The Unmaker

Little Dahlia holds her mother’s hand as she tours the Bug-Slaying School for the first time. They are here to visit the facilities and meet the other Instructors by the council’s recommendation—the recommendation, of course, given as an exclusive privilege to the Sina household only because little Dahlia’s father is one of the best Swarmsteel Makers in town.

Instructor Biem sits on the roof, watching little Dahlia and her mother play around with the giant insect training dummies. Her father appears behind him with a crate of uncorked alcohol, scowling at the smoke in his mouth.

“It’s not healthy for you, Biem. You’re a bug-slayer,” her father grumbles, as he sits down beside Biem and slices the smoke with his metal claws. Biem clicks his tongue in irritation. “And watch where you smoke as well. Don’t do it around Dahlia. I don’t want her to grow up like you.”

“You don’t want her to grow up strong?” Biem shakes his head in mocking dismay. “You haven’t changed a bit, Sanyon. Not since you whacked that smoke out my dying old man’s mouth and gave him a candy stick instead. What, you do that for everyone on their deathbeds?”

“I do. Want one?”

“Just give me a bottle.”

The two clink their bottles together and race to see who can down theirs the fastest—Sanyon is out of practice, so Biem wins without any trouble. The bug-slayer decides to interrogate the doctor with a few sly questions.

“Those your girls down there, huh?” Biem says, narrowing his eyes at little Dahlia crying over the giant insect dummy and her mother patting her head, soothing her soul. “The outsider who can dismantle anything in one minute and the little runt who screams every time she sees a bug. Why’d you bring them here? You want to enrol that little runt into my school?”

Sanyon takes a swig of his unfinished bottle. “My wife wants it. I want it, too. It’ll be good for her.”

“I disagree. If you can’t stand bugs, you can’t stand bugs. Simple as that. Just send her off to the General School so she can become a doctor like you. Great Makers know we need more people like you–”

“We’ve been teaching her how to make Swarmsteel lately,” Sanyon says. “She’s… pretty good at it. Better in a month than me in a year. Guess she’s got her mama’s talent and my stubbornness mixed in one.”

Biem scowls.

“And why would you involve her in a field of bugs when you know she fears them more than anything else in the world?”

“Because fear is the child who clenches her fist in the face of a bug, and if her fist is clenched, she is not making anything,” Sanyon says, as he unravels a single hand and shows off his new surgical Swarmsteel; five black steel claws, double the length of his fingers. “I made this, by the way. It’s not up for sale. It’s like I have five scalpels on me at all times. Now I can cut you up five times as fast the next time you trip down the stairs.”

“... So, what?”

“So what?”

“You want me to give preferential treatment to your runt once she enrols?”

“I want you to help her find the Swarmsteel she wants to use,” Sanyon says, leaning back in his seat with a heavy sigh. “Whether she discovers it in the back of the homeroom, steals it off another student, or makes one of her own, I don’t particularly care—but if she has a Swarmsteel that only she can use and only she can hold, she will never be able to clench her fists again.”

“...”

Biem sighs as well, lolling his head to the side.

“I’ve got two kids too, you know?” he mumbles. “I can’t be watching over your little runt the entire time she’s here. It’ll kill me.”

“Oh, come on, Biem. Just keep tossing Swarmsteel at her and–”

“But,” Biem mutters, “You dressed my old man up real nice before you put him in the box, and I don’t think… I’ve ever seen him look that good before.”

“...”

“I’ll watch over your little runt, Sanyon,” he says. “At the very least, I’ll make sure she gets beat up in training every day. But I also want five bottles of alcohol from the uptown Nirzaq store every month as payment.”

“... Deal.”

- Scene from Alshifa Bug-Slaying School past

Come seven the next morning, bright and early, everyone washed their faces in the pond before Issam saw Dahlia off at the glass door entrance.

As per the decision they’d made last night, Issam and the twins would stay in the garden for a few more hours, gathering as many vegetables as they could before heading down south to the shelter. Dahlia would be leading her party in the opposite direction. Just a few hours of quiet walking away from the northernmost hill, they expected to reach her house by noon at the latest, then all the way back to the shelter by midnight—provided they wouldn’t be detected during the whole process, of course. It could easily be an extra day or two if they had to scuffle with the Swarm here and there, so, at the very least, Dahlia didn’t want to part with Issam and the twins without having repaired their Swarmsteel.

Just a bit of polish for Issam’s mantis scythes and a bit of fabric mending for the twins’ moth mantles, but she had other gifts for everyone else as well.

“... Capelets for the three of us, huh?” Issam said, as all of them he looked over their shoulder to their new scaled apparel; she’d made sure to add extra beetle scales onto the theirs for more defence, and for that reason alone, they were much, much shinier than the full-body mantles the rest of them wore. “Just curious, with your… Altered Swarmsteel thing. How much ‘toughness’ do these capelets give?”

