The Unmaker

Final Journal entry #8888

Year 98 since the Swarm descended and our great ancestors retreated into the undertown.

Today, Eria died.

It happened late at night. There were plenty of warning signs. If I’d paid more attention I’d have noticed she’d been sneaking out of bed every night to tear through the garbage, ripping apart every little insect she could get her claws on… I can’t say I don’t feel the same urge sometimes. There’s nothing like the rush of blood I get from putting a living bug in my mouth, and the energy I get from it, the shivers that run through my body whenever I deprive myself of it iiiiiiiiiiiii

There were warning signs.

I didn’t see them.

I told her I told her that we could only eat one small insect every single month, and we’ll do it together so we know we aren’t eating more than we should, but that was stupid. I could’ve easily done what she’d been doing and snuck a quick grasshopper for myself whenever I’m out at work. If I really wanted to stop her I should’ve chained her to the bed and coated the entire house in insect repellent extracts, but

It happened late at night. There were plenty of warning signs. If I’d

It happened late at night. Just two hours ago. She woke up in the middle of the night with Dahlia sleeping between the two of us, her neck the first bone to snap as her skin stretched and sagged, black chitin plates infesting her face and mutating her eyes. I immediately tossed Dahlia out of the room, locked the door behind me, and I

The door banged. Dahlia was screaming, asking what’s going on. Eria charged me with ten black claws for fingers, her eyes vertical slits, her hair falling out and replacing with bony chitin spikes. She didn’t get very far on her first charge. The moment she rolled off the bed her knees snapped and she cried, but then two more arms flew out her spine and I was afraid I raced for the chains I’d been keeping in the closet. Her new arms knocked her forward and she tackled me before I could grab the chains. I think I

I roared at her to stop, and to come back to her senses. She’d been hiding her mutations so, so well these past few years. She’d quit her job so the townsfolk wouldn’t notice her getting frailer. She’d only talked to Dahlia while sitting on the bed, blankets wrapped around her claws. She’d worn her shawl over her jaw so nobody could ever, ever, ever see her hardening face, and this was how she was going to let it end? Like some feral mutt, saliva sleazing from her needle of a tongue as she tried to drain my brain from my skull? I PROMISED HER. I SAID I WILL FIND A CURE, SO I

Dahlia broke into the room halfway through our tussle and saw everything.

Eria immediately went for our daughter, so I…

I remembered the Swarmsteel claws I’d made—the surgical scalpel claws.

I didn’t make them for the Bug-Slaying School. I made them so Eria could wear them and hide her real insect claws from the rest of Alshifa, so maybe, one day, she’d be able to walk outside without fear of anyone realising her mutation.

But when I saw her flying at Dahlia, her needle for a tongue poised to take out at least an eye or two, I panicked.

I donned my claws and stabbed her through the back, kicking Dahlia out the door as I did. Black blood sprayed and splattered onto my face, and it was just the sweetest thing I’d ever tasted, the most intoxicating drink I could ever have; I kicked Dahlia harder than I should’ve. In the face. I broke her nose. I realised it the moment my feet landed, but as long as she was out the door I could slam it shut again

Eight minutes of screeching, screaming, and slashing.

Something important might’ve happened in those eight minutes, but I don’t… remember much of it.

By the time Dahlia crawled in through the window, the bedroom was a mess of flesh and chitin, blood and bones—I’m sure the world Dahlia saw must’ve been very, very different from the world I saw, but I don’t remember what I said to her, either.

What could I say, standing over her mother’s eviscerated, mutilated body?

…

Dahlia tried to approach Eria while I was still heaving for breath, bleeding from every orifice, so I panicked again and hit her. No. I know it wasn’t right. But if she were to get any closer to the two of us she might accidentally trip, fall, and absorb some of our cursed blood. I can’t let that hpppan( I won’t let that happen.

So I locked Dahlia in the closet and buried Eria myself, not even giving my wife the bug-hunter’s deathbed dressing. I can’t. I couldn’t. I think I… I ate some of Eria’s flesh during the fight, because I still can’t pry my Swarmsteel claws off my fingers.

They’re stuck.

I won’t last much longer myself.

