The spear is quickly unfolding in Awelah’s forelegs. “Alright. Let’s kill it.”

Ooliri is glancing at the frond, the evidence for Makuja’s claim of someone’s presence. “It’s not the hound, is it? It wouldn’t have hands to grasp with.”

“If it’s a mantis, we can trade supplies or information.”

“Or get the drop on them,” Awelah says, “if they’re like you were.” There was a pause before she added the ‘were’.

The accused shakes her head. “Everyone from my team is gone.”

“So? Your orders were to kill everything coming out of Duskroot, that’s what you said. It’s a big territory, so whoever actually wanted it done, if they wanted it done, had to have hired more than just your boss. We’re in Windhold. You’re from Bloodhold. That’s on the other side of the mountains.”

“Well reasoned.”

“That’s a yes. I’m right,” she says. “Let’s go.”

The pale nymph stalks forward with her spear at the ready. Behind her, the two share a glance before following.

Flapping sounds from ahead of them; but it’s just birds startling. The rainfall has worms surfacing in the mud, making a feast of themselves. There are slugs among them, too, though they might soon have hope of growing wings, escaping with flight of their own.

Fresh ferns litter the ground here and there, suggesting whomever they pursued cut down the underbrush as they went.

“Stop,” Makuja calls out from behind Awelah.

The Asetari stops without complaint. With the keen focus of a present hunt, she cares only about finding her quarry, a goal the other nymph shares. The social implications of taking an order from her, and the accompanying annoyance that would inspire, feel as distant as old memories. They were tracking unknown prey; and the warning in Makuja’s tone was message enough.

“Dead snake,” is her elaboration.

It’s a big one, with more girth than their legs. It lies half-obscured by a cut fern. A stab wound cracks its skull like a bore hole, and a long, dark gash gutted the snake. It’s unclear which came first.

Awareness of the fact has been shared; but none of the nymphs knew quite what the make of it. They go forward, through bends, around boulders and past thinning ranks of fronds.

Another carcass litters the way, this time a longicorn. Awelah doesn’t miss it, and Makuja walks up to the thing. She’s peering close at the wounds on the thing.

“Something’s off about it.”

She makes the focus seal, then skips straight to release. She presses a hand to the leg, and a cold black nerve passes into it. She sees the chitin warp with deliquescence, flesh looking to implode.

They compare it to the slice wounds, and the similarity is apparent. “It’s liqued,” Awelah concludes. “They’re using enervate, whoever, whatever they are.”

“Shouldn’t we turn back?” Ooliri asks. “They left after watching us practice, so could they have been… scared? Didn’t want to mess with us?”

“If they’re scared, all the more reason for us not to be.”

They hear it before they see it. The bubbling flow of a stream, and not the one they’d camped by. Three nymphs emerge from the foliage, and their approach is stopped by a harsh buzz. A moment, and they realize it's intelligible as speech.

“Ztalking an unzeen being, one leaving only death in wake. Yet you find it wize to purzue?” Some quality of the voice renders it hard to track where it’s coming from.

“Show yourself,” Awelah says.

“Very well…”

A sword flies up out of the creek, piercing high into the air. All of the nymphs look up to track it, tensing as if in threat.

It’s a sleight of hand. The weapon arcs and falls to earth, where a bug now stands, their arrival entirely missed. The blade is buried halfway in the mud, but the bug pulls it free, and not a trace of dirt remains on the unreflective metal.

The head is yellow and black, with traces of orange fuzz starting on its thorax, but this is obscured by its garb. The bug wears armor of studs and plates, but rather than leather lying beneath, it looks like layers of… paper? Black lines trace over the paper in intricate, unrepeating patterns. The armor doesn’t add much to her bulk, and if the mantids had been imagos, they’d outsize her. As it stands, the bug is eye level with them while on six legs — five, rather, as she brandishes the sword, the rapier, and stares with dark eyes. A euvespid.

