The Unmaker

Amidst a game of tag set up by Instructor Biem, little Dahlia stops and stares up at the ceiling. Raya immediately flies in and knocks her to the ground, defending his title of unbeatable champion once again.

Little Dahlia doesn’t stop staring at the ceiling even as Issam and the others walk up to her, offering her a helping hand.

“... What’s wrong, Dahlia?” he asks.

She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t look at him. The twins turn to call Instructor Biem over while Issam goes over to fight Raya—he must’ve figured Raya tapped her a little too hard on the head—but little Dahlia just can’t bring herself to tell them she’s feeling nauseous about ‘something’ on the surface.

Above the ceiling, above the earth and stone—there is ‘something’ crawling on a hundred legs, and the revulsion is making her feel sick to the stomach.

Instructor Biem kneels next to her, placing a hand on her forehead. She breathes heavily, her hands clenching her stomach. She doesn’t know why she thinks she can sense something over several hundreds of metres away, but that doesn’t change the fact that she does feel nauseous, she does feel her blood roiling inside her veins. It’s scary. It’s repulsive. It’s–

“A bug-hunter’s instinct,” Instructor Biem says, as he sighs and picks her up over his shoulder, carrying her back into the Bug-Hunting School. “Perhaps it’s a good thing you’re so deathly afraid of living bugs. If you’re not, you’d get lazy. You won’t be able to see them when you need to see them the most. Now, it’s equally important that you don’t clench your fists out of fear, but compared to the likes of Raya and Issam—the two of them don’t seem to be afraid at all—you stand a much higher chance at surviving a strong bug encounter.

“So it’s alright.”

She casts a hopeful, trembling glance at him, and he sends a scornful glare up at the ceiling in response.

“... Oh, I sense it too,” he says, eyes darkening. “They skitter around up there sometimes, probing the ground, trying to claw through the earth. It’s not exactly common, but I do feel it every once in a while.

“And you felt them too, huh?

“You better put that instinct of yours to good use one day, if not only for the rest of your classmates.”

- Scene from Bug-Hunting School past

… Thirty minutes before midnight. Twenty-eight students of the Alshifa Bug-Hunting School set off from the shelter with two hundred and ninety volunteers in tow, clad in bullet ant armour and draped over by silver feather-pattern shawls across their torsos—their first and final symbol of defiance against the dark star that dared fall upon their home.

Tonight, there would be no battle.

There would only be a ‘hunt’.

With Issam and Raya both leading the group, they travelled fast but quiet to the Bazaar in the centre of town; the broken scenery up to that point was all but already familiar to them. The grass around them had been dyed red with blood, the main roads outlined in heavy stenches of iron and rancid odours. Torn and tattered canopies dotted the streets running up to the bazaar, vendor carriages abandoned, entire stores and stalls toppled sideways from having giant insects run into them on the first day of the invasion. Now, the only difference was there were no giant insects roaming around—the ants had torn them apart, the lightning hornet had electrocuted them out of irritation, or Raya had slain them all while running circles around the northern end of town. For these three reasons alone there was peace as they trudged up the sloped street. Nobody really said much of anything. Nobody felt like wasting their breath before the final encounter.

Near the top of the street, before they were about to step foot into the Bazaar, Issam brushed the hairs on his ant bracers in a circle. All of the bug-hunting students immediately scattered to their designated positions the moment they smelled the citrusy scent wafting from him, the command they’d agreed as ‘attack’—only, of course, they weren’t ever going to attack the lightning hornet outright.

Four first-year students scaled the three-storey buildings on the circular Bazaar’s right, taking off their heavy satchels to begin setting up their firefly cages. Seven second-years scaled the buildings on the Bazaar’s left, arranging even stronger firefly lamps in neat, orderly rows. Eight third-years ducked into a side alley and began unfurling their fabric puppet, courtesy of the old textile store ladies at the shelter having given it their all rushing out such a massive project. Two of the fourth-years jumped onto the walls of another side alley, carefully taking out dozens of glass canisters and fixing them to the walls with sticky tree sap. The fifth-years were laying atop a completely different roof altogether, observing the preparation from up high, while the rest of the emergency volunteers were standing by just a bit below the Bazaar, peeking over their crates and sandbag covers with their fingers twiddling nervously.

