I tugged at the harness that Octavia had prepared for me, melons in tow, when a thought struck me. I turned to Octavia. "If you're that worried about the scent of the punctured melon attracting the wrong kind of attention, maybe we should just leave it behind. Four melons isn't a bad haul."

"Having four melons isn't as good as having five, even if the fifth isn't in premium condition," she said. "And the scent won't be a problem if we don't waste too much time."

I looked up the long, twisting path that led back home. "How long do you think this will take us? Just walking down the path took maybe ten minutes. Now, we're going uphill, and carrying several hundred pounds' worth of melon with us."

"It'll be fine," she said.

"Okay," I said, letting just a little bit of hesitation color the word. Part of me was tempted to object further, but Octavia knew this place better than I did. Given that she had seemingly made a habit of getting most of her food from here, and seemed to have survived many years by doing that, it didn't really seem like my place to question her threat assessment.

I pulled the melons behind me, and I was surprised by how quickly I could move. Within a few steps, I quickly realized that I wasn't dragging the melons so much as keeping a tight grip on a rotating bag as the melons rolled within the web enclosure. Was this how early proto-humans had first felt when discovering the wheel? Octavia was hard at work behind me, constantly adjusting things to ensure that the web enclosure kept rolling with the melons and didn't bunch up. I was impressed by how well she seemed to keep a handle on it. Even if she had eight legs, she seemed to only require the front two legs to keep everything going smooth and stable. I was the one exerting most of the force that pulled the melons uphill, but her diligence ensured that as much of that force as possible was concentrated on actually moving the melons upward, rather than overcoming the force of friction, which would have been immense if we didn't have the advantage of a spherical payload.

There were a few moments when we hit larger bumps, and Octavia had to exert a bit more effort to heft the melons over the speed bumps. It was in those moments that I became most aware of the small number of armored ants that were still following us at a distance; I counted four ants, though there might be more hiding in the darkness. Were they hoping for us to drop one of the melons and just let it roll into their clutches? It wasn't an impossibility, but this kind of cautious pursuit wasn't what I would have expected from the armored ants.

"Are the armored ants normally like that?" I asked.

"Sometimes," she said. "They like to observe things. That's why they're always roving around, looking for new things to collect."

"Things like glowstone?"

"Sometimes," she said. "Usually they're just interested in food."

"The 'constant searching for food' squares with what I'd expect from ants," I said. "But are they normally that passive? Just sitting and waiting like a dog under the dinner table, waiting for a scrap to drop down?"

"Armored ants try lots of things," she said. "Sometimes simultaneously. Some of them are ferrying glowstone right now as if it's the most important thing to them, while these ones are following us."

"Easy when you have numbers on your side," I said. "I suppose sending out four ants to bet on the possibility of us dropping something isn't such a huge cost when your colony is hundreds strong. Still, it isn't exactly comforting to be stalked by creatures who are essentially betting on your failure."

"It means you have something worth taking," Octavia said. "When you've got something others want, having a few stalkers is the kind of thing that you have to get used to."

"Is that what your whole life feels like?" I asked. "Just spending your days in the same tunnel network as the fire ants, knowing that a few layers of web is all that stands between you and them?"

"You get used to it at a certain point," she said. "Though maybe you'll be different. Maybe if you become the apex predator, you get to be exempt from that kind of thing."

"I certainly hope that's true," I said. "But it might be optimistic. After all, by definition, there can only be one apex predator, out of hundreds or thousands of wildlife species. 'Just become an apex predator' isn't exactly a viable evolutionary strategy.'"

"I think you might be the exception to that," she said. "Dragons seem pretty special to me."

I chuckled, doing my best not to upset the melons as my shoulders shook with laughter. "My first day in this world, I got attacked by a pack of hyenas. So, my life as an apex predator is already off to a great start."

Octavia's tone was light as she responded. "What was it that you said about the ants? 'Easy when you have numbers on your side.' I bet you could beat a hyena in a fair fight."

"Thanks for the words of support," I said. "I'll be sure to let you know if I ever find a hyena willing to face me one-on-one in a fair fight. Maybe you can make a wager with one of the other spectators."

