The Unmaker

There were many things Dahlia could be doing in the morning. She could be harvesting reeds under the sweltering sun, working in the poorly ventilated forge under Smith Jaleel’s stringent orders, or just running errands for whoever needed someone with four arms to haul wares around—instead, she was dangling off a single crimson silk thread, trying not to bump into the sandstone walls of the well she was being lowered into.

[A light touch would not make the well collapse on us,] Eria reassured her. [The thread will not snap, either. It is a blood thread produced by Alice herself. With the townsfolk watching us from above as well, there is no risk of us being abandoned down there.]

She gulped back in response, letting out a shuddering breath.

It’s still scary, you know?

[The height?]

The dark.

It didn’t matter she had two firefly lanterns dangling off the back of her belt. It didn’t matter Alice was already waiting for her at the bottom with four more lanterns, shouting up at her to hurry down. Sure, a dozen townsfolk may be on standby fifty metres above in case something went wrong, but knowing the light around her could be snuffed out at any given time was more than enough reason for her to feel a little uneasy.

To begin with, while she agreed with investigating how that water bug had gotten into the oasis, she didn’t understand why they had to go through the well.

[Because it is a hassle if people living on the edge of town have to walk to the oasis just to draw water,] Eria said, pointing a leg forward as she was about to touch down at the bottom, [their ancestors must have dug these tunnels to make the oasis water branch out across the entire town. In that sense, there are many ways for a water bug to invade the oasis via these tunnels.]

Biting her teeth, she descended past the narrow shaft, and space opened up the instant she did. It was still dark past the edges of their firefly light, but most assuredly, the bottom of the well wasn’t just a muddy ditch—dark sandstone tunnels extended into the abyss on both her left and right. They weren’t natural tunnels. There were remnants of slates carved into the walls, cracked and rusted metal pickaxes left behind, and were it not for the fifty-metre-tall shaft above her head, she’d otherwise be able to jump and hit the three-metre-tall ceiling with ease. It reminded her of the sewers back in Alshifa; the suffocating humidity in the air was difficult to ignore.

Only, even as she finally let go of the thread and landed hard on her pierced ankle—she winced a little, knowing she probably shouldn’t put so much weight on it until it healed—she immediately realised the first thing wrong about the bottom of the well.

“... Where’s the water?” Alice mumbled, her lanterns jangling behind her waist as she knelt and scraped dry sand off the floor. “If this is supposed to be a well, then we shouldn’t even be able to stand at the bottom like this. I’d love to be drowning in cool water instead. Hey, wouldn’t it be fun if there was a current here and we could just ride it out and see where it takes us? We should play here with the kids next time!”

Dahlia ignored the Hasharana’s ramblings and knelt as well, pinching dry sand between her claws. It really was strange—they’d asked the townsfolk just a bit earlier about the last time any one of them drew water from the wells around town, and most of them had said the wells were still bursting with water just last night. It wasn't until the water bug showed itself last night that this morning, the townsfolk woke up and found the wells completely dried up.

That meant the water from the tunnels disappeared only after the water bug had been slain.

[Considering the fact that the oasis itself does not seem to have raised or lowered in surface level, there are two possible reasons,] Eria said, as she rose to her feet and steeled her eyes at the tunnel on her left; that was the direction the oasis was in. [The first is that the channels where oasis water flows into these tunnels have been clogged for some reason, and water is simply being lost to the sand so the surface level of the oasis is not changing significantly. This is unlikely, however, as I do not see how so much water can be lost to the sand by simple diffusion that the surface level would not rapidly increase. The second and more likely reason, instead, is that–]

Something is actively digging tunnels at the bottom and draining water from the oasis at the same rate as the well tunnels used to, so we don’t see any change on the surface level, she thought, turning to glance at Alice for a second. The Hasharana stopped playing with the dry sand on the ground and bounced to her feet, nodding firmly. But both reasons wouldn’t occur naturally. Something must’ve interfered with the oasis.

[And so we must inspect the channel connecting these tunnels to the oasis with our own eyes.]

