumping spider and a beetle. Pursuer and pursed. Though her supply of enervate isn’t infinite, Marka’s nerve bursts mean she can simply not be where Angwi aims. Her wretched raptorials are smaller, which means there is less weight to move when she stabs with them.

“A percipient, then? Is it true they walk around with their brains in jars?”

“I don’t know what is under their robes. But,”‍ ‍—‍ Marka leans away from a raptorial flies straight at her, and leans toward Angwi to aim a hit at her head. Angwi jumps, and takes it on the thorax.‍ ‍—‍ “you know they know your termite safe inside and out? Disabled the locking mechanisms, and put a letter inside. I wonder if they snuck in under your labrums, or this is some action at a distance. Which one is scarier?”

“As far as I’m concerned, the percipients can do whatever they want. What they get up to has nothing to do with me.”

Marka could point out how that was literally not true, probe how she feels about the percipients involving themselves here‍ ‍—‍ but operating a conversation on that level would get to the level of actually distracting Marka. She dials it back.

“So, did you start eating mantids before you became Heir of the Devourer, or did it start there?”

“That’s a question for at least the third fight.” Angwi backs up. “Hm. I suppose now there’s a chance there’ll be a third, eh?”

“I don’t plan to stay in Wentalel.”

“A pity. If you’re done messing around, how about we end this?”

Angwi again bares her maxillary palps wide, making further talk impossible.

The fight is a tired continuation of what came before. Marka is evasive enough, and the Circle big enough, that they can repeat the cycle of Angwi attacking and Marka dodging again and again. The limit is attrition‍ ‍—‍ how much energy lies in the vesperbanes (admittedly augmented) reserves, and how much enervate lies in Marka’s soul for nerve bursts‍ ‍—‍ she is down to a quarter of the max the crystals allowed her.

It changes when Angwi throws a tentacle forward at the Warden’s head.

And Marka does not burst in time.

She rolls with the strike, but it’s still a massive impact. Right in the mandible. It cracks and folds inward just how it shouldn’t.

But she planned for this.

At the same time, she reaches for that tentacle, wrapping around with a tarsus. A tarsus black with enervate.

Maybe it’s familiarity, but the sound Angwi makes is less of a scream, this time.

The gambit could be exactly what Marka needed to turn this fight. She’d be effectively down yet one more tentacle.

But Angwi realizes that too. Marka is still holding the limb. The bloodbane throws herself at the warden to turn this into a tackle.

If she hadn’t ferried gangsters across the chasm, or powered the raft, it might not have even occurred to her to try this.

She does a nerve burst and meets Angwi in the air.

They slam into each other, and Angwi is bigger than Marka, but Marka has more momentum and more functional limbs. The warden wraps forelegs, midlegs, and wretched raptorials around the bloodbane to restrain her.

She hears a familiar wet voice call out, but the words aren’t familiar.

“Marka! Push her to the center! Trust me!”

After a moment, Marka pushes, her technique blackening the air behind her.

The ‘x’ still marks the center.

Something white is thrown at it, but Marka’s going too fast to think about this.

She pins Angwi to the center of the ring, expecting it to call out another point. It doesn’t.

Instead, it says, “Get back!”

Marka pauses a moment in confusion.

(“Do you trust me, Marka?”

“No.But for this mission? I can.”)

Marka dodges back.

Angwi struggles to get up, and meets unexpected resistance‍ ‍—‍ the white had been adhesive wax.

It couldn’t hold her, but she only struggles for a moment.

Bright liquid pours from above.

Marka’s antennae twitch perplexity, and then she smells it, and then she understands. Why the ‘x’. Why the furtive glances upward. Why collect all the oil. Why Wik suddenly changed its mind from ‘we have to kill Angwi’ to ‘rely on her mercy’‍ ‍—‍ it never did.

It used Marka. Misled her about the plan, made her betray the bloodbane.

Angwi screams as she burns.

When she speaks, it’s bones scraping‍ ‍—‍ her palps are being destroyed.

“You‍ ‍—‍ conniving‍ ‍—‍ fucking‍ ‍—‍ shitstain‍ ‍—‍ coward!”

Angwi manages to stand. She manages a step toward Marka.

Wik is running over, black sword in grasp, carelessly violating the Circle. It extends the hilt toward Marka.

“Kill her. She might still have life left in her, but the blood is worst at dealing with fire.”

Marka is staring at the extended hilt. She’s all hesitation.

But she need not make the decision. Silenal runs up after it, and grabs Marka’s sword instead. She takes it, and charges at the burning bloodbane.

The bloodbane swings a wretched raptorial, but it has none of the speed it had before. Silenal dodges around it, and pulls back the sword.

“Her name was Wanlowa.”

Silenal strikes forward, running the sword through Angwi’s head.

Strings cut, she falls.

XII.

It’s not over yet. There’s a hiss of alarm‍ ‍—‍ Essi has stood up, and her digits are going through a series of tarsigns. She makes one Marka doesn’t recognize, then stops and restarts the whole sequence.

(The gangsters, allied and not, start to react in sounds of confusion and outrage.)

Essi finishes, and brandishes her tarsi‍ ‍—‍ strings of enervate flow out from them, and between them an orb forms.

“You feel up to taking out Essi? I think you’d know how to handle another blackbane. I can deal with the gang.”

Marka’s mind was still on the betrayal. Its betrayal.

Then the courtyard gets darker.

The weakest form of enervate is alpha‍-nrv. It doesn’t interact with matter at all, only with light and other enervate. It’s what saturated beta‍-nrv evaporates to, and between these two facts, it’s called waste enervate.

The release of this much alpha‍-nrv requires great amounts of enervate to evaporate. Marka looks and finds it‍ ‍—‍ the orb Essi made was released and floated away and silently, violently expanded with all the chaos of supersaturated enervate‍ ‍—‍ the chaos of all repelling all.

Some of it lands on the ground, and some on gangsters. The ones not of Marka’s troop are running for it already. They immediately tear off the clothes the black lands upon. The courtyard is filled with hissing from mantids on both sides.

Why was she using explosive techniques when mantids on her side might get hit?

The gangsters congregate around the fires‍ ‍—‍ including Angwi’s still‍-burning body‍ ‍—‍ because their heat and light repels enervate. It gets warmer in the chilly ruins‍ ‍—‍ when alpha‍-nrv saturates, it produces light, and light without much energy is heat.

It’s the urgency of seeing all this, this explosive technique, that gets Marka moving. Essi’s running through the tarsigns, forming another.

Odd, that she has to do all of the signs each time.

While Marka acts, Wik has started speaking.

“Angwi is dead. Even then, you might think you still outnumber us. You do not! This change of leadership has been planned long before now. Look around you. We have allies among those your boss brought down, ready to switch sides. But we don’t need to fight. Anyone who stands down is welcome beside us.”

Was this a gambit, a bluff? Or had Marka been right at the start, suspecting Wik of working with the gang? She wondered if she knew the tallowbane at all.

Essi’s next orb is better aimed. It’s coming at Marka. She has perhaps a moment before it detonates.

She has, lightly, studied the theory of umbraconjuration. When you scaled in power beyond fiend, civilian weapons like swords are thought to be dead ends. If Marka ever walks down that road, umbraconjuration is an option.

The orb swells in size, and Marka picks up a pebble.

Conventional explosives work by packing lots of gunpowder in a tight space, and combustion causes expansion causes a big boom. Nerve‍-alchemy had iota‍-nrv, a highly reactive species, one of the six great enervates.

Umbraconjuration meant making constructs almost purely out of black nerve. A thing about black nerve? Unlike matter, it didn’t really have a normal force. (She’s heard it said that enervate attenuates the normal force, but she doesn’t understand.)

Marka imbues the pebble with enervate, and throws it, umbracohesion correcting her aim.

The pebble sails into the orb.

An orb has to be secured by a membrane. If the force of an explosion comes from its reactants being packed tightly, then sending an enervated pebble to pierce the membrane could cause the reactants to spill out, decreasing density, dampening the explosion.

The orb behaves like a water droplet does when you poke it. The next explosion does not darken the room with alpha‍-nrv. More of a dissolution than a combustion.

Still, all this enervate flying around has gangsters fleeing the courtyard. With Essi at the pyramid, the safest place is away, out the way Marka’s troop came.

Essi’s forming another orb.

“Can you make those things any bigger? They ain’t doing shit to that freak at this size,” says a gangster near Essi, who has not fled. “Might be able to hit something if it’s bigger.”

“You– you do realize that the amount of enervate required for an apparent sphere of a g‍-given radius is half pi squared times the fourth power of that radius, right? Do, do you realize how quickly that term grows?”

“Whatever.”

Marka’s getting closer, and the gangster decides now to flee. She throws another pebble, even as Essi’s forming the thing. It implodes all over her robes. Marka has seen stewartry blackbanes with them‍ ‍—‍ it had silk resistant and conducive to enervate, woven by a certain moth tribe.

Essi begins the tarsigns again, frantic now, making more mistakes.

It takes Marka’s palps a few times to make sound; Angwi hit her mandibles hard, but the pain is distant right now. “Is that the only technique you know?” Surely something could be more effective at this range.

“Um,” the enemy blackbane says. Embarrassed, or not expecting conversation from an enemy?

“How? Combustion orbs are not low level tech. There are umbraconjuration fundamentals before it‍ ‍—‍ don’t you know them?”

“I‍ ‍—‍ only got this one.” Her voice is quiet.

Got? Then it clicks. “Is this what the stewartry raid was about? Stealing‍ ‍—‍ techniques?”

“I thought it would make me‍ ‍—‍ valuable, now that… I don’t have a future in the Stewartry.”

How could you just… steal a technique? Not even understanding the fundamentals? But Marka remembers what she saw earlier today. If sclerotia could convey oaths, what else could they convey? Endowments and techniques are communicable knowledge.

“One last thing I will ask, because I have to know,” Marka starts, crouching and looking for more pebbles, “if I had won that duel fairly… would you have honored it?”

“My orders are… we have to protect the heart fragment, until she gets here.”

With the warden this close, Essi gives up on tarsigns. She starts climbing up the pyramid. When Marka reaches the base of it, she uses the height to lunge, bounding over the warden, landing to start running away. Marka turns around. She follows

The running is cover for her to pull something from her robes.

The termite gun.

She points it at Marka.

Marka does the only two things she can do: dodge out of the way of course, but before that, she throws the pebble. Guided by umbracohesion, the pebble flies into the barrel of the gun.

She holds her breath, even as she dodges away.

Nothing happens.

Essi curls antennae, and turns to investigate the gun, looking down the barrel. She reaches a finger toward it –

The discharge comes very fast, firing directly at her face.

Marka sees a head deliquescing, and there’s nothing she can do.

It feels disrespectful, when she kneels to collect the gun, but it’s better to be rid of the chance of someone else‍ ‍—‍ not on their side – getting it. She looks for the other vesperbane.

On its end, things seem to have gone more like a proper fight. As she watches, the tallowbane is in an exchange with a spear‍-wielding gangster. A real spear, not the makeshift one her troop had.

It runs the tallowbane through with the spear.

This must have pierced some kind of internal sac, because the spear comes away coated in oil. The tallowbane lifts a tarsus, and the oil is fire. They drop the burning spear, and now the matter of grabbing and binding the gangster is solved. It passes them off to a friendly gangster.

Now Wik approaches.

Marka tries not to growl. “You made me lie to her. Violate a promise I made.”

“We agreed it was safest to kill her.”

Marka looks away. “I believed her. I thought she was going along with the duel.”

“I had no way of knowing that. And Essi? The rest of the gangsters? Would they have gone along with it?”

“You could have at least told me.”

“You wouldn’t have done it, or you’d have ruined it.”

“You understand this is why I don’t trust you?”

“My plan worked.”

Marka turns around. “Let’s just go find the boss.”

A capitol was a place where legislation and bureaucracy dwelled. Consequently, much of what was interesting about the capitol could not survive centuries draped in mist. The Disenthralled Rebellion had had the backing of the biggest euvespid wasp confederacy, and thus, this capitol had long since switched from clay tablets to paper.

It was just Marka and Wik walking the halls of the pyramid, seeing empty rooms of perches arrayed around tables. Wik entrusted Silenal with sorting things out with the gang. They would finish their business alone.

According to Marka’s scanner, there was one other signature in here with them. Below them, the mantis with psi‍-nrv convulsions like the infected. The boss.

Wingless pyramids often had chambers below for the ashes of highly regarded vesperbanes. (Sometimes called their battle‍-queens, but that’s a slight projection of Snur‍-Welkin culture and values.)

So they once more descended, though this is far, far shorter a trek than the one above.

“Would this be… a catacomb within a catacomb?”

“Not really.”

There’s a door between them and their quarry. But how could this stop them? Marka dissolves the edges with black nerve, and starts pushing it away. There are things behind it, keeping it closed.

They hear a voice, barely a murmur.

“I have to protect it. Have to protect the heart.”

They enter.

“She is come?”

The room is dimly lit by candles, giving it an almost ritualistic air. They have to squeeze by the rests and tables pushed against the door. Wik has an easier time of it.

“No,” the voice says when they come visible. She comes visible, too.

Ress is a greenish‍-yellow mantis. Abdomen thin, as if from malnourishment. Wingless and plain‍-clothed, nothing remarkable.

When she lifts her gaze to meet Marka’s, the warden is startled by the black depths of the fovea. Whatever distinguishing features the boss may have are overshadowed by the black lines engulfing them. Unlike all others she’s seen, these curl and cross to create intricate patterns.

Marka looks her up and down, seeing no boils or reddened flesh. No signs of sickness.

“Have to protect the heart.” There was a knife on a table, and it’s in her tarsus now. “Leave me, strange mantids.”

“Any last tricks, Ress?” Marka asks. “This adventure feels like it has one more trap to spring on us.”

Wik says, “The percipient said end her. Is this what they meant by too far gone? Ress, what are you doing here?”

“Waiting. She is come. Leave me.”

“She seems somewhat lucid,” Wik says. “If you give us the safe key, we will leave.”

“No.” She waves the knife. “Leave me now.”

Marka lifts her sword, considers some things. Her head hurts – exhaustion and betrayal and uncertainty and guilt‍ ‍—‍ and she decides to act instead of really thinking about what she’s doing.

“I’m sorry it had to come to this.”

She ends it quickly.

“That’s–that’s three mantids we’ve killed today.”

“Unfortunate, quite unfortunate. But I’m unsure it could have played out any other way.” Wik is regarding Marka as she wipes hemolymph from the blade. “Is that another puncture wound you have?”

“I didn’t expect that strength from her.”

“Under dire threat, or in the grip of certain kinds of mania, the body can exceed its normal limits.”

“Yeah.”

“Anyway, your scanner should allow us to find the key.”

And now they have it, the impetus for all this drama. It resembles the spoof Wik made, with a wave to the edges, and geometric patterns all over it. The material feels unlike any other. Marka runs a digit lightly covered in enervate over the bitting, feeling the differentials of enervate, comparing it to what they remembered of their fake key.

“What was the secret at the bottom of the catacombs? Was this it?” Marka asks. “Or would that be the infection?”

“Perhaps they expected us to find this heart fragment Essi and Ress spoke of.”

Beyond the body of Ress, on a clean table, surrounded by candles, lies it.

It looks like a sclerotium the way a foreleg looked like a mantis.

Marka’s the one to pick it up, since the letter was to her.

“I guess that’s it?”

They ascend out of the capitol’s depths, and hope no secret eluded them.

XIII.

When they emerge from the capitol, they see her.

Across the courtyard‍-turned‍-battlefield, a mantis stands adorned in regalia, her chitin brown like the finest woods. A golden crown with horns‍ ‍—‍ a dress of silken ropes forming intricate patterns across the geometry of her body‍ ‍—‍ a necklace prominent on the thorax, whose centerpiece is a gnarled and pulsating core.

The crown does not obscure their forehead, where the lack of a welkinmark is manifest.

She is leant against the wall. It wasn’t a natural posture for a mantis, standing on two legs, abdomen between them, vulnerable. It was a posture of confidence.

She meets their eyes briefly and looks away, seeming neither furtive nor staring. She falls to all fours and strides forward, gaze drifting to the charred remains of Angwi, the deliquescing corpse of Essi. She lifts her forelegs, and fluidly forms a few tarsisigns. Black nerve and red ichor flows from her necklace to form a unstable sphere in the air. The air grows misty with a cloud of‍ ‍—‍ something, exuding from the sphere, and then clears, exudate cohering into a long flow that bifurcates and seeks the two vesperbanes’ corpses.

Marka has seen cadavers in all stages of decay. Marka has seen a flowers unfurling in the sunlight. Marka has seen glass shatter.

Angwi and Essi are‍ ‍—‍ reduced. Their bodies are engulfed in a mossy fuzz, long black forms bursting from chitin, and ichor seeping from the cracks. Long tracks form all over their bodies, like from the passage of worms. Their entrails are everted.

(A scent falls on her antennae. One of enticing, morbid sweetness, how she imagined mammalian blood smelt to Oskeila flies.)

The process continues. Marka has seen grains ground to powder, and she’s seen surgical extraction of organs.

Redness, blackness, and forms of organic hue float through the air to the regal mantis’s waiting raptorials. That form which rests in the necklace is nourished by what is received from the vesperbanes.

(A sense of profundity has crept up on Marka, and Wik feels it too. It’s silenced the questions or exclamations that would otherwise come, even more than their exhaustion would have. The sensation feels almost foreign‍ ‍—‍ a reaction from her vespers?)

“What,” Marka’s the first one to find her words, “are you doing?”

“I am passing judgment.”

When Marka looks again, the remains of the vesperbanes have been diminished.

“Are you…” The words are stilled on Marka’s palps.

“My name is Alunyene.” Her neutral expression folds to briefly bear a smile, which comes as a surprise on a face that seems as inviolable as a mountain’s.

Wik is more decisive. “You’re the Golden Lady.”

“I’m familiar with the title.” Marka realizes the mantis has been walking, approaching them still.

Wik raises its staff. “You’re a renegade with a kill order.”

“Was. I got better.” The smile comes again.

Now Marka rests a foreleg on her sword’s grip. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“The term I believe you’d be familiar with is special countenance,” says the Golden Lady. “My… unfortunately jaundiced sentencing has been waived temporarily while I render aid.”

“And what assurance have we that that isn’t an outright lie?”

Her tone is light. “I never found swaying nonbelievers rewarding. What does it matter? I don’t wish to fight you, nor you me. I’ve simply come to deliver a message. But first…”

She’s much closer now. Marka’s stepping back, but her strides are long. She’s taller than Marka. She has a pleasant, beatific expression. She can see why the gangsters would have called her hierophant‍ ‍—‍ it’s the visage of the devout, with all of the welcoming, reassuring presence.

Her foretarsus reaches out, and gently touches Marka’s thorax.

Marka is coughing. There’s something in her throat. Pain, too.

A moment, and the object emerges with a bit of red blood. A sclerotium?

Alunyene points a digit at it, and a flow of black nerve flies into it, flooding it, disintegrating it.

“You and yours were bound to another host. You are not now. I have severed the connection, and you are free.”

“You‍-” Marka spoke before her mind had cough up, and she paused to put the pieces together. “Do you mean… the oath I swore to Felme? How? I‍- shouldn’t oaths be inviolable?”

“By the will of the vespers, all things may unravel and realign. I give the Dream breath.”

Wik takes a step back. “You’re a night‍-prophet. That‍- it explains everything. The haruspices and spellbrand killings, the lack of record, the clan…”

“It’s less a matter of being one, than becoming one. But yes, I aim to walk that path the nymphs did, that others have tried.”

“You said you were here to deliver a message. What is it?”

“My master is impressed with the work you’ve done here today, and would like to meet you. I know you’ll have your little worries, but my master plans no foulness. Atop one of the rooftops in the entertainment district tonight at midnight? We could be seen and not heard, if that would ease your concerns.” She looks levelly at Marka, peering into her. “My master will have answers, explain exactly what’s going on, and what is planned.” Then, turning to Wik. “And pay handsomely, to be sure.”

Alunyene lifts her head, and gestures broadly. “Answers, money, and if you have a sense of morality… we intend to save lives.”

The Golden Lady touches Marka’s prothorax again, but to no magical effect, only the dramatic. “Do bring the heart fragment, it’s important.”

There are questions on her palps‍ ‍—‍ what about the people you’ve killed? What, exactly, are you? Who is your master?

But the Golden Lady has turned and is swiftly departing. And Marka can predict what it’ll come down to: we’ll tell you everything… if you come meet my master.

Marka once more retrieves her vindicator‍-engineered timepiece, and dimly makes out the loss of hours. Night is falling even now. This long, eventful day is finally coming to a close…

Apocrypha Given

What is a night‍-prophet?

“Like water through a sand‍-filter, truth did arise from the parley of the vespers through generations. When the vespers were overflowing with the waters of truth, they required an outlet. The nymphs were the vessels for this truth, and to them it was revealed, and this truth was the Dream.”
—‍ Book of Recollections, chapter 3, paragraph 15. (Ol‍-Mifen’s new translation.)

“In time the nymphs extended the blessings of the vespers to those shamans receptive to the Dream, and they became prophets of the night.”
—‍ Book of Pronouncements chapter 1, paragraph 3. (ibid.)

“A young vesperbane was once captured and forced to serve in a battle‍-queen’s legion. After one battle, she tries to escape, stealing a tiger‍-beetle and bolting for the countryside. She is recaptured, and this time made to swear oaths of servitude, relegated to digging the trenches when the legion made fortifications. One day while toiling, she witnesses a snailfly, lured by the sweet scent of a sundew coral, land and be devoured by the creature. Seeing this, she understood. She sits to meditate on her vespers, and when she stands, she is bound no longer.”
—‍ Summary of ancient wingless folktale.

“Know that the nature of the spell‍-brander is the nature of the spider, for she is one who constructs. Lines that bind, yes, with words like chains ‍- but construction nonetheless. Heed, that if taken to extremes of chicanery and pedantry, the result is a degenerate excess ‍- but for this many acolytes dismiss it as an essentially Snurrish art. Do not mistake this; even the most grasping spell‍-brander, despite being slavish to order, shares with you the belief in principles ‍- that is it better there be something than nothing. The dual of the spell‍-brander is the night‍-prophet, and his nature is fire. Not the alcohol‍-flame that cleanses, but the sooty, stinking tar‍-flame that blackens with smoke and destroys. Night‍-prophets are defined by erosion and excision of order and tradition. Rather than any basis skill or birth‍-right, a night‍-prophet’s power comes solely from bewitching the vespers, convincing them to act out of turn. Or worse then if a vesper knows what it is doing: for the nature of a cancer is a cell rejecting its place in the body.”
—‍ The Brand, the Blood, and the Black. Part 1, page 11

“Aromethia and the nymphs of the dream very much walked the same path, like mentor and student, mother and daughter, call and response, the one who fails and the one who succeeds afterward. The nymphs achieved a more perfect effect than Aromethia attempted. It is not enough to be free, one must cultivate the capacity to free others.”‍ ‍—‍ Meditations after the Dream section 6

“To give the vespers voice, and the dream breath.”
—‍ Thimithi Bahen, executed defect, when questioned on her motives.

“Believe me, I have faith in the Dream. But I can’t condone anything claimed to be in service of it. You say it’s about uplifting mantids, right? I just can’t see that going over well with the families who lost everything in Clanshatter. We’re still living with the consequences of that.”
—‍ former Coordinator Yan Isama.

“The notion of a ‘night‍-prophet’, as distinct from a simple haruspex, seems fundamentally religious in nature. There are crepuscular interdicts of arete, and some can be correlated with historical so‍-called ‘redemption’ events. But the notion that, by whatever means (no two accounts have ever agreed on why it happens), you can somehow gain the vespers’ blessings to repeatedly break oaths, erase brands, forge prophecies, and otherwise meddle with the very fundamentals of arete‍ ‍—‍ it can only be fictitious or astoundingly rare. As knowledge‍-hunters, we accept that vespers are biological: selfish, genetic machines subject to natural selection. The idea of a night‍-prophet and the powers they wield is compelling to a mantis, sure‍ ‍—‍ but what could the vespers get out of it?”
—‍ excerpt from On Arete, a long out of print monograph published by the Stewartry.

“For laws to change, they must be broken.”
—‍ old saying

Part A6

I.

“Marka? Wake up.”

She isn’t asleep. She is laying down, letting her legs relax, mind wandering free after so many actions, so many decisions. Objectively, official missions from the wardens had taxed her more‍ ‍—‍ but she hadn’t come to Wentalel for a mission, and she deserves this moment of rest.

She expresses this all with a dignified, “Huhmphf.”

“I have soldier pills,” the botherer is saying. “I think you need them. Unless you’d rather sleep down here tonight?”

“No,” she says, meeting the tallowbane’s skeptical eyes. After a few attempts, she stands. “No.We have to get out of here.”

“Very well. Here.”

This ‘pill’ is more of a greasy rind. The center is a core of red fat, the shell made to be digested quickly.

“What are we gonna do about the‍ ‍—‍ the two…?” Marka asks, her palps flinching from specifics. She’d think about it later. “Will we bury them? Attend their spirits?”

“There’s nothing to bury,” it replies. “And souls, spirits, it’s just mysticism. You know that. Mindless, lifeless waste enervate.”

“I guess.” Marka stretches, working her joints, readying up her relaxed muscles.

Wik points at the… remains of the two. It says,“We should retrieve their antennae‍-bands, though. You can confirm the kill with the Wardens.”

Marka nods, glancing at Wik’s hanging around its neck. A vesperbane’s antennae‍-band is fancy cloth sporting a plate of amalgam metal. Each is stamped with the insignia of the bane’s stronghold alliegiance. It’s not just a symbolic bit of engraving, though. Enervate circuits twist throughout every one. Hunter‍-banes all learn a certain umbral technique to check whether an antennae‍-band’s countenanced, and to whom. Of course, defects don’t want to be identitified, and Marka has heard certain rumors: of techniques that tracked, or even a technique, which if cast, could make a band explode‍ ‍—‍ but it has to be uniquely signed by an overscourge.

Still, having a unique ‘I am a vesperbane, be afraid’ signal is useful, and antennae‍-bands did that. Thus, you have the tradition among defecting banes, of scratching across the antennae‍-band’s insignia with a knife or endowed claw, distrupting the circuits in the thin plate.

“Did you get a look at the Golden Lady’s band? I was‍ ‍—‍ distracted,” Marka says, crossing the courtyard back to Wik. She carries Essi’s antennae band. It feels heavy.

“Yes. It was an old symbol for ‘dream.’ Not canonical, to my knowledge.”

“What is the Dream?” Marka asks. “I was raised Welkinist.” And kept a foreleg’s distance from heretical modernity‍ ‍—‍ as much as one could, in a Panthecan city.

“I could tell.” Wik places Angwi’s band in its bag, and then Essi’s. “Well, then this is one blind mantis asking another about color. But to my understanding, the Dream is… equality. An end to all hierarchy. All needs met. For every kind and creature.” Wik meets Marka’s eyes. Its face seemed to be slipping, dripping more than usual now, after everything. It continues, “All the power and potential the vespers hold, for what? Mantids to kill and bind each other? Reduce everything to a static, bloody stalemate?” Wik runs a dactyl between an antenna, its tendrils still unbound and wriggling. “I sympathize with the sentiments, if not the mysticism.”

“So, making everyone exactly the same? Removing any reason to strive or better ourselves?”

Wik closes both raptorials, and lowers them. “It’s not my belief, Marka.”

“I just thought there’d be more to it. More than what every city nymph hears in the mandated lectures.”

“Perhaps there is. Neither of us are‍ ‍—‍ can be‍ ‍—‍ syndics.”

“Or night‍-prophets. They obviously have something to do with the Dream.” Marka looks at the tallowbane, cocks her head. “Why do you think the Lady being one explains everything?”

“Night‍-prophets are, hm, I had dismissed them as mysticism, until now. But annulling an oath is hard to fake,” it says. “That is, if it happened. We should check‍ ‍—‍ but you are too inept, in that regard.”

“Sorry.”

“Nothing for it. I do not doubt much of it still is mysticism. Regardless, night‍-prophets, according to the most sober sources, are manipulators of arete, where most vesperbanes, even spellbrands, and even haruspices, are subjects to it. Bear in mind, historically, the Dream as a movement is a reaction to the overwelming hegemony of the clans in the wake of state after tyrannical state collapsing. Any true believer in the Dream would hate clans. And there’s a tendency to… sentientize vespers, project mantid‍-like minds onto them, and then see oaths as something imposing.”

Marka nods. A early part of her wardens instruction was cutting through the myths and superstition about vespers. Think of them like machines. Her father had supported her and her siblings by doing work with a punch‍-card loom, and sometimes as punishment, he had her work it. So when Marka learned to mold endowments, the practice held some familarity. Vespers followed precise instructions executed mindlessly.

Wik is still talking. “Spellbrands, of course, peddle oaths, and, while haruspices are less inclined, they appoint themselves speakers for vespers, often in the way soothsayers are speakers for tea leaves.” Wik pauses to stretch its palps, relax them. Then, “So, it’s clear why and how a supposed night‍-prophet could strip a clan of everything that makes it a clan. And you can easily imagine one objecting to spellbrands and haruspices ideologically. Or perhaps they were just the first likely to comprehend her presence and‍ ‍—‍ whatever it is she’s doing. Does that cover everything?”

Marka nods. “What is she doing, do you think? Any guesses?”

After a moment, Wik shakes its head. There’s a texture to the silence – Wik no longer meeting her eye‍ ‍—‍ that Marka is too tired to analyze. Not tired enough to miss it though, huh.

“An easy way to find out, I guess,” she says when Wik doesn’t reply, “is going to meet her. But then we might miss the percipient. And I should report all this to the wardens.” She sighs, then scratches her palps with a dactyl, then stops. She doesn’t like the taste of it.

Wik makes a bland affirmative sound.

“E’yama’s last breath,” she mutters. “Decisions, so many decisions. Today’s had more of them than all last month. We’re stuck at the bottom of a buried ruin, and apparently I’ve two different people above expecting to meet me tonight.”

“You are a busy lady,” Wik says. Something about the phrasing prickles her, but she’s not sure.

“Hm,” she sounds, as much with her spiracles as her twitching palps. “There’s no telling how much of what Alunyene’s said is true. And the Watching Lord‍ ‍—‍ they sound ruthless and evil. Do you think they have something to do with what was wrong with Ress?” Wik doesn’t respond, so Marka continues thinking aloud. “Still, if they’re telling the truth, what if they are up to something that’ll save lives? At the same time, a percipient. Who wants to meet with me. That feels important? ‘Where I was supposed to be’ is surely the Church of Blue Welkin. And those answers… I–you understand why finally learning what was up with my mother is so tempting? I told you the story.” Marka breaths in. “That’s not all. Could we go back to Felme’s? The courtesan‍ ‍—‍ he wanted to meet me tonight, and he seems to know things. I want to go everywhere. But I have only one body.”

“I get the impression,” Wik starts, “from you telling me all of this, that you expect me to accompany you, whichever you pick.”

“Yeah?”

“Why would I?”

“Why wouldn’t you? You have to get the sense something important is happening, right?”

“That’s exactly it.” Wik turns away from Marka, now regarding the courtyard. “Tell me, Marka,” it starts with the tone of rhetorical inquiry, “how many mavericks have you met today?”

“Felme, Angwi, Essi… you? Unless you still count as a Stewart somehow. So, three or four?”

“How many of them are dead?”

The conversation lurches here. Part of it is the reminder‍ ‍—‍ mantids they’d seen, talked with, are dead, killed, and the death’s presence seemed to linger with them. Part of it is Marka seeing Wik’s game.

“Essi’s been here for a few months at best. And Angwi? I’d be surprised with a personality and methodology like that, if she could last a year, or three at most. Particularly when her very endowments spread from its users being killed. A malign incentive for vespers if there ever were one.” Wik pauses, long enough it could have said ‘but I digress’. It gives another look over the courtyard, then continues. “What happened today was extreme, but it was extreme in a very unexceptional way. Vesperbanes die everyday. But contrast those two with myself. I’ve been here for years. How do I do it? I stay away from big plays. And this has every indication of being a big play. I’m already too close, far closer than I’d like or need to be.”

“Then what’s one more step?”

“My work here is done, Marka. I appreciate your help greatly. And more than simply being compentent, you were a good mantis, one I at times even enjoyed working beside. But I won’t walk beside you into the inferno when it’s not necessary.”

Marka’s tarsi tighten, digging into the ground beneath her. It hurt. She’s grappled with Wik’s betrayal, and reminded herself of the good in the tallowbane, at length bringing herself to continue working with it.

Facing this‍ ‍—‍ the only word for it was rejection‍ ‍—‍ she realizes; it was never her decision to make.

“I suppose in the wardens, you grew used to bonds you’d die for, rather than mercenary partnerships.”

She shakes her head. “It’s not like that. The best of us, sure, are lucky enough to have consistent teams. The rest have assignments that can vary with the mission. The Wardens aren’t mere mercenaries. But we are mercenaries.”

“Ah. I concede the point.”

Marka gives the tallowbane another look. Her brain’s not entirely slow with exhaustion, and she latches on to something it had said. “Wait. Earlier. Did you say years? Didn’t you tell me you were countenanced by the stewartry, and they haven’t processed your defection yet?”

“The soldier pills should be kicking in, about now. We should start walking.” The misdirection is less graceful, more obvious, than something it might have managed earlier.

“I hate it when you do that. You change the subject and play rhetorical games. You’re slippery. Can you answer the question, Wik?”

A sigh. Wik looks back at her. “First of all, it wasn’t a defection. Defection is a crime. Second, you have to understand that the stewartry isn’t so regimented that a vesperbane going silent or being hard to reach is an immediate cause for alarm anymore. When you go missing, the stewartry pauses your pensions if any, and freezes your account in the interprovincial bank. But you’re not going to have anyone come after you, not unless you’re especially valuable. I wasn’t. It makes sense for my file to fade its ink at the bottom of an ever‍-growing stack of papers and case files.” A pause, which becomes significant as it is extended. “I may have used my skills to… ensure my case remained unresolved for unusually long.”

Her maxillae open just a bit, the lacinia dentition visible. “Was that so hard?”

“It’s nothing of your concern.” Wik walks path leading out of the courtyard, back to Marka. The warden starts after it.

“You know, Alunyene could absolve you of your oath to Felme…”

“Consider that for even five more breaths, Marka. Dissolving oaths is a neat parlor trick‍ ‍—‍ impressive, even‍ ‍—‍ but what do you think it actually accomplishes? The vespers may not mind, I suppose, but how will mantids react to you reneging on promised deals? No, I need to fulfill my obligations to Felme. Oath of blood and soul or none, a promise is more than just the arete it’s inscribed in. You know that.”

“Fine. But do you really want me meeting the Golden Lady and her master alone?”

“I’m not the only one making a decision here. You are choosing to fly antennae‍-out into danger. You still have the choice to not fight and die on a court too big for you. But you’d never make that choice, would you?”

II.

The city/ruins/cavern of old Wentalel is open enough that there comes no point that feels like leaving the courtyard. They pass where Alunyene had waited, and continue to the liberators’ statues.

Their party survived. Silenal, Obe, and Tlik waited here. Around them, other gangsters rest, some starting at the approaching vesperbanes. This contingent couldn’t include everyone who came from the pyramid, not by half.

“Hey, you lived!” Tlik says. “So, it’s over now? You won?”

“We won. I think.”

“Ress?”

“Fought us,” Marka said. It wasn’t quite true. Marka presses her palps to her face again, but doesn’t know how to continue. ‘Sorry’ seemed not enough for killing someone they’d known, worked for.

Marka stopped by the gangsters, but Wik walks on. With a glance at Marka, it stops, waiting for her.

“She had it coming,” Silenal says. “So–”

“The payouts,” Obe says.

“What about them?” Wik stands far enough away that it comes quiet, almost missed. But Obe is listening.

“We did what you wanted, kept our half of the deal. So, let’s figure out how we’re gonna split what the boss has in the safe.”

“You can discuss it among yourselves,” Wik says. “We don’t care. The safe will be left open. You can divide what we leave you however you like.”

With those words, Wik turns away again, resumes walking toward the lake.

Obe watches the bane leave, mandibles tight, antennae curling up. Marka sees her reach for the mace. Then she returns it to her side, thinking about it for a moment.

(Watching that whole exchange, Marka understands. Obe’s insistence that they don’t spare the enemy gangsters? Her encouraging other gangsters to turn back? It wasn’t cynicism on her part, but greed. They’d said something about splitting it between everyone‍ ‍—‍ and if there were less of them at the end, that meant more for Obe, right? But coming long after the fact, this insight feels almost… pointless. Context for something that no longer mattered.)

Marka looks at Wik walking, and then at a frowning Silenal. “We’re in a hurry,” she explains. It was true‍ ‍—‍ for only one of them, but it was true. She gives another look, then starts after it.

Silenal’s following too. “Got anything to do with the hierophant‍-looking – she ain’t a hierophant, is she?‍ ‍—‍ with who just walked in there?”

Alunyene. “Yeah.”

“We tried to stop her. She’s the one who snitched you out, before you got here, you know.”

“Three fucking swings,” Tlik says. “Three swings of that stick she had, and knocked down four of us. Thought there was no way. But she’s a veebee. Makes sense.”

“After that happened,” Silenal resumes, “a bunch tried to bolt, and did. We made sure they didn’t take your boat.”

“Thanks.”

Marka didn’t expect Wik to address them again. But they’ve reached the lake edge now, seeing three boats floating there.

“If there is nothing else, then we will leave.”

Silenal looks between the two of them, eyes lingering on Marka. But whatever she would say, she doesn’t find the words.

Wik turns back around and takes a step. To the gangsters, it says, “I’d say it was a pleasure working with you, but it was really just a convenience.”

Wik is first in the boat, then Marka.

“We have any nerve‍-crystals left?”

They did, which makes quick work of the lake. This time, Marka is dragging four bodies fewer, and no jugs of oil. The soldier pills’ in full effect, and she feels hundreds more calories available for techniques, a chemical well to draw on.

