Another week passed before Dahlia received a letter from Alice early in the morning, telling her to head out to the undertown ruin and bring Safi with her. It was a letter devoid of the Hasharana’s usual quips and ramblings, so she assumed it was serious; she departed alongside Safi at noon with two camels, and raced off as fast as they could until Cacip came into sight.
It was still an undertown nestled at the bottom of a giant desert crater, but Dahlia was decently surprised when she saw about a hundred, maybe even two hundred townsfolk crawling all over the undertown. They were tiny dots in the distance, but the shouts and songs of hard work and labour were more than audible. Wanting to get a closer look at what they were doing, she tied her camel next to the other camels the townsfolk had left on the edge of the crater and slid down, followed closely by Safi behind her.
On her way down, she started being able to pick out the finer details. The undertown ruin may have been a desolate relic just two weeks ago, but now the townsfolk had fixed giant white tarps over the broken buildings, rolled steel barrels over every roof, and laid out tons of scaffolding across the sandy streets as though they were actually intent on rebuilding the entire undertown. There were guards directing builders to their designated sites, housewives hanging wet tarps to dry on makeshift clotheslines, and even a few children playing around with Risha balls—most likely, their parents were working out here and they wanted to follow.
For all intents and purposes, the giant locust carcasses had all been cleared out and hauled back to the Oasis Town, and the townsfolk had cleaned the streets enough to get rid of the lingering musk of rot and death. If Dahlia closed her eyes and only listened, ignoring the sunlight bearing down on her skin, she could almost imagine herself back in Alshifa… and she felt she could imagine it even more vividly, too, when someone surprised her from behind and wrung their arms around her shoulder, the same way Issam would jump into her whenever he saw her wandering around.
Alice was much stronger than Issam, of course, so getting jumped into by the Hasharana hurt a lot more.
“You’re both late!” Alice said, grinning at her and Safi; the old chef sighed and continued dragging his heavy rucksacks along the ground, heading towards the centre of the undertown.
Dahlia watched Safi leave the two of them behind, frowning, and then she turned to scowl at Alice.
“Why have I been called out here?” she muttered, leaning back and forth and trying to squirm out of Alice’s arms. “I was… busy. Making. I was so, so close to adding on the pretty finishing touches–”
“I heard you’ve been making Swarmsteel lately. Is this what you were working on?”
Ignoring her completely, Alice let go of her shoulder and knelt, squinting right next to her legs. Dahlia reeled away, feeling a bit squirmy being stared at so intently, but… it was something new, and, in truth, she was a little glad that Alice noticed instead of brushing it off as nothing special.
Her new project in question was based off the adaptable Swarmsteel prosthetic she’d made for the little girl, and she was wearing it around her legs right now: two hand-moulded giant locust greaves on each leg coming up to her thighs, the knee and ankle joints made flexible by carving off a bit of chitin around them and connecting the separated plates with bronze springs and wires instead. Her feet were wrapped snugly by five-toed chitin shoes that closely mimicked her real feet—unlike the three-clawed foot she made for the little girl’s prosthetic—and so far, the whole Swarmsteel was quite promising. They gave her legs a bit of protection, the chitin was breathable, and, perhaps most important of all, they didn’t stand out from the rest of her outfit.
Quenched dyed in her blood, her locust greaves were streaked in beautiful strands of gold and black, and she thought they looked rather pretty.
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[2x Desert Locust Greave (Quality = D)(Spd +1/2](Tou +1/4)(Strain +216)]
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“... They’re tough, aren’t they?” Alice asked, rapping a knuckle on her shin plates to test its hardiness. “And the springs on the knees and ankles are… suppression springs? How high up can you jump and land without breaking your legs?”
Dahlia pursed her lips. “Well, if I broke my legs even once these past two weeks, I wouldn’t be here with you,” she said, withdrawing her legs as she looked away, heat rushing to her cheeks. “For your information, though, I think it’s around ten metres. I jumped off the bell tower to see if the springs would reduce the impact, and they did. Kinda. I can’t tell if it’s the Swarmsteel or my natural toughness protecting me, though.”
“Eh. That happens once your attribute levels are high enough. You think you can move around decently in them, though?”
“Hm? Yeah, I… guess. They give me an extra level in speed, and I’m still working on fine-tuning the springs so they don’t snap when I fall from heights above ten metres, but–”
“Well, it’s good enough as long as you can run and jump around with them.”
Alice bounced to her feet and started leading Dahlia forward, waving off the townsfolk around them as she did. The guards and builders and housewives and children immediately vacated from their workstations, beginning their ascent up to the edge of the crater. It seemed like everyone but the two of them and Safi were leaving, but for what reason, Dahlia didn’t know—she’d been completely focused on making Swarmsteel the past two weeks and hadn't paid any attention to Alice’s plans in Cacip.
But, if she had to guess why Alice was telling everyone to leave now…
“Are the traps for Madamaron finished?” she asked, looking around in worry as Alice flung two arms around her shoulder once again, refusing to let her run off. “What have you been telling them to do the past two weeks, anyways? What’s with all the wet tarps and barrels and scaffolding?”
Alice looked at her pointedly. “They’re the traps,” she said, guiding both of them towards the centre of town where Safi’s back was turned towards them, dumping the contents of his rucksacks into a giant pit they’d dug over a broken water fountain. “Took a little while longer to finish than I would’ve liked, but hey, as long as they’re finished. I thought about taking it easy for the rest of the day since everyone’s been working hard the past two weeks, but… well, the longer we wait, the more time we’re giving Madamaron to grow. I’d rather it not notice we’re setting a trap for it in its usual feeding grounds.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Dahlia blinked slowly.
