Golden sky hung above as horizon enveloped sun. Gilded like kintsugi, shining between shards of darkling clouds. This twilight might well have been night already — that suited me.
I crawled up the tower, claws of my tarsi hooking into brickwork. Human alchemists loved this plain white stone. What was it that drew such empire-wide devotion — the symbolic purity? As if this tower wasn’t a stain on forest that predated it. Even where it wasn’t garrish white stone, it was angular iron bars flecked with red.
You’d think this order of knights would care more about hiding — especially now that we were hunting.
In my wake, dragline silk fell, fresh from my lice-nest, and stuck to the stone. Not that I had much worry for falling: rather, this dragline was the spine of my nascent sensory web. Already swarmlings had crawled out from holes in my exoderm, tiny mandibles grabbing silk threads and skittering off across the plain white edifice.
The dragline behind me was thick enough to support my weight, but by contrast each thread carried off by swarmlings looked ghostly thin. A light touch to sketch this first draft of my sense-web. Better to err on the side of stealth, because—
—Here!
A swarmling cried out a warning, urging for my attention. I halted, and antennae unfurled above me, searching, scenting. At once I smelled human sweat. Faint, dismissible, but when all I needed was confirmation?
And here I thought — been told! — this was an abandoned outpost. We had been hunting; snatcher squads and the solider caste on patrol had picked out several low-ranking knights probing these hills. Three ambushes in the past month — capturing nine thralls! Architects were debating building the next warren above ground.
Put simply: this was our territory. Didn’t the humans not realize that yet?
Mandibles scraped together with an amused twitch, venom already wetting their tips. All the better for me! I was dispatched here on mere web-spinning duty. If I had been right, all it would have earned me was a whole lot of waiting.
Now? I get to enjoy prey. Oh, how I shuddered with hunger.
Already my stance on the tower shifted — not climbing up, but across. My claw traced across the plain white façade until I found the thread that had cried out.
I could feel vibrations pulse along it, but I only meant to orient myself — my fingers alone could hardly interpret the coded pulse better. No, for that I had symbiosis with the lice-caste swarmlings forever burrowed in my honeycombed scalp-nest.
—Movement! (again it cried.)
—Acknowledged, (I signaled back.) Coming. Soon!
The little thing was so insistent, almost frantic in its pitch. Each swarmling servant laying my web was about the size of my fingertip. Tiny bugs, thinking little and knowing less, but my lice-nest administered them without myself lifting a thought. Half my mobile swarm was deployed.
Spare some attention, and I could feel twenty-four swarmlings flying, skittering, and dispersing. Lice integrated reports of other ’lings and what I’d witnessed with my own — much keener — five eyes, and with this totality we plotted the trajectories for each ’ling to follow.
The tower was a fat pillar. Circular and spiralling upward, it took up most of the square-fenced area at its base. The enclosing fence was about ten meters on a side, and the tower itself rose almost thirty. I’d climbed a dozen meters up already, charting a diagonal path that skirted around windows.
I now remembered (or was I just learning?) the path my lice directed the swarmlings down. Unlike the proprioception of my limbs, my sense of where swarmling was came down to where it should be, and what the vibrations of its silk seemed consistent with.
Meaning this alarmed swarmling should be—
—Movement! (it sent yet again.) Bright!
—Be calm, I will—
—Danger!
That last transmission came with decisive punction: a silken thread snapped, never to pulse again. I wanted quiet — but this?
This was a problem. Fortune had brought me prey to hunt, but no longer could I ambush nor trap it — because sure, maybe the swarmling was cutoff by terrible coincidence, but most likely, it had been squished.
Still, if my prey were stupid, it wouldn’t recognize a chrylurk’s swarmling. But what was a stupid thing doing in an abandoned knight outpost in the middle of known chrylurk territory?
Two impulses tore at me. At me, because this strategic consideration was beyond my lice-nest’s autonomy.
Should I direct my swarmlings away from the danger? Or send them in to gather more information — confirming the prey’s suspicion of chrylurk presence?