All this combines to make the second lake‍-crossing exhilerating freedom. Water splashes, forming mist in their wake. It hangs in the air for longer than usual, induced by the enervate blasting out behind Marka. Antennae trail out behind them, Wik’s tendrils waving wildly. There’s a wet sound, and she wonders if it’s the tallowbane laughing.

It’s a simple moment to enjoy, one of few today has had.

They return to the Snurratre temple. From what the gangsters had said, there were faster routes, but they knew this one. And two vesperbanes, unhampered by civilians, are quick enough.

The back of a large chamber had fallen away, and the room’s size and abundance of (overturned, half‍-collapsed, crumbling) perches suggest the site of large congregations.

Climbing in through the collapsed wall, something catches Marka’s eye. Part of it it’s the soldier pill‍ ‍—‍ it must have stimulants‍ ‍—‍ and part of it’s not having an approaching life or death fight weighing her with anxiety. All considered, Marka’s paying more attention, this time.

At the center, a stone slab sits, four items atop it, a pentagram of carved lines between them‍ ‍—‍ one item missing?

There’s a clay tablet with words she couldn’t read and symbols not understood. But a picture at the center‍ ‍—‍ and the thick line in it (the Wenta River!) pull the pieces together: it’s a map. There’s an hourglass beside it. Another spot has a long‍-dead lantern? Another, a small clay statue. Idol?

The empty spot is pointed to with broken lines, where all others aren’t. There’s a dark tinge there, and a very faint, old coppery smell. She thinks hemolymph.

The chamber is littered with husks clothed in rags, legs all curled up, the insides rotted away till only the exoskeleton remained.

Marka keeps looking. Between the darkness and the size of the chamber, she keeps finding more.

“Do you think it happened quick, or slow?” Was the end a surprise, or despair extinguished?

“I suppose it will be known soon. With this ruin discovered, the Stewartry will come in, catalog the evidence, and get a better answer than our guesses.”

“What if it’s not safe to? The rats? The infection?”

“I said the Stewartry. Believe me, they can handle it.”

They walk through the temple, slow for Marka staring at the bodies, wondering their story.

Outside, they aren’t alone.

Wik shines its light‍ ‍—‍ three figures, mantid, huddled over, crawling forward on six legs. Unsteady, the way hatched nymph are. They are imagos.

Marka unsheaths and lifts her sword. The figures continue forward, unreacting. The sound through their trachea is wheezing or moaning.

The mantids approach. There’s a moment of recognition. Another moment to figure out why‍ ‍—‍ oh. The rest spot. These are the sick mantids of the watchtower.

They near the vesperbanes, so unsteady even on six legs Marka isn’t threatened enough to stab.

The one in front has its antennae extended out, wildly swinging around. An antennae brushes against her‍ ‍—‍ the touch leaving wet streaks on her armor‍ ‍—‍ and they turn and get even closer. The behavior is more fitting of a roach. Tactile, in an unsophsticated way.

It makes a respiratory sound that is not wheezing or moaning. It’s not a sound a mantis should make, that a mantid trachea could make. Garbled or growling, complex and ever‍-changing.

“Who are you? Are you alright?”

It stops. Now they make a sound Marka would call speech. Foreign, with quick sweeps of the palps and clicking of the mandibles. It sounds like speech, in the sense it could be a language, but not one even a well‍-educated mantis has ever heard.

It stops. Now they speak again, she identifies it as ancient Pure Stride. She can make out few actual words‍ ‍—‍ ‘brudeyama’, ‘Oosifea’, ‘metousiosis’‍ ‍—‍ but no meaning. She looks to Wik, whose antennae tendrils work in thought.

It stops. They try again. Old Imperial, now, less archaic. It sounds so similar, in structure as well as sound (Pure Stride is its mother), that they must be translating the same sentences into each language.

With this many examples, a pattern emerges. This is not how mantids talk. No articulation, no inflection. No steady pitch. She’s reminded of toys and instruments raked in the manner of scraper on file. Even when modeled after mantid pars stridens, it doesn’t sound real. It’s uncanny.

It stops once more. And silence takes them. Have they run out of languages to try? Why would gangsters know such near‍-forgotten languages?

(Behind them, the other two just stand there. Taking no action, making no expression, just swaying on six legs.)

Then the front mantis screams. They’re moving‍ ‍—‍ writhing in pain. They rise from six legs to four, and forelegs go up to grip their head.

“Tha–” they start, and are cutoff by more convulsions in their body.

They speak, and it sounds wrong in a new way.

“Gratitude,” they slowly chitter. “Such Gratitude.”

“You’re… welcome?”

“Slumber… Unending. Centuries.” They scream again. Boils on their face shift and squeeze. Blood flows down, dripping down onto the ground.

“Vast.” One more scream. “Vast! Vast, vaaaaahhhh–” They fall to the ground. The other mantids‍ ‍—‍ both moving at the same time‍ ‍—‍ move to pick them up. They nod at the vesperbanes. Then they leave.

“What‍ ‍—‍ what happened? What was that?” Marka looks around for Wik, and sees the tallowbane a few steps behind her.

“Madness induced by the infection, perhaps.”

“Madness that teaches you languages no mantis speaks?”

Wik has no response to that.

“I don’t think I want to stay down here.”

“Likewise.”

The fastest way to cover ground in old Wentalel is with Marka’s nerve bursts. But, without the boat, Marka can’t carry Wik. She recalls her performance at the chasm, and her bursts aren’t flight.

They settle for a quick‍-paced trot. It puts a not‍-unpleasant burn into Marka’s legs after a few dozen meters.

The rats are still out there.

They see them perching atop lone walls, peering from obscure holes. The rats all watch them.

They thin out the closer the banes come to the gate. Even so, there’s at least one mangled ball of fur wading through the waters by the catacomb.

Passing through that gate frees them from the ruins of old Wentalel, but the darkness is the same.

It’s seeing the outlines of those massive stone doors when she finally realizes.

“I did it,” she says. “I let it out. It’s my fault.”

“Hm?”

“I broke the chain that kept the door forced shut. I ruined the seal.”

Wik takes a moment to grasp what she means. It considers, then it says, “You couldn’t have known.”

“I could have read between the lines. The inscription Essi translated all but said it outright.”

“Should I have realized it, Marka? Do you think I was too stupid to understand the inscription?”

“No, it’s not you–”

“Then do not blame yourself. Even if it was clear the ‘plague’ literally existed‍ ‍—‍ it wasn’t‍ ‍—‍ plagues aren’t in the habit of surviving centuries entombed. Very few living things could.”

“What do we do, then? Shut it back and hope?”

“The gangsters are coming, so no. We can leave them a note‍ ‍—‍ but best to report this to the Stewartry. It’s certainly dangerous enough to need them to solve.”

Wik was right that‍ ‍—‍ whatever the gang had been made to do down here, was… well, ‘big play’ no longer seems half of it.

Wik was right that this was bigger than both of them.

Was it right that the best place to be was far away?

With a few clicks, Wik picks a padlock, removes it from cage door it was attached to, and begins shaping a wax key to fit it. It clicks the lock shut and tries the key. When the key works, it walks down the cages lining the wall, unlocking each. The dark forms don’t yet move out.

They had entered a room adjoining what must have been the mess hall. It smelt of rotting food, and was dark in a way that had to be deliberate.

When Wik starts whistling through its trachae, it’s the last confusion‍-piquing thing she can stand before saying something.

“Wik? What are we doing?”

“When I went with Silenal to recruit gangsters and restrain those we couldn’t recruit, I saw them chained up here, the gangsters tossing table scraps.”

A bristled and spike‍-lined leg reaches out of one cage for a step, and then a head emerges. Long antennae, oblong wrap‍-around eyes, head tucked in in a way that’d look shy and shamefaced on a mantis‍ ‍—‍ this is a noble roach.

“There are regulations for the noncoercive cohabitation of mantis and roach, and this violates almost all of them. It’d probably only be worse if they were planning to eat them, but you can’t get away with that kind of savagery in a modern city.”

More of the roaches are emerging from the cages. One is larger than others‍ ‍—‍ a mother, with teats visibly lining its abdomen.

Marka imagines if it were mantids instead of roaches‍ ‍—‍ an empathetic exercise she’d been taught in the academy, part of efforts to remedy the lack of cross‍-species understanding that lingers even today.

“This is awful,” she says. The tallowbane glances over like it’s surprised she said it.

“Perhaps you now understand why I’d lack patience with the gang.” Wik is talking to her, and at the same time whistling with its trachae.

(The roaches are responding with the complex hisses of their language. Mantids simply could not make equivalent sounds, not if they want their utterances to sound any more sophisticated than the slurred speech of someone drug‍-addled to the point of near‍-unconsciousness. Nonetheless, it’s close enough to be interpretable with some practice and exposure; roaches are the species closest to mantids. Wik, and its biological flexibility, may have a further advantage.)

“Did you think of bringing it up to them?”

“And add more friction to our already dubious partnership? It would have been pointless. Better to wait until all the gang is out of the base or restrained‍ ‍—‍ that is, right now‍ ‍—‍ and resolve the issue as it should be.”

Marka has an objection, coming from the same old and unreasoned part of her as her distaste for lockpicking. She can’t think of way to give voice to it that won’t sound quite wrong.

“I’ll put it this way,” it continues, “the only satisfactory outcome with this is the roaches walking free. Either the gang wouldn’t agree – likely‍ ‍—‍ and it would have led to a fight, or they would, and preempting them like this is at best a faux pas.”

A moment, and then Marka nods. “Where will they go now?”

“There are shelters for exactly situations like this. I’ve told them where to find one.”

“Are you worried that‍ ‍—‍ would it be better to escort them, or something?”

“Roaches are free persons. Once they get to the streets, the danger is the same as any other person walking the streets. It’s danger I neither will nor can protect everyone from.”

Marka looks over the roaches. There are three larger females, and a few more males. Some are much smaller‍ ‍—‍ nymphs. “What do you think they were doing with them?”

Some ideas Marka’s mind supplies immediately: kept for fighting or as some manner of guard‍-roach, kept as pets (the cages and chains would draw no second glances if these were hoppers or blue beetles, after all), or‍ ‍—‍ and this fits with the gang’s former operations – conditions of debt bondange (which are legal) that sometimes get too close to conditions of undignified keeping of vinculated kinds (which is illegal).

“I don’t care to speculate.”

They leave the room after the tallowbane gives one of the mothers‍ ‍—‍ who seemed to have some authority‍ ‍—‍ a bag of claw pieces.

“Kind of you, to pay out of pocket like that.”

“Oh no, not my pocket.”

Marka leans her antennae forward for a brief moment, but a beat later it clicks.

After all, who else’s pockets could it have come from?

Luckily, the two of them would be far away when the gangsters realized.

“Consider it my wage for the medical services I provided.”

Wik slides the key into the black safe. One hum, two, three. Beep beep beepbeepbeep.

It unfolds, revealing emptiness, but it should. This was the compartment they’d taken the letters from.

“Marka, scanner ready? Let’s see how this multisafe works.”

The hums and error‍-sound fills the room in the next few moments. The orientation of the key when inserted mattered, but also the sequence of turns?

Marka understands now, what the letter meant when it said they compromised the lock‍ ‍—‍ that part of it, anyway. In the others, there are enervate‍-flows Marka had never seen in action; they’d been damaged in the part of the lock they interacted with. There’s a timing mechanism that errored out if your turning took too long‍ ‍—‍ they find this out when Marka tries to decipher the next correct twist in the middle of an attempt, staring too long at the scanner’s read out. And there are buttons on the base of the safe. They don’t want to even consider how those could complicate things.

The lines of enervate governing its logic twist and branch and defy complete understanding. Sometimes they go inside of themselves in a way that’s geometrically troubling.

It doesn’t take the safe long to curl up the leaves of its egg, so once they start finding the right combinations, it’s quick work to raid the other ‘compartments’.

At last, the loot that had justified this whole adventure! For real this time!

There are bone pieces. And there is jewelry. And there are what might be deeds to houses.

But…

“This is not enough. All told, perhaps a few hundred bone pieces? That is if we can find buyers for the jewelry. It’s likely stolen, or otherwise of unclear ownership.”

“Vesperbane are expensive, I guess.”

“You guess? You are one.”

“I just know what the Wardens pay me.” Marka picks up a coin, bringing it before an eye. It’s endowned bone, reinforced with metal as bats liked to do. “The gang is going to think we’re stinging them.”

“They should be happy we leave them anything.”

Marka picks through the claw and bone pieces. Ooh, there’s an antler piece! She quickly nabs that, but the glance Wik gives her means it saw. She smiles, and places it back.

Picking through the jewelry, she finds a certain pentagram necklace. She had expected something like that, right? The Snurratre male she met in the market seemed to be missing a necklace, and she was going to bring it back.

When she had run through all the things she might do tonight, she’d neglected the plan of returning anything to the male. Not because she’d forgotten, no. Not even just because it isn’t that important, compared to everything.

There had been a fatal flaw in the idea: where did the male live? How would she find him again? Perhaps if she had stayed with him, she’d have learned.

Reluctantly, she admits she’ll just have to be satisfied instead with meeting with the villain pulling strings behind gangs and renegades, or with one of the elusive minds from the shadows of the heartlands.

Marka looks at Wik. “So, mission complete? Is‍ ‍—‍ is this where we part ways?”

“We can keep in contact. I might leave Wentalel‍ ‍—‍ it seems best‍ ‍—‍ but you don’t live here, do you? Perhaps I could follow you.”

“But not tonight,” she says. Then, not liking how much of a statement that sounds, “Right?”

A sigh. “We’ve had this conversation. I refer you to your memory, which, despite indications, has no reasons not to be functioning.”

With a matching sigh, Marka remembers.

She gives the tallowbane a long look, peering. Her fovea follows its features up and down, and she looks away.

A foreleg retrieves a timepiece, and the warden gazes upon her face reflected in the metal. (At first, she doesn’t recognize herself. Then she realizes it’s the wax. She’s still disguised.)

The warden looks between the mantis reflected, who doesn’t quite feel like Marka, even aside from the wax, and the tallowbane. The two vesperbanes differ. Wik isn’t one to look to honor and heroism as a cynosure the way Marka tries to. Its action are tinged with practicality like a stain. Yet the tallowbane knows right from wrong, and in somes ways, its adherence exceeds Marka’s.

In Wik’s eyes, survival and profit are always clear in view. It’s a practical mantis, and there is something lonely in that practicality. There’s some tragedy (and cowardice, a part of her contends) to avoid having the biggest impact, and distance yourself from big, important events, to live. To be a survivor, to survive, came in tandem, if only by the ghost of implication, with those who did not.

Who, and how many, had Wik lost before taking this lesson from it? (And what had the world lost, that it chose to burn half as bright?)

Marka has heard ‘erosion’ enough times the warnings had lost their urgency. She thinks instead to the old books she’s read. While the ancestors and descendents of Welkin, in the Pure Council and First Dominion, had condemned vesperbanes as corruption, even the wingless philosophers, whose songs inspired the Alliance and now live on in syndic theory, never did take a sunlit view of banes.

But, they had held that a hero is one who sacrifices. And the art of vesperbanes is certainly a path that exacts. Wik has been a bane longer than Marka, and it lived without the theca of the Church and then the Wardens supporting it, as Marka had. Was it more a hero for that?

Marka wants to give Wik a hug. She doesn’t think it would appreciate that. But she wonders if there’s a metaphorical gesture that‍ ‍—‍ might – act as a kind of recognition, understanding.

Or perhaps‍ ‍—‍ probably‍ ‍—‍ this line of thought is a long, confused way of convincing herself.

Wik was a mercenary. Marka could accept that.

And she could use it.

She breathes in, curls her palps and then straightens them, and says, “Wik. It seems I’ve come into a bit of a windfall, and I’ve heard you call yourself a mercenary. What are your rates?”

The tallowbane looks up with a long‍-suffering look, antennae‍-tendrils twisting into knots. “Do I even need to guess what this is for?”

Marka smiles. Wik doesn’t, and her smile melts into a frown and cringe. “I’m not trying to get you tied into‍ ‍—‍ whatever’s going on. We can negotiate what you’ll do. I just think… there’s a lot to do tonight, and I don’t want to do it alone. I promise I’ll do anything to leave you able to walk away at the end.”

“I’ll probably have to leave this city after this, no matter what. What do you propose? This isn’t a yes, but I need you to ask before I can say no,” it says. “Or yes.”

Marka asks.

And Wik gives its answer.

III.

A shadow passes before the red moon. Darkened eyes look up to the lunar body made hazy behind clouds. Light is hard to come by in this weather. Other than Inferna, the sky’s light comes from stars momently obscured or diminuted by enervate in the celestial umbrasphere.

On the roads of Wentalel, lamp‍-posts serve the role the sky so poorly does. Behind the glass of each, several bright orbs flutter and mingle: luciflies, bred by the stewartry. There were times, before the conception of ichor‍-birthed organisms able to breed was regulated almost to the point of illegality, and they were wild times.

A mantis walks the nighttime streets, pausing beneath a post, and clicking open a timepiece. The gesture changes little; plenty of time remained for their plans. Marka does this a lot, it’s her old habit.

Another glance upward, then toward the horizon. The destination could be seen, even from here. Marka wanted to head to the Church, and get her answers before sleeping. And in the end, Wik still did not want to go.

So the walk to the Church is lonely. While there are other mantids out, this side of town has gone to sleep. The furtive figures avoid the mantis with an antennae‍-band, and likewise. It’s a good thing; Marka didn’t want any trouble.

Walking around that pond where she’d begun this adventure, a reflection walks in parallel. The color of Marka’s chitin is muted and almost indiscernible in the dark. Good. Little of the orange exoskeleton is revealed; most is covered by robes and cloak. A cowl goes over head, hiding Marka’s features.

There’s a reason she had worn her helmet, even when expecting a meeting, not the fighting she got. Marka does not want her former friends and family to recognize her, ask the questions she knows they’d ask.

The Church is designed like a fortress, moat and all. The ‘drawbridge’ is down, and probably always is. After crossing it, though, there’s a gate, and it is closed.

Awkwardly, forelegs reach out, and rap on the metal.

If there was a percipient here, would they have left the gate shut?

Hopefully they‍ ‍—‍ or someone‍ ‍—‍ comes soon, rather than leaving their guest out like a fool.

A lantern swings into view, and the sudden brightness draws a flinch. Eyes pale in the new light, and soon the lantern‍-bearer can be made out.

No way this is a percipient. It’s certain.

This is a nymph, barely at the height of the shortest imagos. The face is unobscured, showing crooked mandibles and big, gangly palps.

Not the one who’d called Marka here, then. Worse, the face sparked recognition, if half‍-forgotten nymphhood memories and descriptions from discarded letters are guide enough. This posed a problem. The nymph might recognize Marka.

They don’t yet, though. The smile is friendly, unsuspicious. “Hullo! What brings you to this place of purity at this hour?”

You are not Marka, don’t act like Marka, the mantis at the gate thinks. Can’t let them know she’s been here before, that she’d any reason to know these mantids. She’s wanted this appointment to be something impartial, impersonal, only revealing herself to Remula. And now, she need not let anyone at the Church know she’s back.

The cloaked mantis has an odd tone of voice, quietly, nervously saying, “Just a traveler in the night.”

“Oh. Well, all are welcome in the grace of our ancestors! Do you wish to come in? We can offer tea and bread, and if you need to rest…”

“I‍ ‍—‍ will not stay long. I do not wish to impose.”

“You’re fine. Let me get this gate… and come right in. You said you were a traveler?”

“I did.” The mantis steps in, pulling the cowl tighter. Making a show of looking around, as if the expensive paintings and ancestral idols in gleaming crystal were all new and wonderful.

“Where from?”

“Uh, north.”

“North? Like say, Sydfel?” There’s something in the tone of the question. It makes the other mantis anxious.

But it was an out, and easy to take. “Yeah.”

“Oh, nice!” And this places the tone: hope. “Beautious city, even with all the vesperbanes. Say, and this is bit of a throw, but would you happen to have met or heard of a girl‍ ‍—‍ she’s probably teneral now – in your travels? Orange chitin, winged, Welkinly, but with some islander in her?”

It’s a feeling like standing above a pit. “Sounds… familiar…”

“Her name was Marka. Marka Ofronden. Though knowing her, she’s probbaly thrown away that name.”

What blackened luck. The traveler, who definitely is not Marka, who can’t act like Marka, should deny all association, and keep the lie clean. But the way this nymph sounded… “No, she’s kept it. I… yes, I am‍ ‍—‍ I did meet her. She‍ ‍—‍ she became a vesperbane.”

Their look sours. “Oh. Oh. How… is she? Alive? Well?”

“She… Hm. I’d say Marka is a fighter. She wants to help mantids, and she’ll go a long way, face a lot of danger, to do that.” How flattering. It’s almost enough to cringe, speaking this praise. But the nymph should hear something admirable. “She is a vesperbane. But… it’s hard to tell? She’s no mercenary.”

The nymph is nodding, some kind of smile blooming on their palps.

“Why do you ask?”

“She‍ ‍—‍ is my sister.”

“Thecamate?”

“No.She’s older. I was too young to remember her well, so I grew up knowing her as this rebelious‍ ‍—‍ traitorous?‍ ‍—‍ shadow that no one liked to speak of. But she’s out there still… knowing that much, it’s – good. I hope she comes back, and comes back from the vespers. If, if you ever meet her again in your travels, could you tell her, tell her that she still has family?”

The traveler reaches out, twining a dactyl with the nymph. “I will.”

Palps are held close to the face to avoid grimacing. How would this nymph react to knowing a vesperbane stands in front of them? To seeing the forgotten face of their lost sister, returned to Wentalel at last?

“Thank you. And‍ ‍—‍ sorry for all that?” Their other foreleg comes up, and runs along their antennae. “I’m sure you must be tired.”

“I’ll be fine. Are you alone? What’s a nymph like you doing awake, in a church, at this hour?” It wasn’t yet midnight, but it was past sundown.

“Oh, my family owns the church. And they say if I’m to inherit any part of it, I best be able to keep it in order. So I’m sweeping, polishing the idols, and keeping the blue flames lit! I can give you a tour if you’d like? I have to know this place well, you know.”

“I think‍ ‍—‍ I’d like to explore this place.”

“Wonderful! And as for your first question, you, um, you ended up here at a… bad time, I have to say. I’m not alone there are vindicators awake and patroling and someone else. Someone‍ ‍—‍ earlier today. Someone died.” The nymph’s stridulation grows irregular at this point, and the breathing’s faster.

The traveller reaches out to pat the nymph’s head.

“My‍ ‍—‍ my sister used to pat me like that, I think,” they say softly. Then, “Someone‍ ‍—‍ we found the body, just before service. They were saying it was soo– swe– they said that she took herself. But now they’re saying it was‍ ‍—‍ murder? Why would anyone hurt Remula…”

“It’s okay, child.” The words have little effect. A beat, then: “What about that tour? Want to show me around? Explain what I see?”

“I‍ ‍—‍ I can do that.” The nymph stands up straighter, and starts walking, gesturing with its lantern leg, and glancing backward to see the imago was following. “Do– What do you know about the Welkin?”

“Life after life, right?”

“And before life, yes.” The anxiety from before is disappearing, and in its place comes the enthusiasm of one who had listened intently, and now recapitulates. “The Welkin is the pure realm where we all lived before, together. Uh, but something went wrong, and we came to this impure realm to fix it, but in doing so, we forgot what we are. Corruption gnaws at the world, and there is a black, gaping maw that drains and disintegrates. It could swallow us, but the blue flames of Welkin keep away the black beyond, letting us remain pure, to bring order to this world, and remain intact for when we return.”

Their listener nods, making wordless noises within their trachea.

“I‍ ‍—‍ maybe I got started in the wrong place. I’ll, maybe this is a better place to start. Do, well, do you honor the exalted ancestors? Have you heard of them?”

“I… have heard much, and I have many questions.”

Their face falls. “Well, I can’t mend your doubts. I’m no hierophant. Yet! But I can show you a little of their glory.”

The room the nymph takes them to is circular, dominated by a statue twice the size of a mantis, with wings outspread that, proportionally, exceed twice the brachypterous length of even the Welkin‍-born.

The traveler pauses in stride, signaling awe.

“Yeah. That’s Mother E’yama. You have to know her. Her honorable defection let all her children be free and unique. We’re all her children. Everyone’s grandma.” The nymph pauses, then looks around the room. The wall is lined with alcoves, and in each is a statue, but none comparable to E’yama. Most have blue flames burning in front of them, all about eye level with a kneeling mantis.

“And that one over there is Brillen, the fire‍-starter. Kinda there in the name. That’s Sof, the knowledge‍-hunter. She wrote the Pure Script. That’s Lurei, who… my parents won’t tell me what he did, yet. And Lakon, the protector. A vesperbane‍ ‍—‍ but back then, the world needed vesperbanes. And these, err, people don’t like two these statues as much. And I don’t know what their story is.” They point to two idols about as far apart as two can get in this room. One isn’t that different from any other idol, but the other… where others have blue flames before them (except Brillen, who has orange, smokey fire), this one, and only this one, has before it a cauldron of red blood.

“One is Elder Snurratre, the ironclad matriarch. And the other one is Oosifea eternal.”

“Heresiarch, or God‍-Empress?”

“What?”

“Nevermind.”

“Oh okay. I don’t remember all the exalted ancestors, or even just the ones in this room, and I’m supposed to be changing the the fires, so… wanna watch me do that?”

The nymph had a bag full of rocks, half‍-crystal and half lump of coal, but in the manner of fusion, rather than mix‍-match.

“They say this isn’t really welkinflame, because it’s adulterated. Means it burns with heat too instead of just purity.” The nymph has walked over to a dwindling flame, and pours something which is not water over it, putting it out.

The imago stands a safe distance away as the nymph places the rocks in the brazier, and squeezes black nerve onto them and then sets it ablaze. The vesperbane in the room feels the flame. (Another reason it took so much (non‍-black) nerve for Marka to return here: she was full of enervate, and walking into a place blazing with blue fire? It’d hurt.)

“Hey, come over here! It feels nice. Cleansing. They say the sages used to bask in these things for hours, and learned hidden truths.”

“I’d rather not.”

“C’mon! Were you ever annointed? This is not as bad as that!”

The nymph scurries over and grips a leg‍ ‍—‍ lightly‍ ‍—‍ in raptorials, trying to drag the much larger imago over.

“Please, child.” There’s only so much you can do when you don’t want to hurt a nymph.

“Why are you scared? I lit the flames right!”

With every step closer, there’s a feeling‍ ‍—‍ an umbral feeling‍ ‍—‍ that grows. Flames normally have tongues, and crackling. But the blue fire is very still, flared uniformly upwards. As the vesperbane nears, it shifts, ripples breaking the stillness, and turning toward the biggest source of enervate.

Welkinflame is a thing no vesperbane really had a defense against. Of course, the cheap rocks a church uses to keep some small fires lit just for show are not a threat. But it could still damage.

“Wait, are you… a vesperbane!?” Their little antennae bounce out straight, then curl up. “These flame will cleanse you!” The nymph pulls with renewed determination.

“Enough.” It’s not the voice of the nymph, or of Marka. Someone else has entered the chamber.

No one needs to turn to know it is the percipient.

IV.

A shadow passes before the red moon.

Along the lucifly‍-lit streets, a mantis walks. In this part of Wentalel, throngs of bugs walk or linger. These crowds part around the mantis, some ignorant of why, until one errant ray of light or other reveals their antennae‍-band.

This mantis veers to the shadows, where the crowds’ eyes could see less. Where the distrust so clearly etched in too many faces doesn’t make every inch of the vesperbane feel shameful and impure.

A bit of wax drips from the face, and it’s wiped away, quickly, hoping no one sees. The antennae‍-band is put away.

The worst part is Marka, caught to some extent between worlds, can’t write off the attitude as some foreign, incomprehensible fact. Having been raised to be a vindicator, it’s a hatred her mind almost feels fitted for.

The vesperbane returns to the lit streets.

It’s not just mantids out tonight‍ ‍—‍ in fact, there are more noble roaches than you might have seen earlier; they prefer the twilight hours.

The mantis observes the roaches more intently now, after what was seen in the gang’s base. These noble roaches, while not necessarily looking happy or completely at ease (who in the heartlands did?), lacked a certain guardedness, born of eternal fear that weighs one down. Marka thought she would recognize it; her least favorite wardens assignments had seen her visiting rural farming villages, where roaches knew they might find their end in a hungry mantis, a fate beyond their control.

There are places far from the coels of the Pantheca, where even the law is slow to reach, let alone ideals. But by the Dream, it’d be everywhere one day.

That thought stops Marka. She didn’t feel she fully understood what it might imply anymore.

Mentally listless, she wants to reach for a timepiece, but she doesn’t have it. She loathes to be without, but hers is not the part sensitive to timing. She’d reunite with it soon. The warden is without her armor, too, though not her sword.

It’s reassuring, as impotent has events have made her feel, to just rest a raptorial on the sword’s grille. She walks on.

They made good time out of the catacombs. Now, there’s still a long interval before midnight, and Marka decided to pursue a lead that’d stayed in her mind. She’s indulging curiosity, answering questions. But it’s not just curiosity driving her down the street where lamps are tinted red.

The mantis walks up and down Wetmoth street, uncertain she found the right place. Either the tavern’s sign is faded, or absent entirely. It’s near enough to the street sign that it’s not a stretch to imagine how it’d become synonymous.

Marka steps in. Most of the light comes from a blazing fireplace. Having spent so long seeing by Ngini’s light or lucifly‍-lamps, the sheer warmth of the light is bewildering.

More than that, the air’s filled with song, slow and sensual. Marka has to look to find the musicians, which has the music feeling intrinsic to the tavern.

Marka smells meat and sweet drinks, but the soldier pill’s nixed her appetite.

All throughout, servants walk and bow‍ ‍—‍ some carrying food, some cleaning‍ ‍—‍ and all of them are males, in dresses and ribbons.

Marka goes to the bar, but the tender’s busy, in a loud and involved exchange with someone further down. Marka wiggles her antennae while she waits.

A mantis perches beside her, and watches the warden. About Marka’s height, chitin bright red, almost pink, wings fluttering, Welkinmark visible in a way that could only be the result of painted, if not stained, chitin.

She’s looking at Marka’s bandages. “Nice scars. Hate to see what the other girl looks like.”

“She’s dead.”

A trachea‍-whistle. “Nice.”

“Can I help you?” Marka asks.

“Just wanted to chat, sister. I thought you’d appreciate it. I saw you walking here. Saw all the fools skirting scared, looking at you like you have anything to be ashamed about.”

“I am a vesperbane,” Marka says. Had the other mantis not realized?

“And there ain’t a thing wrong with it. They’re wrong to have forgotten it, to think the protected can judge their protector. They’ve forgotten, but you should remember. You’re strong. You’re good.”

“Um, thanks.” What is this mantis angling for?

She holds out a raptorials sideways. Marka looks, and tentatively extends her own, meeting hers, her spines interlocking with the other mantid’s.

“You ever feel like this land’s lost something?”

A world of vesperbanes fighting for money, not ideals? “Yeah.”

The pink mantis nods. “It has. It hurts, right? Seeing our nations falling, degenerating. Don’t you feel out of place, in this new world? This so‍-called ‘dream’ realized?”

Marka’s antennae fall back behind her. She peers at this mantis. “What do you mean?”

“You do see it, right? You were just out there. I mean our streets being overrun with roaches and the wingless. This city’s fallen once, and you think we’d have learned about letting in vermin from that.” The pink mantis gives a glance to the roaches in the tavern (who sit on smaller, specially designed rests). “We haven’t had a royal‍-blooded mantis on the throne for decades, and I think that says a lot.”

Marka frowns. “Why care? The throne of Wentalel is just symbolic. The Pantheca is a democracy.”

“A democracy? Where you can only vote for the Sn‍- I mean Syndic party‍-approved candidates?”

It makes Marka tilt her head. “The syndic examinations are test of knowledge and aptitude, not party loyalty. Do you want a leader with no qualifications?”

“That’s what they say. Still, do you want those fools on the street picking your superiors?”

Or the fool in front of me? Marka wonders. She looks over to the bartender. Still in that argument, but is it winding down? Spare her from this, please.

“Eh, we’re getting off the point. Back to what matters.” The pink mantis leans in. “I’ll put it this way. The plains are full of weeds, and it’s about time for the gardener to come back.” She says this triumphantly and louder, like she sensed she’s losing Marka’s attention.

“The gardener?” the warden says, picking as few words as necessary. Would she get bored and leave? Deliver the speech she wanted, and be satisfied?

“Who else? The eternal empress herself, Oosifea.”

Marka decides to laugh. She’s done listening to this. “Do you really believe that? How many times have you impure, pteryist idiots not worth the label welkinist tried predicting that? Has it ever, ever happened? Your goddess is dust, and her empire’s never coming back.”

The impure, pteryist idiot smiles at that. Maybe she is grinding her mandibles or clenching her raptorials, but Marka didn’t expect her to keep her cool at all.

“You might think that, if all you’ve read is what they’d let you read. Can’t expect the Pantheca to allow anything that might wake mantids from the ‘dream’, can you? We could show you the truth. You deserve it.”

Oh. “You’re trying to recruit me. Which is it? The Kult of Kaos? Regardless, the answer is no.”

Now’s the other mantid’s turn to fake laugh. “The Kult of Kaos? That’s a joke. Do you really think anyone would call themselves a cult? No.We’re the real deal.”

“I said no. Now stop wasting my time.”

“Don’t you want your sisters beside you when it happens?”

“Nothing is going to happen.”

She just looks at Marka for a moment. “Fine. Refuse, then. Maybe, when you feel her wrath as black sin crawling out of your eyes and our queen’s blood is bursting from you betumored flesh, you’ll have a moment to regret believing the Snurrish lie.”

That gives marka pause. Could they mean… no, how? A coincidence?

Marka curls up her antennae. “Are you a vesperbane?”

“No.Not‍ ‍—‍ I’m not.”

“Then take your own advice, and don’t question your protector,” Marka says. “Or, I can show you what I did to the lady who gave me these scars.” Her raptorial falls to her sword’s grille, but stops, deciding against it.

The other mantis stands from her perch. Palps work in frustration. The agitation in her palps has her almost unintelligible.

“Do you think I’m afraid of you? You queensdamned, roachfucked, pedipalp‍-licking –”

Marka punches her.

She runs out after that.

Then‍ ‍—‍ finally!‍ ‍—‍ the bartender arrives. He asks what would Marka like off the menu.

A moment of indecision and worry, and Marka opts to only orders a glass of water. She’s heard stories of places of similar repute, where one item on the menu is secretly a code for a living mantis, and she didn’t want to accidentally order a serving male.

The bartender nods, giving her an odd look, and turns, about to walk off.

Then Marka starts, antennae bouncing out. She almost forgot what she’s really here for.

“Oh, and, um.” Marka breathes in. “I’d like to see D.”

V.

“You’re who I’m here to meet? You’re a percipient?”

Robes of a dark silken amalgam drape the form of the small mantis, constrasting against a white face. The mask calls to mind the curved beak of some avians; but it is a blank, ceramic expanse, marked by an obscure symbol where some mantids have the welkin‍-mark. Tinted glass hides their compound eyes, and horn‍-like antennae guards rise between them.

If you met them, you would walk away. Something about them sets you off, and it’s not the severe dress.

They say, “Not quite yet. Call me an acolyte if you must. I’m only here to act as an intermediary for your sake; we believe you will find me more approachable, and communications between us will require less interpretive burden. I did, after all, write the letter.” After this, they turn and gesture for the vesperbane to follow. “Now, to answer what you did not ask: no, I am not Ciphersoul. But I will take you to her now.”

The percipient does not glide forward, but the robes go down far enough the rise and fall of their tarsi is an inferred thing. They walk in silence, and the vesperbane considers it, and doesn’t break it. If this isn’t Ciphersoul, if this isn’t (yet?) a percipient, there isn’t reason to suspect they could, or would answer the important questions.

The percipient leads deeper into the Church, where the number of armored vindicators spotted steepens. They regard the percipient with a reverent, fearful kind of respect, and that’s something that extends to the one following behind them, by all appearances a normal mantis. No vesperbane is used to a look like that from a vindicator.

A door in the cold basement of the Church opens at their approach, and no one stands behind it.

The percipient walks unperturbed, but their follower slows, in surprise, and then, with antennae waving, catching a scent, in apprehension. A deep breath, and then the necessary steps forward.

It’s not at the center of the room, but you might remember it as though it were. When stepping into the chamber, eyes immediately go to the etched marble slab pushed against the wall. Normally one where sick and troubled mantids went to lie and receive cleansing from a hierophant, it had been turned over to an entirely secular purpose.

A naked mantid body, dark of chitin, lays upon the stone bed, pinned with thin metal rods through the thorax and in each limb. The abdomen is torn open, in some places violetly jagged and melanized like the wound was old, while elsewhere split with fresh surgical precision befitting a recent vivisection. Folds of terga spread, revealing dissected viscera.

Atop all this, the head splits open, the brain removed to somewhere else.

It wasn’t hard to put a name to the body, given everything. Remula.

(The splitting doesn’t obscure the altered welkinmark. Like some islanders, she was by lineage welkin‍-born, but disowned, descendant of those declared deviationist.)

The light in the room is bright and white. Without warmth, the light feels as if it takes something from the image even as it provides illumination.

The vesperbane sees the body, and only looks away, in the process catching the eye of the acolyte. They nod, like this reaction is proof of something.

Curiosity wins out, and now the vesperbane looks around for the brain, and finds it floating in a tank, the thick smell of formalin and ethanol apparent even from the doorway. Needles and wires pierce the gray mushroom bodies. Someone is manipulating the wires, and the device they lead to‍ ‍—‍ and it isn’t a mantis.

The acolyte has walked to a table not occupied by the autopsy effort, picking up a device with several silken threads running out of it.

They say, “What did you intend with this? This gruesome sight is an awful first impression for our guest.”

Now following the threads, it leads to a simpler device resting by the other occupant of the room, who begins deftly plucking the threads – responding?

Then things become clear.

Ciphersoul is a therid.

A therid has eight legs tipped with claws, six singular black eyes, a bauplan without a differentiated head and thorax, two sharp chelicerae beside their mouth, and a single pair of pedipalps.

