The Unmaker

Bright and early the next morning, Dahlia met up with Alice at the eastern end of town. There, they were accompanied by a dozen town guards as they rode out on half a dozen camels, each camel strapped down to the leg with canisters of cool water and rolls of dried meat just in case the expedition took longer than expected—’there is no certainty in the desert’ was what the chief had said, so, if necessary, the guards were fully prepared to camp a night out on the rolling dunes. With Alice here, they wouldn’t have to worry as much about attacks by giant insects during the night as well.

By all means, this should be a simple expedition to a ruin the townsfolk had been to many, many times before.

“... You should’ve told me earlier that my Altered Swarmsteel System wasn’t translating the townsfolk’s tongue, though,” Dahlia grumbled, hugging Alice’s waist as their shared camel sprinted across the dunes, kicking sand up into their scarves and goggles. “I can’t believe you just watched me bumble around for two weeks without letting me know. All those times people talked to me like they thought I understood them, and then they had to dumb their speech down so I could pick out a few words here and there… embarrassing. Humiliating. If there’s anything else I should know about my system, you better–”

“I’ll have uncle treat you to something nice, okay?” Alice laughed back, shaking her head softly as Dahlia squeezed her waist tighter. “Honestly, though, I actually didn’t know your Archive’s functions were that restricted just because it wasn’t registered. All the more reason you should either get it registered or just learn the Sharaji Tongue properly, right?”

Dahlia mumbled back in response. Ignoring the communication mishaps, Alice had a point; she really should learn the Sharaji Tongue if she wasn’t going to get Eria registered anytime soon. Even if Mushariff Idan greeted her this morning in Alshifa Tongue, most of the younger townsfolk didn’t know how to speak her tongue—she didn’t think the guards accompanying them to the ruin knew, either—so if she was going to live here for the foreseeable future, there’d be real value in being able to communicate without having to cling to Alice all the time.

She’d talk to the chief about it at a later date. Right now, though, they were encroaching on a massive crater in the middle of the desert, and their caravan of camels were slowing significantly so they wouldn’t roll down the steep inclined slope. One of the guards raised a fist and ordered the rest of them to stop, and there, they dismounted to continue the rest of the journey on foot—the camels would have a hard time navigating through the ruin, after all.

And she of all people would know it was an undertown ruin.

Even through thin veils of sand blowing in the winds, the sun was bright enough that she could make out the tiers of buildings at the bottom of the crater they were sliding down to. This entire crater must’ve been an underground cavern at one point, but somewhere along the way, the rocky ceiling had collapsed and exposed the undertown to the surface world. As their sandals clacked against the bottom of the crater, they were immediately surrounded on all sides by muted and faded buildings—stone and wooden constructions both square and tall, the roofs all gabled or pointed. Sand washed over most of the cobblestone streets, but if she looked closely she could still see the patterning, the sewer grates, the garden plots where trees and conifers had once been grown.

She raised her head, pulled up her goggles, pulled down her scarf, and took a deep whiff of the air: musk and heat, dried oil and sands, and an irremovable scent of ‘civilization’ that’d once been purely content with what it had.

The moment the ceiling had caved in, what the undertown had was no longer theirs.

“... Cacip,” she whispered, making Alice’s ears perk as the guards stayed by the slope, tossing around anchoring ropes so they’d all have an easier time climbing back up to the camels. “There were eight undertowns all connected by a web of tunnels, and Alshifa, where I came from, was one of them… but I heard it didn’t used to be eight. Cacip was the ninth undertown we lost contact with about three decades ago, and our elders had never figured out what happened.”

Alice strode forward through the empty street, kicking up sand and rotten wooden beams as she did. “Well, now you know. This undertown was built too close to the surface. You said your undertown lost contact with this one about three decades ago, right?”

“Right.”