(In the highest castes, mighty elders could have thousands of swarmlings and envelop countrysides in their sense-web. Given that possibility, one bug squished should tell a canny victim little about how near I truly was.)
I made the call, and I moved. No point in gathering more information, not when I was this near — not when my swarmlings would be blind to what mattered most. Queen had deemed me fit to subdue prey — trivial for any good drone — and even to combat alchemists up to first compleation. This now mattered, because…
Why had my swarmling seen bright right before it died?
If my prey were an alchemist, I should worry. Second compleation meant I should flee at once — second compleation meant as soon as it spotted me I should already be in range of their transmutation — second compleation meant it should have already sensed the evanesence of my sense-web.
(Bitter irony when I was powerless to wield the art of evanesence, save for what my lice could do without me lifting a thought.)
Six limbs worked, clawing at the stone. A shadow in the impending shadow of the twilight. The swarmling had died below me, so I descended. It had ventured west, out from the tower’s shade and into the remaining light, at last reaching an open window then fluttering inward.
This had been the only swarmling to find a way inside — other windows were shut.
While I closed in, I delegated to the swarm held in reserve. Thicker ropes of silk were retrieved from my lice-nest, then flown off by eight I still retained. Four ropes each: these new bugs would reconvene with the others, handing off extra to the ’lings already deployed.
I didn’t have the time or skills to lay a trap. No, this was just to augment my sense-web. I could set tripwires — by the fence, by the door, by other windows — while my bugs perched to listen. If my prey fled, I would know when and where.
It would take a minute for those wires to fall and be drawn taut, so while I waited, I strummed the phantom thread that led back to the hive. Transmissions were strained at this remove, a world seen through a pinhole — or, more aptly, a conversation through two cans joined by string.
Only a single day on duty and already I missed the harmony, missed my lice interwoven with the Queen’s tapestry. But I could endure this. I had completed duties beyond the hive before. A few at least.
—Line? Weaver Seventeen to any operator, (I sent.)
—Bound! Alive and well! The hive hears you, dear~ (the operator replied; roughened with low fidelity, yet this one pulsed a thread-voice pitched to sing.) Everything alright? What can this one do for you? Hope you aren’t getting lonely out there.
—Just a small update (I sent.) Something’s here, smells like prey. I’m going to engage — it might be an alchemist. So. If I unravel…
I didn’t finish. What happened after was a mystery to me — I had never recapitulated before.
—Seventeen, if you’re worried, this one can ask for reinforcements—
—No need, just… letting you know. Out of an abundance of caution.
—If it was just prey, would you have said anything?
—Isn’t this protocol? Mission parameters were securing abandoned outpost. Laying a web that might catch prey later.
—Oh, little hiveling~ (— At the operator’s melody I cringed; this wasn’t my first assignment. —) Catching prey on your first day out there would still be within parameters. Is that all?
I paused, sighing through my spiracles in a way I dared hope couldn’t be heard at all from this far away.
—No (I sent.) I think it might be more.
Traitorous lice wavered in transcribing my voice. I’m not scared, I thought.
—It’s okay to be scared! Listen, here’s what hive will do, okay? This one will send a hunter out to your web. You can wait for her, or you can go in by yourself. (The operator paused.) And if it’s just prey, if you handle it, then sing to this one again and hive’ll leave you to it.
—We’re getting sidetracked (I sent.) There’s two reasons I connected. One was the warning, the other a question.
—Well, little hiveling? This one is here to serve.
—Have the scouts and webs seen anything? Has anyling gone missing?
—Have faith, dear. If hive sensed danger, hive would tell you right away.
—Right, of course.
(It made sense, it was obvious — I only got this duty because our intelligence was lacking at the border of our territory.)
—Nevertheless, this one will probe for details. That will take some focus. Shall this one leave you to work Queen’s will?
—I think my tripwires are all set. Yes, it’s time to pounce. Slack.
—Oh, lastly: this one will bind you to your calvary. Say hullo to her. Slack!
What? I didn’t ask for saving, and I certainly didn’t want to chatter obnoxiously in the ear of more seasoned hunters. I felt the transitive binding growing reflexively taut: the operator had stitched two threads together in that gracile fashion of her caste, and birthed a new connection.