“... Let’s go, then!” Alice said, walking ahead of her cheerily. “Your Archive told you to investigate the channel, right? Mine told me to do the same. I’m trusting you to watch my back, alright?”

Dahlia grimaced. “I’ll… try.”

Slowly, quietly, the two of them headed down the left tunnel, leaving the glowing crimson thread behind. While Dahlia was so fixated on glancing around her every few seconds—beyond paranoid that something would pounce at her from the darkness—Alice kept her head forward, her pace steady, her arms swinging casually. Even when they arrived at their first fork in the tunnels, she didn’t hesitate a single moment before turning right, moving with such confidence Dahlia had no choice but to follow without question.

She still frowned, of course, but didn’t voice her worries to the Hasharana.

So they arrived at their second fork, and Alice chose the right turn again.

They arrived at their third fork, and Alice chose the right turn again.

They arrived at their fourth fork, and when Alice chose the right turn once again, Dahlia yanked her back by her dangling hood, forcing a pained urk out of the young Hasharana.

“... Hey,” she said, voice tight with just a tiny, tiny sliver of unease. “Do you… do you actually know where you’re going, or are you just guessing your turns?”

And, to her horror, Alice simply shrugged.

“I mean, the oasis can’t be that far off,” Alice said, grinning back at her, and the shadow cast on the other half of her face was ripped straight from a nightmare. “We’ll get to the oasis if we just keep turning here and there, right? We turned right first, and then we turned… right… and then we turned right–”

[Would you like to open your mutation tree?] Eria asked as Dahlia pushed past the rambling Hasharana, grumbling under her breath. [Now that you have the unallocated points to spare, I believe it is about time you engaged with the other half of your system. The benefits it offers might be useful in this situation.]

My ‘mutation tree’?

[This.]

As she started walking with Alice following behind her—the two of them passing by the crimson thread they’d started their journey from—a small subsection of her status screen popped up next to her head.

Alice peered forward with interest, but she angled her head in such a way that the Hasharana probably couldn’t see most of it.

[// MUTATION TREE]

[T1 Core Mutation | Nymphal Metamorphosis]

{T1 Branch Mutation | ???}

[T2 Core Mutations | Base Chitin Development | Dagger Antennae] 50P

{T2 Branch Mutations | ??? | ???}

… I don’t get any of it.

Eria vanished from her shoulder and reappeared on the hovering black boxes, crawling over the word ‘nymphal’. [Now that you have consumed insect flesh, you can begin unlocking ‘mutations’ unique to your insect class. There are ten tiers of mutations you can go through, with each tier offering more and more mutations for you to unlock—the tier one core mutation is always unlocked the moment you consume insect flesh, and for an assassin bug class, yours is ‘Nymphal Metamorphosis’. You have already been living with this for the past two weeks.]

She knitted her brows together. And what does that do?

[Most mutations, when manually unlocked, require at least a day or two of processing by the Swarmsteel System before they can even begin to emerge, let alone develop into a fully-functional part of your body,] Eria explained. [‘Nymphal Metamorphosis’ makes it so any and all mutations you unlock are almost immediately mutated, while simultaneously reducing the strain of undergoing intense bodily changes… that is to say, it is a ‘comfort’ mutation. If you were to unlock a tier two core mutation now—and it would cost fifty points to unlock one of them, as indicated on the right—you would begin mutating right now and have its full functions available to use within a minute.]

… Oh. Her eyes lit up, her fingers tapping her chin. Because true bugs don't undergo lengthy moulting whenever they have to grow or regenerate lost appendages. They just grow and regenerate as they are.

[Correct. Now, seeing as Safi turned the water bug you defeated last night into your breakfast sandwich this morning, please order me to deposit fifty out of your fifty-three points into unlocking the tier two core mutation named ‘Dagger Antennae’.]

She did as she was told, and the twin stabs of pain under her forehead were immediate. By now she’d gotten used to the feeling of controlling two extra arms, so she managed to keep herself from panicking when her hands shot up and felt two little dagger-like nubs starting to poke from her forehead. There was something more important to worry about, anyways; she found herself facing off against the first fork in the tunnels once again, and this time, as her nubs slowly lengthened and curled back over head like reins someone could pull on from behind, she ‘felt’ there’d be more empty space if she picked the left tunnel to go through instead.

