The Unmaker

Twelfth day of the fungi outbreak. Little Dahlia and her mother watch from the sidelines as her father leaves the house to go to the council hall every single day. He is so busy he doesn’t find the time to play with her, so she pouts in her mother’s lap, watching him duck out of the house early in the morning again.

“Why does papa need to stay outside for so long?” she asks.

“Because the townsfolk don’t know the proper procedures to get rid of the outbreak, and he needs to go to the council hall to give lectures and speeches on dealing with the problem,” her mother answers, rubbing her head slowly. “It’s difficult, draining, demoralising work, I’m sure. Seeing the people you care about doing everything in their power to not help themselves… that's why when papa comes home, you have to give him a big hug and tell him he did a good job, alright?”

“Why does papa keep working, then? Why can't someone else do his job?”

Her mother blinks.

“Because there are only five doctors in Alshifa, and he is the only one qualified to talk about insect-adjacent outbreaks.”

“Then why can't the other doctors become qualified?”

“Because it will be difficult for the others to learn in five days everything papa learned in five years.”

“Then just learn it! Why is everyone putting everything on papa–”

“Because ants build an empire one grain at a time, and everyone must do their part,” her mother chides, flicking her on the forehead. “A worker builds, a soldier fights, a drone carries food, a queen births. From the moment you are born, you have a role only you can play at every intersection of your life—a child studies as a student, an adult works in the undertown, an elder advises and ensures the continued survival of the townsfolk. It just so happens papa will play the role of ‘leader’ this one time.”

“You, too, may one day find yourself in a leader's position, so when that day comes don't run away from it.

“That is your role.

“That is… your… fate...”

“...”

“... Oh, don't look so down! How about we see who can draw more water from the well? Winner gets to pick whatever she wants from the Bazaar insect part traders!”

Little Dahlia lights up.

“Okay!”

- Scene from Sina Household past

… Four in the afternoon.

Four hours after the death of the bullet ant queen.

Eights hours before midnight.

Issam gave the shouting order to yank the cords, and so the townsfolk of Alshifa did, heaving and groaning as one—two hundred and fifty-one people putting their backs into pulling down the giant wooden beams supporting the opening to the Southern Luwu Tunnel.

The creaking noises became damning screeches, and one by one their hundred metre long cords dislodged the wooden beams from their pedestals. Small pebbles were flung across the sky as great stones collapsed in an avalanche of weighty thuds. Even those of them cowering behind sandbags several hundreds of metres away felt the winds lashing out at the undertown, the destruction of Alshifa's final tunnel a monumental scene everyone just had to behold… because once the dust was settled and Dahlia glanced over from where she sat right in front of the shelter, she had to finally accept the conclusion that now they had nowhere to run.

[This was for the best, Dahlia.]

[We cannot risk any more insects coming in through the Luwu Tunnel.]

She pursed her lips and tore her gaze away, meekly asking a few of the younger students to continue arranging all the insect parts they’d harvested in the past two days… of which there were plenty for her to work with. Leftover carapaces from the pine sawyer beetle, shreds of robber fly wings here and there, and a hundred ants’ worth of raw chitin all the younger students were toiling to pry from the carcasses all over—not to mention the sturdier chitin of the ant queen she’d decapitated, she felt confident she could clad every single student in at least one Swarmsteel to better defend themselves. There were more than enough parts here for her to make something useful. All she’d have to do was sit on her stool in front of the shelter and work her way through the street, maybe ask for a helping hand or two every once in a while to make the menial chores less troublesome.

The limiting factor—and the problem here—was time.

