Roach or ant, beetle or bat, all races feared the mantis. True, part of it was that we never fought alone (ha). And true, part of it was that we always had tools and magic (ha!). But even when stripped of all of that — as currently I was — our lessers feared us because we were quick.
The moaning yellow roach was already in front of me, taller than I was when sitting. Already it was charging.
A single thud of my heart. Blood and fear pumped to every extreme. Hindlegs levering me up while my abdomen pushed back to let my midlegs catch me. One heartbeat and I rose on all fours.
It was a reflexive jump that threw me back from the roach. Away and to the side. Since I had sat in middle of the shrine, the jump sent me splashing into the pink water.
The roach’s charge went wide of me, tangent to the pool. I already was peddling backward and was out of the pool in seconds.
Roach-antennae whirled and it turned and it started toward me.
A single foreleg stepped in the pink, acid-smelling pool. Then the roach yanked it out like it’d been burnt, and the appendage melted as the roach shook the limb.
It almost forgot me then, in its pain. Then the pale yellow head lifted to catch me in those black compound eyes, and roach wings buzzed as it clumsily rounded the pink pool. I looked twice, and saw the elytra wriggling but not opening. The roach couldn’t spread its wings. Why?
I spun around. Even as the roach left my fovea, I saw the beast. With my back to it, I could still see at the very edge of my vision as it reared for another charge.
In two seconds I could leap three body-lengths.
My claws were digging into the dirt of the path leading out from the shrine and into the woods. Just in time to throw myself again to the side, falling — the roach had charged, barely unstable for the melted leg. My luck ran out then: spines on the creature’s legs clipped my abdomen, and I felt lymph flow.
Air sucked into my mouth, and a scream was vibrating my thorax.
Momentum not wholly gone, my side-dodge became a roll and forced distance between me and the roach.
I had had the advantage! Its leg had melted! Could this have gone any worse? I paused. If my luck went the other way, could I have been gored entirely? Eaten?
I stood up.
Mantids were quick. Our reflexes, our leaps, our thinking — but roaches could run in a way we couldn’t, and it would easily eat any distance I tried to build.
So I leapt up.
The shrine was in a clearing in the woods, and the trees grew tall at the fringes. I went high enough to catch a branch and pull myself up and perch. From here I stared down at the roach.
I could still feel the way the roach leg brushed my abs. I didn’t like that it was fuzzy. Still I felt that spine parting my flesh, and I didn’t like that wound seemed to crawl.
Below, I saw the roach-chitin was not a uniform yellow; here and there, in the cracks and where it had cracked, there sprouted long black bulbs like many dark digits, poking up from the flesh. They were worst on the creature’s back, the elytra all but bound in place by the growths.
The roach still approached, limping, looking up. Behind it, I could see its spiracles flaring wide.
The beast walked just underneath my branch, so perfectly that I planned to drop down and crush it, and then the growths around the spiracles seemed to flutter.
The roach moaned again, the sound of air forced through half-covered spiracles. But it wasn’t just air, the exhalation was misty, and as it dispersed it became a vague cloud.
I had kicked a mushroom before. Spores. The bulbs must be fruiting bodies. Black cordyceps? But roaches couldn’t contract that.
Still, I wouldn’t chance it. A wild, mean roach teeming with fruiting bodies? If it wasn’t bat fever, it was a evil bane’s spell or some new horror. Did the coordinators know?
This needed to end fast.
I leapt off the branch, gaze level on the shrine.
Before now, I had never dared. But how else could I vanquish the roach?
I touched down on six limbs, and dashed at the shrine. Inside, behind the six platonic statues, as if they guarded it, there lay the sheathed blade of the lost ranger of Udgrov. It had made him notable — you didn’t see many wielding a sword.
Quickly, delicately, I snatched up the blade and curled dactyls around the hilt.
(The mentors say if an unworthy tarsus were to dare to wield a vesperbane’s blade, it would wither to dust.)
The blade slid free with a singing hiss, and I turned to face the charging, limping roach. The heavy blade nodded toward the ground in my grip.
I dodged aside the pool hoping the dumb beast would eat the same trick twice — but it now knew to loop around.
Drawing back the sword, I waited the roach’s careful approached, and then swung.
The bug went flat underneath the swing, and the air whiffed. My hope hardened, and the fight resumed anew.
Dodge. Leap back. Swing. Repeat.
Once, the beast lunged so close I had to abandon a swing. Once it let the blade sink into a leg, and I didn’t have the strength to lob off the thing, let alone keep going. Once, I just missed.
The roach was making more noise now, in anger or pain or intimidation. And with the hissing noise came more spores. They suffused the air, and I couldn’t double back for fear of crossing into the fungal mist. Clearing became maze, and I became hemmed it.
I knew enough tactics to smell my folly. The terrain lay in the lap of the enemy, putting me on the defense, reactive and running. If this were a mantis with half a learning in war games, I’d have already fallen. But I thanked whatever affliction this was for sapping the roach of even its meager wits. It meant that (along with, I hope, at least some strategy on my part), the roach didn’t think to just run in a loop and trap me.
Time passed, and the pain in my abdomen was unveiled as the thrill wore down. I was drawing deeper breaths, and my leaps didn’t carry me as far. I was flagging.
By turns and ploys I now found myself backed against a massive tree, the clearing, now spore-filled, lay between me and the path out. Behind this big old tree, other trees and bushes hazarded the way. I could risk it, but I’d be relying on the roach not overtaking me in the underbrush — a fool’s hope. I could climb back on a branch, leap to a better spot in the clearing or just climb away through the canopy. But the roach could send spores up after me in the first case, and in the second, well, the ambrosia beetles were particular about their trees.
The shrine’s clearing was half suffused with spores. Some had dispersed or fallen aground, leaving spots with but wisps, while some were thick with the passage of the roach. Even the few safe places were succumbing to dispersion and the evil wind.
I drew a breath into my abdomen, and I lowered the sword.
(I called my nymph self an idiot. You’ll believe me in a moment.)
Once more the roach came charging at me. I held my sword steady in front of me.
Breathe, Tlaki. Relax. Unlatch your worries.
Timing the right moment, I leapt forth, sword piercing in front like a lance while the beast charged full-bore at me, and from head to tail I ran it through with the blade of the lost ranger of Udgrov, and the roach was vanquished.
Snuggly Serials 