(—Line. —Bound. I felt the automatic subconcious buzz of our lice-nests acknowledging each other.)
But I pointedly ignored the hunter.
Instead, I turned attention to swarm, examining in detail what my lice now reported — the newly released wave of bugs mingled with the others, attaching stiff tripwires to the gossamer sense-web we’d half-constructed.
But I was just dithering, wasn’t I? Even the operator a day’s travel away had caught that.
I dropped to the outcropping before the open window, upon which rested both glass panes. The window was too small to easily leap inside. No, I needed to slowly angle myself inward.
Within the tower lay barren space. Dirt-streaked floors, wooden tables empty of contents, and detritus of sundry origin (plain white paper pages scattered, rat-nibbled crumbs, stray threads). What had I expected — bodies and blood-stains from a triumphant chrylurk conquest? But I would remember if we had made any proper move on this tower.
We called it abandoned because months had passed since we’d spied any torchlight or smokestacks or tracks on the road. This tower overlooked a dirt path north, now only leading into the heart of our hive — which meant any human ambition to use that road could not escape our noticing.
I suppose my duty amounted a test of that hypothesis.
The claws of six limbs gripped the edges of the window as my segmented body worked itself inward. Finally my abdomen slid through, and the hooves of my hindmost legs fell upon the stone floor. Then came a single thought, a single perception.
Bright!
Then a shuddering boom and the shattering, piercing pain. Like fire shooting up my leg. Blooming into a sting that shook and tore my everything — concentrated low and waning as it spread, though.
My immediate regret was not paying closer attention to the paper, even in the darkness — I smelled wet ink!
So that was an alchemist!
The transmution-explosion rocked me to the left, and I staggered a few steps, but I have too many legs not to immediately regain a firm grasp of balance. My antennae were waving wildly, head twisting as all five eyes peered for threats.
But the room still lay barren around. Vacant.
I drew in a breath. My right hindleg wouldn’t support any weight, and it throbbed in pain. Its hoof was gone, haemolymph draining from the hole, and further up that leg, the hard shell of exoderm buckled inward, jabbing into my cuticle.
My head drew closer, examining the wound, then closer still — but bringing my own hindleg to my mouth was a task beyond insectoid flexibility. So I brought a foretarsus to a mandible and let it drip, venom pouring out from a chelicerae-tips and into the grooves of my claws.
Then I stabbed my own claws into my leg. My venom numbed me, and the hard ceramic of my exoderm came glowing to life. On instinct, I now transmuted myself, exoderm flaring to life. Not enough to repair, but the bleeding stopped.
And before I took another step into the tower, I felt it. No, I didn’t feel it. My tripwires had niggled in the back of my head (literally), as I had waited anxiously for my prey to bolt. That catharsis never came.
Just like my swarmling uttering a ‘—Danger!’ and vanishing, the tripwires I wove in front of the tower’s entrance are gone. A hole in my sense-web.
I turned and lunged back to the window. The trap had exploded the wall, and through the wider opening the setting sun smoldered in my eyes. (Spilled blood glimmered on smooth floor.)
At least getting out wouldn’t take as long. Another dragline fell from the lice at my scalp. An unwoven silky glob served to glue one end to what remains of the windowsill. Next, I crouched and I leapt.
As I fell, rappeling down the side of the tower, I remembered the space surrounding me. Sunset to the west, and the entrance — and the suspicious hole in my web — lay on the tower’s south side. From here I could not see the entrance. Fastest way to arrive would be to loop clockwise around the tower, a direct southeastward diagonal.
Kicking off the wall, I angled toward the north.
My target had taken out one of my swarmlings, then left a trap for me. As soon as the trap went off, it made a move at the exit — as if spooked and making an escape. That was an argument for my pursuit. Pounce for the kill as a proud hunter would.