After she’d killed the queen and the rest of the ants scurried back through the Southern Luwu Tunnel, Alshifa had become quiet. Deathly quiet. At first the survivors in the shelter had been hesitant to come out even knowing all the ants were gone, but quickly they realised it wasn’t just the street outside that’d been seemingly vacated by all manners of the Swarm; they had the entirety of the Southern New District to themselves, bless the Great Makers, and neither Dahlia nor Eria could provide anyone a good explanation as to why. Perhaps the ants had killed the other giant insects that’d first descended with the lightning hornet? Perhaps the other giant insects had also left along with the ants? In the end, before anyone could start arguing and panicking about what to do next, Issam and Amula had read her mind, gathering all the healthy and able-bodied to seal off the Luwu Tunnel. The rest of them were to drag the ant carcasses close to the shelter so Dahlia could start harvesting their chitin.

Issam had given his order four hours ago, and now that they’d collapsed the tunnel, Issam and the two hundred able-bodied were trudging back to the shelter from the near distance. In no time everyone would start panicking again, questioning those of them who’d made the call to seal the tunnel instead of attempting to escape through it—someone would have to answer for everything that’d happened in the past three days.

Maybe Issam would do it.

Maybe Amula and Jerie would do it.

Maybe the twins would do it.

But when the five of them returned, alongside the twenty-one younger students who’d survived the ant onslaught and the total three hundred and twenty ordinary survivors of the invasion, it was her that they surrounded in a wide berth across the bloody street—so she chewed her lips and looked nervously over at Issam, beckoning him to come over so he could take the attention off of her.

He obliged, much to her relief, stepping carefully over the carpets of harvested ant parts they were currently leaving out to dry in the sun.

“... Everyone from the council is dead,” he said in a firm, stoic voice, and everyone’s faces turned into dark grimaces as they found spaces to sit down where they stood. “The townsguard are dead. Our Instructors from the Bug-Hunting School are dead. The fact that the ants were able to flood through the Southern Luwu Tunnel means, most definitely, that the other undertowns connected to Alshifa are also… annihilated.

“The only people who can fight in this shelter are us, the twenty-seven students of the Bug-Hunting School, and all of you who are still alive and kicking.

“Nobody will come to save us.

“So please, listen to what Dahlia has to say.

“I’m sure there are many things she has to tell us about what to do from now on.”

She whirled on him, teeth gritted, but he’d already swooped behind her with a hand patting her shoulder; the three hundred and forty-seven turned their attention back to her in an instant, their silent gaze overbearing, unbearable.

The beating in her chest was all she could hear as she froze, fists clenched, like she was encased in cold amber.

What did she have to tell them?

What could she tell them?

That the bug trader had given her a little bug companion she could talk to and increase her attributes with?

That her parents had died as half-insects, their ailments born of consuming too many insects in the first place?

Or the fact that there was seemingly an entire world of humans up on the surface, fighting great wars against even greater insects, and that the lightning hornet that’d crashed into the undertown was nothing more than a grunt of a dark star?

Did everyone need to know everything she knew, or would she still be running away if she couldn’t be honest with them right now?

…

The burden of their vigil still weighed down on her neck, on her shoulders, on her back, but strangely she’d never felt as… sure, in the past three days, of what she had to do.

While her mom had been fighting the insect ailment in silence, her dad had not told her anything, or even gave off the slightest hint or slip that there was something she needed to worry about—surely, they’d not meant to deceive her, or to make her feel ignorant and stupid once she did eventually discover what’d been going on in the shadows.

They’d raised her all proper for as long as they humanly could, because what they had to do as her parents—even with their ailments—had never ever been something they had to change.

Right now, they were in much the same situation.

She knew a lot more about the surface world and the lightning hornet than everyone else did, yes, but what really mattered right now–

“By midnight, the lightning hornet in the Bazaar will be able to birth an army of giant insects to wipe us out,” she said, tightening her jaw and raising her head to address the townsfolk as she did. She was fidgeting and squirming in her seat, still, and she was aware; she had to unclench her fists and speak nonetheless. “That’s… that’s why we need to work together and kill it before it can even try to create an entire army. Initiative. If we can take the initiative and kill the lightning hornet, we can look to seal the hole in the ceiling, and from there we can think about how to revitalise Alshifa with what little resources we can scavenge all around. I’m… I’m still thinking about the plan, but please trust that I’ll have something ready in another two hours.

