Watched for and taken care of, urvai beetles were little more than a pest. A ravenous one, yes, consuming anything vaguely edible with unmatched voracity, but a pest, nonetheless. As long as they were caught early and eradicated. If left to fester… A small infestation would eventually become a swarm, and then a tide. One that could threaten entire cities.
Talia and her escort crept slowly through the outskirts of Karzurkul’s mid-quarter, bearing witness to that process in full swing for the first time in nearly sixteen years. It had never ceased to baffle her just how big of a problem tiny beetles —no more than the size of her thumb, at first— could become.
As they turned a corner and came across the first pod of sentry warriors, their hound-sized carapaces curled up in dormancy, the threat became more plausible. Milky, beige-white chitin streaked through with grey-green veins made the insectoids impossible to miss, clustered as they were in little balls in the centre of the street. Razor-sharp mandibles and diminutive, scythe-like limbs wrapped around the stinger-adorned backside in a tight little nodule, with antennae sticking up from the top.
After all, the battle to fight them off had killed her parents, indirect and senseless as their deaths had been.
Scurrying forward into the shelter of a raised staircase, Talia sent out a tendril of mindsense toward the quiescent forms. Hard, ugly tumours clinging to the bones of the decrepit city.
There were three, their alien minds so dim they were nearly imperceptible. Whether that was a sign of lacking intelligence, or just an indicator of their deep stupor, Talia couldn’t tell yet.
Hopefully, the dormant state won’t affect what I’m trying to do.
Talia maneuvered her way into her first target’s mind, allowing the tendril to pervade and infiltrate its every nook and cranny. What she found was… Primitive was the wrong word, but it fit better than anything else she could think of. Streamlined also worked. The bug was nothing more than a few instincts, guided by pheromones and hunger.
Easy pickings.
A tremor spilled across the city from deeper within, the accompanying boom lagging behind. The tall buildings lining the street obscured the view of the aberrant karztwyrm in the ruin’s centre but did nothing to blunt its rage. Talia froze, half-expecting the sentry warriors to stir at the quake, but nothing happened.
Holding in a sigh of relief, she continued.
She began the first test, spreading her grasp from the first to the other two. Pressing inward on the areas meant to induce sleep, Talia felt the mana in her Core begin to drain, fuelling the manipulation. Two of the warrior’s thought processes slowed further, falling deeper into a torpor, the senses meant to alert them to danger winking out like a blown-out candle. Experimentally, she ‘flicked’ at the parts she instinctively knew would generate pain, bracing herself for a reaction. When it was clear they wouldn’t wake, she relaxed, focusing her attention on the third.
Time to wake you up.
One of the egg-like nodules began to shift and move as its simple brain told its body to wake from sleep. Talia prepared the next set of spells as it shifted sluggishly, deprived of the jolt of instinctive aggression that would have shot it into fight-or-flight —or in the urvai’s case, fight-or-fight.
A few dozen paces behind her, she sensed her teammates tense with worry despite her warning.
The group’s presence was more to appease Calisto than it was to protect Talia, but it cost her little to bring them along, and she figured it might go well toward reassuring them that she was crucial to their success. Whether or not it actually worked was unimportant, at the moment, as long as they didn’t ruin the test.
The sentry warrior finally unrolled from its ball, alarm spiking in its mind as it detected unknown scents nearby —those of Talia and her escort. Acting at the speed of thought, Talia clamped down on the bug’s sense of smell, the only true sense it had. Only to back peddle as it immediately curled up on itself, rubbing furiously at its antennae and letting out a subsonic keening that threatened to wake the other sentries. She cut off the keening, twisting at its mind. A jerk of her psionics sent it back to sleep, its legs falling limp under the weight of its carapace.
Well, that didn’t work. Back to the drawing board it is.
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As minutes turned to an hour and then two, Talia tried a dozen different ideas, having to stop midway through to cycle and refill her Core as the city shook with quakes. She and her team had eventually hunkered up in an empty building with a window overlooking the street where Talia’s test subjects lay in various poses of disturbed sleep.
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After the first hour, they’d sent Silversweep back to the shelter to inform Calisto of the delay. She’d been surprised to note —though in hindsight it should have been obvious— that her telepathy only seemed to work when all parties were within the range of Talia’s mindsense. Even though she could expand her natural range forcibly, doing so cost exponentially more mana than leaving it at its natural state. At least her range had expanded greatly compared to when she’d first gained her psionics, making the ability useful if limited to about two hundred or so paces. In any case, from her experience with Silversweep’s return, the telepathic links re-established themselves when the recipient came back into range. The taught-cord, snapping sensation of the link breaking and reforming was unpleasant, mostly for Talia, but more than manageable.