Dirt sprayed up from the impact of three legs against the ground. Already I was moving on, galloping counterclockwise around the tower. Sunset in the west, so on the east side I could move under the cover of the tower’s shadow. Chrylurks in pursuit moved faster than humans — at least a chrylurk with both hooves, I thought, mandibles gritted — so ideally, even this detour couldn’t cost me my quarry.
Chrylurks outsped humans; this was an alchemist. Alchemy denied its captives true self-transformation, but Queen had warned me what compleated bodies were capable of.
And I had already felt what this exscient wastrel could do. My leg! I should make it scream for that — but could it repeat the stunt? Could it hit me harder at close range?
Even as the thoughts twisted in my head, vacillating from vicious hope to helpless dread and back, I moved, claws almost digging through the dirt with the swiftness of my passage. My run was interspersed with leaping and crouching as my lice informed me exactly where my tripwires had been set.
The shadow felt almost cool as it fell over me.
I went further east, hoping to spot motion. Low to the ground I moved and searched, but a part of me thought of home, and I strummed one last transmission.
—Line!
—Bound. Speak.
—Alchemist encountered. Injury sustained. Pursuing target.
—Already started the fun without me, grub? (not the operator speaking: the hunter had replied.) Don’t die on me.
—Target spotted. Slack.
With that excuse, I turned my focus entirely from lice-song to the forest around me.
A human figure jogged out from the tower, head frantically turning, scanning for pursuers. It didn’t see me, of course. Venom had gone cool in my leg, and quiet were my lice. Not even a second compleation could sense me right now — not unless it saw me, and my exoderm was dark camoflage.
Studs on the armor caught the light and gleamed, but it wasn’t plate. The most dangerous knights all used plates — always needing room for engraving transmutation circles. Was this a weak one, then?
Fangs wetting, I smiled. Creeping steadily onward through underbrush, I remained patient for just a few moments more. The human’s stride slowed as it arrived at the fence.
The gate was closed. Latched, locked, held fast with old metal’s weight.
I surged forward then. It would open the gate as fast as it could, but that was time when their eyes weren’t watching for me. Still in the shadows for now, but my movements would only get more apparent the nearer I came.
Bright! Then a loud crack, and the human ran into a cloud of smoke. Seen from afar, that bright light looked like lightning shaped into a round form — like a cone or wheel. Afterimages on a pair of my eyes.
Momentum carried me forth, but my antennae curled tight. The question had an answer: yes, it could do that again. Now I knew I had run toward danger. Second compleation or not, I didn’t want to explode. I could fall back right now — just disengage.
Already started the fun without me, grub?
I wasn’t a little hiveling or a grub. I had completed my duties! I was entrusted with this task. Queen Herself deemed that one chrylurk would be sufficient for this duty. Was I insufficient?
My target was past the gate — and therefore past every tripwire I had lain. My swarm likewise remained waiting in place, mute on lines I had ordered silenced. I could summon them, but I’d been equipped with a web-spinning swarm, bugs unsuited for biting or stinging. Nor were they fast enough in flight to try binding silk to fleeing prey.
I reached the gate myself and slipped past it. I was closing in — the alchemist was fast, but not that fast — but I still had no plan deeper than pouncing.
Catching prey on your first day out there would still be within parameters. But I didn’t think that was true. At this point, I would have so much more to work with if I instead had even a few days to prepare my nest.
“Agh!” came a yell of surprise — prey saw me, eyes wide, mouth panting and ringed with spittle. So close! But I kept an eye on those damned hands.
My shell writhed to life, evascenscent power flowing in the lines of my ceramic exoderm. Skin shifting, shimmering. The surest defense against an alchemist transmuting you: transmute yourself.
So close! A few more steps and I could have lunged at the helpless thing!
The human skidded to a stop, but I’d kept running and abruptly I was now very much in range to lunge.
But those damned hands. The human bend down, plain white paper in hand, slamming it against the dirt. I stabbed the earth. Bright! The lightning-wheel spun and cracked sharply.
My stab-stop came so abruptly my hindleg and abdomen were lifted up with my lingering momentum. Dirt and small rocks scratched against me.
But I didn’t burn — I didn’t explode.
