The Unmaker

Finding a sandstone house with four chimes dangling outside the front door was not easy, especially when Dahlia was walking around with the drowsy little girl in her arms, her skin starting to burn up under the sweltering midday sun.

Because most of the townsfolk were hunkered under roofs having their own lunches, there weren’t a lot of people wandering about the streets she could ask for directions. It wasn’t like she could speak their tongue in the first place, but she could attempt a mime or two with her extra arms, at the very least—she’d been running around the southernmost end of town for the past fifteen minutes like an ant that’d lost its antennae, checking door to door while covering the little girl’s face with her extra arms to provide just a bit of shade.

Right after checking her fiftieth door, Dahlia rounded a corner and ran into Alice, who was squatting on the ground making a sandcastle in a back alley; her crimson eyes immediately lit up as she noticed the two of them passing by.

“Oh? What’s going on here?” she asked, demolishing her sandcastle with a swat and bouncing to her feet to walk beside Dahlia, grinning down at the drowsy little girl as she did. “Can’t suppress your appetite anymore? You gotta eat a human? Well, don’t eat a kid. If you gotta pick someone, at least go for one with more nutrients–”

“I thought you said you wanted to investigate Madamaron alone today,” Dahlia muttered, a bit light-headed herself as she headed towards her fifty-first door down the street; today was much hotter than usual. “Your investigation is… hunched over in some alley making sandcastles? Really? You left me behind today for a sandcastle?”

Alice shrugged, sending her a teasing smirk. “Even an Arcana Hasharana needs to take breaks, and there just so happened to be a particularly cool shade in the alley, and the sand there was also particularly sticky and clumped-up–”

“–I’m busy, so leave me alone–”

“–are you trying to take the girl home?” Alice finished, pointing at herself. “I know where she lives. She’s the chief’s daughter, right? I visited the chief when I first came here a few weeks ago, so I think… uh, I still remember the way.”

Dahlia stopped for a second, squinting at Alice.

“Do you really?”

Alice scratched the back of her ear, averting her gaze. “Uh… yes. I do.”

“Do you really?”

“Just follow me.”

The Hasharana grumbled, evidently displeased as she kicked the sands and walked a few steps ahead, leading the way. Deciding to trust her just a little, Dahlia followed—it wasn’t like she had much choice but to do so anyways, unless she wanted to spend at least fifteen more minutes stumbling around in the sun.

So it was that they bumbled around a bit longer—squeezing between tiny gaps, walking over alleyways filled to the brim with empty crates, and arguing directions every time they made a suspicious turn—before they finally found the humble sandstone house with four chimes dangling on a iron rod jutting out the top of the door.

Dahlia wanted to shoo the Hasharana away now that she arrived at her destination, but Alice was persistent and clingy, unwilling to part with her as she was goaded into making sandcastles together. They must be causing a ruckus right outside the front door, because within ten seconds the master of the two-storey house yanked the door open, scowling at the two of them standing on her carpet.

“...”

The middle-aged chief, clad in finely embroidered orange silk, looked the two of them over for only a brief moment. In the next, her eyes were wide as she finally noticed her daughter in Dahlia’s arms. She immediately stepped aside and ushered Dahlia into her house with a wave, hesitating to do the same for Alice—though, on seeing how persistent the Hasharana looked, she had no choice but to relent with a silent grimace. Both of them left their sandals on the carpet outside as the chief closed the door behind them, quickly scooping the little girl out of Dahlia’s arms to carry her up the stairs. The second floor was probably where the little girl’s room was.

The first floor and the living room of the chief’s house, then, was…

Beyond normal. It was just like any other living room she’d been invited into whenever she had to deliver some of Smith Jaleel’s metalwork to their customers’ houses directly. With sand-tone walls, a wood-panel ceiling, and boring-looking furniture that was just there to fill the space, the chief’s house was thoroughly unremarkable. Dahlia didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but Grandma Ramaba’s was a general amenities store, Smith Jaleel’s was a miniature workshop for him to handle smaller projects, and most of the townsfolk she’d delivered goods to had living rooms that felt… well, lived in. Colourful carpets, reed snacks in pots and baskets, maybe a tapestry hanging on the wall here and there.

It was like nobody ‘lived’ in this house.

