Death in the East

::: subchapter One moment, a black and white form rises in the ants' shelter, shaking, something falling away as it turns. The next moment, it is close enough to see the veins in its eyes, the flaring of its nostrils. Black and white fur colors it in sharp contrast. The knuckles of its forelegs pound into the ground with each step, and the legs are as tall as the nymphs are. A massive direbeast, and they don't have their two strongest techniques. The anteater is fast --- if Makuja runs, she could at least escape. She can cover enough distance, climb into a tree perhaps. She guides enervate into her midlegs. Awelah had moved to the front to cast her projection. Now her raptorials fold around her spear --- it has the greatest reach any of them could bring to bear. Breathing in, timing it, the Asetari thrusts up at the incoming beast. It dodges to the side. Makuja is on the left, and Ooliri on the right. Awelah is right-dominant, spear-end held on that side. It means dodging to her right has put the anteater clear of the attack. It means it puts the thing right in front of Ooliri. To his credit, he has already fallen into a proper stance, holding his baton tight and untrembling. With but a moment of hesitation, he swings. The anteater's tongue appears, flashing out of two lips like an arrow. Ooliri flinches back, and the tongue catches on the baton. He pulls, and the anteater pulls harder. Ooliri is disarmed. Then the anteater is shifting weight to its hindlegs. Makuja, throughout, is backing up. She could escape. But she had sworn loyalty, hadn't she? So the red nymph leaps, knife in hand. The sudden flash of motion draws the beast's eye. On its hindlegs, it raises a clawed paw. Makuja stabs forward, pierces the flesh. With a raised leg, it bats Makuja aside like a ball. She hits the mud and rolls. She can smell the blood before she gets up. Awelah thrusts her spear again as the anteater starts after a backpedaling Ooliri. Her weapon goes deeper, wounds wider, and spills blood for one instant before the red mass is coagulating, sucking, closing itself over several seconds. The Asetari takes a step back. "What can we do, if it can close wounds that fast?" "It'll --- it'll run out of energy. Or mass." Ooliri's voice is unsteady as he dodges a swipe. Tries to dodge, rather --- it hits his leg and cuts deep. "Not before we do." The tongue flicks out again, all of its tiny hooks scraping against Ooliri's chitin. Another swipe, and Awelah, standing close by, tracks the creature's eyes, and catches that it's not looking at Ooliri --- it's looking at the bag. "Drop it! Drop your bag," she says. Ooliri frantically pulls at the straps, sloughing off the bag to clack against the ground. The anteater pauses in its advance, tearing at the bag as though it were another combatant. They see it nose through the bag, and what it stops at: the glass containing samples of Unodha. This buys them a few seconds to catch their breath, minds wheeling for plans. Ooliri is backing up diagonally. The pause ends when an umbra-coated stone cracks against the anteater's skull, splitting it open. Makuja is palming another stone. The impact angers it, but at least it didn't laugh. The red nymph is the target now. The anteater starts a charge that lasts until Awelah punishes the distraction. Her spear buries itself between two ribs. Of them all, the Asetari has the best they can offer. She puts out enough force to stagger a beast three times her size. Will she be enough to save them, this time? There can be no reprise of that sapiovore tactic --- the mammal stands taller, on unsprawled legs. Unless... "Get me some time. I" --- but she didn't have a plan --- "will act." All Awelah can do is wrench the spear free before the beast's torque sends her flying. The effort breaks her stance; so she's in no position for a followup. Not before the anteater can use those claws, those legs as thick around as they are. Unlike Makuja, the pale nymph wouldn't be sent flying by the force of the blow. With ground beneath her, it would be felt. So Awelah can't stall for Makuja to set up her technique. Without time, with Awelah soon to be crushed, Makuja should abort her plan, charge in. Unless --- until --- Ooliri tackles Awelah. Off-balance, pale legs tumble and she's rolling to recover. The gray nymph is in her place. Standing shorter, when he dodges, the anteater's claw-swipe goes higher than center mass. Instead of being brained, Ooliri's bandaged arm goes up. The blow is deflected. Makuja wastes not a heartbeat more. Coldness flows into her legs under guidance. The tongue flicks, catches on Ooliri's arm again, and pulls --- pulls the bandages. Alien muscle is revealed and letting the bandages rip free, Ooliri claps. He makes the louse seal, and then a half a ⸢Bane blast⸥ explodes against the chest. One arm comes back, and the other is striking with boney claw tips, blood coursing down the limb in exposed veins. The