The Unmaker

None of the townsfolk frequented Uncle Safi’s ‘Breathing Tavern’ at the edge of town, and probably for good reason—even after an entire week of having her dinners here, Dahlia still couldn’t quite get used to the fact that the floorboards and walls and ceilings were all swaying left and right, up and down, back and forth.

They were slight distractions, truly; easy to ignore background movements if she considered how tasty Uncle Safi’s food was, but maybe it was just because of her appetite, or because her stomach was always growling every time she stepped into the tavern that she didn’t really find the creaking and groaning floorboards particularly eerie. She was here to eat. Simple as that.

But for the townsfolk of the Sharaji Oasis Town, dinner was an hour to get together with friends and family and share stories of their day. It was nothing like how she and Alice took their meals in this tavern, just the two of them patrons in this otherwise vacant and lonely establishment.

“... Uncleeeee, I’m hungry,” Alice groaned, slamming her upper body flat against the bar counter, arms sprawled out across the lacquered wood. “I want big eggs filled with beetles, tomatoes, pepper, and onion. Also, spiced cold cuts and fruits. Also, dinner bread with vinegar and a side of dipping sauce. Also, I want–”

“What do you want, Dahlia?” Uncle Safi grumbled back, back turned towards the two of them as Dahlia fidgeted in her elevated bar stool, trying to avoid touching Alice’s sprawled-out arms. “I don’t have much in the inventory, so until I go out tomorrow and refresh my supplies, I can get you some fried skewers sprinkled with sand cinnamon. Anything else you want?”

Dahlia tilted her head back and thought for only a moment before reaching into her cloak, pulling out her pay for the day. “Can I have… um, something sweet? Do you have candy?”

Uncle Safi glanced around and gave her coin pouches a nasty eye, waving them off the counter. “I don’t know how to make candy, but if it’s sweet desserts you want, I can get you tarts alongside my niece’s ones.”

She nodded vigorously, not wanting to be a spoiled brat and ask for what simply couldn’t be delivered. Come to think of it, she’d never asked how her dad always had an endless supply of bloodberry candies for her to suck on, either—maybe candies were really, really difficult or expensive to make.

Still, the appetiser bread Uncle Safi slid towards them before retreating into his kitchen at the back was sweet. She and Alice each took a single slice to stave off the hunger for the time being, but for the past two years in Alshifa, the bread itself would’ve been her full dinner; it was doused in delicate honey with a stuffing of shredded insect flesh, like her breakfast and lunch, which was already more juicy meat in a day than a whole month back in the undertown.

Of course, she didn’t ignore the status screen that Eria showed her while perched atop her shoulder.

[Unallocated Points: 0 → 6]

It didn’t matter what dish it was, or how long it took Uncle Safi to prepare it in his kitchen; every little chunk of insect flesh counted towards increasing her unallocated points. Maybe the idea of putting insects in every single dish on the menu was off-putting to the townsfolk—she knew the her from Alshifa would’ve turned her guts inside out at just the thought of it, at least—which was why the townsfolk avoided this tavern like it was the plague, but she also had to admit… the dishes weren’t terrible at all. Far from it. Uncle Safi was an ingenious cook who knew how to suppress the instinctive repulsion with mouth-watering recipes that incorporated only a bit of insect flesh here, a bit of insect flesh there. If she didn’t have Eria showing her unallocated points increasing, she felt there was a chance she wouldn’t even be able to distinguish a ‘normal’ dish from an insect-flavoured dish.

And, seeing her chow down on her bread so willingly, Alice turned with the side of her face still pressed against the counter, chewing on her bread without any hand support.

“Unckel’s cookeng isth de besht,” the Hasharana mumbled, quite incoherent, so Uncle Safi barked at her to speak properly all the way from the kitchen. She pulled herself upright with a groan and stuffed the rest of her bread down, swallowing hard. “Did you know the exact same cut of insect flesh—same mass, same shape, same everything—will give you a different number of points depending on how it’s cooked?”

Dahlia shook her head, frowning slightly as she kept on chewing. “You mean… if you cook it, you’ll get less points?”

“Eh? Why’s that your first assumption?”