I’ll have to make up a lie, tell the townsfolk Eria died suddenly of a contagious malady, so I had no other option but to bury her quickly. They’ll believe me. I’m not too far gone yet. My face is still mostly intact and only my claws stand out. I’m the genius doctor, the youngest in Alshifa’s history. I’ll convince

Dahlia has to forget, too. She can’t talk about this. I told her, through the closet, that it was all just a nightmare and she’d wake up tomorrow with everything just alright. What a terrible lie. It doesn’t even make sense. I’ll let her out tomorrow morning and what’s she going to do? She’ll ask questions. She’ll tell everyone. What’ll happen then?

Will they dig up my wife’s corpse to study her?

Will they kill me in the process?

Will they suspect Dahlia and drag her into this mess?

No.

Nobody can know.

I won’t last much longer myself, but… if Dahlia can graduate from the Bug-Slaying School and find a job that’ll make her leave Alshifa, she can forget everything that's happened here. She’ll never have to come back here to the house of her nightmares. Only after that can I throw myself off a cliff, and then nobody will ever know what happened to Sanyon, the hermit, useless doctor.

I need to turn people away before that.

Nobody can visit me, nobody can think I have any saving grace. I must put up a temper. I must spit in the face of every helping hand without letting them see my mutating face. I must be the useless doctor who took the death of his wife too hard and refuses to work henceforth. They must slowly lose their pity for me. Dahlia has to hate me, too, if I want her to leave Alshifa behind and never come back to investigate just what happened to me and Eria.

How many more years until Dahlia graduates?

Two?

A household consisting of an outsider of a wife who died of a mysterious illness, a useless husband who hasn’t worked or stepped outside in the last two years of his life before he disappeared, and a daughter who has abandoned everything for a new life in another undertown, unable to be contacted—I’m sure we’ll all be wiped from the Alshifa Records soon enough, and nobody will bother to investigate what really happened here.

This is a good plan.

… Two years.

Just two more years, and this curse will die with me.

Now, I must make sure Dahlia hates her father and wants nothing more to do with him.

- Excerpt from ‘Secret Sina Household Journalinal Entry’, Written by Sanyon Sina

… Her dad rose on two crooked insect legs, and Dahlia froze with one hand clamped over her bleeding left eye.

She couldn't make herself blink.

She couldn't make herself stand.

It wasn't just fear that shot through her as her dad rasped something incomprehensible. It wasn't just terror that clouded her judgement as he drew closer, spine so hunched his elongated claws screeched against the floorboards. Her body thrummed with nervous energy that clawed up the back of her throat, trying to escape as words she could say to bring him back to his senses, but they all died on the tip of her tongue without a sliver of confidence behind them—what ‘strength’ she'd managed to muster by walking into her house alone evaporated the instant she recognized that black bug form of his.

A ‘true’ bug.

And she knew why he looked like this. She’d known for two years that he looked like this, and having slaughtered and eaten a horde of giant insects who’d come his way the past day must’ve made his mutations appear even more prominent.

But, somewhere in the back of her head, she’d always thought he’d eventually recover… and then she could believe it was all just a horrible, horrible nightmare.

…

This was no nightmare.

This was real.

He lunged for her head with a guttural screech, and Amula surged through the front door at a speed she couldn't follow, knee flying from ground to sky as she knocked him to the back of the living room.

Raya cut through the wall on her left a half second later, stepping in calmly, while Jerie moved in another half second later with his flute already pressed to his lips. A sharp, ear-splintering wail screeched out of the instrument, and her dad's chitin plates trembled as though they were trying to shake loose from his skin—but that wasn't about to happen. Bloody tendons connected them to his body, his insect claws having devoured his fingers, and the cicada flute only made him scream and cower on his knees by the sofa. He wasn't falling apart. He wasn't dying or trying to run. Jerie grimaced and moved closer, attempting to knock him out with sheer volume and obnoxiousness with the flute–

But that was their first mistake.

Something slid from beneath her dad's arm, stabbing forward on a few cracking joints, and Jerie would've been skewered through the stomach had Amula not pulled him back at the last second. The song stopped. Her dad clawed to his feet, teeth chattering as two extra insect arms exploded out from behind his waist, their bone-like talons every bit as sharp as his mutated claws. Amula yanked Jerie and Dahlia further back as Raya took another step forward, grimacing at her dad's unnatural, bone-breaking stretches and contortions.

Her dad was only just now warming up.

[... Frenzy,] Eria whispered. [When a human consumes insect flesh without a system, they gain strength and abilities depending on the quality and quantity of the flesh they have consumed. In Altered Swarmsteel System terms, this is because insect flesh fundamentally alters the makeup of the human body by selectively mutating the muscles and organs related to the six basic attributes.]

