The Unmaker

“... I was a child when she first appeared in the centre of the continent, just a few weeks’ ride from here,” the chief said, eyes sunken, staring blankly out the window. “It was Year Seventy. Thirty years ago, the day the Hasharana was formed. The ‘Worm Mage’ was inaugurating the founding of his wandering bug slaying organisation, and in the middle of their celebrations, the ‘Swarm Queen’ launched a surprise attack. She decimated their headquarters and coordinated a simultaneous assault with her Six Great Mutants on all Six Swarmsteel Fronts. You undertowners would not know its name, but we, of the surface world, call it ‘Mortality’s Day’—the day all of humankind unclenched their fists and resigned themselves to violent, pitiful deaths.”

The chief raised her finger and pointed out the window, sweeping from one horizon to another, tracing the crest and trough of the dunes. For her part, Dahlia watched; she listened; she pressed her lips together and tried to follow the chief’s finger.

“I watched the Worm Mage pick up a mountain that once stood on that dune, and I watched the Swarm Queen shrug it off as he threw it at her,” the chief said quietly. “The Worm Mage stomped and made the desert ripple. A hundred Mutants burst out the Swarm Queen’s stomach. He carved a thousand wormholes in the sky and brought down nine mountains from the wintry east. She fed her children to his flames and summoned a thousand more, and I was there, running; I watched as the two of them fought over this desert for only a mere thirty seconds before they took their battle elsewhere, and the Worm Mage was never seen by another man ever again. He died that day, struck down and slaughtered by the Swarm’s strongest. For a while after that, humanity lived with their heads low, and yet… it was little different from how we had always been living.”

“...”

The chief angled her head to look at Dahlia, her eyes half-hidden behind her veil and headchains. “You would not know this, but humanity has always been the prey. We have always been on the backfoot. Living legends like the Worm Mage or the Storm Strider appear once every few years, inspiring the rest of us to fight on, but the Swarm has no need for heroic figures. They are uncaring about motivation or unity. They know how to kill, they know how to make us scurry like we are the bugs who must live in caves, and that is all they need to do.” Then the chief gave her a sly, painful smile, bereft of the meaning behind it. “Do you think the Sharaji townsfolk truly believe in spirits and deities of the desert? If we did, the only real gods we believe in are the Swarm—their blood is unholy ichor, their chitin are dark gemstones, and when humans meld with Swarmsteel, they accept a part of the evil gods within themselves. Do you enjoy the comfort of being clad in the carcasses of evil gods?”

Dahlia narrowed her eyes, trying to find some sort of judgement in the chief’s face, but there was only quiet, a hint of curiosity, and… she could’ve sworn the chief looked the slightest bit sad sitting in this very room.

Strange.

If it were her in the chief’s place, she’d be delighted.

“... Do you not like the Swarmsteel in this room?” she replied, tilting her head slowly, inquisitively. “For me… these scarves and mantles and cloaks are very pretty. They’re not produced in mass. There’s no repeating pattern in any of the embroideries—each and every garment in this room was made for one person, and one person only.”

The chief blinked, looking almost surprised that that was Dahlia’s answer; but then she smiled softly, turning to glance at the reed mannequins all around.

“My late husband thought the same as you,” the chief murmured, gazing longingly at a particularly flowy velvet butterfly dress off to the side. “Though he, too, saw the battle between the Worm Mage and the Swarm Queen, he never thought for a single second that insect parts were ‘evil’. He was utterly infatuated with all the things he could weave with them—mantles that could trap moisture in our bodies, scarves that could protect our breaths even in a sandstorm, and nails that could change colour depending on the time of day. The ladies loved his nails, by the way. They sold really well even to travelling merchants from the Rampaging Hinterland Front, and I, too… I adored every layer he wove for me. When we made this house ourselves, he said he must have a workshop in our bedroom so he can try his clothes on me any time he wants, not that I understood half of what he made. His mind was beyond mine.”

Then, the chief scoffed, shaking her head as though in disbelief of what she was saying herself.

“Sometimes, I wonder if he adored his Swarmsteel more than he adored me,” she whispered, smiling weakly at her daughter on the bed. “But, for a decade while he worked as the town’s Swarmsteel Maker, everyone liked what he made. Slowly but surely, insect parts lost their title as ‘carcasses of evil gods’, and if he had just lived a decade longer, maybe we would not have to worry about getting attacked by the Swarm anymore. Maybe he would have turned it all around; maybe he would have joined the Hasharana as one of their Makers and made a weapon that could defeat the Swarm. He was a talented man—he had the smoothest fingers you would ever see on a man.”

“...”

Sensing the chief wasn’t going to go on any further by herself, Dahlia dipped her head and folded her hands in her lap.

“If you don’t mind me asking…” she began, voice low and quiet. “How did… your household lose its Maker?”

The chief remained silent for a moment, her face still as a pond on a windless night.

