Two chrylurks, Gloom and Adversity, crawled through tunnels of limestone. Shimmerbugs aglow were the only illumination, glinting off pools and streams. Water trickled through, carving these caverns deeper, but its work has largely been outpaced by the hive’s excavation. Behind them, the floor bore a layer of crushed chitin and exoderm, and the walls a tracework of woven lines. Both grew scarce as they went on.
Then, at once, the confining tunnel gave way to a larger chamber. Shadows swallowed the wall, but the echoes of chitin-hooves on stone were suggestive. Smaller still than the bustling heart of the hive, but almost an hour of squeezing through crevasses rendered any space where two legs outstretched touched no wall profoundly welcome.
But was it truly an hour spent spelunking? The body was present for this adventure, but the mind? Draglines of the silk led back to the hive, at time hitched to those wires tracing the cave walls. Lively communication had pulsed back and forth all throughout. Adversity watched as her closest sisters attended their own duties — a hunter practicing forms fit for four-limbed fighting, a nurse washing and the feeding the thralls in their pens.
Adversity sent cheers of —Good job! as they completed each task, and they pulsed their thanks. In turn, she recounted cave sights — slender olms sleeping, stalagtites looming high — for she was the first among their group to venture this far from the hive.
A bit spooky, she admitted — and her nurse sister sensed it.
—Focus, sis, you aren’t going so far to not pay attention to it!
But most of what lay this far from home was so much opaque cave darkness. Then, almost in response, came deliverance.
Gloom’s Shimmerbugs flew forth by unspoken command, finding perch on the far walls. The larger chrylurk once more lead the smaller. Zhe was one head taller, and zir head boasted a panoply of silken loops drawn in dizzy patterns. Three horns burst from above zir, and cobwebs latticed the space between, a concourse for crawling spiderlice.
A veil fell over zir visage, cloaking her eyes to vague points — but it seemed less a matter of obscurity than emphasis: as if the silk and all the spiders at work were her true expression.
By contrast, her follower Adversity bore no horns but buds thereof, nor silk-work save a short, cropped head of hair. Her exoderm clad her thin and shiny. Her apertures were wide and credulous, and her four arms fidgeted in excitement-uncertainty.
—You’re ready (zhe told her.) We will begin.
—I am? (she started. But it hadn’t been a question, and she shouldn’t question it.) Right, I am.
—Come here.
She approached. Two of the weaver’s hands lifted from the space between zir forelegs, and she caught a whiff of something pungent, but zir hands were already reaching out, grabbing. Zhe grabbed her antennae, one in each hand, and moved along their lengths in a smooth stroke.
Danger! Caution! Quiessence! Zir fingers were wet with deep bitter alarm. A pheromonic command backed with a high caste authority. The caress continued past her antennae — with pressed, feelers were pushed against her head, and how those scented fingers brushed her hair.
Her body reacted automatically. Pulse spiking, attention snapping into keen focus — but the most dramatic change lay in her swarm, just as compelled by the pheromones. Her spiderlice stilled their continual chatter. All the communication lines, all her hive-bindings, went still, retracted and clipped.
She opened her mouth to yelp in shock, but her voice was utterly mute.
Her eyes settled on the weaver — not glaring like had every right to, but watching for a signal, an order. That pheromone said Danger! and zhe was her authority.
“Calm now. You may speak.”
“What the heck! I didn’t even get a chance to say slack to my sisters.” She threw her arms to either side.
Zir head inclined, shifting zir veil. “You shall speak to them again soon. This is part of today’s lessons.”
“You could have warned me! Heck, you could have told me to tie up my bindings myself. I know how!”
“You would take too long, girl.” Head head tilted — and one noticed, distractingly, that her two side-horns formed a perfect right angle. “You know what role we have assigned you.”
“Yeah I’m gonna be an infiltrator and get all the exscient wrapped around my finger!”
“And what dangers does an infiltrator face?”
“Getting caught?”
A hum. “And the easiest way to get caught?”
“Forgetting your backstory? Taking off the mask at the wrong moment?”
“Wrong. Mortals are fools and liars. They will believe you, and when they don’t, they will believe it a mundane deception. Further, their sense of privacy and propriety is our advantage. No, any chrylurk deemed smart enough to be a infiltrator is far from likely to make such simple mistake.”
“Then I guess I don’t know. This today’s lesson?”