Eria tilted its head on her shoulder and the little boxes popped up, one by one next to everyone’s heads.

[2x Pine Sawyer Beetle-fuse-Robber Fly Capelets (Quality = E)(Spd +1/1)(Tou +0/3)(Strain +103)]

[Pine Sawyer Beetle-fuse-Robber Fly Mantle (Quality = E)(Spd +1/1)(Tou +0/1)(Strain +93)]

“Three inherent toughness levels and one speed level for the capelets, and one inherent toughness and speed level for the mantles,” she said, dipping her head apologetically at Jerie and the twins. “Sorry the mantles aren’t as good as the capelets. Confusion. I… don’t really know why they give the same speed levels as the capelets even though there’s more material overall.”

[Because the extra weight from the extra material slows it down,] Eria said. [Remember to tell them, however, that the toughness only applies to their shoulders for now. Although they have all melded with their apparel enough that their overall speed level has increased by one, if Raya is punched in the face, his skin will not exhibit the properties of someone with an extra three levels in toughness.]

That last part was incredibly important, she supposed, so she informed the others to not rely on her Swarmsteel if possible, and to run if they ever found themselves in grave danger. Her mantles and capelets increased all of their overall speed level by one, which meant she was actually twice as fast as the ‘average human’ already—or, at the very least, her speed level should be two if she were to check her status screen now.

Theoretically, it sounded unbelievable. Physically, she woke up this morning feeling a little… light around her shoulders. The best thing about her mantle was the fact it’d only prick the skin around her neck a little whenever she took it off.

She supposed the only reason why everyone could remove their mantles and capelets so easily was because her Swarmsteel weren’t all that good.

[Generally speaking, the lower the quality of the Swarmsteel, the easier they can be taken off without causing pain… like in this scenario, where you can take your mantle off easily even though you are obtaining the full speed bonus,] Eria consoled her, and she stared glumly at the little black bug as everyone exchanged good luck hugs. [There is use for lower quality Swarmsteel, you see. Sometimes you want to be able to quickly equip and remove a low-strain Swarmsteel depending on your situation. If all you have are S-rank Swarmsteel that permanently binds to your body, you might find your options limited in times of great crisis. That is why common militia on the surface tend to equip only lower quality Swarmsteel—because they do not want to carry high-strain Swarmsteel around all the time.]

… Are you complimenting me?

Eria wiggled around happily. [You are most welcome.]

The twins kicked Raya in the shins one more time for good measure, Amula muttered something to Jerie behind them, and Dahlia took tepid steps out the front door to immediately wince—sunlight was glaringly bright so early in the morning, and the glass building wasn’t helping with the superheated refraction. The cobblestone tiles were steaming beneath her feet, the air shimmering before her face, and when she unconsciously turned around to maybe wash her face in the pond one more time–

She nearly bumped headfirst into Issam, who was leaning by the door and smiling at her ever so softly.

“... Trust my gut instinct. You’ll find your dad,” he said, as he reached out to pat her on the head; this time she didn’t mind it as much, but still she grumbled, muttering under her breath as she looked elsewhere for comfort. “Don’t do anything reckless, okay? Keep yourself safe first. Let Amula and Jerie handle all the fighting, and if need be, use Raya as bait while you guys run away. He’ll work as excellent bait.”

“Hey.”

“Good… um, good luck to you too,” she mumbled, as Eria chided her to look him in the eye as she spoke. She knew it was only polite, too, but his eyes were too bright and dazzling. She didn’t manage to hold onto his gaze for long. “We’ll see you by tonight or early morning tomorrow, then. Depends. Maybe we might be a little… slow. Because of my dad.”

Issam’s smile somehow widened even more as he patted her head again, eyes slanted. “We’ll be waiting, then.”

The twins said their goodbyes as well, and then the four of them were off, turning right with their hands tracing the walls of the garden.

The strategy was the same—stick close to the sides of the street, try not to walk out in the open, and ignore any giant bug they could ignore. Every daylight hour they wasted would be an extra hour of moonlight they’d have to trudge through, and there was no doubt there’d be more giant insects up and about during the night. They had to travel as far as they could without being reckless all the same.

A task easier said than done, of course.

Past the garden, onto the Eastern Harzhal Street, the stores were packed to the brim with small spider egg sacs bulging and pulsating in every dark corner, under every cold shelf. The legs of their colossal mothers often jutted out the broken windows, and the entire street looked like a death trap just waiting to activate at the sound of a single misplaced step. Dahlia waved the four of them away and decided to go for the second route. Instead of trying to sneak directly through the Bazaar—where the lightning hornet still sat, no doubt—they decided to go for the long route where they’d head far northeast first before turning for the west, eventually routing their way to the northernmost hill.