“... I’m hot. Where’s the water jar in this place?” Alice muttered, walking off on her own and disappearing into the back kitchen through flaps of hanging fabric. Dahlia had half a mind to pull her back—it was rude to just search around someone’s house for food and water without asking—but a peculiar scent in the air caught her nose, and her attention along with it.

Her first surprise came as she walked over to the base of the stairs, her nose tingling, her antennae swaying gently behind her head. She felt she recognised the subtle, poisonous, almost ‘wrong’ scent wafting down from the second floor… and for all she’d wanted to tell Alice to sit still and not explore around without permission, she found herself climbing the stairs on her tiptoes.

The smell of a hundred different scents—all subtly mixing into one single note—reached her nose as she found herself in a dark corridor. Sunlight illuminated the living room through open windows below, but there were no firefly lanterns here. It was just a corridor, two doors flanking the sides at the end of it, and the door on the left was swung inwards; that was where the smell was gushing out from.

…

Maybe it really was rude to intrude, but the chief had always seemed to despise Alice’s presence, as well as all things related to giant insects; Dahlia couldn’t help but let her curiosity get the better of her as she neared the room and peeked in through the open door.

The living room may be dull and unremarkable, but this room was a Swarmsteel Maker’s hobby room. Glossy greaves and gauntlets hung gracefully on mannequins, moulded from tough insect carapaces. Gowns and scarves and capes hung delicately on hooks on the other side of the room, the fabrics made from translucent butterfly wings and veined beetle elytra. Upon the workbench next to the bed the little girl was sleeping on, she spotted pairs upon pairs of unfinished spectacles; the lenses fashioned from dragonfly eyes, the metal rims shaped from locust legs, wooden cups of strangely shaped carving tools lining the shelves all across the room. There was an open window behind the workbench to let sunlight pour in, but the curtains were made of polarised moth wings and scales—the only thing that came through strong and harsh were the warm midday winds. No sand. No sound.

Her eyes sparkled at the myriad of Swarmsteel garments as she stepped into the bedroom, and it was still a bedroom. There were cabinets, closets, a desk and accompanying chairs; there was just Swarmsteel scattered all around as well.

And they’re all so… pretty.

Look at the lining patterns.

Look at the little stitches made out of critter ant mandibles.

They must be made by a–

“Please don’t touch any of them.”

She froze, her claws just about to caress a pinkish-blue scarf hanging on the hooks.

The chief didn’t turn around to chastise Dahlia. While the little girl slept soundly on the bed, she sat on a chair nearby and held her daughter’s hand the entire way through—the winds that blew in made her headchains jingle, but otherwise she was quiet. She was still. She didn’t speak so loud that she woke her daughter up, and… faced with the two of them, Dahlia’s chest suddenly felt like it was twisting in knots.

This sight looked… familiar.

Maybe her mom used to hold her hand like that when she was younger, but she wouldn’t remember.

…

For a few seconds, she debated just leaving the room and the house entirely, but doing so without at least attempting to explain what’d happened just didn’t seem right to her. Slowly, tentatively, she stepped forward and slid herself onto a stool next to the chief; the chief’s baggy and sunken eyes didn’t tear away from the little girl’s sleeping face even once to look at her.

Guilt formed a giant lump in her throat, and she opened her mouth in an attempt to speak.

No words came out.

She tried again.

Still nothing but a hoarse, grainy breath of air.

“... I… um… I tried to make her a new leg,” she finally managed, folding her hands in her lap as she averted her gaze, lips trembling. “But I’m not… good enough yet. Inadequate. I don’t know how to make prosthetics. But, um, if you’d just give me a few more tries… and a bit more time with your daughter, maybe I’ll–”

“I cannot deny the polite request of my daughter’s saviour,” the chief murmured, a soft, keening voice, “but to put ‘Swarmsteel’ onto her body and show her the wonders of insect parts… it will not lead to a happy fate for her.”

Dahlia was about to bite her teeth and gulp, but then her ears perked.

She tilted her head as she realised it only now.

“Wait a second,” she said, lifting her head to stare at the chief, eyes wide. “You can… you can speak the Alshifa Tongue?”

The chief’s eyes flickered over for a brief moment, a small frown scrunching her brows. “Yes. A few of us of the older generation can. What is so surprising about it?”