“Because if you cook meat… you denature the tough parts of the meat.”

Alice blinked, “No. It’s the opposite. Cooked insect flesh typically gives you more points. That’s because raw insect flesh tends to have a lot of bacteria that’ll mess up your insides, which means your Altered Swarmsteel System needs to work a lot more to safely extract the biomass and turn it into points. You can’t overcook the meat, though, for normal reasons, so the mark of a skilled Hasharana Chef is how they can prepare a dish containing insect flesh to provide someone with the most points possible. Each species of insect has its own optimum temperature during cooking, so just ignore this conversation and leave it all to uncle. He’ll handle our food no problem.”

The old man himself was speed-walking from steaming stove to steaming stove inside the kitchen, and Dahlia lowered her voice as she swallowed the last bits of her bread. “And is Uncle Safi a Hasharana like you, too?”

“Him? Nah. Uncle’s just a normal cook,” Alice replied, waving her hand absentmindedly. “When I say ‘Hasharana Chef’, I just mean people who cook for the Hasharana back at the Genesis Glade Front. All Hasharana are fighters, plain and simple. If any one of us knew how to cook, the Worm God wouldn’t have to employ fifty cooks at our base all-year long–”

“–your skewers, Dahlia–”

“–thank you–”

“–because the specialised cooks can’t fight and defend themselves outside of our base, nor do their specialties make them welcome in any normal town or city that doesn’t need bug slayers,” Alice finished, scowling at Uncle Safi as he spun out, handed Dahlia her steaming plate of fried beetle skewers, and spun back into the kitchen. “Uncleeeee. Where’s mine? I’ve been playing ball the entire afternoon!”

Uncle Safi glanced back and returned a scowl. “And Dahlia actually worked two jobs today to repay the townsfolk for letting her stay here. You’ll get yours when I feel like sweating for a freeloader.”

“But I ordered first!”

“You don’t work, you don’t eat.”

While uncle and niece squabbled from halfway across the tavern, Dahlia plucked one of the skewers and gave the square chunks of meat a long, hard look. Sprinkled with sand cinnamon as it was, she couldn’t quite tell what insect flesh she might be digging into, though she could say the same for every dish she’d eaten in the past week—if she didn’t ask Alice or Uncle Safi, she wouldn’t be able to recognise anything at all.

She decided that maybe she didn’t really care as long as it tasted good and could fill her growing, insatiable hunger.

Bracing herself, clenching her throat, she took the plunge and bit off the first chunk.

[Unallocated Points: 6 → 17]

It had a fine, spicy taste, filling her nose with a familiar scent of char and firewood. The meat was a bit chewy, so she felt it might be some variant of beetle or shield bug meat—those ones were generally tougher to gnaw through than most others she’d tried so far—but Uncle Safi outdid himself with this dish again. Her face lifted and a small, satisfied smile tugged on the corner of her lips as she worked through the rest of her skewers, and throughout all of the five minutes, while Alice and Uncle Safi were still rambling off at each other about dishes far beyond her understanding–

She heard a scuffle behind her, outside the front door, and she turned at the exact same time as Alice did to see the shadows of a mother and child fighting over… something. The tavern was too bright with firefly light, the town outside relatively dim in comparison. She only vaguely heard the mother shouting as the child cried, trying to hold onto some kind of goggles in their hands, but eventually the child was overpowered. The mother ripped off half of the goggles, and the child stumbled back into the tavern, thrown off balance by their own pulling force.

When the little girl fell through the door and landed flat on her back, Dahlia blinked.

It was the same girl who’d distracted the guards for her and Alice just an hour ago.

…

While the mother stormed off in anger, shouting what Dahlia just knew meant something along the lines of ‘don’t come back for the night’, the little girl scrambled onto her knees and started scooping up all the metal parts that’d come off the pair of goggles in her hand. It was a frantic, pitiable look—even Uncle Safi poked his head out the kitchen to see what was going on, and then the little girl finally seemed to notice all three of them staring at her from the counter.

Her eyes went wide at first, a smile rising as she recognised Alice and Dahlia.

Then the pained expression returned and she whirled away, clenching her jaw, picking up the remaining scrap parts as quickly as she could before racing out of the tavern.

