Black Nerve

Udgrov 1.1 

But begin with a scream. The sound came as a harsh equal to the hissing moans that the roaches make for speech, and it was distant enough that it blent with the wind in the leaves of the forest, and the faint laughs of its guardian ambrosia beetles.

I ignored it, and puffed air through my spiracles. “Why doesn’t the shrine have any walls?” a younger Tlakida asked no one, cursing some fool builder. I drew my cloak tighter around my thorax, hoping to damp the noise. Of course it still leaked in, through the tattered, unwashed thing. The cloak hardly could cover my unfurled abdomen. I loved to wear it, though, even when it drew sneers.

After all, I had accepted it years ago, at this very shrine, as a gift from the lost ranger of Udgrov.

Back then, an even younger Tlakida had thought it meant her fit to inherit, proof she could be Udgrov’s next vesperbane ranger. (And it was, just not as she’d conceived it.)

(You’ll forgive me if the prose has wandered a bit here; it’s to make a point. I wasn’t in a shrine in the middle of the wild Udgrov woods for no reason, and nor for the same did I curse that loathsome roach‍-​moan.)

I sat there resting upon my metathorax, abdomen unfurled flat behind me and hindlegs crossed in front. After adjusting my cloak, I drew my midlegs together, dactyls interlocking, and rested them in my lap. I had snapped open my spiked raptorial arms at the roach’s moan, so I shut and relaxed them, brought them neutral before my thorax.

Behind me, my spiracles flared and sucked in air, abdomen rising and falling in a breath‍-​rhythm. My antennae swept side to side, keen for an approaching roach’s reek, but none was there and I made them curl up and rest atop my head.

(It’s foreign to me now. Years of trained vigilance in the academy, years of practiced paranoia in the war, and yet there was indeed a time when curling up my antennae alone in the wild wouldn’t see me struck dead.)

Breathe, Tlaki. Relax all your muscles‍ ‍—‍ well, except those you’re using to breathe. Is that a crumb on your maxilla? No, relax. Feel that damn wind on your chitin.

Wind. Why didn’t the forest shrine have anywalls? There were six pillars enclosing the hexagonal affair, but open air between them. The wind walked in like an unwelcome friend‍-​of‍-​a‍-​friend and knocked ripples onto the strange little pool‍ ‍—‍ it smelled like acid and honey, and I never dipped more than a tarsi into it. Daily the melted corpses of tiny vermin would accrue at the edges like a ring of filth at the baths. None but I were here to clean it, and the repetitive act of doing so granted me more clarity of mind than hours of sitting on my abs while the wind molested me.

Breathe, Tlaki. Unlatch yourself from all your thoughts and worries. Allow your awareness to expand beyond your mind.

That last one was the only point on which I’d had any luck‍ ‍—‍ not there was any tell. To me, it seemed a simple matter to step outside your mind, connect with your body, and immerse yourself in your surroundings. It felt like light radiating out from the crackling flames of my mind‍ ‍—‍ keeping it smoldering dark and contained was the real trick. I tilted my head and let my eyes’ foveae sweep over the alter. Six platonic statues sat like guards before a blade in rotting leather and they were the symbols of the six spirits of life.

Oxygen. Carbon. Hydrogen. Nitrogen. Calcium. Phosphorous.

Each had a symbol and a sign, a true name and its invocation. It ranked among the few scraps of real vesperbane lore the mentors entrusted us. But what did it mean? What did knowledge of the six spirits let you do?

An Tlakida younger still, having flawlessly formed the six signs, asked a mentor in a bouncy pitch, “So, what combination lets me cast fireball?”

Can you guess what they said?

Breathe, Tlaki. Relax. Unlatch your thoughts and worries. Allow your awareness to expand.

I’d heard it constantly for months, more annoying than the gusting wind or that screaming roach.

But no matter. Even if I had to wrought and reinvent all of magic on my own, I would become the next vesperbane ranger of Udgrov.