"I guess the moral is that you're never truly safe from violence," Octavia said. "No matter what advantage you have, there will always be someone who thinks they can take a bite out of you, especially if you're young, or sick, or injured, or alone, or otherwise compromised. Even if you outmatch your foe, you can never make yourself completely invulnerable."

"Maybe," I said. "But I'm hoping I can at least make myself invulnerable to insects."

"You can grow harder scales?" she said.

"That's the idea, yes," I said. "Or, well, tougher scales, at least."

"I just said that."

"No," I said. "You said harder scales. Hardness isn't the same thing as toughness. A diamond is harder than iron, but you wouldn't make your armor out of it. Toughness makes something more resistant to cracking. Hardness can actually have the opposite effect, because it decreases a material's ability to deform."

"Oh," she said. "Like how glass is harder than plastic, but if you drop them on a hard surface, the glass bottle is more likely to shatter."

"Exactly."

"Then why is a plastic knife more likely to break than a steel knife?" she asked. "The steel knife is harder, so it should be easier to break, right?"

"Steel is hard and tough," I said. "Much tougher than a plastic knife."

"So you can have the best of both worlds. I bet a tortoise shell is also pretty tough."

"Yes," I said. "Tortoise shells are both hard and tough. But it's not all upside. Even if you have both hardness and toughness, there are other tradeoffs."

"Like what?"

"Weight, for one," I said. "There's a reason that tortoises aren't exactly renowned for their agility. If you want both toughness and hardness, you have to pay for it somehow. In the case of a steel knife, you're paying for it in the manufacturing cost: there's a reason you keep steel knives around for years, while most plastic knives get chucked into the garbage after a single use. There's always a tradeoff somewhere."

"I wonder if that's true," she said.

The point seemed self-evident to me, but I decided not to press it further. The next few moments passed in silence. I was in the middle of pulling the melons over a particularly steep section of the path when I heard Octavia speak up behind me. "Stop." A pause. "Look intimidating."

"What?" I said.

"Don't look back at me," she said. "Look forward. Be intimidating." She skittered up next to me, leaving me to shoulder the weight of the melons alone, but part of me was grateful that she was at my side. I tried to follow her gaze, and in the dim light, I finally could finally make out the sight of what I thought she was seeing: there was a bright red pattern on the path in front of us, perhaps thirty feet away. A moment later, the pattern vanished, then reappeared, halving the distance between us. I could now see that the bright red pattern was actually the shape of an insect, perhaps the size of a dog, but with six black-and-red legs that were nearly as long as Octavia's. It looked at us with a pair of black, beady eyes that were fixed above a long, curved proboscis that gave its face an almost elephant-like appearance, except that the crimson proboscis tapered to a needle-point end. Octavia slowly raised her two front legs in an aggressive posture. I tried to imitate her posture, but with the weight of the melons pulling on my legs, it was impossible to rear back while keeping my balance, so I settled for straightening my neck as much as I could.

I whispered. "Are we…"

"We're not its prey," she said. "But we're not trying to pick a fight with it, either. That's the message we want to convey."

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

"So, should I…"

"Don't make sudden movements," she said. "But don't look weak, either. Just wait for it to pass."

A moment later, the red-and-black insect vanished, then appeared several feet in front of us, then vanished again. I heard a movement behind me, and I wheeled around.

Octavia snapped at me. "No sudden movements. Move slowly. Watch."

I watched, and the black-and-red seemed to suddenly materialize behind one of the ants: by the time I realized it was there, its long red proboscis was already embedded in the ant. The ant flailed for a moment, then its movement slowed. By now, the other ants had already started to flee, but the black-and-red insect vanished again, reappearing on top of one of them. Whether it was literally teleporting its proboscis directly into the ants flesh, or simply stabbing the ants faster than my eyes could register. The thing disappeared again, impaling a third ant.

Octavia took a few steps down the path. At first, I thought that she planned to confront the killer insect, but she simply took her position behind me and placed her two front legs on the melons. "Go," she said.

"Go?"

"Don't run," she said. "Just resume our normal path."

"And?"

"And be grateful that it decided that we weren't its food," she said.

"You're not worried about it attacking us from behind?"