Hopefully, if her next idea worked, she wouldn’t be subjected to it again.
Alright, no more stalling.
The spell was based, like most of her psionics, on her foray into crescian memories. Specifically, the ones from Waits-In-Darkness, the crippled spider who had learned to steal memories. What Talia was attempting was nearly identical to something the spider had learned later in her life: erasing the memory of an individual before it even registered. Becoming, essentially, a ghost. The arachnid had made prodigious use of the ability, slipping into nests and expanding her web across its entirety, ripping the memory of herself as soon as she was spotted, faster than anyone could react.
But Waits-In-Darkness had been old and powerful by the time she’d developed the technique, with the power to support it. Talia, comparatively, was weak. She’d need to be more specific, and more targeted, or she’d run out of mana long before they made it to the tunnels. They weren’t going through the heart of the swarm, but there would still be more than enough urvai around to end them, if Talia failed. And so, she honed the technique specifically to urvai senses.
Talia had briefly considered simply wading into the insect hive, lashing out with whips and bolts of pure force, but had immediately dismissed the possibility as foolhardy. Her kinetics were much more mana-hungry than her psionics. She might have been able to ward off wave after wave, but doing so would put them on an impossible-to-beat timer. Maybe one day, such a thing might be within reach, but that day was not today. Better to embrace subtlety, especially when she had the perfect teacher right there in her head.
Let’s get to it.
This time, she was fairly certain it would work.
The urvai sentry warrior woke with a jerk, rolling to its feet, positively emanating confusion. Then it scented Talia and her group, across the street —until it didn’t. The memory itself was torn from its mind continuously, creating a selective blind spot as far as the delvers were concerned. Holding onto her new invisibility shroud, Talia waited and watched, withdrawing nearly all her threads from its mind and seeing what it would do.
The ground rocked under another tremor, but she ignored it, as did the warrior.
Come on, bug. Go back to sleep.
It did just that. Satisfied that whatever threat had woken it was gone, it curled up on itself and fell back into an energy-conserving stupor.
Visceral satisfaction made Talia’s heart swell. She stood quickly, buckling on her sword and clenching one metal fist.
Before they had time to argue, Talia had already bolted down the stairs and into the street.
As she came up on the sentries they began to stir. Talia skidded to a halt in front of the milky-beige nodules, keeping her shroud pulled close.
Have to make sure it works when they’re all awake.
The urvai warriors woke in a flash compared to before, with nothing to impede their thoughts. In less than a few seconds, she was faced with three chittering bugs rushing her. And then they just stopped. Looking around, confused for a moment, before curling up once more.
Success. Now for the final test.
She could feel the awe of her teammates radiating from the building they hid in. A side-effect of the telepathic link was that she could no longer truly ignore the minds around her. At least, not those she was connected to. Where before, the lights in her mindsense were like candles flickering in the distance, now they were more like an itch at the back of her neck. Not quite insistent, but no longer dismissible outright. It was an annoyance, but if they were awed now, then what came next would temper that with fear, most likely.
Talia dropped her shroud, backing away slowly and giving herself some space.
In a flash, the urvai were up and rushing her. She was already in their primitive brains, cutting off the ability to communicate, but leaving the rest untouched.
Then she killed them.
Her Core throbbed, nearly emptied in a split instant as the bugs tumbled into a heap at her feet. Talia winced as a migraine set in.
Should have tried it with just one. Better data that way.
But the results were clear. Killing with psionics was… of limited utility. She’d only done it once before, but her Core had been near empty then, and her body wracked with manaburn. The mana she’d used had come from around her, searing her insides as she drew it in too fast.
Cutting off the ability to move is less costly than just snipping them from their bodies. Like with blight-devils.
However, it was good to know that in a pinch, she’d be able to defend herself decisively. Even if something told her that the more intelligent something was, the harder it would be to accomplish. Which only made the fact that she hadn’t crippled herself with Zaric even more impressive. Or lucky. Though she supposed other factors she was unaware of might have played a part.
Grif and Lored didn’t move, and though their hoods were up, Talia could imagine their jaws hanging open. Silversweep cackled through the link, something about stories and world spirits fluttering over the connection, mixed with unintelligible beastkin words.
Talia frowned, debating whether or not answering was in her best interest.
she answered finally, leaving it at that.
Eventually, the moment passed, and the dwarf stood back from the window, shaking his head. Both fear and amazement shed from the delver’s mind in equal measure.
They packed their scant belongings in heavy silence, and Talia reflected that perhaps showing off that she could kill with a thought wasn’t the best way to reassure her fellow delvers.
No matter. I got what I came for. I can’t control how others react, only my own actions. If they want to fear me, fine. As long as they do their jobs.
The ground shook as they made their way back in terse silence.