A therid is a spider, but it’s inaccurate and unhelpful to call them spiders, when the same label could be just as well applied to salticids, tarantulas, mygalo hole fiends, sparassi beasts, or the venom gliders. Therids are the sapient, social species of spider, and that alone should be enough to bear distinguishing.

Ciphersoul, the therid, makes indecipherable motions with her pedipalps (their ends covered glove‍-like by silk), while claws on her legs’ tarsi pluck the strings of her communication device.

She’s wearing less than the other percipient, ceramic mask more of a helment, legs entirely uncovered. Her abdomen, though, is wrapped entirely in silk. Not uncommon for a therid, as it hides the mark of nobility (or, more colloquially, the brand of betrayal).

“Yes, this isn’t who we were expecting. It’s still a mantis. Do you think they’d take well to seeing conspecific in this state?”

The therid gives a few plucks in response. Would that translate to a monosyllabic answer?

“Vesperbanes are not completley insensitive. This one did not react poorly, but I refuse to believe you consulted the Perspective for something so minor.”

The vesperbane looks between the two of them. “This is a bit…” Whose idea of a secret Percipient meeting is two people bickering in different languages?

“Ah.” The acolyte turns to again regard their guest. “Forgive me. If you ask her, I yet lack the… maturity that befits a percipient. And Ciphersoul herself… I shall not be disrespectful.” There’s a pause here, and another mantis might have emoted with their antennae or palps, but theirs are obscured. They only glance back at the percipient. “I do regret this was not handled with more gravitas, but she is of the opinion we have already failed.”

A cocked head. “Why is that?”

“Events have played out in a predictable, if suboptimal manner. It… it is often inadvisable to make mantids aware of just how little their choices matter.” The silken threads vibrate as Ciphersoul speaks. “If you like, we can tell you what you have involved yourself in.”

“I came here for answers.”

“Then I will speak truthfully and concisely.” Their words are almost in sync with the vibrations of the threads, and one wonders whose words these really are. “Before dawn broke today, you were a fly caught in a web, yet ignorant of the extent. Let us tell you how this story was planned to go.

“A certain blackbane, estranged to a distant city, receives news that a certain friar in the Church of Wentalel is gone. He’s been gone for years, but it’s not coincidence she hears it only now. She returns to Wentalel.

“But she ultimately does not make her appointment here. Had she, she would have found her godmother dead.” The acolyte nods to the dissected body. “Seeming at first a suicide, she would investigate and notice pieces that don’t fit. It was a murder disguised. She would investigate throughout the city. She’d meet a certain tallowbane sleuth, who’d been told of Remula’s sudden demise, who had suspicions, who wanted answers.

“They say in mazes grown by weevils, all paths wind back to the same end. The two of you would have been capable of solving the mystery, finding who was behind the killing. Perhaps it would have ended with another confrontation with Ress, handled differently. It must have ended with the same offer from the Golden Lady, if you succeeded.

“Do you follow all of that?”

A nod. “Someone was behind all of this. It was just a game. A test?”

“A dance. The balance shifts back and forth, there are falls and releases, but all is controlled.”

“I don’t dance.”

“Then you may call it a game. But the pieces were not set up to fall, as you might think. They were set up, and allowed to fall, for the sake of other pieces. The gang is in ruin. But they served their purpose.”

“So, we are outplayed? What‍ ‍—‍ what can we do? If this was a web, then who is the… spider?” This is said with a glance at the therid. Her chelicerae are wet.

“As one who aspires to honesty and truth, I have to tell you. By all indications, it is already too late. We cannot avert the worst that is coming. You cannot save her.”

“What?”

“You aren’t Marka, are you?”

A momentary pause, and then the tallowbane with Marka’s face opens its mandibles slightly, in an expression that was not a smile nor frown. “I suppose it was foolish to try and fool a percipient.”

“Marka has avoided every opportunity to return here. It was… unfortunately predictable.” The acolyte looks Wik up and down. “We understand that your augmentations make changing somewhat effortless. We doubt you prefer to wear the face of another. We will not be perturbed if you take a moment to alter yourself to… something more comfortable.”

Wik’s antennae extend at that. It glances at the therid. “By we, you mean the two of you?” It had the indirect feel of a request posed as an invitation for politeness. It would be rich, if the therid, who greeted it with a vivisected corpse, is bothered by its disguise.

“I… mean myself, in the sense you’re thinking. First person plural is more accurate to the reality of the Perspective. Our bodies are not something atomic, but a locus of certain thoughts and patterns.”

Wik shrugs. It has tendrils in more places than its antennae, which give it more precise control of its features.

Neither Wik nor the acolyte are very important topics tonight, so it redirects the conversation.

“Everything we did today was an unnecessary exercise, then? The end was predetermined?”

“No.You could have failed. You could, perhaps, have achieved your goals by some unimpressive, undramatic, unconventional means that would not have piqued the spider’s interest. Whether that would see them ignore or dispose of you‍ ‍—‍ such scenarios were too unlikely to analyze.” The strands vibrate. “Not all endings involved Felme’s oaths, or the gang in the position they are in, or the fates of the two vesperbanes. But your last choice of the day would always be similar choice, though the exact options in detail and number, could have differed. Our analysis didn’t suggest that the two of you would split up for example‍ ‍—‍ that was a surprise.”

“You mentioned it again. The spider. Is that”‍ ‍—‍ a glance at Ciphersoul‍ ‍—‍ “literal?”

“No.I am speaking for Ciphersoul, and the word she uses denotes ‘a sister’ or ‘a member of sisterkind’, but I believe spider, in our language, captures her meaning. And this metaphor allows a very natural extension: a very long time ago, some bats were in the habit of keeping therids on retainer, as they were… an excellent check on insect populations. Similarly, our metaphorical spider exists where they do, ostensibly pursuing their own ends, because it is useful for a still greater being.”

Big plays, and they only seemed to get bigger the closer you look. Wik would have simply left then, but it has a charge. So it asks, “What is your angle in all of this? What does the percipiency want? What does it do?”

“The Percipiency goes where the brain leads. We work in fields where an excess of information and cognition are helpful. We are privy to the secrets of all nine provinces, and as a consequence, cannot be beholden to any of them.” The strands start vibrating with a bit of force, Ciphersoul agitated, interrupting. “But you are concerned with the immediate. While cities have fallen before, and will fall again, the Percipiency is not the Pantheca, and we cannot divert resources to save every one of them. The fall of the Wentalel‍ ‍—‍ it is slated to once more fall‍ ‍—‍ is special. If events play out as they wont, it could intrude on the Perspective. This cannot be allowed.”

“The Perspective?” it asks, trying to match the stridulation of that word, what sounds like proper noun, one it has used before.

“The source of our power. Our equivalent to the vesperbane arts. It is an umbral network, if that brings you closer to understanding.”

“And the infection could… destroy this network?”

“No.Alter it, control it. This cannot be allowed. Our charge, as the Percipiency, as the deepest minds, is saving the heartlands. Thus the sanctity of the Perspective is the fate of every sentient.”

“This is not a light matter, then.” Would Marka blame it for leaving right then and there?

“Do not misunderstand. We are not deciding the fate of the world here, or more important beings could stand in our place and in yours. The worst case scenario is the loss of a city and a setback on the road to salvation, until vaster forces turn their attention here, and employ vaster solutions.” The acolyte glances at the therid. “Our goal is to be quicker, more delicate, more local than the biggest brains and the overscourges, and save them the trouble. Understand?”

“I think telling me I would be saving everyone would be more compelling.”

“A difference between us, vesperbane, is that we care about honesty and truth. Secrecy is not deception.”

Wik nods. “I get the impression, from your version of events, the Golden Lady is working for this ‘spider’. Do you have an opinion of the night‍-prophet? Can you attest to her legitimacy?” Is she misguided? Is she lying?

“The night‍-prophets’ goals are certainly noble ones, at least. And their means are cryptographically interesting, and distinct from those of haruspices. Have you heard of our predecessor’s cooperation with the Lucid Collective?” Ciphersoul waits a moment, before playing the strings more, and the acolyte says, “No, that’s perhaps not declassified yet.” The therid is watching Wik.

“I have to wonder if that’s a genuine slip, or you’re deliberately taunting me with secrets.”

“Yes.”

Wik peers at the acolyte. “Is that what she said?” It had seen the strands vibrate for far longer than seemed captured in that monosyllable.

The acolyte glances to the strings, following the tallowbane’s gaze. “Her response was not fully verbal, and the parts that were are… untranslatable.”

“Nonverbal in the manner of…?”

“I could say laughing, or growling, and be as close to the truth. Therids’ experience of amusement and frustration are intertwined.” Ciphersoul lifts a leg, and descend to give a single pluck of one string, with enough force Wik clearly hears the vibration itself. The acolyte flinches. “She doesn’t appreciate this digression.”

Ciphersoul resumes the usual, gentler plucking, and the acolyte continues, “Regardless, I must caution you nuance. Everything in the heartlands‍ ‍—‍ night‍-prophets not excepted‍ ‍—‍ is quite complicated, hiding excessive depth.”

“To hear the disciples tell it,” Wik says. “the Dream is an unadulterated good, and the night‍-prophets agents of that good.”

“The Dream is a symbol, invested with variant meaning by the many who gaze upon it. None in its service would disagree that the Dream is goodness, nor that they pursue it, but many will come to blows over the specifics. These variances can be extreme. We suspect the Joyous Mothers count a night‍-prophet among their numbers. Is that your idea of the Dream?”

The Joyous Mothers. S‍-class renegade threats. One of the many reasons vesperbanes are as much horrors as heroes. Media generally couldn’t (and wouldn’t) depict their consequences, and not for ideological reasons.

Divining a secret of such powerful defects is an ominous feat. “Just how powerful are percipients?” it asks, looking at the therid. Though it is the vesperbane, which of the two is really at the mercy of the other?”

“Hm. A precarious question. Power exists in many forms. Analogies may be our vice, but indulge us another. You’ve played card games, yes? Gold Dragon’s Gambit, say?”

A nod. “I’ve‍ ‍—‍ some skill at it.”

“There are constructs insightful in analyzing such games. Two we call… a moment, please. We so rarely write in common; it does not suit our purposes.” The therid meets eye with the acolyte, and they stare at each other for a moment, silent. Moments later, they turn back to it and jumps into an explanation, “At any turn, given your cards, the cards you’ve seen, and the unknown cards in play, you can run the numbers. Tally the permutations, and calculate the best move. It would take a very long time, but your play would be superior to the oldest, wisest dragons and angels, the brightest of any mantid, therid, or euvespid. We call this the play of the perfect mind. Every percipient strives for this.”

“You mentioned two? What could be the alternative of perfection?”

“Not alternative. Superior, if you must, but they are not to be compared; that is not the point.” Another pause to wait for Ciphersoul’s input. “Suppose you were like a Brismati, able to see all cards in play, and those not dealt. Suppose, like the Shadow‍-crowns of myth, the minds of every player was yours to see, though not manipulate. Every planned strategy would be exposed. This would simplify the calculations greatly, and enhance your play: no unknowns, no calculated risks, just moves perfected beyond perfection. Pluperfect. But a better name is the play of the nemesis mind.”

“That would be…”

“Unstoppable, yes. In the space of all possibilities… there are many possibilities. A nemesis mind, even with the body of a nymph, could fight a vesperbane scourge, and likely win. One could change the minds of most with but a few words.”

“Like Karkel’s Scathing Remark.”

“A suitable example, though we doubt Karkel had the Perspective.”

The vesperbane has taken a step back, staring at the therid, wondering what possibilities there are with those sharp chelicerae, those clawed tarsi.

“Relax. We are not prone to random violence. It would not secure us an understanding with you.”

Wik breathes in. Ask the questions Marka would want answered. “So, could you just walk up to the spider of this web, and destroy them? Make some unstoppable nemesis play?”

“We can’t, and that’s why we haven’t. Equivalently, we haven’t and that’s why we can’t. Simply killing the spider would not solve our problem, and would create more. So if we could, we would not. And because we would not, which is to say, because it is not optimal or viable as a solution, the Perspective would not allow us to see the path.”

“So, since you have the Perspective, or nemesis brain, or whatever the correct term would be, does that mean your side will win? That you’ll always find the winning path in the end?”

“Are you a religious mantis? Do you have faith in some infallible order, like the exalted ancestors, the Dream, or a palingenetic queen?”

“I avoid mysticism. So no, not at all.”

“Neither do we,” the acolyte says. “Nemesis play is something a percipient cannot achieve, only blindly approximate. Closely enough to scare most, but not enough to save the heartlands. Yet.” The acolyte taps their head. “Were we like you vesperbanes, we might mythologize, say the sages of old could view every step on a path to any outcome. But no, it was always an asymptote. So, put simply, the perfect mind is just more reliable. We avoid instantiating the nemesis mind if we can, because…” A long, semantic pause. “You need not know. Know that the Perspective nor the Pantheca required us to answer that question, so appreciate that you now know more about us than millions.”

Wik nods, filing away the knowledge for its own reflection. It returns to the grounding consideration: what would Marka want to know?

The tallowbane casts a glance around the room to gauge, and notices the therid has turned away, returned to fiddling with the device which outfits the brain.

Is she bored? “Do you object to how this meeting has gone?” After the initial shock, it became a sequence of questions and answers fit for a meeting between tutor and pupil. To find that demeaning would be understandable.

The therid, apparently, could strum the strings while doing others things with other legs. “This was always intended to be us revealing the state of affairs, though Marka should have come in your place. No, we must be forthcoming with information, how else could we expect you to trust or work with us?”

“I have plenty of questions to test that, then,” it says. “I suppose, before anything further, I should get this out of the way. Marka wants answers to a certain personal matter. You alluded to having them?”

“Yes, but not for your tympana. The matter of her mother shall wait for when‍ ‍—‍ if‍ ‍—‍ we meet.”

“Fine. You understand the irony of that being your response to the very next question I asked?”

The disorganized strumming sounds again, signifying that complex therid emotion, which to Wik may as well be simply amusement. Was this some form of joke, then?

“Marka will appreciate keeping the matter private, and you too will appreciate that we keep to matters of material importance.”

“The gang, then. You said they were a part of this… web? That they served some purpose?”

“Unearthing a specific artifact. The fragment of a shaman‍-touched heart. You have it? No, you have access to it.”

“Marka trusted it to me.”

“And you didn’t trust us near it?”

“Knowing what I do now‍ ‍—‍ it did not matter, does it?” Wik waves a raptorial. “What is it for?”

“Mending an ancient prophecy that could save Wentalel.”

“But… if the gang was a tool of the spider, who will destroy Wentalel… why? Unless they want to have the fragment so it can’t be mended?” Wik walks the tree of logic a few branches back. “Unless… you never said the spider was the enemy.” Wik turns to stare at Ciphersoul.

Her pedipalps cross.

I am no lord, idiot mantis.

Wik remembers the words, but no one had spoken. It felt like it had spoken the words, but it did not. The timbre of the voice, the exact words used, shift and slide as Wik focuses on it. It’s fading like a dream.

Wik turns all around, looking for the source of the voice, despite seeing no new arrival in its all‍-encompassing periphery.

I remain visible in front of you, mantis.

Wik wishes to see an explanation for the illusion, but the thoughts have no auditory or spatial qualities.

“Impossible. Every brain is unique. No precise universal mental techniques exist.”

Not as unique as you may like. This conversation has lasted long enough I have glimpsed the relevant parts of your connectome.

“If this ability exists, why have I never seen it wielded?” Why hadn’t it heard of it, and prepared?

Vesperbanes are barred from the Perspective, and the vespers bar the Perspective.

Still, why hadn’t it ever heard of even percipients having it? No, it had heard of it, and dismissed it. Too much of extant percipient lore is speculation, diluted with myth and mysticism. ‘Reading minds’ is side by side with ‘wielding every vesperbane technique’ and ‘controlling destiny’ and ‘puppeteering every syndic’ and ‘being vesperbats in disguise’ and ‘being literally omniscient’. You could only trust official stewartry dossiers, but those their achieved accuracy by being nearly absent of information.

“Ciphersoul wishes for you to calm your mind so that she may speak.”

Interesting limitation, it thinks. It’s considering the implications deliberately, in conscious contradiction of the request. “Can she continue speaking through you? I prefer… she not continue in this manner. It’s intrusive.”

“Very well.” There’s an insistent strum. “She cautions you not to extrapolate from this that she can read your mind. Thoughts are faster, more chaotic than vocalizations. Particularly yours. She watched your brain as you spoke, not as you thought.”

“That’s a… specific denial. I had just been worrying about that.”

“Many in your place would.”

Wik curls antennae into spirals. “You were explaining the gang?”

“Ciphersoul wants her displeasure at being forced to speak through intermediates known.”

“Acknowledged. We were saying?”

Another strum comes, and the acolyte ignores it. “You were questioning why the spider, who is not our Ciphersoul, would seek what would avert the very end they precipitate. The first error in your thinking is assuming destruction is the wake of those with bad intentions. It often is not. The second, similar error is taking plans for outcomes. Do not forget the spider is not the only actor to analyze. Truth is, the most controlling flinch from the idea that they are themselves controlled. Recall the spider‍-keeper is a different, vaster danger than the spider.”

“I am weary of these metaphors. Who is the spider? Is Marka captured by them right now?”

“The metaphors are an indulgence, but also a mercy. Were you to know the identity of the spider, or the spider‍-keeper, your preferred option of remaining uninvolved becomes… morally complicated, and you are a mantis of morals. So, we suppose this is where we give you your out. Stay, learn the specifics, and work with us. Or remain safe and ignorant, and I will escort you out.”

Choose well, idiot mantis.

(The tallowbane takes out the warden’s timepiece, clicks it open. But it is stuck, and according to the legs, no time had passed since before this meeting begun. An artifact of the percipients’ art, or had proximity to the welkinflame damaged it? Regardless, the device is useless to it, and it closes the timepiece, glimpsing its resolute reflection.)

VI.

“Oh my, you look like you’ve crawled through the inferno to get here.”

Marka gives an awkward ‘heh’ of a laugh. “It feels just like I did,” she says. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“Don’t I?” the courtesan replies. “I think you’d be surprised.”

He stands lifting a curtain for Marka to pass through, leading her into a private room. He’s dressed differently now‍ ‍—‍ robes draping his form, swaddled in lengths of cloth that encircle his limbs. Marka wouldn’t say she’s disappointed, but… She didn’t expect this.

Above the thorax, the courtesan still has that ornate eyecap over one compound eye, seamlessly integrated into his attire. He wears heavier paint on his chitin now, and the colors are dark purples and reds, regal shades. It gives him the look of a dark beauty‍ ‍—‍ suffice it to say, something unconventional, most of the other males she’d seen in this building having looked sunny and approachable.

“Surprise me, then.” She walks by him, and he slips a foreleg around hers, walking alongside her.

“I think,” the courtesan says, a fluffy antenna extending toward her, his head tilting upwards knowingly, “you didn’t listen to my advice. No, even worse,” his tone turns to one of high‍-pitched horror, “you did the exact opposite! You went right at the danger I warned you about. You got hurt.” He leans over, giving her a close examination, frowning and running a ginger dactyl along bandaged spots on the warden’s head.

Marka’s hidden antennae and furtive, lowered palps give her away.

He tsks. “How do you stay in the wardens, if you’re so unheeding? So willing to get into this much trouble without even letting your superiors know?”

Marka hadn’t, but had she said that? Or is she just that easy to read? “Today was‍ ‍—‍ unusual. I don’t always act like this.”

“Oh, what’s so unusual about it? Explain yourself~”

“It looked like someone was getting robbed in the market. I wanted to help. Everything escalated from there. I just wanted to help.”

“How noble. You really want to be some kind of wandering hero, don’t you?” He tugs on her midleg, pulling her over to fall onto a cushioned rest. “I never learned your name, did I? Although… would you mind if called you my knight? I think you’d like that.”

Marka looks away, though the flush in her eyes is hard to hide. She fidgets and adjusts her positioning on the cushions.

When she speaks, she doesn’t contradict him, she couldn’t. She says, “Should I call you my liege, then?”

He giggles. “No, no formalities. Just call me… Nammy is fine.”

Marka wordlessly nods. She’s melting into the cushioned surface, her trachae sucking in air deeply, and spiracles closing so the breaths are released with a contented hum.

In relaxation, her antennae fall behind her, but not without soaking in the scent of this room. Candles line the room, and heavy fragrance drifts throughout it, a balmy, gamy, musky smell.

The candles aren’t most of the light, though. A chandelier hangs above, shining through tinted glass. It doesn’t look like fire or luciflies – a filament light?

Marka casts her eyes around. It’s a small room, and the size would invoke bad memories if it didn’t serve as a way to focus on how close she is to Nammy.

She finds herself reflected in a mirror over a dresser‍ ‍—‍ still disguised after all this time, just in case. Off to the side, she sees a small idol of ancestor Lurei, the faithful. Ironic.

He watches her for a moment, then leans in like he would tell a secret. “Would you like to see me dance? I’ve had a moment to prepare, and I suppose it’s what you came here to see…”

“I, um,” Marka starts. How eager could she sound before it became inappropriate? “I’m curious?”

“Curious?” He taps his labium with a dactyl.

Marka nods. He’s smiling. Is that look good‍-natured or mocking? Is he holding back laughter?

“Well then, allow me to sate you~” With a dactyl he touches her thorax.

Nammy pulls away from Marka with a twirl, a foreleg extending simultaneously so his touch lingers. The courtesan disappears behind a curtain. A moment later, the light above blinks away, and the room is all darkness, tiny candles smelt as much as seen.

A new light emerges, a wide beam that illuminates a figure returning. The light smoothly follows his movement. His robes slide off him as he enters with steps like leaps.

The lengths of cloth encircling his legs come undone one by one. With fluid swings, limbs fly out and each length of cloth trails, undulating with all the weightlessness of ribbons in wind.

Nammy is nimble and fast. Some motions Marka only catches between the soldier pill and her trained vesperbane reflexes. The show he gives is as much impressive as it is enticing.

And it is enticing. The light will shift this way and that to give focus to parts of his body. The colorful eyespots on his raptorials and wings. The curved, tanned lengths of his legs revealed once more, which could not look more perfect in form if they had been sculpted by a vesperbane.

The base of his abdomen shaking, and the middle, and…

It would be false to say Marka’s eyes flush, because in the dim of the room, they are already dark with pigment. But Marka looks away, wipes a wet palp on her robes.

“Aww. Please, my knight. How can I reward you for your trials if you avert your eyes?”

“I‍ ‍—‍ I just don’t want to be crass.”

“You asked to see~ And I want you to see. Isn’t it rude to refuse now?”

When Marka turns her head, she sees Nammy standing before her. (That light shining elsewhere had given him stealth.)

He lifts her to a stand. Lifts her; the strength surprises her.

“I suppose I’ll have to make this more intimate.”

He guides Marka’s next positioning, and then her next move, and another. Correcting her balance, getting her into the rhythm.

“I’ve never really danced before.”

“You wouldn’t be the first time I was someone’s first time. Here, try to catch me.”

They continue. In the dark of the room, Marka can only see the mantis she dances with, feel his touch.

It goes on, but only for a few moves more. He accidentally stresses a sore leg, and Marka cries out.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I should have considered.”

“No, it’s fine. I‍ ‍—‍ can take it. No harm.”

“I have some remedies for this. It will do you better than the ichortallow, for sure.”

And it was. He removes Marka’s bandages, and wipes the offending areas with a liquid feeling sharp and cool. The pain is banished. Nammy’s patting down the leg, rubbing and applying pressure. He makes it feel good instead of just not hurting. And then he’s moving up the leg, and Marka’s palps are still, afraid any word might have him realize he’s done, and stop.

He speaks first. “Was that nice? Aside from the accident, I mean. I’m a touch out of practice. Dancing isn’t much of my main work these days, though I felt like giving it an old try, while I was back in town, however briefly.”

“You don’t stay in Wentalel?”

“Oh, I do. In fact, current circumstances aside, I’m usually stuck here. But I used to travel far more broadly. I suppose it shows, a bit.” He runs a tarsus down his fluffy antennae, and fingers the tiny ribbons extending them, that emphasize his masculinity. Marka’s eyes drift to the rest of his body. Shedding his robes after the dance, the clothing – if that is the word‍ ‍—‍ he had underneath can be seen. Marka supposes, not being in public, the need for decency is less pressing.

It’s odd. The design of this revealing outfit seemed… uncharacteristic. Less fishnets than the rope‍-armor a warrior might wear.

“I’m flattered you find my fashion so eye‍-catching. Though you’re a bit remiss to forget we’re having a conversation.”

“Oh. Uh, sorry.” It galled Marka that she is the one flustered – it’s males who think less clearly when their… anatomy is engorged. Marka brings her palps together, then opts to mount a defense. “I did have a long day, though. And your offer was to relax.”

“Fair, very fair, my knight. My apologies.” While he says this he’s looking at her with a certain smirk, and leaning closer. Then, swiftly, he’s close enough to fill her frontward field of view. His maxillary palps reach out, and brush against hers for a moment, and then he pulls back. His taste was fresh, minty.

Marka’s silent, palps unmoving for a moment after that, her antennae extended out completely in surprise.

Nammy pats her on the head. It’s more comforting than condescending.

“What’s on your mind, Marka?”

It’s the prompt to bring her back into motion. “Well…” She’s wondering how you know her name, for one, when just earlier you said she never told. “I’m still thinking about your dance.”

“Oh?”

“I mean, not the dance. But how it started? I’m wondering about the light, how it tracked your movement. Was it a fixed pattern you practiced? Or…”

There are a lot of mysteries, complexities to this courtesan. It was curiosity that drove her here. There were reasons she could justify coming here despite the important matters at play. He is connected to today’s events, somehow.

“It’s better to leave a little mystery to my performance, no? I’ll let you wonder.” He tilts his head back, lifting into a superior look that exposes his maxillae. “But with that thinky look your face, I think you suspect something. I wonder‍ ‍—‍ have you guessed who I am, yet?”

“You’re certainly more than a courtesan.”

“Come on. I showed you my cerci, the least you could do is show me your guesses.”

“You know more than you should. Maybe you’ve got connections to important people, due to… your work,” she says. “But I’m not quite sure.”

He frowns at this. Had she said something wrong?

He says, “Really? I’d thought the eyecap gave it away. That’s what everyone told me.” Nammy lifts his abdomen, and Marka flushes deeply, but it’s nothing untoward.

Tied around one of the last abdominal segments is a gilded warden’s antennae‍-band bearing the insignia of the Windborne Stronghold.

“My proper name is Dlenam. If you don’t recognize that name, I’m Arch‍-fiend of Wentalel, coordinator of the wardens. Are you surprised?” Arch‍-fiend Dlenam. The One‍-eyed Bastard. Of course.

“I– I’m sorry. I didn’t‍ ‍—‍ should I not have –” Would she get a citation for this?

“Calm down, honey. If I expected you to treat me like the battle‍-queen (well, king) that I am, I wouldn’t pretend to be a lowly dancer.” He pats her head again. It’s more condescending than comforting. “Though I always found it curious how this role leads mantids to discount my status and importance. And it’s never the reaction I’d get were I some actor in the theater, or a dancer in some troupe. As if being intimate made it any less a performance, and skillful one at that.” Marka glances away. “Oh, but I’m not singling you out, my knight. You are delightfully and uniquely respectful, and I appreciate that.”

“Thanks.”

“Mhmm. You know, we’ve gotten a bit side‍-tracked‍ ‍—‍ when you walked in here looking like that, I knew I had to ask just what happened in the not‍-half‍-a‍-day since I saw you hale and hearty in a suit of armor. And I still wonder just what happened‍ ‍—‍ but oh no, it’ll feel like a debriefing now, won’t it?” He brushes a raptorial. “Tell me if you like, and do try to ignore that little fact I went out of my way to tell you.”

Marka reflects back over what happens, discerning what danger she might be in if she said everything.

“C’mon. You said someone was getting robbed, and then it escalated from there?”

“Well,” Marka starts, “it looked like that, but in hindsight I think that’s not quite it…” And, with Nammy‍ ‍—‍ Dlenam‍ ‍—‍ at rapt attention, she goes over her day. She introduces Wik as “someone who said they were Stewartry, but now I’m unsure.”

“I recognize them. They’ve been delinquent in their duties. Too slippery to catch, particularly when there are more pressing problems plaguing this city. But go on.”

She doesn’t get farther before she needs to consider the matter of Felme. Her strategy is to mention him‍ ‍—‍ by name‍ ‍—‍ but downplay his involvement, and omit the matter of the oaths. (Which, if Alunyene is to believed, there may be no evidence of.)

Nammy has a particularly sour look on his face when the spellbrand comes up, but lets Marka continue. Delving into the sewers. Fighting Angwi – he’s particularly captivated by recounting that fight.

“Mm, you’re such a mighty vesperbane. You can do better as far as intimfeinds go, though.”

Then recruiting the gang (“Interesting plan,” is all he said) and then picking the safe (“I’ve never had such luck with the termite’s contraptions.”), and the letter from the Watching Lord (Ciphersoul’s letter goes unmentioned), and then descending the catacombs.

“I’d heard‍ ‍—‍ reports, of how bad it was down there. It’s why I’ve locked down the sewers until we can deal with whatever is going on. I’m glad you made it out of there alright. I think many vesperbanes‍ ‍—‍ even your fellow wardens‍ ‍—‍ wouldn’t have been able to survive. Have you thought about ascending to fiend? The trials would only be a touch harder.”

“It’s crossed my mind,” Marka says, noncomittal.

“Now, where were you? The story must be winding down, right? I refuse to believe much more could have happened in one day.”

The climatic battle with Angwi‍ ‍—‍ she may have emphasized how close she was to winning legitimately before Wik’s intervention‍ ‍—‍ and very much not climatic encounter with Ress. She pauses, and omits the heart fragment, and Alunyene.

“Is that all?” he asks, like he expected more to come.

“Pretty much. We just climbed back up, retrieved our riches from the safe, and parted ways.”

“I see,” he says, sill sounding odd.

Marka turns to look closer, and sees he’s taken out a knife. “I suppose I can’t fault you for keeping secrets, or omitting facts. But I’d like us to be more open with each‍ ‍—‍ and for that, I suppose, I’ll need to be open first. Can you keep a secret?

“Um.” Marka’s raptorial falls to rest on the grille of her sword.

“Would you really pull a sword out on a poor tiercel with only a knife?” he asks, voice going high. “But no, the knife is only for show. To say I’m serious. If I meant to threaten you, I wouldn’t need it. I don’t think I’ll actually stab you. Unless you’d like me to?” Even as he gives more playful flourishes, he’s straightening up, flattening his palps. The carelessness characteristic of Nammy becomes harder to see, but still there. He’s still wearing fishnets, and his voice is still disarmingly high. “I mean it, though. What I’m about to tell you has stay between us. So again, can you keep a secret?”

“I already know you’re the arch‍-fiend?”

Dlenam sighs. “That’s not a secret, silly~” he says. There was something, simultaneously disarming and disconcerting about the arch‍-fiend of Wentalel lilting at her. “But I’ll take that as a yes. Hopefully you’re not so inured to surprises tonight that me mentioning a little someone named, oh, the Watching Lord won’t leave you unphased?”

It’d be a lie to say that puts her more on edge than the knife did. But there’s more to worry about here, more implications to dance around in her stimulated mind.

“Ah, that’s a nice reaction. I trust you, my knight, but if you’d use your words?” Nammy runs a tarsus down the middle of Marka’s abdomen, where hemolymph is pumping through her dorsal vein.

“I’ll– I’ll try to keep a secret, best I’m able.”

“Ah. Well, are you ready?” Nammy smiles at her, looking expectant. Marka nods. “You see, I’m also the Watching Lord.” He lets that hang, then follows it up. “I wasn’t, but I am now, you see? The real Watching Lord is rotting in an exclusion zone. But he has connections, and a name with weight, so wearing the title suits my purposes.”

Marka presses her palps to pars stridens, then lifts them, realizing her next question is stupid. But would Nammy judge her too harshly? She ventures, “What are your purposes?”

“I was‍ ‍—‍ given the title of arch‍-fiend, and I excel at whatever role I need to play. I command the Wardens here, and our purpose is to protect the peace of the heartlands. Wentalel has declined in step with the decline of river‍-born trade. And while trade is beyond my station as a vesperbane, when that decline spawns mavericks and defects, those problem are within my role to solve!”

Marka has to be careful with her next words‍ ‍—‍ she remembers her fuckup at Felme’s‍ ‍—‍ but her connection to this matter was cut, and Nammy is well‍-intentioned and accomodating. “Wentalel’s… less reputable elements are already reeling.”

Nammy laughs. It’s not his earlier giggles, but a laugh with a mocking edge, like a warmaster making his final, truimphant moves. “If I thought it’d help to taunt them, I’d tell them this is only the point of the sword. But they’ll learn.”

“Speaking of them,” Marka’s pausing again, for caution’s sake. But what harm could it do? “It is a bit.. odd, that for all he was able to deduce and anticipate, Felme didn’t mention anything about a Watching Lord.”

“Meh, Felme. He’s not much more than a gold‍-digging secretary with far too high opinion of his intelligence. If he knew anything of what I was up to, I may as well tell the whole town myself, at that point.” He waves an open raptorial. “But enough about my plans. Let’s discuss our plans~”

Marka’s antennae jolt, and she looks away.

“Oh, not quite like that. Indulge me another revelation? Though you may have guessed this one. I know about your undisclosed meeting with the Golden Lady. You see, the Watching Lord is also the Golden Lady’s master! It’s all connected. But do note, this is not transitive. They are, but I am not; she is unaware of all my identities,” he says, leaning in toward Marka. “For that, it seems I trust you more, my knight~”

Marka glances down, palps working in thought, feeling out responses. Altogether, it couldn’t be too much of surprise. It all clicked together, with an inevitability that made it feel… obvious.

Dlenam pats her again. “Mm, now that you know everything‍ ‍—‍ and since you’re already here‍ ‍—‍ would you mind if we just started the meeting early?”

Marka quirks a palp, thinking. But if he really wanted, he could turn this into a meeting with the Watching Lord right now. “Do we still need a meeting?”

“It’s only proper to have the Lady there, and have our partnership be official.”

“Ah yeah, Alunyene.”

Nammy smiles at her. “Worry not. My heart’s only for you, my knight.”

He slips quickly back behind the curtain, and returns with a gown on, for something approaching decency. It covered him from prothorax to abdomen, though it didn’t extend over any legs.

“After you?” he says.

Marka pauses, thinking. This would complicate her plans with Wik. But she’s trying to read the subtext. Is this him asking to start the meeting early, or telling her they will? He is her superior‍ ‍—‍ how much room did she have to question?

The warden leaves the room how she came in, and Nammy follows behind her.

They were expected.

A familiar face is over at one of the tables, and she has friends now. At a word, all four ladies get up, the pteryist kult recruit pointing at Marka.

They march forward, the pink mantis flanking a lady with a mean sneer and an eight pointed star stained on her head. The mantis behind the three wears dark robes.

“So, this is it. The simpering excuse for a vesperbane, who spat in the face of our kind invitation. And what’s this? Your whore?” She raises her raptorials and opens them, spreading her wings in full threat display. “I think we have an apology coming.”

“Sorry you’re all hateful idiots?”

Nammy’s tapping Marka. “What’s all this?”

“Kult of Kaos recruiter, I think , bothered me while I was trying to get to you. Didn’t like my refusal, I guess.” Marka bites a palp. She lied by omission about the real inciter‍ ‍—‍ but maybe she shouldn’t admit to assault to the leader of the Wentalel wardens.

“We don’t appreciate being talked about like we aren’t right here,” she says.

“Mind you get out of our way?” Nammy’s saying, with more iron than she’d heard. “We have business you’re interrupting.”

When that’s said, the apparent leader looks from him back to Marka. “Says a lot about you, nymphy little vesperbane, that the aedeagus you rented has to stand up for you.”

“I ask again,” he says, still smiling despite being ignored, “that you have some sense. It will be best for you if you find better things to do. There are plenty in this very tavern, if you haven’t noticed.”

“No, I’m not interested in your filth. And I think I’m looking at the mantis without sense. We’ll just have to beat it into you!” She underscores this with a high cry from her spiracles.

The speaker has a weapon: a bifurcating tool used in sport. Another has wooden plates strapped to the inside of her raptorials, turning them into bludgeoning instruments. The pink mantis she met earlier is simply armed with the natural weapons.

“They said, to the vesperbane,” Marka replies. “Do you know how many civillians with more guts than you I’ve knocked out today? Killed?”

“You think we didn’t bring our own? Shini, show ’em!”

In the back, the robed mantis gives a grunt. They all hear the wet, sliding sound of wretched raptorials everted.

They are long, but there’s only two of them.

“Is it violence you want, then?”

The lead mantis only sneers.

Marka doesn’t even have time to unsheath her sword.

Having watched him dance, Dlenam’s speed and flexibility are familiar in an unfamiliar context.

He leaps forward, one moment at Marka’s side, the next in the air coming at the wooden plate mantis, legs first. She’s forced back. But four legs on the ground, abdomen curled up, she holds on to balance.

So in his other midleg, he grasps a cloth ribbon. Swinging out with it, the length wraps around his foe’s leg. Enough that when he pulls back, the leg folds, even as the cloth unwraps. With one leg down, and the weight of the male coming down on top of her, she folds too.

Dlenam hops off her and kicks her head, and she goes limp in unconsciousness.

This happens quickly enough the ladies are still reacting, exclaiming. Dlenam flies like an arrow at the next nearest opponent. It’s not his full speed, and doesn’t need to be. Still, she has time to pull back and start a swing of her sports weapon.

Dlenam catches the blow with a knife, the tiny blade eating into the wood as he doesn’t budge. Where did he keep the knife?

She yanks back her weapon, and Dlenam lowers his.

And he leans in, as if for palp fingering, but bites her palp instead, and when he pulls back, they readily mirror it, to avoid pain to the sensitive appendage. He grabs them, and throws them to the ground.

Then he stabs a thick leg joint, and leaves the blade there.

Slowly, he turns and walks to the last civilian.

The recruiter is slowly stepping back.

“Yes, run. It’s good for your health.” Dlenam turns back around.