Dahlia pursed her lips, eyes dark and half-lidded.

“... Just like Hasharana Chefs who only know how to make dishes containing insect flesh for bug slayers, Swarmsteel Makers in small towns like this aren’t very looked up upon,” Alice said, turning back to the counter with a shrug as she stole a skewer from Dahlia’s plate, tearing into the meat without an ounce of care. “The town may be using furniture and amenities made with insect parts, but, by definition, they’re not Swarmsteel. Swarmsteel are things you physically and biologically meld with, like clothes and armour and weapons that burn themselves onto your limbs. You don’t see anyone wearing insect parts on their bodies here, do you?”

Dahlia remained swivelled around, her face grim. “So what do they do if something made with insect parts breaks down here? Just wait for a Maker to pass by and hope they can fix it?”

“There are Makers here. That forge you work at, and the smith… very technically speaking, he is a Maker,” Alice explained slowly, chewing on a mouthful of meat. “Just not a Swarmsteel Maker. That’s the difference. Handling insect parts only when you’re trying to repair something static like a bin or a carpet is no problem at all, but making something that will stick to someone is a big no-no here. Making stuff with dead stuff that goes on people’s living bodies is tantamount to… hm, like us breaking into that lady’s house this afternoon. It’s taboo to make and wear Swarmsteel here.”

“...”

“Well, it’s not all too uncommon for small towns and villages across the continent to shun Swarmsteel Makers. There’s a reason why the Genesis Glade Front have, like, a hundred employed Swarmsteel Makers that only make stuff for us. They can’t really make a living anywhere else with their specialty, so–”

She slipped off her stool, snatched the remaining three skewers off her plate, and raced out the tavern.

Invisible threads could’ve shot out of Alice’s nails to snag her, but she wasn’t stopped. She wasn’t shouted at to come back. Most likely, the Hasharana didn’t care if this one particular child was having an argument with their parent, nor did she care if the child had a hobby that was looked down upon in the town—but, for some inexplicable reason, Dahlia felt she had to go after the girl.

If nothing else, maybe it was because she just wanted to see what, exactly, it was the girl had been holding so tightly onto.

Past the townsfolk going in and out of the communal kitchens, through crowds of people feasting and singing and playing Risha ball on the main streets, Dahlia drew close to the shadow of the little girl running like her life depended on it. The sounds of chatter and laughter gradually faded the further away they got from the kitchens. Deeper into the northern end of the Oasis Town where there were no communal kitchens and no crowds gathered, Dahlia only had moonlight above her head and the dim firelights from the braziers far behind her to light her way, but it was like the girl had inexhaustible stamina; she simply had no idea how long she was going to be running, and to where.

But she kept eating and running.

And she never let up.

Eventually, as far away from civilization as they could be in the northwestern end of the Oasis Town, the little girl stopped and put her hands on her knees, panting as she kicked off her shoes and waded shin-deep into the oasis.

By the time Dahlia caught up behind her with plenty of stamina to spare, she’d already sat herself down in the sparkling water, curled up into a ball—her broken goggles dangling loosely in her hand.

…

So Dahlia drew in a small breath and trudged forward, kicking off her shoes to join the little girl in the oasis. It wasn’t until she made ripples that the girl whirled, tears welling in the corners of her eyes, but they didn’t quite fall; the girl made more of an effort to cover her goggles than to wipe her face clean.

Covering her goggles meant she wasn’t holding all her scrap parts, though, and now they were floating on the surface of the oasis, swaying and bobbing in the gentle ripples.

[... Hydrophobic insect parts,] Eria observed. [Perhaps she builds all her Swarmsteel in the oasis if all her parts can float on water. It is an actual technique Swarmsteel Makers in the Genesis Glade Front employ; it has long since been proven that working in still waters can increase a human’s focus by a non-insignificant margin.]

That was news to her. There weren’t many ponds or river streams in Alshifa, so she’d never even considered the idea of making any Swarmsteel outside of the musty confines of her bedroom, but it did sound like it could be relaxing if she were to do it in a cool oasis like this.