“The only people I’ve been able to understand since coming to the surface were Alice and Safi!” she said excitedly, her voice rising, but then the chief raised a finger to her lips and she quieted down; the little girl stirred a little on the bed. “I… Sorry. I’ll be quiet. But I actually haven’t been able to understand a single thing anyone from the Oasis Town says before, so you’re my first!”

It was the chief’s turn to give a puzzled tilt of her head. “What do you mean? I am aware you work at both Idan and Jaleel’s stores. They must talk to you a lot.”

“They don’t! I mean, they try, but it’s not like we can have much of a conversation when I can’t speak or understand the Sharaji Tongue!”

“... What?”

Dahlia blinked back at her, just as confused. “What?”

“You… do not understand our tongue?”

“Should I?”

A pause.

Then, the chief sighed. “That Hasharana does,” she muttered, shaking her head in dismay. “She said all Hasharana with… what did she call it? ‘Altered Swarmsteel Systems’? She said Altered Swarmsteel Systems can automatically translate all spoken tongues, and the user can also speak in an unfamiliar tongue—that is how that Hasharana has been able to communicate with us. Do you not have that Swarmsteel as well?”

Twitching an eye, she looked down at her shoulder and scowled pointedly at Eria.

In response, Eria waved its forelegs as though to say ‘nothing can be done about it’.

[The chief is correct,] Eria said plainly. [We, the Archives of the Altered Swarmsteel System, can automatically rewire your brain to understand and speak in unfamiliar tongues… but I am an unregistered Archive. You obtained me through an abnormal channel. Since you never took the Hasharana Entrance Exam, several of my abilities and functionalities are still locked—translation being one of them.]

…

“... No, my Altered Swarmsteel System isn’t working correctly,” she mumbled back, dipping her head apologetically at the chief. “I’m sorry. I… I’m going to have a talk with Alice later about her watching me bumble around town these past two weeks without being able to understand a single word being spoken.”

“And I will inform the townsfolk to speak in Alshifa Tongue around you as much as possible.” The chief waved her concerns away, shaking her own head once again. “To be honest, I, too, did not believe that Hasharana when she first said her Swarmsteel allowed her to understand a tongue she had never heard before. It sounded ridiculous. How could there be Swarmsteel so advanced that they could allow children her age to bypass learning a tongue that took me a decade to master?”

Dahlia smiled softly. “Swarmsteel are powerful, and I’ve been told there are really, really skilled Makers out there. They can probably make a fully functioning prosthetic leg for your daughter in less than ten minutes.”

“I am aware. I suppose that, too, was part of the reason why my late husband was so infatuated with insect parts and making Swarmsteel for everyone in town.”

“...”

The curtains billowed as the winds blew in stronger, sharper, sunlight reflecting off the unfinished lenses on the workbench. For her part, Dahlia couldn’t stop herself from looking around the room, admiring every little piece of unused fabric, every box and crate of dismantled insect parts sitting on shelves or tucked behind cabinets—it was clear the man who once resided in this room had real talent. If she and her father could be considered specialists at making all-rounding Swarmsteel out of chitin and tough insect parts, the Swarmsteel Maker here had a knack for making fashionable Swarmsteel out of wavy butterfly threads and fibres.

The room’s scent may be subtly poisonous; the stories imbued in each and every Swarmsteel, completed or unfinished, were not.

“... I noticed, out in town, that there are lots of things made out of insect parts too,” she said, locking her fingers together as she looked at the chief. “The brooms are made of stick bug chitin. The trash bins are made of termite midguts. Everywhere I look, there’s something useful made out of insects, so… why is Swarmsteel taboo in this town? Why not use the insect parts to their fullest potential?”

She knew it was a sensitive topic—it had to be—but the Swarmsteel in this room was just too pretty.

She had to know.

And, whether or not she was being pitied for not having understood a word the past two weeks—or because she ‘deserved’ a reward for saving the little girl—the chief didn’t immediately shoot her question down.

Instead, the chief simply looked out the window and brushed the curtains away.

The endless desert outside was as golden and ephemeral as always.

“... Because you lived in a cave,” the chief said softly, “and you do not know the Swarm that ravaged the world.”