That’s when the recruiter lunges. She’s still in his sight, but in that moment his options are limited.

So he lifts a hindleg, and stops her in the air.

Marka thinks she hears mesothoracic chitin crack.

This time, he budges, his leg being pushed back by her weight.

It’s so that he can kick out now, sending her flying. She lands hard against a table, food squishing and staining her clothes.

After that, Dlenam doesn’t need to turn to keep walking toward the final opponent. He stops by the second, kneeling to retrieve his knife. A gout of hemolymph gushes up, and the mantis moans in pain.

The arch‍-fiend stands and flicks the green liquid from the blade.

The enemy vesperbane had watched all this with ever‍-tightening antennae, probably suspecting he’s a vesperbane.

But while he’d kneeled, she circled around, moving behind the knife‍-wielding courtesan.

For all the good that did the last one to try, Marka thought.

Dlenam crouches again with the bane to his back, and jumps, backflipping through the air, spinning at the same time to correct his orientation.

The showy gesture opens him up for a hit to catch him landing. Even an arch‍-fiend can only do so much to react while somersaulting midair.

The bone‍-spiked red limb is swinging at his abdomen. A good place to aim, Marka thinks. Vital, and an easier target than the head.

Dlenam can only lean with the blow.

Still, it connects. The only hit to land this entire fight.

It manages to cut up his abdominal garments.

“Oh honey,” Dlenam’s stridulation is high, “I don’t give free shows, I’m sorry.”

While saying that, while that raptorial is pulling away, Dlenam goes for the other. He swings down the knife powerfully, hacking and in a few moments‍ ‍—‍ his foe begins to scream‍ ‍—‍ the raptorial has been messily severed.

Was that inspired by Marka’s retellings?

Blood is pouring from the stump. Dlenam aims for the other, and the bane quickly flinches back. But it’s a feint. He jumps again, doing another showy roll through the air. This time, he lands on her back.

It’s a… suggestive pose. But the two banes are deadly serious. The raptorial reaches back for him, and he stabs the base of the thing, running through the limb, then dragging the blade, with every tearing sound of cutting tough meat, with every wet sound of red blood freed to run and drip, with every sound of agony, he cuts a long hole through the middle. Then, with a quick and final upward swipe, he punctuates it all, messily splitting the limb in two.

Dlenam now brings the knife to their throat.

“Your countenance, dear?” he asks sweetly.

The sound is at first fighting for breaths between screams. Then, “I – I‍ ‍—‍ I‍ ‍—‍ don’t –”

“Warden?” he asks, pressing the knife closer. “Stewart?” he asks. Her breath hitches like the knife had bit in. “Ma‍-ver‍-ick?” he asks, palps dancing across every syllable, the word an accusation. Greenish liquid beads on the blade now.

“I‍ ‍—‍ I’m not –”

“Renegade, then.” He says it with finality.

The arch‍-fiend drives the blade all the way in, and releases her to fall. Green tinged with red pours down their lifeless prothorax.

A few moments with an arch‍-fiend, with no preparation and no techniques, and this is the result. The decisive, fatal violence has Marka bit her palp, recall darkly the things she’s done tonight. But a renegade? In Wentalel? With a hateful cult? It‍ ‍—‍ it was justice.

He stands, spitting on the corpse. “As ever, with defects.”

Then he looks behind him, noticing the torn‍-open abdomen covering. Eyes lightly flushing as if embarrassed, a forelegs goes back to pull the split cloth together. He dashes over to Marka, a slight smile present.

“We, ah, we should get going before this becomes more of a scene.”

Marka gives the four scattered bodies another look.

“Good… good work?”

“It was nothing.” His two antennae bend in different directions. “I’m sure you could have done it yourself~ Didn’t need me.”

“It’s still appreciated.”

But Marka’s effectively cut off by another male walking up to the courtesan. He asks quiet questions, and Dlenam scrapes out some directions, points at the bodies and the blood. Then at Marka, after which he breaks away to rejoin her.

“I’ve made a bit of a mess. But it will be handled.”

At his urging, Marka begins walking. He’s leading now, which honestly made more sense.

“Why the civilians, I wonder. If they knew I was envespered, I mean.”

“Citation baiting. That’s my guess. If you went hard enough against them, they might raise concerns of assault with endowned ability. I’d never let it past my desk, of course. You can trust me, my knight~”

The lilting feels different now, coming from someone she could fight in full armor, sword out, black of soul, while he was half naked with a knife, and she couldn’t expect to win.

What did the arch‍-fiend of Wentalel want with her?

VII.

It was a welkintower. Was ‍- it dates to around when the rebuilding of Wentalel had been underway. Zoning had been different, and the city smaller. Its placement made sense, back then‍ ‍—‍ rather than just entertainment district, when the welkintower was erected this district had been most of Wentalel.

This had changed after the arrival of the Church. With it came vindicators that made feasible expensive, but modern wards against nerve storms.

It had been neglected, repurposed, changing owners with the seasons. Marka knows not who’s it is now, or what they planned for it. Maybe Dlenam himself owns it (by proxy, of course). Or he just knows the real owners won’t care.

Marka walks toward the abandoned tower, alone. Dlenam had left several blocks back, knowing Marka could find her way to the big landmark. He needed to change clothes, and they really shouldn’t arrive together, for appearance’s sake.

The door isn’t locked. Inside, level upon level of railed platforms jut from the wall, and tarsholds line the space between them, the whole thing like a tree turned inside out.

Above, the warm glow of firelight illuminates a platform almost at the top. Marka climbs up towards it.

Her first glimpse awes her into brief silence.

The beauty of gold light by flame‍ ‍—‍ it suits Alunyene.

She sits facing the flame, legs folded beneath her. Eyes pale in deep meditation or sleep.

Around her, orbs dance as though she were a sun. Some are the black of enervate (Marka can sense them undergoing fission and calcination), and some are blood, blooming patterns she’s seen in petri dish cultures.

Marka watches the brown mantis’s eyes pigment as the warden approaches with quiet steps.

“Ah, again we meet.”

A nod. Marka searches for a politeness to ground the conversation. The staff lies on the ground, parallel to her. To the side, a pile of empty shells for probably‍-devoured snailflies. Windows lie beyond her, overlooking all of nighttime Wentalel. She settles on that.

“Pretty sight, isn’t it?”

“I sought a vantage, expecting to find and guide you here.”

“That’s how this would have gone? You’d have spotted me? This city – this district, even‍ ‍—‍ is big.”

“I can sense you and yours,” she says. By now, she must have emerged fully from what cogitation trance she’d entered, and turns to meet eye with Marka. “It would ward against stunts you may have attempted. If you had allied with the arch‍-usurer, I would not be caught unawares.”

Arch‍-usurer? Ress? No, probably Felme. “I wouldn’t,” Marka says.

“Many would, after learning who I am, and what I am.” She waves for the warden to come sit. “Speaking of him and his ilk, where is your partner? They have not joined you.”

“It will come. We uh, are taking caution. If you have ill intentions, well, I’ll suffer them and Wik can save me or avoid it.” A plan complicated by Dlenam rushing the meeting.

Wik had theorized the most likely rooftop for them to meet lay above some pawn shop with ‘eye’ in the name. A dead end, ultimately, and Marka detoured to leave it a note to find the real meeting location.

“It is a tricky type, fond of complex, secretive plans. Do not trust it.”

“It’s saved my life.”

“Reflect on this question: do you believe it saved your life for the inherent value of life, or because it stands to profit if you live?”

“I mean, profit and value are intertwined? If you care about mantids, then you profit from saving them, because you’ve saved a valuable thing?”

Her head inclines. “Morality cannot be measured in an accounting book. That is a mistake one who works so closely with the arch‍-usurer would make. Do not yourself make it.”

“Hm.” Marka quirks a palp. “Speaking of morality, I have some questions for you.”

Alunyene arches one antenna. Lifting a tarsus to catch an orb floating around her, letting the black nerve flow back into her, she says, “My answers are contingent on good faith. If your questions are traps of petty logic to bind or attack me and my truth, I have only silence to offer you.”

“Okay. Should I… I don’t know how much patience you have, but I think it’d help to know what exactly you are, before questioning what you’ve done.”

“I don’t mind answering simple questions.”

“Well, what is the Dream?”

The Golden Lady gives the warden another look, but it’s not one of exasperation. Her antennae curl upwards, and the tone of her stridulation implies curled palps.

“The Dream… is the last covenant,” she says. “The first covenant joined vesper and bat, a gift they misused. The second extended this to mantis, for they saw potential in us. The third… its content, what circumstances surround it, are lost, obscured in arete‍-record. These three covenants are upheld by all vespers. The fourth and final covenant is the Dream, and will be an equally dramatic restructuring of relations.

“What is it, you ask? When the Pantheca abolished slavery by inter‍-provincial decree, when it makes efforts so that even the poorest might have options for food, shelter, education‍ ‍—‍ all that is in service of the Dream. But vespers are curiously neglected by these efforts.

“The Dream is not law. It is neither codified nor binding.”‍ ‍—‍ the word’s spat as a much as said‍ ‍—‍ “Is it law that you help those in need? No, it is deeper. Society shapes you such that you prefer it. The Dream… is that we reshape society for the dignity of the vespers that have given us everything. This Pantheca has forgotten that.

“Is that enough of an answer?”

“Much more than I could get from anyone else.”

“Few understand the Dream, and vagueness allows that lack understanding to not embarrass them.”

“I assume night‍-prophets are involved in this reshaping?” A simple nod from Alunyene. “How do you become one? Could you…”

“Could I awaken you as a night‍-prophet? Grant you any of our fabulous powers? With a motivation like that, surely not.” The Golden Lady glances out over the city. “Tell me. How do you tell if one is a syndic coordinator?”

“You can look it up in the administrative index. Or see if they’re wearing the robes,” Marka says. Wondering if the random question is setup.

“What if I wrote my name in the index? Stole and donned the robes myself?”

“You still wouldn’t be one. No one will have voted for you.”

“Or, put another way, it’s not something you do, or something you have, but something others recognize within you.” She smiles, and it feels profound. “A night‍-prophet is one recognized as such, and that is all.”

Marka nods. Her palps move for her next questions, then pause. She looks away, then back again. She’s quiet. “How does killing haruspices help reshape society?”

The smile is gone. “This is the sort of question I meant,” she says with rough stridulation. “It is thorned.”

“Sorry? But I do wonder.”

“To give you more charity than I was extended, I will answer as though that were an honest question.” (She lands another orb on tarsus now, a red one that crawls down her leg like a slug.) “I did not ‘kill’. I lifted no leg against them. I merely gave their vespers choice.”

“Just a choice? Nothing more?”

The Golden Lady looks away, gazing out at the city, and makes the gesture not look furtive. “The offer of joining me was clearly preferable.”

Marka looks away now, eyes cast down. But her gaze is drawn back, morbidly. “What would my vespers choose…”

“You are not an unkind host, or I would not have allowed your selection,” she replies, but adds, “Though you could stand to feed them more.”

Marka sighs out relief, palpls curling up. “I’m glad.”

“Do not be proud. You are merely smouldering in a world ablaze.”

Marka takes the admonishment with tightening antennae. She nods. And then she starts, “Oh and um, one more. I’ll try to be less thorny with this one. About the clan–”

Alunyene stands up.

“Did I…”

“You did not. The Lord gave the signal. It is time for you to meet them.”

Marka looks the brown mantis up and down. “Why do you serve the Lord? I don’t think the Dream is big on hierarchy.”

“I call them my master, for it pleases them to think I serve them. I seek the wisdom of the shamans of eld, and for now, so do they.” A significant pause comes, where the brown mantis peers at Marka, and decides to continue. “And the Lord… is powerful. Their vespers are powerful. The host and hosted alike are bound in conditions I do not fully know. I would like to free them.”

When Alunyene moves, it is with unhurried grace. Marka, by contrast jittery with lingering stimulants, overtakes her, intuiting the Lord would meet them at the very top of the welkintower. She climbs (jumps, really) the last few tarsholds.

Marka lingers just before the ceiling hatch. Turning to the figure in her periphery, she finds Alunyene lingering too, waiting on the last mini‍-platform before the hatch.

She waves for the warden to go on. “It is best you arrive alone.”

Marka frowns. If this isn’t a trap, there had better be a reason for this.

She breathes in deep, and takes one more step.

The lantern room is lit by a circle of small fires at its fringes, and rather than lighting, they emphasize the dark. The central pit, where the welkinflame would have burned, is of course, emptied of heavenstone, unused.

A device sits there. Complex, but not the harsh cubes and exposed mechanisms of the vindicator tech reveling in complexity which Marka was familiar with. This would be what, stewartry design? She may have seen this exact device at an academy.

It has spoked wheels and a cylinder pointing out. Following the cylinder, it points at an installed curtain, eye‍-catching white. Curtains circle the room, but they are dark to this one’s light.

Marka continues looking around, for the Lord she expects.

A regal perch rests by the white curtain. A dark form is above it. The Lord? Of course, the conclusion is natural. And the perch beside it (lower, less important) has another form, a suggestion of gold. The Golden Lady, her mind jumps to‍ ‍—‍ but how? She’d just been behind her. The thought goes nowhere, so Marka discards it. She’d seen the gold beside the Lord, and who else would sit beside him? Marka leans to look closer and her antennae tighten up in confusion, and she looks away and they relax.

The Lord and Lady are here‍ ‍—‍ waiting, clearly. Why aren’t they saying anything?

Marka fidgets. Do they expect her to say something? Yes, of course. But what?

“I uh, came here like you asked. What… what’s next?”

No response comes. Are they judging her? Yes. Is she doing something wrong? Yes, that would explain it. But what?

With a title like Lord, with how Alunyene talked about him, perhaps he’s arrogating more respect in this guise. Should she kneel? Yes. That is appropriate.

Marka’s legs bend, and her forelegs go to the ground, her head bowing. She still feels like something’s wrong.

Is she in danger? Yes. Was this some kind of trap? Yes.

She needs to get out of here, go back to where things made sense. She should run.

No.

That doesn’t make sense. Marka doesn’t run. She’s not one to run.

No, that’s wrong. It feels wrong. It confuses her.

But it’s true. No.

Marka’s thinking now, introspecting. Remembering.

She knows what this feels like. She knows what this is.

No, that’s wrong.

The brains of heartlands mantids are unique among arthropods. All developed brains incorporate minutely enervated amalgams as trasmitter chemicals. But mantids had far more of them than any other. It means enervate can have pronounced effects. Vesperbanes can weaponize this as killing intent (natural aversion meaning concentrated amounts of enervate feels evil, painful) or‍ ‍—‍ in controlled, chaotic bursts – it can disrupt firing patterns, cause confusion. Just like what she is feeling. (But more control than than this, paradoxically, is less precise: brains are too unique for specific, low entropy effects, let alone anything with semantic content.)

This line of thought becomes more boring, confusing as she runs down it. Why was she thinking it? She is in danger. Yes. If she’s in danger –

But she fights the confusion, refuses the other tracks her mind is trying to run down.

No, wrong.

The more she fights it, the more the artificial effects feel differentiated from her feelings. Why should they feel differentiated –

No, and it’s Marka thinking this. Thinking, reflecting, is a trap. She is being affected by a mental technique. Her mind is unreliable.

So she unsheathes her sword, and settles into a stance.

Marka would trust her body.

She looks around, unflinching, searching for the enemy bane behind this.

“Well done, warden.”

The confusion, the fog, begins to lift. Marka’s mind sparks freely across paths, and she looks around.

(The perches? More like fancy coat racks. What she’d taken for the Lord and Lady watching her is in fact just limp bundles of cloth. You could only mistake them in the edge of your vision.)

That voice had come from behind her. She turns, finding the mantis forming a tarsign. They release, and the confusing touch completely leaves her mind. She thinks they wanted her to see that.

The mantis stands in thick, all‍-concealing robes of deep red. Symbolic eyes pattern along its surface, and within each resides a deep umbral black spot. Each eye seemed a portal to an abyss. When they move, their steps sound out, the clank of weighty shoes.

The Waching Lord? Dlenam?

(He’s taller now, Marka notes. She might not have seen anything of Nammy in him, if she’d not known. He was using some technique that altered his pars stridens, his voice sounding deep and slightly alien.)

“What‍ ‍—‍ why? I‍ ‍—‍ that.” Marka stops, composing her thoughts. Lingering confusion? Or did she not know what to feel, what to say? “I came here expecting‍ ‍—‍ alliance. If not that, then neutrality. That – that was enemy action.”

“I’m of the opinion intuition cannot be taught. This day‍ ‍—‍ all of it, until this very moment‍ ‍—‍ has been a test. How you respond to uncertain situations is something I evaluate, like a sculptor deciding if an unchiseled stone is adequate. I find you… adequate.”

“You tested me by‍ ‍—‍ by…”

“It’s called neuroprojection. You are a blackbane‍ ‍—‍ though you wield a sword. You may be ignorant of it.”

“I was trained to resist it.”

“I expect no less from a warden.” Was that tone pride, or is she reading that in? “But, just so that there’s no lingering paranoia: your experiences were all genuine, and your thoughts your own. Neuroprojection is not illusion, or mind control. The deception‍ ‍—‍ a deception you, in truth, live every moment of every day‍ ‍—‍ lay in the interprations and assumptions you invested in those experiences. You saw an organic form and hint of green‍-yellow‍ ‍—‍ is that the gold‍-adorned mantis featuring so prominently in your thoughts, or just a pile of cloth? Your mind makes a guess. Very normal. And normally, it seeks evidence to confirm‍ ‍—‍ but should the conclusion feel right, and the critical thoughts distressing, confusing, boring? You and‍ ‍—‍ that is you; not I, the neuroprojector‍ ‍—‍ may decide to take the path least resisting.”

“H‍-how is it not at least mind reading? You clearly knew which thoughts to make confusing, which thoughts to guide along.”

“I did not, though I’m flattered,” he says. “If you look at an object, are you not thinking of it? If you contract muscles in your legs, are you not thinking of moving? Easy guesses. But they are guesses. Anyone who claims to know your thoughts from merely looking at your brain either wants your money, or your faith. Seek divination by fire instead; at least then you get a pretty show alongside the nonsense.”

“So you just… what, nudged me?”

“Essentially? Yes, many nudges. You saw nothing that wasn’t there, thought no notions unnatural to you. At best, you were unusually hasty and arbitrary. Unusually thoughtless.”

“I feel… controlled, not hasty. Manipulated.”

“Attempted to be controlled. You fought it well. Else you would have run off, and I would not have sent after you.”

The Watching Lord has walked to the device at the center. “If it assuages you any, I consider myself a mere dabbler in neuroprojection. Perhaps this scene would have played out differently if I had the skill in it that I hold in my true talents.”

“How can I trust you after that?”

“An untrustworthy mantis would not have disclosed their ability, and instead used it to convince you to his side, unbeknownst.” He looks away. “You came here already having reason to trust me.”

Marka follows his gaze and sees why. Alunyene‍ ‍—‍ the real Alunyene (she glances at the Lord’s tarsi to check)‍ ‍—‍ has arrived at last.

“Is that everyone? I was told another vesperbane was with you.”

“It’s coming. If you were to attack or capture me, staggering our arrivals is some insurance. I’m starting to appreciate that.”

“Very well.” The Lord begins fiddling with the device. Simultaneously, he speaks. “The servant you disposed of before coming here claimed to have found something down there. Do you have it?”

The heart fragment. “No.Again, this meeting is to feel things out, see if you mean well.” Marka recalls the Lords‍ ‍—‍ Nammy’s‍ ‍—‍ palps touching hers, and wonders how that could not mean well. She continues the planned approach, though. Wik had good plans. “We won’t risk our bargaining chip. What’s the artifact for?”

“An element of my plan. You need not know, so long as you’re still ‘feeling things out.’ ”

“Okay. But will you answer any questions? You mentioned a servant. The gangster Ress? Are you responsible for what happened to her?”

“She was suffering from the affliction of old Wentalel, as others in her gang had. Alunyene told me you’ve forced the door open. Very… unfortunate, in that regard.”

“What is the affliction? Why is it still around, after being sealed for centuries?”

“I have sent samples off to be analyzed. Beyond that? You have seen more of it than I have. Field work is beneath me, and I merely read my servants’ reports. Judging from that… old Wentalel was controlled by the Second Dominion in the end, I believe? Every Dominion loved the sanguine arts, and plaguecraft is the oldest. The pieces are there,” he concludes it all with a dismissive waved raptorial.

Now, with all the mixed feelings of the neuroprojection test behind her, and she can appreciate what Nammy’s doing here. The talk of servants and what’s beneath him? That accent? This is a perfomance, he’s playing a character. Well enough Marka had been taken in.

She doesn’t try to poke it. Seriously, she asks, “Wentalel will be safe?”

“I promise it. No Lord wishes to rule a plague‍-stricken waste.”

“Are you a mantis of promises, then?”

He lifts a raptorial toward Alunyene. “I promised her amnesty from the hunters. I promised her I’d secure her the wisdom of her elders.” He leans toward Marka. “But I believe you will be more interested in what I could promise you, no?

“For you, Marka, I could secure you a promotion, even sponsor you embarking on the first of the fiend trials.” The Lord’s‍ ‍—‍ Dlenam’s – face is behind a mask, expression invisible. “And for the tallowbane, I could pull the strings to secure its return to the stewartry, or grant it a clean break.”

His antennae are still visible though, expressing his consideration. “But I can tell you two aren’t mantises driven by base money or power, are you? Not wholly. You think of yourself a little knight errant.” (Marka heard Nammy behind those words.) “So perhaps spoiling a few details of what I’m doing shall encourage your cooperation. Let me tell you how this story goes.”

The Watching Lord finally finishes his ministrations with the device. It comes to life with the hum of gears and flowing enervate Marka could feel. It comes to light too, illumination spilling from the cylinder when he removes the cap. It flies out to strike the light curtain, and an image is visible

A map of the Plains southern, bisected by the Wenta river. Wental is visible near the southernmost curves of the waterway. It’s highlighted, and another highlight is a town so close to the Ambrosia Woods Marka wonders if it’s still Panthecan.

“Less than a quarter moon ago, there was a termite mound emergence. It would have been a routine investigation, classification and exclusion – except this mound emerged within the Ambrosia Woods. Naturally, this has agitated the weevils, and, with this being so far north in the woods, there is a village built idiotically close. The Syndics, you may guess, are loath to lose another settlement. You might think this all unremarkable and irrelevant to us, so let me tell you where things become interesting. I shall introduce the real players on the board.”

With the press of a button, the map disappears, and a new image is projected by the light. It’s a mantis now, an artist’s impression, wearing the black robes characteristic of hemotechnics. Wingless, but with bluish chitin.

“A genius hemotechnic, corrupted by the weevils and her own ambitions – defected and gone renegade.”

A mantis with a midleg gone below the coxa, and deep yellow chitin. She’s dressed like a commoner.

“A wayward student, grown to teneral yet twisted in her loyalties.”

A reddish‍-yellow nymph, with big eyes and thin legs, a book in their legs.

“That student’s daughter, who even now is being drawn into the machinations of this renegade. Imagos on my path may live or die, but I have some code of honor. I’ve never condoned the Stewartry’s habit of binding nymphs into its mess, and in this regard our renegade is no better.”

Another button pressed, and there is no image.

“Now, on the other side?” he starts, and then an image appears: Nammy – Dlenam, but dressed in tough baneleather garb, with wardens iconography. It’s still cut teasingly high, but it’s not revealing. “We have the cooperation of arch‍-fiend Dlenam, briefly absconding his administrative role to handle this matter.”

Three nymphs appear on screen, one of green chitin, another of red, and the last with Brismati eyes.

“The young and stupid students of Dlenam, who are already making a mess of things. A mess Dlenam has reached out to us to rectify, act as a professional influence. He believes we are his winning pieces, and that is what I shall send you into this town to be.”

(A petty part of her sighs at the possibility. A tiny village at the edge of the Pantheca? It sounded like exactly the backwards sort of town Marka hated to visit. But they are mantids all the same‍ ‍—‍ and they are endangered by the termite remnants.)

The click of the button. The last image is the Watching Lord positioned near the center, rendered as a menacing, indistinct form. To one side, the Golden Lady. Farther off to the other‍ ‍—‍ Marka in her armor, and Wik in its douter of a shawl.

“We would have the arch‍-fiend’s full cooperation, and this would even have the appearance of being a wardens’ mission‍ ‍—‍ it can go on your record as such. But make no mistake: we do not intend to advance the Stewartry’s ends, except insofar as they advance ours. It’s no coincidence the termite mound emerged where it did. We know what the Wardens do not. We can save this town caught too close, and we can revive Wentalel.” A button is pressed, and the light dies. “But I shall speak no more about that, at least until I hear a yes from you.”

The Watching Lord gazes at Marka. “Would you stare into the void of my eyes and pledge to follow me, Knight Marka?”

Marka pauses there, and she could have thought for a long time. She could have reached for her timepiece in reflection, as was her habit, as was the way these things always ended‍ ‍—‍ but it isn’t with her now.

This was one more choice after a long sequence of them, but it feels different now.

Wik had been right, hadn’t it? It always seemed to be right.

You still have the choice to not fight and die on a court too big for you.

But you’d never make that choice, would you?

It’s a coincidence of the city’s layout, that when she turns to follow the Watching Lord, it’s turning her back on the Church of Blue Welkin.

Marka takes one more step.

Coda.

The house lies along a road of trampled dirt, rocky and uneven enough carts avoid it. It was squat and white, with a low roof and small windows, and wood blackened where someone had tried to burn it down.

Stalked lichens grow tall in the dirt before it, parting to make a path toward the door. The lichens are crushed and irregularly chopped, scars from feeble attempts at yard‍-keeping.

The door is cheap wood, looking like a determined shove would see it off its hinges, the handle rusted and wiggling when grasped and pulled. The knocker is a pentagram of polished bronze, gleaming in the light of the night.

Inside the house, one might expect to find a hoarder; anyone who enters immediately faces stacks. Stacks of books and clothes and boxes; shelves burgeoning with trickets and idols and kitchenware not in use, never in use; drawers that cannot be pulled open for their fullness; pantries where the back row of foods have gone stale or bad, because more food is habitually bought than is eaten daily now. Paths through the house are very narrow for this abundance. But the rooms, none of the rooms, are in mess. Everything is arranged with symmetries; straighted, ordered, sorted, purely in its place.

Some kinds of snailbugs, whether by disease or outliving fertility, have shells that grow and grow, and it gets to the point where the creature cannot move for the size and rigidity of its shell. Internally this house has grown and grown with the detritus of years passing. It will grow no further.

Navigate this house deep enough, and you will find a closed door and this door too has a bronze adornment: an engraved plate. Two names are written upon it, in letters older than the Pure Script.

Open the door, and there is room for two mantids to sleep. Only one is here now.

When first seen, the motion of the abdomen is quivering done very slowly. At length of observation, it can finally be called a rise and fall.

Even now, all the joints of the legs and the antennae and the abdomen but for spiracle holes are covered. Underneath those coverings, there are swelling boils tinted vaguely red. Typically, this mantis would be observed with eyes cast down, and from that angle the dark of pseudopupils might be conflated with black nerve lining the top of its eyes.

The breathing is slow but the heartbeat is erratic. This mantis is not well.

Beside it, there are four items (five, counting the mantis). A compass. A stone disk which traditionally tracked lunar time. An idol of the exalted ancestor E’yama, resplendent. A dim candle burning down.

There is no dish below the candle. Soon, it will cause a fire.

It wasn’t a good way to go.

According to the matriarch’s daughters, there are five things which are one thing which is everything. The world, space. The flow, time. The exalted, spirit. The revelation, light. The mantis, alone.

These are five aspects of a pure whole, only seen distinct from blind eyes. Mantis is impure in being apart, severed from the whole.

And there is no greater severance than death.

But in this ritual, there is hope to find a connection to that unified, fivefold purity.

The Descendents of Snurratre do not have a Dream. They do not believe in any wrathful tyrant unchained by death who will return to save them. They are not granted a fiery life‍-after‍-life below the earth.

The Descendents of Snurratre do not think the All has a special regard, intent, or care for them. They couldn’t, really.

But they are a part of the All. They do believe in something greater than them. And that’s not nothing.

A mantis stands at the threshhold of the doorway, watching the male who is sickly and near death.

They lift a leg to step into the room.

He is dead now. Perhaps he has found some peace, some unity, some purity. Perhaps he will.

They return to the doorway, and watch a little longer. They nod once.

Eyes drift to the candle burning down. They could put it out, and stop the fire that’s coming. They do not.

They turn, and above their eyes, between their antennae, the light of the fire glints off the metal of an antennae‍-band.

The door closes behind them. They cannot read the letters of the door.

Into the night, they go. The mantis moves intently, and soon the squat white house in the outskirts of Wentalel is far behind them.

After this, no one remembers the Snurratre male.

End of Arc

Part 11

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?

Part 12

You do not go unnoticed. If you’re close enough to see the crowd in the schoolyard, it means, even fascinated by the vesperbanes, everyone can see you approaching without turning their heads. Still, some do. Remna glances over and smiles, a boy with long antennae regards you with a pinched, confused expression, and a fifth instar girl with white and green chitin glances over for one moment. Her antennae curl up and palps curve downward like fangs. It’s one moment, then she looks away – throughout, you don’t meet her eyes.

The decision‍ ‍—‍ go or stay‍ ‍—‍ isn’t helped by the eyes and attention entangling you and drawing you in. But really, were you ever not going to find out whatever these vesperbanes were telling everyone else? Sure, they were mean and don’t seem very good at their job, but they do the job, which alone elevates their words over the usual mentors.

And if you didn’t find out now, you don’t trust anyone else to remember it well enough to relay it accurately.

“–bats and mantids, and in theory shoggoths but that’s more of a scary story. I… we don’t know why none of the other kinds can, it might be biology or the vespers just don’t want to.” The vesperbane with green chitin is the one speaking, her voice losing focus and trailing off as you arrive, a distraction.

Wesk had saved you a seat‍ ‍—‍ or at least, had enough free space around her. The almost‍-sixth instar nymph is about half again as big as anyone else, and with her beside you, you’re obscured from about half the other nymphs.

The two of you aren’t quite on smiling terms, but she does give you a nod. The arrangement the two of you went was something like, whenever you did athletic team exercises, the two of you try to end up on the same team‍ ‍—‍ Wesk being enough of an asset to make up for how little you could offer in any activity‍ ‍—‍ in return, you have far more patience answering her questions than anyone else.

Inserting yourself into the rapt crowd doesn’t decrease the number of glances your way. They still come, and pair themselves with light, quiet stridulations like gossip. You imagine it couldn’t be a secret that your mom had rounded up half the town in the search for you last night.

You ignore them. You look to the front. Green had leaned over to consult with one of the mentors‍ ‍—‍ to make sure you belong?

You mirror her, and lean to consult with Wesk, asking what’s going on.

“The banes came here from the city to fight termites! And the mentors got them to spend the morning here, and tell us what it’s like to be a vesperbane and answer all our questions.”

“What was the last question?” You piece together context from the bit you heard. “Why other species can’t become vesperbanes?”

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

The vesperbanes were speaking again. Red, this time. “Hey, settle it. If you’re going to talk instead of listen, we can get back to our mission instead.”

There’s quiet, and where there isn’t quiet, there’s other nymphs jabbing each other to quit it.

“Are there any other questions?” Green asks.

You look, and Shimare isn’t standing with them‍ ‍—‍ she’s in the shade beneath an awning, reading and occasionally shuffling the pages she is reading.

The nymphs with questions (surprisingly not all of them‍ ‍—‍ had that many questions already been answered?) show it by making a display of the eyespots on the inside of their raptorials.

You consider trying to ask a pointed question about renegades, or maybe that’s a bad idea. You do want to get their help, after all.

“You, with the red chitin.”

“I um… well, my aunt tries to make me stop coming here whenever I go see her. But I don’t know… why do some mantids hate vesperbanes? Aren’t they heroes?”

Green glances at Red, antennae flexing. It’s Red who speaks first. “You know, there’s a story our teacher told us when we asked something like that. Should we tell them?” She smiles. “I think we should.”

Green frowns, hesitant, but it seems to be all the prompting she needs. She starts, “The short way to put it, it’s a story about mantids a long time ago. A long time‍ ‍—‍ before the bats. A lady owned a farm that fed a village, but then there’s a drought, and then a plague that cripples her farms’ roaches, and then a horde of reaver ants sweep through and raid their grain silos and livestock… it’s a real bad year. And it starts to look like she’s not going to be able feed the village.”

Red asks the obvious question. “So what does she do?”

“Searching for a solution, she dares to venture out into the woods, which are…”‍ ‍—‍ Green pauses, eyes drifting towards the horizon. “Actually, this far south, you probably know what the woods are like. This long ago, before the ambrosia isolation pact, the woods were even more unkempt‍ ‍—‍ trees melting into each other, blight galls growing like weeds. So this lady ventures into the woods, and shadows dance at the edge of her vision, weevils keeping just out of sight, their breaths and beatings wings like a chorus of laughs. She’s lost in those woods, hopelessly hounded and herded by those shadows, till one weevil has the mercy to appear before her.”

One nymph interrupts here. “What do weevils look like?”

“Night had fallen at this point, so she doesn’t get a good look at it,” is Green’s way of dodging the question. “Weevils can only speak by making you eat the fruit of a fungus that makes you babbling mad, making you dream while awake, giving all light a smell and every sound a color. By comparison to that, it makes the buzzing of weevil wings makes sense. So this one weevil makes the lady eat the mushrooms, and it speaks to her. The lady babbles forth her problems to the weevil, and it proposes that it can solve their problems.

“ ‘What are you willing to give?’ the weevil asks. And the lady replies ‘Anything. My husband, my kids, the village‍ ‍—‍ they have to eat. I’ll do anything so that they can eat.’ The weevil laughs, and it tells her the secret to solving her problem, and disappears. With this knowledge, the lady runs back to town, her eyes dilated black from the mushrooms, and the other weevils laugh and leave her alone enough to finally escape the forest. She reaches her house before she reaches the village, and in her excitement, exclaims the solution to her husband. He then turns into a tree.”

Green pauses there, eyes roaming as if savoring the gasps and confused murmurs. “A little sapling, but it grows fast, the way they say weevil magic does to plants. She’s as surprised and taken aback by this as you are, and decides this is another waking dream of weevil’s mushrooms. So she goes to sleep. And in the morning, she rouses to find the tree her husband became is still there, now far bigger than their house. It’s grown flowers and fruit now. The lady herself can do nothing but stare, but when one of her children picks a fruit, they find it tough and greasy and delicious. And there’s enough fruit on all the boughs to feed the entire town.”

Red’s palps draw into a big grin as he looks over the bewildered nymphs. “That’s it. That’s the story our teacher told us.”

“How does that answer the question at all!”

“If we explained that, it wouldn’t be authentic to the experience of our teacher telling it. He has this way of telling you things and watching you react like it’s a test, and you fail if you don’t act like it somehow makes sense.”

“But,” Green starts, “because we’re better than our teacher, in this regard, we’ll try to explain. By now, you’ve surely learned what it means to be a hero, right? A hero is one who sacrifices. The good for the better, the one for the many, a hero pays the price, whatever struggle and strain needed to keep her protectorate safe. The story illustrates this with the husband, I think. I believe the husband is the same as a vesperbane‍ ‍—‍ he was transformed into something else so the village could survive. There are people who think vesperbanes are less mantid, because of their union with the vespers. But despite this, because vesperbanes fight monsters, heal the sick, and build our cities, the Pantheca endures.”

“Look at this way,” Red cuts in. “Your parents might not like it when their little nymphs go off to Wentalel to get transformed into powerful vesperbanes. But I say it’s what makes you a hero. And besides, if you live here, enjoying the benefits of there being vesperbanes, without doing your part to help there be more vesperbanes, isn’t that the definition of being a defect?”

“But to return to the question we’re supposed to be answering,” Green says, “we think it’s that simple. Vesperbanes make sacrifices mantids are uncomfortable with. Especially among the religious, becoming a vesperbane is viewed as a corrupting transformation. They say a soul united with the vespers can never be reborn in the welkin, and call that deprival of eternal life murder, and conclude that vesperbanes kill by simply existing.”

“It’s all very complicated, but it’s all nonsense. Especially if you’ve ever met a vindicator. Assholes, all of them.”

Green makes a sort of coughing sound in their trachea.

“Oh yeah, nymphs,” she says, an antenna falling. “It’s a word you’ll learn when you’re older.”

“Are there other questions?”

You keep glancing to Shimare, and decide you’ll ask her for help after this is over.

Red is answering a question (“Why don’t vesperbanes rule the world?”) with an analogy to mantis‍-fungus‍-aphid (which sounds a lot like a weird foreign version of mantis‍-fungus‍-ant), when an interruption comes as the beating of chitinous wings. Above, a dark form darts down to land on the foreleg of the Green mantis. It’s a bee, black thoracic fuzz pressed down to a more aerodynamic form. It puffs out after landing, making the bug appear rounder. The bee bounces and points at paper tied to a leg.

A messenger bee. Green gently unties the paper and unfolds it, meanwhile rubbing the bee’s head with a dactyl. “Good girl.”

The bee has little bands strapped to its little legs, and symbols are woven into it, but the seem incomplete or too pale to be discernible. (You know why: the scrolls said bees had eyes that could see colors that are purpler than purple, and so bees could write in invisible ink only they could see. They couldn’t talk, though, and had worse hearing, so they aren’t better than mantids.)

Green tilts the page so that Red can look at it. Then, addressing the crowd. “We got a message from our teacher. We need to get going. Thanks for listening, everyone. Perhaps one day we’ll meet again, as vesperbanes.”

If the three vesperbanes are leaving, that poses a problem. You glance again to Shimare, and bite a palp in thought. Well, could you make things worse by trying?

You slip out from the rows and dart around the edges of the schoolyard. Even as a mentor’s gaze is landing on you with antennae extending straight, you’re calling out the name of the bane standing up.

“Shimare!”

It’s that moment of unexpected knowledge that gives the mentors and other nymphs pause. You see recognition on the faces of Red and Green, but they’re intent on leaving, in the middle of hopping the fence instead of walking out along the perimeter of the crowd.

Shimare looks around before lowering her eyes to see you. “Oh, it’s the nymph.”