Dahlia, who was lying flat on her stomach next to Issam and Raya, had half a mind to scramble down and tell the non-fighting townsfolk to return to the shelter… but perhaps it wouldn’t really matter either way. As long as they stayed out of sight, they shouldn’t, theoretically, come under any fire—and if all of the students were to fall here, it wasn’t as though anyone would live to see another morning, shelter or not.

There was no reason for everyone to not be here, even if all the townsfolk could do was hand out supplies and construct emergency shelters for any students wounded in the hunt. Surely having support on-hand was better than not having any when they needed it the most.

… It’s just sitting there, though.

Why is it sitting like that?

She shook her head, cleared her mind of the townsfolk, and turned her focus back onto their opponent in the centre of the Bazaar—the lightning hornet with four arms and two legs, black and gold stripes across its smooth beetle-like chitin. It looked very so eerily humanoid in both the way it sat, cross-legged, propping up its head with two of its fists, and the way its beady compound eyes were just staring off into the distance, as though it wasn’t even really breathing and living; it was living, without a doubt, but anyone not equipped with the sensitive hairs of the ant bracers might not be able to tell for sure.

Now that Dahlia had both the cricket and the ant bracers on to increase her perceptivity, she could almost see a faint… ‘aura’, around it. It was bluish, swirly air waves, tinged with the sickly scent of sweetness enveloping its body in a five metre bubble radius. She almost felt nauseous just looking at the air shimmering around it.

[It is a Mutant, after all,] Eria mumbled, crawling further forward on her shoulder to get a better look at the lightning hornet. [While those of you with high perceptivity can see the physical shimmers it causes simply by inhabiting a space, even those of you without high perceptivity can tell a Mutant from a normal insect simply by its behaviour—you can consider them giant insects with ‘intent’ and ‘desire’ to mimic humanity’s nature, and their form reflects their deviant behaviour.]

They… mimic… humans?

[Normal insects do not usually stand on two legs,] Eria pointed out. [Mutants try. They attempt to use tools with their claws and talons like humans do. They mutate shutters and specialised membranes so they can blink like humans do. They keep their unconventional insect appendages and abilities concealed until they really need to use them. Particularly powerful Mutants are even capable of human speech, and while sympathy may be beyond their ken of understanding, the Seven Great Mutants across the Seven Swarmsteel Fronts are, indeed, able to wield empathy as weapons against humanity—so etch this into your heart, Dahlia Sina.]

[Under no circumstances should you pay any heed to what they have to say.]

[They are pure dark stars who envy the joys of humanity, and they cannot be reasoned with so long as they believe they are greater than you.]

And… this hornet in front of us… is it also capable of–

[It does not appear to be capable of human speech right now, but if it is allowed to live and continue metamorphosing, it might one day emerge from Alshifa as a powerful Mutant even the surface dwellers will have trouble dealing with.]

[So be ready.]

[I do not wish upon you any harm, but if the need arises and the opportunity presents itself, you must kill the lightning hornet even at the cost of a few lives.]

[The surface, too, is at stake.]

…

She tightened her lips and gripped the edge of the roof, her claws digging into the stone. The trembling in her body must’ve been pretty obvious, because Issam patted her on the back and mouthed something at her—something along the lines of ‘we got this’, she thought. It didn’t really reassure her after hearing what Eria had to say about their opponent, but…

Still, she swallowed a gulp and nodded at him slowly.

… Let’s do this.