inflicted wound mends a bit slower, the brightness of his ichor contrasting against festering dark direblood. Ooliri lets himself be pushed back by recoil, falling away to gain a precious stride's distance from death. "Awelah, are you okay?" "Back, both of you. Get away from it," Makuja calls. Surrounded on both sides by overgrowth, getting away meant, if they didn't want to be slowed, they'd draw closer to the red nymph. That's fine. With nothing in melee range, the anteater falls back on all fours. Good. The tongue flicks out at an escaping Awelah --- and she had gotten distance! At this range... that tongue is longer than its head, and it does not have a short snout. The saliva is sticky, but even with barbs, the tongue touches her cloak and can't keep hold of the strange material. Awelah is jerked back for a single step. Still, Makuja only needed the beast in a shorter stance. She splays her feet and sends herself flying at the direanteater. Mid-air, she unsheathes two knives. The anteater tries to back up, stand up, but Makuja moves with explosive force. Black feet are curling into balls with fur in her grip, and then Makuja fully secures purchase on the creature's back with one knife stabbing in each side, angled between ribs. This close, the earthy, sulphuric stench of the animal is intolerable. Her imitation of the Asetari would be complete as soon as she spares the moment needed to make the signs for a bane blast. Would it be enough to take it down? Ooliri has other ideas. "Makuja! You made the hound flee --- you said you had your, Unodha's blood." He's putting pieces together fast. "Can you ---- does the control of direbeast extend to..." The anteater's still trying to shake her off, and by now its rampage has gone further up the path. Ooliri was cut off by a need to dodge. Makuja can finish the thought from there, anyway. It's a long shot --- but were the odds better than counting on one bane blast to be enough? She weighs it, and then she feels her heartbeat, imagines the pain and power of bloodletting. Did she have a choice? Makuja imagines once again that sensation of her master's technique. She slits a finger of each hand on the knife they hold. Knowing her time is limited, she pulls back her hands with the speed of one flinching from a fire. The sign of focus. The whale sign. That burning sensation, hands trembling as they maintain the contortion. (Had she flinched from a fire, or toward one?) Faster, faster. Each hand is now slick with blood. When she releases the whale sign, when she strikes forward, it feels like she's losing something. ⸢Blood Wolf Bite!⸥ When the anteater shakes this time, screeching its pain, she hasn't the security to resist, only to grab hold of her knives, pull them free as blood pours out. Tumbling off its back, her eyes glimpse the blood she's used in the technique, that had flowed through her palm. On the creature, it congeals into linear forms like a brood of parasitic worms. They burrow into the flesh. This comes naturally to ichor, seeping into life like a transmissible cancer. She supposes she just gave it an energetic push. Makuja hits the rocky road. Ooliri is there helping her up. Awelah stands before the beast, giving a trio of shallow stabs before leaping back. The two of them, Ooliri and Makuja, are at its side. Before it can go after Awelah, Makuja strikes with her raptorial, vise grip briefly holding a leg, pulling. Then she releases it fast. She feels weak. Had the spell taken so much from her? Didn't she have arete? The wounds are piling up. The anteater is limping. But what other tricks did they have? Maybe the blood she injected could have taken the thing down from within --- but how soon? One hit from those legs would kill or cripple. They can't keep getting lucky, not forever. Something had to change. "Awelah. I know it hurts, but" --- Ooliri pauses, fractionally --- "can you try it again? We..." And then he is deflecting another swipe with his muscle-leg before he could find the words. The Asetari is weaving signs. Ahead, Ooliri and Makuja are holding the line. Behind them, smoky aura-nerve curls off Awelah's chitin as she maintains one sign longer than usual. Makuja even feels the pull of her enervate within her coils. Awelah finishes the signs. Nothing happens. A pale form screaming and stumbling, and gray running over the help. In that moment, Awelah can only stand with the help of her spear. Makuja stands alone, wielding two knives against the bleeding beast. Faster, faster. The anteater towers over her. That mouth could swallow her. It evolved to swallow bugs. Ooliri laughs, a sad sound. "We --- we did well for three nymphs on our own, didn't we?" "No," Makuja scrapes. Dire beast and shadowed bug had all cowered and fallen before them. How is this any different? "We can't die here," Awelah asserts, the words a whispered rubbing. Makuja can't die here. Doesn't she have a purpose --- a use? She's the only thing between