She was extra careful not to make any large movements as she sat down next to the girl, then, to prevent the scrap parts from drifting away. The girl finally seemed to notice she’d let go of the parts and moved to paddle them back, but she dropped her goggles in the process—poor hand-eye coordination. Dahlia caught the goggles with her third hand before it could plop into the oasis, making the girl flinch.

But it wasn’t a flinch of fear.

She’d seen Dahlia around enough times to know she wouldn’t be hurt.

… It’s pretty well-made.

Dahlia’s urges got the better of her. She pulled the goggles in and started turning it around slowly, pulling the straps straight so the whole thing would flatten out. The girl’s expression turned cold and distant as she opened her mouth, as though she wanted to ask for the return of her Swarmsteel, but just as quickly she averted her eyes and looked away when Dahlia started feeling the individual gears and cogs on the inside of the goggles’ lenses; she had a look more befitting her age now, cheeks rosy with embarrassment as though she feared what Dahlia was going to say about her Swarmsteel.

And Dahlia had tons she wanted to say about it.

She didn’t even need to actually turn any of the dials to guess what the goggles were supposed to do.

The straps are corded birdwing butterfly veils, and there’s three thin lenses layered on top of the first inner lens. Three glasswing butterfly veils folded multiple times to achieve the consistency of glass. They’re each tinted into the three basic colours with… spice dye?

The three dials on the side of the goggles connect to the gears, so if the ‘red’ dial is turned, a mixture of firefly and sun beetle extract will flow behind the ‘red’ lens, and red light will glow out of the goggles. If both ‘red’ and ‘yellow’ are turned, extract will flow behind both and make orange light glow. Turn the dials the other way and the extract will drain off to the other side of the goggles, turning off the light. The extract then gets recycled back to its original storage vials for repeated use, and if it runs out of light to glow, the whole thing can just be left in the sun for a few hours so the extract can recharge.

It’s–

[Night vision goggles that only work for the right eye,] Eria said, not sounding particularly impressed. [It is well-made, but fragile. The metal frame surrounding the lenses is tempered iron with a bronze coating, which means in high temperatures, it is less susceptible to heat expansion while the butterfly lenses will expand. This will eventually result in the lenses cracking because the frame is inflexible. In the desert, this is a flaw that–]

Can be remedied.

It was a shame she still couldn’t speak the Sharaji tongue, so, instead of trying to talk to the little girl, she paddled the scrap parts over to her: a few cogs and gears, a few blobs of hydrophobic sticky sap, a few hollow reed tubes that must’ve been how the extract was supposed to be recycled once the dials were turned off. Judging by the glum and sullen look on the little girl’s face, it was beyond her ability to repair; the original gears were already glued on poorly and the straps loosely hooked onto the metal frame, so the whole Swarmsteel itself must’ve taken days, if not weeks to cobble together with what little resources or outside help she had.

Having something the little girl spent weeks on destroyed was a tough blow—but Dahlia saw the path, and she felt she didn’t even really need to do much to get the goggles fixed.

The ‘core’ of this Swarmsteel’s function is night vision, and on that front, the butterfly lenses and the extract vials are still perfectly intact. The gears and tubes and sticky sap that came off are non-essential in the first place.

Eria.

[Yes?]

Can you count down from sixty? I don’t have a pocket watch with… me…

…

[Yes?]

… Nevermind, she thought, shaking her head. Just… watch me.

Slowly, tentatively, she sharpened her assassin bug claws—all fifteen of them, holding the goggles up with only one hand—and immediately flipped the whole thing around until she located the extract vials. Three on the right side of the right lenses. Originally, extract would flow out of the vials whenever dials were turned, and it’d wash across behind the lenses until the dials were turned off, at which point slits on the left would open to drain the extract. They were ripped off now, but she could guess the extract was supposed to flow back into the right vials via the reed tubes, thus completing the recycling… but the solution to get rid of both the heavy tubes and lessen the inflexibility problem of the frame was simple.

The goggles weren’t made for her, it was made for the little girl to wear. The frame was small, the lenses were even smaller; using her claws, she carved a line along the underside of the right metal frame, and then she sealed up the holes in the right vials and the left slits where the tubes were initially supposed to connect with blobs of sticky sap. Once she was sure the line she’d carved was deep enough, she sealed up the surface of the line with more sticky sap to turn the underside of the frame into a hollow frame.

