They’re not alive? Ian frowned. I’m too far to really get a good look at them. I can see only the vaguest outlines of vitality from where the figures are hiding.

“Are they puppets?” Ian asked, recalling Yuma Tai’s party.

Wolfien craned his head forward against the wyrm’s ribcage. “We need to get closer.”

The wyrm dipped downward, its sinuous body winding through the air. “Let me know when,” Ian said.

“Okay, that’s low enough; I know what they are. Arima, tell the general we have expert illusionists out here.”

Illusionists, plural? Ian wondered.

“What kind of illusionists?” Arima asked.

“Dunai says that those figures below are human-shaped vessels full of wasps.” Wolfien pointed his arm out of the wyrm’s rib cage. “He says that there are two illusionists hiding nearby in a small cave. Based on that intelligence, the general is adamant that they’re from Kyeila and manipulating light that isn’t on our visible spectrum to control the wasps.”

“Why does she think they’re from Kyeila?” Ian asked. Wolfien’s swift explanation was a bit hard to follow.

“Yes, why does the general think they’re from Kyeila? She wants to know,” Arima said.

“She says that they’re possibly a nasty pair of Light and Cloud practitioners called the Zimmerman Twins.”

“Hold on,” Arima replied, cocking his head. A moment later he gave Wolfien a crisp nod, saying, “Confirmed: We have permission to engage. She says to stay focused, Wolfien; make sure nothing catches us unawares.”

Wolfien nodded back. “Understood.”

The three men locked eyes, then turned their heads to peer down at the jungle below. Ian maneuvered the wyrm closer, swooping by the wasps. As they approached, they could hear the furious buzzing of wings over the roar of the wind. Without the defense of distance, the clouded vitality signatures no longer appeared human, the cavorting mass of insects glowing white under translucent black soil.

Ian realized with a start that the actual cavities in the earth were hollowed to be the shape of humans, providing the insects their human-like disguise. Or perhaps...

“Yes, they were people who were captured,” Wolfien murmured softly, anticipating the unspoken question.

“Who?” Arima asked, frowning.

“The wasps are covering corpses,” Wolfien explained. “Ones wearing SPU uniforms.”

Ian frowned. Flesh-eating wasps; fun. My constructs are way less nasty. They didn’t eat so much as convert raw materials into energy and new constructs.

Wolfien gestured to the right, his forehead pressed against the wyrm’s ribcage. “Dunai, the illusionists are in the cave about ten seconds in front of us.”

Ian nodded and continued forward, the wyrm slicing through the air like a spear.

“I see their arrows,” Arima whispered softly.

“Dunai: When you disable them, make sure you freeze their mouths. They’re going to try and trigger coma oaths.”

“Sure.” Ian could see how the enemy knocking themselves out for over twelve hours might be a problem. Unfortunately, they’re our only potential lead on the Kyeilans’ activities.

The illusionists came into Ian’s range, their prone forms resting up against smooth cavern walls. One of them was awake keeping watch; he struggled against Ian’s grip, his eyes reddening with rage, but was unable to call out to his slumbering companion. She didn’t notice Ian’s presence, her sleep continuing uninterrupted.

“Got them,” Ian declared, leading the wyrm to the cave’s mouth. The entrance was craggy and filled with ferns and flowering foliage, but just a few feet inside the greenery trailed off. Ian kept the bone wyrm stationed outside, the massive, serpentine construct serving as an intimidating guard.

“Can’t see,” Arima called out. While Ian and Wolfien could use shades of vitality to see the way forward, Arima had no such aid. As end arrows disregarded material objects, they didn’t help navigating in the dark.

Ian plucked a soul gem from his pocket and rolled it in his hands, breaking it into sand-like granules that almost-instantly melted into an oily, violet liquid. He sent the gem juice into Arima’s eyes, the general’s assistant flinching and taking a step back in response.

“Good?” Ian asked.

“Fine,” Arima muttered. “Just takes some getting used to.”