[However, if a human without a system consumes too much insect flesh too fast, or the quality of the insect flesh they have consumed is extremely poor, their body runs the risk of mutating into the form of the insect they have consumed the most.]

[We call this the ‘Frenzy’ state.]

[And, in this state, your father is no different from a–]

Raya tapped his spear twice on the floorboards, making everyone except for her dad jolt in place.

“... Doctor Sanyon,” he said with a quiet, sombre voice, before dipping his head with one arm curled behind his back. “You may not remember me, but you made my spear and crossbow long ago, when I used to climb up the cliffs every night to pester you for powerful Swarmsteel.

“I also injured myself a lot during training, and you never charged me a single coin for looking at my wounds.

“I…

“...

“... I’m grown up now.

“I don’t like owing people favours.

“So I’ll repay everything I owe you right here, right now.”

Dahlia’s bristles tingled with anxiousness. Amula and Jerie must’ve sensed what was about to go down as well, because both of them dashed forward, fanning out on Raya’s left and right as he stepped it for a straight thrust to her dad’s chest—a triple-pronged attack by the strongest students of the Bug-Slaying School.

Against any giant insect, she was sure the attack would decimate without encountering even a shred of resistance, but her dad stood still. His two metre frame hulking, looming over all of them. Raya stepped into the shadow of his body cast by moonlight, and there was a small silver gleam as his claws ripped out something ball-shaped from the pocket of his mourning clothes; it was a ball Dahlia recognized all too well, a celebration toy that’d normally do no harm to anyone whatsoever.

But Dahlia herself had made it, a few months ago, when the bug trader had asked her to make something ‘deadly’ for once. She’d not made anything like that ever since, but the one her dad held in his claws now was a prototype that was even more dangerous than the one she sold to the bug trader.

Her body moved.

She felt pain in her ankles as she kicked a piece of wood at the back of Raya’s head, knocking him slightly off kilter. The moment he lost his balance, her dad crushed the bombardier beetle bomb in his claws. Flames erupted. Tiny nails flew in every conceivable direction, the flanking seniors forced to whirl mid-air and brace themselves with their capelets and mantles as the living room shattered like glass. Raya howled the exact same moment Dahlia curled herself into a ball, and all she could do was hope he hadn’t been hit too hard by the Swarmsteel of her own making.

Wooden beams fell from the ceiling, letting in colder moonlight, harsher winds. Still biting her lips, she forced herself to open her eyes and look through the smog—her dad was still very much alive, limping towards her with half his face peeled off his head.

… Dad.

Raya scrambled to his feet, left ear missing, closing the distance between them in a flash. In another moment Amula jumped out from behind the table she’d used as cover, and the two of them landed simultaneous thrusts and kicks; the honey bee spear caught in her dad’s left claws, the bombardier beetle boot caught in his right. His body trembled, a low growl escaped his throat. In a single, smooth movement, he spun in a circle and his claws cleaved along the motion, rending the spear’s stinger in half and severing all of Amula’s right toes in the process.

Maybe Dahlia should've reacted the same way Raya and Amula reacted, by bouncing away from her dad in pain and apprehension, but… then it shone in her eye.

The little trail of steel and silver dust, flaking off his claws.

He could see the steel thread, too.

She blinked, her vision going dark, and when she opened her eyes again she was sitting propped up on her dad’s lap.

Her arms are stubby and a little fat. They’re by the bedroom desk, facing out the window. The air is suffocating though the undertown is cold outside, but in front of them on the table lies a dead beetle that isn’t a single bit warm. Her father twirls his scalpel with expert proficiency, dissecting the beetle and cleanly removing its innards, so she looks back at him and asks, with a puzzled tilt of her head.

“Papa, papa. How did you get so good at cutting things up?”

She finished her blink. She was back in the living room. Splinters and broken insect chitin flew as her dad cleaved up a storm, tearing entire floorboards out to throw at Amula and Jerie. Raya sliced through all of the debris with ease, but without an ear his footwork was unstable, his sense of balance slightly off with every forward thrust. Her dad dodged and swung his claws again, shattering the tip of the honey bee spear as if it were just sugar glass. The back walls shuddered. Metre-wide cracks splinted across the ground, blood trails flying as Raya retreated with a pained hiss.

