{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/black-nerve/eifre-quest/a5",
  "path": "/posts/black-nerve/eifre-quest/a5",
  "publishedAt": "2021-05-18T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "::: subchapter\nI.\n\nSince she embarked on this mission, Marka had been ready for violence\nand danger. The longer it goes on --- wearing away at her with its\nendless walking and hard choices --- the more she accepts she'll come out\nthe end of it exhausted to the point of dreamless sleep. And when Wik\nproposed to sneak through the sewers, she did expect it to be gross.\nBut in all of her anticipation, it's none of these that really tempt her\nto call it all off.\n\nThe sewers beneath Wentalel are dark, muggy and tight. Predictable,\nunsurprising facts? Sure. But inescapable ones, that seep into the\nvery atmosphere of being in the sewers. They had a lantern, but Wik\nstill has it covered. And while it had assured her the Wentalel sewers\nwere more spacious than usual, when an hour passes surrounded on all\nsides by old stone, not being outright constricted is a small solace.\nThe big, open room where they met and fought Angwi did reprieve, but\nnow she follows Wik away into another sewer main.\n\nNow far from the gangsters' hearshot, Wik speaks. \"I worry we're losing\ntrack of what we're here for.\" A wide sweep of its foreleg encompasses\nthe distant platform, still dimly visible. \"Angwi, Essi, the boss --\ntake a step back from circumstance, and realize this is not our fight.\nWe came here to acquire the gang's assets and avoid undue violence. Not\nmore than that is necessary, and no less is desirable.\"\n\nMarka lifts her palps. \"But the circumstance is pretty important. Angwi\njust tried to kill us --\"\n\n\"Tried may be putting it a bit strongly.\"\n\n\"She played with us, yeah. Still, her ultimate goal was clearly to eat\nus. Or me. That's what she said. So, the circumstance means we'll have\nto go down there and deal with the threat she poses.\"\n\nAnd they should see what's down there, full stop. Why does the\narch-fiend want no one in these sewers? Could he be here himself? And\nwhat is the gang seeking down below? A termite arcology? They're\nexcavating something, and no matter what, it's something of interest.\n\n\"To put it simply, if we fight Angwi again, especially if it's on her\nown terms, I fear we lose.\" Its cotton antennae curl up. \"Us exploiting\nsurprise and lack of knowledge, and her not acting to her full ability\nwere undeniably factors in us surviving that fight. We can expect\nneither in a rematch. And she isn't the only one down there.\"\n\nMarka clenches her raptorials, pausing a moment before she moves her\npalps. \"What do you want to do about her, then?\"\n\n\"That's a long conversation, one we need not have while the gangsters\nare back there chewing palps in impatience.\" Wik reaches out and taps\nMarka on the head. \"Stay focused on the goal. You're a warden, Marka.\nHave you heard the phrase mission creep?\"\n\nWik had changed the topic. Marka wants to change it back, nail the\ntallowbane to its positions and win. She bites back the impulse. Is\nWik even wrong? Their best effort weakened Angwi by a margin. And her\nbeing a bloodbane --- how soon will that injury be healed entirely?\n\n\"Fine. Let's say I swallowed all my objections and followed your lead.\nWhat do you propose we do?\"\n\nWik pauses at that, lifting a pale tarsus to tap slowly, thoughtfully on\ntheir labrum. The waxen digit fused to their face when it rested there,\nand when it lifted, strings of wet wax stretch between it and the\nmouthpart.\n\n\"Being seen entering the sewer,\" Wik pauses there deliberately --- it\nseemed above explicitly casting blame, but the emphasis fell there for a\nreason: it was Marka's idea --- \"has damaged our chances of slipping\nthrough their base with stealth, but we can't know by how much.\" Wik\ndrops their foreleg, and the tarsus with it. \"Put simply, we don't know\nwhat the situation at the base looks like, and whether they're on guard\nor unawares.\"\n\n\"But we know who would,\" Marka says. \"Whatever's going on at the base,\nit's going to be easier to get in with one of their own vouching for\nus.\"\n\nWik peers at Marka, but it knows she's right. It says, \"Just remember\nwhat we are here for.\"\n\nLittle more to discuss, they start back toward the gangsters. With the\nconversation gone, this new quiet underscores the high-pitched drips and\ndull, obscure reverberations which the sewers have for ambience.\n\nAfter a short walk, Marka is looking over the gangsters who'd attack\nthem long moments ago. There are six. The one who'd thrown rocks kneels\nby a prone, stinking mantis --- the one Angwi had ran through with her\nwretched raptorials.\n\n\"Is she--\" Marka starts, quietly.\n\nWik interrupts, \"Yes. Dead. There wasn't much I could do by the time I'd\ngotten to them.\"\n\n\"There's still something,\" the rock-thrower says. She rises and big\ngreen eyes stare at the tallowbane. \"You can get her back for this.\" Her\nantennae are curled tight.\n\nWik only nods and says nothing.\n\nMarka looks over the six --- five --- gangsters on the platform, all but\none restrained by Wik's wax. She can see where she'd earlier drawn\nblood, the injuries are now bandaged up, or covered in red wax --\nichortallow. Was that safe for civilians?