I heard footsteps beyond the dirt, and I lunged into it. This stupid trick had only bought my prey seconds before I would be, once again, in range to lunge again.
(So close! A few more steps in stealth and my fangs might already be sunken into them.)
Skidding to another stop, it slammed another slip of ink-enchanted paper to the ground — how many did it even have? — and I dodged the next explosion at well-learned distance.
I ran forward — and hard metal stabbed into me.
Immediately I flinched backward, droplets of haemolymph clinging to the iron before evanescent exoderm shifted my shell, sealing it to a close. I backed up further.
The human stood there, staring at me. “Damn, but Sovin was right — not just blightflies out here. Damn!” Its barding bore the quincunx, emblem of the knights’ order.
“You… should… kneel…” I said. We were unused to speaking — extraneous — but Queen had trained us well. “A leg burned… a hole in the chest… if you kneel… I’ll bite you numb before I exact my due.” My proboscis flared, exposing all its needles, and baring my mandibles’ grin, down from first tooth to fang-tip.
You alchemists are all about balance, isn’t that right?
Not standing anymore, the human was strafing slowly, eyes fixed, as if testing my reflexes. “Fully grown, speaking, this is a right mess. You’re a right mess.” A huff of air. “No, not right at all.”
I stepped forward, and the hand holding the blade tensed. A short tool, almost a dagger, and my vitals lay well behind me, abdominal. I could easily take another stab, if it were just a stab.
This was an alchemist. Either the attack had done something I couldn’t sense — dangerous. Or this was yet another setup to bait me into cockily eating a more deadly follow-up — more dangerous.
I felt my swarm. Thirty-two back at the tower, I could summon them, but they wouldn’t arrive for almost another minute. I still had eight inside me, so I instructed them to detach ropes from the silk on my head. If I played this subtle, could I lay a trap and bind it?
The alchemist bent low again — not kneeling, alas — but no paper fluttered. No explosion bloomed. Now it started moving. Quick, should I take caution or initiative? My weight shifted forward and at once I regret my choice.
Bright! A cone pointed right at me. It was new, but I reacted, throwing myself to the side, and let my legs buckle. This saved me.
Smoke and burning air above me. But how could I dodge an explosion? But then, how could the alchemist have exploded the ground below them without self-harm?
Pieces clicked in place. Alchemists transmuted, which required an object to transmute. Before, it was the ground itself, yet this had limited their tactics.
When it bent down, had it grabbed a rock? Something it must’ve transmuted into an explosion.
(The wall of the tower had exploded; my blood fell on smooth, undamaged floor.)
Their innate transmutation was… carefully shaped explosions?
But all that told me was… I really didn’t want to stay at this range, did I? Close enough to burn in the blast, but beyond countering with these sharp claws.
Smoke cleared, I glanced up from my low crouch. My swarm had kept going, six lines of silk spiraling out from me.
The alchemist wasn’t looking at me. It had spied a swarmling mid-skitter. In one second, he knelt for another rock, pointed it, and bright-crack annihilated two swarmlings and their silk.
“Silk? Carried by bugs. So no haunted shuttle,” it muttered. Then those lips bent upward.
Queen had taught us well — this was a smile.
I rose slowly, and not completely. “What do you… have to be happy about?”
“Seems I have a chance here.”
Did it? Not second compleation, I decided. Queen told me that the power of second compleation was transmutation at a distance, with a circle drawn on the air itself. This exscient liked underbluffing, but the silver circle would have killed me.
So I gave a smile of my own, saliva-slick proboscis running along my mandibles.
I made my decision.
Moments ago I’d risen, not completely — I had crouched, so now my three legs extended with full force, launching me up and onward.
A lunge, finally! I’d held myself back, afraid of the sword, but fearfully circling and dodging explosions had gotten me nowhere.
In the air I twisted, so instead of my core, the jabbing blade sunk into my shell at the joint where my second left arm met thorax — and I was right. Terribly.
It had baited me. This time the sword itself glowed bright.
Lightning-glare shone a piercing radiance into my midmost eye, even as I leaned away — but I couldn’t dodge the blade lodged in me.