Pulling my dingy cloak’s hood over my eyes, I summoned images in mind of the six spirits and upon them I focused.

Prevesperbane training was a lot of things, but it was mostly meditation. They never told me what it was good for, besides blowing away time and forging frustration. And here I was, evening free to burn as I wish, and I was doing more of it.

(All to the lovely applause that was the wind and the roach.)

We learned so many things I’d rather practice‍ ‍—‍ they taught us combat stances and strikes, had us run and leap and climb, and memorize histories and expositions and logics. Even those droning words came easier to me than meditation.

There was nothing I wouldn’t rather practice‍ ‍—‍ yet here I must have had a sense that this was something in which I was deficient, and the collective mentor wouldn’t repeat it to exhaustion if it wasn’t important.

“But what is it for?” The younger Tlakida asked this everyday, to silence. Was this how magic was awakened? Did this grant you the renown intellect of vesperbanes? Could you somehow defeat a monster with relaxed muscles and unlatched thoughts and no worries at all?

(The wind had finally shut up, but now the roach was louder.)

If I knew what this all was for, then I’d know when I finally won at meditation and could move on to something else. Instead, I was left fighting in the dark.

But not in the quiet. The stupid roach was noising it up again, with more stabs of harsh sound. I swung a midleg up to jerk away my hood‍ ‍—‍ covering the eyes helped meditation‍ ‍—‍ and at once I saw black eyes level with mine, and staring.

Just beyond the threshold of the shrine there swayed a giant roach.

Udgrov 1.2

Roach or ant, beetle or bat, all races feared the mantis. True, part of it was that we never fought alone (ha). And true, part of it was that we always had tools and magic (ha!). But even when stripped of all of that‍ ‍—‍ as currently I was‍ ‍—‍ our lessers feared us because we were quick.

The moaning yellow roach was already in front of me, taller than I was when sitting. Already it was charging.

A single thud of my heart. Blood and fear pumped to every extreme. Hindlegs levering me up while my abdomen pushed back to let my midlegs catch me. One heartbeat and I rose on all fours.

It was a reflexive jump that threw me back from the roach. Away and to the side. Since I had sat in middle of the shrine, the jump sent me splashing into the pink water.

The roach’s charge went wide of me, tangent to the pool. I already was peddling backward and was out of the pool in seconds.

Roach‍-​antennae whirled and it turned and it started toward me.

A single foreleg stepped in the pink, acid‍-​smelling pool. Then the roach yanked it out like it’d been burnt, and the appendage melted as the roach shook the limb.

It almost forgot me then, in its pain. Then the pale yellow head lifted to catch me in those black compound eyes, and roach wings buzzed as it clumsily rounded the pink pool. I looked twice, and saw the elytra wriggling but not opening. The roach couldn’t spread its wings. Why?

I spun around. Even as the roach left my fovea, I saw the beast. With my back to it, I could still see at the very edge of my vision as it reared for another charge.

In two seconds I could leap three body‍-​lengths.

My claws were digging into the dirt of the path leading out from the shrine and into the woods. Just in time to throw myself again to the side, falling‍ ‍—‍ the roach had charged, barely unstable for the melted leg. My luck ran out then: spines on the creature’s legs clipped my abdomen, and I felt lymph flow.

Air sucked into my mouth, and a scream was vibrating my thorax.

Momentum not wholly gone, my side‍-​dodge became a roll and forced distance between me and the roach.

I had had the advantage! Its leg had melted! Could this have gone any worse? I paused. If my luck went the other way, could I have been gored entirely? Eaten?

I stood up.

Mantids were quick. Our reflexes, our leaps, our thinking‍ ‍—‍ but roaches could run in a way we couldn’t, and it would easily eat any distance I tried to build.

So I leapt up.

The shrine was in a clearing in the woods, and the trees grew tall at the fringes. I went high enough to catch a branch and pull myself up and perch. From here I stared down at the roach.