“It’s a prelimanary,” said Gloom. “The answer is alchemy. Alchemists are always your greatest enemy. No disguise or story will suffice if they see us wielding arts mortals cannot. Evanescence — do you know what that is?”
“We drink their blood, and then our webs become magical?”
“Approximately. Weaving serivane taxes our sanguine reserves, yes?”
Her antennae nodded.
The veiled eyes stared, waiting. “So why did I cut your hive-binding?”
“That’s what I’m saying!”
Antennae fell over zir face, drooping disppointment. “Your duty here is to think, dear. I ask because you know. You are ready. Simply tie toward the threads you have been given.”
“Oh. Um.” She paused, lifting a secondary hand to chew on her fingers. “It’s not that just weaving it that taxes. Sometimes I get thirsty just from messaging my sisters a lot. It’s like breathing, you keep doing it.”
“Approximately, yes. Evanescence allows threads to pass beyond the veil of material. After all, Your line back to the hive went through the cavern walls around us. But serivane cannot remain ephemeral anymore than a fire could burn forever with no fuel.”
“And… fire spits also out smoke, right? You’re saying alchemists can sense serivane?”
“Mortals are fools. They will walk right into cobwebs without seeing them. Serivane is just as inconspicuous, even to an alchemist’s aura. Unless, of course, there is an abundance of it. But it is, always, a matter of chance. Infiltrators must deal in chance. Just one glint is enough to raise suspicions.” The weaver reached out, and this time zir hand bore a strand of serivane. Zhe patted her head, and in the process bound their licenests.
—As an infiltrator, you will spend your time cut off from the hive, not because you must, but because it’s simply a prudent caution. Such is the virtue of quiessence.
—But what about my sisters? That’s kinda…
—Your duty. You will accept it (zhe sent, and zir ironclad certain underscore the words.) But let us move on. Here is my next question-lesson for you. Can you reconnect to the hive?
—Yeah, let me just—
—Do not do so, not yet. The real question: how?
—Um, I just tell my lice to do it?
—What are your lice doing?
She chewed on her finger again. Another hand, reaching up, grasping the silken tresses the hung by her neck. She groped around till she found a spiderlice that was dutifully weaving or just chewing on silk. She plucked it and stared at the tiny bug. (Bug — despite the name, they had six legs.)
But it had no answers for her, it only squirmed.
Zhe hummed wordlessly, making her glance over. As an idle demonstration, she had a line of silk drawn between two secondary hands. At once, a primary claw came down and severed the line.
—Tell me. How can this connection be restored without either limb crossing the intervening distance? (zhe asked.)
She stared. But this display seemed to underscore the fundamental absurdity of what zhe had asked.
—I don’t know. Maybe if you… threw the lines? But you’d have to get closer, or you’d have to throw them at the same time — which you couldn’t coordinate without already being hive-bound! — and even then both lines would have to meet midair, but even then they’re still severed… I don’t know. It doesn’t seem physically possible.
—It’s not. Evanescence transcends what is physical.
—So it’s magic then. Do I have to know this?
—You want to know this, dear. You’re curious.
Again that certainty in her tone. And… she did recall the heady scent of the pheromones, laden with pragmatic meaning but also that unique musk of zir. This was an authority. She knew what was best.
—I must explain, because you won’t be able to figure this all out on your own. First, we often speak of harmony — our bindings are like songs, pulses of meanings — but the vibration of serivane strings… it does not always serve us to think of it as sound. It is also akin to light.
—I’ve seen through my sister’s eyes before (she sent, antennae nodding.)
—You misunderstand. That is synesthesia of a different origin, but I cannot discuss protocol today (zhe replied with a waving of her sharp primaries.) This light shines back and forth across a serivane line. When you cover up a light, it casts far-reaching shadows, and when a serivane line is cut, the disturbance is quite distinct from simply going still.
Now, zhe reached into the ropes that clad zir body — all the netting that surrounded zir had myriad treasures, less like a spider’s web than a magpie’s nest.
What zhe retrieved looked like a spool with hooked flanges, as if chitin had grown into a contorted shape.
—Your spiderlice produce these devices with the same industry with which they produce silk, but theirs are all tiny and thus difficult to inspect. This one operates by the same principle, though.
With a claw, zhe cut a new, thin string from her hair, and begin winding it around the hooked flanges in an intricate pattern. As she worked, a spiderlice wandered forward, descending from on high, suspended by its own line.