“So… what you’re saying is–”
“The traps are done, so we’re luring out and killing Madamaron today,” Alice said casually, waving and hollering at Safi as she did. “Uncleeee! Torch the meat! Drag the bug out from its hiding hole!”
It was only now that Dahlia noticed what was inside the rucksacks Safi had insisted they carry with them on their camels: every variety of raw insect meat he had stored in the back of his tavern. So close to the water fountain where all the meat was dumped into a hole, she could taste their stinging, acidic scents in the air with her antennae, and she could just as well smell the smoke coming from the small matchstick in Safi’s hand—she could do nothing but watch from a distance, then, as he tossed the matchstick down the hole, roasting the meat in a roaring, belching pit of fire.
Then the old man started walking away calmly, headed towards the edge of the undertown to climb out of the crater himself.
“... What?” she said, glancing around just in time to see Alice vanishing with a gust of wind.
She tried to take a step forward, but suddenly, she noticed her four arms were tied to her torso with multiple rolls of glowing red threads. She couldn’t move her arms. Scowling, she spotted Alice jumping between two roofs to properly tie her anchoring threads down—securing her in the middle of the street—and she started shouting up at the Hasharana, doing her best to kick up waves of sand in protest.
“Hey!” she snapped, brows furrowing, sweat beading down her forehead as her antennae stood up straight; she felt something rumbling beneath the ground, trying to burrow up to the surface. “What’s this about? We’re killing Madamaron now? No preparation, no plans, nothing?”
“We do have a plan, though?” Alice said nonchalantly, jumping to a roof on her left, tying another anchoring thread to strengthen the thin cocoon keeping her arms pressed to her torso. “Uncle Safi cooks all the reserve meat in his tavern at once, and the smell attracts Madamaron. It surfaces, eats all the meat, and then it turns around—look! There’s a four-armed little bug girl all tied up in front of it! There’s no way it won’t charge at you thinking you’re free food, right?”
Dahlia clicked her tongue in exasperation, struggling in vain; it was getting more and more difficult to squirm out of Alice’s threads by the second. “What, so you called me out here just to be bait? Why me? Isn’t it good enough luring Madamaron out with the burning meat?”
“I wanna see how fast it’ll charge at you, though. If it’s at the speed of a Lesser Great Mutant, I might have to change up my strategy a little.”
“And what’ll happen to me if it is super fast?”
Alice, who’d jumped to a roof on her right, glanced down at her very briefly.
“Eh.” The Hasharana shrugged nonchalantly. “There’s no need to worry, really. Even if it does turn out to be a Lesser Great Mutant, I can probably deal with it before it gets to you.”
“Probably?”
“There are only two things certain in life–”
“This isn’t funny! Get me out of here!”
Alice shook her head and chuckled, as though saying ‘no can do’.
“Let’s make a catchphrase that only we can understand!” she chirped, raising a finger. “You’ll say… oh, I dunno! Since you’re from a ruined undertown, why not something like ‘upon the bed of carcasses’? That sounds cool! Whenever you say that, I’ll say ‘the flightless moth lies’, and then whoosh! I’ll jump in to save you!”
“What the hell are you–”
Then, she vanished—leaving Dahlia’s arms and torso wrapped in a cocoon, kept from moving away by a hundred glowing threads tying her to buildings on both sides of the street.
[I did mention all Arcana Hasharana are a little… strange in the head,] Eria said, offering her condolences. [I do not believe she was lying when she said she would protect you, though. It might be ideal to simply remain where you are.]
She glared down at Eria on her shoulder, sending it a furious, glowering look.
She could’ve asked if I wanted to be bait, at least.
[Would you have agreed even if she had asked?]
Well, no, but… I would feel better, at least, even if she tied me up afterwards–
Their mental chatter was disturbed by a massive geyser of sand blowing out from under the water fountain, and the only thing Dahlia saw, as she whipped her head forward to stare at the rising cloud of sand, was the shadow of a five-metre-tall giant swallowing the burning flesh in a single loud gulp.
…
As the cloud of sand settled slowly, she saw its hunched and feral posture, the segmented turtle-like shell over its back, and its thickly layered arms and legs. It had four arms. No wings. Its full-body chitin was a grimy palette of earth tones, and streams of sand trickled out from little pores in its shell-like carapace. It had a vaguely humanoid head; bony spines jutting out its scalp like particularly spiky hair, and while it had two little beady eyes facing forward, it had two giant shear-like mandibles in place of a human jaw. It was every bit like the Mutant firefly in that sense—Dahlia felt she could even see the faint ‘aura’ of reddish, pinkish swirls of air around it, and its aura made it just that much more difficult to stare at.
And while she’d thought she’d grown a fair bit stronger since her last encounter with a Mutant, the fact of the matter was, she found herself frozen as Madamaron turned to stare straight at her.
There was something incredibly off about it, and it wasn’t just because it was obviously much, much bigger than the Mutant firefly—she just couldn’t place her antennae on what exactly that was.
[... ‘Madamaron’, the Destroyer,] Eria mused. [It really is a Mutant antlion nymph after all–]
Are you sure?
Clicking its mandibles in delight, all five-metre-nothing of the Mutant antlion charged at her, and it kicked off with so much power that it tore up the street behind it with an explosive boom.
For Dahlia’s part, she was just staring blankly back at the stampeding bug.
Listening.
Feeling.
… Is this really Madamaron?