[Well, you do have quite the elaborate set of traps laid out for it,] Eria offered, a smidgen of consolation. [If they all go off without issue, my calculations say there is a ninety-five percent chance the lightning hornet will be severely weakened, allowing all of you to converge upon it and kill it in melee. That is an acceptable percentage.]

[Have faith, Dahlia.]

[You will see the sun rise again.]

A gust of cold wind whistled through the hole in the ceiling, and apart from Dahlia, all the fifth-years rose onto their knees to wave at each of the scattered groups. The first-years immediately sent their thumbs-up back. The second-years did much the same. There was a bit of delay before one of the third-years poked his head out of the alley, nodding profusely, while the fourth-years were completely unresponsive. Frowning, Issam whispered for Dahlia to go check up on them, so she obliged with a small nod—sprinting low and fast across the roofs, vaulting down a few pipes and pallets as she did.

Just before she could peek over the edge and see what the fourth-years assigned to sticking the glass canisters onto the walls were doing, her bracers squeezed down on her arms and made her wince.

…

She turned.

She looked.

The lightning hornet was staring up at her, head swivelled, looking entirely bored with the scenario they’d set up around it.

… It knows we’re here.

And the moment the fourth-years poked their heads up over the edge, shooting their thumbs-up back at Issam, the citrus command of ‘attack’ was given.

The hunt began.

Two, three, four shadows blurred down from the fifth-years’ building, and the twins laughed as they fanned their moth mantles outwards; a storm of withered autumn leaves came out whirling, swirling, Jerie’s screeching cicada song making the lightning hornet reel momentarily. It didn’t take long for the leaves to envelop the lightning hornet in a giant dome, but this time, unlike with the beetle on the bridge, Amula was here with her Swarmsteel. She was ready. Charging. Heels flaring with a fierce orange glow. She soared over the dome, kicked violently down, and the spark from her bombardier beetle boots ignited the leaves—fire spreading beautifully across the air like a spiderweb lit aflame.

The heat was palpable; even Dahlia braced her arms in front of her face as she peeked out through a tiny gap. The lightning hornet, of course, wasn’t fazed by this attack. It could wield physical lightning, of all things—a bit of fire dancing around it wouldn’t scare it at all.

So it rose to its feet, shrugged its shoulders, and walked straight ahead at the four fifth-years clinging to the side of a building.

… Eria.

[What is it?]

Are we one hundred percent sure it's an oriental hornet?

[... It is difficult to determine the exact species of a Mutant, but it is, observably, a hornet capable of harnessing electrical potential. There is only one known hornet species in the world with that capability, and that is the oriental hornet,] Eria said, hesitating for a moment. [In that case, your traps designed to damage any general hornet should be able to damage the Mutant as well. You do not have to worry.]

[Watch.]

The second wave of citrus scent was emitted, the order to attack given—the first-years hiding on the roof right above the fifth-years shot to their feet all at once, slamming the cages in their hands to make the fireflies inside screech in terror. There were dozens of cages, all the fireflies handpicked from the shelter’s reserves as the brightest and strongest fireflies there were in Alshifa; it showed with the flaring ball of light that blinded the lightning hornet for a good few seconds, making it stumble back in pain. The first-years didn’t stop there. With the fifth-years’ help, they slid off the roof with the cages in hand and continued shaking the fireflies, forcing the lightning hornet back with Jerie’s song in tow, step by step until it eventually backed into the opposite end of the Bazaar.

Then the second-years slammed their rows of firefly lamps, and the flaring ball of light became the sun in its own right, shining so fiercely down at the Bazaar that the lightning hornet was caught completely off-guard. The second attack order was given—over fifty firefly lanterns joined together to drive the lightning hornet further and further back from the Bazaar, and once it neared the narrow alley Dahlia and the fourth-years were waiting in, the giant fabric puppet rose into its gargantuan ten metre form; the silhouette of a wolf spider backlit by the moon, every individual leg manipulated by a third-year pulling its strings.