"No," she said. "Like I said. It already decided that we're not food."

"What is 'it,' exactly?"

"An assassin bug," she said. "We didn't play a trick on it. It's looking for food. It wants to find creatures that it can stab, paralyze, and digest without much effort. You and I don't match that description. It realized that, and moved onto other creatures that do."

"What would have happened if it had attacked us?" I said.

"We would have fought back."

"Yes, but…" I struggled under the weight of the melons, and realized that in my fear, my shoulders had tightened in a way that made it harder to pull the weight behind me. I relaxed, and the work became easier. "Do we need to be afraid of it? What if it stabbed one of us with that thing?"

"It would be extremely painful," she said. "And probably fatal, given enough stabs or enough time. Hence the 'fighting back' I mentioned earlier, though fighting back becomes quite a bit more difficult if it manages to paralyze you."

"Can it paralyze us?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said. "I've never let one stab me, and I don't intend to. I think it's better to avoid a fight altogether, don't you? We and the assassin bug want the same thing: it wants to find something that it can eat, and we want it to pursue things that it can eat and leave us alone. But if you seem weak, it might mistake you for a possible meal."

"Is there a reason we didn't strike first?"

"The same reason you don't pick fights with bees or wasps," she said. "You would probably win the fight, but…

"Point taken," I said. "And I have a lot more confidence about my ability to win a fight with a bee or a wasp than that thing. It's almost as big as you are."

"What are you talking about?" she said. "It's half my size."

"That's a lot narrower than the margin between a wasp and a human," I said. "Anyway, I agree with you about the importance of treating assassin bugs like a real threat."

"I'm glad we're in agreement." There was something about her tone that struck me as defensive; as if there had been some question in her mind that I wouldn't agree with her assessment on the importance of avoiding conflict with assassin bugs.

The next several minutes passed in silence as we continued up the path. Eventually, the silence became a greater strain than the effort of pulling the melons.

"I trust your judgment," I said, answering the question she hadn't asked. "Whenever I ask questions, it's just because I want to understand things more fully. In an urgent situation, I'll defer to your advice without questioning it."

"You seemed to have plenty of questions when the assassin bug appeared. I thought I was pretty clear when I told you to 'look intimidating.'"

"You weren't, is the thing," I said. "Or…hmm, let me put it this way, I'm too inexperienced to know what you mean by that. You said to 'look intimidating.' What, exactly, am I supposed to do in order to look intimidating? If I rear up on my hind legs, does that make me look more intimidating, or do I look less intimidating because I'm presenting my soft underbelly? Should I make noise, or no noise? I don't have your experience, or the intuition that you've probably gotten from being in situations like that before. When I ask questions in a situation like that, it's because I trust your experience and intuition."

"I meant that you should be intimidating," she said. "I'm not a dragon. Why would you expect me to know what a dragon can do to look intimidating?"

"I—okay. Point taken." Several moments passed, and she didn't say anything in response. "I'm sorry if I said something that upset you."

"No, it's fine," she said. "You're just inexperienced. You have to learn and get more experience. And I'm not bothered by it. I don't always understand why you ask the questions you do. But I'm starting to realize that sometimes you have reasons for saying the things you do. Like, when you explained the difference between hardness and toughness. I thought you were explaining it, just to be…"

"Pedantic?"

"Yeah," she said. "But your point about how glass is hard but also breaks easily was something I hadn't thought about before. I don't know if, or how, it would ever be useful to me to know that. I mean, really, the useful part — about how a glass will shatter if you drop it — is something I already knew. But you taught me something new, and I can tell that it matters a lot to you whether you understand the differences between all these things. So…you can ask questions. I'm not bothered by it. I mean, I am bothered by it. But I understand that it's just the way you are. You probably act this way around everyone."

"I'm glad you understand," I said. "And yes, I am like this with everyone. Including myself, now that I think about it."

"Well, I'm glad that you found someone to talk to," she said. "I can only imagine how exhausting it would be to be trapped alone with nothing but your own thoughts all day."

"But you don't have to imagine," I said. "You do know what it's like to be all alone with nothing but —"

"I know what it's like to be alone with my thoughts all day," she said. "But spending all day with the thoughts that stir around in your head? It must be exhausting."

