{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/black-nerve/chimhop/08",
  "path": "/posts/black-nerve/chimhop/08",
  "publishedAt": "2022-03-07T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "Everyone was dead.\n\nOocid. Madam Rutabrood. Mita. Yugen. Fihra.\n\nAnd Awelah. Unless...\n\nOoliri had climbed up the ridge. With Makuja's seeming betrayal, it\nshouldn't be a surprise to find the pale nymph lying there, bleeding\nout.\n\nHer cloak was gone.\n\nA filament of enervation extends down to her body, trailing from the\nwisp-masses high above. It makes him quirk an antennae.\n\nOoliri sits, and his eyes pale in meditation.\n\nThere was no reason to expect this. But he had a feeling.\n\nHe'd done this same ritual yesterday morning. He'd withdrawn arete from\nthe crypt of his one vesper.\n\nAnd now...\n\nNow he had multiple vespers. He was a vesperbane.\n\nMake that three gifts from his brother, then. Why entrust all this to\nhim?\n\nBut if he had his brother's heart pumping blood, if this arm was the\ndesign of that medical genius...\n\nOoliri had watched him make the signs enough times. Centipede. Cricket.\nMite. And so forth.\n\n[Serum Form: Pure Healing Palm.]{.spell}\n\nBlood pools in his new hand. He feels a tug of what is not his will, and\nfollows it. The blood brightens and clears to purity. He presses it to\nAwelah's back.\n\nHealing yourself with ichor is hard. Healing others is much, much\nharder.  So much could go wrong. But Awelah is dead anyway.\n\nThe filament extending up to the sky fades to nonpresence. Awelah\nscreams. Ooliri does not know if that means it worked, or didn't.\n\nAwelah's eyes scramble for focus. She finds him sitting there. Antennae\nspiral defensively. She leans away. Her murmur is barely intelligible.\n\n\"Traitors...\"\n\nAwelah clasps her tarsi together into the seal of focus. Holds it for a\nmoment, and when her tarsi release, the palms are covered in black\nnerve.\n\nShe nods once, and her gaze flickers to the clear liquid on his hands,\nalbeit stained with hemolymph now. Awelah is wary, but this seems to\nconfirm that she at least had one ally remaining.\n\n\"So we're vesperbanes now.\"\n\n\"Long awaited, and yet I find the circumstances... distressing.\"\n\n\"Let's make our first mission getting back at the ones who did this to\nus.\"\n\nOoliri wants to say no. It was stupid. They would die. Just like the\nrest of team nineteen. But...\n\n\"Before he died, my brother told me what our mission really was. We need\nto find our father's correspondent and\" --- this was inference --- \"help\nthem decode his last research notes.\"\n\nAwelah waits, listening for more.\n\n\"I checked our mentor's body. The notes aren't there. I think Unodha has\nthem.\"\n\n\"She has my family's cloak, too.\" Awelah stands with a groan, and\nwobbles for a few moments.\n\nOoliri stands with her. \"It's not defeat until you fail three times.\nThat's how the stories go, right?\"\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nA clear sky yawns above. The wisps are gone. It feels like something is\nending.\n\nThe sun seeks darkness at the horizon. As it sets, the tone of\neverything warms, like the world had been set alight.\n\nMakuja's world had been set alight. She'd watched master burn in that\nwarden's suicide technique. She wonders how much of her had burned, in\nthat conflagration. She wonders how much of her remains.\n\nThey sit at their camp. Unodha drinks her tea. She is condensing\nenervation, binding arete to replenish her reserves. Makuja sharpens her\nknives.\n\nTheir camp is not hard to find --- they thought everyone else in a large\nradius was dead, and they'd be leaving soon. Two figures round the bend\nof a ridge --- a familiar, vexsome pale violet and a gray against gold.\n\nIt seems they hadn't been hard to track, either.\n\nUnodha didn't have her bow; Makuja hadn't retrieved it.\n\nDutifully, she says, \"Enemies incoming.\" Doubtless the fearsome hunter\nher master was had already noticed.\n\n\"You should have brought me her head,\" Unodha growls. \"You told me you\nkilled her.\"\n\n\"She has returned to life, much like the nymph whose heart you set\nfree.\" Makuja grabs her other knife. \"Shall we put these angels back in\nthe grave?\"\n\n\"Gladly.\" Unodha takes the skin of tea and downs all of it. \"Bitter. You\nshould know better,\" she murmurs.\n\nMakuja smiles. \"Allow me to spill your blood?\" she requests.\n\nMaster arches one antennae.\n\n\"You do not have the arete left to manifest your myxokora. Nor your\nbow, nor your hounds. You have me, but my body is young and weak. I am\nan assassin, and with only my natural endowments, I will be of little\nuse in this battle. With your blood, however, you can use [Blood Wolf\nHowl]{.spell} and grant me strength.\"\n\nA moment, and then Unodha holds out a foreleg. Makuja stabs, and drinks.\nThe wound closes itself.\n\nIn moments, Makuja feels the blood in every muscle fiber. It hurts.\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nAwelah and Ooliri arrive.\n\nThere's no will left for posturing. It's the dregs of two exhausted\narmies meeting, each disfigured by attrition.\n\nAwelah has one word for Makuja. \"Traitor.\"\n\nIndeed.  How perceptive.