“What do you want?”

“To be unthreatened, unbothered.” She emphasizes with a single stab. “You are but larvae before me. Begone.” Like a mantis, euvespids speak with stridulation of palps, close enough to be barely intelligible, as if through a thick accent or speech impediment.

“Why were you watching us?” Ooliri asks. “What are you doing here?”

“Turn back. Leave. I will not warn you again.”

“We are vesperbanes,” Awelah says. “I think we should be making the threats here.”

“I have read from book of Mother Zhadow. Wisdom of her pages exceeds your vile chimerae.”

Hearing this, Awelah tightens her grip on her spear and settles into a stance. Seeing this, Makuja palms a pair of knives. Seeing this, Ooliri unholsters his baton.

The euvespid watches in stillness for a few seconds. Then, “It would zeem my wordz are not heeded. Hear my actions, then.”

Instantly the bug flashes forward at Awelah. The mantis throws herself away just in time to only escape with a gash. Putting a stride of distance between her and the euvespid, she starts making tarsigns as her foe recovers.

Too slow, Makuja thinks. The euvespid recovers far faster than Awelah counted out, and Makuja steps forward to buy her ally time. But she has two knives, and the euvespid has a sword. At her approach, the euvespid interrupts a thrust aimed at Awelah, stabbing the rapier at Makuja. She deflects it with a knife, but a euvespid imago has so much more muscle to put behind it. She’s pushed back.

Ooliri steps forth to assist her. His baton swing distracted their foe for a moment; that’s how long it takes for her to grab the baton after a missed swing, pulling Ooliri toward her and then kick him back with middle legs. His legs buckle and he’s down on the ground.

Then a chill passes over them all: ⸢Umbral Body Projection!⸥ Awelah had finished her signs.

Awelah’s projection holds a spear (had it before?). At a signal from its creator, it jabs it at the euvespid. She doesn’t try to parry, and deftly avoids the enervate construct. Committing to that dodge gives Makuja an opening, and she pounces, knife slashing out.

It barely makes a sound against the armor, the force of her blow sapped as if repelled.

When her recovery is complete, the euvespid has something new in her offhand: an unrolling slip of paper. She slashes her dactyl across it as if striking a match.

⸢Wasp Art: Aura Storm!⸥ Lines on the page thicken with unearthly black and race across the paper — at the very end, they give rise to a kind of plume of smoke without color or mass, just a darkening of the light that passes through it.

It looked… not unlike the space that existed right before Awelah’s projection ‘filled in.’

The shadow flows toward the umbral projection, and Awelah's spellform undulates, as if waves rocked its surface. The construct loses cohesion and starts to collapse, and like a failsafe triggered, it starts to drift back toward Awelah. On instinct, she reaches out toward it, and touches the unstable mass with a tarsus. Then the blackness flows back into her, like blowing a bubble in reverse.

The euvespid says nothing, but Awelah snarls, and lunges for her. It’s a fool move, as shown by the bug merely lifting its blade. Awelah arrests her moment to keep herself unimpaled. The pale nymph’s reply is a stab with her own spear. The euvespid knocks it aside, and now they’re pushing weapons against each other.

Awelah is stronger than Makuja, or maybe she just has better leverage, because she contests the euvespid’s strength.

What happens next depends on your perspective.

Awelah sees the euvespid shift to the side, as if to seek a better position to push against her. The mantis leans forward to punish this, and the euvespid relents, giving ground Awelah eagerly seizes as she hears a loud, hissing voice.

Makuja sees the euvespid doing something with the legs obscured from her ally’s view, and then a piece of paper drifts to the ground. She tries to call out a warning, but the pale nymph is already rushing forward.

The euvespid lifts a foreleg, and snaps, the middle and opposing dactyls of her tarsus rubbing together. It’s a tiny sound, immediately overshadowing by Awelah crying out.

