Author’s Note: I find I am unlikely to continue work on this chapter. I had a few interesting ideas, but some of them were too ambitious to execute, and overall, I didn’t not have enough outstanding long-term plans or this project or confidence in it, so I believe it will be another abandoned Black Nerve project.
(Typographically note: prose and dialogue intended to remain in the final product are presented as-is. Synopses and editorial notes are prefaced by two slashes.)
Engelsgrav is not an exclusion zone. Nor is it a Panthecan municipality. Nor according to some, was such a place ever real.
If Engelsgrav exists, or once did, it would be as a forgotten finger of eastward expansion, as the welkin-born diasphora settled the moutainous land after the second dominion’s destruction. Indeed, ‘Engelsgrav’ is so quintessentially post-duoregnum a name, you’d be forgiven thinking for that alone it’s too cliche to exist.
Abundance once defined the province – endless land, endless trees. Only depletable by the endless arriving families. A moth-trap for the desperate or hopeful, a ten thousand such villages grant us the confidence to suppose Engelsgrav another typical case.
As read in Extermination: a History, the southeastern realm of the heartlands crowded with weevils whose parasitic fungus compeled trees to behave like weeds. Such was the abundance of trees. But the same strange influence meant trees and weevils alike were too destabalizing a presence to remain.
Distant observation (it must be observated from a distance) suggests that, hemmed in by an oxbow of the Jhawnford river, lies a small and forested expanse. Forested, and not by pseudoaboreals. By the Photovore Transition Decree, all ambrosia weevil groves are excluded from the Pantheca. But again, there is no Engelsgrav exclusion zone.
Hordes of reaver ants are known to wave banners of peace when passing near the Jhawnford oxbow, and euvespid trade routes are recorded to have passed through the area. By the Ordinance of Mantid Unity, only syndic-coordinated bodies may establish relations with other kinds, and by the Coordination Against Excess Commerce, superpersonal trade can only be conducted by registered guilds. But again, there is no Engelsgrav union.
In discerning how this state of affairs arose, indulge us a few more facts. Recall the dispute regarding whether Engelsgrav exists – many maps omit entirely the Jhawnsford oxbow and the forests enclosed within, and crosschecking this with travelers’ indices reveals spatial discrepencies. Scouts wandering nearby will neglect this area in their reports – journeys have passed with the Jhawnsford leg forgotten entirely. Others report strange dreams, fanciful flights of thought.
Engelsgrav is Anomaly U-928.
There are those, keenest of mind, who are not turned away by the dark manipulations of this world, and study the truth in its alien dimensions.
Thus, when under a waning Tenebra and a half-full Inferna an ootheca is laid in the wilds of the western Land of Mountains, stradling the edge of a zone obscured to umbrascrying by an anomalous outcropping of the RF-23 umbraspiritual projection field (codename: ‘Phytonumen’) – close enough the mantids gestating within will be mentally influenced, but far enough to be studied – it is recorded in an ledger repurposed from a termite ruin.
Later that day, a percipient takes notice.
Life begins as warmth, and unity, and growth. Time exists only as things which were not yet now are. Growth begets multiplicity, and then at length, separation. Warmth becomes distant, yet there remains safety, enclosure. Even separation doesn’t negate the +presence+. The source of warmth, the source of growth (before separation, before there was enough for separation) remained close. At times it vanishes, but then returns. All is right, all is good.
And then the source is gone. It had vanished before, but always after some time returned – is this one more step in that pattern?
It is not. The source does not return. Never.
The world is dark, dangerous, confusing, empty, alone without the source. Growth continues in this dim absence, but it slows.
A new presence arrives and remains. It is not the source. It is more dangerous and confusing than the absence. It stays like the source had. But it is hungry. Fanged. Will it eat of growth?
When the time comes for eclosion, the new presence is still there. It is safer to remain in safety and enclosure, but growth cannot continue here.
Time has come to hatch.
Limbs flail and struggle. The enclosure cracks an opening! Soft chitin squeezes through and eyes pale in the first light and wet trachea open and flare and suck and breathe.
There are others, conspecifics, theca-mates, siblings, crawling free in mirror. One is already out, limbs beneath it swaying back and forth for balance.
Another crawls out! Another!
That is all.
Two are staring at each other, tiny face-appendages buzzing together in angry sound.
All are hungry.
The staring pair take a step each, closing the distance.
It appears. Vast, dark, with legs and legs and legs. Long, thick feelers.
A mouth, yawning open, revealing dentation, face-tendrils around it moving as if preparing to eat. It could eat all.
The tracheae of each sibling flares, almost in unison, filling the clearing with alarm-hiss.
One sibling – the last to emerge – starts to flee on its unsteady legs.
With so many legs and legs, it is much faster.