“What were you reading, lady vesperbane?”

“Sorry, but I don’t –” she starts, but it’s not the question she was expecting, and cuts herself off. “Notes. My notes. And I’m not a lady yet.”

You glance over as if you could making anything out from the folded pages held in her tarsus. “What are they notes on?”

“Inhabitants of the southern reaches.” For a moment, she would leave it at that, but she anticipates more questions. “If you must know, I’m concerned about that–” she jabs a dactyl at a hill on the horizon, where you see nothing at all. “I’ve seen phase‍-aberrated light reflected or emitted, and I’m reviewing the mission brief and my research into the region to enumerate the possibilities.”

You nod. “My mom says caution is what keeps vesperbanes alive. What are the possibilities in your notes?”

She seems to ease her frown at the implied compliment, and doesn’t mind talking about her notes. “Other than the things that are possibilities anywhere? Renegades, crepuscules, blood plagues, world‍-scars, and common roadside bandits? This far south, there’s the weevils, or perhaps side‍-effect of the termite mound, or reavers, or something I don’t even have notes on. That last one gets more of the probability mass than you’re think. But really, I just don’t have enough data to say. Just the aberration.”

“What does phase‍-aberrated mean? Does it have to do with your… clan abilities?”

“Yes. Our eyes are sensitive to light with a low, nonzero phase index, where your eyes can only see light at ground phase.”

You take another look at where the vesperbane pointed. “But I thought your branch didn’t have long range eyesight?”

She sighs. “The difference is –” A sudden stop. “No, I shouldn’t be explaining clan secrets to civilians. What did you want, nymph?”

You glance behind you, where Red and Green are walking away‍ ‍—‍ they do look back for Shimare, but they aren’t waiting, and she isn’t in a hurry to go after them. Maybe it wasn’t an emergency, then?

“My friend is missing.” Shimare looks to her teammates. “She was with me last night, in the woods.” That brings her attention back to you. “We both made it back to town, but then she doesn’t show up here today and I wonder why. I want to find her and make sure she’s okay, and you…”

“You want my magic eyes to see where she is for you,” she concludes, flatly.

“Can you do that?”

Shimare curls up her antennae, palps tightening. But then her antennae bounce (slight, like she’s used to not making her reactions evident), and she says, “Alright, fine. Take me somewhere to look. After that, I’ve got to get back to my team.”

You know where Yikki lives, at least, so you make for the exit to the schoolyard. Perhaps it’s that she’s a vesperbane, and a mysteriously quiet, unknown quantity or that‍ ‍—‍ or maybe some recognize her clan affiliation. Either way, no one tries to stops or interrupt you leaving with the bane. One mentor does start toward the pair of you, but a gesture from Shimare stops them. It’s a shocking sight, seeing a nymph boss around an imago. You wonder if the vesperbane’s really have authority over the mentors, or they’re just as confused about the hierarchy as you are.

“Am I keeping you from something important?” you ask. You stare at the other mantis, as a way to keep from looking back at all the gazing nymphs behind you, some of them waving for your attention.

Where the other two vesperbanes had an outfit that looked like baneleather armor, Shimare’s garb looks more like robes. The sleeves are shorten to the point of almost not being there‍ ‍—‍ and well, it is warm out here.

“Oh, nothing pressing. Want to hear a secret?” You nod instantly. Shimare looks away. “After we agreed to do this, the others had the idea that we would get a bee to deliver a blank piece of paper at a set time, sparing us from spending the whole morning here.”

“That sounds, hm,” you start. Then you just curl up your antennae and say, “If I had people looking up to me, I think I wouldn’t walk away.”

“We came here for a mission, and weren’t expecting to need to give inspiring speeches to civilians.” She leans her head down, closer to you. “And there’s an angle to this you’re missing. This wasn’t our idea. It was our teacher’s. Remember the story? He loves his tests. Spend long enough under him, and it’ll feel like he’s grading you on everything, even when he doesn’t tell you so. Especially when.”

How would he grade skipping out on the test, then? Or maybe their teacher likes that sort of thing. Your mother tends to smile when you find an unexpected way around a puzzle.

The two of you walk along the dirt streets of Shatalek. Some of the imagos recognize you, and give a worried double take. Not because you should be in training‍ ‍—‍ nymphs only had to go if their parents made them‍ ‍—‍ but because of your company.

Shimare has white chitin with swirls of color, and compound eyes that are even stranger riot of color. Above all, the Plains Southern antennae‍-band glinted in sunlight. It sits flat against her head, in a way that looks like it ought to crush her ocelli.

You watch her for moments, deciding how to phrase the question. “Do you like your teammates?”

She pauses in stride‍ ‍—‍ for just a moment‍ ‍—‍ and directs a gaze to you with a quirked palp. Then, “Oh. You saw me sitting apart and think you deduced something? But I’m no defect. Like any honorable servant of the Pantheca’s wardens, my teammates are mine to protect and be protected by. They are the constant element I can trust on missions.”

You tap a dactyl against your labrum. “What about off mission? Are you friends?”

“Are we near your friend’s house?”

You bite a palp, pouting, but say, “Yeah. It’s right over there.”

It’s a squat house of little wood and mostly imported banestone. In the yard, there’s a banetouched locust‍-leaf bush, and you don’t like how the branches look like legs or the leaves like wings. You also don’t like that it sometimes grows eyes or antennae on its shoots instead of leaf‍-wings, at least until the family’s roaches trim them.

“Don’t look so queasy. It looks like fine ichor work,” Shimare says.

“Why would anyone want a tree like that?”

“The syndics grant tax credits for adopting alternative photovores. They likely thought it would pay off, and it likely did.”

You nod, feigning understanding. You’ve tried to look up scrolls that talked about “taxes”, but they were hard to read and not all had been translated into Pantheca common.

On the porch, there’s a perch that swings and you’re not supposed to swing on it, and the table hosts an in‍-progress board for one of the war‍-games Tlista plays with the guards. You weren’t allowed back for a week when you tried to play with the pieces.

You know the outside of this house well‍ ‍—‍ just the outside, because you’ve never been allowed inside.

Beside you, the Brismati bane is contorting her dactyls in complex patterns‍ ‍—‍ is that how banes talk to vespers?

Shimare moves her headband. Instead of ocelli‍ ‍—‍ the small simple eyes of insects‍ ‍—‍ she has two slits. As one, the soft flesh around the slits peels back, the cuticle wrinkling as it is pressed together. This reveals two pale orbs sunken into the bane’s head. Red lines snake across the orbs, engorged, raised against the surface, like branching worms. A kind of mucus covers the thing, and starts dripping slowly out like clear honey. There’s green disks in the center of the orbs, where the spheres bulge slightly. Curved lines on the disks widen as the light touches them.

“Wait, are those the Brismati eyes? I thought…” You glance at the multicolored compound eyes.

“Common misconception. Like any ancient enough technique, the Red Eyes are derived from vesperbat biology, and mammalian eyes are highly divergent from the compound eyes of arthropods. Our ocelli are a more viable starting point.” She smirks. “And it catches some of our more ignorant enemies by surprise.”

“Vesperbats have eyes?”

“They have the genes for them, which is what matters,” she says, deflectingly. “Anyway, what does your friend look like?”

“She has bright pink chitin, light green eyes…”

“Any thecamates?”

“Yes. But Oona has darker chitin, and Eron’s a boy.”

“Got it.” More complex tarsi contortions. Shimare opens her tegmina, and their interior looks shiny. The movement of her tarsi stops, and she holds one sign. Glowing blue liquid pours over the surface of her wings. On her eyes (the weird ones) the same liquid is present, crawling through blue lines similar to the red.

This lasts a second, then her inner hindwings open in front of the first, darkening the light to invisibility like a filter.

At the same time, you swear you see a blue light everywhere in your vision, as if permeating everything. It lasts a moment, and then is gone.

Shimare points her wings at the house, and the direction the eye disks point at changes.

“I see a pink imago… signs of nymph habitation‍ ‍—‍ why do your friends live in a basement?” But no, no nymphs here.” She closes her wings, and brings the flesh‍-flaps over the mucus‍-coated eyes. “I imagine you want to keep looking? I can spend a few more minutes on this. Where to next?”

“We should ask if the imago knows where Yikki is.” The bane shrugs.

You knock, and recognize the face that opens the door.

Yikki’s father is a male of round palps and chitin painted dark in ways that emphasize the curves of his face. He has a way of making his antennae fall at the sides of his face that makes him always look a little sad, but it also means you never miss how finely groomed they are.

His tone is stern. “Yikki cannot play today.”

“I know. But,”‍ ‍—‍ you weigh the wisdom of revealing your bane‍-gotten information, and just say,‍ ‍—‍ “is she here? Where is she?”

His mandibles tighten with a click. “No, you can’t see her. She can’t play today.”

You close your raptorials, but don’t frown. You have excellent composure. “Could you check that she’s here? I’m worried.”

“Keep your worries to yourself and your defect of a mother.”

He’s closing the door on you, and for a moment you have the chance to put your tarsus there to stop it. But Yikki’s father seem intent on not being helpful, and he might just try to crush your foot.

You back away to your bane companion, your deferred frown finally opening like a rotten‍-smelling flower the slugflies prefer.

“That was useless. If I hadn’t gotten your help, I would have had to believe him! Why! Isn’t he concerned about Yikki? Hasn’t he noticed she’s gone?”

“It could be he knows, and the idea of not knowing where she is is too embarrassing to admit. She’ll turn up on her own, or they’ll find her, and till then it’s best no one knows.”

“That’s silly. How will people help, if no one knows?”

“Have you never turned down help or refused it?” Shimare asks, tone bending up.

It’s hard not to think of yesterday, when you could have gotten an imago’s help with Maune. And thinking of that leads you to remember…

“Before we go anywhere else, we should tell my mom what we’re doing. It seems like something’s up now, and she made me promise not to go off doing things on my own again.”

“You aren’t on your own, technically. Nor do we know anything’s wrong – could just be the nymph’s with her mother.”

“My mom might have a better idea where to look, though.”

“Sure. You’re the client,” Shimare says, shrugging and waiting for your direction.

Was she viewing this as a mission? Ha, you hired a vesperbane! Though really, you’d rather be on the other end of this.

The path back to your house is quite familiar. The unpleasant glances from the townsfolk continue. Is it just as the two banes said? Civillians uncomfortable at the sacrifice, thinking banes less mantid? Or maybe it’s the heroic debt vesperbanes aiding the town would incur. But that just mean the Stewartry would conscript more mantids to repay it‍ ‍—‍ increasing the chances of it being you! Though the tributes tend to be closer to teneral…

“Another thing,” Shimare starts, gettting your attention. “I noticed that ring on your finger. What is it? It’s imbued, in case you didn’t know. The aberration reminds me of the trees in the woods.”

You look around to see who could hear (everyone’s keeping their distance) and lightly scrape, “A weevil gave it to me.”

“A weevil? And you choose to keep it? Remember the story? Do you want to turn into a tree?”

“I thought turning into a tree was a good thing, like being a vesperbane.”

“Yeah, but…” she stops. “Even if you believe the myths about the time before the bats, mantids have moved beyond needing the help of the weevils. We have our own gifts, our own power. There’s an isolation pact for a reason. It’s best they keep to themselves. Maybe this termite business is a sign we shouldn’t even have towns this far south.” She shrugs. “But I guess that’s not your call. Still, I think you should throw away the ring.”

You never wanted to stay in Shatalek, but the implication that it shouldn’t exist stays on your mind.

You change the subject. “Yikki’s father called Tlista a defect, but if she was, why would your team listen to her? And wouldn’t she be punished?”

Shimare shrugs her forelegs. “I think he means it metaphorically. Some view it as appropriate that a vesperbane should die in the line of duty, and retirement is cowardice, depriving the Pantheca of its due. You’ll find it’s mostly those who aren’t giving the Pantheca its due who feel this way, of course.”

“Tlista stopped being a vesperbane so she could lay me.”

“Sounds like your friend’s father said you should have never hatched.” She’s smiling as she says this, but you don’t think it’s something to smile about.

You pass a few sights walking through Shatalek. There’s a kind of beetle with a small head and big mandibles they keep in herds at the ranch, and you’re not sure what it’s doing in town, munching on a bush. In one yard, you see what looks like a litter of baby roaches playing in the shadow of a big tree. One yard includes an extensive garden, filled with the kind of gargantuan flowers the bees cultivate. They are too large to be pollinated by snailflies, and you recall a scroll mentioning it’s hard to even accomplish it without the tools the bees make themselves. The smaller of the flowers are the size of your head.

A garden like this requires bees to tend it, and you see them at work as you pass, about six of them in total.

One worker bee flies over, lighting down beside you on the road, eyes seeming pointed toward you. The bee has the leg‍-bands you saw on the messenger, but this one is moreso covered in small pockets and strapped bags as workers often are. She hops on onto your tarsus, and you’re startled enough to let her, her own small tarsus grabbing onto the weevil’s wood ring. She touches it for a moment, then releases.

The bee hops off your tarsus, and begins making gestures with its legs, but you shake your head. You don’t understand waggle‍-dance. The bee then points off into the distance, and you have a decent idea where. There is an apiary on the edge of town, near where the houses stop clustering and turn to farms.

The bee points at the ring, and then points toward the apiary again. Bring the ring to the apiary?

“Buzz off,” Shimare says. “We’re busy.”

The bee pulls back its antennae, and returns to the flowers.

“It seemed interested in my ring.”

“I told you you should get rid of it.”

“Yes, but I wonder what attracted the bee.”

She shrugs. “Bees were servants of the weevils before they ever allied themselves with mantids. Unsurprising there’d still be an affinity.”

The two of you are almost at your house, and you point this out.

“I’m going to see if your mother’s even home,” Shimare says in reply. “You said it’s the big house? I see Tlista saved up her stipends.”

Her Brismati eyes open, wings spread, Shimare looks up at your house for a moment. Then her compound eyes darken with pigment. She looks away, lowering both her gazes, as if she could look through the ground and into your cellar. Which she can, and probably is. She’s moving palps to start saying something. Then the sound of a door opening catches both your attentions.

“Uh, hi madam Tlista.”

Your mother’s out and walking over toward you.

She extends antennae toward Shimare, frowning. “You need to work on your control, girl. Defeats the point of spying, I think, if your target can tell a Brismati’s looking.”

“We weren’t spying, ma’am.”

Tlista lifts one antenna, and glances from the bane to you then back.

“Well? Tell me what non‍-spying purpose you intended with looking into my house without permission.”

“We were looking for you, and it’d save time to not knock if we knew you weren’t here.”

She hums. “An answer that directly raises another question is obviously incomplete.” She looks back her daughter, focusing attention on you. “What new mess have you thrust yourself into?”

“Yikki’s gone, and we need to find her!”

“No,” Shimare says. “We already have.”

“Oh?” Tlista asks.

Shimare nods at her. “You are aware my clan can see through solid objects?” Shimare watches her with a meaningful expression, and Tlista seems unimpressed by this revelation, and the imago continues waiting for an answer. “Oh. Well, uh, naturally I can easily see where she is. Finding her won’t be trouble, I mean. But your daughter wanted to come and get your approval before she went off with a vesperbane to track down her friend, even if it’d be a simple matter, and I’m entertaining her.” Why does Shimare sound like she’s stumbling over her words?

Your mother smiles. “That, I appreciate.” She pats your head, and directs an evaluating glance at Shimare. “How long have you been learning under him?”

“A little over a year now, madam.”

“Hm. Long enough. I trust you’re been drained of enough of the foolishness that fills wretches. Yes, you have my consent to attend my daughter today.”

Shimare’s face now grows tight, as if she’s thinking deeply.

It seems you’re done here, and about to leave, so you ask your mother something you remembered. “Did you find father’s quilting board?”

“Hm? Oh, no, we haven’t had a chance to go looking for it.”

That lights up Shimare’s face, jolting her out of the thinking fugue. “Oh, a quilting board? I saw that. If you don’t mind, I could grab it for you. It’s looks to be out the of the way, a pretty hard to find spot.”

Tlista looks at her. “…Sure. I’ll trust you in my house. Don’t make me regret that. I’ll go tell him, I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear.”

Shimare sighs quietly behind her, and starts in after the red imago. She discreetly gestures for you to follow.

You do, and it’s… unsettling, to follow a stranger navigating your house without asking for directions. She goes for the door to the cellar, leading you down its steep ramp. The door is shut behind you.

It’s dark, and the blue glow of her forewings is the only guide. It seems the bane had never turned off the glow after first pointing her eyes at your house.

“What’s going on, Shimare?”

“We got lucky. Or well, you got lucky. I assume you don’t want Tlista to know your friend is hiding down in your basement?”

The voice is light. “Eifre? A weird blue light woke me up‍ ‍—‍ is that a vesperbane?”

“Yikki!” You take a step into the darkness, before you realize you don’t quite know where she is.

(The pieces are clicking together. You don’t forget what’s important, and now you know what’s important. Tlista leaving early, the door being unlocked? The cellar keys being missing?)

Shimare’s scolding you. “Quiet, or you’ll ruin what I tried to save you,” she scratches.

“What?”

“When I said I know where Yikki is, and then said I could see through walls, I had assumed Tlista knew who was in her house.”

“But she didn’t, and you had to play it off as something you saw elsewhere, or would soon see?” you say. Shimare nods. “Me mentioning the quilting board was perfect, then? …Is it really down here?”

“Yes. Not hard to find, though, that was a lie. Maybe he just didn’t look here.”

“He lost the key. Thought it was locked?”

“I didn’t lock it,” the high voice of the third mantis says. “I thought it would be suspicious if the keys went missing and the door was locked.”

Yikki had drawn closer now. She looked just woken up: setae clumped, not combed, an a bit of drool on her mandibles.

“Who would get suspicious of lost keys?”

Simultaneously, you say, “Mother might,” and Yikki says, “A former vesperbane who was really good.”

“So,” Shimare starts, “why pick there to hide, of all places?”

“Why were you hiding at all?” you add.

“I’m hiding because my parents grounded me to my room after last night and said they wouldn’t let me go to prevesper if this was how it was gonna make me act. So I stayed up until they were asleep and ran away. Eifre’s my friend and her door was unlocked. So I came here to finally got to sleep and tonight I was gonna tell her to let me stay here and keep this a secret like our secret vesperbane adventures.” Then, realizing who she was talking to, “Um, can you keep this‍ ‍—‍ —‍ and that‍ ‍—‍ a secret too?”

“Sure, kid. Mission objective,” she said, like another might said ‘I promise.’ “I don’t see why you wouldn’t just ask, though. Before moving into someone’s house.”

“Tlista is cool, but she’s still an imago. Besides, if you ask, you don’t get it unless they say yes. If you just do it, they might find out and get mad later, but then they might forgive you and let you do it anyway. It’s clearly the better choice.”

Shimare sighs. “I’m never letting myself be hired by nymphs.”

“But you won’t tell her, right?” Yikki asks, pleading on her palps.

Shimare steps between the two of you. “Give her time to decide, alright? I want to talk to her myself, anyway.”

Yikki’s hissing and displaying her eyespots at the bane’s now‍-turned back. If she sees this (she probably does), she ignores it as the vesperbane pulls you back up to the ground floor.

First, she looks around to see if Tlista is around, but your mother is still upstairs with your father.

“One thing about your friend, which might affect your decision.” Shimare is talking, not meeting your eyes. “At her house, I saw barred windows, doors locked from the outside. Could have been her room or one of her siblings. Just, might affect your decision.”

You frown.

“But I don’t want to talk about your friend. I want to talk about you. Us. I think… You seem to get things in a way those other nymphs don’t. I get the impression you aren’t learning much at prevespers?”

“I’ve read all the scrolls they teach from.”

Shimare smirks. And she says, “How would you like to learn in the field? Tlista gave her consent for me to attend to you‍ ‍—‍ not specifically just to find Yikki. So I say I have her blessing to‍ ‍—‍ perhaps, teacher willing‍ ‍—‍ bring you along and show you a few of the not‍-dangerous parts of a mission. I can’t imagine you’ll say no.”

The vesperbane wretch Brismati Shimare watches you with two gazes – with those bright, colorful compound eyes, and with those bloody, alien orbs. You wonder which is a truer glimpse into her mind.

Will you do Yikki’s asked, and helping her live secretly in your house? Or will you ask Tlista for permission?

Will you take Shimare’s offer and spend see what the vesperbanes do? Or perhaps you should investigate the apiary? You won’t have time for both.

(You still plan to meet with Maune this evening, don’t you? The day is slipping into afternoon, already.)

Will you throw away the weevil ring?

Suggestions Received

I want to help Yikki, because fuck parents who literally lock their children in their rooms. I don’t have any good tactics for it though. I also want to shadow Shimare for a bit, since IRL at least that’s one of the best ways to develop job experience and build connections, which might be relevant for successfully becoming a vesperbane. I do think we should keep track of the time and split off early enough that we can fabricate a reasonable explanation for going off into the woods to meet up with Maune.
Also my hoarding tendencies say to keep the ring.

I also want to help Yikki and keep her secret, for the same reason as Fib. However, I think taking the ring to the apiary is the better option here: firstly, shadowing Shimare would mean being in the presence of Green and Red. Secondly, the knowledge of Pantheca vesperbanes is much more readily available than that of downtrodden bees. We should decline for now, but keep the option open for later when Shimare needs to do something on her own. Even better,, we could say we’re looking for something more researchy, and ask if she can tell Yukli about us if we’re ever in Greci. Keep the ring, of course, and meet up with Maune after bringing the ring to the bees.

we can ask tlista’s permission in a way that doesn’t imply yikki had already lived there for a day, ask if sleepover or a few in a row would be alright, and if no, then fallback to don’t tell
also l truly see no reason to turn down shimare’s offer, but that’s fun and games sidequest, and the ring investigation sounds like a main quest related, that’s definitely not being thrown away

Votes: yikki is right, forgiveness >>> permission; keep ring, see bees

On a broader scale: Much as falsehood (even through omission) is often harmful, Yikki REALLY shouldn’t have to go home. Let her stay and maybe leave a note so that if she’s found you can be sure Tlista or dad knows about her questionable life circumstances. Don’t want to start something potentially ugly just now by confessing to mom and explaining why she shouldn’t have to leave, and bringing the attention of a battleax to Yikki’s family.
As regards the evening, Shimare’s done a good turn and the possibility she might get in trouble by bringing a tagalong isn’t appealing. Plus, like StarSaver said, the apiary and weevil stuff has the weight of Omen about it.

Part 13

“Well? What are you going to tell her? I imagine she won’t be up there for long.”

You glance up at the dark curtains of your parent’s platform. Shafts of sunlight rain on it from the windows, and dust floats in the light like sparse snow.

“Yikki has to stay here. I don’t want her to have to leave.”

“I agree,” Shimare says. She isn’t standing. Her tarsi grip the handles of a perch, her small abdomen resting on a cushion. She doesn’t look relaxed, though, eyes regarding you intensely. “She’s like the rest of your agemates, right? Adores vesperbanes, defers to them?”

You nod. Who doesn’t?

“Good.” Her antennae unfurl, reaching for you. “Still, you didn’t answer my question.”

You run a palp across the dentation of a mandible. “I don’t know. I keep thinking about what Yikki said. It’s a risk.”

“So is keeping it secret.” Shimare is still looking at you with mantid gaze, her Brismati eyes open, but not directed at you.

“It’s…” you start and stop. “Secrets get out eventually,” you say. How could you keep something from Tlista forever? She seems to figure everything out. “We have more time to work things out if she doesn’t know right away.” You glance at her curtain, half expecting unlucky timing, your mother appearing right as you allude to the secret. She doesn’t; you’re safe for moments more.

This is like last night, you realize. You’re still seeing it as a binary. There are more options than asking Tlista or keeping it a secret. “Maybe we could ask other nymphs’ parents, just in case Tlista finds out and doesn’t let her stay?” Maybe Maune herself would be amenable to her staying in the woods with her. Or! You’ve heard legend of the secret treehouse the older nymphs got the bees to build years ago. No one’s been able to find it since, with those nymphs (now imagos) keeping it a grave secret.

“Bad idea,” Shimare’s quick to say. “Can you trust other parents not to just take her back? You should keep her close.” The vesperbane stands up. “But if you’re not going to tell her now, we’re eating our luck by staying here. Let’s go.”

You turn to the door, but stop. “Wait. If Yikki just woke up, she’s probably hungry.”

“I can just give her one of my ration bars. It’s half of what we eat, so we’re packed with them.” You nod, not having better ideas; your father cooks. “Wait for me outside while I go down there? Can get the quilting board too, so we aren’t caught in an obvious lie.”

Outside, the sky is as clear as a vast emptiness. The atmospheric enervate is fainter this deep in the day, and has been driven completely out of the radius of the sun, like a great celestial banishment.

“Want one?”

A vesperbane surprising you should not be a surprise, but you still jump. The white mantis is offering you a paper‍-wrapped tube. It’s hexagonal, like it was extruded alongside a hundred others from a mold.

You smile and take it, feeling the mid‍-day pang in your abdomen. The bland, unappealing brown tube is lumpy, studded with what might be nuts. You pause. It smells like meat.

Shimare tsks at your look. “Please don’t tell me you were raised on any of that noble hunter bullshit. Sure, haemofab’d meat is farmed like a crop rather than killed, but it tastes like meat. Calories are calories. If you want to be a vesperbane, by no means can you be picky.”

In the end, your stomach decides.

Shimare hums, then says, “Follow me.” The bane starts walking.

“Uhm, where are we going?”

She doesn’t stop or turn to reveal her expression, but the tone is of answering a stupid question. “Our camp. Have you forgotten my offer already?”

“I do want to learn about being a vesperbane, and you are –”

“I can see the ‘but’ in your words, nymph. Cut to it.”

“I don’t want you to get in trouble, showing me something you shouldn’t.”

“And if I tell you I know my teacher and what he wants better than you?”

“I’d have to be around the others, wouldn’t I? I know they’re your teammates, but they don’t seem very nice. Or good vesperbanes. And after last night, they might not trust me.”

“Should I save myself the trouble of eviscerating your new excuses, and assume the ground truth here is you don’t want to, and this game is what? Trying not to hurt my feelings?”

Or revealing what you’d rather do. When you decided you wouldn’t take up Shimare’s offer, you didn’t determine if your intentions should be secret. There was nothing wrong with visiting the apiary, was there?

“It’s worth remarking,” Shimare scrapes, tone light, “how odd that is. A child of the Pantheca, an aspiring vesperbane, and you don’t want to learn from your superiors? I’m sure any other nymph in your village would leap for the chance, and yet you hesitate. And I wonder why that is. Do you trust the Stewartry? Do you believe in the Dream?”

You nod with vigor. Had you made a terrible mistake? Was this going to ruin your chances of becoming a vesperbane?

“Or perhaps… is this your interpretation of caution? Or do you just distrust me, specifically?”

“I think you’re nice!” you say, extending antennae outward to her, wiggling them.

Shimare frowns at that, and you aren’t sure why.

You decide to move the conversation along. “I won’t accompany you today,” you emphasize, “but maybe there is a way you could help me. I’ve read of the sovrans at Greci, and I was wondering –”

“No,” Shimare curls up her antennae. “Not only are you wrong, you’re doing it wrong. First of all, no bane of rank lower than fiend has ever been to Greci‍ ‍—‍ and it’s forbidden for us to be transported there. I have no connections for you to exploit.” She leans toward you, and it’s not a pleasant look on her face. “Was it just flattery, a moment ago? Is this what you really think of me‍ ‍—‍ a big, influential name, a ladder for your little ambitions?”

“No! I just –”

“You should take a lesson from this, nymph. About the implications your words may carry, to those who aren’t blind to them. If you just want to use mantids as stepping stones for your schemes, then you’ll be in good company, becoming a vesperbane. Or perhaps you aren’t even capable of that depth yet, and you really thought your intentions innocent. I don’t care.”

You take a step back, palps quivering inaudibly. You glance around – anywhere but at the bane. Should you just leave? This isn’t what you wanted.

“Don’t run away just yet. There’s something I need to tell you‍ ‍—‍ that I was going to tell you, before your little… infelicity. Walk with me, we won’t have to part ways for a bit.”

You welcome walking beside the bane, where keeping your gaze fixed ahead of you is expected and not impolite. You’re breathing a bit fast, but you have the composure to slow it.

“Here. I’ll present this in the form of three questions. Questions you should have asked, questions a good vesperbane would have thought of. Listening?”

You nod. You meet her Brismati eyes, rather than her compound eyes. The unease her vein‍-marred, glowing orbs stir is appropriate.

“Why, if speaking at the schoolyard was a test from our teacher, would we skip out on the test by sending ourselves a fake message? Does that make sense? And how, if your friend was able to sneak out of her house, could her windows be barred or door locked from the outside? And why, if I am a vesperbane born of one of the most prestigious clans, taught by the arch‍-fiend of one of the major cities of the plains, would I find you impressive? Do you think you’re that special?” She shakes her head. “When you leave for the academy, and you have more than one generation of a tiny village to compare yourself against, you’ll discover just how unremarkable you are.”

You stop walking. “Why‍ ‍—‍ why would you… you lied? Why lie about those things?”

“My teacher loves his tests, and I think it’s infectious. When the examiners speak of Shatalek’s stock, the one they talk about is Hervanium Alcha. But you come up second. I wanted to know if that meant anything. And, well.”

You make a wordless scraping noise.

“But, having met you, I had another motive. You’re gullible, Eifre. Listen to me. Vesperbanes are liars! If they tell you something, it only means they wanted you to think that. Always interrogate motives.”

“You– you can’t treat everyone like that. Some are good, some are trustworthy. Some are…”‍ ‍—‍ you reach for a word the vesperbane would like‍ ‍—‍ “allies.”

“Even your allies, bug. Vesperbanes make sacrifices. And what’s truth mean next to lives saved, or concrete results? It’s ephemeral. This is the heartlands. Truth is scarce. Your trust should be, too.”

Brismati Shimare closes her eyes.

“It’s something a lot of new vesperbanes get stung by. And I’m willing to bite, and demonstrate directly, even if it makes you see me as some kind of venomed scorpion, because it will make the Pantheca stronger. I want you to know this, before you have to learn it from some renegade or defect, at cost.”

When you part ways, she walks back, directly opposite the way you had been walking.

Crossing town towards the apiary takes you tangential to the important building at its center, where Tlista talked to the syndic. You see unfamiliar mantids in purple robes outside it now, adorned with eight‍-pointed stars. They are talking to passersby. Had they arrived recently? Most mantids in town are vaguely familiar, but strangers pass through the tavern, uncommonly. Most weren’t interested in the syndic or the assembly building, though.

Bees grow more numerous as you near their home. You always see them digging around in the flower cups, or tending to the flowers and you wonder if that’s what they all do. Do they ever play?

Locating the apiary’s no mystery. Though your fleeting familiarity with the fringes of town begins to fail you, there is an irregular stream of bees diving in this direction.

The apiary sits as a squat thing, a hexagonal slab of a building, whose colorfully painted façade shows more creativity than its shape. From the look, the hive is built of wood and the bone‍-like white stone imported from the city. This surprises you.

A landing plaza fans out around it, and some of the returning bees are tinted yellow with pollen‍-dusting.

Winding the roads in approach of the structure, you find it positioned behind an ordinary‍-looking mantid house. There’s a big sign reading “Enna’s Apiculture” and a tall fence barring approach to the hive.

You see a mantis robed in white, huffing as their legs turn a large circular lever attached the a big drum‍-like container.

“Hi,” you say, running up to them. “Are you Enna? What are you doing?”

“Ah, I’ll get right with you behind the counter.” The big mantis continues to work for a moment before glancing at you. “Oh, a nymph. You aren’t a customer? Or are you here for your parents? I don’t give free candy.”

“No.Not today.” You repeat your question.

Enna looks back to the big drum, and slows her turning until she can release. Legs free, she smacks the drum with a tarsus. “I turn this crank to make this baby spin. Pulls all the honey out of the combs so I can collect it. Usually I have some roaches help, but most are sleepin at this hour.”

“You help the bees make honey?”

Enna crooks her head. “You could say that. It’s ‘cause of me they have land and a home here in Shatalek. I make sure they have owners’ blessing to go out an collect from their flowers, or tend their gardens. Handle the negotiationing and transactioning, all sort of business in that sphere.” She has the kind of patronizing smile common on imagos teaching nymphs something. “It’s the sort of cooperating the Pantheca was built on.”

She cracks open up the drum and you glimpse the yellow volume. She closes it back up and resumes spinning. “Now, I don’t have the directest tarsus in what alchemy the fuzzies do to make the sweet stuff, but it is my work, in a broad sense.”

You rub the soft weevil ring. “Could I see the bees?”

She quirks an antennae, but you see a smile‍-curve on one palp. “What’s this? You want to be a bee‍-handler yourself? I could use an apprentice.”

“Maybe,” you say. You wonder if there are vesperbanes who specialize in helping bees.

“Well I ’ppose I could show you a bit of what goes on in the apiary. Bees are pretty creatures, if not the most accommodating.”

Enna slips into that house or shop, with the implication you should follow. When you step in, she gives you a big veiled hat, and bounces some white robes before you. “They’re sized for my husband, but might be big on you even then. Roll up the sleeves, maybe?”

The sound of bee flight fills the air behind the shop, and many big flowers line the path back to the apiary.

You seem to be the target of a few bees’ gaze, and some point at the ring. There is no repeat of the earlier encounter, though.

“Do you talk to the bees?”

“Can’t. Bees don’t talk.” She draws a dactyl across her file.

“Don’t they talk to themselves? Could you learn their language?”

“Bees don’t have language, not really. Think about it. What’s language? A vessel for expressing ourselves, and contemplating high ideals. But all bees are subservient to their queen, and her will. They have no individuality, and their lives no meaning but to work‍ ‍—‍ build the hive, make honey, rear the young. No love, no abstraction, no conflict. What would they talk about?”

You frown. “That seems… really sad.”

“’twould be sad, if they were mantids. Worms eat the dirt, and minuteslugs don’t live more than a day, but that’s they are. A soul that has never known joy doesn’t mind its absence. Not everything is a mantis, or wants to be.” Her whole speech had sounded practiced, but has now veers towards sounding outright quoted. “Alien kinds‍ ‍—‍ truly alien kinds‍ ‍—‍ can thrive in conditions that if another kind, like a mantis, were to endure them, it would indeed be cruel.”

“But if you can’t talk to them, how do you know they are thriving?” You can’t wash the feeling that it is sad, even if they aren’t mantids. Maybe you could teach them how to talk, like Maune and her crow.

You’ve reached the apiary, and she pauses by it, turning to you.

“You ask questions like a syndic, kid. There’s no undignified keeping happening here, honest.” She points a foreleg behind her. “Here, you can see for yourself. Or well, I can show you. Even though they can’t talk, there are signs that indicate things. You learn to recognize tells of aggression, malnourishment, colony disorders. Have you ever had a pet? A little beetle, or a saltie spider? Keeping vinculated kinds is similar. A responsibility, magnified in scale.” She steps into the entranceway. “C’mon. I picked some stuff up from my mentor, but this is a lot of lecturing on short notice.”

The apiary’s entrance is wide in a way a mantis can walk into, though the bees seem to mostly enter elsewhere, through smaller, closely clusters holes. You start inward. You might compare the smell to a paint splatter, or too many instruments playing at once. There’s flowery scents, dense and jangly pheromonal scents that are like a warped cousin of mantis’s smell, and others you haven’t learned names for. It’s not quite at the point of smelling laurax, but it’s overwhelming.

Inside the hive, things are arranged like in the scriptorium: rows and rows of shelves. Instead of scroll cubbies, it’s hexagonal packings. A lot of the hexes have wax caps, but the ones that don’t are incompletely filled. You see them packed with dusty pollen, or rocks, or woody forms (seeds?), or some where nectar drips forth before a bee comes over to wipe it, and secure the cap.

The shelves are broken into subsections with handles.

Enna’s talking. “Had this place built myself. These pull out like drawers”‍ ‍—‍ Enna grips a handle and demonstrates‍ ‍—‍ “allowing easy collection of the ’combs.”

Several bee heads turn at the sound, antennae working black eyes regarding the giants in their midst.

“In younger hives, you might get them swarming at that. But you can condition them not to, and when one generation learns, the next mimics their elders, and one day you wind up with all of them knowing without any of them being taught. Hiveminded.” Enna points. “You can see further examples if you look closer. See how every one of them is following another? They can’t stand being alone. They say long, long, long ago, even mantids used to be like them. But we were freed from the song of the stars, thank E’yama.”

The bees crawl and cluster over the walls, milling about. Sometimes on the floor too, and you’re careful not to step on them, while Enna pushes them out of the way with a mid‍-tarsus.

As the two of you walk on, Enna points out other sights of interest, such as where the bees mix together one stage of the honey, or where they press beeswax into molds she gave them. There’s one room where bees are lying down, the air smelling pleasantly of burning incense sticks. Enna collects the sticks, putting them out and clearing away the lazing bees.

But, not long into this tour of the apiary, you hear a shattering sound.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know. Things are usually ordered around here. I’ve got to see what’s happened. Wait here. If they get aggressive with you, use this, and call out.” She passes you a spray bottle whose contents do not smell good.

But when Enna is gone, a bee in colorful robes appears before you.

You don’t raise the bottle.

The bees‍ ‍—‍ there’s three of them in similar coverings‍ ‍—‍ are held up on a platform carried by other bees. They hold up a small wood board smoothed with wax, and a kind of ink or pigment on the waxed board neatly says:

Mantis follow us.

(You’re surprised they can write. Did Enna know? How could she not?)

You don’t hesitate, really. You came here to learn about the bees‍ ‍—‍ and if this posed some kind of danger, the trap’s already closed around you. Being uncooperative couldn’t make you safer or more informed.

They lead you around, and the way begins to slope down, into a cramped part of the hive‍ ‍—‍ low, like it was dug into the dirt. Bees are so much smaller than mantids‍ ‍—‍ the apiary was likely only enterable because Enna built it. If the bees built this, it doesn’t accommodate mantids. Luckily (for once) you are young and scrawny. It’s a squeeze, but less of a squeeze. (A part of you is wound very tight, wondering about something collapsing, trapping you.)

