A Student Asunder

Two chrylurks, Gloom and Adversity, crawled through tunnels of limestone. Shimmerbugs aglow were the only illumination, glinting off pools and streams. Water trickled through, carving these caverns deeper, but its work has largely been outpaced by the hive's excavation. Behind them, the floor bore a layer of crushed chitin and exoderm, and the walls a tracework of woven lines. Both grew scarce as they went on. Then, at once, the confining tunnel gave way to a larger chamber. Shadows swallowed the wall, but the echoes of chitin-hooves on stone were suggestive. Smaller still than the bustling heart of the hive, but almost an hour of squeezing through crevasses rendered any space where two legs outstretched touched no wall profoundly welcome. But was it truly an hour spent spelunking? The body was present for this adventure, but the mind? Draglines of the silk led back to the hive, at time hitched to those wires tracing the cave walls. Lively communication had pulsed back and forth all throughout. Adversity watched as her closest sisters attended their own duties --- a hunter practicing forms fit for four-limbed fighting; a nurse washing and the feeding the thralls in their pens. Adversity sent cheers of '---Good job!' as they completed each task, and they pulsed their thanks. In turn, she recounted cave sights --- slender olms sleeping, stalagtites looming high --- for she was the first among their group to venture this far from the hive. A bit spooky, she admitted --- and her nurse sister sensed it. ---Focus, sis, you aren't going so far to not pay attention to it! But most of what lay this far from home was so much opaque cave darkness. Then, almost in response, came deliverance. Gloom's Shimmerbugs flew forth by unspoken command, finding perch on the far walls. The larger chrylurk once more lead the smaller. Zhe was one head taller, and zir head boasted a panoply of silken loops drawn in dizzy patterns. Three horns burst from above zir, and cobwebs latticed the space between, a concourse for crawling spiderlice. A veil fell over zir visage, cloaking her eyes to vague points --- but it seemed less a matter of obscurity than emphasis: as if the silk and all the spiders at work were her true expression. By contrast, her follower Adversity bore no horns but buds thereof, nor silk-work save a short-cropped head of hair. Her exoderm clad her thin and shiny. Her apertures were wide and credulous, and her four arms fidgeted in excitement-uncertainty. ---You're ready (zhe told her.) We will begin. ---I am? (she started. But it hadn't been a question, and she shouldn't question it.) Right, I am. ---Come here. She approached. Two of the weaver's hands lifted from the space between zir forelegs, and she caught a whiff of something pungent, but zir hands were already reaching out, grabbing. Zhe grabbed her antennae, one in each hand, and moved along their lengths in a smooth stroke. ==Danger! Caution! Quiessence!== Zir fingers were wet with deep bitter alarm. A pheromonic command backed with a high caste authority. The caress continued past her antennae --- with pressed, feelers were pushed against her head, and how those scented fingers brushed her hair. Her body reacted automatically. Pulse spiking, attention snapping into keen focus --- but the most dramatic change lay in her swarm, just as compelled by the pheromones. Her spiderlice stilled their continual chatter. All the communication lines, all her hive-bindings, went still, retracted and clipped. She opened her mouth to yelp in shock, but her voice was utterly mute. Her eyes settled on the weaver --- not glaring like had every right to, but watching for a signal, an order. That pheromone said ==Danger!== and zhe was her authority. "Calm now. You may speak." "What the heck! I didn't even get a chance to say slack to my sisters." She threw her arms to either side. Zir head inclined, shifting zir veil. "You shall speak to them again soon. This is part of today's lessons." "You could have warned me! Heck, you could have told me to tie up my bindings myself. I know how!" "You would take too long, girl." Head head tilted --- and one noticed, distractingly, that her two side-horns formed a perfect right angle. "You know what role we have assigned you." "Yeah I'm gonna be an infiltrator and get all the exscient wrapped around my finger!" "And what dangers does an infiltrator face?" "Getting caught?" A hum. "And the easiest way to get caught?" "Forgetting your backstory? Taking off the mask at the wrong moment?" "Wrong. Mortals are fools and liars. They will believe you, and when they don't, they will believe it a mundane deception. Further, their sense of privacy and propriety is our advantage. No, any chrylurk deemed smart enough to be a infiltrator is far from likely to make such simple mistake." "Then I guess I don't know. This today's lesson?" "It's a preliminary," said Gloom. "The