⸢Wasp Art: Threefold Binding—Activate!⸥The mantis is pulled to the ground by an unseen force, as three ropes spring from beneath her — ropes which could not have been present in the undisturbed ground.

Awelah is stuck there, and the euvespid turns her eyes toward Makuja.

By now, Ooliri has recovered, standing up and drawing his foretarsi together into focus.

“No. Be ztill, larva, and fight no more.”

Ooliri glances at Awelah, and lowers his forelegs. The frown on his face and droop of his antennae make it clear that the inaudible brush of his palps as he looks at the red nymph is ‘I’m sorry.’

Makuja stands alone against the euvespid.

If only she had something to turn the tables. She looks down at her sides. Nothing happens.

Makuja is still holding her knives, her mind still running to think of some way out. But the euvespid starts talking.

“Pitiful dizplay. Even curzed and parazitized, you are no more threatening than a zmall bird. We zeek to be unthreatened, and I am zatizfied. You may approach my miztrezz.” The euvespid attends to Awelah, moving at her with quick darting steps, and touching a dactyl to the paper beneath her. ⸢Deactivate!⸥ The ropes retreat, and Awelah can pick up her spear.

She turns once more to the euvespid, gripping tightening, and her intent is easy to read.

The wasp lifts a leg, her tarsus holding a page pointing at her. An impulse of massive force hit the nymph, and she is sliding across the ground, mud decorating her cloak.

“I told you I am unthreatened.”

“Who are you?” Makuja asks.

“What is this power?” Awelah speaks haltingly from the ground.

“I am Klepé. I am a writer.” The euvespid starts to walk off.

“Seals. You’re a sealscribe,” Ooliri brushes. He glances at a tilting Awelah, and explains, “The euvespids have recipes for special paper and special ink, and draw circuits of enervate. You,” he asks, “can you — could you teach us?”

“A cannibal who wishez to read book of Mother Zhadow. To mix her wisdom with parazitez. A very very dangerouz thing.” Klepé’s tone had gotten lower, the buzz harsher until it was hardly intelligible as Panthecan. “No. Never again.”

Awelah is picking herself up off the ground. “Are you the guardian of the earth?”

The wasp’s wings flutter, as if from some kind of excitement. “Of course not. Do you think your kind would beztow such an honor on mine? To a ztinging wazp? No. Ridiculouz.”

“You mentioned a mistress,” she says “are they the guardian? Could you take us to them?”

“Where do you think I am to go? Follow me, larvae.”

Ooliri looks to Awelah, and then to Makuja. “Should we follow them? We still don’t know what they want, and we’d be at their mercy.”

“It could kill us either way. That kind of power… let’s at least see if we can have any of it.”

“Euvespids are sapient, Awelah. They’re not an ‘it.’”

“She could kill us, then.”

“Are they a she? Eusocials don’t… have babies unless they’re the queen, and the ones that… give the babies tend to stay around the queen, so the rest are kind of… neutral? That's what I read.”

“She could be a queen,” Awelah replies, brushing some mud off her cloak.

“Well, they aren’t sitting on a throne with a paper castle up around them, so…”

“That armor might as well be as impenetrable as one.”

Makuja interrupts. “We could just ask.”

“Oh right.” Ooliri darts forward, closer to the wasp leading them. “Are you a boy or a girl? Or neither? What’s your gender?”

“My what?”

A pond ripples atop a hill, down which waters flow softly toward the creek. The ‘master’ sits at its shallows, a wrinkly brown lady whose amadou dress is dirty with splashes of mud. Above her head, her thinning antennae are pale as if from faded pigment. A plain black cloth wraps around her compound eyes. At the edge of the stream, she is digging out clay.

There’s no reaction to their approach.

“Um, madam? We don’t mean to startle you —”

“Startle?” The lady laughs. “I could feel you coming for a hundred paces.” She has stopped her digging with a little trowel, and waves at the euvespid. “Don’t mind Miss Klepé. The little one has a habit of attacking anything that comes near me. She meant harm, but you have her respect now.”

