The Unmaker

“... What are you doing, papa?”

Little Dahlia is pushed out and forced to sit on the chair in the Perana Household’s living room. She isn’t allowed into the bedroom. She hears people sobbing, she hears children crying, she sees, through the tiniest gap in the door, her father putting on a strange mask on the old grandfather’s face.

She wonders what her father is doing when he layers more and more pieces of metal over the old grandfather’s body—six extra legs behind him, spindly antennae over his forehead, two claws on each of his pinkies and a piece of chitin shaped in the form of a pretty chestplate. The dressing-up is complete, her father leaves the room. The Perana Household continues to sob as he takes little Dahlia out of the house.

As they walk, little Dahlia asks her father what he was doing in the house again.

“It’s called the ‘Almat Alsu Deathbed’, and it is something every doctor in Alshifa learns before they are recognised as a man of life,” he explains, as his eyes stare out into the night. The firefly posts are unlit, they are trudging blindly through the dark. They can see perfectly all the same. “For a bug-slayer who was strong and loyal to their cause, we send them away from this world clad in the flesh of their mortal enemies; that man was the old principal of the Bug-Slaying School, and he had slain a giant, giant butterfly fifty years ago.”

Her father pauses for a moment.

“So, he wears the skin of his prey,” he says plainly, looking down at Dahlia. “Do you think it’s a disgusting tradition?”

Little Dahlia thinks.

She smiles.

But she doesn’t answer.

Her father nods and smiles in return

“That’s what I thought as well,” he says. “Now why don’t we stop by the sweet’s store for a second? You can pick whatever you want, but don’t tell mama.”

“Sweets! I want bloodberry! Bloodberry!”

“Alright, alright. How’s a hundred-pack bloodberry candy bag sound to you?”

- Scene from Perana Household past

“... Something’s wrong,” the children whispered. “Help daddy.”…

[Dahlia.]

[It might not be wise–]

I’m going.

Despite Eria’s warning, she rose to her feet and left the kids to Amula and Jerie, her heart pounding in her chest from fear as much as reluctance. She knew she probably shouldn’t check, but every fibre of her burned, even her bones—she wasn’t a brave girl. She wasn’t a strong girl. It pained her to admit it, but there was little she could offer in a fight compared to her friends. There wasn’t much she could confidently say she was ‘good’ at, but still she carried the blood of a doctor in her veins, and when faced with a desperate plea for help… there was just no way she could look elsewhere.

Though, it wasn’t as though she couldn’t tell already.

Raya and Amula and Jerie weren’t moving to support her for a reason, after all.

Slowly, steadily, she left the range of Jerie’s lanternfly light and neared the idle man. The air was significantly warmer around the scorpion's carcass. It was a giant bug to awe at, pincers so heavy they sank halfway through the wooden floorboards, and its tail so long that even after its death, it pierced through the ceiling and kept the bug relatively upright.

The man was sitting dead centre upon its carapace. His arms were on his knees, his head lolled down as though he were panting for breath, but… she heard no breaths. Felt no blood coursing through his veins. He may appear as though he was simply resting after a hard-fought battle against the scorpion from behind, yes, but when she swallowed a gulp and gently pulled his shoulders back—the half-eaten face of the man almost made her bite her tongue off for how quickly and suddenly he fell over.

[Dahlia!]

As she gasped for breath, she noticed something crawling beneath his bloody and battered skin. Maggots. A shudder of animalistic fear rippled up her spine as it happened; she doubled over and vomited the black and brown sludges of the morning’s breakfast. She could smell sour air and she wanted to puke again. Just looking at the man with the half-eaten face was enough to make her eyes burn, but she simply couldn’t look away—the broken dragonfly goggles hanging off the side of his head didn’t mislead her, and the signature black and gold shawl around his shoulders was a symbol of an esteemed, well-lived Instructor of the Bug-Slaying School.

… Instructor Biem.

The longer she looked, the more details she could pick out; his skin didn’t have a human’s comfortable glow; his bones hung helplessly out his broken limbs, his knuckles particularly broken, particularly disfigured; no blood came out of the gruesome slash wounds across his torso, but there were more maggots and botflies wherever she looked. The absence of life in who she considered was once the harshest man in the undertown made her feel sick to her stomach, but, even still…

[He killed the giant scorpion with nothing but his bare hands, and still he sat for two days straight.]