The pressure of the harness on my forelegs kept me from shrugging. "I find that I get along pretty well with my own thoughts. I—"

I heard a thud, and then a yelp from Octavia. I looked back, and saw the break in her web, the four melons that she was holding up with the force of her own body, and a fifth melon, rolling away. She quickly rolled the four safe melons into her web, and then rolled the mess of web into my body until it clung. Before I could protest, she was already chasing after the fifth melon.

I yelled after her. "Hey—"

"Stay," she called back, like a master commanding her dog. And so, with the four melons now connected to my hindquarters by a sticky ball of web, I sat and watched her.

At first, I thought that her errand was hopeless — that we should just give up on the fifth melon and get back in gear. After all, objects rolling down hill didn't just move; they accelerated. Had the path been a smooth incline, she would have had no chance of catching up to the melon. However, the path wasn't perfectly smooth, with plenty of speed bumps along the way, and there was a place where the path nearly plateaued, the melon wobbling along slowly and giving her time to catch up…almost. The melon slipped over the edge of the plateau and began stumbling further down the path as Octavia pursued. It was a small wonder that the melon didn't tumble off the path and into the abyss below, but the curve of the circular path meant that the melon's momentum was constantly taking it away from the edge and toward the wall. Again, it seemed to slow to a wobble, and it looked like Octavia might be able to catch up with it…

Something else moved in my field of view, and my eyes darted away from Octavia. I saw the movement again — no, not movement, almost like something vanishing and reappearing. Red-and-black. Assassin bug. The same one? Be intimidating. Octavia's words rang in my ears, and I raised the one claw I could, unsure how, exactly, I was supposed to look intimidating with four melons clinging to my hind legs. If I'd wanted to move, I would have had a hard time of it.

Should I use a breath attack? I thought again. Don't pick fights with wasps and bees. Probably not, then. This thing could strike fast and my breath attacks were many things, but 'fast' was not one of them. Forget 'fast,' this thing could effectively teleport — whether it was a trick of the eyes or true teleportation, I hadn't figured yet. It blinked toward me again. I stood my ground, doing my best not to look like prey, but also not look like something that was looking for a fight.

The assassin bug vanished from my field of view, and a moment later, a sudden, searing pain erupted in my back. My body tensed and I collapsed to the ground. I could feel it digging into my flesh, twisting, burrowing, tearing through me. I exhaled [noxious breath]. An instant later, the searing pain was replaced by an entirely different sensation, a frigid cold. I could see the assassin bug in front of me now, just outside the breath cloud. "Go away," I tried to yell, but it came out sounding like a whimper. Be intimidating. I tried to stand, but couldn't — I could barely even draw air into my lungs. Every breath was a struggle. I gritted my teeth and tried to force myself to stand, to move, to do anything.

The assassin bug vanished again, and I felt my world explode into pain once more. First came shock, then the wave of agony as the cruel symphony of searing heat and frigid cold overwhelmed every one of my senses. I opened my mouth to scream in pain, but all that came out was a low whine, like the sound of a scared dog. Be intimidating. Through the throbbing pain, I managed to open my mouth. Be intimidating. For the first time in my life, I let out a [roar].

The roar erupted from my throat as a guttural, bone-chilling sound that reverberated through the cave. The air seemed to tremble. I felt a surge of energy deep within me — something resembling hope — and I realized that the assassin bug was no longer penetrating me. That feeling of relief and hope was the only thing that kept me conscious as I weathered the agony of the two stab wounds. I saw the bug in my field of view as it blinked away — then blinked again, further away this time. The third time it blinked, I couldn't even see its shape, just a flicker as it reappeared even further away. The fourth time it blinked, I couldn't see where it had disappeared to — away, I hoped. Far, far away.

Had the danger passed? I hoped so, but if not, I had another roar in me. I forced my eyes to stay open, and I watched as Octavia hurried up the path toward me. For a moment, I became aware of my blinking HP bar, and a blinking red status under it.

HP: 6/29 SP: 3/16 You are debilitated. 30% movement penalty. 30% penalty to all stats.

Debilitated. Yeah, that was a pretty good description of how I felt.