[We may not know what mutations the oriental hornet has, but as long as it is a hornet, it will feel a compulsion to retreat against its natural predators.]

[It is a good thing you know what giant wolf spiders look like, and relayed the information to the old ladies of the textile stores.]

[Faced with the harsh lighting and the panic induced by its natural predator, the oriental hornet will understand fear.]

Everything was set. Everything was working a little too well. The fireflies blinded it from above, the fake wolf spider trudged forward and made it retreat deeper into the alley, Jerie’s cicada flute screeching and blaring to make it clamp its hands around its head—Dahlia didn’t notice Issam’s order for her to retreat specifically. The two fourth-years had to fly over the edge to pull her off the building, just as they yanked the final set of cords and released the glass canisters they’d fixed to the walls of the alley.

Dozens of bombardier beetle extract canisters shattered against the ground, drenching the walls and the lightning hornet in a cloud of burnt, charcoal-like scents.

“... Krrk.”

The lightning bug made a small sound with its clicking mandibles, but that was about all it managed to get out before Raya cut through the giant wolf spider puppet with a single cleave of his swordstaff—the second sky-to-ground cleave sparking a line of fire that ignited the alley drenched in the extract.

Dahlia hadn’t yet come to stop being thrown back by the fourth-years when the explosion made the Bazaar rattle. Red hot energy burst outwards from the alley, toppling the two buildings on both sides and making the ground implode upon contact. A tidal wave of smoke and dirt shot into the sky and came down with the viscosity of ash. Unbridled carnage, pure destruction; the guttural screams of an entire section of the Bazaar crumbling on itself made everyone wince as they took cover behind whatever they could use as one. Even still, a storm of shrapnel caught Dahlia on the thighs and neck where she was mostly unprotected, though her arms were clenched so tightly over her face she didn’t feel much of the heat blasting into her eyes.

It must’ve been a good ten seconds, or twenty. Lying flat on her stomach by the side of the Bazaar with the two fourth-years covering her, she couldn’t look up because of the heat until enough smoke subsided; it was a whole minute before anyone dared to open their eyes and release their hands from their ears, staring daggers into the column of roaring flames where the lightning hornet had last been seen.

… Tick.

Click.

Flick.

Despite having been told their elaborate traps would only weaken it at best, she couldn’t help but shudder as a stray crunch of gravel under the lightning hornet’s claws shattered the uneasy silence. Fear spread across the students like wildfire as the dark shadow rose within the flames, azure lightning sparking around its four arms in stark contrast to the red all around. It was the height of biology—an explosion that would’ve killed the giant pine sawyer beetle twenty times over was nothing more than a slight impediment to its movement.

It took a step forward, through the fire, and Dahlia gritted her teeth.

It took another step forward, out of the fire–

“Gotcha.”

And Issam took his own step forward, mantis scythes sharpening his blade, severing its bulky abdomen from behind with a single swift blow.

…

Its abdomen rolled. Its body fell slump onto the ground, landing hard on its armoured chest. For the briefest of seconds its wings flapped as though it were trying to take off, but now anyone could tell they were just the twitchings of muscles still believing they were alive.

The lightning hornet had its heart separated from the rest of its body, before it could even make a single move, and now there were only the harsh, crackling sounds of the Bazaar burning to cinders around them.

… Just like that?

[Just like that,] Eria muttered. [While most insect hearts are tubular structures that run along the entire length of its body, close to the dorsal surface, there is usually a ‘heart opening’ that can be targeted as a vital point. For a hornet, that would be severing its abdomen from its thorax.]

I… see.

But still she found herself shaking, her pulse thundering in her ears, pain shooting up her arms from her bracers tightening over them too hard. It wasn’t just a feeling of ‘wrongness’, she thought, as the students around her erupted into great cheers and raced forward to hug the fifth-years who’d executed their part perfectly—it was a feeling of impending doom that kept her heart hostage.

