{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/black-nerve/chimhop/10",
  "path": "/posts/black-nerve/chimhop/10",
  "publishedAt": "2022-04-24T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "With closure on the battle, and nothing but uncertain danger urging them\non toward an uncertain goal, a certain lethargy grows in the nymphs.\nThey sleep like corpses, and awake at midday, ravenously hungry. Meal\nafter meal, their bodies never seem to regain strength, their stomachs\nfill like pits too deep to see the bottom of, and the soft parts of\ntheir cuticle hold a feverish heat as if coals burn within them. It gets\nworse, and days pass like this. Sometimes one of the nymphs doesn't\nawake for most of a day, leaving the others to care for them.\n\nIt's made all the worse by the sudden, causeless inception of it. They\nsuspect parasites from meat, or poison from misidentified herbs. The\nfeeling wanes like the waning of the moon. It's Ooliri who finally puts\na true name to the condition. Each of their bodies had new passengers;\nadaptation to the vespers felt like a terrible sickness.\n\nWhat finally drives them from their cave by the stream bank is the\nweather. Either the clouds have taken to raining at night, or somewhere\nfurther upstream, but the flow comes faster, and wider, and soon they\nwould risk waking up drenched --- or drowning.\n\nWalking away from the stream, they pass under the shelter of tall ferns.\nMakuja stops, prompting a glance from the other nymphs. She points at\nthe ground.\n\nHere, just meters away from where they slept, diamond shaped imprints\nsunk into the mud. The tracks of a maned wolf.\n\n\"Maybe we should have started moving sooner,\" Ooliri says quietly. \"We\nshould put as much distance as we can between us and that...\"\n\n\"No,\" Awelah says. \"We didn't get this far by being cowards, did we? We\nneed to get stronger. Train, and if that dog comes after us, it'll\nregret it. It was almost dead, and prey isn't plentiful this soon after\na wispfall. It must be weak. It stands little chance.\"\n\nThe gray nymph sighs. \"Would you really say that after so many people\nunderestimated Unodha?\"\n\n\"Its master is dead,\" she replies. She doesn't linger on it, but Ooliri\nglances to Makuja, the red nymph's face betraying no reaction. \"It's\nweak, and it's alone. Didn't you fight one of them? We'll be fine.\"\n\n\"I'd feel more fine if we weren't alone in the wild. A little\ncivilization around us, help to call out for.\"\n\n\"And we don't know where the nearest village is! You said your map\nburned up with your mentor.\" A glance to Makuja. \"And your team killed\nthe roaches who knew where we were going!\"\n\n\"We had orders.\"\n\n\"Your new orders are to help us. And right now, that means training.\"\n\nRather than acknowledge that, Makuja glances to Ooliri, whose antennae\nare spirals, his eyes cast away to the horizon.\n\nAwelah put a tarsus over face, palps scraping. Why are you looking to\nhim? He isn't the team leader. He's a wimp, she half-murmurs,\nhalf-thinks. She runs the tarsus back, sliding up to her antennae and\nrunning through her tangled fluff. \"Remind me, why are we going to this\nvillage?\"\n\n\"There's rumor of a vesperbane they call Lady Earth-shaper protecting\nit. They could teach us.\"\n\nAwelah smiles the smile of a trapper. \"And they will be more likely to\nteach us if we're already strong. If we didn't waste all our time\nrunning.\"\n\nOoliri starts off, \"That's not what---\"\n\nBut she cuts him off with a click. \"Look, if you want to be safe,\" she\nbegins.\n\nThen she claps her hands together. The seal of focus draws enervate into\nher hands, and they buzz with the power. She thinks of her family's\nsignature technique, and she feels her fingers moving, forming more\nsigns. She was only passingly familiar with tarsigns, and never learned\nthis sequence, but the flow came naturally, in the way every limb had a\nway it preferred to bend, in the smooth inevitably of a martial form.\nOf course, she thought, it's my birthright.\n\n⸢Umbral Body Projection!⸥ She steps to the side, leaving a shadow in the\nair. It darks as it fills with enervate, becoming recognizable as\nAwelah's silhouette.\n\n\"You need me,\" she says. \"You need what I can do.\" Then she turns away\nfrom the two nymphs. She gestures at her projection, and then it moves\nafter her, propulsed more than it walks. \"I'm going to find a clearing.\nYou can... join me.\"\n\nAs she walks away, Makuja and Ooliri share a glance.\n\n- - -\n\nProjection dispelled, Awelah stands half-crouched and punching a\nmetataxite. It is about as thick around she is, but its lowest shelves\nstarts above her head. With each impact, the great lichen shakes a\nlittle. With a grunt, she takes one step back, then makes the seal of\nfocus, followed another tarsign, as natural as her last\nsequence. Then:\n\n⸢Bane Blast!⸥ Her foreleg is thrust out toward the central fungal\ncolumn, and before it impacts, a burst of black knocks her arm back. The\ntaxite is only slightly worse off; now, it shakes a bit rather than a\nlittle. Some of its chitinous protective layer flakes off and falls to\nthe damp mossy ground. She frowns at this result, as if it offended her.