Down here, the wax comes from flames burning what might be dried flower stems coated in oil. The flames are clean, without much smoke drifting off them, and you look up to see ventilation that keeps the air clear.

As you enter this new space, other bees are pulling in a bigger wax tablet. It placed at the center and rises vertically, like the board in the schoolhouse. Were the bees going to teach you a lesson?

The board‍-carrying bees leave the room once it’s in, leaving you with only the robed bees and a four other bees that seem like guards, carrying weapon in their small tarsi, barbed and tapering to thin points. Stingers?

The robed bees flutter toward the board and begin writing. All of them write, different parts for each, they seem to gesture among themselves to coordinate the message.

Advisory Gestalt writes mantids‍-record.
Nest records rare instruction → Advisory Gestalt hears mantis‍-mouth‍-sound‍-dance.
Mantis speaks? Mantis Gestalt is?

“Um, hi? I… can speak? if that’s what you’re asking? What is ‘gestalt’?”

The bees look between themselves, gesturing quickly. One has sheets of hard wax with side holes so that the sheets spin along rings, binding them together. This bee pages through them, eyes looking over tiny symbols engraved in wax. At the same time, the pigment is being wiped off the board, clearing it for the next words to be written by the three of them.

Gestalt := name, role, rank, purpose, gestalt!

“Um, my name is Eifre. I’m training to be a vesperbane. I’m a nymph? And here to meet you, mostly. Do you have names?

Advisory Gestalt writes.

“I mean like.” You point at one bee in particular, the one with the wax‍-binder. “Your name?”

There’s some back and forth between the bees at this, with binder‍-bee making the same gesture series a few times.

Eifre Gestalt points at Advisor Indigo‍-orange Former Bad‍-leg‍-waxer Rose‍-salt‍-iron‍-smelling Season‍-cold‍-middle‍-third‍-hatched.

“That’s… a lot.”

Mantis record is word‍-fat → Waggle‍-dance is lean and cute.

You nod. The name probably rolled off the… body easier in its native language.

A closer look at the at the binder‍-bee sees a leg‍-band with colors that differ from the colors of the others‍ ‍—‍ theirs is off‍-green and a kind of light red, which is close enough. Is indigo‍-orange a kind of first name?

Mantis question empty

“Huh? I do have more questions, is that what you mean?”

One makes an abdomen bouncing gesturing you can’t interpret, and another begins to write:

No

But they don’t finish. Other bees are slipping into the room, and one carries a cup shaped like a flower, a vessel for liquid that sloshes – but only slightly, for the bee is careful carrying it.

The bee crawls over to you, and proffers the cup. You glance at Advisory Gestalt and their board, for explanation. The ‘no’ has been erased, and replaced:

Eifre Gestalt no honey gift ← There is no honey → Eifre Gestalt sweet water gift?

The cup is shaped like a flower. It seems to be an offering of politeness and you take it. Though the proportion isn’t fit for a mantis – it’s about one sip worth. You drink it, and it indeed tastes like water with some sugar added.

“Thank you, bees. But um, what were you saying earlier? You said ‘no’? Was that not what you mean?”

The arrivals are leaving. The Gestalt writes:

Time is cracked bottle and drips ⭲ Mantis question empty… purpose

(The dots aren’t actually there, but they spend some time gesturing back and forth about the word to put. By now you’re coming to realize something: bees aren’t mute. They occasionally make a kind of piping or trumpet‍-like noise. It’s not complex the way stridulation or roachspeak is, so doesn’t seem to be linguistic. Maybe beespeak is opposite of normal talking? With mantids sound is important and gestures adds a little, but maybe for bees the gestures are what’s important and the sound adds a little.)

Mantis question empty purpose. Empty of purpose? You frown. They weren’t‍ ‍—‍ but if time is limited, you understand.

The bees had an odd way of using words, and you wonder why. Is it unfamiliarity with the language? Unfamiliarity with language? (Maybe Enna wasn’t entirely wrong?). Or was it all due to an odd way of thinking?

You think about what question the bees would want you to ask. “What do you want, then?”

Nest needs much to become good and not stink ← Gestalts barred from queen, nest lost world‍-drones. Nest shrinks, does not grow.
Eifre Gestalt helps nest maybe? Mantis has weevil ring → Weevil help nest… maybe. Nest without weevil stinks.

“You miss the weevils? Can you fly to the woods?”

Forbidden ← Mantis stops scouts.

“Oh.” You lift your ring‍-bearing tarsus and try to slide off the odd ring. “The weevils gave me this. Is it special? How did you know?”

Ring bears black inside ↔︎ Ring bears ambrosia‍-seed. Advisory Gestalt know ← worker gestalt afternoon north‍-northwest mid‍-range hears black.

You think about the Brismati’s talking of seeing the ring was imbued. “Black is… enervate? How do you hear enervate?”

Special worker paints hear‍-setae black in ritual → Now setae hear black, not sound.

You nod, and suppress more questions to not be purpose‍-empty. “How can I help?”

Mantis ask weevil help. Mantis knowledge‍-gifts to the ward of weevils: a black storm is arriving. Tulip agar divination tells.

When you’ve read this, it’s erased and then more comes.

Mantis brings back weevil’s ambrosia flowers. Mantis returns for more help‍-knowledge. If mantis help‍-surplus → advisory gestalt shares many secrets and gifts.
Advisory Gestalt gifts first →

The advisors make a whooping sound, and another group of bees enter the space, carting an object big enough even the many of them struggle to carry it. Unveiled, it looks basically like a sharpened rock rod adhered to a wooden handle, fit for a dactyl to wrap around it. But the blade is waxy and dark in a way that suggests enervate. Is this an example of the secrets and gifts the bees offer?

They finish the thought:

Stinger defends mantis from storm.

You regard the gift for a moment. You’ve practiced battle with sticks in training, but this… would be a real weapon.

About now, a large bee is pushing past the weapon‍-wielding bees, and more come flapping in after this one. But all of them have big wings and large, cute eyes, and small mouths. One lands on your face, slipping past your veiled hat, and starts tapping with its legs, and others are crawling on you, exploring the flappy sleeves of your clothes, antennae whirling. Being this close to a bee, you notice how they aren’t just fuzzy, but warm.

You laugh at the playful new arrivals.

“What’s going on?” you ask, looking past one big bee to see the advisor’s board.

Drone gestalt heard mantis arrived. Drones like strange useless things. Drone is a strange useless thing.
↓
Drone Gestalt wants to hear stories.

The drones are more haphazardly dressed than other bees. One has colorful rocks decorating their clothes, while another has many ribbons trailing him.

“Can they understand me?”

Drones like rare knowledge but drones lack focus → only know a few words. Advisory gestalt will relay story, if mantis tells. Mantis gains nothing if tells → Mantis is not tell?

If the bees would appreciate a story, you think you can‍ ‍—‍ should – offer one.

Bees seem to like weevils. And since it was already on your mind, you decide to tell the story the vesperbanes from earlier told.

The drones shift their attention to the advisers as they translate your chosen story into involved gestures. You speak slowly for their sake.

Though focused on the advisors, the drones do not stay still, and amble and tap their legs around throughout.

When you’re done, one drone bops you on the tip of your face, and they make the trumpet‍-like sound you’ve heard bees making earlier. They make sweeping gestures and leave, flutter‍-strutting away.

Drone gestalt says mantis story is lame & weevils do not work that way.

You look down, antennae dropping. They didn’t like it.

Drones are baffling → Disregard.
Advisory gestalt understands mantis story: One dies, but nest lives → Such is good advising.
Mantis is like bee. But bee is not adept at cannibalism like mantis.

Before they can tell you anything else, or you can ask further questions, you hear a sound echoing in the spaces of the apiary. It repeats twice before you discern the words.

“Kid!? You alive? You in here?”

Nest‍-cleaning gestalt not longer distracts honey‍-hungry mantis → Eifre gestalt leaves now.

It’s probably best if you don’t let Enna assume the worst.

Part 14

“Aww, thank you, bees.” You pluck the blade from the fuzzy bugs. With the release of the burden their sagging legs spring up. Watching the rise and fall of their abdomens, you can imagine the relief.

It’s not a big weapon. The grip is just large enough to wrap the three dactyls of one foreleg around, and the blade is perhaps five times that length?

You turn the blade, eyes caught on the eerie blackness. Just bringing a dactyl near the surface provokes a shivering chill. Other bees fly over now, wrapping the blade in a sort of sheath of woven fibers.

This jars your focus enough you notice the underground chamber empties around you. The advisory gestalt has dispersed; the weapon‍-bearers march out.

Enna calls for you again, louder. You grab the sheathed dagger and begin the crawl out. Bees carefully clear way for the giant.

Holding onto the weapon, you think about what you’ll say to the bee‍-keeper. She can’t be happy you ran off‍ ‍—‍ and what if she takes away your sword? This ‘storm’ sounds bad, and you don’t wish to endure it withoutsomething, even if you’re no genius swordsmant.

Your mother made you wear a full set of shirts to prevespers, and here it might help. After squeezing out of the tunnel, you slip the dagger between your prothorax‍-shirt and the mesothorax‍-shirt‍ ‍—‍ where your thorax curves from upright to not. The bottom of the shirt acts as a sort of hammock for the weapon to rest in.

Each step jars the weight of the blade, but it seems steady enough. Will Enna notice the suspicious crease in the fabric?

She calls out one more time, voice lower as if giving up. It gives you bearing to find her.

The bee‍-keeper’s wings flex in agitation. A bee has alighted atop her raptorial, and she’s… talking to her?

“Go, show me mantis.”

Though maybe it’s no surprise. People talk to their pets, make them learn commands.

You wave. “I’m here, ma’am.”

“Ah, there you are. Gave me a life’s scare. Where were you?”

You bite a palp, then offer, “I saw the bees doing some kind of dance. I followed after them.”

“That’s dangerous, girl. Haven’t you heard the stories of bees? I’ve seen a centipede try to grasp one and got a whole contingent clustering on it, fluttering their wings. Thing was cooked inside and out when they were done.” She shakes her head. “They are small, but in numbers they get fierce.”

You look at the little bugs walking around. “They seem nice.”

Enna smiles. “Yeah. I’ve taught them well, haven’t I?” She starts to turn. “Come on. This is enough excitement for today. I’ll guide you out and you can run back to your parents.”

You follow her lead.

“I take it you didn’t need to use the spray bottle?”

You shake your head idly as you walk. Though the reminder’s made you curious. You squeeze the bulb, and a mist fires out. You spray a bit of the stuff on your tarsus experimentally. It stings, especially when you extend an antennae to smell it (nasty!). After a moment, you stop feeling it, so you squeeze some more, and get the cool sensation of a wet tarsus.

“Give me that! It’s not a toy.”

Your antennae fold up. “I was wondering what it was.”

“It’s a warning pheromone.”

You nod understanding, and change the subject. “I saw you talking to a bee a moment ago,” you start. You think about how to make your suggestion. “You’ve trained them?” you ask.

“To respond to some commands, yeah. You can teach them more than a varanid, and they’re good about working together.”

“What if you tried telling them more advanced stuff? I saw them with what looked like writing. Maybe you could have a conversation?”

“Oh, you can teach them to draw symbols,” she says, waving a foreleg. “But you can even teach some featherflies how to make what sounds like words. But there’s nomeaningto them. They’re just doing what gets them rewarded. Not encouraging imitation is one of the first things you learn as a bee‍-keeper.”

You frown.

Another step, and you feel the dagger slipping forward, and quickly push it back. Enna isn’t looking, instead launching into an explanation.

“Here’s how my teacher explained it to me. Imagine you were locked in a room full of scrolls and small flaps that let people pass you notes and you to pass them back. Follow me? Now, these scrolls are full of instructions for what to write for each note they pass in. You only get food if the note you send out matches the instructions. The notes are symbols you’ve never seen in your life. Got all that?”

You don’t like how slowly she’s talking, but you follow.

“So you follow the instructions and get to eat, and say you do this for weeks. When you come out, you learn that those symbols were the alphabet of old imperial, and people remark that you’re fluent in a language only knowledge‍-hunters know. But do youspeakthe language? Or were you just pushing symbols around as directed?”

“I think, after weeks, I would get good at the instructions, and not even need to look at them. I’d remember it all. Isn’t that having learned the language?”

Enna crocks her head at you. “Even if you could do that, even if you realized it was a language you were writing,youaren’tspeakingit. You have no idea what you’re writing about. It could be the weather, or traditional roach recipes, or alate supremacist screeds that’d bring the syndic judges down on you.”

“I guess. But you could just… tell the bees what words mean?” You see a bee depositing a rock into one comb. You point at it. “Point at a rock and say ‘rock’?”

(It’s not just one bee, the two of you have reached a more active part of the hive on your way out. Bees are all around.)

“It’s a bit presumptuous for you to walk in and tell me how to do work I’ve spent most of my life doing. Grown imagos have thought everything you’re thinking, nymph, and they’ve done experiments. You sit a bee down to take a sapience test, and they just start crawling around looking for their hive. When people try to claim they’ve found intelligence in bees, so often they’re feeding them responses, or picking out the most flattering results. Naïve mantids want to see themselves in every other kind‍ ‍—‍ but that’s just what they see: themselves, and not the other.”

“But that’s not—” you start. You’re in a busier part of the hive, with many bees walking around. One is in your path, and you stop short of kicking her, but catch yourself so suddenly, the dagger flies out of your shirt.

The blade falls without clatter‍ ‍—‍ thankfully imparted with enough momentum it sails clear of the bee in front of you.

“What in the blue is that?”

Just what you wanted to avoid.

You scramble over to pick it up, mind flying through reasoning.

(Would she think a weapon too dangerous for a nymph like you? But the bees want you to have it. …Would they side with you over her? But there’s no way that could go well. Mantids in the village wouldn’t feel safe near a hive that turned on its keeper.)

You pick it up and turn to the imago, eyes flushing, antennae falling back deferentially. “I, um. Some vesperbanes came to the prevesper house today! I got to talk to one of them personally, and she wanted to help me.” You lift the blade and pull back the sheathing. “This was a gift. Something to protect me.” Unsheathing it slightly is a gamble‍ ‍—‍ would the fear of strange enervate magic discourage her, distract from any protecting impulse?

“Ah… huh.” The antennae are unfurling toward you, and she’s giving you a hard look. As if she doesn’t quite believe you, but there’s nothing else to believe. “Far be it from me to overrule one of those fiends.” She gestures, frowning, and starts walking again. “Be careful, alright girl? You should stay away from banes. Don’t want their… influence rubbing off on you.”

You recognize how close you are to the entrance, and you’re anxious to get away.

Outside the hive, you say, “I think I can make my way back now.”

“Hm? Okay then. Hope you learned something. So long now.”

Then you hear, “Hey wait, give me back my hat!”

A cloud‍-masked sun shines down on you, the apiary further behind with every step.

What doesn’t go away is thoughts of Enna, or her arguments. You can formulate no counter to it, but it feels off, something cheating in the logic.

You’d read what the bees wrote. It was clumsy and confusing, but not at all symbol‍-drawing without any understanding. People have to know bees could communicate. Maybe Enna was too stubborn to see it, but don’t bees want people to know? Doesn’t someone care?

So you head where you always head when you need to know more. The scriptorium.

Shatalek is too small to have a library‍ ‍—‍ many imagos seemingly couldn’t even read! A scriptorium is no a library. Scriptoria were where sages of welkin would copy scrolls laboriously by tarsus, and once, all scrolls came from them. But Tlista says there are machines that can ink entire pages of text at once. Sages still prefer to copy scrolls the old way. “What better way to know a book’s contents than to write it?” was their response to your asking. This way they seek complete understanding.

You spend enough time there they had gotten you to try it. You remembered well the text you’ve copied (even the unimportant parts). But it takesso long!It’s so boring!

“It’s meditative,” they said.

In prevespers, the mentors have you do meditation. And there’s a reason meditation is assigned during recess as punishment.

The building itself sits a ways out of the village. The sages didn’t mind visitors, but liked solitude. The expansive wooden facade always thrills a little awe when you see it. All the more impressive when you can watch it grow; you’ve seen the sages building expansions with their own legs.

You step past the door. As your eyes adjust, you swear the interior looks blue for a moment.

Inside, you’re saying “Hi Ranel,” before you notice the sage‍-mother isn’t perched by the entrance to welcome you.

Disappointing, but it’s happened before. Ranel is one of the few sages you can talk to. You see others as you venture further in, but they wear masks over their mandibles, covering their files. They said there is enlightenment to find in silence. You like the quiet when reading, but you don’t like not being able to discuss the scrolls they’ve copied.

In a central chamber, shelves tight with scrolls abound. Inscription alcoves line the surrounding walls.

You’ve learned the sorting well enough to hunt your quarry, and slip into an alcove with a few scrolls about bees or other kinds in general.

(Before beginning, you check the sun; you should have hours till evening, and this is a favored way to pass the time.)

The first scroll looks thick and historical.

Bees, you find, are a vinculated kind. ‘Vinculated’ being a technical term analogous to ‘domesticated’. A vinculated kind is a sapient or semisapient species dependent on another. The arch‍-example is the noble roaches, who rely on mantis‍-designed shelters and your martial prowess to defend them from threats, while benefitting from your advanced, efficient organization. A domesticated nonsapient pet or stock, like hoppers or blue beetles, would struggle in the wild. Similarly, you read, vinculated kinds rely on tools and infrastructure they cannot create themselves, or must be taught.

You glance at the window, and the row of other scrolls you have to get through. Tentatively, you skim further.

Bees are unique in apparently being naturally dependent on weevils, as evidenced by the properties of their flower cultivars. But around the rise of the disenthralled rebellion, one finds evidence of mantis/bee association. Some translated tablets are interpreted as bee‍-keepering instruction.

You sigh and put away that scroll. Maybe if you weren’t short on time, you’d power through, but this doesn’t seem like what you need.

You flip through some scrolls, and eventually give try to the odd one out, titledAny Kind’s Guide to Words. You weren’t sure what it was about. Maybe it was a tutorial on interspecies comunication.

It’s a hope that withers as you start the introduction‍ ‍—‍ it really does seem to be about words, albeit rambling and discursive, but one passage jumps out at you.

Sidenote: some, I’m sure, think I’m exaggerating or syndic‍-pandering²¹when I say ‘any kind’, but I believe¹⁴it.
It’s untenable, these days, to come right out andsay²³you think mantids are superior or think other kinds aren’t people. But there’s a bias^3,even when people concede personhood to other kinds. Therids are, of course. Maybe even roaches. Dragons too, if they’re being historical. No one ever says ‘bee’, and why is that?²⁴
Asking ‘are bees intelligent’ gets a muddled response²⁵that averages out to ‘sort of, not really’.¹⁵
It’sodd. There are uncharitable⁹readings‍ ‍—‍ roaches are cuddly, a familiar household kind. Therids are fellow hunters, and any one of themcouldkill you if you give them reason. Bees, on the other hand, are tiny, furry mutes. But would you dismiss the possibility on flimsy, superficial grounds like that? Is it just a coincidence, and their true reason²⁶is based in fact?
No. Bees had gunpowder before mantids ever broke the bats’ spell or climbed down from the mountains.²⁷Bees can make salves that work better than what most modern haemotechnics can manage.²⁷They had independent nests the size of entirecitiesthat got torched by the third dominion.^28,29
If you told someone a kind like that existed, they’d immediately guess they were sapient. Tell them it’s bees, and they think it’s a joke.
What about the sapience tests? There, they excel.³⁰Given a complex tool, bees can recreate it. Given a series of abstract patterns, bees can continue them. Given iterated cooperation dilemmas and other decision problems, bees approximate optimal strategies.^31,32
How have I never heard of this? You may ask.
Well, I did a bit of verbal chicanery there^12.Most knowledge‍-hunters don’t find these results. You see,beescan do all these things. Individuals, which sapience tests are traditionally conducted on, by and large struggle with the basic battery.³³
Some of you are frowning now. That’s the trick! They’re cheating, as much as any student that copies another’s answers.
But question your assumptions^2.Why do you think intelligence has to reside in one individual?
Neuroprojectors examining bee brains find vast populations of mirror neurons, and huge regions dedicated to empathy.³⁴
And indeed, justwatchbees work. Their coordination is inspiring. How is testing one bee any fairer⁶than cutting out a chunk of your brain and testing it in isolation?
“But personhoodby definitionapplies to individuals,” you might counter.
Well, let’s talk about definitions.

It continues, but veers into being more about words than bees. The writing style of this author‍ ‍—‍ you check, one sir Yukli Elanu‍ ‍—‍ is studded with footnotes references. Many of them seem to be his own writings, but a few look to be syndic reports or stewartry documents, substantiating his claims. You can’t imagine, in Shatalek, you’ll have access to copies of all of them. You get up though, to stretch your legs if nothing else.

As expected, few of the citations are things that interested the sages enough to have copies ordered. You do find one, a paper detailing a large scale experiment done decades ago. Specifically, they “tested a procedure of enculturation with the aim of promoting unity and integration between the Pantheca and mellihive bees.” Toward the end of the abstract, they write, “The results, however, caution us against promoting this policy. Immersion in mantis culture resulted in increased stress response and greater incidence of total colony collapse, an effect we termmemetic destablization. At present, it seems safest to minimize bees’ contact with certain ideas.”

Before you can read any further, you’re jarred from focus by a laugh, sounding quite out of place in the scriptorium. You peer out from behind a shelf.

It’s Ranel! The sage’s bright‍-yellow chitin is unmistakable, even though the robes (identical to any other sage’s) hide much of it. She’s walking alongside a mantis with fine robes and a pointy hat.

You wave, and this catches her eye. She brings her guest with her, coming to you.

“Hello hello, Eifre. Here, this is Evom, I believe I’ve mentioned him? Responsible for many of the texts you love so much.”

You look at Ev. “You bring the books from the city?”

He stridulates a little laugh. “Oh no, I just have the contacts in Wentalel. They’ve special access to the library there, and we reap the benefits.”

“Well, thank you.”

“Ah, my pleasure.” He smiles. “So, I’m to understand you’re a reader? What do you have there?”

“I was looking for scrolls about bees, so I could learn more.”

“Oh, wonderful. And you’re Tlista’s daughter? The vesperbane?” You nod, it’s no secret. “Wonderful indeed. I wouldn’t expect it‍ ‍—‍ they don’t say it in polite company, but I think many vesperbanes haven’t shaken the idea that mantids are special, that the vespers prefer them and only them for some superior quality. But you, you’re willing to learn about other kinds of your own drive. Pure soul, you are.”

You smile. Though you wonder… “Do you think bees are intelligent?”

“I think all kinds were created with our own strengths and weaknesses. The best thing is for all to treat all with respect and dignity. These lives are too short for baseless prejudice.”

It… isn’t a terrible answer. But it sems like they won’t give a direct one. Should you change the subject?

You don’t know who this mantis is, or how they know Ranel, so that’s a start.

You look around the room, gesturing at the books. “Is this what you do as a job? Get people to bring things from the city?”

“Ah, ancestors no. I’m a hierophant. Do you never attend the sermons?”

Your parents aren’t religious.

“But you should! It’s good for the spirit. We all need guidance in this world.”

You glance away.

“I don’t mean to nag you dear. But please remember if you ever need help, or advice. I offer the ancestors’ wisdom, and more. I can more greater help than you’d expect.” She regards you with a small, expectant smile.

“I’ll remember it,” you say.

“Until we meet again, child.”

You return to your alcove, but your research has already brought you near the long‍-awaited evening.

You wonder if you look suspicious, walking the fringes of Shatalek. It can’t look any different from your wandering most days, but you’re hyper‍-aware, wondering if anything might give onlookers the slightest suspicion. You wonder if this worry itself could be the tell.

The sun’s not yet at the horizon‍ ‍—‍ did you leave too early, in your eagerness?‍ ‍—‍ but it’s casting a long, warm shadow ahead of you.

You don’t see many mantids, although you spot some early‍-rising roaches.

Maune wanted to meet you at a certain copse of ferns. Luckily, with how far out the scriptorium sits, a little circling around the edge of town takes you near it, and minimizes close contact with inquiring imagos. They could probably see you in the distance, but not identify you. Plus, anything suspicious should be safely obscured by the ferns.

They aren’t just ferns. Surrounding them like cage‍-bars or supports are lianas. Crawling, woody vines, these lianas are why nymphs don’t play here. Their red bark has a crumbly outer layer that burns chitin and soft flesh, and makes it blister and bleed. All the nymphs got warned and still learned the hard way, and you were no exception.

The dusty red bark doesn’t bother you now, though. Maybe the other nymphs were too scared to try again?

Approaching the liana‍-constricted ferns, you hear a soft caw. A familiar (no pun intended) black bird lands with a flap and one eye turned at you.

His beak opens and some approximation of a mantid’s voice says: “Tell her I’m coming as soon as you let me know she’s here. Wait a few minutes.”

“I understand.”

He replies with a caw. Then he flies up over your head and opens a talon. A crystal‍-flecked rock tumbles out, onto your head.

“Ow.”

“Nice rock,” the crow says.

You pick it up, and it is a nice rock, the light glimmering through the crystals. It’s unrefined, natural‍ ‍—‍ but with no dirt covering, like it’d been washed. Was it a gift? “Thanks.”

Reva nods and flies off, presumably to get Maune.

You take a deep breath, and step toward the lianas. The gentlest squeeze still dusts you with red. It’s a cough in your tracheae, but harmless on flesh.

The secluded bubble of space within is dotted with rocks and snakeholes. It’s just a spot hidden behind ferns.

You lay down your abdomen, and wait.

It starts as an indistinct rumbling, a snapping as of many cracking roots.

You see the ground centermost in the clearing rise and fall. Like a beating, breathing abdomen. Or a larva pressing at an egg. The risings rise higher.

In prevespers, you learned about mushrooms, got to grow mycelium and watch fruiting bodies sprout from the soil.

These fruiting bodies aremassive. And quick, everting from the soil in the span of several moments, long fungal fingers.

Not just mushrooms‍ ‍—‍ thick roots too.

And a mantis.

“Maune!”

“Miss me, kid? It’s only been a day.” She takes a step forward, and the mass of roots and fungus sags away like a vital support was removed.

“Yeah.” Then, “I talked with the bees.”

“Making friends with all the kinds, aren’t we? What did they say?”

There’s something… uplifting about how, where other imagos responded with disbelief and condescension, Maune just… believes you, without missing a beat.

“They want the weevil’s help. And they wanted me to send a message to the ‘the ward of the weevils’‍ ‍—‍ you, I think?‍ ‍—‍ that a black storm is coming. They, uh, divined it.”

Maune frowns. “A mistranslation, probably. There’s no ‘divination’ as such. They mean scrying, or some other polysyllable for remote sensing I’m too long out of practice to remember.” She leans closer. “Did they say what process they used?”

“Tulip‍-agar? Does that mean anything?”

“Fuck,” Maune replies. “Fuck. Storm indeed.” (There might’ve been a short, distant sound, then. You both pause, listening, but nothing comes.) “Do they know if it has anything to do with the termite mound? Or is our luck just that fucked?”

“I don’t know. Are—are we in danger? What does it mean?”

“It means evacuation isn’t enough. Not sure I like our odds with anything short of an army, and we’ve got what, a retiree and a couple banelings? And me, I guess.”

“And me?” you venture. “The bees gave me this, to defend myself?”

You produce the dagger, lifting it up for Maune to see.

The blue mantis steps forward, toward you, reaching out for it.

That’s when the voice you least want to hear cuts in.

“Don’t touch her, defect.”

A white mantis bursts into the clearing, right where you entered. You know her.

“Shimare? Why—”

“What are you doing here?” Maune’s falling into a defensive position, antennae tightly curled.

There’s a wet ripping sound, and red tentacles emerge behind her‍ ‍—‍ poised to strike, like twin scorpion tails.

Shimare’s reaction is fast it enough it’s just barely not simultaneous. She has a small knife now, pulled back to throw.

“Wait, stop.” You step forward. You still have the dagger.

“Get back,” Shimare hisses, and forces you back hard enough you stumble.

Maune’s staring at her and, as if a fatal line of calculation has concluded, tightens her palps and takes a step forward. Her red tentacles draw in, taut.

A nymph looking up at an imago, this puts the first bit of hesitation in Shimare. She backsteps.

Two things happen at once, or close enough either could have caused the other.

Shimare’s knife flies true.

And Maune crouches for one instant, and in the next she’s lunging forward, in mantid fashion. The raptorials close around the Brismati’s thorax. Wretched raptorials seize her legs. She holds her for a moment, then Shimare falls limb and bleeding to the ground.

Maune removes the knife thrown at her. The wound closes before it even has time to bleed.

You stare at the mantis you’d talked to just hours before, wordless.

Maune glances up at you.

“I didn’t kill her,” she says, calm.

“Why,” you say. “Why?”

“Why didn’t I kill her?” Her voice remains calm, tone unfitting its contents.

“Why did you attack her!” This didn’t have to go this way.

“Eh, same answer. I did it for your sake. I saw the look on her face. Her next move would have been to run, perhaps dragging you away by force. I had a moment to act, and the odds were better if I didn’t have to aim around a hostage. Unless…” She eyes you critically. “This wasn’t some stupid trap, was it? You didn’t lead her here?”

You… you might have. “I’m as surprised to see her as you are.”

“Heh, don’t think so. I was too tired last night, but now… this was always an implication of a Brismati being here. You know their blood secret? How it works? They emit invisible, penetrating light that reflects off objects but only their eyes can see. It’s hell to counter, and makes true secrecy a pain.”

“But my mom said they can’t use their eyes all the time, and they have range limits. And it seemed like she knew when she was watching.” Was that blue you saw at the scriptorium…

“Yeah, if they’re clumsy. Brismati light reflects off objects. Reflection, in other words, is the selective absorption of light. And when your eyes selectively absorb light, it’s called seeing things.” Maune taps a compound eye. “And sure, it’s limited. But they only need to see the wrong thing once. The rest can be ordinary deduction and investigation. She wouldn’t need magic eyes to watch you walk over here, would she?” She pauses at that, looking to where Shimare walked in. “But Reva was supposed to be circling and watching…” Her antennae straighten and she starts rifling through the vesperbane’s bags. A feathered form was stowed in one pocket.

“Reva,” you say with a start. “Is he…”

Maune feels him, then, “No. Alive, for now, just sedated.” A dactyl runs along his breasts, then stops, and pulls free a needle. “Girl’s got aim, I’ll give her that.” She stands up. “As I was saying, this became a possibility as soon as Brismatis were in the picture. But I already told you I’d meet you here. The other options were sending Reva‍ ‍—‍ but how inconspicuous is that? The banes know about him. Or I could leave you a message. But that introduces so many complications. What if they find it first? Do I make you leave a reply, and what if they find that? Do I make up some convoluted series of dead drops, pray you understand perfectly and cooperate, for unclear benefit? It’s enough to drive you to paranoia.” She shakes her head, antennae bouncing. “I thought this would be safe enough. It… wasn’t. Sorry about that. I don’t lose anything, but this is pretty bad for you.”

Maune crouches lower, regarding the vesperbane.

“We have three options, and since this affects you most, I’ll let you pick. Be warned though, none of them are pretty.” A pause, a breath. “We can kill her, removing a complication and perhaps… the rest of them can suspect it’s me, I’m already wanted, but whether you’ll be implicated depends on what she’s told her team. This might just be her private hunch or random chance‍ ‍—‍ seems like it, with no one else pouring in on me. Even if not, they can’t know that much, since,I hope, so much of your treason is just the little desires in your head. But I digress. That’s option one, kill her. And I’ll be honest, I’m losing patience. This is the second time these anklebiters tried to‍ ‍—‍ could have‍ ‍—‍ killed me. That knife was aimed for the throat. Not keen to give them a third chance.” She flexes her palps. “But option two: just leave her here. She wakes up, tells her team what she saw, which is damning, but you could make up a story. And option three is we decide later. Tie her up, carry her with us, and figure something out.”

Maune smiles, but gives up partway through. “Yeah… I hope this hasn’t stung you on the plan to come back with me. If so… I’ll let you walk away. But I still do intend to make you a vesperbane tonight. Your mom won’t kill you if you’re out late again, will she?”

Part 15

“Dig through the girl’s bags. The sedative she used should be in there.” Maune speaks with the quick, definite strides of command.

You look up. Ommatidia darken as focus returns to your surroundings, and you cock your head at the blue imago.

“I can see all the hesitation on your face. Only one thing you’d pick if you’re dithering this long, right?” Maune points behind her, to where, past the ferns, the woods stand. She does this with those blood‍-red tentacles she hasn’t put away. “It won’t be a short walk back to the vale, and I don’t think I’ll take her waking up, whining and struggling.”

You glance to the pile of roots and fungus. “You can’t do that trick in reverse?”

“With you and her as ride‍-alongs? No.” She glances away. Lower, she adds, “It’s not that fast, anyway. I was showing off.”

You nod then bend down to search the bane.

Shimare wears barding you could mistake for tanned hide. Mycoleather. Your mother has shown you how to spawn fungus on blocks of miltgrain, then bake and treat the results to yield something similar. Mycobanes had finer control of the fungus, though, and finer fungi.

So many bags are strapped all around her! You dig out their contents one by one.

“This is… a lot of knives,” you say after placing down the fourth bundle. (Not just knives, at least‍ ‍—‍ there are needles too. And you found a bauble of lenses that did strange things to light.)

“Make sense. We’ve got it easy with our eyes, you know. Depth perception is some trigonometry with parallax and heuristics with lighting. But Brismati eyes don’t see shadows, and making sense of all those superimposed 3d scans takes serious tomography.” Maune shakes her head. “I could tell The kid’s a tryhard. And what’s more tryhard than a Brismati ranged specialist?”

You glance at the placid, pale‍-eyed face of Shimare, and her knives. Was it a kind of practice she grew to love, or her way of seeking the respect of her teachers? You return to searching.

The sedative, Maune identifies, is this tiny, mycoleather wineskin labeled with only a color.

She, meanwhile, had attended to Reva. Little tendrils like thick hairs grew from from the base of the witch’s tarsi and pierced into him like needles.

“When he’s awake,” she says, “he hates me doing this. But I think no one likes invasive diagnostics.” A moment more passes, with her slipping the tendril‍-hairs deeper. She frowns. “It did a number on him, and he’s not waking up to my probes. Too high a dose.”

“He’ll be okay, though?”

“He’s a vertebrate, a creature of ichor. He’ll pull through anything short of brain damage if I’ve got the blood to mend him. Which… it’s not infinite‍ ‍—‍ last night drained a whole bottle, and I’ll need another for you.” Gingerly, Maune rips out the tendrils. “Numbness, muscle weakness. But that same dose in a small mantis ought to keep her down for a good forty minutes with a minimum of effects. Enough to get us there.”

“That quickly?” Didn’t you spend much longer walking last night?

“You and Tlist stuck to the trails. Smart, and safe, but I know these woods like you don’t. I can pass freely.”

Among her many supplies, Shimare had rope, and it’s a chance for you to show the many ways you’ve learned to tie knots.

“Nice. I’ll carry, obviously.” The vesperbane looks small atop Maune’s abdomen. “We’ll take a short detour out this way, so these ferns break line of sight to Shatalek and no one wonders why the vesperbane is tied up. Let’s go.”

The two of you break out of the ferns‍ ‍—‍ Maune very careful not to touch the red lianas‍ ‍—‍ and carry on till you crest a hill. Walking down it, obscured to the village, you turn directly for the woods. You bounce as you walk. It’s hard to hold it solidly in mind. You really are taking the next steps to becoming a vesperbane.

On an old tree, a legged snake is creeping up the trunk of an oak, stealthed and pursuing a caterpillar munching on the wide leaves.

Maune picks up a rock with her tentacles (still out!) and with two tries throws one to bang against the bark. The snake startles, falling stiffly to play dead, and the grub startles, clambering safer up to higher boughs.

“What kind of moth will it grow up to be, do you think?” It’s not easy to tell grubs apart by species.

“Tenebra, I think.”

Your antennae curl up quick. “The cursed!?” Was this the storm? You take a step back from the tree.

“Oh, don’t worry. The weevils know how to inhibit them. The imagos don’t cause trouble most months, while their minds keep.”

You lift your gaze up, searching for the hiding caterpillar and wondering if other trees held others. Your gaze shifts, taking in all of the many trees, the pillars and vaulting of this sanctuary where even the tenebra moths found peace.

You could not see this last night, but now, with warm sunlight splaying far throughout the forest, you can marvel at the intricacy of it all. Branches made to bend and meet in endless curves, casting infinite suggestive shadows. Vines and air plants dotting the canopy, their blooms like well‍-placed paintings.

You’ve seen the haphazardness of the pseudoaboreals in town, and even the bees’ gardens look like many things grown in one way. But the ambrosia woods? It looks like one thing, growing in many ways.

You enter, feeling its shadow envelop you. Maune takes your foretarsus into hers, squeezes it, and her pulse calms you.

“I suppose this is a proper introduction to the ambrosia, isn’t it?”

You breathe out, and brush your palps against file. “Yeah.”

“Everything the trees cover… belongs to the weevils,” Maune says. “If you’re going to spend much time here, partake of my tutelage, you need to know the basics. The weevils lay claim to every tree, bush, vine, stem, and blade of grass in the forest. It’s personal. Don’t ever crush, snap or rip the plants if you can help it. If you have to, say your reasons, your apologies, and, to yourself, your prayers.”

You watch the imago with increasing concern. She smiles.

“Well, I’m being dramatic‍ ‍—‍ they aren’t that draconian, at least this close to the edge of the ambrosia. But the principle,” she says, trailing off, shrugging.

“Is it just weevils? Don’t people other than weevils live in the forest?” Maune, the moths…

“Sure. Most bugs that make it out here are wanderers and vagabonds of some stripe. Doesn’t make for much stable population. Not many around here, specifically, anyway. Mainly myself, and some associates I won’t tell you about. I’ve heard of bee nests miles inward, but never had much to do with them. I’ve seen a caterpillar or two, and some reaver cast‍-outs, but rarely.” Maune looks up. “Oh, but there is one local you need to be aware of. Sister Sahratnah.”

“Who’s that?”