While everyone else celebrated, she remained lying flat on the ground, her eyes the only eyes in the Bazaar still locked onto the fallen lightning hornet.

… But if you knew we were here, why didn’t you attack us first?

Something tingled on the back of her waistband. Vibrating. Humming. Frowning, she reached behind her and pulled out her pocket watch, staring at the flickering second hand.

Why didn’t you try to use your lightning early on?

She flicked the glass on the pocket watch, trying to get the second hand moving again. It didn’t work.

Why didn’t you move even though you knew your giant insects were all dead?

She flicked the glass again. This time a second, fleeting strand of electricity ran down the second hand, and suddenly the entire pocket watch stopped working altogether.

Were you that confident you could walk into our trap and still win?

Why?

Surely you’re not that much stronger than us, right?

If you believed you were, then…

What… exactly… were you planning… by letting us cut off your… heart…

…

Then she tore her eyes away from her pocket watch, noticing the black and gold stripes on the back of the lightning hornet’s chitin.

She noticed the black and gold segmented antennae on its severed head.

She noticed the single red line running up its spine.

She noticed the dozens of small horizontal slits on the sides of its waist, flapping in the winds like the gills of a fish.

And the faint spark of azure lightning, coming from its still-twitching claws, reflected like stars in her eyes.

… You’re not a hornet.

You’re a–

A jolt rippled up her spine as Eria took control of her body, and the voice that roared out her mouth wasn’t her own.

[DOWN!]

[EVERYONE, GET DOWN NOW–]

Blue particles gathered around the ‘hornet’ as it clenched all four of its fists, punching the ground. The students lurched. The undertown trembled. Her pocket watch exploded in her hand, metal shards carving her palm open. The twins managed to fling both Issam and Raya back in an instant, while Jerie handled Amula by tossing her Dahlia’s way—the rest of them weren’t so fortunate. The flash came before the sound; a storm of lightning bolts burst out from its gill-like slits, blasting the flames away, ripping through the closest ten students and tearing them in half. Left, right, above, behind, the azure flashes streaked across the Bazaar and obliterated everything standing in their way. Rubble shards flew everywhere as the resulting boom arrived, shattering windows, toppling lampposts, throwing Dahlia back just as she rose to her feet to scream at everyone.

Shit!

This is–

Pain. Deafening noise. She hit the side of a carriage on her way out of the Bazaar, spine arching as an airy gasp escaped her throat, and she would’ve started rolling down to the shelter had two of the townsfolk not caught her by the wrists. People were shouting, once hopeful voices turned to sheer panic—in mere seconds the Bazaar had turned from a battlefield marred with wildfire to one crackling with unchecked electricity. While she struggled to claw onto her feet and the townsfolk below shouted up at her in worry, a dozen more people were sent flying out of the Bazaar by the winds, soaring over their heads; half of them were broken and steaming corpses struck directly by lightning, but the other half were still alive. Still breathing. Instinctively she reached up to grab one of them before they could start tumbling down the same way she’d been, and she caught him, the mantis swordsman who’d been closest to the origin of the blast.

As Raya, Amula, Jerie, and the twins were caught and pulled down by the townsfolk behind her as well, she crawled onto her knees and yanked Issam up with her. Thank fortune he’d not been hit by a single bolt directly—he most certainly would’ve been split in half had the twins not reacted as fast as they had—so all it took was him shaking his head a few times before the light in his eyes came back.

Taking cover behind the wall of sandbags the townsfolk had put up across the entire street, the two of them held their breaths as the Mutant in the centre of the Bazaar ‘deflated’; the azure glow inside its torso fading, its body making horrific squelching noises while it regrew a new abdomen from its bleeding hip.

This time, it made no attempts to conceal what it really was.