Her father doesn’t look at her as he focuses on the beetle, making sure not to mess up removing its wings.

“I’m not like mama,” he says. “While she may be just as precise as I am, I don’t like how violently she dismantles everything in front of her. I prefer softer, gentler cuts.”

She frowns and kicks her legs back and forth, her heels thumping against his shins.

“But why?” she asks.

Another blink. Rushes of maddened frenzy. Amula was ready for the counter cleaves this time as she leaped in close, a roar of fire bursting from her boots as she twirled through her dad’s slash. The sickening crunch of her heels smashing into his right arm showed she’d done some damage, but not nearly enough. While she recovered and tried to land, one of his extra arms shot out and slashed where her ankles touched down, the senior losing her balance completely. The other extra arm would’ve shot through her throat had Jerie not screeched a single shrill note right in his ear, shattering the windows and pummeling her dad through the bedroom wall.

A hundred prototype pocket watches flared to life with a chorus of discordant tick tocks as her dad flew through the closet, smashed through the desk, and recovered before he could hit the bed. He regained his bearings. Jerie couldn’t draw another breath quick enough. Raya and Amula stepped in to defend their flautist as her dad came out swinging, ten steel threads trailing from each of his claws and connecting to her classmates’ throats.

“Because when the cuts you use to dismantle something are soft and gentle, the parts you put back together into making something new will also feel soft and gentle,” he answers, as he twists the beetle’s legs off and places them neatly by the side, ordering them from smallest to largest. “The kind of Swarmsteel I like to make are those that are comfortable to use and gentle on the skin. If it gives you rashes and hurts to take off, then it is not so much a tool as it is a weapon of mutual destruction—and I am a doctor, at the end of the day. Not a Swarmsteel Maker.”

The flurry of slashes was unending, aggressively aimed at the trio’s Swarmsteel as though her dad was actively trying to dismantle them. Harshly. Violently. Every bone in his body continued to snap as he jerked his limbs like they were hung on wires, every wound he sustained regenerated over with dagged black chitin. His vertical amber irises were unblinking, neither Raya nor the seniors could find a single inch of opportunity to move in close. If all they did was continue playing on defence and trying to draw it out as a battle of attrition, Dahlia knew for sure they would lose—her dad, after all, was a man who’d eaten nothing the past two years.

His life had been starving.

His struggles had been silent.

Yet when his steel threads twirled around him, intertwining, enveloping his body like they were the threads that pulled his limbs along…

“So when you grow up and go to the Bug-Slaying School, remember to make only Swarmsteel that has the user’s sufferings in mind.

“Make soft, gentle Swarmsteel, fit for just that one person to equip.

“That is the kind of ‘Make-Whatever’ I’d like you to be.”

… All she could notice was how much brighter her own steel thread was, going from the tip of her scalpel to the patch of skin over his heart.

She could see it.

She could feel it.

And when a pocket watch rolled across the floorboards to bump into her right hand, her hands moved to pick it off the ground and tuck it behind her waistband by themselves.

… Eria.

[Child of the Maker.]

Is there a way to reverse the effects of entering the Frenzy state?

[There has not been a single recorded case of anyone making a full recovery from the Frenzy state in a hundred years.]

And if I just leave him here?

[The more insect flesh he consumes, the closer he will be to losing his humanity completely, and if that happens…]

…

… I see.

Amula and Jerie were sent flying out the windows. Raya skidded backwards with the blunt end of his spear dragging through the floorboards, bleeding from his ear and panting like his life depended on it. Maybe if they’d arrived sooner and her dad hadn’t been allowed to fight off as many giant insects as he had, they’d be able to subdue him without much trouble… but she’d made them take detour after detour, pausing here and there, slowing them down with her indecision and cowardice—so at the very least, in front of her own dad, she didn’t want to appear like that.

She didn’t want to clench her fists in fear.

Chisel in her left hand, a scalpel that’d rolled over to her in her right, she turned the dial on her pocket watch and drew a slow breath to clear her mind.

“Life can only be seen backwards, but must be lived forward,” her father says. “The hands of time turn clockwise. A story that doesn’t end while repeating itself over and over is just like a bug that refuses to die until a boot.

“That is why my watches cannot be rewound.

“And that is why, no matter what irreconcilable mistakes you feel you have made, you cannot ever give up on life.

“You must move forward.

“Do you understand, Dahlia?”

“...”

Little Dahlia nods firmly.