[He must have been one of the strongest bug-slayers in Alshifa.]

Eria wasn’t wrong.

Instructor Biem may not be her dad, but he was still her instructor, from the first year to the very last.

He deserved a prettier ending.

Eria.

[What is it?]

She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and pulled out her scalpel.

Can you… can you say ‘tick tock’ for me sixty times?

[... Tick, tock.]

Images formed in her mind—memories of someone breathing their last on their deathbed—and she opened her eyes. Her hands were already moving. Her free hand went to wrench clumps of maggots out Instructor Biem’s face, her chisel tracing the steel thread along the scorpion’s carapace. The beating in her chest became background noise, easy to ignore; she wiped blood off the good man’s skin with her mantle while cutting the scorpion apart with her other hand, shuffling over to its giant pincers.

In the brief few moments she wasn’t covering him with her body, she heard Amula and Jerie moving in front of the children so they wouldn’t see their father in such a dreary state.

[Tick, tock.]

Just below the dead eyes, above the mouthparts, the scorpion’s pincers were composed of one movable finger and one fixed finger. For how many times Instructor Biem had told her to be more creative in training and to utilise more unpredictable fighting strategies, she removed the movable fingers with a clean cut of her chisel. For how many times he’d shouted at her to use her legs to run, to not just stand and freeze in the face of a superior opponent, she removed all six legs from the scorpion and kicked them off to the side. For how many times he’d roared at her to keep her face steady, to erase fear from her catalogue of expressions, she stared the scorpion in its eyes and removed its carapace overhead—prying it off with one foot placed on its fangs.

The solid chunk of chitin ripped with a slimy tear, but she cleaned slime off each of the parts with her mantle and quickly whirled back over to look at the man himself. She didn’t shy away. She measured his dimensions from head to toe, her fingers twitching as they itched to begin their work.

[Tick, tock.]

Twenty seconds. Time felt slower as she zoned in. She felt like dust was falling slower, her thoughts were racing faster; it wasn’t the steel thread, but she saw how to arrange the pieces. She knew how to give Instructor Biem a proper sendoff.

Her vision blurred as she refused the urge to blink for the umpteenth time, kneeling and rising, looking and not looking, clasping each scorpion part in place before moving onto the next. She felt she heard his children whispering something behind her, asking Amula what she was doing, and for her part Amula didn’t answer. It was more than likely all of them were just as confused, and… could she really blame them?

She saw the path to giving him a ‘proper’ sendoff, but maybe it wasn’t the right path. Maybe she was desecrating his body. Maybe she’d finished making what she was trying to make and his children would end up screaming, running away from him in fear—but now her face was twisted in a dark, ugly expression, and she couldn’t stop herself even if she wanted to.

[Tick, tock.]

If she could’ve had her way, she would’ve done the same for the bug trader.

[Tick, tock.]

For the old vagrant who’d always handed her a piece of candy.

[Tick, tock.]

For the countless fallen townsfolk who she’d ignored on her hardheaded journey across Alshifa just to get to her dad.

[Tick, tock.]

And if she could’ve had her way… if she’d fought her dad two years ago, if she’d yelled at him, if she’d kicked him and screamed at him and forced him to dress his final patient up for their deathbed as well, she would’ve–

[What… is this?]

Eria’s legs started quivering atop her shoulder, and if the little black bug could actually show any emotion other than ‘satisfied’ and ‘dissatisfied’, she would think Eria was trying not to cry.

She was trying not to, too.

[Dahlia… what…]

[This memory…]

[This bed… this death…]

[Who…]

[...is Eria?]

…

Tick, tock.

She didn’t need to hear Eria say it. Her one minute was up, her breath could no longer be held, and it was like invisible chains unwound from her hands to finally free her from her one-girl puppet show; Jerie caught her before she could stumble into a wooden beam and trip over backwards.

Her knees were a bit weak, her chisel dangling loosely in her left hand—she muttered ‘tell them to come’, and Amula was initially hesitant. Refusing to bring the children over. But then she must’ve done something, or looked at Amula with a particular light in her eyes, because suddenly the older girl shuddered and rose to her feet, gently pulling the children along with her.

Raya stayed at the back of the room, staring out the hole in the wall. Jerie propped her upright, her trembling fingers struggling to slip her chisel back into her sleeve. And when Amula nudged the children far enough forward and they could finally see their father—for the final time in their lives—she felt as though their cries and wailing sobs were not half as sad as they otherwise would’ve been.