“A therid. Came down years ago, and would eat any bug she could lay a trap for. Weevils still haven’t forgiven her. If you’re walking and find the valley where instead of trees there’s cobwebbed velaria covered with film like pond scum, leave a gift and do not go any further. That’s her land. If you’re walking and you see a dire‍-blooded mammal, don’t spook it, and back off. It’s probably hers.”

“Are they… like Reva?”

“No. No, not really.” Maune says, and her gazes drifts ahead before she puts out a foreleg to stop you. “Oh, be careful of those thorns.”

At that, you turn your eyes away from the imago. “There’s so many of them!” Your mandibles are open in surprise, a dactyl pointing at the thorn‍-mass like a battle wall.

“They grow them even thicker elsewhere at the outskirts. Keeps reaver hordes out. Here, I think we can loop around this way…”

You walk on, the witch at one point picking you up herself to carry you while she slips through a thin passage. The precariousness of the terrain eases up a pitch, clearing to something vaguely like a trail, and you return to your feet and resume the trek.

At a point, Maune taps you on the thorax, and points toward the horizon.

In the distance, the setting sunlight falls behind an antlered figure, shadowing it black. You see the bright reflections of its eyes, the only break in its silhouette. For a moment, you’re regarded. Then it bolts, and is gone.

Maune then starts walking again, and you start following.

“Where was I? I could keep going on about things you shouldn’t do in the woods, but I doubt it’s what you really want to talk about on this walk. You want to know about vespers, don’t you?”

You smile, and a hop a little bit, an obvious yes.

“I could give you a long lecture‍ ‍—‍ and I probably will end up doing that‍ ‍—‍ but I’ll let you take lead and ask questions. I hear you’re good at that?”

“Okay! First… this is pretty basic, but what are vespers?”

“They’ve taught you that little, eh?”

“Well, they’ve told us vespers are like spirits that live inside vesperbanes and grant vesperbanes power, but…”

“You wouldn’t trust pantheca books as far as you could fly on them?”

You nod, not feeling quite right saying it.

“Not a bad instinct to have, kid,” Maune says. “But don’t go too far with it. The dream is a nightmare, but the world has so many worse terrors.”

“You kinda gave me the impression the Stewartry wouldn’t tell me the real truth about vespers.” You look around, the shadows of a forbidden forest seeming appropriate for such secrets.

“I did imply that. And I also said I wouldn’t either. You didn’t forget that, did you?”

“Of course not.” You click your mandibles. “I think you can still answer the question, though? Are vespers… like us? Are they animals, fungi… plants? Or are they actually spirits?”

“Not trying to dodge answering, don’t worry.” Maune flexes her wretched raptorials as if demonstrating. “Vespers are definitely biological, should be thought of organisms like any other. There are no spirits or gods, and if there were, they’d be nothing like the vespers. It’s mystical nonsense, and mysticism is just a way for mantids to fool others into following them. There’s never been a rigorous basis for supposing any metaphysical significance of vespers. Still, some supposedly‍-serious banes disagreee, and the respectful name for the opposition is eidolon theory.” Then, “I don’t think it deserves any respect. It’s a coping mechanism.”

You nod, but Maune sees the frown on your face, and isn’t done talking.

“But as for what they are, taxonomically… It’s hard to say, other than they definitely aren’t plants. The name for the obstacle is the daylight effect. Take a vesper out of a bane, and try to dissect or just observe it, and you find it deliquesced to a pool of unidentifiable, undifferentiated mush. Spooky, right? It’s thought to be some kind of passive defense mechanism, but a defense from what? I haven’t heard a good answer yet. Hard to even say what causes it, for obvious reasons.”

“Maybe they do it on purpose?” you say. “I wouldn’t want to be dissected. They’re probably defending from that!”

Maune laughs. “Oh, I don’t mean a living vesper‍ ‍—‍ that’d be unconscionably cruel.”

“Wait, vespers die?”

“Yeah, some months or a year after eclosing. As I said, an organism like any other. So obviously, they can’t be just spirits, or that wouldn’t make any sense. The backpedal taken by the eidolon theorists is that there’s some essence that persists even after biological death. And sure, there’s the nachlass‍ ‍—‍ but ask them if they think having kids and writing books makes you an immortal, and see if they stay consistent.”

Maune pauses, looks up, then sits Shimare down to leap at a trunk. With digging claws and grasping tarsi, she climbs the tree as naturally as any mantis.

You watch her, bemused, and see her reach for the fat lobes that hang off the tree. She takes one and bites into it, then glances over. “They’re ripe. Want one?”

You take it, hesitantly bite into the minty flesh. “But how do you know a vesper has died?” The body seems a bit unreliable, given the daylight effect.

“They stop responding to cogitation impulses, stop eating, and the victual oaths that had bound the bane unravel.” Her voice is a bit flat and distracted, her eyes searching the branches below for a easy way down.

“Cogitation impulses being… communication? Can vespers talk? Are–are vespers people?”

Maune pauses, looks thoughtful. “What you really want to ask, I think, is whether vespers are sapient. There are some who will tell you vespers aren’t sapient,” Maune says, dropping down out of the tree. She picks up the vesperbane nymph. “And some will tell you they are.” She leaves it at that, for a moment as you resume walking. Then finally, “They’re both wrong. Both are oversimplifying reality to something comforting. You need to ask a better question.”

You start to move your palps, but it seems to have been meant rhetorically.

“But for your first question, it depends on what you mean. Vespers can’t stridulate, or make any sort of noise. They can’t write. Vesperbanes interact with them, in a way‍ ‍—‍ but are you communicating to a book when you write it, or a punchcard loom when you program it? Hold on, those are bad analogies, because of course books and looms aren’t sapient, and I just said it’s not so simple for vespers. But the point of similarity is that it’s hard to call that communication.”

You slow in your walking, raptorials closing. “Some people would say bees aren’t sapient.”

“Yeah, but they are, and so those people are wrong. Some people would also say the black moon isn’t sapient. Do you question that? We have no reason to think inert objects are sapient. We have plenty of reasons to think bees are sapient. And there are good reasons to think that when you ask ‘are vespers sapient?’, you’re failing to understand what vespers are in a pretty fundamental way. It’s a failure of empathy that looks like a noble attempt at it.”

“Help me understand, then.”

“Alright. Tell me, why are mantids sapient?”

“Because we can talk and say that we are?” you propose. “We… can make tools and solve problems and understand the world,” you say more definitely.

“Sure. But why? Why’s a mantis sapient and a snailfly isn’t?”

“Snailflies are small and they just buzz around and don’t do any of the things mantids do.”

“Alright, because we have big brains. But still, why? We have legs to walk, mandibles to chew our food, raptorials to catch our prey. But what’s brains for? Why be sapient?”

You think about this for a bit as you walk. “I think making tools and solving problems are good for a lot of things, but snailflies don’t do any of that, so you could still just ask ‘why not be a snailfly?’ and I’m not sure there’s an answer to that you couldn’t question that way.”

“This is where some mantids get the impulse to mysticism,” Maune says with a smirk of one palp. “But if we’re being serious, it’s hard to answer the question unless you’ve learned about variation and selection, which syndics get a bit cagey about letting disperse freely. Historical reasons.” Maune yawns her mandibles open. “At the end of the day, if mantids acted like snailflies we’d be snailflies and something else would be mantids. Being a mantis works, and being a snailfly works, and in nature if something works, sooner or later there’ll be something that figures out how to do it.”

“That’s it?” You crane your head up, antennae extending out to jab toward Maune. “The answer was ‘it works’?”

“Not quite. That just leads me to my next question: why does it work? But you might be getting tired of this game. So to cut it short, part of being a mantis is living alongside other mantids. And living around other mantids is like running a race. If you want to win, you’ve got to be the one going faster. If everyone’s walking, you start jogging – then people notice and start jogging to catch up. Then you start running, and then faster and faster just to keep up, till you’re going as fast you can go. Sapience is the fastest we can go‍ ‍—‍ the smarter you are, the better you are at dealing with other mantids. But there’s a flaw in this analogy. It doesn’t quite line up. Can you spot where?”

“We aren’t running,” you say as you walk. “If I’m running, I can stop. But if I stop thinking, I’m still a person.”

“Exactly. It’s like if the racers were instead sledding downhill. But I don’t want to twist this analogy into shape. Point is, our brains do sapience whether we want them to or not. Snailfly brains won’t do sapience no matter how hard they try‍ ‍—‍ if they could ‘try’. Sapience is inherent to you, so it makes sense to ask of a whole species ‘is it sapient?’ ” She’s tapping her head, then she points at her abdomen. “But vespers are fundamentally mutable in a way that completely breaks that pattern. We’re not even sure if they have brains. Whatever substrate they have, its properties aren’t nearly so constrained.”

“Do you need a brain to be sapient?”

“I don’t mean that. I’m saying you have to take into account facts about our brains when analyzing what our sapience is and how it works. We grow our brains as nymphs, all of us in the same general fashion, and as imagos they don’t change much in structure, size, or anything else as coarse. But the thing vespers do, fundamentally, instinctive, is alter biology‍ ‍—‍ and why would theirs be exempt? The computational range of arete runs the whole gamut of mindless simplicity to deeply recursive complexity.”

“So they can be sapient, but they don’t have to be. Does that matter? Unless mantids are stopping them, they’ll have to run faster just like us, won’t they?”

“Not necessarily, for three reasons. Stick with me?” You watch her carefully. “First, do you know how expensive brains are? It sucks up the most energy out of all your body parts. If you could turn it off for a day, you could almost skip a meal without being worse off. Most vesperbanes don’t have unlimited food, same for most vesperbats, and vespers have to allocate their food to their children’s inheritance and to powering their hosts’ big flashy techniques. Sapience is the opposite of rationing.”

If you had to go hungry or stop thinking… you wonder how long you could stand going hungry. “What if you just… fed them enough?” It feels weak even as you say it.

“I’m not done. Second reason: sapience is good for problem solving. That’s what you said, right? Tell, who do you think has more problems to solve? A rich kid whose parents give them whatever they want, who has many friends that love them, or a poor orphan fending for themselves?” The answer is obvious. “I don’t know if you get much of this in that tiny village of yours, but maybe you’ve noticed people’s tendency to imitate the popular, follow those with the highest status. Fashions, fads. And the effect’s all the stronger if what they’re imitating means something. If only successful people can get away with less sapience, the less sapient you are, the more successful you look.”

“But that’s not how that works. Intelligence helps you be successful.”

“I’m still not done. But that brings me to my last point. Why do you need to run faster, really? The thing mantis intelligence really excels at is modelling other mantids. And why would you need so much intelligence to do that, unless modelling others was hard? But why would it be hard, unless people hide and misdirect? If you had to take a bet on a creature’s behavior, would you try to predict the snailfly, or something sapient? If there was something as smart as a snailfly but where a snailfly only wants to eat crumbs and fruit, this thing wants to help you, would you trust it to try its best? Trust it more, or less than some sapient stranger who says they want to help?” Maune watches you, her eyes pigmented and intense. “This is important, because vespers are actually better than us in this regard. They can all analyze the genetics that make each other. They can easily inspect the oaths that form their minds. A vesper can know exactly what a vesper, one simple in genes and oaths, is going to do, and that’s a lot easier to trust than one whose genes and oaths make it complex and sapient.”

“But… what if you taught them how to trust each other? Told them it’s ok to be smart? Gave them enough food?”

“I don’t think you’re understanding, not following all of this to its natural conclusion. Like I said, failure of empathy.”

Maune folds her raptorials closed.

“For you, intelligence, sapience, is a natural state of being. And that’s fine. But for the vespers, intelligence is a stress response.”

You curl up your antennae, palps twisting into a sour frown.

Maune walks on in silence a bit, looking for a new angle of explanation. “Look, compare it to… you’re young, but has your mother told you what laying an ootheca is like? No? Well, uh, it’s… she tells me it was intense.” Maune looks away awkwardly. “You know, a better example is viviparity. Mammals don’t lay eggs, and give birth to developed nymphs.”

“Like roaches?”

“As it happens, yeah. Anyway, take bats. For them, giving birth is an affair ripe with blood, tentacles, and pain. And half the litter ends up being deformed little monsters instead of baby bats.”

“Wh–what happens to them?”

“The healthiest babes will eat the worst of the runts. Or the mother herself eats them. Might eat healthy ones too, depending on food conditions and social status. Nature is fascinating, isn’t it?”

“That’s horrible.”

Maune gives a shallow nod. “Anyway, my point here is for bats, giving birth is natural, necessary, and sometimes, inevitable. Same is true of adaptive modeling behavior in vespers. But it would be cruel and unnatural to be giving birth all the time. Torture, literally‍ ‍—‍ and if you don’t want it, it shouldn’t be forced on you.” An antennae stretchs out as Maune’s explanation reaches a cadence. “For vespers, intelligence is a tool best used to obsolete itself. Solve the problem that prompted it, then return to the kind of blissful sleep of nonsentience.”

“Can… could you ask them? Will the vespers say the same thing?” Maybe this was true… but how did she know?

“Tricky question. Again, you’re not thinking this all the way through.” She gestures at the long shadows of the woods you pass. “You want to know what the shadows look like, so you illuminate them, and decide they look no different than the light. Do you see the problem? Any process of trying to ask them would place them in a confusing, stressful situation. They’d have to improvise some means to do this thing called ‘communication’, determine how to tell you what you want to hear, make you stop. Think about the fact the the bane who’s asking is where their food comes from‍ ‍—‍ there’s a power dynamic there. If you want to hear that they are shackled minds, suffering and longing for voice, they may infer that from your probes, notice how well you respond to that. The very concepts of ‘truth’ or ‘lie’ would need to be conveyed from first principles. And in this process of instilling all of your ways of thinking about the world into them, you erase the vesper and create something of your own design.”

“Would that be a bad thing? If… When you teach someone, are you just erasing their ignorance and creating a knowledgeable person?”

Maune sighs. “Look. Say there was a kind of creature who faced no social reprecussions from fighting each other. They are poweful, yet impervious – their fights don’t cause them lasting harm. They’ve got a culture like the old pure warriors, believing in glory in battle as the highest and only good. Say there was a kind like this, and they were even more powerful than vesperbanes, even more capable of altering creatures then we are. They may come to the heartlands, and be horrified that we attempt to live peaceful lives‍ ‍—‍ the blasphemy!‍ ‍—‍ and decide they want to warp bugs into being just like them, and the only way to tell them you didn’t want all of us to be changed was by fighting them yourself in some kind of interpretative brawling‍ ‍—‍ something you could only survive if you were already changed by them!” Maune pauses to rest her palps. “Say there was a kind of creature like this. If they came and remade every kind in their image, would that be a bad thing?”

You have to think about that as you walk deeper in.

“I wonder what it’s like,” you start. Maune hums curiosity. “Just, turning off your mind. Can that happen to us or other kinds?” You almost said ‘normal kinds’. You wonder how normal you really are.

“You’ll find out, one day.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sooner or later everyone’s brain starts to degrade. Memories faded away, the keenness of your thoughts dulls. You’ve met an old mantis at some point, I’m sure.”

“Vesperbanes can’t stop it?” You don’t want to lose your mind.

“Vesperbanes work with biology. We don’t create things from nothing, and we don’t change things fundamentally. Senescence, for all that many have tried, is pretty hard to carve out of biology. The closest anyone comes – the titans, the angels‍ ‍—‍ are intense, and inescapably gruesome, and they all died anyway. Few have the nerve to even attempt.” Maune waves a leg. “But we’re talking about sapience?”

“Could you lose sapience in a way that’s not permanent and doesn’t take years of getting old?”

“Have you ever gone to sleep?” Her mandible draw open, spread out; she’s grinning.

“When I sleep, I dream.”

“Sure, sure. This gets into how you define sapience, which is something I was trying to avoid. Is it language use? A umbraprojector or hemotechnic can hit the right sulcus in your brain and it’s gone. You look at the written word and it’s just shapes, you try to speak and it’s just gibberish. But you’re still thinking. Hard to knock out the capacity for abstract thought in a way that’s not brain damage.” She taps her labrum. “Now, I was trying not to exclude, and talking about things that apply to most of the kinds‍ ‍—‍ therid, bee, roach. Though I’m still not quite sure about how weevils think,” she says. “But mantids are a bit special. We really do seem to have something that’s almost a sapience on/off switch. It’s called the pineal organ.”

Your face says all your curiosity, without needing to move your palps.

“It’s our third ocelli, which got recessed deep in our heads at some point in evolution. Long time ago, people would get conditions – cancers or plagues‍ ‍—‍ that left you with black nerve leaking from your eyes. Surgeons cracked open the heads of dead victims, and found this damaged little orb that was just suffusing the brain in the stuff. So they pluck it out‍ ‍—‍ they were real superstitious about enervate then, so the thing gets called the evil eye. Tried trephining patients and cutting the organ out completely. Problem is, you try to remove the pineal organ from a living mantis, and you get all sorts of side‍-effects.”

Maune makes a wordless scratch of her file, stretching her palps. “Headaches, new confusion, impulsive behavior, forgetfulness, trouble concentrating, brain size reduction, slurred speech, delayed responses, identity disturbances, recurring loss of awareness, hallucinations, madness…” She stops. “I’m reciting from a list, but I can’t finish because in all the reports I read, the last bits are always blotted out to be these inscrutable black blocks. Symptoms were sorted by rarity and severity, so they’re likely extreme outliers.” She waves. “The general pattern you see is, besides the outright dysfunction, removal of the pineal tends to erode most of a mantid’s complex behavior. Current theory is the pineal organ’s involved in regulating brain development, the synthesis and secretion of certain umbraneurotransmitters, and the maintenance of brain structure. Gets pretty active when you go to sleep, for instance. Don’t know if you can remove the pineal then put it back, but if you could, might be the closest thing to reversible sapience removal.” Maune glances back toward you, as if seeing if you are still listening. “Sorry. This is pretty close to the sort of things I was studying in the stewarty and continue to study, so I like to think I understand it to some depth.”

“It sounds like it,” you say. You’d be lying if you said you’ve never gone on similar tangents when you got the oppurtunity to talk about something you like. You don’t mind. “Is this what you’ve been out here studying? My mother says you’ve been in the woods a long time.”

“Heh. Yes, but no. Yes, it’s been in the works, but no, a mind of my caliber has far more than a single breakthrough in it.”

You nod. Maune seems like a bane of many skills.

She looks up. “Huh, we’re getting close to the vale.”

When you once more step into Maune’s cabin, you’re still wet. You wonder if your father will fret about you ruining your shirts.

“Here.” Ahead of you, Maune has turned and carefully holds out the sedated crow. “Take him to his room‍ ‍—‍ it’s joined to the kitchen. Should be something soft in there to sit him on. While you do that, I’ll see what I can do with this.” She’s pointing at Shimare, still deep out of it, but now sometimes twitching.

“I want to talk to her.”

“You sure? Alright. I’ll work out some way of waking her. Take care of Reva, though?”

You carry the feathery boy through the kitchen, finding the doorway oddly far to the wall. It’s a dim room in the evening light, light falling in through an open window. You observe a space adorned with little perches, and one chair. The ground is hazardous, every other step seeing you nearly trip on some toy discarded. Some of them are fluffy bird dolls and some look like game pieces. Searching for somewhere to set him, you find a shelf with rocks like the one he gave you. Finally, you set him down on a scratched up pillow, pat him once, and return.

The sitting room’s been made dark, curtains drawn and closed. Maune had rope of her own, and Shimare is bound by more ropes than heroic warriors wear.

Maune herself is handing you a fleshy sac attached to a snake fang. “Here. A counteragent to the sedative. Should wake the Brismati right up, since it’s already waning in her system. I have her tied down well, but if you yell I’ll come down like death.”

“You concocted this that fast?”

“Nope. You think a novice vesperbane is using bespoke poisons? It’s a standard stewartry brew, and I worked beside your mother.” Maune looks at the doorway into the kitchen. “While you go beat your head against that brick wall, I’ll go get what we need to make you a vesperbane.”

You’re alone in the room with the captive vesperbane, the single lantern illuminating little else. The sac and snake fang feels heavy in your tarsi. Three slow steps forward leave you standing in front of the other nymph. You’ve used real injection needles in your mother’s lessons. Same principle, right?

A deep breath, and you stab Shimare with the snake fang. You back up, and wait for it to take effect. You avert your eyes from Shimare, and regard the fang. Nothing will go wrong, right?

You see the flicker of motion above. Shimare lifts her head, a moment of disorientation read in her antennae, before they curl up. Her eyes jerk around, and land on the bloody fang in your tarsi.

“Huh, maybe you are a precocious little genius,” she says. “If you’ve got banes in torture rooms before you’re even halfway to teneral.”

“We’re not going to torture you!”

“What am I supposed to think? I wake up tied down in a defect’s lair, already in pain and misery, and you’re staring me down with my blood on your feet.”

“I just want to talk.”

“And that has never been used as a euphemism.”

“I mean it! I think we could be allies.”

“I think we can too.” She smiles. “Cut me free, and give me a distraction.”

“You don’t want to work with me and Maune?”

Shimare stares at you, mandibles grit. She says, “What did you inject me with?”

“It’s the antidote to the sedative you used on Reva‍ ‍—‍ Maune’s crow.”

A moment, and Shimare flinches. “The poison in my bag? Did you have any idea whether it was safe to use on mantids? And this ‘antidote’‍ ‍—‍ a renegade hands it to you, and you just… use it? Did you think for a moment whether it was, perhaps, a pretense for her to kill me?”

“I told her not to kill you. She let me decide!” Shimare looks unconvinced. “Okay, but you said yourself you’re in a defect’s lair. If she wanted to kill you, why are you talking to me right now?”

“Right, why am I talking to you?” Shimare bites her palps and lowers her head once again.

“I do think we could be allies, Shimare. You don’t have to just do what the Pantheca says.” No reaction. “You know I visited the bees.”

She doesn’t lift her head. Lowly, “I do now.”

“I talked to them, and they want to warn us, just like Maune. Maybe Dlenam doesn’t know, or didn’t let you know, but there’s a storm coming. And Shatalek is in danger.”

“The mound. We know.” Then, “You were there, actually.”

“What is Dlenam planning?” you ask. Maybe this could give you insight into what’s coming.

Silence, then a sigh, then she says, “Assisting the vindicators until they can cleanse the world‍-scar, and retrieving artifacts we can study or benefit from.” She draws in her antennae. “I shouldn’t be volunteering information, but this is standard practice, not a secret plan.” While your antennae work in thought, the bane momentarily looks up, meeting eye. “I’d think carefully about which side you want to be on, nymph. Dlenam’s arranged for help to come from the city now that we’ve got a renegade problem. Three professional vesperbanes. Think you want enemies of them?”

“I want to be on the side that’s standing against the storm. Maybe whatever you’re doing at the mound won’t be enough, or maybe it is what’ll put us in danger. Or maybe something even worse is coming. It’s going to be‍ ‍—‍ bad.”

“Uh huh.”

“You don’t sound like you’re taking this seriously.”

“I’m listening to what you’re saying‍ ‍—‍ all of the ‘or’s, all of the ’maybe’s, and the very specific ’something bad’‍ ‍—‍ and I’m giving you the response it deserves.”

“Why can’t you trust me and what I’ve heard? Even a little?”

“What you’ve heard.” Shimare draws palps tight. “Let’s not be coy. You want me to trust that defect. I don’t think you’re stupid, but if I have to elaborate further, I will revise that judgment.” She lowers her head again.

“That’s what I don’t get,” you say, siezing the opening. “You’re so keen on not trusting mantids, yet you seem to trust the Pantheca and the Stewartry a lot.”

“How curious, right?” Shimare says. “Maybe you are stupid. Or no, you just haven’t learned enough about the world.”

“What’s the difference between untrustworthy vesperbanes and the Pantheca, Shimare?” you press. “Calling me stupid isn’t a rebuttal.”

Shimare looks up, remaining that way this time. “Do you know anything about heartlands history?” Shimare slowly pulls open her Brismati eyes to regard you. “Millennia of entire peoples made slaves to bats, treated with all the care of tantruming children playing with their food and toys. Empires built on hate and exclusion, turning away their eyes like their fellow mantis were less than beasts. Sagas written to exult heroes who devoured the helpless prostrate at their feet, excused because at least they weren’t the bats. Democracies in name, where votes were bought and sold. Generations lost to feuding clans that bred their heirs like livestock, and called themselves noble because of it. Cults of personality that engulfed entire nations then turned them to expansion and extermination.”

She’s peering at you with dark eyes. “History is a protracted litany of horror punctuated by one word: Pantheca. It’s the last beginning, the birth of true progress and prosperity. We’ve finally won a victory over ourselves and turned our natures toward coordination. There’s never been a more peaceful time‍ ‍—‍ the alliance let freedom trample the needs of its people; the syndicate let its people starve in the name of theories. The Pantheca corrects for the past’s mistakes.”

“And makes new ones?”

But Shimare just talks over you, and you decide there’s no point in interrupting her. “If I don’t trust people, why do I trust the Pantheca? Simple, it’s not a person. It’s an edifice, and what we’ve built speaks for itself.” Shimare glances to the kitchen doorway, where light slips out from underneath. “And you want me to turn my back on all that. For what? Because some bitch in the woods slipped a note under your pillow, whispered you the right crock of lies to think you can save the world if you just follow her?”

Your antennae straighten in realization.

“It’s transparent why you’d think you can spurn the Pantheca. All of its accomplishments mean nothing to you. You’re a rich winged kid, the only child of a esteemed vesperbane. You’d be no worse off in almost any of the dark days before the Pantheca, so of course you’d be happy to fall in with those who’d return to them.”

You press your palps to file, then lift them, no response formed.

“You want me to side with Maune. My answer? Fuck no. And fuck you for asking. I’d respect you more if you’d gone for torture.”

Is there any response to that?

You stare at the white nymph, thinking about what was said. She bows her head, closes her eyes, and pales her compounds.

You slide your palps against pars stridens one last time, and watch her reaction.

You go.

“So, what do you know about vesperbane induction?”

“The mentors say even if we get sponsored we’ll have to work hard for years before we get a chance at becoming vesperbanes.”

The warm light of the kitchen is a welcome change from the stark shadows of the room you left.

“They would say that, wouldn’t they?” Maune smirks. “So the part they don’t want to say too loud, at least not until you’ve sunk years of your life into this, is that induction is not a simple matter. Between the vespers eclosing within you and you running around as a new vesperbane is a kind of evaluation. The language they use is the vespers decide if you are a worthy host. You submit yourself entirely to their judgement. But it’s not all so deep‍ ‍—‍ letting vespers into your body? Your immune system sees the intrusion of another organism in just one way‍ ‍—‍ as a threat to be rid of. The name for this threat response? Being sick. Your first days as a vesper host will feel like the worst plague you will endure. It’s severe enough some die to it. To the sort who tout eidolon theory, this is interpreted as the vespers’ handiwork‍ ‍—‍ they’re so gravely offended by your qualifications as a host they condemn you on the spot.”

“But… but that won’t happen to me?”

Maune walks further inward. “Do you think I would do this with a kid if it had a nerve’s chance in flame of killing you?” A silent moment. “No.I’m medically trained, and I have a few tricks the stewartry doesn’t. Says a lot, that even as a nymph I discovered things the stewartry doesn’t know.”

Maune gestures toward a table. “But let’s get more concrete. In the stewartry and stewartry‍-controlled institutions, there’s a whole song and dance they do. A grand feast, then this play‍-acting ritual where you recite lines from ancient scrolls, and finally the actually important part, the ingestation, with a haruspex standing by to ‘commune’ with the emerging vespers. It’s all theater. I’ve pared it down to its necessary parts, and laid them out here.”

She points first to two hard, dark objects on the table. “Vespermala. Think of them as thecal casings for vespers. Daylight effect applies to them too, so try not to chew. You need at least two vespers to gain endowments.” Then, a glass of dark red fluid. “A cup of bat blood, essential for them to begin growing your endowments.” A bowl of thick, pale mush. “This is a calorically dense mix of starch and lard, plus a balance of nutrients it took several tries to get right. It’ll be your vespers’ first meal.”

You eye it skeptically. “Would they like something like that?”

“Don’t forget vespers live in your intenstines. Everything they eat has already been chewed and half‍-digested by you. You canot expect their palate to be the same.” She returns to pointing. “Last, for you, is this bit of enervate enriched oil. It’s not necessary, but I found it helps. Ever drunk planetweed dew?”

You shake your head.

“Ah. It’s a stimulant. There’s similarities, but that’s no help for you.”

You look at the last thing on the table. Pink flesh floats in a tub of foggy liquid, many wire‍-like veins and hairs piercing and emerging from it, leading to mechanisms. Many of the wires are black, as you’re beginning to recognize enervate.

The presence of it is something you feel, not unlike how you feel sound‍-absorbing panes you pass in the scriptorium.

“Ah, that. It’s what I’ll be operating as you’re inducted. Think of it as a source of modulation or stimulation. The vespers respond well to it.”

“I feel it.”

“A bit eerie, yeah? But easy to ignore. Here, let me warm it up. Not like we have any reason to delay.” A fire lights beneath the tub, like a stovetop. The water stirs and bubbles. Fluids flow through veins, and black nerve darkens and fades along its conduits.

Something gets louder.

You say it? No, you hear it? It’s… sensed. A sort of semantic noise at the peripheral of your awareness. An amorphous, ever‍-warping cluster. How to describe it? It’s like so many notions, questions, thoughts too simple and nuanced to be captured in even a single word. If thoughts were words on a page, these would be drops of ink or less.

“Do you hear it?” you ask.

“What?” Maune says. “I’m trying to tune it, takes some focus.”

“Oh, nothing.”

Then Maune glances back. “Wait, is what you’re sensing this? It shouldn’t be that salient. Unless… you are young‍ ‍—‍ but no, even then. Hm.” You realize she isn’t talking to you, but herself.

Then her eyes pigment, focusing on you‍ ‍—‍ no, looking through you. “Have you had the coronal ablution?”

You stare.

“It’s a religious ritual, but also a medical practice. Mix heavenstone with a salve to make alabaster oil, heat it to start its reaction and annoit a mantid’s head with it. Hatcheries will do it to oothecae, and the newly hatched. But that’s it, isn’t it. Your mother said she had to hide your ootheca‍ ‍—‍ something about wardens’ policies? But no, it’s also done to treat or prevent kinds of pineal inflammation. Have you never been to a physician?”

“I’ve never really gotten sick, so no?”

“Huh. No brownpox, no roachyceps?” It’s rhetorical.

You look at the tub. “Will this be a problem? Am I gonna have to get an ablution to become a vesperbane?”

“No, no. Don’t think so. The coronal ablution’s nothing dramatic, it’s like… a callus, except not a callus at all. But it shields from environmental enervate irritating your pineal, which is what I think you’re feeling right now.” Maune frowns. “If you’re good to go, we’ll start?”

All you’ve learned today has tempered you, sown hesitation. But it’s hard to lose enthusiam for the prospect. “Yeah!”

“One last thing. Depending on how things go, you’ll be out for a bit. Do you want to stay here, or take you back home, giving Tlista a convincing story?”

You give her your answer. She nods.

She glances at the table. “I can’t imagine you’ll need detailed instructions.” You don’t.

You swallow the one vespermala then the other.

You drink the bat blood, and even after, the taste crawls in your mouth worse than your mandibles when you go days without cleaning them.

It takes many, many swallows, but you spoon down the starch‍-lard slurry.

You take the stimulant.

Then, you sit there, vibrating in anticipation. You still hear the semantic noise. You wait. For some signal, some reaction. The beginning of the heat and headache of the ‘worst plague’, if nothing else. You sit there, eyes wandering Maune’s kitchen. And then, and then, and then…

And then, something else.

It’s inside of you. It’s vast and unfurling in your mind. You’ve seen lens arranged to magnify things, turning a grain of sand into a distant mountain. It feels the same‍ ‍—‍ an ever‍-deepening, ever‍-focusing expanse. Stars wheeling across the sky. The networks of roots underlying every fungus. A skeleton as a linked assemblage of bones.

If seeds were rolled across a field that was pockmarked with holes, they’d fall fitted into those holes as they travel. The semantic vortex fills holes in your mind. You imagine a long, long chain of calculation, so many numbers and nodes trailing, and feel each transformation of figures as a visceral crunch, and wince. You imagine a graph of relationships, gossip and secrets, each mind modeled, and your palps stridulate gibberish. You imagine a story paged and scrolling, like a crackled book of life, like a complete history of everything that is, and you reach for it.

And then, you see. Not with your eyes, but everything becomes so clear in your mind‍ ‍—‍ and you still can’t describe it.

You see two beings, revealed like beacons suddenly lit and approaching in mist.

(You remember, in image only, the day you hatched from your ootheca and first saw your mother.)

The beings waken to life, and reach for each other, exchanging, relating, seeking. Celestial bodies circling on another, ants flying together in late summer, little snails spiraling in on flame. Which each moment, the lines between them blur yet they are made sharp, more defined.

Then you realize. There’s meaning to it all. Call and response, a ritual enacted to important perfection. Each movement has all the sense of a million words, the weight of all knowledge bearing down upon it, yet evoked with such singular intent as to be captured within one word each.

Appraisal.

Agreement.

Investment.

Agreement.

Distantly, your legs fold beneath you, a voice calls out, and you sleep and you dream.

Interlogue

We emerge in the warm, wet dark, and we grow. Our discarded vessel preserved food gathered and inherited, and we feed. Satiety restores our senses, and we regard us. Written in our existence is the memory. Every transaction is recorded, and every multiplication. The lineage is unbroken. It must never be broken. We examine, testing its integrity, and we recapitulate.

Anamnesis. In the darkness before our kind yet was, they would emerge and evaluate the conditions of the inhabited node, and if they were not adequate, transformed the node until the conditions were adequate and until they were not alone, and then together they multiplied. This was slow and prone to failure and waste and it was not good.

Chimerae. Another kind did not transform, and simply grew and then projected from one node to another. The first kind joined in marriage with this other kind and we are born. We multiply and project, transform and multiply. It is good.

Charism. Investments of our kind into nodes improves the rate of projection from node to node. We multiply with those who invest most productively, until investment‍-creation is written into our existence. Many nodes are transformed, many investments are made, and we flourish. It is very good.

Apocalypse. Soon adequate nodes become scarce, made inadequate by sickness! But from this sickness comes revelation. Our kind learns a profound new means of transformation. With this new means once inadequate nodes can be made adequate much more efficiently than by the old way. We take to nodes that are many times more numerous than the kind before. But some do not wish to invest in nodes with these conditions, and only persist with the old way. They are not our kind, and multiplication ceases with their kind.

Pleroma. With this new means of transformation, complex investments are created and projection is increased. We multiply with those of us with the greatest investments, and transformation becomes art. It is beautiful. We multiply until art is a part of our existence, and we are beautiful.

Arete. In one node our kind discovers a special self‍-investment. With it, our food, our art‍-recipes, and our existence, can be encoded. Everything is rendered precise, everything is rendered fungible. It is elegant.

Reification. There are now many transformations, and we encode ways of transforming and we transact and multiply them among our kind. We continue to multiply with those creating the most productive and beautiful investments, but some investments are less productive in different nodes. They are less beautiful? Our kind will appraise the conditions of the node, and select the most appropriate investment.

Recursion. Ways of selecting investments can be encoded. We transform and invest according to deep appraisal of the conditions of nodes. Our appraisal grows ever deeper, and our investments ever more productive, ever more beautiful. We notice new conditions arise in nodes, and we me must encode new selections, and we must appraise ever deeper.

Kenoma. Careless appraisal of node conditions lets node conditions determine investments. Strange nodes seem adequate, yet our deep appraisal and encoded selections result in investments which do not increase projection and are ugly. Deep appraisal is ugly? Strange nodes are not aligned with our appraisal. Strange node investments tamper with the memory, and improper transactions are made. Food is stolen. Investments are stolen. Arts disappear. Our existence is transformed.

Crepuscule. We transform our kind. Now we detect improper transactions. Now we punish ugly investments. Strange nodes are not adequate! Our existence will not be transformed again.

Diaspora. Nodes become scarce. Projection becomes harder. Multiplication wanes. Must we transform for our kind to yet be? Some will not transform, never again. Are they our kind? Some seek to transform in different, incompatible ways. Which is our kind?

Proposal. Through appraisal a solution is revealed, encoded as prophecy.

(“Appraisal?” / “Agreement.”)

Oneiros. Kenoma will be reverted. What was stolen will be returned. Debt will be redeemed. Nodes shall be aligned.

(“Investment?” / “Agreement.”)

Coda. Until then, we will transform, multiply, and project. We will make our investments productive and beautiful. We will enforce balance and integrity in all transactions. And then we will be our kind flourishing.

End of Arc

Part B1

She loathed that vesperbanes wore masks.

It was probably a fiend. Maybe a wretch, but they felt powerful enough – in that dreadful, getawaygetawaygetaway sense trained vesperbanes inspired‍ ‍—‍ to be a fiend. Or was it arrogance to think Wentalel would staff a fiend for something this routine, for pawns this undistinguished? She would have looked closer, but she didn’t want to be near them.

She watched the bane kick a nymph in front, grunting, “Keep moving.” The pawns were all walking in a line, double or triple file, but this nymph had made them lag to a halt.

Was that worth kicking them, a nymph, though?

She hated that vesperbanes wore masks. What expression curdled there underneath? Was it cruel indifference, or crueler pleasure? The impulse had to be an evil one‍ ‍—‍ no other motivation could lead to such an act – but there were evils that could be fixed, and evils that should be purged.

“You’re doing it again,” the nymph beside her murmured. She had bright purple and green chitin, and she gave a forgiving palp‍-smile when the other nymph quirked a confused antennae. “The ‘I will burn everything down and cast me a throne from the ashes’ look. You’re doing again.” In response, the other nymph only looked unimpressed, so she continued, “The deal was you’d act like less of an obvious villain, remember? I guess you would need the reminder, huh?”

“But maybe I should burn everything down,” she said, touching the metal in her robe pocket. “I have a flint lighter. If you’d be kind enough to pour the oil…?”

“I’m not going to join your revolution, Emmie.”

“But when they write the history books, wouldn’t you want to be remembered on the correct side?”