“If anyone has any questions, please… please ask me now. Because I’m going to start making Swarmsteel otherwise, and–”

Someone raised their hand, behind the group of children on her left. It was Miss Sitrin, owner of one of the textile stores in the Southwestern Racha Street. Her aged and wrinkled face had never looked particularly unkind, but just this once Dahlia was met with suspicion and reservation in equal parts—she was about to ask the same question most everyone looking at Dahlia probably wanted to ask.

“Where’s your father, Doctor Sanyon?” she said. “I’d thought you and Issam left two days ago with a bit of supplies to go retrieve him. I’m delighted to see you’re still fine, if not a little weary, but… where is Doctor Sanyon?

“He’s not of the council, yes, but he has worked with them more than even most elders in the shelter—we want to hear what he has to say about this situation.”

The air filled with murmurs of agreement, heads turning to look through the crowd, as though her dad would just be sitting or standing amongst them while leaving her out to be barraged by a slew of questions with no good answers—she was sure she couldn’t properly hide the hurt from her face as she looked down at her feet, tears welling in the corner of her eyes.

Miss Sitrin was right, after all.

She wasn’t her dad.

Maybe she’d have a bit more authority to speak in front of everyone if she were, but right now…

…

“... My dad’s dead,” she whispered, as she drew in a huge breath and forced herself to look, and look at the people she was speaking to. “He… gave his life to protect me when we arrived to take him back here, to the shelter. So he won’t be here. And I… everything I just told you, about the lightning hornet and the midnight time limit, I learned from his dying breath. He’d been doing private research on the Swarm for a while and figured a few things out. He was sure, even without a partner, that the lightning hornet will be able to birth as many giant insects as it wants.”

Issam visibly tensed behind her—as did the twins, and most of the adults and elders who knew her dad before he’d become a hermit—but she didn’t let their hopeless faces knock her down. Not right here. Not right now.

She’d gladly tell a few black lies if it meant she could get everyone to work together now.

“You don’t… have to trust me. I’m not my dad, after all,” she continued, straightening her back and sniffling hard as she did. “But… please believe me when I say I don’t want to die. I don’t want Alshifa to fall. I’m sure none of you want that, either, even if rebuilding and mourning is going to be… painful, for the many years to come.

“So help me, and the rest of us students of the Bug-Hunting School.”

“By midnight, the lightning hornet must fall, or none of us will live to tell the tale about what happened here.”

“...”

It was a heavy silence like every last one before it. The youngest of the children, too small to even hold blades in their hands, were of course the most anxious as they snuggled into their parents’ warmth. Tense and debilitating terror rose onto the people’s faces at the thought of confronting the lightning hornet that'd killed all but their weakest warriors. She could see for herself just how much they weren’t in any state to fight—half of them were still sporting thick bandages and heavy wounds from the initial invasion, and most, if not all of them, knew they'd be sending the young Bug-Hunting Students off on a one-way trip to the afterlife if they agreed to help.

So, she racked her head and searched for ideas.

Something that could convince them.

Something that could sway them.

Something that could make them believe, something that could make them know they still had hope in this race against time—and the moment her bracers started tightening and her chestplate started squeezing and her mantles started cutting deeper around her shoulders, she knew what she could do to get time moving again.

Slipping her dad’s claw gauntlet onto her left hand, she scooted off her stool and stayed on her knees, pulling in one of the smaller giant ant carcasses.

Issam read her mind and turned the dial on her pocket watch, giving her a warm, smiling nod.

…

Her blush was immediate, though her eyes were still faintly bleary as she sucked in a sharp breath—ceasing to take another as the countdown began.

Time moved.

Tick, tock.