“Respect? She called us pitiful.” Awelah grinds out the word.

“Not killing you is how she shows affection.” She picks up her trowel again, and pierces the clay. “Now if you mind, I don’t have the time left on this plane to chitchat with eighth instar nymphs.” Despite the dismissal, her tone is light and carefree. “So leave me. Go play ball or somethin.”

Purple antennae flare and golden antennae extend outward; indignation and curiosity, respectively, at her guessing their age without even being able to see them.

“We just wanted to know —”

“Don’t care. If you want to yammer at me, pick up a trowel and help me gather clay.” She waves at Klepé, and the euvespid hefts a scroll, mere paper held like it weighs a great deal. She unrolls and fingers the page, and a moment later black nerve flows across the page, covering it until the symbols and patterns are completely obscured. Three tendrils emerge, and the wasp pulls them like strings; on the other end are trowels, deposited a moment later on the ground.

Ooliri watches the display in fascination. Makuja, though, is the first to step over. She bends down to grab a tool and begins work. Ooliri is next. Awelah remains standing.

“Look,” she says. “We’re looking for someone. We just need a pointer to where to find them, or whatever else you know. We don’t have time to do charity work.”

The old mantis doesn’t react, just seizes the hands of the nymphs, directing them to pluck weeds and rocks from the clay, and depositing the mass into a pot of water to be further processed.

“Are you from a village? Do you have a cabin around here?” It’s Ooliri asking.

“Why would I need one? This land is all the home I need. Has been for years.”

“Do you get lonely?”

The lady laughs again. “What do you think this clay is for? Eating? The house-mantids like the little pots to hang around.”

Awelah grins satisfaction. “So you do know of a nearby village! Have you ever heard of the guardian of the earth?”

A moment, and then the lady sighs and says, “Child, are you too stupid to notice I ignored you but not your boyfriend?” She shakes her head. “Moons above, what was Uvema doing? You’d think one of her daughters would have raised you smarter than that.”

There’s a moment for Ooliri to give a worried glance at Awelah, and for Makuja, without a glance, to drop her trowel. Then the spear is in Awelah’s grasp, and she’s lunging — into Makuja’s forelegs. The vice of one wraps around Awelah’s thorax, and the tarsus of the other is going beneath her head to press the flat of a knife there.

An instant later the euvespid is there with buzzing wings, a tarsus grappling the pale nymph’s dark antennae and yanking her back.

The old lady placidly continues digging, as if nothing had happened.

“How is she doing, by the way?”

“Dead,” Awelah scratches out. “Both of them. All of them.”

“Except you?” The old lady finally pauses work, and looks up at the pale nymph, despite her covered eyes.

“Except me. A mistake they will gravely pay for.”

“Such fortune is so rarely blind error.” Planting her trowel particularly far into the ground, she adds, “The shadows of this world hide many secrets. In every depth explored, a depth unseen remains.”

“Are you implying—”

But the old bug is already saying something else. “Honarari, Geleche, Mewla…” A sigh. “Tragedy. Grand tragedy. But I suppose cowards always outlive the brave.” The murmured tone of her last sentence makes it clear she isn’t talking about Awelah. The pale nymph still scowls, till, as if unable to maintain it, her features fall into a wet frown. She recognized the names of her uncle and aunt — and her mother.

“H-how did you know my family?” is what she asks.

“We are in Duskhold, are we not? Or close enough. Are the people here not enamored with the service of noble Asetari?”

“We aren’t noble.”

“No?” With an odd smile on her palps, she says, “If my memory remains… did Uvema not fancy herself a queen? Queenheart, that’s what they called her.”

In a plain tone, Makuja looks at Awelah and says, “Would that make you a princess?”