—The work of these spools requires two threads. The first is the control line, a vaneweb I am weaving by hand, though swarmlings are far more adept at its construction. As a vanewebs, it requires an sanguine inflow, which this plump little bug here will provide.
She stared as zhe covered the spool in a tracework of webbing. Her lidded apertures barely discerned the filaments, but the ocelli on her brow scried the shimmer of alterlight — this was a vaneweb already pulsing.
The weaver cut another long strand from zir voluminous hair, and delicately let it drift toward the spool. As soon as the silk reached a certain radius, it was drawn into the shimmering device. Zhe let go, and the silk flew down, almost slithering over the chitinous cylinder, tightening into loop within a second.
—The spool has three modes of operation. The first is the initiation I just performed. For the second, here. Hand this to the spiderlice you so presciently summoned.
She still held the bug in her hand. The weaver had tapped the spiderlice in command of the device’s vaneweb, and the spooled silk slacked just enough for a thread to peel away.
Except it, with the same invisible will that let the thread slither-coil around the spool let it now rise like a charmed snake, straight up the air to the weaver’s waiting fingers.
Zhe pinched it and pulled. Tautly, the thread stretched.
This was what zhe now handed to the infiltrator — or her swarmling, as it were. There was more than enough silk to bridge the distance. The bug took the silk with a happy wiggles of its legs.
—You are bound to it, yes? (zhe asked.) Say hi to me. If fact: Slack.
—Slack! (her lice reflexively replied.)
With a pop, the line they had spoken through until now went silent — not quite as scary as when she’d lost the whole hive-in-harmony earlier, but she still flinched.
But this was part of the lesson. Zhe knew best. In fact, zhe given an order — what had zhe just said?
She turned her mind to the bug and the silk it chewed. She had a swarm-binding with it, far from a true harmony (’twas such a simple-minded creature), but she still formed the words.
—Hi (she said to her bug.)
—Ack? (it had no idea what to do with the signal.
She glanced between it and the spool and the weaver gazing patiently at her. Right.
She felt out the pathway, performing the routing which her lice would handle automatically. First to the swarmling in palm, to the spool, then to the weaver.
—Hi, O Gloom.
—Hi yourself, Adversity.
It worked! Their voices sounded different, like this. Most hive-bindings had more threads, more bandwidth. Like this there was very little harmonic information to speak of, just the raw words.
—As I was saying, this is the second mode of operation — communication at a distance. Now, move! Walk around this chamber a bit, (zhe commanded, and she obeyed, a slow amble.) If you look at the spool with ocelli, you can see how the light shifts as you move, yes?
Antennae worked up and down, affirmating.
—Why do you think it does that?
She stopped and thought. Something was happening with each step. It wasn’t necessary to allow the movements — an ordinary spool of thread could move freely. And whatever that mysterious something was, it was worth spending their precious sanguine reserves on, constantly.
And the point of this whole demonstration, it tied back to restoring a connection without crossing the distance. But how?
No, she couldn’t figure it all out at once. All zhe was asking of her was why the vaneweb is shimmering with activity.
All she was doing was moving around. She takes another step to demonstrate, and there came the tell-tale wrinkle in the alterlight, faint as it was.
Then she stops. Instead of moving, she just waved her hand through the air — the hand clutching the spiderlice. Even fainter, now, but there it was!
Why would it register every single movement, unless—
—It’s recording? (she sent.)
She was excited to say it, but that did come across on the austere wire.
—Indeed (zhe replied, clapping her free claw together.) The vaneweb operates by principles advanced enough you may consider it magical for the purposes of this lesson. Simply understand that its lines encode the angle and length unspooled.
She nodded.
—Now, remember what I said about how serivane pulses are like light? Pay close attention and do not move.
Zhe brought down a claw, and the vaneweb winked. The now-loose thread retracted, just like it had when zhe first fed it silk. The vaneweb shifted all throughout — not like when she had moved around. The glow intensified for a second then dropped to something much dimmer — then vanished altogether.
“This is the third mode,” zhe continued. “When the thread is cut, it is like a light gone dark, and it immediately ceases to update the record. Instead, the silk is respooled, and the web attains quiessence. An alchemist could not sense this.”
“Are you going to show me the magic trick, now?”
“What do you think happens next? You can figure the rest out, now.”
She could? What did she know now that she didn’t before? She stared at the spool, dark now but it had shimmered with alterlight earlier.