The crowd winced as she plunged her claws into the giant ant’s head, dismantling its mandibles, its forelegs, its hindlegs, and then all three parts of its armoured thorax—she joined the pronotum and the mesonotum first, the two hardest sections of chitin on a giant bullet ant, and smoothened them into the two parts of chestplate anyone could easily put on by curling their edges over each other. She remembered her failings with her own beetle chestplate. The problem with the previous iteration was how it couldn’t properly meld onto her body because the chestplate wasn’t actually in contact with her skin, so this time she used her claws to cut two little spikes on the back half of the chestplate, making sure whoever wore it would be pricked ever so slightly. Then she added leftover pieces of chitin from the beetle onto both halves wherever she could, praying, hoping they’d be good enough for some of the Swarmsteel’s innate toughness to transfer over to the body as well.

Tick, tock.

A single slash, following the silver path, and the propodeum—the third part of the ant’s armoured thorax—was split neatly down in half. By natural design they were already vaguely shaped in the form of armoured pauldrons, so all she had to do was smoothen them out a little, line the edges with flaps of the robber fly’s wings, before adding the same little spikes she’d made on the chestplate just to ensure they’d meld properly. Still, she remembered Eria’s advice from when she’d made the capelets and mantles; she shaved the pauldrons down to half their original thickness in order to reduce their weight, which would hopefully be enough to increase the amount of speed they’d be able to give their user without sacrificing too much in toughness.

Tick, tock.

The giant ant had six legs. She only needed four for limb protection. Same as when she’d severed the cave cricket’s leg chitin for bracers, she went straight for the tibiae below its femurs, removing them in four swift flicks that cut perfectly around the joints. She surprised herself a little with how precise her cut had been, though perhaps she could attribute it to the claws her dad had made; they were leagues sharper yet simultaneously easier to wield than her scalpels. With a bit more practice maybe she’d be able to cut through something like the pine sawyer beetle’s chitin in a single slash, but for now, she ripped four cylindrical tibiae out and hollowed the soft flesh with a few twirls of her claws. These bracers and greaves were going to be even tighter fits than her cave cricket bracers, which, hopefully, would mean they’d be able to give more perceptivity with their tiny ant hairs than her bristles currently did.

Tick, tock.

Final part. Mandibles. Two from the head, not the most serrated ones in the world—certainly not amongst the countless ant species with even sharper bites—but they’d serve well enough as emergency weapons in case a student lost their blades mid-fight. It took a bit of fiddling and adjusting to see how she could most comfortably hold them like shortswords, but very quickly she realised the jagged edges wouldn’t actually be all that effective; it was the smooth, curved backside that she started sharpening with her claws, shaving away the excess chitin, before trimming some more chitin from the bottom to make it resemble the handle of a blade. For good measure she wrapped some of the robber fly wings around the handle to make them easier to hold, and suddenly they felt faster as well, when she gave them a few careless swings through the air. Most likely the wings were melding with the mandibles and combining their attributes. She’d love to investigate more about the particular details if she had the time, but right here, right now–

Ding!

She shot back onto her stool, gasped for breaths she’d been refusing to take, and warm blood trickled out from between the seams of her claws—most likely she’d bruised and cut her own fingers underneath for how fast she’d made them move the past minute.

Even still, the whole set of Swarmsteel lay sprawled out on the ground in front of her, arranged neatly and perfectly in the vague form of the human who’d meld with them.

A chestplate.

Two pauldrons.

Two bracers.

Two greaves.

Two shortswords.

All of them were better Swarmsteel than the ones she’d made thus far, and when she turned, discreetly, to tilt her head at Eria...

[Bullet Ant-fuse-Pine Sawyer Beetle Chestplate (Quality = E)(Tou +0/5)(Strain +89)]

[2x Bullet Ant-fuse-Robber Fly Pauldron (Quality = E)(Spd +0/4)(Tou +0/4)(Strain +288)]

[2x Bullet Ant Bracer (Quality = E)(Per +0/20)(Tou +0/4)(Strain +268)]

[2x Bullet Ant Greave (Quality = E)(Per +0/20)(Tou +0/4)(Strain +144)]

[2x Bullet Ant Shortsword (Quality = E)(Str +0/6)(Strain +87)]

[Set Bonus Qualities: Long Distance Pheromone Communication]

Pride flared up inside her, along with a fierce protectiveness of the Swarmsteel she had made.

