The Unmaker

A red blur descended from the moon and smashed down feet-first next to Dahlia—clasping her hand with an amused laugh as the ground rippled around them.

The Hangman had returned, and she was twirling a giant silk-woven glaive in her right hands.

“You figured I hadn’t left?” Alice asked, beaming at Dahlia from the side. “Seriously! What if I’d really, really left? You were gonna look incredibly silly holding your hand out, saying ‘upon the bed of carcasses’–”

“Rude. You were the one who made the catchphrase.” Dahlia scowled back, exhaling slowly as she released the tension in her muscles. “Next time… clue me in on your plan, huh?”

Alice shook her head cheerily. “No can do! If you knew I was still hanging around the desert, you wouldn’t really be afraid of Madamaron, and it can sense if you’re afraid or not! It wouldn’t have attacked if it’d known I was still around!”

Dahlia grumbled under her breath. The Hasharana wearing her face was unpredictable as ever, but that was Alice’s strength—Madamaron’s weakness. For the past ten minutes it’d been chasing Dahlia around Alshifa, throwing her left and right, up and down, but now it stood against two of her. Like twins. Like a puppet and its shadow. Whether its eyesight was keen enough to differentiate between the two of them or not, there was no doubt in Dahlia’s mind that it was a bit skittish staring straight at them.

If they’d both bothered to dress up the same, there was a real chance it simply wouldn’t be able to tell them apart, and then they could take it apart by confusing it to all hell. It wouldn’t have to dodge Dahlia’s pathetic attacks, but it would have to dodge Alice’s attacks; if it didn’t know which one of them it had to pay attention to, it’d have to spare energy to deal with both of them, leading to clumsier movements and quicker exhaustion.

Of course, Alice could just fight it solo as well.

“... It’s big and inflexible,” Dahlia muttered, glaring straight at Madamaron as she let go of Alice’s hand. “Its chitin armour is also only half as tough as the nymph we fought back in Cacip. Three centimetres thick. It can regenerate them in under thirty seconds, but its stamina is also lacking. It can’t stay airborne forever.”

“Got it.” Alice grinned, striding forward as she bit her nails to pull out spirals of glowing blood threads. A few flicks of her wrists, a few twirls of her hands, and she wove one more giant glaive for her left hands. “Anything else I need to know about?”

“Its heart isn’t in its head.”

“Oh, I figured. They usually aren’t anywhere close to the head.”

“It’s probably in the chest, then.”

“No shit. Where else can it–”

Madamaron may have been stuck in a daze, but no longer. It stopped shuffling back unconsciously. Its feet sank into the stone as it exploded forward, dark winds swirling around its fist as it punched down—and Alice swung back, matching four oversized arms with two oversized glaives.

A shockwave lashed out at everything within reach, throwing Dahlia back, making the ring of debris scatter. Alice’s glaives weren’t surgical blades. They wedged themselves into Madamaron’s forearm chitin with sheer brute force, and she laughed as she swung the giant back into a building, her crimson wings fanning out along the motion to add more wind to the force. Madamaron rolled and scraped against sharp rock, screeching all the way. It hadn’t come to a stop yet when Alice dashed in with a puff of dust, soaring overhead with her glaives coming down on its head.

Very quickly, their battle became impossible to follow. Dahlia knelt with her arms in front of her face, lightning sparking every time shrapnel bounced off her bracers, and… the two of them were off into Alshifa. The cavern filled with unnatural rumbles as they struck each other through walls and towers, broken fountains and rotten oaks, trading flurries of blows so fast she could barely tell who was winning. Alice was laughing, though, and Madamaron—despite its size—couldn’t seem to rest for a single moment.

It was an even more extreme case of the antlion nymph fight. If there was one advantage humans innately had against the Swarm, it was the fact that their enemies were usually much, much bigger than them—and that meant, at equal speeds, Alice was far more elusive and irritating to catch.

[... It still hasn’t used that ability, though,] Kari noted.

It will in a few seconds.

Once it realises it can’t beat Alice in a head-on fight–

Madamaron punched the ground with all four of its arms, throwing Alice back with a shockwave before taking off into the air. It’d fought on its feet the entire time, but now it’d recovered most of its wing stamina; sand and dust and smaller debris began swirling around it in a giant cyclone as it beat its wings, vibrating its limb like an antlion nymph would, too, to add to the wind pressure. Everything it could do to obfuscate its figure and make itself appear more menacing than it really was, it did… but Alice wasn’t afraid, and neither was Dahlia as the Hasharana landed next to her with a screeching halt.