A new alarm-hiss is heard – the very high pitch of pain. The sibling is lifted very high into the air, and this hiss is punctuated by a crunch and a liquid drips down. Its mandibles work, and the sibling grows smaller and then is gone.
A big and deep sound, like their own buzzing but more, is made and they are filled with understanding. “This is the first thing you will learn. If you do not remain with me, you will die.” Its face-tendrils are moving, making the sound. The sound is… words. Meaning.
The siblings stare at it, sensing any new motion could bring the same fate to them as the sibling that is now gone.
“I have something for you.” Its head moves fast, pivoting with its legs and legs, retrieving two things so far unseen. They fall to the ground between it and the siblings. Liquid falls from them, but it smells different than what fell from the sibling that is gone.
The one who emerged first slowly walks to the one of the dropped things, and then lowers head and like the sibling who is gone the scaley form grows smaller as the mandibles bite and chew.
The small black eyes of it fall on the other siblings. First upon the one who did not emerge first, and did not flee, and then its small dark eyes move and land on another sibling.
And then…
The dark gaze is met.
She is a sibling, and it is looking at her.
“Eat,” it says.
She steps forward to lower her head to other form, and then she looks around. The one who hatched first has eaten and is not hungry. If she eats, she will be not hungry but what will the last sibling eat?
“This is the second thing you will learn. The world does not feed you. You feed yourself. If you hestitate and fail to seize the means of survival, you will starve.”
She looks at the scaley thing on the ground and at the other hungry sibling. She grips the form in her spiney limbs and she tears and now it is two things. She leaves one on the ground then her mandibles make the smaller until the meat is gone. Her hunger is smaller, but she is still hungry.
She looks at it again, at the face-tendrils which move and make sound. They do not make sound but she looks away after moments. Right now it is still looking at her and it doesn’t stop.
She starts to hiss and the other siblings look at her. She is afraid.
It moves fast again, and bites around her middle and she is lifted in the air. She trills loud, scratchy.
It does not eat her, and places her on the its its back. This is done again to another sibling and the last tries to run while this is done but the many legs and legs are very fast.
“Remember this, the final lesson for to-night, little hunters. I am your mother, and you are my children. I will protect you, and I will make you strong.” There is a feeling. This feeling is the warmth they felt when they were safe, before the source had vanished forever.
Their mother moves very fast on her legs, and the children must hold on to not fall.
They are brought to a dark rock overhang and dropped from mother. On the ground, each sibling tends away from her.
Each experiences a shivering, inward-culring feeling. Mother says the word chill. They find that huddling together, the feeling is smaller.
They have become slow and drooping and wishing to lay down. The nearness of the mother is scary, but – the word she uses is tired.
They lie in a pile of small siblings, and still they shiver. Mother nears and with her many segments and very long body she enwraps the huddled nymphs. They need shiver no longer.
When they awaken, she is gone. But there air no longer makes them shiver and it is bright.
She arises with whirling antennae and excited legs. There is color. Beyond the rock overhand, she sees a big and faraway thing that is making every other thing bright. In the light, green leaves are glowingly illumed. The light sparkles through the see-through water of a stream.
// Later that day, the mother bemoans the nymph’s small size, and teaches them of a memory she has, of a mantis knapping stone to create a spear-tip, and affixing it to a stiff limb to create a tool. She shows them how to hunt this way.
// At a point, she introduces herself:
A feeler points backward, at the things of many legs. “I am mother Scolopendra; that is the name for what I am.” The feeler then points at her. “I will call you Brudeyama; that, I recall, is the name for your kind. Each of one of you a child of the first hunter. You will make that name apt.”
// Over months, comraderie grows between the three nymphs. They endure the dangers of the forest with Scolopendra as a callous guide. Sickness, predators, and the perils of blood and black nerve beset them. Our viewpoint nymph develops upon what we’ve seen above: she grows to care for her theca-mates. One day, the nymph she had shared her first meal falls into an antlion’s trap, and she blames herself for not saving them. Throughout, the other nymph is more standoffish, and brushes off her kindness, refusing to care about her beyond viewing her as something nonthreatening in a hostile wilderness. One day, they are overpowered by reavers, seized and devoured; a fate that could have been avoided if they hadn’t been so insistent to act alone. Again, she views herself as the fault; if she had been able to connect with them, couldn’t she have been there for them?
// In either case, though, Mother Scolopendra praises her sensibility: her awareness that saved her from the antlion, her caution that kept her from the reavers. That she survived is proof of her superiority, and thus demonstrated, she is the only one of that brood worth teaching. Scolopendra’s rebuttal to her concern for her fellows is thus:
“It is fitting for a beetle or roach to huddle together, as a swarm, to sacrifice and lower their fangs, treating their competition as if they were their own children. That is their nature. You are not a beetle, brudeyama. You are a hunter.”
// Nonethless, she never loses this habit, and this earns her a nickname from her mother: little beetle.