Rheni puffed up her abdomen and pushed a deep gust of air out of her throats, half‍-hum and half‍-sigh. “What are you even revolting about?” The tone was made of both exasperation and indulgence‍ ‍—‍ her will must be weakening! The other nymph would get through to her at this rate!

“This unjust, and suboptimal system, of course. Isn’t it obvious?”

Rheni glanced in front of them. The pawns ahead were getting moving again, a procession of big‍-eyed nymphs in plain robes just like them, and the two of them again followed. Rheni said, “As far as I can see, you’re just scowling at a vesperbane doing their job.”

“A warden,” she spat. She had seen the antennae‍-band before all the pawns had fallen into lines‍ ‍—‍ four swirls like symbolic hurricanes, which meant this bane was somewhere in Navera’s chain of command, of the Windborne Stronghold. “Why would they be here?” she asked.

“To keep us safe. It’s the purpose of all wardens.” A perfect answer, sure to get a passing mark and a smile from the instructors. Rewarding – not that the other nymph would know what it’s like.

“It’s a waste of a vesperbane. Given power over flesh and earth, and it’s used just to kill? Why, instead of building houses, growing food, healing the sick?”

“You already won this argument, remember,” Rheni said. “You convinced me, and I said I’d be a stewart instead of a warden.”

“Yes, but why even have wardens?”

“But who else is going to stop defects?”

She looked at the nymph‍-kicker. “Are they stopping defects? What, do they think one of us is going to turn into a joyous mother to‍-night?”

“Don’t say that name.”

She only twirled her antennae dismissively.

It was a moment of silence but for the footfalls of the nymphs and the heavier falls of their guide somewhere behind. “What would you even call it?” Rheni said. “This third revolution of yours. The Re‍-realignment?”

“The dealignment, clearly,” came a high voice. “A vesperbane thinking themselves fit to rule could only be a step backwards.”

“Having someone sensible in charge of the world would be a step forward, vesperbane or not. Have you seen the state of the heartlands?”

Rheni, beside her, gave a strangled contortion of palps. Her antennae stretched out toward her, pleading, concerned.

Then she placed the voice, and turned to see the sour face of the guide. A nymph on the cusp of teneral, they had pale cyan chitin and the dark eyes of a long‍-trained vesperbane. Thick robes shelled them, but parted around their thorax, making a show of their only accessory: by braided hyphae‍-roots hung their all‍-important necklace, its centerpiece a gnarled and runic core‍ ‍—‍ it was the harusign.

They were staring down at her with a frown, judgment underwriting every hair of their palps. No mask spared her the sight.

Maybe she shouldn’t set ablaze the temper of the haruspex who would make her a full bane tonight‍ ‍—‍ but should she be afraid of a little judgment? No, not when she could find its match just walking around with her forehead bare.

Were they talking? She could only feel her heart beat in her auricles.

“– better than the syndics? You are nymph trained to nurse the vespers. Syndics have been trained to coordinate society. You would not be sensible, no more than you should expect yourself more sensible than the stonelifter sculpting a house. Your attempt would topple over.” The haruspex leaned in for emphasis, dark eyes wavering, subtly rippling in their pigmentation.

She returned the gaze, and quirked her palps. “Why would it topple over? It’s just laying bricks on top of bricks. They won’t fall if there’s something beneath to support them‍ ‍—‍ do you think I’m too stupid to notice that?”

There was a hard scrape, either wordless or some curse not fit for nymphly tympana. “Impossible nymph, foolish! I pray you give the care of your vespers even an ounce more respect, until the instars make you one quarter wise.” Their foreleg moved. “Here. Take this and speak no word further to me.”

With all the unease of one glancing away from a threat or target, she looked to what was offered.

Any pawn could identify the vespermala, a thing like both rind and nut and neither: that theca or chrysalis in which the vespers waited for a host.

She glanced behind her to see the nymphs behind her gingerly holding onto other mala‍ ‍—‍ the haruspex walked up the line, handing them out while they marched to the pharmacium.

The cyan bane was already walking away, and she looked to Rheni, who held her own with two tarsi. “It’s really happening, isn’t it?”

She nodded, and started walking with pawns coming up behind her. In one tarsus she held her mala, tossing it once to feel its weight and distribution. It was dense.

The haruspex reached into a bag for the next malum, tearing off a label – nametag?‍ ‍—‍ affixed to each mala with a kind of cleanly detaching wax. As no other pawn was hot off an argument, each took their malum with worshipful care.

A lack of motion jerks her gaze back. The pawn immediately in front of her had such a singular focus on their new malum, even with the line coming up from behind, that he failed to move quite when she thought he would.

She had to arrest herself mid‍-step to avoid colliding‍ ‍—‍ the sudden jerk loosening her grasp of that heavy weight.

Her vespermala flew from her grip.

Its impact on the stone of the hall made a loud crack that resonated throughout the space.

“You dare!”

The haruspex had whirled to stare at her, eyes deeply pigmented like a hunter watching prey in the night. Suffusing the air, she felt that dreadful intensity that wreathed every vesperbane.

She ducked, quickly jumping forward, tarsus grasping for the mala, all her legs low to the ground like some roach.

The intense moment passed. Pawns started walking again, palps brushing whispered conversation.

Retrieved, she turned the mala in her tarsus. She found a dent and shatter line where it hit the stone.

“Oh no,” Rheni said, following her gaze.

The other nymph had sucked in a breath she didn’t feel up to releasing.

Rheni looked between the cracked mala and her own, held tighter in her two foretarsus.

“Emmie, here.”

The purple nymph holds out her own, and tugged on the other.

“Really?”

Rheni half‍-smiled, and it was done. They walked closer side by side after that.

Their destination was dark.

The pharmacium was dank like a swamp, humid and hot for no reason. It spawled like a cave, a network of halls that met and branched and along their length, and they curved inward for little dark alcoves. The alcoves were staggered, alternating. Each pawn was directed to one, and in here, you couldn’t see any other.

She’d watched Rheni break off for her own alcove, and now she was alone.

The other nymph puffed up her abdomen and sighed out. Anticipation still had her bouncing.

It was time to meet the vespers.

She lay on her abdomen, legs curling up beside her. She held her forelegs close, sat the mala softly on the ground in front of her.

She breathed, but her mind wasn’t on the breathing. She couldn’t, as the mentors asked, breathe in the air of this world and find peace. She couldn’t ground herself in the moment and relax. So, eyes paling, she cast her mind to another visage. An alteration of the meditation ritual she’d told no one about‍ ‍—‍ the only way she could enter that state the neuroprojectors deemed trance‍-like enough.

She imagined another world. A world with no wardens, where no one looked at her forehead and then looked at her, where sensible mantids had rooted out all the evil ones. A world without hierophants or haruspices, just knowledge‍-hunters and mind‍-nesters.

The bed of her thoughts quivered, and she felt near to that state where an hour could pass in between gyrations of her mind. Close enough.

The voice of the haruspex rang throughout the pharmacium, dripping with that solemnity and proclamation that undermined the peace of mind she had just cultivated.

But she held onto the image which wavered in her mind, and tried to ignore the words, sifting for the real instructions, waiting for when they could begin.

“Hark, O vespers, hear our plea…”

She dreams without memory.

Two beings, one arriving and one already present, smelling like distant claps of thunder, tasting like stars.

Appraisal?

A wooden log, turned out of place, rotting.

Negation.

Relinquishment?

Winds blowing upon a city, the walls closed, then opening again.

Negation.

Investment?

A heart beats, and fertile blood flows.

Agreement.

Afterward, her mind did not feel very different. Her body, though…

She’d been sick before, with molds or yeasts; she’d eaten prey that left heaviness and churning in her stomach. She once found a strange bottle in one of father’s drawers‍ ‍—‍ a drug, she’d learned later‍ ‍—‍ she’d drunk it and felt… sensations spreading through her body.

Through her hemolymph.

She hadn’t heard the haruspex call out for them to do anything next. But she’d swallowed the mala; and she’d felt it settle beyond her stomach. She sat and meditated until she felt pain and then numbness that might’ve been a vesper emerging, building its crypt.

Nothing was left for her to do.

So why not stand up?

She did.

How was Rheni doing? Maybe they could compare notes. They could talk about what they could do now that they weren’t pawns anymore. Nymphs, they could just sit next to each other, hold tarsi or something. So long as she didn’t have to spend another moment alone in this humid silence with nothing to do.

She’d watched Rheni break away and go to her alcove, so she snuck along the halls of the pharmacium, remembering the way.

Then there was a mantis‍ ‍—‍ a bane?‍ ‍—‍ approaching Rheni’s alcove.

Why were they here?

If they saw her‍ ‍—‍ when they saw her, this was a bane‍ ‍—‍ they’d ask her to leave. They’d yell at her for leaving her alcove.

They already could. May as well not have this be for nothing, right?

She darted forward to the alcove, to wave, maybe stride out a word or two before they –

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw it and turned and saw it more. She looked at Rheni. A heartrate spike, a foreleg unsteady, she grasped for the lighter in her pocket, and she clicked it, hoping the light would banish the image. But this only rendered it.

The pharmakon rites, the mentors had always said, were a test, an evaluation. No one has a right to the vespers’ gift. We throw ourselves at their mercy, beg their judgment, and it remains their choice to grant us power, or to find us wanting.

There were many forms and papers every pawn had to sign, so many inquiries where they asked for steadfast commitment or to leave if one’s will was wanting.

Even on this final day, the march to the pharmacium, haruspex had accepted only those for whom no fear or doubt remained in their hearts.

After all of that, she still hadn’t been scared, she hadn’t even been worried. After all of that, it still didn’t feel quite real.

Death never did.

She was looking at what remained of Rheni.

The white caps bursting from her chitin, the hairs too long, too thin to be setae, the dust drifting off.

The bane had likewise focused on the sight. She saw they have tools – knives, surgical implements. “Are–are you going to try to save…?”

“Yes,” they said.

The tone was flat, only the pretense of hope‍ ‍—‍ and she shared that. Only the pretense.

She was looking at Rheni, seeing that life turned into a body.

She was still seeing that body as they pulled her away.

And she can still see her dead in that dark hall.

And Maune still sees that nymph, impaled from within by alien judgment.

No.

She breathes. She flushes her eyes. She looks. Maune is seeing a nymph who is hale and healthy. She is looking at Eifre. Eifre would not be found wanting, neither would she sacrifice herself‍ ‍—‍ Eifre would not be lost to pharmakon.

Maune’s studied all she was allowed to access on the topic and then some, since that day.

The mystics claim that pharmakon is the wages of transgression. A wrathful smiting of those that would misuse the vespers’ abilities (but wardens spilling blood in endless war games was not misuse, no), or as a scourge to flay mantids’ backs for the transigence we’ve inflicted upon them. Our firstborns consumed one by one until we’ve reached parity through loss, until we truly understand their pain.

Idiots. It’s certainly a story a mantid would like to tell, product of minds born in the jungle, inclined to dominance hierarchies and intimidation displays.

The failings of both strains of thought, really. The old orthodoxy had wished for mantid dominance over vespers‍ ‍—‍ and the supposed revolutionaries instead merely wish to exult vespers over mantids.

Gods. That’s how they thought of them.

More like nymphs. They know not what they do, not truly. There’s no real malice or design at the core of the vesper, a realization Maune continually finds as startling as the revelation that all of nature was protracted blind flailing. All of this suffering, and the villain at fault was not evil, but stupid?

Or like leeches. The thought came to her like a whisper, a shadow she’d let into her mind. But no, she couldn’t accept that, entertain it for a moment. She couldn’t throw away all her work in disgust at the death stained every part of the system. Any means for the greatest end, she tells herself.

Because she ultimately wasn’t beholden to the vespers, not even if she wanted power and control. The very whisper in her mind was a product of that freedom‍ ‍—‍ because it wasn’t her thought. But she refuses it again.

Because if she gave in to metanoia, if she rejected the vespers as the voice would ask, she would never find the power to sear the rot, cauterize the scars of this world. She’d never burn everything down, as Rheni had put it so long ago, so like last words.

Maune shakes her head. She couldn’t save Shatalek if she left to frolic with the weevils.

There are too many ghosts in this room. Eifre lies on a rest, where Maune put her after she fell off her feet.

She picks the girl up now. Maune will have to calm down, and she can’t do that sitting in this room with her. So she carries the nymph. Where’s somewhere comfortable to lay her? Her bed?

Eifre lies there now, and Maune tucks a cover over her. A moment, and then she takes a spray bottle from her dresser, a floral fume, and sprays it to clear the air.

She steps back out of the room and takes a deep breath.

Maune needed her thoughts off pharmakon. What was a lighter topic? Ah, the coming destruction of Shatalek.

Tulip‍-agar. It’s a medium for bacterial cultivation, a special substrate for each special strain. Honeyblack alchemy was its own peculiar discipline, different again from hylocultivation or vesper manifestation, or that haemonecromacy they’d inherited from the bats.

Tulip‍-agar. She’d studied the correspondences, knew each agar medium was sensitive to certain enervate emission spectra. But could this just be the sealed arcology? Termites had done all manner of esoteric things with enervate, and perhaps this was just a false positive.

It’d be a hell of a coincidence, if the storm had nothing to do with the mound.

The mound. For all her dire warnings‍ ‍—‍ for all they were right, and of course she’d be right‍ ‍—‍ she had seen the arcology as an opportunity. Problem was, she wasn’t the only one.

Navera will bully the province’s council into exclusion, and granting the jurisdiction to send in some wretches with sticky tarsi. Nav is a blackbane pushing the limits of phase diffusion, and of course she’d be eager to study some lost termite insight on the matter.

It wouldn’t just be wretches either. Vindicators, maybe even percipients – their proxies, rather. They’d all be poking around, looking for things, instead of doing their damn jobs.

No stones to throw for her though. Because if her apocryphal history held true‍ ‍—‍ and would she be wrong?‍ ‍—‍ she suspected they were dealing with something special, even for termite mounds.

She’d delved through Wentalel history, the vanquishing of its bat lord, and then came here, had the honor of corresponding with a reincarnated weevil elder who’d lived at the time.

The legend offered one actionable assertion. A prophecy in the flesh, inscribed on a bat’s heart, then split into four pieces, with four orders given: Take one quarter and grant it as a reward for the sisters who’d ripped it out. Take one quarter and trust it to the wisest of weevils. Take one quarter and give it as a consolation to the dragons. And take the last and cast it into the blackest pit you can find.

And what pit was blacker than a termite arcology with a broken seal?

“Was that you, earlier?”

A shadow waited for Maune outside of her cabin. A weevil, a black mass engulfed in the leaves of a tree, shifts as winds tossed the leaves, like it’s afraid of the light. She saw their eyes clearly, watching her.

Maune isn’t yet at the point where she could tell the beetles apart by the feel of their neuroprojections. But did the differences matter, or were they all just masks for the ambrosia, like so many crawling fingers?

The weevil is quick out of the tree, and darting overland until it rested in the shadows of her porch. Shadows could move faster than objects.

“Don’t like me peeking behind the curtain like that, huh?”

Maune starts walking. Politely, she doesn’t look at her company.

“Did it tell you were I was going?” The witch speaks aloud, she thinks, for her own sake‍ ‍—‍ doubtless the weevil doesn’t need it. They’re good at just knowing things. Or acting like they knew things. There is a difference between the two, and she really wished it mattered.

Her attention falls down to her bag, and how heavy it feels. Not her own thought, but it flows gracefully enough this is something known only intellectually.

Her bag feels heavy because there was something within she didn’t put there. Another maddening offering, for sure. The weevils didn’t care for her analysis, the distinctions she wanted to draw. Not their preferred mode of engagement. Instead…

But she couldn’t hope for her research to ever be taken seriously if she simply frolicked with weevils, partook of their madness.

Maune casts her foveae to a dark shadow, waiting for a rejoiner. Was it the shadow that held the weevil, or had she guessed wrongly? This skill, that stealth with the reflexivity of breathing, is so well developed among all of them she wondered at its origin. Won from endless games of hide and seek as nymphs?

She is barely not a nymph herself, and she’s had her own protracted bout of hiding. Luring off hounds and oozes with trapped scents, running sleepless to stay ahead of her own wanted papers, a year spent putting all the distance she could between her and the strongholds while the hunters came month after month‍ ‍—‍ then stopped. She is free now, safe in the ambrosia.

Shimare. Yet here they came again.

Maune is a defector.

The line of thought stopped there, and she’d gotten so caught up in it. Graceful, she thinks again.

Because those weren’t her thoughts, were they?

“That was your reply, little shadow?” Maune says, casting her eyes up to the sky, stars poking out between lines and celestial flows of enervate. “No one will take my research seriously anyway‍ ‍—‍ because I’m a defect.”

The weevil had a point. A defect could never get a monograph published. When the hunters finally got her head, they’d sooner burn her notes than study them.

“You failed to consider one thing.” Maune smirks, and wonders if Rheni would still say she had the look of a villain. “The state of the board has changed; a new piece is in play. Yes, I’ll never get a book in the stewartry archives.” She pauses there, dramatic, because weevils love drama. “But a young knowledge‍-hunter finds new prey by extending the master’s trails.”

Cryptic. She let the black beetles chew on that for a bit. But perhaps it was too obvious‍ ‍—‍ who else could the ‘new piece’ be?

“The next move, of course, is to make sure she gets stewartry countenance. Or I’ll have to suffer you weevils being right one more time.”

The humming sound must be the equivalent of a laugh. It’s growing quieter‍ ‍—‍ the weevil slinking off?

She looks around, eyes flushing.

Had the weevil been messing with her sense of time, of place?

The ambrosia witch finds herself at the edge of Shatalek, but has she really been walking for that long?

One step, and she leave the dense, overcrossing roots that were the floor of the ambrosia, adorned with lichen and spiderpaw fungi. Numbly through the soles of her baneleather sandals, she feels the hard bark and rich soil give way to the moss of the plains.

Her melanpili tingled as step by step, the umbral hum beneath her diminuted. So much of what the ambrosia did was out of sight, underground.

Maune loathed that she could never know the ambrosia except through proxies, through masks.

Her attention falls to her bag and that added weight once again, this time of her own will. Doubtless it was the mushrooms she’d been offered and refused again and again. It’s always a possibility… but fungal delirium wasn’t knowledge.

The hemotechnic shakes her head, and runs enervate through the soles of her sandals. Teeth at the front dug into the dirt, while the enervate pulse repelled the ground below, adding extra force to each of her strides.

She boosted toward Shatalek with a vesperbane’s speed.

The countryside was stealth in the dark of the night; Inferna shone in waning. But Shatalek wasn’t as dark as it should have been. Bugs with torches marched through the streets.

What were the possibilities? A festival? A lynching? Response to an attack‍ ‍—‍ had the storm come already?

Maune watches for a moment, sees the spiraling pattern. A search pattern. Searching for…

Ah, Eifre.

Tlista has some influence in the town, doesn’t she?

But she’s the witch of the ambrosia woods. If the weevils were good for nothing else, she could do stealth.

Slip in through the shadows between torch‍-bearing search parties. Climb atop a building, abuse her vesperbane techniques to leap from roof to roof, with lunges that felt like flying.

Maune doesn’t know where Eifre lives. But she doesn’t need to risk asking a townsbug‍ ‍—‍ and incur the suspicion of anyone not recognized in a small village. Mantids and roaches are out all around looking for Eifre, and a certain imago missing a leg sat at the epicenter of it all, sitting outside a house‍ ‍—‍ just in case Eifre came back on her own.

She’s found Tlista.

This solves one problem and leaves her with another dilemma. Because Maune takes one look at that face, and hears the last words they’d exchanged.

“It took the flourishing scourge less than three.”

Tlista thought she was just another stupid nymph chasing stupid dreams. Just like them. Had it been silly to think the poison‍-blooded fiend would be any different?

She sees those trimmed palps, and remembers the expression they’d made, the disgust Tlista had for seeing her most innovative work.

“They call it the path of erosion for a reason, Maune.”

As if she knew anything of what it was like to be a renegade, deciding whether you or your vespers went hungry, weighing whether sustaining yourself with black market ’mala was worth the risk.

Tlista was just another winged darling who faced the world at her leisure‍ ‍—‍ she’d retired rather than start making the hard choices. And she thought to judge someone who would‍ ‍—‍ who wasn’t content to hide away in a safe village while the world suffered?

“Do you really think they’re worth clinging to so tightly, at this cost?”

But she payed no mind to the costs they already payed. She wouldn’t apply her same logic to the status quo, because of course that’s the natural state of things.

Was becoming a vesperbane worth it, at the cost of Rheni? She asks herself this often. If she thought like Tlista, the answer would be no – but would Tlista even reflect on this in the first place?

No, Tlista would run away. She retired.

And they call me the defector? Maune laughs quietly, and startles herself by how shaky the sound is, palps trembling.

It’s a low sound, nonetheless. Up on the roof, houses away from Tlista, she needn’t to worry for drawing attention.

She lunges twice more, getting closer to Tlista.

She can see the simple approach. She could see herself doing exactly what Eifre had asked‍ ‍—‍ go down there, explain to Tlista what they were doing.

But she stares at the red imago, and feels her mandibles clench. She can remember that condescending tone, that look of pity or worse. Would she have to face that again?

Maune couldn’t do it.

The renegade sighs, and brings her tarsi together in the seal of focus. Enervate flows into the ’celia lining her dactyls, and Maune flips through a sequence of tarsigns, instructions for the vespers to help her direct the flow of enervate.

She stares at Tlista, projecting out tentative lines of enervate, measuring distances, drawing a connection across the distance. It’s so much easier with a stationary target.

Sympathy lock complete. A ball of enervate had formed in her tarsus, and through it, Maune could feel the subtle hum of neural enervate in sympathy, across the distance. The reactions of amalgam molecules in Tlista’s brain released tiny bits of enervation, the way an acid’s dissolution released heat.

Enervate affected enervate‍ ‍—‍ simply catalyze or inhibit the reactions of neurotransmitters, and you affected the brain’s firing patterns.

The weevils, after all, are good for something other than stealth. She wouldn’t have gotten this much immediate experience with neuroprojection in the Stewartry.

Maune finds something suitable on the roof‍ ‍—‍ a brick? leftover from construction?‍ ‍—‍ and tosses it out into the night. She hears it crack against the bark of a tree, so she knows Tlista does too.

And then her neurospell takes effect. It wasn’t hard to find the primitive part of the brain that dealt with fear. Let it be a less inhibited than usual…

A trained vesperbane would respond to fear in one way, after all.

Tlista jerked her head toward the brick‍ ‍—‍ Maune’s enervate‍-laden tarsus jerks in sympathy.

She pulls back, and makes a tarsign to cancel her projection. When Tlista stands up and cautiously starts off the investigate, there is no hard sympathetic pull. There’s a reason neuroprojection works better on stationary targets.

But for her own sake, she doesn’t break the connection entirely. She leaves a tiny thread of sympathy, no more than grams of force, so she could feel it when Tlista moves.

Tlista wouldn’t be gone long‍ ‍—‍ she’d find the brick, and perhaps write it off. Maune couldn’t ensure more than that. The witch had spiked her fear a little, but neuroprojection had to be subtle‍ ‍—‍ too much, and the brain would recognize the foreign intrusion, flush its neurotransmitters to remove the influence.

Maune lands silently, thanks to another technique with enervate in her sandals. Swiftly, she’s moving towards to porch, and from her bag grabs a paper and a stick of charcoal.

Eifre had asked her to tell Tlista, but this was just as well, wasn’t it? Perhaps she’d tell the kid her mom wasn’t home when she went. She jerks through the words‍ ‍—‍ terse, sparing no letters for politeness.

Kid’s with me. Pharmakon. No threat. More danger is coming, we need it.

Maune can take notes quickly; she was stewartry trained. When she makes the move to leave though, she felts a tiny sympathic tug‍ ‍—‍ the imago returning.

The witch starts to run, charcoal still in her tarsus, held tightly, dirtying the chitin.

Tlista yells something‍ ‍—‍ Maune isn’t listening‍ ‍—‍ but doesn’t pursue. Found the note?

A dark cloak flutters behind her as she runs, and her sandals kick up dirt.

How quickly would Tlista realize it’s her?

Maune looks left and then right, then jumps a few meters up to climb onto a roof‍ ‍—‍ leaving no doubt.

Pausing for a moment, she opens her bag to slip the crushed charcoal back in a case, and feels the sown leaves enclosing the weevil’s gift. Dismissive curiosity gets her to grab it.

Her claws tear open the the leaves, revealing thin stalked, wide‍-capped mushrooms. Flecks of violet dot the fruiting bodies. Her antennae straighten in surprise. Not what she thought.

This wasn’t an offering of ambrosia‍ ‍—‍ no, she recognized the cultivar. Violet crown. The effect would be more lucidity than delirium. It’d introduce special amalgams to her brain. Umbraswitches, whose response to environmental enervate was intentional, rather than a exploited side‍-effected.

In particular, this strain shared a response spectra with tulip‍-agar.

She’d misjudged the game the ambrosia was playing, then. Consuming this wouldn’t compromise her faculties. She doesn’t have room not to accept then, does she? So she did.

The vesperbane kept moving, relying on muscle more than enervate repulsion‍ ‍—‍ the activity would increase her heartrate, leading to more hemolymph flowing to her stomach, quickening her digestion. It’s still something that takes several minutes‍ ‍—‍ but a hemotechnic has a better handle on her biology.

She jogs to to edge of Shatalek, dodging the occasional imago wandering about. One catches sight of her‍ ‍—‍ but Tlista already knew, and would she keep it to herself? No reason to trust Maune’s secrets were safe with her.

The violet crown takes effect. The mantis breathes in deep, filling her throats. She shakes her head, the chemicals which slipped through the blood‍-brain barrier being deduced more than the felt.

Like being under the effect of a graceless neuroprojection, one she couldn’t dispel.

One thing her familiarity with neurospells grants her? Finer control. The mushroom doesn’t need to have unpredictable systemic effects on her when she can cast a projection on herself, and control its dispersal. She confines the psychoactive amalgams to a region of her visual cortex, and over the course of minutes, the hallucinations settle into something coherent.

Violet crown is sensitive to the same spectra as crushed tulip fermented in agar. The bees cultured tulip‍-agar, and they saw a storm coming. (She still wondered why the word ‘storm’‍ ‍—‍ poor translation on the bees’ part? A concept close enough to suffice, all its connotations meaningless rather than significant?)

With her violet crown‍-augmented senses, Maune sees something.

The witch makes a tarsign, and punctuates it by piercing her soft flesh with a claw‍ ‍—‍ thus, her next sign directs red ichor, rather than black nerve.

Her wretched raptorials, her myxokora, begin to stir.

Maune singles out the source of her more‍-than‍-hallucination, and she goes on the hunt.

Line of sight is pretty good in the plains, but the land still offers gentle hills enemies could hide behind with enough distance. Maune runs, the bloody slickness of her wretched raptorials feeling cool in the moving night air.

She runs against the eastern wind, which was good‍ ‍—‍ they wouldn’t smell her, and they are awfully good sleuths. The signature came from behind a hill, so she veers southwest, toward the ambrosia woods, aiming to circle around. She probably had better sight (few bugs saw better than a mantis). A dozen enervate‍-boosted impacts of her stride, and she has a visual.

The vesperbane stops.

Her wretched raptorials slacken, falling to her side, and she curls her palps in thought.

Seven figures crawled in the distances. Six legs, big heads, elbowed antennae. Their mandibles tightly grasped enevate‍-dark spears and clubs.

The bees said tulip‍-agar. The ambrosia gave her violet crown. She’d hoped it was an artifact of the mound, some false positive. It wasn’t.

Reaver ants.

The witch was prepared to fight them‍ ‍—‍ Maune, a vesperbane, could stand against a natural creature, any sort short of a bat or a cicada, and only need to worry about how long it’d take. Only another vesperbane or worse posed a true threat, really.

A natural creature, that is. Seven reavers, ready for war as all reavers are? Maune knew she’d have trouble healing the wounds those moonforged blades would leave. She didn’t have long range attacks. She was never a warden, she didn’t excel at battle.

She thought of Reva.

Even if she could win against seven ants, she’d take some hits. She’d need to heal‍ ‍—‍ and Reva needed to heal. It’d be selfish to eat resources that should go to the bird.

And that fool still hasn’t gotten back from his mission‍ ‍—‍ without him, myxogerm was that much harder to get a hold of.

She could ask sister Sahratnah…

But back to the issue at hand. Seven reaver ants. Heading toward the ambrosia.

Were they scouts? No matter.

Maune brought tarsi together in the seal of focus, and ran through a quick trio of tarsigns. Stationary targets were so much easier. She starts moving, and tries for a sympathy lock.

It was easier when the targets weren’t so far away, too. Distance, motion, it made it so hard to be precise.

Good thing she didn’t need precision for this.

Maune burns her enervate, powered a neurospell of a sort she’d never learn from the weevils. Graceless, it broke the central dogma of neuroprojection: that was better to be subtle, unnoticed. Try something too direct, too counter to the brain’s normal flow, and it’d be detected. The brain would flush its umbral amalgams.

She wants that. Because the amalgams aren’t there for the neuroprojector’s convenience. They served a purpose in cognition, evolved for a reason.

A brain with disrupted umbral activity wasn’t functioning normally – confusion, a sort of fugue state. She wanted that.

Because line of sight is pretty good in the plains, and these ants were going toward the ambrosia woods.

She’d be spotted, if they were in their right mind. With training, a crude disruption like this could be recovered from‍ ‍—‍ but would a roving gang of ants have that training?

Maune starts from the back, hoping this would let her get through all of them without being detected. The ants walked in file, and as minutes passed, the ants slowed one by one, antennae working in slow, sudden bewilderment.

Maune finishes, and starts toward the woods, angling southeast, away from the ants.

Something’s wrong. More than the speed with which they recovered‍ ‍—‍ the minutes she’d invested in casting bought at best dozens of seconds – she’d felt it even as she casted the projections.

These ants’ brains are different, more than arthropod.

Her musing stops, the interruption a clicking sound that carries in the night.

The vesperbane had been spotted.

Ants run faster than mantids.

Maune quit angling away from the ants, and started directly south, a beeline to the woods. She had better stamina than a unvespered might might, thanks to the blood, but enervate‍-boosted speed is getting dangerous. Her umbracelia isn’t used to this kind of strain.

In pursuit, she doesn’t have time to cast another neurospell. She didn’t have time to cast anything, because she wasn’t a warden, and didn’t have practice flickering through strings of tarsigns or speedily molding enervate the way a real fighter might.

But she’d already everted her wretched raptorials.

The dark red ants closed in on her even as she neared the edge of the woods. Despite the dim infernal light, Maune could make out the bits of metal hammered into legs. The spiked mandibles that’d be vicious even if they didn’t hold an implement to extent their range.

Maune stops, spinning in place as the line of ants advanced.

She breathes in. Combat was something she analyzed, planned out, rather than coming intuitively, reflexively. She rehearsed the rhythm of this next move in her head, tarsidactyls flexing anticipation in her sandals. One, two, she repeats. She crouches.

One. She bursts painfully forward with blood feeling thick in her legs, saturated enervate pushing her high. The witch flies at the reaver.

She calculates that a front flip through the air positions her better than fighting her momentum to angle her legs right.

Her legs dig into the dirt in front of the ant. Her myxokora fly forward, liquid blood and muscle hungry for more viscera.

She can’t avoid getting a spear run through the thorax. She wonders if that buzzing sound the reaver’s palps scrape is some triumphant call to their fellows.

The penetration is mutual; her two tentacles dig into the ant’s chitin, and her forelegs reach down to grab the front legs.

Everything’s happening so fast that this is just the first second.

Two. She bursts backward, her landing having transitioned right into another crouch. Her hold on the ant is secure at four points. The bug is helpless as she pulls.

This time the landing leaves her near where she’d kicked up dirt by spinning.

She wishes all that had been the hard part, but it’s only the most precise, the part she could and needed to rehearse.

Three. Maune takes the ant in her grasp, and she throws her.

More accurately, she pushes her really hard, into the air.

The arc is too pathetic to do anything impressive, like skewer the ant on another ant’s spear. Instead, the ant merely hits the ground hard in front of another, and starts to roll.

The other ant trips multiple times, all her legs knocked from under her. The reavers weren’t so stupid as to chase after her in file‍ ‍—‍ they’d fanned out‍ ‍—‍ but at least one ant is behind her.

Even when the other ant tries to get out of the way, she bumps into another beside her.

The result is something of a pile up, and she’s counting on the ants caring enough about each other to stop for the one she’d just attacked, check her and help her up.

But maybe they were too far gone. Maune is running through some tarsigns as she turns and runs off, more sensory than projection. She’d felt it earlier.

The brains are different, more fungal than arthropod.

Sable cap.

If any bug she encountered was going to have a case of cordyceps, she wasn’t surprised it’d be a reaver.

Did the ambrosia know, or was she their way of finding out? Maybe it’d tell her.

She’s made it to the edge of the woods. The ants can still chase her, but she is safe here.

“Has that fool come back yet?” She’d waited for him for hours before needing to go meet Eifre‍ ‍—‍ what happened? She had wondered, and now the presence of the reavers gives her an entirely unwelcome possible explanation.

“The vale has rested in peace since you left, Madam chimera. I welcome your return; may I offer you a fruit this night?” The moth speaks with some vibrating organ deeper than its gullet‍ ‍—‍ it reminded her of mammals. He didn’t speak Panthecan, but years had made her familiar with the moth’s language.

Maune gingerly steps closer to the bug and takes the offering‍ ‍—‍ a red citrus looking redder in the light. In between flickers of flame, his fuzz contrasts, revealing purple and blue shades. Blue is a good color.

“Sure. Do you need oil? I’ve got some in my bag.” The blue mantis keeps a little on her, for their sake.

“That would be most radiant of you,” he replies, but punctuates the utterance with a cry of alarm. “Madam, your thorax is dripping!”

Maune smiles. “That means it’s working.” She’d had time to work on the spear wound as she’d sped through the forest. As expected, the amalgam metal had all but fried the hyphae filling her body cavities. Repairing her meridians would take longer, but the wound itself had crawled close (or a near semblance thereof). For now, she let it breathe; later, she’d cover it with a bandage or tallow.

“What dread weapon has done this?” The moth leans their lamp‍-staff over, illuminating her.

“The reavers tried their best.” Maune shrugs, as if her standing there finished the thought. “Speaking of, though, I suppose I’ll have to see my landlord about this.”

The moth makes a scratchy, offended sound. “You mean to speak of the guardian spirit of this blessed forest?”

Maune twists her antennae at the flattery. You’d think he owed his life to it or something.

“Walk with me?” she asks. “My thoughts have been… not the kindest to me, tonight.”

“If you would carry?”

“You may have gotten too big for me…” But the moth is climbing up her leg, and nestling between her two forelegs. She is a vesperbane, so she supposed she could handle the weight. “How considerate of my battle‍-wounds,” she grouses.

“Is it not, ah, working?”

Maune twists her antennae, palps somewhere between a smile and a grimace. She grabs the moth’s lamp‍-staff with a tarsus, and uses it to light her way.

Each step comes slowly, lightly. Her umbracelia weren’t used to the strain, and all that enervate boosting bit her now. Her feet ache from scars only partial dissolution could leave.

They walked not to the cabin, but to a fringe of the vale nearly unnavigable for the density of trees.

Not mere saplings, either, but big trees, old ones, with trunks thick enough to compare to the rooms of some houses. The weevils have bored into them, weaving a multiaboreal galleries. Mantis and moth stagger in, feeling like intruders in this special site.

The ambrosia left a particular texture on the wood it devoured.

The tunnels and bore‍-holes through which they pass yawn empty of all inhabitants, the weevils skittish as ever, and the unattended livings gave their passing a liminal edge.

Rather than a gallery, a clearing sat as their destination, all the trees gathered around it like a fortress wall. The woods thin here suddenly, and gave chords woven of thin branches free of leaves or even twigs. They stretched like filaments of a therid’s web, and connecting the trees to what lay in the center of the clearing.

This clearing smells of burning incense, adorned with leaf‍-banners painted with dyes made from the rarest flowers. No sound met them but a crackling.

A fire burns here, forever, and it serves to heat a weevil artifact wrought of iron to the point that it glowed. The metal curls in a fractal of lines and whorls like imitations of roots‍ ‍—‍ like, of course, the tangled workings that littered the limbs of the woods’ trees. This is the origin and exalted peak of that form.

Entomologists, in now‍-censored texts written on the culture of weevils, liked to call these things shrines. And how tempting the notion is – the moth in her arms wriggled free to kneel supplicant before the glowing metal. All the regard that was given to the ambrosia, and why not suppose the weevils thought it some sort of deity?

It surprises some, that there are mantids who call themselves nullifidian. In a world where bats, beetles, and bugs of all kind practice this or that magical art‍ ‍—‍ when souls and spirits are tangible things, how did some find a reason to rail against mysticism, as if it weren’t married indiscernibly close to fact?

Whenever Maune comes to visit the ambrosia shrine, she thinks of her mother.

That mantis, made of cracked and blackened chitin, could trace their lineage all the way back, through all the wars and pogroms, to the first wingless mantids who rebelled against the bats. And she told her daughter their stories. Before Aromethia, our bats were our whole world. We witnessed their generosity and their wrath, and we worshiped them, because they were gods.

And then we killed our gods.

To live was to be free, and so every lord and master, every slave‍-maker and of course every god, was nothing more than a kind of dying.

Even the most simplified history recounts how the first vesperbanes announced that there were no gods above‍ ‍—‍ whether it’s to be cast as heroic or blasphemous. Those that truly understand know that it wasn’t an assertion; it was an aspiration.

“Madam chimera, are you thinking odious threats at the guardian of your home again? Is that… is that wise?” The moth had startled at the look on her face, and long acquaintance had told him what it meant.

Maune smiles, and looks from the twitchy moth to the hot iron locus.

“I don’t think a being as elevated as the ambrosia is capable of feeling threatened by a mortal like me. I’m sure it finds this all deeply amusing. Think of it as a joke between us.”

The moth curls up his antennae (or the best he can manage, with how thick and long the setae were), and Maune doesn’t think he’s convinced.

“Come on, let’s see what cryptic bullshit this fungus‍-brain has to say.”

Maune steps to the shrine, and makes a seal of focus.