They reached the small chamber where the two practitioners had made camp for the evening. When they came around the corner, the conscious illusionist’s eyes widened slightly, but he could do little else to protest, his bones and muscles locked in place. The woman to his side looked peaceful, her eyes closed and her golden hair tucked into a ponytail. To Ian’s eye, the vitality signatures of both confirmed that they were Light practitioners.

“The man might have already contacted someone by quantum channel,” Arima observed, speaking in hushed tones. “What’s the strategy, Wolfien?”

The Regret practitioner gave Ian and Arima a contemplative look. “Let’s keep the woman here, but take the man around the corner back near the entrance. I don’t want them together if we’re going to start an interrogation.”

Ian complied, sending the stiff man back through the tunnel. Wolfien gave the woman an appraising look before gesturing for them to walk back toward the cave entrance. His eyebrows pinched together as he stood before the immobilized illusionist; after a few seconds, he turned away and sighed. “I couldn’t get anything out of him. Arima, can you create a blood oath?”

“Of course. Also, General Var’dun’a says that a Remorse practitioner is on the way,” Arima added, keeping his voice low. “In the meantime she’s dispatching more earth elementalists to scout for the Kyeilans. She doesn’t think their main strategy was setting the traps.”

While they waited for the Remorse practitioner, Ian knocked the man unconscious, providing Arima the opportunity to form the oath. Arima knelt down beside the captive’s limp form and used a scalpel to slice a thin line across his neck. He took out a roll of thick, cloth-like parchment and tore off a segment, then dipped the butt of the scalpel in the man’s blood and started writing.

He looked up and gave Wolfien a stiff nod. “Try now.”

—

“He’s definitely from Kyeila,” Wolfien explained, relaying his findings. “The illusionist was working to transport wasps into the interior before being sent back to check these traps once our soldiers fell into them. They were almost discovered by one of our platoons heading East, but took refuge in this cave; they decided to take shifts sleeping until nightfall, when they’d have a better chance at reconnecting with their fellow soldiers.”

“Please elaborate on transporting wasps into the interior,” Arima said, his eyes narrowing.

“He resisted telling me, but the Kyeilans are bringing in wasps through an underground tunnel system. The Godorans apparently already had one ready; the Kyeilans would be given its location in the event of an attack. All they had to do was dig a few thousand feet to connect to it. They’ve been moving wasps in through there using wind elementalists and Light practitioners.”

“...How many wasps do they have?” Ian murmured.

Wolfien sighed. “I’m still not entirely sure, but more than we anticipated. It seems that Kyeila has decided to turn these wasps from a distraction into their vanguard; such a strategic shift would have taken years of preparation.”

Godora and Kyeila had completely different responses to the end of the war with the SPU, Ian realized. The former demilitarized, while the latter apparently worked on creating weaponized wasp farms. Wonderful.

“The general says that they’re going to be sending even more people to scour the land for tunnels while upping the interrogations on Godora’s elite. Good work.”

A few minutes later, a Remorse practitioner Ian didn’t recognize came and poked through the less-guarded mind of the slumbering Kyeilan illusionist. As the state of being asleep was more conducive to a Remorse investigation than being unconscious, she was able to gain more holistic insights into the illusionist’s origins. The Kyeilan woman turned out to be one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, studying under the Zimmerman twins.

“The tunnels connect to Corvid’s sewer system,” the Remorse practitioner said, breathing heavily, as though coming up from an extended duration underwater. “Start there.”

Arima smiled. “That’s definitely a good place to start.”

Ian knocked the Kyeilan captives out such that they wouldn’t come to until they returned to Corvid. They then flew back to disable the wasp traps.

Ian killed the wasps without making a single gesture, their humming wingbeats suddenly silenced. He sent a fistfull of bone shards down to cut into the earth, then dragged the three bodies and wasps out and up to the wyrm.

The bodies were partially eaten and rancid, the oppressive jungle heat facilitating rot. Arima, Wolfien, and the Remorse practitioner all gagged as Ian drew the bodies near, their eyes watering. The wasps, meanwhile, were small and beady-eyed, their bodies crushed together and concentrated into a ball of insect that Ian stuffed into the wyrm’s skull.