// (Over the course of the following years, a few episodes would be covered, presented here mostly in the form of dialogue from Mother Scolopendra. Ideally, it would have been woven into scenes.)
“When you hurt something, it bleeds. Creatures bleed ichor or hemolymph, and soft wood bleeds a kind of thick water. The right wood will instead bleed a sticky blood that attracts snailflies. But if the wood is already dead, hurting it will make it bleed sparks. These sparks will violently kill other dead wood – and even its kind that still lives! Trees become very spiteful when they die.”
// Scolopendra shows her a trap made from tree sap:
“With enough patience, this will always bring you food. Indeed, a hunter could live their entire life this way, as the therids do. It does take cunning; lesser hunters could not think of it. Still, I find it does not satisfy me. A good hunter does not seek strong prey when the weak will do, yet I find I must.” Beat. “If you take after me in this regard, you will find yourself likewise driven from triviality to greater challenge. Perhaps this compulsion is the only way nature found to have us great hunters die.”
// When they happen upon a locust-leaf bush:
“This was created by your kind. Shaped like a tree, yet its trunk can be crushed like chitin, and its leaves chew like membranous wings or soft skin in my mouth, tasting of strange beetles. What twisted will mocks the trees with replacements of flesh! I notice the plants tend to wither near them – are they enemies, or heirs?
“Eat them if you must. Long have I wondered if they are truly prey fit for hunters, or merely plants, meals for grubs. I do not know.”
“The eye within is a kind of body-tool which occupies itself with consuming and excreting juices. There are other body-tools which excrete juices. When you feel the thrill of battle, you know it in the keeness of your senses, the readiness of your thews. When you bite into a terrified prey, a similar body-tool has done the work of flavoring itself with the terror pulsing through its blood. Our bodies work beyond our will – but with time and exceptional will, one can master it.
“When you have learned to open the eye within, it will amplify your abilities as a hunter.” Scolopendra lowers her gaze to the ground, as if pondering something deep beneath the earth. “This eye may be the reason I able to think and speak at all. If it is, then I curse it.”
// This requires some further elaboration, because it matters at the end. Scolopendra teaches the little beetle how to open the hunter’s eye: through this art, her sensitivity is greatly increased. Her ability to sense prey, predict and outsmart it, is greatly increased, and only increases further with more experience, a finer control of the hunter’s eye. It mutes her empathy, and this is how she is able to bear killing. For this reason, the little beetle with the hunter’s eye activee gradually diverges in personality until the difference is rather pronounced.
// Additionally, note that Scolopendra uses mostly the hunter’s eye to communicate, rather than pure stridulation, so it’s only when the little beetle has control over her own that she is able to reply to her mother’s speech. When she encounters other mantids, it becomes apparent that she’s never actually learned to speak, but through the sensitivity of the hunter’s eye, she’s able to productively interact with mantids through mostly nonverbal communication.
// After killing a vesperbane investigator, Scolopendra prompts her to commit phagein:
“If you so wish to be a protector, then consume the entrails of your fallen enemy, and embrace the chimerae of two hungers. They will grant you the power your kind desires in a protector.
// Later:
“You must feed the chimera that grows inside you, or it will feed itself.”
// Still later:
“You should get chimerae of your own, mother Scolopendra. It would suit you more.”
“No. It is the nature of the chimerae that they may only bond with your kind, or the kind which flew in the sky with leathery wings. I cannot speak with the chimerae, and were I able to, I would want nothing to do with them. I prefer my body remain my own.”
“You’ve had the dream, haven’t you, little beetle?”
She tilts her head, and her mother explains:
“Sometimes I dream I am a mantis in a strange ceremony. I lack my many legs, my forcipules, my maxillipeds. The world has too many colors. I writhe and I cry out, but the dream does not end. When I awake, I find my body a strange and misproportioned prison. Unlike any other dream to which I might be subject, my will cannot master it and when the dawn comes, every moment of it remains with me always.” Mother Scoopendra looks out into the distance. “When this happens, I find a mantis to break my fast, and remind myself of what I am.”
// After spotting weevils:
“I would avoid the long-faced beetles. Weevils. I have seen those conniving tarsi of theirs uplift a seed to sapling in a day. I have witnessed their ministrations upon a tree, giving it sinews with which to move, orbs to see, wooden features… that express a will. Given a creaking voice to cry out in sudden awareness, and the sound is so familiar. I wonder if I was brought to life in such a fashion. If those black beetle eyes be that of my creator’s… I do not wish to meet that gaze.”
// After killing a reaver or spinner ant:
“Tear open the gaster. Pull aside this body-tool, igore it. That one, though, you may snack upon it. But look: this one is our quarry.” Her legs indicate a a gland buried in the viscera, though she lacks the dexterity to remove it. “The ants have pititful eyes, but keen antennae. Remember that, and remember your feelers can be fooled. This scent – much like how you react to your own kinds’ body-juice, and thereby know the tenor of their wills. The smell of this body-tool, it tells the ants, there is danger, stay away.” Mother Scolopendra looks at them. “We are the danger.”