It was just a feeling.

A tingle in her antennae.

She trudged down the left tunnel, dragging Alice along with her so there’d be no chance of them getting separated.

[T2 Core Mutation Unlocked: Dagger Antennae]

[Brief Description: You have grown dagger-like antennae out of your forehead. Your senses have grown more attuned to the world around you. Scales exponentially with increases in perceptivity]

[Unallocated Points: 53 → 3]

[‘Dagger Antennae’ and ‘Base Chitin Development’ are generic mutations most insect classes have as their tier two core mutations,] Eria said. [As their names suggest, they are mutations that force the growth of antennae and chitin in your natural body. The type of antennae and chitin you develop is based on your specific insect class, but for the vast majority of people, they serve about the same function. I believe… that while Alice does, indeed, possess moth antennae, her exact insect class is in the unfortunate minority of possessing extremely weak and insensitive antennae.]

Dahlia stole a peek back at the Hasharana, eyeing the long, comb-like antennae jutting out and curling backwards from her forehead.

But hers are so big. You’d think they’d let her feel out which path would take her closer to the oasis.

[There is no ‘ultimate’ insect class,] Eria chided. [A Hasharana may be powerful in certain aspects, but in others, even a simple soldier with a normal Swarmsteel System may outperform her. For another example–]

“I have wings under my cloak, but I can’t fly, you know?” Alice chirped, interrupting at just the right moment. Dahlia couldn’t help but shudder as the Hasharana skipped up next to her, fanning her cloak back to show her the folded red and black wings underneath; they were almost perfectly camouflaged with the rest of her cloak. “See? I actually have massive wings, but I dipped my hands in the unfortunate lot and came out with something that just adds to my weight without doing much in return. I can unfurl them for a few seconds to scare insects away if I really need to, but if I have to keep flapping them, I’ll run out of stamina really quickly.”

“... Right.”

[The Hasharana… is correct,] Eria said slowly, hesitantly, as though trying not to match Alice’s beat. [Whatever insect class she has, she is not adept at this sort of blind navigation. She may have other mutations to help her find her way in other situations, but in dark and narrow spaces, your assassin bug antennae—while not the most keen and sensitive of antennae—will be far more effective than hers.]

They came across a second fork in the tunnels, and this time, the tingling sensations in her antennae told her to veer right. But if she has a high enough perceptivity level, her insensitive antennae wouldn’t matter, right?

[Correct. Most mutations scale with your attribute levels. An insect’s antennae’s sensitivity is usually ten times the rest of their body’s sensitivity, so since you have five levels in perceptivity, your antennae specifically have around fifty levels in perceptivity,] Eria said. [For your reference, ‘Base Chitin Development’ would make chitin grow over your skin, and the amount of chitin grown scales with your toughness level. There is another feature I have yet to explain as well—that being unlocking ‘branch mutations’—but for the time being, you can simply leave those be. Focus on unlocking your core mutations up to tier four first, and then you can look into unlocking the smaller branch mutations.]

Her head was a bit doozy with all the new information, but she felt she’d managed to absorb most of it in stride. Got it. So… now I have super sensitive antennae, and if I increase my perceptivity level, they’ll also increase in sensitivity.

Eria hummed in approval. [And the Hasharana might not have a particularly high perceptivity level to begin with. I feel, apart from the points she has put into unlocking mutations, that she has most of her attribute levels in dexterity–]

“Yep. My dexterity level is almost double that of all my other attribute levels combined,” Alice interrupted once again, crimson eyes boring holes into Dahlia’s as she tilted her head and spoke. “What else is your Archive saying? I’d love to know what another Archive thinks about me. Hey, do you think we should just let our Archives talk to each other and see if they’ll figure anything out about what we might find at the end of these tunnels?”

