Makuja is a good tool. She does what has to be done. When it requires violence, yes, but also when it requires patience.

That’s what sets her apart, she thinks. She isn’t just loyal. She’s clever.

Unodha’s other pawns are dead, and she lives. Why? Because she had a plan. She didn’t just join the others in marching like ants to their deaths.

She found refugees. Instead of killing them, she gained their trust, traveled with them. They would lead her to others. And when a great many refugees had banded together, there would have been a slaughter, and her master would have been proud of her plan.

And then she had shown up. The Asetari. It was doubly important to ensure no Asetari lived. But she’d seen her fight the other pawns. Makuja wasn’t a fighter. Makuja was an instar younger than her, half a head smaller. The Asetari had reflexes, and slept a weightless sleep, held up by nightmares.

Makuja wasn’t just violent, she was patient. So she waited. For the Asetari’s sake she took a safe blow that bled much but wasn’t terribly threatening. (That pawn had been surprised, hesitant, when he saw who he was hitting.) This would gain the Asetari’s trust, let her get closer. She hadn’t expected the Asetari to care, to bandage her up just like she did. Makuja ought to kill her just for that.

She tried to let her fellow pawns escape when they raided their camp. But they were too afraid of Unodha to plan more deeply than taking the first opportunity they saw, every time.

She thought they’d learned a lesson, when they came to her with the plan of luring the Asetari out, into a trap. It nearly worked — and then that Windborne pawn showed up. Confused her with lies. She killed both of her fellows — at this point it was for the good of her and her master. It was just making things chaotic, keeping them around. A blade should never cut its wielder — her master always said that. This mission had been a test, and she decided they had failed.

Success had been down to her, in the end. As always. But the Windborne banes made her plan intractable. How was she to kill the Asetari, when two of this ‘team nineteen’ were on watch every night?

But her master always made things simpler when she came around. Now they were all dead.

— even the one with the goggles, who pretended to care about everyone —

Now they were all thankfully dead. Makuja had served her master well. She was a good tool.

She had the Asetari’s cloak to prove it, fresh with the blood of her master’s prey.

Unodha takes it, and sniffs it. She regards her tool with a slow nod, frowning.

“Why not bring me her head?”

Because her knife had trembled even as she finished it, and you would have seen the imprecision and hesitation of her cuts.

“Beheading is slow with my tools of choice. Speed in my returning to you was essential. You suffered gravely in your battle.” Perhaps she could attend to her master’s wounds, for once.

The battle was over, and with the octopamine fading, she watched the muscles that had crawled over her master’s form retract and shrivel away. It had been an advanced stage of the myxokora manifestation — the wretched raptorials could only emerge in the heat of battle, when a vesperbane’s heart rate had elevated to extremes. To have encompassed so much of Unodha’s body…

“Will you survive?”

“Do not pity me. Did you sabotage your mission because you thought I was too weak to fight a couple of runts?”

No mission matters more than your master’s life. You told me that. “Forgive me, master. Shall I make camp and tea for you?”

“Do it. That shadowy ‘cel claimed your target was the last of those fops. Let’s make sure.”

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“We’re staying in Duskhold? It’s within mission parameters to return to our client now with what we’ve accomplished.”

Unodha grunts as she starts moving. She bends by the corpse of that ashbane she fought, retrieving something rectangular, untouched by the flames.

Makuja keeps talking. “Our recruits are all dead. Your hounds are dead. Your bow is beyond repair. You’re on the edge of death. No mission matters more than my master’s life.”

“We’re staying in Duskhold. We’ve got a mission to do.” The words are stated, and it’s missing the characteristic growl of her master. It’s unlike her.

Makuja meets her eye, and see something she’s never seen there before. Not emotion, but dark lines flowing across her compound eyes. An inscribed pentagram. Or is it a trick of the shadows, the lingering smoke? It seems to fade.

The nymph follows the bleeding imago in silence. At length, they stop and the red and black nymph sparks a campfire, and bows before leaving to gather herbs.

She’s a quick study, and had familiarized herself with the flora of Duskhold in preparation for this mission. She can tell sweet creep apart from paralytic ivy. Gather the spiral roots without the blight-mites. Cut away the leaves of the red might, so similar to blood mint with deadly amounts of enervate.