“... It was nothing extraordinary,” she finally said, looking out the window once again. “Five years ago, he and his assistants stumbled into Madamaron in a nearby undertown ruin. We found their bodies the day after, and he left me and our daughter alone. For what? A bunch of insect parts he said he could smell in the ruins all the way from this room? Are these ‘Swarmsteel’ worth dying for in the end?”

Dahlia’s antennae perked and she glanced out the front door behind her. “I… I’m sorry to hear that. But, miss chief, don’t you think that maybe… maybe he only wanted to–”

“Nothing he could have made with insect parts could ever replace my daughter’s papa!” the chief snapped, losing her temper for a brief, brief second; then the little girl stirred on her bed, and she immediately clenched her jaw. “Swarmsteel… are disgusting. He should never have desecrated the carcasses of humanity’s evil gods. Never. The Hasharana and the Seven Swarmsteel Fronts and the Great Mutants and whatever is out there… we want nothing to do with any of it. To make Swarmsteel is to try to live with our heads held high, and that will only invite–”

“Are you weak of sight, miss chief?”

The chief suddenly turned to stare at her, but if she wasn’t sure before, she was more than sure of it now—she’d moved her chair a little bit to the right while the chief was staring out the window, and it didn’t feel like she was actually being looked at.

“... What?” the chief said.

“When we first met, and a week ago when we met again, after Alice pulled me and your daughter out of the oasis,” she started, “you had two guards around you, supporting your arms. You always have two guards supporting your arms. Then, your veil that hides half of your face, the headchains that reflect sunlight back into my face, and just now, when you couldn’t look me in the eye… you must be half-blind, right? Or, at the very least, your eyes are not very sensitive to light?”

The chief paused.

Then, after a few moments of heavy silence, she brushed her forehead and pushed her veil out of the way.

Dahlia wasn’t particularly surprised to see her eyes were clouded, foggy white orbs underneath her reflective headchains.

“... Your eyes are just as keen as my husband’s,” the chief muttered, tracing a finger along her eyelids. “For generations, the women of the Sharaji chief’s household have been born with a sickness that will eventually lead to colour blindness and weakness of sight. Because we cannot see, our skin is more sensitive to minute fluctuations in the air, and so we are better at detecting oncoming sandstorms than most. Even my daughter, when she grows to be twenty, will begin to lose her vision and become like–”

“She won’t.”

It may be rude, but she’d been rude enough already; Dahlia didn’t hesitate to lean forward and pluck the little girl’s goggles off her neck.

Then, Dahlia held the goggles out to the chief.

“Try it on,” she said.

The chief knitted her brows. “This is… the one I fought with her over that night.” She shook her head, averting her gaze. “My daughter has inherited my husband’s inquisitiveness for insect parts. It will not bode well for her. I owe you everything for saving her life a week ago, and I will repay you the world if I could, but to meld with a Swarmsteel now would–”

“She was making this for you,” she said, sternly this time as she pushed the goggles even further forward. “Just try it on.”

“...”

Reluctantly, the chief took the goggles and pulled the straps behind her head, fumbling with the clasps for a brief second—and the moment she started adjusting the metal frame over her eyes, Dahlia gestured for her to turn the cog dials on the side.

The chief did as instructed, and the mixture of firefly and sun beetle extract immediately flowed behind the right lens.

Dahlia smiled as the chief tensed up and reeled back in her chair, her right eye glowing a bright shade of vermillion; it really was a remarkable Swarmsteel, even if the chief wasn’t exactly wearing the straps correctly so it could meld with her scalp. All for the better, Dahlia supposed—the concept of easy-to-wear and easy-to-take-off Swarmsteel, tailored for one specific person, was the Sina household’s specialty after all.

Except she wasn’t the one who’d made the goggles.

All she’d done was give it a little upgrade.

“... She was making it for you, miss chief,” Dahlia said, as the chief looked around the room in a daze, snapping her head left and right as though she couldn’t believe what she was seeing; Dahlia couldn’t even begin to imagine the myriad of colours flooding through her head right now. “And this is just what I think, but maybe… it’s not so much that Swarmsteel are made from the ‘carcasses of evil gods’, but more so that ‘we slayed the evil gods, and so we wear their slaughtered kin to make them fear our scent’.”

“...”

“In Alshifa, there was a little funeral rite we liked to do for our warriors. We called it the ‘Almat Alsu Deathbed’, and it is something every doctor must learn before they are recognised as men of life,” she continued, dipping her head as the chief kept turning the dials, flickering through more and more combinations of colours. The chief probably wasn’t listening; she didn’t really care. “For humans who lived until the very end, we would send them away from this world clad in the flesh of their mortal enemies. They wear the skin of their prey, and it terrifies the Swarm—wouldn’t you be unnerved seeing a human carrying with them the corpses of a hundred other humans?”

“...”

“But I don’t think… Swarmsteel are disgusting,” she said, looking slowly around the room, smiling as she did. “I think your husband made very, very pretty clothes.”

“...”