\n\nOoliri has a proposal. \"There's still a possibility of an amicable\nresolution if ---\"\n\nUnodha's voice is not a growl. \"Die.\" Makuja watches closely, sees the\nshadow of a pentagram in her eyes.  Her master seems to lose all\nswagger when it comes to this mission.\n\nHer master lunges forward and the nymphs flinch back. She slams a leg\ninto the ground and casts, [Sand Form: Rising Ground.]{.spell}\n\nThe earth in meters' radius around them expands, granting them the high\nground.\n\nMaster had explained to her the limit of this technique: it was just an\nair bubble supporting them. Excess weight would pop it. But would fresh\npawns know that?\n\nThe mystery of her survival is joined by a new inexplicability. Awelah\nis a vesperbane; she claps her tarsi together, and casts, [Umbra Form:\nUmbral Body Projection.]{.spell}\n\nA second pure black Awelah joins the first, but without the spear.\n\nHow can a nymph who was pawn yesterday cast such an advanced\ntechnique?\n\nThey rush in to engage Unodha, and the bane is moving substantially\nslower now.\n\nSomething has changed in the gray nymph. Ooliri closes in with so much\nless hesitation. And why should such a soft larva outdo her in that\nregard?\n\nTime to play her part.\n\nIt's with a rush of power that Makuja enters the fray. Her legs pump,\nand she darts forward. Her arms swing forward with weight. She breaks\nOoliri's baton swing.\n\nThen Awelah claps and swings her foreleg and her shadow is rushing for\nher, faster than the pale nymph herself can move. Makuja dodges back,\nand its raptorial stab misses. Then she replies with a lunge forward,\nand stabs once, twice, three times with only her knife. The barrage\nunravels the projection, and it melts.\n\nThe blackness clings to the metal of Makuja's knife, and it no longer\nreflects light.\n\nWhen she blocks a swing of Ooliri's baton with the knife, the metal\nbends. She drops the useless, degraded tool.\n\nAwelah can do more than make projections. She holds out her palms and\ncasts bane blast --- but it's nothing like her relative's efforts. It's\nmore of a black sputtering, spitting enervate at Unodha.\n\nA scrape of master's raptorial spines across the gray nymph's thorax\nleaves a gash. Then he makes a sign and slowly runs a bandaged arm over\nthe wound, messily closing it.\n\nMakuja evaluates the tide of this fight. Her chance to end it would be\nsoon.\n\nIt comes when Awelah stops, stabbing down on her master's foot, briefly\nrooting her to the spot.\n\nThe red nymph takes a deep breath.\n\nMakuja does what needs to be done. She is not just violent, but patient.\n\nLast thoughts flicker through her mind.\n\nA blade should never hurt its wielder.\n\nNo mission matters more than her master.\n\nMakuja is a good tool, and does what needs to be done. But whose needs?\nWho would wield Makuja, when this was all over?\n\nMakuja crouches with the great power that hurts her legs, and she leaps.\nShe flies like an arrow and buries her knife to the hilt in what was her\nmaster's neck.\n\nUnodha roars, and there's something uncertain in it.\n\n\"Your tea was poisoned. This fight was over before it began.\"\n\nMakuja wasn't done. The two former pawns have halted in confusion. The\nnymph pulls herself onto Unodha as she begins to struggle. Reaches for\nher abdomen, retrieves her knife and stabs again. Begins to dig.\n\nFeels her heartbeat accelerating.\n\nMakuja grabs Unodha's entrails, rips them out and bites down.\n\nBlood loss gets to the huge bane, and she shudders and crumbles. Makuja\nturns to face the nymphs as she feels something squirm in her gut.\n\nAnd now, to inherit. She's seen her master do this.\n\n[Vesper form: Chimerical Sacrifice.]{.spell}\n\nThree nymphs' eyes pale in unison.\n\nTwo entities, wriggling in dark crypts, so tiny, yet growing, reaching\nout ---\n\n--- through an endless procession of profoundly rotting corpses,\nworm-colonized and fungus-rooted, the gravestones like pillars upholding\nrealms ---\n\n--- through a grand bat with wings like the heavens above, exalted\nabove every last thing in existence, his head a fractal of horned\nantlers like a great lord's crown ---\n\n--- through a small mantis kneeling supplicant, whose eyes are spirals\nand tarsi are joined in prayer, whose back is wingless before bat wings\nclimb free and there is kneeling no longer, never again ---\n\n; vesper\n: Appraisal.\n\n  Agreement.\n\n  Investment.\n\n  Agreement.\n\n[Vesper form: Pharmakon!]{.spell}\n\nWhen lucidity returns, two nymphs look upon bloody Makuja, standing atop\nthe corpse of her teacher, her guardian, her master.\n\nShe hyperventilates. From her side, liquid muscle erupts. It sculpts\nitself into a form broad and long, tipped with claws.\n\nThe two nymphs look upon Unodha's heir.\n\nAwelah moves first, forelegs reaching for the projection mass Makuja\nearlier dispersed, compelling it to reform.\n\nA new battle unfolds. From a distance, it resembles the first fight of\nthe day in miniature.\n\nAwelah flanks her with her projection. Makuja surges. She feels the\nblood in her muscles. It doesn't pain her. It's not her masters' power\nnow, but hers.\n\nIt's a dance. Wing-sweeps meet with spear thrusts. Myxokora meet with\n",
  "title": "A Chimerical Hope"
}