“... It’s not… a hornet,” she hissed, gasping slightly when she felt a painful prick in her waist; she looked down and paled at the sight of a small wooden stake sticking out her waist, between the chinks of her chestplate. “It’s… ah… it’s not a hornet. It’s what you’d call a… a… hah–”

[–Injecting emergency adrenaline–]

“–It’s a photuris firefly,” she finished, through gritted teeth, as the rest of the fifth-years crawled up to where she and Issam were—right behind the sandbags, overlooking the Bazaar. “It’s a unique species of firefly that eats other fireflies, and it does so with what’s called ‘aggressive mimicry’. There are many types of aggressive mimicry, but what it really means, in this case–”

“It’s smart enough to pretend to be something else while keeping its true claws concealed all this time, huh? So it can see what our strongest attack is before deciding if it wants to fight?” Amula muttered, her face grimey with soot, a dozen small cuts peppered across her skin as she shook her head. “This won’t do. We can’t fight it like this. We have to retreat, consolidate our forces, and then–”

Easier said than done, of course. No longer was the firefly interested in hiding its true colours. In order to determine if they were capable of killing it, it’d even went so far as to let Issam get up so he could sever a third of its body from behind—and if that wasn’t enough to make it stay down, then surely they had no more destructive cards up their sleeves.

Tick. Click. Flick. The firefly screeched at the top of its tubules and started jerking its claws around, flinging lightning bolts out its palms in every conceivable direction, in no particular pattern, all with intent to kill; the few students who’d managed to survive the initial burst and were crawling in Dahlia’s direction were taken out first, lightning snapping down like living tendrils and shattering their spines through their chestplates like they were made out of glass. Other bolts whipped across the undertown, striking buildings a hundred metres away, weakening boulders on the ceiling and beginning a full-on collapse of the artificial cavern. She stared up in shock as small rocks started falling from the ceiling and landed around her, the street beneath her cracking as crystal dust exploded from their impacts. The townsfolk immediately shouted and started rushing them off to the side of the streets, beneath flimsy tarp covers and overhanging roofs, but the lightning bolts just kept on firing, the firefly showing no signs of stopping anytime soon.

Her breaths quickened and formed cold clouds that floated up towards the moon in the sky. She could smell sulphur in the air and she wanted to puke. The lightning bolts were so bright just looking at them made her eyes burn, but… she couldn’t look away. The townsfolk weren’t looking away, Issam and the others weren’t looking, and neither was Eria—she’d be damned if she turned away from the students she’d just killed with her faulty strategy.

What… could she do now?

“I thought you chopped its heart off, though?” Aylee shouted in Issam’s ears, pulling her further under the tarp as a boulder the size of her head smashed into the ground where she’d been kneeling. “How’d it just… grow a new abdomen? How’s that even biologically possible? Were we just hallucinating or what?”

“Issam cut it clean off! I saw it for sure!” Ayla shouted back, slapping Aylee on the back of her head, scowling fiercely. “It’s a Mutant, right? We already knew it had insane physical capabilities, so maybe it can survive even without a functioning heart! We have to aim for something else! Somewhere else!”

Aylee whirled on her twin. “Like? Like what? The heart wasn’t enough? Do we have to incinerate it for it to–”

“Dahlia! Is your little friend saying anything? What’s its weakness? Where do we have to cut?”

“Stupid! If Dahlia knew, she’d have told us about it before we went out there with our swords like fucking idiots!” Amula snapped, scowling at Issam as she did. “Are you sure you cut through its heart, chitin and all? It’s a bug, right? Does it even have a heart? What did you feel when you cut it?”

“Nothing! I cut it! And what happened back there isn’t important right now!” Issam said, stabbing his blade into the ground as he panted for breath, and it was only now that Dahlia noticed they were all in various states of injure; the twins were clutching their burned shoulders, skin and flesh were hanging off Jerie and Amula’s faces, while Issam and Raya were kneeling hunched over with blood sleazing down their legs. Shrapnel. Wooden fragments. Issam growled and thumbed out into the Bazaar. “We need a new strategy now! We don’t have much time left! We can’t afford to leave and come back in another hour—with just the six of us, what can we do to beat it in a head-on fight?”