“It must’ve been the ‘Day of Mortality’, then—thirty years ago, when the Worm Mage first fought the Swarm Queen all across the continent,” Alice said, snapping her fingers to beckon the rest to follow her deeper into the ruin. Dahlia obliged, and so did the rest of the guards with their hands on the hilt of their saifs; the safest place around here was next to the Hasharana. “The chief said as much, right? The two of them fought in the Sharaji Desert for only about thirty seconds before warping away, but the force behind their attacks must’ve dislodged and weakened the ceiling of this undertown, causing it to collapse. It would’ve been a quick and immediate death for everyone.”

“...”

Dahlia looked away as they travelled deeper into the ruin. Alice might be searching for signs and traces of Madamaron, but she was looking at the broken sidewalks, the desolate marketplace, and the dried sand-covered husks of men and giant insects alike—no doubt about it, there were giant insects currently using the ruin as their nesting ground. It had everything a bug would need; lots of shadows under roofs, sewer tunnels for rapid movement around the ruin, and it was at the bottom of a crater where sandstorms surely hit weaker and less often. For bugs who preferred living on the desert’s surface, Cacip was the perfect location.

A cold shiver ran down her spine as they stopped before a particularly gruesome husk, some sort of desiccated giant locust—she couldn’t help but wonder if there’d been people here who hadn’t died the instant the ceiling collapsed, and had to live several more days as giant insects started infesting the undertown.

She shook her head immediately afterwards, clapping her cheeks with all four hands to snap herself out of it.

Focus.

We’re looking for traces of Madamaron.

And this husk…

“It’s fresh,” she said, kneeling to place a palm on the carcass of the giant locust. Alice did the same, narrowing her eyes. “It died the same way that poor lady died on my first night in town. Drained. Its body was snapped in half, its insides sucked out through a hole in the abdomen, then its outer surface was left untouched… and now that I think about it, Madamaron can’t be a fog-bask beetle.”

Alice turned to look at Dahlia, brows furrowed. “How so?”

“Fog-bask beetles chew with their mandibles. They don’t suck out their prey’s insides like most true bugs do,” she said, shaking her head softly. “If it’s not a fog-bask beetle, then I’m not sure how it made those ripples in that poor lady’s walls, but it can’t be a chewing insect. It has to be something that can… grab its prey… and then…”

She trailed off, swivelling her head around to look for more giant locust carcasses. There were plenty around her—at least two or three dozen just scattered about the street, thrown through brittle walls, draped across broken roofs. The guards followed her eyes and were visibly tense as they noticed just how many giant carcasses were actually around them; it wouldn’t be surprising at all if Madamaron had been here just hours ago to feast on this small horde of locusts.

In that case, “Can all of you… um, check the streets around us?” she said, looking to Alice for translation. “Look for giant footprints or dents in the ground. Report anything strange back to me, and don’t stray too far. Dangerous. Madamaron… may still be close by.”

Alice translated dutifully, and, while hesitant at first, the guards must’ve been reassured by a Hasharana’s presence. They started spreading out in groups of three to check the areas around the giant locust carcasses, and they made sure never to leave Alice’s field of vision; for her part, Dahlia kept walking in circles around her giant locust laying slump against the entrance of a broken store, frowning at how ‘clean’ its body had been snapped and folded in half.

She had… an inkling of a suspicion.

And when the guards returned to her, each reporting to Alice their findings as they shook their heads, she had real evidence to support her suspicion.

“No giant footprints or cracks in the ground,” Alice said plainly. “So, Madamaron didn’t walk around and kill the giant locusts on foot. It can fly, then? That’ll explain why there are some carcasses on the roofs. It must’ve swooped down, picked up a few of them, and then dropped them from the sky—”

“It’s an antlion nymph,” Dahlia breathed, rapping the ground next to her with a knuckle; the cobblestone street sounded strangely hollow underneath. “It didn’t push through the walls of the poor lady’s house by softening them with water. It vibrated its way through, just like how it makes trapping pits in the sand.”