\n\n\"Names?\" Marka asks, as was polite.\n\n\"Silenal,\" the rock-thrower says. She had tried to convince the\nvesperbanes to back off, and then, failing that, to work together with\nthe gang.\n\n\"Tlik,\" says the mantis who had earlier argued with Silenal. On closer\nlook --- she wore the same warriorly rope garb --- Marka recognizes this\nas the first gangster she fought. Tlik looks at the warden with a\ndeferential bow of the antennae.\n\n\"Nal,\" says a mantis wriggling against bonds to sit up.\n\n\"Memata,\" grinds out a mantis not looking at anyone. Ruddy cloak --- the\nmantis Wik had impersonated when it first joined the fight?\n\nThe last three had been spoken bymantids bound by Wik's wax, some still\nstruggling to be free. There was a fifth and final mantis, who seemed\ntoo out of it to respond --- succumbed to injuries? Or had Wik sedated\nthem?\n\n\"Alright. And which one of those need we actually remember?\" Wik asks.\n\n\"Mine,\" the rock-thrower, Silenal, says. \"Everyone around here knows my\nface. If I'm the one speaking for you, they'll listen. Just stick with\nme.\"\n\nSeeming the most important among them, Marka gives this Silenal another\nlook. The darkgreen mantis stands shorter than the blackbane, with\nlarge, light eyes and thick palps. Clearly she's female, so one\nconcludes she's an instar or two away from teneral.\n\nUnlike the others, Silenal wears no cloak, only three shirts --- one for\neach thoractic segment. All are the dull colors of cheap, low-class dye.\nAnd had no sleeves: instead, the legholes yield ropes or ribbons that\nrun the length of the leg, attaching to what are leg warmers or guards.\n\nIt takes a moment of careful peering in the torchlight to notice each\none has a concealed blade.\n\nSilenal turns, taking a step forward. The vesperbanes don't move until\nthe gangster says, \"C'mon,\" with a wave of a foreleg. Marka starts after\nher, while Wik attends to the other gangsters, freeing them.\n\n\"Catacombs are down there, ain't they?\" It's one of the gangsters.\n\nSilenal holds up two digits. \"We're heading back for two reasons. One,\nthe more bodies we got the better our chances are, so we'll talk a few\nof the others to our side. Two, we'll need a crank to force open one of\nthe old doors down there.\"\n\nThe walkway Silenal leads them down is not narrow; three mantids can\nwalk side by side, and comfortably. Planks extend the walkways, looking\nsimilar to those shoddy bridges in the previous room.\n\nAt intervals come torches the gang had placed, creating in a rhythm of\nmeager light followed by long stretches of darkness. (Sometimes very\nlong; torches only last while they have fuel, and whoever kept this\npassage lit didn't try very hard.)\n\nMaybe if Marka wasn't wearied after a long fight, she would have seen it\ncoming.\n\nA figure crouches low behind her. Marka dimly wonders, at first, if the\nthey have dropped something.\n\nThere's only a few heartbeats of time when she could've reacted\ndifferently. A gangster flies at her with all the speed of a mantid's\nlunge.\n\nOn her back now. A triumphant snarl. A raptorial closing round her\nthorax, restraining her foreleg --- but finding no purchase on armor.\n\nBut a real threat is in the other leg. A knife, swinging inward, at neck\nlevel.\n\nThe best that can be said for what Marka does next is that it was\nself-defense.\n\nThe modifications to her dorsal thorax and armor's backplate are for\npropulsion. But what they do is eject high velocity, high energy\nenervate.\n\nPain jerks the foreleg upward, midswing. This lacerates the periphery of\nMarka's eye instead of her neck. She sees pain. But the attacker falls\nback off her with an agonized cry. As per the third law of motion, Marka\nis pushed forward.\n\n(There were strictures against envespered assault with endowed ability:\na crime in all nine provinces. Marka hadn't heard of anyone convicted of\nit --- but the punishment was a strenuous dock in pay.)\n\nIn the dark between torches, Marka cannot see the damage done. She has\nno sense of just how much enervate was fired in that panicked discharge.\nUmbral damage is ranked in degrees, and some of them are merely\ncrippling.\n\n\"Are you alright?\" she asks.\n\nBy now, the other mantids on the walkway are reacting. Except for Wik,\nthese were vesperless mantids, civilians, and the release of enervate\nwill have set them on a primal edge.\n\nMarka's spoken question further confused things --- it seemed an\nappropriate reaction to them tumbling into one other by accident, rather\nthan the assault or counterattack the other mantis's cries suggest.\n\nBefore any response manifested, the attacker's on their feet. They're\nstriking forward with a raptorial. Marka can only shift to catch it --\nwherever it's aimed --- and hope it lands on her armor. Another strike\ncomes, and then another. The darkness gives every attack stealth.\n\n\"Fuck's going on?\"\n\nMarka gets a few blows of her own in --- cracking them on the head with\nthe weight of her foreleg guard, grabbing a raptorial limb, swinging out\nher midlegs to knock out",
  "title": "Interlude 1e"
}