Amula looked at him like he was crazy. “You want to fight it head-on? Are you seeing what we’re seeing? Can you even think about blocking or dodging a lightning bolt–”

“What, so we’ll just sit here and get crushed by our own cavern? You got a better idea?”

“We can retreat to the shelter!” one of the townsfolk said, chiming in from behind with a dozen more people nodding furiously. All of them whirled at once, desperate eyes boring holes into the non-combatants, and the poor man gulped nervously. “We have enough supplies to last another week! Even if that thing brings down the entire cavern, the shelter will hold, and the rubble burying us from the outside will stop any insect from getting to us! We can hold on! You don’t have to go out there and fight again!”

“And then we’ll start eating each other once we start starving in three weeks?” Ayla said, slamming the wall next to her with her fist. “No! We can’t do that! Either it dies here, or we die here! We have to stop it before it can bring down the rest of the cavern!”

“But you don’t know how to kill it, do you?” another lady said, her voice shuddering as she raised her hand. “Issam… Issam cut off its heart. And it’s still not dead. Doesn’t that mean… it’s immortal? If that’s the case, then–”

“Then? So what? We still have to try! Issam, Jerie, back me up here! It’s got to have a weakness somehow! We just have to look–”

“Issam didn’t cut off its heart,” Dahlia whispered, claws curled over the edge of the sandbags as she grinded her teeth, glaring straight at the firefly. “We completely misread it. If it’s a hornet, its heart opening would be in its abdomen, but if it’s a firefly, its heart opening should be somewhere around its thorax… somewhere between its waist and shoulders.

“But I just… we just need to know when there’s an opening, because if we don’t–” a lightning bolt zapped over their heads, cutting along the side of the buildings, and the townsfolk under and behind them screamed in terror “–we’ll never be able to get close enough to it to even try cutting it again.

“So I need… time.

“Five minutes.

“If I can have five minutes to stare at it, I… I promise I’ll figure out its lightning’s weakness.”

Everyone grimaced and lowered their heads. She couldn’t even blame them for it. She gave them hope by saying she could analyse how to possibly evade its strongest attacks, but then she took it all away by saying she needed five whole minutes of doing nothing in order to figure it out—at the firefly’s current rate of throwing lightning bolts around all haphazardly, they’d be struck by a stray or have a boulder fall on them within a minute or two, let alone five.

It was an impossible demand.

It was the worst case scenario.

It’d take a miracle for her to last five whole minutes without moving, or–

“So you mean you just need to see it dance around for five minutes, right?”

It’d take a godsent talent to buy her five whole minutes.

And nobody dared to breathe as Raya rose to his feet, thumping the end of his swordstaff against the ground as he rolled his shoulders.

“... I got this,” he said, glancing Dahlia’s way. “You better pay attention, girl. I’ll only do this once. If you miss even the tiniest of details, I’ll–”

“Where the fuck are you going?” Amula hissed, grabbing Raya’s wrist as he took a step out of cover. “You’re insane. You’re out of line. You… you’ll die if you go out there alone.”

Raya looked at her like she was crazy. “I’m the strongest. I can go five minutes.”

“No, you’re not,” she said, gritting her teeth so hard Dahlia could hear her jaw creaking. “I’m… I’m the strongest. Remember? You lost to me. Me. And if I say you can’t do it, then… then…

“...”

She couldn’t finish her sentence before tears started welling in the corner of her eyes, because it didn’t take magic for anyone to figure out it was a black, giant lie.

To that end, Raya simply chuckled and pulled his wrist away—smirking at Dahlia and Issam as he walked out into the Bazaar.

“... I am the strongest.

“So just watch me make it work.

“And I’ll be repaying that favour I owe you, once and for all.”