\n\n\"How did you do that?\" Ooliri asks. Even now, his voice is higher\npitched than either of the girls.\n\nThey find the Asetari not long after she had left. This clearing is due\nto a giant tree that fell and rotted until it was just a crumbling line\nof woodchips, wreathed by former branches. It must have been the last\nrelic of when this was a land for trees; now ferns and metataxites seize\nthe ground. Hidden by fronds, they had watched briefly, unobserved.\n\nWhen she doesn't answer, he tries, \"Were you... were you taught?\"\n\n\"It comes naturally,\" she finally says without glancing at him.\n\nHe looks down to his arm --- the one without the bandages, and extends\nlong antennae toward it. \"....How?\"\n\nAwelah closes her raptorials, then walks away from her fungal foe.\nStanding before Ooliri, she demonstrates. \"I make the seal of focus and\nthen... I feel the rest of the signs like a pull, like my hands want\nto make them.\" She sees the look the gray nymph is giving her. \"Is that\nunusual?\"\n\n\"It's not how tarsigns work --- not how I learned they work, anyways.\"\n\n\"How do they work, then?\" Awelah says. There's a moment for Ooliri's\nslight surprise to register in a small bounce of antennae, and then she\nis already defending. \"I didn't learn anything about nervecasting. I\nhadn't been promoted yet.\" There's something in how she says that last\nword, some emotion. And it was different from the loss he had heard in\nher tone so many times before. Was there something... bitter, to it?\n\nIt's then that he realizes there's another expression on her face ---\nshe's expecting a reply. \"Um, could you hold out your midleg?\" It's a\nmoment before she does. \"And bend it?\"\n\nThen Ooliri chops at the joint, and the leg kicks out. It almost hits\nOoliri in his thorax, but he leans out the way. \"This is how Emusa\ndemonstrated the concept. Did you kick out your leg?\"\n\nShe frowns. \"I didn't mean to.\"\n\n\"Exactly. It's just how the body is wired. But imagine if you couldn't\ncontrol your leg at all, so if you wanted to kick, you had to hit it\nlike that every time. That's what tarsigns are. When there's enervate in\nyour hands, twisting them in special way sort of... tugs on enervate\nelsewhere in the body, in ways we haven't learned to do directly, yet.\"\n\nMakuja had come beside Ooliri. Silent, she had been easy to miss. She\nspeaks now, though. \"Yet the signs are tugging on her instead.\"\n\nAwelah draws her raptorials together. \"No, it's more like I'm\nremembering them. Muscle memory, except I hadn't done it before.\" The\nlonger this conversation went on, the more her tone seemed to waver with\nuncertainty. As if she'd never questioned it, and now that she does...\n\nThen Makuja asks. \"Can you do the signs again?\"\n\nIt was a simple sequence. Focus seal, then a sign like two fists pressed\ntogether, then the dactyls of both tarsi splaying out flat.\n\nOoliri is nodding. \"Bane Blast is one of the simplest spells. I think\nthat's the louse seal, which... compresses enervate, right? And then the\nbasic release seal, which just... expels it.\"\n\nMakuja takes a step to the side, then runs through the same set. She\nholds the louse seal for a second longer than Awelah had, then on unseen\ncue, makes the release seal and points her foreleg at the ground. A\nspray of dirt announces her success. She plucks a worm from the pits.\n\n\"Wherever this memory comes from, it only needed to grant knowledge of\nthe seals,\" she concludes. She's placing the worm in a compartment of\nher bag. Done, she looks at Awelah. \"Will you show us the seals to your\nother spell?\"\n\n\"No.\" The red nymph, the killer, holds her gaze, and after a few seconds\nAwelah is twitching antennae. She stammers to add, \"Would you even have\nenough enervate to cast it?\"\n\n\"She has a point,\" Ooliri says, nodding. \"Emusa thought the most\nimportant thing for pawns to be learning, besides martial arts and\ntactics, was the arete binding ritual. It builds up the arete reserves\nnecessary for more advanced techniques.\"\n\nMakuja glances down at the pit she'd made the very first time she\nattempted the spell, like that was counterargument enough. \"I've been a\npawn longer than you,\" she says. It was true; he'd told them as much\nover one meal by their campfire. \"I know how to bind arete.\"\n\nOoliri inclines his head in concession.\n\nPoint made, she looks back to the last Asetari, gaze challenging her\nonce again.\n\n\"I'm not teaching you the spell,\" she says. \"It's my clan's\ntechnique.\"\n\nThe other girl doesn't reply. Her antennae fold up, and no frown comes\nto her palps, as if that admission was victory enough. She looks to\nOoliri. Rather, she looks to his bandaged arm. He'd revealed to them\nthat it was soft skin and bones beneath them, not chitin.\n\n\"Can it channel black nerve?\" she asks.\n\nUninterested, Awelah resumes her assault on the metataxite.\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nMakuja makes a 'follow me' gesture with the arm facing away from Awelah.\nShe walks, and then waits for Ooliri on the other side of the clearing.\n\n\"We have to train to become stronger,\" she says, her tone an echo of the\nlast A",
  "title": "Direction Without a Path"
}