Even Eria seemed a bit puzzled by what she was doing, so she figured she didn’t really need to explain the procedure in her head. Once she felt she was done with her modifications, she turned in the water and pulled the straps apart, clicking her tongue so the little girl would brush her own wavy hair out of the way.

Carefully, she strapped the goggles around the girl’s eyes and mimed turning the dials on the side.

The little girl did exactly as instructed, though with a little hesitance. She turned only the red dial, and as Dahlia watched the extract wash behind the red lens to make the girl’s right eye glow, she felt a sense of pride and accomplishment that at least she hadn’t broken the extract release mechanism—but when the girl turned the red dial once again to drain the extract, it was only an indescribable sense of relief that she felt.

Ah.

I didn’t mess it up after all.

Taken aback, the girl reeled away in surprise as the extract didn’t simply dribble out of the goggles even without the tubes. Instead, the faintly glowing extract simply drained into the line Dahlia had carved into the frame, running through the hollow pipe to return back to its original vial.

For the first time tonight, a smile blossomed on the little girl’s lips as she shot to her feet and whirled around the shallow ends of the oasis, turning each of the dials individually to check if the recycling mechanism was truly working properly—and it was the most charming, most genuine smile Dahlia had seen since arriving onto the surface.

[... The mixture of firefly and sun beetle extract glows only when it absorbs heat,] Eria mumbled, crawling over her shoulder. [And by draining the extract through the frame itself instead of a tube, whenever the lenses heats up in the scorching sun, the extract running through the frame will also heat up the frame so it expands slightly with the lenses, thus reducing the Swarmsteel’s fragility.]

It’s also less cumbersome to wear without the tubes jutting out the side of the goggles.

[That as well. Though the gears are still poorly glued on and the stitching could use some work.]

My stitching is still pretty bad.

[You could improve if you start making Swarmsteel again.]

…

She stayed sitting in the water, watching the little girl spin and twirl and laugh as she played around with the dials on the newer, lighter, less awkward-looking goggles.

… Maybe.

But I wonder… if I wouldn’t be better off just getting stronger by increasing by attribute levels and unlocking mutations.

[You were the one who wanted to get stronger initially by only making Swarmsteel,] Eria said, tilting her little head. [Why the change of heart?]

Because my Swarmsteel were weak.

They were terrible.

I made so many of them thinking they’d stand a chance against that Mutant firefly, but they didn’t do anything in the end after all.

Maybe I’m not supposed to grow stronger by making Swarmsteel.

A pause.

[... Well, it is true that right now, you should be focused on increasing your base attribute levels until they reach a certain benchmark,] Eria said softly. [Furthermore, to equip more Swarmsteel in the future and not have them strain you so much, you should continue increasing your strain limit first and foremost. Preferably, your equipped Swarmsteel should never account for more than twenty percent of your strain, and right now, with your assassin bug gauntlets, they are accounting for thirty-eight percent of your strain. That is thirty-eight percent of your stamina and mental faculties permanently being encumbered by your gauntlets.]

She pulled her knees to her chest, smiling and waving as the little girl waved back at her. How many more points do I have to put into strain limit until it only accounts for twenty percent?

[Nine hundred and thirty-eight points. There is no need to rush, however. At a steady rate of twenty points deposited into increasing your strain limit every day, you will reach that target within forty-seven days.]

You’re fast at maths.

Eria bowed proudly. [I am, indeed, an Altered Swarmsteel System. There is no pure arithmetic calculation that I cannot make within ten seconds–]

Plop.

Plop.

Plop.

The oasis rippled.

The waves were neither originating from her nor the twirling little girl.

Darkness bloomed in the centre of the oasis like an inkblot spreading on parchment, and for a good few seconds, every hair on the back of Dahlia’s neck stood up straight.

…

[... Something’s off,] Raya muttered, his voice tight and urgent. [I can smell it–]

The oasis belched aloud like the reawakening of a great beast’s stomach.

And when the little girl paused where she was twirling to look down, something dragged her under.