They grimaced up at the cyclone, their hair whipping into their faces, small dust fragments scraping against their chitin plates. Above ground, the cyclone was manageable, but underground in a relatively enclosed cavern? It could very well collapse the entire undertown.

It was in their best interest to bring it down before that could happen, and while Alice could most certainly do it one way or the other, Dahlia sucked in a sharp breath and grabbed the Hasharana before she could leap through the cyclone.

“... I’ll do it,” she breathed. Alice glanced back at her, and there was a twinkle of amusement in the Hasharana’s eyes. She almost felt as though she were being tested on her resolve, but on that front, she’d never felt as determined to do something as ever before.

Besides, there was an itch in her body that just wouldn’t go away, and her gut instinct told her this was something she had to do sooner or later.

With Kari in her head, Alshifa on her back, and Alice by her side, she wasn’t going to be alone doing this.

“...”

So, there was no warning. There was no exchange of pleasantries. Alice counter-grabbed one of her wrists, pivoted, spun, and chucked her full-force up into the cyclone. She was mentally prepared for the speed. Physically, though—her teeth rattled and her eyes stung with pain as she shot through the cyclone of debris, soaring twenty metres up and straight at Madamaron’s chest.

Panicked, Madamaron lashed out and tried to swat her away, but she braced her arms in front of her face as she flew. A burst of defensive lightning made its impacting fists jolt back. The spark completely blindsided the giant, and she slammed feet-first against its chestplate, her greaves cracking its chitin as she held onto the spikes on its chest with two hands. With the other two, she narrowed her eyes and hissed, slashing along the steel threads to dismantle its chitin plates with violent splatters of blood.

That’s all it takes!

I don’t need to know where its heart is exactly, either!

Time seemed to slow as the cyclone roared around them. Madamaron was zipping about with its wings, trying to fling her off as it shook its electrified fists, but she had an iron grip on its chest; she wouldn’t let go no matter what.

And her left hand wasn’t clenched into a fist as she reared it back, five black claws aiming for the centre mass of its exposed, fleshy chest.

Her dad always said it best, after all: fear is the child who clenches her fists in the face of a bug, and if she was clenching her fist, she wouldn’t be able to make anything.

She didn’t ‘hate’ the Swarm as much as she wanted to make a new home for herself, so she’d never clench her fist to destroy anything again.

She’d make a better destiny for herself, and that—

[T1 Branch Mutation Unlocked: Recollection]

[Brief Description: You are an assassin bug who carries the weight of the dead on your back. You can use the abilities of all humanlike bugs you defeat and devour]

—had to begin with the death of a desert god.

“... Upon the bed of carcasses,” she whispered, her vision tinged with gold as she let her gut instinct take over, her voice melding with a raspier, darker voice in her heart. “Recollection: Firefly.”

It didn’t come from her bracers. It didn’t come from anyone around her. A jolt sharpened her spine, tightened her muscles, and golden lightning crackled around her claws as she hissed, plunging her left hand into Madamaron’s exposed chest.

Each second maintaining the electricity around her hand sent stabbing pains back into her own body—she had no mutations to help her endure lightning yet—but Madamaron’s heavy breaths quickly turned into something more ragged, more primordial. It screeched and buckled and dropped to the ground, the cyclone dispelled in an instant by its off-rhythm wings. She rode it all the way down with her claws still plunged in, though, twisting its flesh, her eyes tearing up as she remembered what it’d looked like: the Mutant firefly throwing lightning javelins wherever which way, flashes of azure light streaking across the undertown. It was a menace back then, so she’d channel that aggression now.

Sending lightning through its insides and burning it from the inside-out, she glared into its eyes as they crashed into the ground, making the cavern rumble one last time.

Even as Madamaron’s back was broken against the ground, she didn’t pull her lightning claws out. She kept them stabbed in, sparking, crackling with pure golden light—until all the desert god could do was convulse uncontrollably, unmistakably dead with its heart charred to a crisp.

…

Maybe Safi or Alice would have something to say about making the Mutant’s flesh borderline dangerous to eat, but as she ripped her claws out and stumbled back on its chest, gasping for breath, eating insect flesh was the last thing she wanted to think about.

She deactivated her lightning claws with a simple thought, and all was silent in Alshifa once more.

What little buildings that hadn't been destroyed by the firefly had been destroyed by Madamaron.

Moonlight fell cold and bright upon the barren cavern.

Dahlia’s knees finally buckled under the weight of exhaustion, but she managed to raise her own left hand and forced a smile onto her face—beaming at the Arcana Hasharana who smiled heartily back at her.

… Madamaron is dead.

And I unmade it.