[... Impressive,] Eria said, hopping off her shoulder to scrutinise the shortswords up close. [If someone were to don the whole set, not only would it be likely for them to gain at least two levels in speed, four levels in toughness, and sixteen levels in perception, they would also gain the set bonus quality for equipping all of these Swarmsteel at the same time. This is only possible because you used the bullet ant as both the base and key component for all of them.]

The townsfolk leaned in, eyes wide, peeking between each other’s heads to get better looks at what she’d just made.

Set… bonus? She plucked her dad’s claw gauntlet off her left hand and winced a little, feeling cold pricks where tiny needles had been pulled out of her skin; evidently she’d started melding with it even though she’d barely had the gauntlet on for long at all. It says long distance pheromone communication. What does that mean? Like, does it mean the user can–

[Communicate via pheromones to other users who are also wearing the same set of Swarmsteel, yes. This will most certainly come in handy against the lightning hornet. If everyone wears the whole set and you prepare certain strategies linked to the smell of certain pheromones, you might be able to coordinate attacks with each other without speaking a single word.]

Ah.

That’s… useful, huh?

[Indeed.]

[And now–]

“Miss, you’re tired already, right?”

It was a familiar voice. Two familiar voices, actually—she raised her head while panting for breath, locking eyes with the siblings who’d not changed out of their plain tunics stained black with blood.

Instructor Biem’s children.

And when they stepped forward—the first to break away from the townsfolk—they showed no hesitation at trying to pull another giant ant carcass over to her.

…

‘Trying’ was the keyword. They were still six and seven years of age, hardly strong enough to be lugging any giant insects around, but the strain in their bony limbs and the teeth-gritting effort on their forces were more than enough to spur another person into action—Miss Sitrin was the second to step forward as she helped the siblings out, dragging the giant ant carcass forward until it was sitting right in front of her.

Then Miss Sitrin whipped out a textile cutting knife from her sleeve, positioning it over the giant ant’s legs as she narrowed her eyes at Dahlia for confirmation.

“How’d you do it again?” she asked. “You cut a circle around this joint, and then you… hm?”

“...”

She didn’t answer.

She couldn’t answer, as one by one the townsfolk rose to their feet, scattered, and started allocating themselves into groups to bring in every last ant carcass in the Southern New District. Those with strong arms and legs did the heavy labour of actually dragging in the carcasses, lining them all up along the walls of the shelter. Those with confidence in their hands and fingers moved back into the shelter to retrieve sets of kitchen knives, gathering around Miss Sitrin and the other store owners of the textile street for an introductory course at cutting for apparel. Those who could do neither did the most brain-numbing, but nonetheless necessary task—cleaning and washing and polishing the Swarmsteel she’d just made with wet rags and whole kegs of alcohol. Most of the children fell firmly in the last category, but they played their roles with light in their eyes, not a single one of them complaining about their work.

Time was well and truly moving again.

…

The whirlwind in her chest refused to settle as she sat hunched over on her stool, legs spread, burying her face in her hands. It was a feeling she lacked the vocabulary to explain. It was a bit of tension, a bit of anxiety, a bit of exhaustion, a bit of pride and confidence and seeing what Swarmsteel made with gentle hands could do—and she broke into quiet sobs, quite unable to hide the triumph she felt from anyone who was really paying attention to her.

Issam was.

Amula, Jerie, and the twins were.

And while she wasted everyone’s time for about half a minute more, with the five of them patting her back and chuckling as they did, Eria hopped back onto her shoulder with a deep bow.

[... You have eight hours left to perfect your set of Swarmsteel.]

[So allow me to assist you, Great Maker, until the very end.]