“Is there another way we can transport the fallen?” Wolfien asked. “Stringing them up on the wyrm’s exterior makes it seem like they’re enemies we killed rather than our own men.”

If I keep them inside the ribcage, I think the three of you will faint. I could always tamper with the corpses with decemancy, but something tells me that won’t be well-received.

“Not really,” Ian replied. “Though I can cover them.” He raised a hand and bunches of dried leaves rose from the jungle floor and into the air, streaming towards the three corpses and covering them in crinkled brown.

“That’s better,” Wolfien replied. “Okay, let’s go back.”

—

As the bone wyrm touched down just outside of Var’dun’a’s earthen bunker, several practitioner soldiers were on standby to take the Kyeilans into custody. Ian passed them along while helping another group of soldiers collect the three bodies.

The bunker’s earthen wall slid downward from the top to reveal a tight-lipped Var’dun’a, the general stepping out before them into the moonlight. “Excellent work finding Kyeilans,” she rasped. “We’ve been able to locate one of the Godoran’s tunnels extending out from the sewers.”

“We’re almost positive the tunnel is a red herring,” Var’dun’a whispered into their ears, Por’sha transmitting her voice over the wind. “The Kyeilans planned for at least some of their people to be caught. The tunnel strategy seems legitimate, but the actual network of tunnels they plan to use may be different than the individual soldiers expect.”

“Where do you need us?” Wolfien asked.

“I need Dunai to be on standby. As soon as we find the real tunnels, I want him to go in. Wolfien, I want you and Arima to join Zuliman’s scouting group.

“Understood,” Wolfien and Arima chorused, saluting the general.

“Let me know if you need me to do anything in the meantime,” Ian said.

Var’dun’a smirked, the gesture mostly-obscured by her scarf. “Rest-assured, Dunai: I’m not one to waste my resources.”

—

Three hours later, the General’s voice sounded in his ear. “We’ve identified a tunnel site, though haven’t engaged, so the Kyeilans should still be unaware. Por’sha will show you the way; best of luck.”

Ian’s head snapped up, his body coursing with false exuberance, his decemancy stimulating him to be more awake. He could see Por’sha approaching from Var’dun’a’s bunker, her hair tied up neatly behind her head so that it stayed out of her face. She tugged the Deathseed behind her, a chain lined with Death energy tethering the floating construct to a leather handle.

The bone wyrm lay disassembled around Ian like an unearthed fossil, though all it took was a thought for it to come to life in a flare of purple flames that arced down its length, ending in the two soul gems slotted in its eye sockets. Ian widened a section of the wyrm’s ribcage as Por’sha arrived, the two walking into the wyrm one after the other. He directed the Deathseed to attach itself to the back of the Wyrm’s skull like a giant leech, then ordered the wyrm to ascend.

“Where are we going?” Ian asked.

“The tunnels are well-past the city bounds. From your current direction, head slightly more South. If you direct the wyrm to go forward, I’ll control its direction with my elementalism.”

As the wyrm took into the air, it initially accelerated slowly, though rapidly sped up as they left the city’s bounds, its form streaking forth like a comet. When Por’sha’s tailwind further increased the wyrm’s speed, they would have sustained serious windburn if not for its energy-lined ribcage.

“How much further?” Ian wondered. They’d been traveling for only a few minutes, but Ian knew how fast they were going: Their destination couldn’t be far.

“It’s just past that small mountain,” Por’sha replied. The wyrm passed over the rocky peak moments later, entering into verdant valley. “Their tunnel is supposed to pass through this field. I’m going to kill the tailwind; keep looking until you sense vitality.”

Ian nodded, then directed the wyrm down, its velocity slowing by half despite the speed gained by the descending. As it came level with the ground, the wyrm moved like a sidewinder, passing over large stretches of grass without pause.

Ian blinked just as pale, barely-visible white flashing past his vision. He doubled the wyrm back, confirming that there was, indeed, a small hint of vitality below. And I don’t think it’s because there’s a grouping of insects here, Ian reasoned, but because the tunnel here is slightly closer to the surface.

“Por’sha,” Ian called out. “It’s time to start digging.”