It had been recording — that was the only insight her teacher lead her to.
Angle and length unspooled. And if you knew both those facts, you knew where to send your thread to restore the connection. Right?
But that was just knowing — how did the thread get there? Her teacher hadn’t said anything about lice throwing or guiding silk, but that had to happen somewhere, didn’t it?
Wait. Oh, that sneaky bug! Zhe had not said anything about it, but she’d seen it. The slithering silk, the way it rose straight up in the air.
“The vaneweb controls the silk? It can make it unspool?”
“You forgot to tell me the first half of your reasoning. We aren’t abound right now, I cannot follow you.”
“Oh, right. The recording — if you can unspool the silk in a straight line whenever, then you just have figure out where to return to by reading the angle and length. Right? Though I don’t know you could keep the thread straight if it has to go really far. If the wind blows it a little… And what if I had moved a bit? Then the angle would be all wrong.
Maybe she’d gone down the wrong track. Could that really work in practice?
But the weaver snapped her claws dramatically. And at once, the spool glows with alterlight, and the silk surged forth, like an arrow toward her — specifically, her swarmling. The bug catches the silk and she felt the brush of their minds rejoining.
—Serivane is not physical and the winds do not molest it (zhe said.) You are broadly correct. This is your first lesson, if I needed to also explain dragline trails and path integration, then your little head would spin.
—I still wanna know how it works, though. How does the silk stay straight? Threads don’t just do that (she sent, jabbing a finger forward to mime the way it flew at her.)
—You are an infiltrator, not a weaver. It would serve you not to delve to deep into these topics. They can… ensnare you. But I cannot not resist a taste: to understand evanescence as a whole, imagine a spider’s web. Patiently she wait, and soon flies find themselves stuck in her grasp. That is their natural place.
Gloom spoke with such vehement truth that Adversity flinched.
—Evanescent webs are arcane weavings that craft the proper place for the world itself to become stuck. All things fall, and we ensure they fall into our design. As it should—must—will. If that is too abstract for you… it suffices to imagine we weave the puppets strings to tug matter along its way.
—So we’re kind of the masters of the whole world then, aren’t we? I’m glad we’re the ones pulling the strings.
The weaver laughed.
—But dear, we are made of matter as well.
—Huh… so we can get stuck in our own webs?
—What do you think a hive is?
She looked down, gazing at the swarmling in her hand with wide apertures, thoughts all aswirl.
—But that is enough. You did well today. You may rebind yourself to the hive.
All that momentary uncertainty fled her at that — she immediately gave the command to her lice.
—Line?
Unbidden, an imagine came to her — or was it sudden attention to a sensation that had always been there? Of a thousand tiny spools in the hex-riddled burrows of her scalp, all aglow and unfurling at once — silken arrows fired with blind premonition at calculated targets.
—Bound! (came the reply of a dutiful operator.) Welcome back!
—Hii! (She was happy, even to hear from the operator, but embedded in her message was signal to forward it to the bugs she most wanted to hear from — her sisters.)
By now the nurse had finished her care of the thralls and was messily drinking her lunch from the mouth of a replete; the hunter clenched her mandibles in pain as a crack on her arm was bandaged up, wounded in training.
—That took so long (said the former.) I missed you~
—Don’t tell me you got in trouble (said the latter.)
As if the isolation had wound her too-taut, reconnecting to her hive left her feeling like she was about to burst and spill out everything. But she had so much built up — she wanted to tell them everything she learned, or how kinda scixe the weaver’s musk smelled, or that it was cool and scary that they were all like squirming flies in the queen’s web.
But all she managed to get out was:
—I love you both (she said.)
—Aww (said the nurse.)
—Oh no. Are you finally going to get unraveled for being too annoying? Is this your last message?
—Quiet, you (replied the nurse.) If you were actually worried you could check. She’s not going to be unraveled, she’s just nervous. Come back soon, I’ll give you a big hug!
—I’d like that.
In the cave, the small chrylurk smiled. The weaver, adorned with zir shimmerbugs, was an approaching beacon, and zhe combed a claw through her short cropped her as zhe passed. Wordless, she was beckoned to follow after, and they began the journey back to the hive.
She was glad to be back, she missed everyone. But she hadn’t even been gone an hour.
How would it feel when she was a real infiltrator?
—You’ll be ready. (With hive-bound certainty.)