After all, with six serrated legs fanning out from under his back, two chitin-plated arms ending in mighty pincers, and a wicked scorpion shell covering his face like the Swarmsteel masks of legend, she was most sure their father had never looked cooler and more dignified before.

In life, she knew him as the harshest Instructor in all of Alshifa.

In death, she’d dressed him as the strongest bug-slayer in all of Alshifa.

And his children would remember his final moments not as someone mutilated by a giant bug, but as someone who did the mutilation, and ripped the giant bug’s skin to wear it over his own.

There could be no prettier death.

There could be no better death.

This was the sendoff she wished she could give to everyone.

…

A heavy weight in her heart lifted slightly, as she continued listening to the children sob over their father’s corpse.

She felt it was good, in the end, that they got to see him looking the best he ever could.

“... What do we do with them?” Raya said, unusually quiet as he leaned against the back of the room with his spear resting on his shoulders. “The bugs outside are gone. We can send them over to the shelter alone, but I doubt they’ll make it past the first street without getting caught by something–”

“N-No,” the older sister said, rubbing her eyes, choking and sobbing in between breaths, but still she was stronger than Dahlia had been—looking Raya in the eye and nodding slowly once. “We… we can go there ourselves. We know the shelter. It’s… down, right? Next to the big tunnel?”

“We’ll go with ye,” Amula said in a small, soothing voice, as she hunched over to smile at the two of them. “Don’t go by yerselves. It’s a long journey. There’ll be tons of bugs on the way, so just stick close to us and–”

The older sister shook her head, sniffling hard. “No. We know… secret tunnels. Underground. Only we can crawl there, be-because we’re small. We can go by ourselves.”

“Tunnels? It won’t be safe regardless. Just come with big sis. I’ll take ye–”

“The kids want to go by themselves, so let them go,” Raya said, holding up his spear to block Amula from nudging the children out the hole before glaring at them himself. “You’re talking about the secret tunnel that runs beneath the house next door, right? The one that goes from here all the way to the building next to the shelter?”

The younger brother widened his eyes, and the older sister sniffled again. “How do you know that… mister… um–”

“I dug that hole when I was your age so I could sneak into the shelter and steal their bread every five days. Now go. Don’t ever make a left turn or you’ll fall deep into the sewers. I heard kids used to fall into my tunnels and get lost for days.”

“A-And what happens if we… get lost?”

“You die like losers. Now get lost.”

He whacked their heads lightly with the butt of his spear and sent them scampering out the building, the siblings holding each others’ hands all the way. Amula’s eye twitched, and she most likely would’ve blown up on Raya had Jerie not stepped in between them with his flute playing a calming tune, as though telling them not to make more of a ruckus than they already had.

“... Tch.” Amula clicked her tongue. At least she had enough sense left in her to walk away from the two of them to cool off, but when her head swivelled slowly about the room and eventually landed on Dahlia’s eyes—there was a strange, strange expression coming from her. One that Dahlia had never seen before.

The peculiar softness in her face, the longing look she casted at Instructor Biem before whirling away… was it ‘sadness’ directed at Instructor Biem, or was it ‘gratitude’ directed at Dahlia?

Did the older girl approve of what she’d done, dressing their Instructor up in the parts of the scorpion he’d given his life to slay?

…

In the end, the topic never really came up.

An hour of stewing in the heavy silence later, resting their legs, all of them got up to carry through with the final stretch of their journey. The little detour had cost them more time than Dahlia had thought, and now sunlight was about to fade, the Swarm about to awaken—her house wasn’t that far away.

She’d get there in another hour.

… Did you know that if a man dies with a bunch of Swarmsteel on his body, maggots and botflies wouldn’t dare to approach him, and as such decomposition wouldn't happen for a much, much longer period?

Eria was unmoving as it answered her question.

[I am aware.]

Do you know why that happens?

[Because smaller bugs fear stronger bugs, and Swarmsteel are stronger bugs.]

Oh.

I see.

So that’s why the tradition of dressing bug-slayers up with Swarmsteel on their deathbeds is a tradition.

[...]

Her name was Eria, by the way.

[... Eria?]

My mom.

The last patient my dad ever treated, and the first one he ever killed.