I could still feel the way the roach leg brushed my abs. I didn’t like that it was fuzzy. Still I felt that spine parting my flesh, and I didn’t like that wound seemed to crawl.

Below, I saw the roach‍-​chitin was not a uniform yellow; here and there, in the cracks and where it had cracked, there sprouted long black bulbs like many dark digits, poking up from the flesh. They were worst on the creature’s back, the elytra all but bound in place by the growths.

The roach still approached, limping, looking up. Behind it, I could see its spiracles flaring wide.

The beast walked just underneath my branch, so perfectly that I planned to drop down and crush it, and then the growths around the spiracles seemed to flutter.

The roach moaned again, the sound of air forced through half‍-​covered spiracles. But it wasn’t just air, the exhalation was misty, and as it dispersed it became a vague cloud.

I had kicked a mushroom before. Spores. The bulbs must be fruiting bodies. Black cordyceps? But roaches couldn’t contract that.

Still, I wouldn’t chance it. A wild, mean roach teeming with fruiting bodies? If it wasn’t bat fever, it was a evil bane’s spell or some new horror. Did the coordinators know?

This needed to end fast.

I leapt off the branch, gaze level on the shrine.

Before now, I had never dared. But how else could I vanquish the roach?

I touched down on six limbs, and dashed at the shrine. Inside, behind the six platonic statues, as if they guarded it, there lay the sheathed blade of the lost ranger of Udgrov. It had made him notable‍ ‍—‍ you didn’t see many wielding a sword.

Quickly, delicately, I snatched up the blade and curled dactyls around the hilt.

(The mentors say if an unworthy tarsus were to dare to wield a vesperbane’s blade, it would wither to dust.)

The blade slid free with a singing hiss, and I turned to face the charging, limping roach. The heavy blade nodded toward the ground in my grip.

I dodged aside the pool hoping the dumb beast would eat the same trick twice‍ ‍—‍ but it now knew to loop around.

Drawing back the sword, I waited the roach’s careful approached, and then swung.

The bug went flat underneath the swing, and the air whiffed. My hope hardened, and the fight resumed anew.

Dodge. Leap back. Swing. Repeat.

Once, the beast lunged so close I had to abandon a swing. Once it let the blade sink into a leg, and I didn’t have the strength to lob off the thing, let alone keep going. Once, I just missed.

The roach was making more noise now, in anger or pain or intimidation. And with the hissing noise came more spores. They suffused the air, and I couldn’t double back for fear of crossing into the fungal mist. Clearing became maze, and I became hemmed it.

I knew enough tactics to smell my folly. The terrain lay in the lap of the enemy, putting me on the defense, reactive and running. If this were a mantis with half a learning in war games, I’d have already fallen. But I thanked whatever affliction this was for sapping the roach of even its meager wits. It meant that (along with, I hope, at least some strategy on my part), the roach didn’t think to just run in a loop and trap me.

Time passed, and the pain in my abdomen was unveiled as the thrill wore down. I was drawing deeper breaths, and my leaps didn’t carry me as far. I was flagging.

By turns and ploys I now found myself backed against a massive tree, the clearing, now spore‍-​filled, lay between me and the path out. Behind this big old tree, other trees and bushes hazarded the way. I could risk it, but I’d be relying on the roach not overtaking me in the underbrush‍ ‍—‍ a fool’s hope. I could climb back on a branch, leap to a better spot in the clearing or just climb away through the canopy. But the roach could send spores up after me in the first case, and in the second, well, the ambrosia beetles were particular about their trees.

The shrine’s clearing was half suffused with spores. Some had dispersed or fallen aground, leaving spots with but wisps, while some were thick with the passage of the roach. Even the few safe places were succumbing to dispersion and the evil wind.

I drew a breath into my abdomen, and I lowered the sword.

(I called my nymph self an idiot. You’ll believe me in a moment.)

Once more the roach came charging at me. I held my sword steady in front of me.