While cutting the herbs, the force of her knife goes too far, and she draws her own blood.

A blade should never cut its wielder.

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There is darkness.

When you die, there was nothing after. That’s why it was so scary — it was the ultimate loss of all that matters. Some, clouded by mysticism, believed in a fiery Welkin deep in the earth where the flames of all our ancestors burn forevermore, and all were united and exalted. Some thought the umbral filaments were souls uplifted into the sky, to rejoin the stars and gods. Some thought the vespers themselves were our spirits reincarnated.

The only story father thought acceptable to believe was that, if someday a technique were devised to restore life to the lost, then there really was no death, only a long, uncertain sleep.

Ooliri’s thoughts are scrambled. He couldn’t help but think of metaphysics as the darkness came for him — but if he was still thinking, it hadn’t come, had it?

“Wake up, little brother. Please, I have to speak with you.”

Or maybe there was something to the story of the Welkin?

“Oocid? How…? Is this the pure branch?”

“No… A technique… I saved you. I always have your back, little brother.”

“I watched you d-die.”

“I miscalculated. Unodha… stronger than I thought. I faked death. She must not have been concerned enough to check.

“How am I…?”

“Your heart… you didn’t have one anymore — so I gave you mine.”

“But… that means…”

“Yes. Only the vespers are keeping me alive, now. I know a little bit about venomotion, but I don’t have much arete left. So this is goodbye.”

“No!”

“Take my bag. You know what’s in it, how important it is. What we promised. It’s up to you to bring her back now. Keep father’s notes. And our secret objective… our real mission. Find the surgeon, father’s colleague. They escaped Duskroot before…”

“But… I can’t. You’re the genius. So you have to live. I can’t figure it out on my own.”

“Elders… family shouldn’t have to bury our youngers. You have more life ahead of you.”

“No! You’re better. Take your heart back, stupid brother.”

“Don’t want it. How could I live without you? Love you too much…”

“How could I live without you?”

“You have longer to learn… Remember how to hold your baton, Ooliri.”

“Please. You did all this… there has to be some technique you can use to save yourself now.”

“Maybe… but shush. You can’t hold your baton if I don’t get to work on that arm with the time I have left.”

Ooliri’s eyes pale as his vision fades to sleep.

When he again awakes, Oocid’s corpse is lying beside him, holding him, in death.

There is a bloody hound that must have attacked him, leaving a gaping wound in his abdomen. The hound is still, dead — or if it was alive, Ooliri didn’t want to wake it. Not yet. He’d come back for Oocid’s bag. For now… he didn’t know if could he bear to disturb him — his body. He reaches out as if to touch, then gives a startled look down at the arm he lost.

It’s not gone — or rather, it’s replaced? Healed? It feels different. It’s all bandaged up, like a cast, and beneath it… skin and bone, no chitin.

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There is a deeper darkness.

“A new spirit enters the astral plane — and here I thought I was the last. Greetings, Asetari.”

The speaker is a shadow in the form of a mantis. Its head leans closer, peering at the new arrival.

“No… Awelah? No, you were our hope. You cannot have…”

It takes a moment for Awelah to move her palps, reach for her voice in this new form. “I was betrayed.”

“You were foolish. I thought… I thought I had done enough to secure you a path… Maybe I have. Every child of a noble clan is born with the vespers. Pray to them now. Only the dream can save you.”

“Will this be my pharmakon rites?”

“Yes. You’ll have to fend for yourself, learn the ways of the chimerae without a teacher. Find one soon. Flourish, or the vespers will devour you whole.”

“Can I ask… is this the pure branch? Life after life?”

“No. It’s a technique your grandmother Uvema discovered. A way to preserve astral projections. If each member of our clan is a tree, and their projections the limbs thereupon… My tree is severed at the root. Dead. I will rot. I am just a memory. But here in the astral plane… the Asetari and our teachings will not die, even if we no longer live. But for that, we must have a living Asetari on the mortal plane. Begone, child. Survive. Avenge. Flourish.”

Awelah wakes up screaming. She has nightmares every night.

When the nymph awakes this time, she is not alone.