Pain screamed as I gushed outward from two gaping holes. I had stumps where I once had left arms. The explosion was shaped into a blade, and it severed me.
But a chrylurk down two arms still boasted twice the human limitation.
Next, several things happened at once.
The claws of my third pair of limbs — front legs — wrapped around the prey’s legs, tearing into leather pants.
The human had thrust its little sword with a two-handed grip — which made it easy to lock my second right arm around both the wrists.
My first right arm swung downward, claws savagely digging into the shoulder — I felt a bone crack. As I fell forward, my claws scraped through its flesh, tearing a brutal rift from shoulder down their back.
But my winning move was my head falling to the neck. Armor protected it, but my wet proboscis slithered along their chin and wrenched away the protection from the inside its defenses.
With that delicious jugular curve exposed, I struck, mandibles sinking in. Even as my body was weary, bleeding, trembling, my venom flowed smoothly down and into my prey. Like that, it was over.
Not that stubborn human pride easily acknowledged that. One arm — the one without a mangled shoulder sapping its strength — twisted in my grip. Hands remained stead on the hilt of the sword. The last, desperate spasm was twisting the knife. Just to make me suffer?
No, that was just setup. Here came the real scheme: bright-crack! But this transmutation sputtered to life, weaker — I could feel that.
Still I burned, with a guttural scream through spiracles already raw — but the first knife-burst had severed two arms. This one imploded a bit of my thorax.
My vision throbbed. Either the blood loss, or the half-collapsed thorax cutting off vital flow, but I felt light-headed.
The world kept moving around me. Everything rose up — vertigo at ground level.
Even at best, one good hindleg on the ground was insufficient to support me. Gripping the human brutally, we both fell.
And after that, there was no struggle. My venom was dosed to sedate, and one look at the pupils told me it was taking effect.
“Damn…” it gasped.
I tried to sit up and struggled a moment before flopping off to the side. Oh well. My prey wasn’t going anywhere. I let my head fall to glance sidelong — and once again those damn hands were moving!
Clapping? I saw light, a soft glow.
“Exscient! Exšh’t!” I cursed. “Just kneel! I won!”
“That—” It coughed. “That you did. But I have— have one… last…”
What would its last gambit be? A forbidden self-trasmutation? How big of an explosion could one body make? I started to wriggle on the ground, but I can hardly move anymore. Certainly can make no efforts toward the blast radius.
The light took shape. A silvery circle, suspending an orb of — blood?
It was second compleation!? Just barely?
Finally, the blood-orb transformed. Antennae curled tighter, I lifted a shaking hand up to cover my face.
And I was unharmed. My hand fell, and I saw a trail of smoke. The transmutation soared upward. Up and up. Higher than the tower now, and still higher.
Night had fallen around us, so this rising light almost seemed to challenge the stars. But though it raced upward for many moments more it couldn’t have neared heaven at all.
It hung there at the apex of its ascent, then as if torn by some great despair, it burst apart. A brilliant conflagration spilled across the sky, blotting out the stars with alchemical light, but only for a moment. It all faded slowly, pointlessly.
You and me both, oh stupid little spell, I thought. My head swam and my vision faded.
—Hello there, my cruel and thoughtless little sister.
The vibration-pulse felt near and strong, not tinny with distance like the operator.
—? (I could muster nothing more coherent.)
—I have arrived at last. Don’t go dying on me just yet, got it? I see you’ve already snagged yourself a meal. No fun for me at all, is there? Just cleaning up your mess. Bad sister.
—The hunter…?
—Your assigned savior, yes. Aren’t you glad that chirpy little operator insisted I came? Now hold still and let me lick your wounds, you’ve all but fainted on me.
I could hear the footsteps. A tree branch cracked and sounded so like the bright-crack! that it jolted me back awake for one instant. But I could not bring myself to turn my head and see her arrival.
Someone else could, though.
“Just… haha… oh, just like they say! Where you see one bug…” The human no longer sounded angry, his quiet voice came wistful and sedate. “Infesting… just like roaches.”