“Isn’t it – isn’t it bad to eat talking creatures?”
“Food that offers conversation before a meal… is all the more enticing. A feast for the mind and gullet.”
“But… what if I ate you, mother?”
She stops. “If you could hunt me, Brudeyama, that would be your right.” She continues, “When I have taught you enough, you must make the attempt. It will be the ultimate test, and culmination of my way, if I am able to rear something to best even myself.”
“When you become a hunter in your prime, remember what I teach you. Remember me.”
“When I see a centipede, I’ll always think of you!”
“When you see a centipede, kill it. Know that it was inferior to your mother.”
// Standing atop some hilltop overlooking the whole Jhawnsford forest, perhaps at sunset:
“This is the last thing I would teach you, little beetle: I will die, and so will you. Death is the one hunter which cannot be bested.”
// In dialogue with some other vesperbane:
“Is that from phagein, eh? Not suprised, I’m sure it comes naturally to renegades. But I dont recommend you continue. The matter of how the brands of fertility and penance are transherited is complex, and you may find yourself saddled with debts and bindings you did not ask for.”
// By now, it behooves me to describe the actual plot of this chapter. Though the first part would be spent meandering around with Scolopendra, more vesperbanes would come, like the one on whom the beetle commited phagein. There’s a bounty for a unknown, uncountenced bane in Jhawnsford that all these banes are pursuing. At point one, the little beetle is captured or taken willingly, perhaps as a sacrifice on pain of the Stewartry discovering mother Scolopendra, or hidden Engelsgrav, or the weevils that live here. Little beetle would be bound and transported to a stronghold for interrogation, but along the way the convoy is interrupted.
// In perhaps her first truly selfless act, Mother Scolopendra would engage the banehunters. It’s enough for the little beetle to escape. But a centipede, even one with such great skill as a hunter, is no match for vesperbanes, and this is the last of mother Scolopendra.
// Dialogue from a druid or thereabouts, a mantis with some relation to the weevils of Jhawnsford:
“I have spoken to the land-mother, whose thoughts are but whispers on the spirits of even the weevils.” The speaker gives her a pat. “She grieves that she cannot revive your care-mother, nor your brood-mother. She mourns that she cannot relieve you of the chimerae that grow inside you. She despairs for the trials ahead, that she will ask of you this.”
// Like that, a quest is offered. (The specifics were either never established or have been forgotten. My original plans for this were too ambitious for a 10k chapter – I considered having an ancient, angelic burial crypt near Engelsgrav (it’s kind of there in the name, isn’t it?), and Kult of Kaos banes were breaking in, digging through it to unearth some elder evil. The little beetle would need to do a whole dungeon crawl sequence as a result.)
// If not that, there is something unique about Jhawnsford, a reason why the weevils remain here, and Scolopendra was born, and the little beetle’s mind is a just little bit unique. And perhaps, that something is fading, or threatened, and the land-mother wishes for the beetle to do something about it.
// Finally, this chapter would end with a percipient arrives:
“Fascinating. We have long speculated what an unabluted mantis conjoined with the vespers would be like. And a percipient as well! Never have we experimented with such, to honor our precommitments. But eventually, of course, we were sure to find a natural example. Hello. My name is Depthseer. You don’t speak language, do you? But your fifth eye is… quite developed.”
Only the hunter could speak. She allows it control now, and instinctively bends down into readiness, compound eyes sizing up this threat.
“No, none of that.” The mantis waves a foreleg.
And she returns, the hunter gone, as if dismissed. How?
“Unfortunate, that it was the hunter’s art you learned. The impulse to violence… This world truly needs less of it.” A head shaken. “You are an uncountenanced vesperbane, but, I’d hazard, you are not a defect. Your… other side excepted, the spirit of coordination – true coordination – seems alive in you. In our perspective, we have seen this. Would you like countenance? You would be free of those powerful banes hunting you, but burdened with… other responsibilities. The wardens, they would be your best fit. For better and worse, they would teach you about the Pantheca, and leverage your… talents.”
She takes a step back, looking, peering at this dark mantis.
“Ah, you sense the catch in this, do you? Yes, we would like your help. Would like it, but it’s no demand or conditional to it. I think… one day, I foresee, I will put together a team, and you may be a good fit.”
She takes another step backward.
“I don’t intend to coerce you, and I won’t need an answer for a long time. At preset, I will arrange for the banehunters to drop your case. Should you ever like to reciprocate, there is a roadside inn not far from here; you can find it if you simply seek out minds that way. If you go there, we will know, and arrive post-haste. When you arrive, we will begin.”
Snuggly Serials 