Verminous Vignettes

A Sculptor Most Delicate {date="2026-03-02"} Shell-sculptors had the sharpest claws of the chrylurk castes, and this one had a whetstone upon the table, honing the edge further, even as you walked in. You, a surrogate clad proudly in ceramic carapace, paused at the threshold to the chamber, tugging on your invisible bindings to the rest of the hive as if it would pull you from some terrible drop. ---Sit down, sister! (the shell-sculptor sent, eager antennae already perking up at the promise of being helpful) This one has been told just what you need! ---Tuned (you acknowledged). Your tugging on the lines ceased, unable to overcome the gravity of your appointment: six legs ferried you inward, and you lay your ceramic-clad carapace upon the cool clay of the sculptor's workbench. All was lit apale in the sharp light emitted by the sculptor's swarmling shimmerbugs, perched and reflecting beams with shiny inner elytra. All was lit, save for the shadows cast by the chrylurks themselves Your forearms folded, hugging your thorax. ---Would you like a full exfoliation? ---That wasn't the order given (you sent). ---You've worn this shell for a month, this one would love to provide you a fresh coat! ---It has served me well. That won't be necessary. ---Tuned (this one hummed resonantly in acknowledgement. It would respect her needful sister's wishes. Clearly a delicate claw was called for!) Then you'll just be needing a replacement thoracic plate? Head still, your antennae bobbed up and down, nodding affirmative. ---But this one needs to see your thorax for the work! Can you move your arms, please? You weren't frozen. Your arms did twitch, initiating slow, unsteady motions. But the sculptor was watching closely. So this one rose, shifting weight from six legs to four. The sculptor caste had sharp claws, suited for that caste's duty, but the pads of the second pair of limbs were soft. This one brought tarsi down high on your thorax. A gentle weight lending comfort. ---You just returned from a duty in the mortal city, yes? (the sculptor sent, admiration undisguised: hatched in the hive, this one knew the exscient primarily as what one sculpted shells to hide and defend from.) Antennae nodded again. ---And you visited this one first thing upon returning. You seek repair --- you flinch from damage caused. The cracks. "I failed," you said. Words issued from the mouth, a whisper. ---We are together bound (this one sent, confused and speculating. Had it been an attempted courtesy, to spare this one bearing the full tone of guilt that could not be muted through their harmonic connection? This one continued:) Loud, brutish breath befits the exscient! You are home now, sister. ---Enough. This is not necessary (you sent). I ask that you fulfill your duty. ---One molds what is soft, one mends what is cracked. This one serves in tune! ---Together bound, and yet this one taunts me with semantics. ---Bound, yet you insist my sister has failed. ---I... (the transmission trailed off; further deflection was moot.) You felt the buzz as the sculptor probed you deeper --- your spiderlice did not, would not, keep secrets from the hive, and answered each subverbal question. You were known in depth, just as if you were one of the sculptor's own shimmerbugs. ---Your womb is emptied, and your gullet drips with nectar fresh from the reaping! Was that not your duty? Finally, after all this prodding --- after the sculptor might well have read the information off your lice-woven record --- you spread your forearms wide. Your thorax was cracked, a with dark splotch in the gleaming ceramic, shards missed and replaced with dark, coagulated hemolymph --- victim to a savage, sanguine caulking. "I miscalcuated my thrall's dose, and it had worn low by the time I returned. Without my venom to stabilize its mind, I was attacked," you spoke calmly --- but that you spoke at all belied that you were too disturbed to commit it to honest record. "Such performance is an insult to our queen." ---How many thralls have known your parascixion? (this one sent, knowing they both knew the answer. One waited, but eventually had to say it:) Just the one, yes? ---I submit, once more, a request that you fulfill your duty, sculptor. One lifted slender arms and flexed a tarsus bearing scalpel-sure anatomy. One's ceramic gleamed in the shimmerlight of the workroom. Despite all the argument, one's mandibles grinned eagerly at the prospect of playing with exoderm --- purpose, pure and simple. ---This one shall peel you bare and restore your beautiful barding, sister (this one sent, with one sly thought a twang in the harmony) But one must make a request of you in turn. ---Which is? ---When you report to Her, ask how She fared with her first thrall! Headstrong Hunter, Patient Weaver {date="2026-03-03"} Among branches overlooking a scarcely-trod dirt road through the woods lay perched a pair of