Ooliri notices the old lady looking at Makuja, and finally comments on it, “How are you tracking our positions so well? Aren’t you… are you blind?” He looks over to the Klepé, wondering if she is some kind of guide or assistant. (By now, with no pale nymph about to attack, the bug had left the elder's side. She stands before the pond, sword panted into the earth and gazing into the shallow water, contemplative.)

“I can hear just fine, thank you. And smell!” She points at Awelah. “You smell of old friends.” At Makuja. “You smell like death.” And at Ooliri. “And you stink of the Pantheca.” Then the lady reaches out, touching his head before questing upward for the antennae-band strapped there. She touches the plate, then remarks, “But this is not yours, not quite. Curious.”

“Look, lady. We’re trying to find a village. Where do you go sell your clay pots?”

“I don’t want for money. It’s a story I don’t believe in, pieces for a game I’m too old to bother playing.”

“Answer the question, please.”

A shaken head. “It’s thataway. But you can just walk this stream, follow it down to the lake. Any stream. They all join with Entcreek eventually, and Wisterun lies up along its banks.” The old lady makes a gesture of looking at the black and yellow bug, who gazes solemnly into the shallow pondwater. “Really, I reckon if you asked nicely, my dear here would scrawl a compass for you.”

From where Klepé stands over the pond, she snaps out an antennae. “Truthz of poizon and zhadow are not toyz for larva to amuze with. I do not ‘zcrawl’ for anyone's convenience.”

“They're this far south and looking for the lake. The nymphies might miss the horizon without a guide.” The old lady’s laugh sounds like a single wheeze; then there’s a moment of pause, needed for her tone’s pivot to sober concern. “We should help, shouldn’t we? If they have finally gone and burnt what Uvema built, if this girl is all that’s left… She wouldn’t want her legacy lost in wilds, wandering into a ’teater den or worse.”

A euvespid foretarsi descends, splaying in front of a bag bound by black cords. With a snap of the dactyls, the cords move and a roll of paper slides from within, into her waiting palm.

“Appreciate it, dear. Do you remember the stink of the deeper dam? Should be enough left to point at it, no?”

The smell of Klepé’s ink of choice is like poison. She replies, “Know that I am fit to write without azziztance.”

The lady’s voice becomes a creaking whine. “But I’m getting old, losing track of the years. Maybe’s it’s all gone without my knowing it. Maybe we’ve had this talk before and my memory’s going. Have some patience for an old bug?” There’s a smile the mantid’s face, leading them to wonder if this is irony, a joke between the two lost on strangers.

Awelah has other concerns. “How do you know my grandmother? Who are you?”

“Just an old lady with no family to name, as you can well see. To Uvema… I suppose I was no more good than an old memory, in the end. But… I must prefer myself forgotten.”

“Give me a real answer,” Awelah says.

“Then give me a real effort.” The old lady grabs the pale nymph’s foreleg in a tight grip, and thrusts it back at the ground, digging its trowel into the clay. “Klepé, my dear, are you any closer to done? I am weary of these children.”

Sitting on the ground, the euvespid claws at the page firmly held in two midlegs, darkness gathering in her eyes. No response comes, but the lady does not seem to expect one.

“The town this compass would point us towards, does the guardian of the earth live there? Or people who’ll tell us how to find them?”

“Of course not! That bane’s never been seen since the act that gave them the title. But they’ll have plenty of stories and superstition, if that pleases you.”

“We want to actually find them!”

“And why should you succeed where others haven’t? What drove you here?”

“We need a teacher, someone to train us and make us strong.”

“You’re nymphs. Shouldn’t you be playing with sticks and swimming? Save the throwing your lives away till you’re older.”

“We’re old enough to be vesperbanes,” Awelah says.

“We are vesperbanes,” Ooliri corrects.

“Married to the chimerae of twin hungers so young? Tragedy, grand tragedy.” Beat. “Why not bother the ranger who routes this part of the country? Why not go to a stronghold and enlist yourself among the hundreds of other doomed nymphs?”