Alice blinked. “What’s an antlion?”

“...”

It was easier to demonstrate. She pointed at the nearest roof, gesturing for Alice to carry her up. The Hasharana did so without complaint, jumping up to the roof and yanking her along the way with a glowing red thread wrapped around her waist. She would’ve appreciated a less violent method of transportation, but… she got her confirmation the moment she had a bird’s eye view of the ruin.

She pointed at the giant locust carcasses one by one.

“Antlion nymphs make funnel-shaped pits in the sand, and anything that falls into the pit gets trapped, grabbed, snapped in half, and has their insides sucked out before their dried husks are flung out extremely violently,” she explained. “See the ‘ripple circles’ all across the ground? Those are the remnant marks of Madamaron’s trapping pits, and whenever locusts fall into one, it’s almost impossible for them to get back out because the sides of the pit will keep sliding down the more they struggle. Then, Madamaron just burrows beneath each of its pits, drains the trapped locusts one by one, and then flings their dried husks out of the pits before reburying the hole with sand to make it seem like there was no pit in the first place. However, there are still ripple circles left behind, and–”

“That’s why there are locust carcasses on the roofs and in the walls as well,” Alice finished. “The antlion flung them so hard they landed up there.”

“... Right.” Dahlia nodded curtly, glancing to see Alice’s expression. “Since antlion nymphs make trapping pits by vibrating their legs really fast, I think… Madamaron, a Mutant version of one, can vibrate its hands really fast to make it ‘phase’ through sandstone walls. That’s how it grabbed the poor lady through her house. If we assume it can also vibrate sand so hard that sandstorms occur more often, then after it’s done feeding and goes into a period of dormancy, there’ll be less sandstorms for a while… is why I think there are less sandstorms after it murders a townsfolk. But if it’s eating so many giant locusts, then why would it go into dormancy after eating just a few humans–”

“Because the Swarm’s favourite food are humans, and they get more nutrients from eating one of us than cannibalising a hundred giant bugs,” Alice said quickly, grabbing her shoulders with four hands, shaking her excitedly with a cheery grin on her own face. “You solved it again, huh? If it’s a burrowing insect, then it also aligns with what we saw at the bottom of the oasis—there were tunnels leading even deeper underground, so Madamaron has to be an insect that likes living in caverns!”

Dahlia scratched the back of her head, looking away sheepishly. Certainly, it seemed like this guess of hers was her best by far—Madamaron being an antlion nymph meant she could explain all of Sharaji’s strange phenomena—but there was always a chance that she was wrong, and if she were wrong just like how she’d been wrong predicting what the Mutant firefly actually was…

…

… Maybe the Arcana Hasharana wouldn’t care either way.

At the very least, Alice didn’t look the slightest bit worried now as she yelled down at the guards, likely telling them to begin establishing the foundations of a giant trap using the entire undertown as bait. They knew Madamaron came here to hunt, and have been doing so for at least the past couple of years; if they could lure it out and have Alice fight it one-on-one, the threat of the evil god could be ended just like that.

Surely, Alice wouldn’t let her guard down and just blindly believe Dahlia’s prediction. It was just a framework of reference so she wouldn’t be taken by surprise if Madamaron suddenly started vibrating the sands.

So, for her own part, Dahlia wanted to do something to help trap Madamaron too.

These giant locust parts are still fresh and usable, aren’t they?

[Correct.]

And locusts are pretty good at jumping because of their strong legs, right?

[Correct.]

Do you think I can make prosthetics out of them, then?

Eria mused on her shoulder. [You can most certainly try. With this many carcasses, it is not as though you will run out of cricket parts even if you fail and destroy the components a hundred times.]

… Then, I want to try a different, slightly more advanced form of Swarmsteel making this time.

[Oh? What is it?]

She looked down at Eria, smiling softly.

Do you think Smith Jaleel will let me use his forge and furnace for this?