answer is alchemy. Alchemists are always your greatest enemy. No disguise or story will suffice if they see us wielding forspun arts mortals cannot. Evanescence --- do you know what that is?" "We drink their blood, and then our webs become magical?" "Approximately. Weaving serivane taxes our sanguine reserves, yes?" Her antennae nodded. The veiled eyes stared, waiting. "So why did I cut your hive-binding?" "That's what I'm saying!" Antennae fell over zir face, drooping disppointment. "Your duty here is to think, dear. I ask because you know. You are ready. Simply tie toward the threads you have been given." "Oh. Um." She paused, lifting a secondary hand to chew on her fingers. "It's not that just weaving it that taxes. Sometimes I get thirsty just from messaging my sisters a lot. It's like breathing, you keep doing it." "Approximately, yes. Evanescence allows threads to pass beyond the veil of material. After all, Your line back to the hive went through the cavern walls around us. But serivane cannot remain ephemeral anymore than a fire could burn forever with no fuel." "And... fire spits also out smoke, right? You're saying alchemists can sense serivane?" "Mortals are fools. They will walk right into cobwebs without seeing them. Serivane is just as inconspicuous, even to an alchemist's aura. Unless, of course, there is an abundance of it. But it is, always, a matter of chance. Infiltrators must deal in chance. Just one glint is enough to raise suspicions." The weaver reached out, and this time zir hand bore a strand of serivane. Zhe patted her head, and in the process bound their licenests. ---As an infiltrator, you will spend your time cut off from the hive, not because you must, but because it's simply a prudent caution. Such is the virtue of quiessence. ---But what about my sisters? That's kinda... ---Your duty. You will accept it (zhe sent, and zir ironclad certain underscore the words.) But let us move on. Here is my next question-lesson for you. Can you reconnect to the hive? ---Yeah, let me just--- ---Do not do so, not yet. The real question: how? ---Um, I just tell my lice to do it? ---What are your lice doing? She chewed on her finger again. Another hand, reaching up, grasping the silken tresses the hung by her neck. She groped around till she found a spiderlouse that was dutifully weaving or just chewing on silk. She plucked it and stared at the tiny bug. (Bug --- despite the name, they had six legs.) But it had no answers for her. It only squirmed. Zhe hummed wordlessly, making her glance over. As an idle demonstration, she had a line of silk drawn between two secondary hands. At once, a primary claw came down and severed the line. ---Tell me. How can this connection be restored without either limb crossing the intervening distance? (zhe asked.) She stared. But this display seemed to underscore the fundamental absurdity of what zhe had asked. ---I don't know. Maybe if you... threw the lines? But you'd have to get closer, or you'd have to throw them at the same time --- which you couldn't coordinate without already being hive-bound! --- and even then both lines would have to meet midair, but even then they're still severed... I don't know. It doesn't seem physically possible. ---It's not. Evanescence transcends what is physical. ---So it's magic then. Do I have to know this? ---You want to know this, dear. You're curious. Again that certainty in her tone. And... she did recall the heady scent of the pheromones, laden with pragmatic meaning but also that unique musk of ==zir==. This was an authority. She knew what was best. ---I must explain, because you won't be able to figure this all out on your own. First, we often speak of harmony --- our bindings are like songs, pulses of meanings --- but the vibration of serivane strings... it does not always serve us to think of it as sound. It is also akin to light. ---I've seen through my sister's eyes before (she sent, antennae nodding.) ---You misunderstand. That is synesthesia of a different origin, but I cannot discuss protocol today (zhe replied with a waving of her sharp primaries.) This light shines back and forth across a serivane line. When you cover up a light, it casts far-reaching shadows, and when a serivane line is cut, the disturbance is quite distinct from simply going still. Now, zhe reached into the ropes that clad zir body --- all the netting that surrounded zir had myriad treasures, less like a spider's web than a magpie's nest. What zhe retrieved looked like a spool with hooked flanges, as if chitin had grown into a contorted shape. ---Your spiderlice produce these devices with the same industry with which they produce silk, but theirs are all tiny and thus difficult to inspect. This one operates by the same principle, though. With a claw, zhe cut a new, thin string from zir hair, and began winding it around the hooked flanges in an intricate pattern. As zhe w