Breathe, Tlaki. Relax. Unlatch your worries.

Timing the right moment, I leapt forth, sword piercing in front like a lance while the beast charged full‍-​bore at me, and from head to tail I ran it through with the blade of the lost ranger of Udgrov, and the roach was vanquished.

Udgrov 1.3

I dipped my abdomen into the pink pool, and felt the gentle burn engulf that gash the roach’s spines had torn open. The wound did not close, but the crawling stopped. I brushed tarsi wrapped in cloth along my chitin, wiping off the few spores which had settled on me. Closer examination showed they were already putting down roots, and when wiped you saw that some had bit into the chitin.

It was just a few spores, and I was bathing in the cleansing pink fluid of the shrine. The liquid tingled and burnt, and that enough secured my peace of mind.

At least, where infection was concerned. But more abstractly‍ ‍—‍ what was wrong with this roach? The noble roaches were docile, subservient beings. They knew to keep out of your way in town, and most of them stuck to the farms.

I’d overheard the whispers of‍ ‍—‍ something out in the woods mangling travelers, snatching children, growing mala.

Had I found the cause? Or had I found another effect?

I stood from the pool, and gathered my clothes as I stepped out. Bandages were wrapped around my dried abdomen (vesperbanes were always prepared!) and I curled it up so that it made a u‍-​shape behind me, resting on my metathorax.

Beside my belongings‍ ‍—‍ spaced apart, to show it didn’t belong‍ ‍—‍ there lay the now sheathed blade of the lost ranger of Udgrov. I stood there regarding it for a long moment, then gingerly knelt to pick it up.

The desire spoke to me, urging that I strap it to my back and stride back into town like the hero I was. And the buts spoke in grounded counterpoint: Remember what the mentors said‍ ‍—‍ what if there were some magic that would smite me if I stole it? Remember your morals‍ ‍—‍ would a vesperbane hero steal a blade from an abandoned shrine? And remember your sense‍ ‍—

If I walked back into town brandishing the lost one’s blade, why wouldn’t the percipients believe I stole it? Me being heir to the lost ranger didn’t exist outside my own fantasies and it was a stupid risk and they’d never believe me.

I returned the blade to its place on the altar, guarded by the statues of the spirits of life.

The time I’d spent fighting, cleaning and brooding stole most of the evening. The writhing sky was red in the east.

I needed to get back. There wasn’t a risk stupider than walking the woods at night.

Outside the shrine was the corpse of the wild roach. I had killed it, vanquished it. Surely there’d be some reward from that, paid by the town watch? Or even the coordinators themselves?

Imagine dragging that roach back to town‍ ‍—‍ it was my first kill, what respect would I command for being the first one in prevesper training to slay a beast? Maybe the shops would be willing to let a real hero inside. Maybe…

Except, the percipients would realize I wasn’t on any of the exit sheets. Nobody at the gate had seen me leave. There wasn’t a safe excuse for that, not when what might be an anomaly was involved.

And so it’s settled, those reasonable, grounded parts of myself concluded. The logical path is to hide it. Slip back inside the walls, and fall onto your bed knowing in your core that you did good.

Mother had never wanted the percipients to get a good look at me. Telling anyone about this would be like doing a whole dance to summon their piercing gaze and attention.

(Years removed, I like to imagine the fires of my mind had crackled at the thought, blazed rebellion. But perhaps it was too early to say…)

What if there were other feral roaches out there? Spores exist to spread. I cast a worried glance across the shrine clearing. What if they’re taking root right now, and the shrine’s now cursed and tainted? I shook myself.

The whispers of danger in the woods weren’t for nothing. I would be keeping me safe with silence, but I would damn others to face the roaches. And if they didn’t have my luck‍ ‍—‍ my skill? If this did spread, and they had to face down more than one roach?