chrylurks, silent sentinels, listening intently to the clanking of vesselblades amarch --- the gilded knights' armor reflecting the night. The hunter tensed: and she thought of her Fione and she readied her claws. ---Halt, sister (sent the weaver on the other branch.) Remain quiescent. The hunter stared down the length of the dirt road --- a old cabin with but a single inhabitant lay at the other end. The hunder knew it well. ---I saw those swords (replied the hunter.) The exšh't brutes will kill her. We have to--- ---Observe and report (the weaver strummed gently, stiffly.) We observe and then we report what we observe. We didn't expect compleat vessels so close to our hunting grounds. We didn't know --- next time, we shall. ---Next time? Next time? What about now! What about my Fione? It was rhetorical; the hunter was already dropping from the branch --- but to be a weaver was to master silk like innumerable complementary limbs. Well within her abilities to suspend the brashly falling chrylurk in woven ropes that might well have coalescenced from the air itself for the very suddenness. ---I would not cross my stinger with that vessel (sent the weaver,) and it is my role to equal the compleat. Where I would flee, you must follow. ---Your role is callous. Your webs are dead and calculated. You've forgotten what's it's like to infest and grow! ---All this passion is sung to me on the webs you call dead (the weaver noted.) ---I'm not done! (the hunter sent while still twisting in her bindings.) She told me she understood purpose of our hive --- she believed, she loved. She was almost parascixe! ---Exscient (the weaver sent, leaving it deliberately ambiguous whether that was meant as an solemn affirmation or scathing negation.) An excoriating agony shall gnaw within the flesh of every vessel for their crimes against us. Such was always their fate. Do you understand, hunter? ---She might as well have been parascix! She was us. I won't abandon her. She is mine. ---And if you forget yourself upon the vessel's transfigured blade? ---Then the hive would lose two, tonight (sent the hunter at length). But if I defy your fatalism, the hive saves two. On average, letting me go makes no difference. ---You called calculation my role. Do not arrogate it; it ill suits you. You would doom the hive itself with your reckless, and we would save far more than two swooning lovers with this caution. We observe, and we report. You are a chrylurk, sister, we are patient. Our way is to hide and rot unseen. ---But--- ---And if she understood like you claim she does, then she knows she does not die should her queen live. Sacrifice would be her role, just as it is for us all. ---Damnable weaver. Always an answer for everything. ---One way, I suppose, to say that I know what you do not (sent the weaver, knowing the hunter's acquiescence had been clear in the harmony between them. Even if the bug was too proud to spell it out.) And I'll give you one more, because we are bound. You drank her dreams. Her flesh may be forgotten to us, but she has already found her way into you. ---I... I'll miss her. But you must be right. I have a role. I can't save her if it means forgetting what I'm saving her for. ---The words you'll looking for are: "Thank you, O wise weaver." ---Maybe if you let me go (the hunter sent, still suspended mid-air in the weaver's binding.) I am glad you spun sense into me. ---I'm glad, too. Otherwise I would have saved the vessels the trouble and killed you myself. Between Contempt and Hysteria {date="2026-03-04"} ---O Sister Contempt, fifth hunter! Where are you? (came a pulsed message, proxied by an operator, originally sent by Hysteria, first architect.) Contempt tensed. A cool breeze tassled her silk-hair as it dangled in the grasp of gravity. Her legs clung to the underside of a thick supports meeting in a cross. Were they roots? The blight's mycelium? Whatever it was had been encased in exoderm. Unsurprising the hive hadn't cached her whereabouts --- not least for the fact she had picked this nook because it was one that few bugs frequented. "Hunter, fifth in caste" might be distinguished in an elder hive --- but fifth of six hunters meant only her kindred (asleep in the warren --- she missed them) ever really spun her any mind. Particularly when first hunter Despair still boasted of the compleat knight zhe had made parascixe. By contrast, Contempt's recent hunt was a courier (lean, but such sweet blood) --- and she'd lost a raptorial forelimb for her trouble. A hunter missing a raptorial? No wonder no bug spun her any mind. ---Line? (sent Hysteria, not proxied this time, but no more scrutable; she had that characteristic opacity of the royal castes.) ---Bound. (answered Contempt's lice reflexively. Then, in her own voice:) To what trespass does this one owe the touch of an architect's silk and mind? ---May I make a physical inquiry? (sent Hysteria, still opaque to