But the Northeastern Burqal Street wasn’t much better, either. The former pottery street was dominated half by crickets and half by leafhoppers, clinging to the walls in their slumber. They got down on their stomachs and crawled a whole kilometre. Then it was Northeastern Keefa Street, overrun by all colourful, all manners of stink bugs—they had to cover their noses with their capelets and mantles the whole way through the smog, walking on their tiptoes so as not to alert the bugs in the alleys. Then there was the glassware street, guarded by a flutter of butterflies overhead; there was the sweets district, where the stores were completely bursting with honey bees crawling in and out; there was also the perfume street, now permanently occupied by a single, giant scorpion they didn’t even want to try sneaking around. They took the even longer route around instead.

Eventually, though, they stepped foot onto the Northern Bridge Street—the final street between the New and Old Districts—and for a second Dahlia allowed herself to sigh a breath of relief.

Just one more street.

One more.

After that, we’ll–

Her bristles rustled. Raya and Amula, who’d been walking behind her this entire time, whirled to the left before she could even tense up—they must’ve been staring at her bracers closer than even she was paying attention to them.

… Eria.

Do you detect anything inside that two-storey building?

While the four of them remained frozen, Raya’s spear poised and Amula’s knees bent and Jerie’s flute pressed to his lips. Eria jumped off her shoulder and skittered a few steps forward, towards the half-collapsed building in front of them.

Sunlight didn’t reach this district in full. Their firefly lanterns weren’t lit. She could barely see a thing inside the building through the broken wall, but if she had any amount of intuition, she swore she heard something moving in the dark—and her suspicions were proven correct as four tiny white eyes blinked out at them, a little motion so quick and so fleeting she barely caught it all.

But Raya saw it, and so did Amula. The two dashed forward into melee range, aiming to end the fight before it could even begin, and the moment they did–

Eria spoke, andshe repeated Eria’s words.

“Stop! Don’t kill them! Not giant insects!”

She shouted, with all of her might, and were it not for Jerie supporting her with a sharp whistle of his flute, both Raya and Amula would’ve taken the heads of the two children who started trudging out of the dark. Instead, the melee fighters screeched to a halt and ran through the walls, crashing into the building quite unceremoniously. Dahlia winced with second-hand pain. They must’ve been as ready to back off as they’d been to charge, but now they’d all made a ruckus and her bristles rustled again; giant insects were swarming around their location, and fast.

Without thinking too much about it, she hurried Jerie and the two children back into the building, whispering for him to light up his firefly lantern so they could work with some light. He did so immediately… and while Raya and Amula stood up groggily, clutching their heads, Dahlia lowered herself and held both children by their shoulders.

The two of them were young. Horribly young. The little boy had to be six at best, while the older sister was maybe seven, maybe eight—far too young for their plain tunics to be stained black with blood and mud. Their eyes were deep in their sockets, heavy bags making their face appear twenty years older than they really were, and judging by the thickness of hardened ash across their bare skin, they’d probably been lying under debris for the past two days waiting for someone to pass by outside; it was no surprise their cheeks were bony and their breaths were haggard as well.

If they hadn’t eaten or drank anything, then…

“Raya, Amula. Do you… have some bread and water from your backpacks?” she whispered, gently pulling the kids down to the ground as the seniors worked in silence, keeping their heads low; giant bugs were already prowling outside, and the screech of their talons sent shivers down her spine.

She held herself together, though.

She couldn’t look afraid in front of the children.

Tentatively, they reached for the waterskins and the small loaf of bread Amula tore in half for them, and Dahlia watched as they scarfed down their meals—their eyes, if nothing else, were brimming with the light of finally getting something into their stomachs. A small relief, a tremendous joy. Dahlia felt she knew a little bit about hunger. There were entire weeks in the past two years of her life, too, when she’d go without food because she couldn’t make enough coins selling her trinkets off in the Bazaar. She may have been fortunate these past two days that Issam was here to cook for her, but… she felt she could still recall the sensation of hunger, after all.

So she reached into her pocket and handed them a piece of bloodberry candy each, gulping loudly.

“It’s… sweet,” she said. “Do you… want them?”

She didn’t even need to ask. They snatched the candies with their mouths, nearly chomping her fingers off, and she reeled back into Amula’s legs. Their desperation surprised her, but only for a moment—in the next, she found herself breathing a soft sigh of relief seeing their faces lighten up a little.

And though she still had more candies where they came, the children suddenly wiped their mouths with their sleeves, pointing at the back of the building where a small, small firefly latern shone on the ground next to a giant scorpion carcass.

…

The four of them followed their fingers, and Dahlia’s breath froze.

Her bristles tingled.

A man sat on the dead scorpion, back turned towards them.

“... Something’s wrong,” the children whispered. “Help daddy.”