“We have enemies. People have tried to kill us, and if we show ourselves publically, they’ll try again.”

“And this supposed guardian won’t? And if they don’t, what’s this ‘training’ supposed to get you?”

“Power. I have to become powerful to fulfill my ambition, to kill a certain bane.”

Makuja nods. “Likewise, I must be stronger to carry on my master’s will.”

Ooliri glances down. He was, as usual, the odd one out. “I want… knowledge. I hope that maybe, maybe I could bring my brother back. And everyone else. All the arts in the world… there has to be a way.”

The old bug’s face hardens. “Foolishness. Utter foolishness.” She looks to Awelah. “When a mantis sets out to slay a terrible monster, commits themself to that path, even when they succeed, the number of monsters there are has not decreased.”

Awelah forces a laugh. “That’s stupid. I’m going to kill far more than one, old lady. Already have.”

The old lady gives a sigh that seems to wheeze terribly out of her body. She looks at the pot of water where the clay they collected sits. “I’ve told you what you wanted to know. I’ll call this a fair trade. Take the seal, Leave me, and go look for your guardian.”

Awelah clicks mandibles and stands up first, then looks to the other nymphs. Makuja sets down her trowel, but tilts her head at the old mantis. “You’re the guardian, aren’t you?”

“I’m an old lady who makes pots while death takes her time with me.” She holds out a foreleg, and the euvespid darts over (with a roll of paper secure in one tarsus) and she grasp it, pulling her mistress up. “I’m blind, and I’m barely fit to walk on my own. No, child, I am not what you seek. All I can offer you is wisdom. And I can see how it’s valued.”

Makuja nods, and stands beside Awelah, who takes a step away.

When the old mantis is steady on six legs, the euvespids closes to stand before the nymphs. She produces a thick roll of wasp-chewed papyrus. “Thiz is zimple enough for even a chimera to operate. Pour upon your zhadow, and will crawl where you must go. Never more than ten gramz. Never at the edgez. Never on the other zide. Do not tear it. Do not get it wet. Do not even look at it without calm intent. It may last one dance of the red moon if you do not toy with it.”

Unrolling the sealscroll, it appears blank save for a circle and a three symbols in the center. With how thick it is, and the wax that coats its edges, doubtless there are other pages beneath. Klepé places a dactyl upon one symbol, and black nerve rides down the digit. When it hits the page, it is drawn outward, riding a curve over the paper and at the perimeter, it begins to turn to cloudy mist, lost as if evaporating away. The euvespid points at edge of the three symbols. “Lake. True north. Myself. If you meet with danger and burn this seal, I may avenge againzt whatever killed you.”

Awelah is the one who takes it, passing her trowel to a midtarsus. She makes a seal and puts her own finger to the page. It’s as if the paper has drawn the black nerve out of her itself. Seeing it work for her as it had the wasp, she rolls it up, tying it closed with an offered cord.

“Thank you so much.” It’s Ooliri who says it. The boy looks between the old mantis and the euvespid with palps tapping nervous. For no reason the other two can discern, he asks: “But um… you mentioned you give people some of the things you make, right? Pots and stuff. If it’s okay… is there a chance you could give us one? I’d like an, um, a big one.”

Klepé has palps in a flat line. Almost responds before she glances to her mistress, and sees the old lady give a smiling nod. “Az you dezire.” Then she takes out a scroll that unfolds so wide she can just barely hold both ends. The ritual of fingering, and a flow of enervate so powerful each of the nymphs feels a slight tug toward it. Then Ooliri has a shiny glazed jug, and carrying the awkward thing reduces his gait to something of a waddle. We have canteens. What is he planning?

After the three nymphs have turned and started following the stream down, Awelah gets the last word. She calls out. “Oh yeah, have you seen a direhound around here? If not, then maybe you should be careful of it.”

“That thing?” Klepé’s inmantid voice carries from behind them. “Yez. I have fought it.”

That night, they still hear it howling.