I drew in a breath, and then reached down to pick up the roach. I paused pensive for another uncertain moment, and then stiffly made the sacrifice, wrapping my old shawl, the ranger’s gift, around spore‍-​encrusted corpse, to keep the spores from spreading further.

I took a deep breath, and starting carrying it back to Udgrov. My choice had been clear as soon as I realized what was at stake. Why?

Vesperbanes saved people.

I stood atop a hill and glanced down at the road to Udgrov, the paved stone that took you up to the gate. A spider‍-​drawn cart was ambling up it now, and two robed mantises lead it. Their light purple robes were bright and glistening like silk. The thickly‍-​furred spider was of the largest, most temperamental breed. And the cart? The conclusion you leapt straight to was that these were merchants. It was a once a month thing to see a merchant‍ ‍—‍ once in a good month. But why was the cart so small? It didn’t make sense to travel all the way to Udgrov with so few goods.

Strides in front of them, the road widened in anticipation of the gate. A squad of six watchmants sat around it, four sitting, and two milling around. They had wooden clubs hanging by their sides, and one had a bow.

Atop the wall‍ ‍—‍ tall as three mantises‍ ‍—‍ another squad patrolled in two opposed loops. Two of those carried spears in their raptorials, and slowed to stare at the approaching carriage.

It was routine and methodical, the check. While two watch‍-​mantids walked up to the cart to examine the singular chest, the two travelers approached a roped off circle. In the center a hairy, clawed foot perched on a stone dias, and it stopped at the ankle. It was preserved, mummified and skeletal, and rimed with dried spit, piss, shit, thrown food or waste paper, and even some crumpled scales of exuviae.

The travelers had robes thick like they came from somewhere colder, and they were covered antennae to cerci in the way only syndics or deep merchants could afford to be. If I wore robes that concealing, you would assumed I was covering up pustules or fruiting bodies. But these travelers? You assumed they wanted protection from the world’s afflictions.

Stiffly did the travelers stand before the foot, and spit at the foot. The guards nodded, and allowed them return to lead their cart into the gate, already opened. The travelers disappeared past the gate.

Now a brown mantid‍ ‍—‍ wingless, as seen from glimpses beneath their fluttering cloak‍ ‍—‍ was trotting up the road, rushed and shaking, seemingly unassociated with the merchants. I hadn’t seen anyone coming up the road earlier‍ ‍—‍ had they hid behind a tree?

He‍ ‍—‍ male, as guessed from his short, lithe figure and fluffy antennae‍ ‍—‍ sped on past the circle with the dirtied claw, and seemed to hasten, trying to slip under the closing gate. But a guard leapt in front of them, and halted the male with all the might of her thick arms. The guard lady was a head taller than the male.

Her feet hardly even shifted, holding the him back.

Even at this remove, I could hear him clucking his palps and trying to articulate some excuse in his abdomen. But the guard dragged him before the foul claw, before which he stood shaking. They gripped his head and thrust it up to look at the claw. And still the wingless made no action but to stare.

Time stretched on like that, like a rope tugged, drawing taut.

The guards released him, and he fell. No longer held up, the wingless knelt, still staring at the claw. An guard’s antennae recoiled back in disgust, while the other unhooked their club.

(It was a test, a filter. To pass, one simply had to spit or make some other show of disrespect toward the vesperbat foot. It was a simple test for bat‍-​fever; those so possessed could not bring themselves to profane even an image of their idols.)

A midleg nudged and then pulled the wingless out of their kneel to splay out on the grass, and the two guards held him down with mesotarsi. One guard pointed at something on the thorax. The other nodded.

The club went up, and then swung down like thunder.

You heard the crack and the splatter echo back from the woods, like an approval. The brown limbs were still twitching.

By the wall, a mantis in the blue robes of a percipient scratched something down on her wasp‍-​parch. A plain‍-​clothed guard was awaking and unlatching the hungry centipedes.

I stared at what once was the male mantis, brown like me, wingless like me.

As the centipede began to eat, I walked away.