The chief turned away, facing the velvet butterfly dress off to the side with her right eye shining pure gold, but most assuredly, the ‘scent’ of tears in the room were not fake.

Swarmsteel were more than just the carcasses of evil gods, after all.

Dahlia kept her head low, respecting the silence. Maybe it was time she stopped intruding and let the mother-daughter have their time alone. She could spend the rest of the day harvesting reeds just to help out Mushariff Idan and his farmers a bit more–

“You said your husband was killed by Madamaron in a nearby ruin?” Alice asked, finally deciding to step into the room and making the chief whirl in shock; Dahlia shot the Hasharana a glare, but Alice's eyes weren't focused on her. “Tell me where the ruin is. I've been thinking of ways to lure Madamaron to the surface so we could have an even fight on my territory, but I've got nothing so far. If it shows up at the ruin, then I want to check the place out.”

“... And you are still trying to kill Madamaron?” the chief whispered, a quiver to her voice as she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, sniffling softly. “I told you when you first arrived: Madamaron is an evil god. It and its descendants have terrorised the Sharaji Oasis Town for longer than you have been alive. Try as you might, a single human can never bring down an evil god of the desert, so we must let it be and–”

“You weren't lying, but you didn't finish the whole story for Dahlia to hear,” Alice said bluntly, her expression cold and distant, her eyes blank and hollow. “The Swarm Queen struck down the Worm Mage that day. She pierced a hole through his heart and cast him eight thousand metres down into the pits of hell, stripping him of all his abilities and humanity of all their hope—and he climbed out of that hell as the Worm God, carrying a Swarmsteel rifle made from the carcasses of a hundred unborn Great Mutants.”

The chief’s expression turned grim, and it turned even more so when Alice suddenly knelt, prostrating herself with all four hands on the ground.

Even Dahlia reeled back a little, completely taken off-guard by the Hasharana’s gesture.

“You may all believe Madamaron is an evil god of the desert who cannot be struck down, but I don’t care what you believe,” Alice said plainly, her voice not a single bit muffled by her facing the ground. “Don’t forget: Year Seventy, when the Swarm Queen made her first appearance, it was humanity who won that fight. It was the Hasharana, wearing the carcasses of their sworn enemies, who dared to live with their heads held high—so tell me where the ruin is, and without question, your evil god will be slaughtered like the bug it really is.”

The promise was directed at the chief, but Dahlia heard her heartbeat thundering in her ears, felt her face flushing red with heat. She’d never heard Alice sound like a pillar of resolve. A living weapon of malice. That the Hasharana could sound like that while wearing her own face, speaking with her own voice, it made her feel… inadequate.

Were the two of them really the same age?

Could she tell the chief she could definitely kill Madamaron and bring peace to the Oasis Town?

“... What do you need?” the chief whispered.

“Directions to the ruin,” Alice replied curtly.

“What else?”

“A guide or two. Maybe a dozen porters as well. Giant insects are known to reside in ruins of human civilization because there’s lots of places to hide, so there’s a high chance Madamaron is living there or using it as a feeding ground. If I find traces of it there, I want to set up traps before luring it out.”

“How long will it take you to kill it?”

“Well, I don’t know. The hardest part about fighting a Mutant is just trying to get it to come out.” Alice shrugged where she knelt, raising her head only to smile at the chief. “If it comes out, I’ll kill it. I just… you know, I might need a few fresh-smelling humans to use as bait.”

Dahlia clicked her tongue quietly—that was about the worst way Alice could’ve ended her plea for help with—but, to her surprise, the chief only gave the Hasharana a resigned, quiet nod.

“... Fine,” the chief muttered, gripping her daughter’s hand tight. “You go tomorrow with the town guards. They’ll show you the way.”

Alice bounced to her feet, clapping her hands and bowing delightfully. “You got it, chief! I’ll bring back Madamaron’s head so you guys can stick it on a stake or something–”

“–that will be unnecessary–”

“–and I’ll be taking Dahlia with me to the ruins as well, so keep giving her a salary while she’s helping me out?” Alice finished, pulling Dahlia off her stool; for her part, she only clicked her tongue and glared at Alice again. “If the ruin’s a fair distance from the town, we’ll have to buy food and equipment for our long trips back and forth. They say an army runs on its stomach, but so do girls in their growing years—uncle can’t make our meals out there, so we don’t wanna starve.”

The chief nodded slowly, pulling her veil and heachains back over her face. “That much can be arranged,” she said, gazing at Dahlia sternly. “I still owe you, after all.”

“...”

With that, Alice dragged Dahlia out of the room, and the chief turned back to watch over her daughter.

Dahlia twisted her lips at the sight.

Eria.

[Yes?]

I will make a Swarmsteel prosthetic.

[...]

Do you want to say it’s impossible without that adaptable insect part you were talking about?

[... Of course not,] Eria said, [and if the undertown ruin we will visit tomorrow really is a feeding ground for giant insects, perhaps we will find a few parts high quality enough to serve your purpose.]