A Final Stretch

Like the umbral filaments spilling from Tenebra, trail lines extend out from Wisterun, a small point whose influence magnified it. Around the town farmland fans out, starting not far from its walls of mud, stone and wood. The farms are delineated and crossed by those trails. Not roads: they lacked the stiffness and symmetry of the roads a diamantid would put down. No, the reason for these trails is only seen as Ooliri flies closer. Ants, dozens of them swaddled in colorful clothes, along them marched in ranks or, here and there, wandered alone. Above him the zipline buzzes as the wheels roll down the wire. Ooliri listens to that sound waiting for a creak or snap. His eyes scan the cable. Can he see exposed strands and wear on the wires, or is it just anxious pareidolia? Quessa had gone down just fine. Yanseno had been confident, and Ooliri is already halfway down now. Below him the metataxite forests they'd traveled are thinning, giving way to civilization. Wait, had Yanseno been confident? "Everything is unsafe," is what he said. Still, Ooliri's strapped to the thing now. If he put up his raptorials in front of his face, then maybe he won't have to repeatedly scrutinize the cables for fault, and won't wonder just whether it'll hurt more to fall down on the conks of metataxites or onto a wheatfield. But if he lifts his raptorials, that means they won't be holding fast to his harness, and he likes having something to hold onto. Instead, he can just fold his antennae over his foveae... "You did it!" he hears Quessa chirp. "I told you it'd be fine." Ooliri moves his antennae from where they wrapped around his compound eyes. The trolley stopped moments ago. He lowers his legs and they land steady on the stone-cobbled platform. Roped fern-stalks fence off this platform, and he turns his head a little to get Quessa's green face in his sightlines. "That was..." Ooliri stops. He doesn't want to disappoint her, so he searches for a way to put it. "Better than running into another world-scar in the wilds. Maybe---maybe I could get used to it." Quessa smiles, and then glances away. "Boleheva might take some minutes to run here. Do you want to wait over by the gate? I think I know one of the ants! But that one's not supposed to be on guard duty. Or was it otherwise? Maybe that one was reassigned." Ooliri glances up at the now-distant tower pointing up over the woods. "Shouldn't we wait for Makuja?" "Should we? She..." Quessa had a tendency to just stop, palps tapping her mandibles where another mantis might stutter or pad with 'ums' or 'wells.' "...seems scary." "She is scary. But most of that --- most of that scariness is for our enemies. You saw her fight that anteater right? She saved our lives there." Ooliri rubs his bandaged arm. "Yanseno seems scary too. But, to you, he's nice, isn't he?" "He is..." Quessa extends an antennae over, which brushes quite close to touching him. "Do you have a father?" "Had one. He's---gone now." "Oh. Do you miss him?" "Every time I go home." Which, Ooliri realizes with a start, he hasn't, not for several shades. Would he be there right now, if this mission hadn't fallen apart? "Oonserta taught me everything. I wouldn't be half the vesperbane or have any idea what I'm doing without him." Quessa nods. "Yanseno is just like that." Ooliri wonders why she hadn't just said the maverick was like father to her. He thinks about asking, but decides not to. This silences the conversation for a moment. "What were we talking about?" "You wanted to talk to one of the ants, I think? And avoid Makuja, because she's scary. But I explained how she's protective-scary, like Yanseno." Quessa looks away, toward the ants milling around by the gate, and her antennae bounce up. "Yeah, there! The One Who Bites Water. He showed me some of the tunnels." Looking back to Ooliri, she says, "I'd like to wait over there? At least until Yanseno gets back. There's something... I think I wanted to say to that one." "Maybe. I'd like to meet an ant." Ooliri glances back at the tower, and sees a mantis riding down the zipline. Makuja? Quessa starts walking, and Ooliri plots out an approach. He could tell Makuja to wait here for Yanseno while he goes with Quessa, play it off as a way to make sure the maverick knows where to find them? The gray nymph watches the image of Makuja smoothly getting larger and clearer, witnessing the descent from the other perspective. Where Ooliri had fidgeted and covered his eyes, Makuja rides down with antennae waving like short banners behind her. She's not all still, though. About halfway down, she turns. Is she leaning to one side? Why? The distance obscures it, but peering closer, Ooliri sees her center of mass is lower --- and there's not just antennae trailing behind her now. Those are the straps of the harness! Snapping one by one, Makuja holds onto the trolley as her support gives out --- but at this speed, with this suddenness (and, Ooliri thinks, with that terrifying height beneath you), her grip cannot be steady. Ooliri cries out in alarm, and it stops Quessa in her tracks. He turns to her with paling eyes. "We have to do --- something, don't we?" "I think..." Quessa looks up, antennae spiking as she sees what's only a blurry image in the fringe of his rear vision --- that dreaded inevitability. "We need to wait for Yanseno. He'll do something." Far from Wisterun's gates, above the woods, Makuja falls. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ooliri thinks I'm weak. Awelah watches the gray nymph slip on his harness as she steps down the steep stairs. Everything she'd done and endured, and one hit from Makuja makes them think she can't bear putting on a starsdamned harness. Her smaller form slips past Boleheva on the stairs, making the big imago stop with a quiet "Woah there." She takes the stairs two at a time, and with the height of each step, she's vertical enough to nearly flip over. The stairs are spiraled, winding inside the six pillars of the watchtower, and when she reaches the spot above the landing, she jumps off the side, hitting the ground with sandals audibly squishing in the mud. Her legs bend enough till her abdomen smacks the ground and forced a pained exhale. By the time she's recovered, Boleheva is stepping onto the landing. "Goin with all the hurry in the world, ain't ye?" Awelah pats grime off of her, and with two false starts yanks her feet out of the mud. "Let's go." She walks off. "You leadin' the way, girl?" Awelah points up to the zipline. "Unless you lied about where that's going, I know which way it is." "Fair enough." Boleheva leans her thorax forward and trots up to the pale nymph's side. "Still, if you're so hasty, might as well climb on. I'll get us there fas'er than anything. Could even beat the maverick up there, I bet." The Asetari clicks her mandibles. "I don't need to be carried like a hatchling." "Look, no one said that." "I have legs, that's my answer." "Ye don't understand it. I'm a bloodbane. Compared to my myxothews, you ain't got legs." She points back behind her. "I could climb that tower with one arm free and three grown imagos tied to my back, and still reach the top. I could run to Wisterun without stoppin for breath if I need to." Awelah looks away, and she walks faster. "Is this about yer pride?" Boleheva asks, catching up with her one heartbeat later. "You think you'll look like a baby if yer friends see you carried around? Fine, maybe. Ye know 'em better than I. But what do you reckon they'll think if they have to wait an hour for you to get there?" The conversation halts there when a small startled longicorn leaps from the ferns, darting across their path, long antennae frenzied in fear. Awelah, almost on instinct, turned to track it. But there's no use hunting; Boleheva had some ration bars they'd ate this morning, and she surely had more. The feet of many bugs had worn this trail, and that alone would have it easier to follow that the pathless wilderness on their way into this prefecture, but the metataxites and dewy ferns around them clear up twist by turn. Somewhere out there, Awelah recalls, that direhound is still creeping about. She isn't finished with it. Clenching her raptorials, she longs to continue that chase. Nothing she can do about it right now, but she resists taking her mind off it. Awelah would be --- is --- a hunter, and she wouldn't let her prey be forgotten, nor escape. Above her lies a clear sight of the zipline throughout, and at some vantages could make out the distant raised roofs of the multistory Wisterun homes. Glimpsing that distant settlement, a comment of Boleheva's returns to Awelah. "You said there were Duskhold refugees in Wisterun?" "Ye." "Are there any... are we --- am I the first Duskroot vesperbane you've seen? Since the attack?" "An attack? A bane force attack? Thought it was bad weather, or a world-scar. But no, no vesperbanes seen till you three showed up. Maybe one of the kids is a pawn, but I doubt it. Ask Yan, he'd've seened it." "They attacked my clan, and all of Duskroot. I made it out alive but, I can't be the only one." "Every detail you let slip makes me want to hear the full story. Don't want to hear it twice, but if you're not going to---" The ranger stops. Above them, Makuja descends the zipline. Awelah doesn't know why this merits attention, until she looks up herself, and sees it. "She's gonna fall. Bloody pits, and there's not a chance to catch her." Boleheva parts her eyes from the red nymph holding on to the zooming trolley, and regards Awelah. "Look, girl, there's no time for stubbornness now. Climb on, or I'm leaving you here." Awelah doesn't hope Makuja is injured. But if she is, and if Awelah were there and the former mercenary needed her help... The pale nymph doesn't wrap her forelegs around the yellow imago. Her lower four tarsi clutch the rope of Boleheva's outfit, and she folds up h