Dahlia bit her lips, turning left at the right fork and letting go of Alice’s wrist as she did. “No… no need. We’ll see once we get near the oasis. You can just stay behind me and–”

“I think I’m close to figuring out how your brain works as well!” Alice said, snatching her wrist and skipping ahead to drag her forward this time. The Hasharana turned and smiled at her with her own face; it’d never stop being eerie to see such a perfect reflection of her face on someone else’s head. “Hey, you should unlock 'Base Chitin Development' as well! It's a handy mutation to have, since, you know, you never know when you need to block a bullet or an arrow flying at the back of your head! Having chitin plates growing everywhere that also scale with your toughness level will definitely be useful!"

“...”

Eria didn’t provide an explanation, and she didn’t press her Archive to do so either. She knew she was being overly cautious of somebody who was supposed to be her ally, but the way Alice was steadily predicting everything Eria was saying inside her head made her feel… concerned, to say the least. It was good enough for now that she had a basic understanding of her mutation tree, and that she had antennae to feel out the correct tunnels with—she could finish the rest of her conversation with Eria when Alice wasn’t around.

[... But you have grown remarkably comfortable with the idea of mutating insect traits, huh?] Eria muttered, prompting her to glance over at the little black bug on her shoulder.

What do you mean?

Eria looked up at her pointedly. [In Alshifa, you would have preferred cobbling four life-draining Swarmsteel together to increase your perceptivity over unlocking a single antennae mutation.] Then the little black bug tilted its head, giving her a look of curiosity. [I would like to ask, before we proceed any further: am I still talking to Dahlia Sina, daughter of Sanyon and Eria Sina, or am I talking to ‘Dahlia Sina’, the assassin bug who carries the corpses of Alshifa in a single human vessel?]

…

[... Come now, Archive,] Issam chided, whispering on her left, [as if our ‘Make-Whatever’ could be anything but our ‘Make-Whatever’. She is Dahlia Sina, the very same one you met down in the sewers—can’t you tell just by looking at her?]

[You’ve spent the most ‘intimate’ time with her out of all of us here,] Amula said, swerving over to her right. [Surely you recognise your own Dahlia? She even fixed that Swarmsteel for that girl last night. Can anyone but the ‘Make-Whatever’ do that?]

[Don’t be silly,] Ayla chimed in.

[Dahlia can vouch for us right now,] Aylee agreed.

[Thweet!] Jerie added, unhelpful once more.

[But, well, it doesn’t matter if she acknowledges 'us' or not,] Raya said, almost dismissively. [She will carry 'us' to our desired end all the same. That is what an assassin bug does. Oh, Archive, you should have known better than to push her to devour insect flesh. Once ‘we’ are awakened, ‘we’ will not slumber–”

“Quiet, all of you,” Dahlia breathed, her head aching, her eyes focused purely ahead. “We’re close to the end.”

Both of them immediately slowed down; surely, even Alice felt the massive open space in front of them.

“I detect life signals in front of us,” Alice whispered back. “Ten… twenty… thirty of them. Stay behind me, alright?”

Dahlia didn’t need telling twice. They were close enough to the cavern in front of them that she could see soft blue light being emitted from the bioluminescent reeds growing on the walls—and both of them ground their walking pace to a halt right at the edge of the tunnel, turning the dials on their firefly lanterns to dim their orange light as they peered down at the cavern.

Immediately, she figured out what was going on.

Normally, the large cavern several dozens of metres below them was supposed to be the bottom under the bottom of the oasis, and it was supposed to be filled to the brim by the small columns of water trickling in through holes in the sandstone ceiling overhead. The water that’d fill up the cavern would eventually overflow into the dozen or so tunnels carved into the walls—but now there were other tunnels at the bottom of the cavern, draining all the water deeper underground so nothing could flow into the usual, horizontal-running tunnels.

And, even without the bioluminescent reeds growing on the walls of the cavern, she felt she’d be able to recognise the mass of skittering bugs underneath her, digging and scraping away at the sandstone bottom to open even more tunnels.

“... Fog-bask beetles,” Dahlia whispered, gripping her own arms. “I guess we found the ones draining the water from the well tunnels, huh?”