{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/black-nerve/eifre-quest/a2",
  "path": "/posts/black-nerve/eifre-quest/a2",
  "publishedAt": "2021-02-26T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "\"Excuse me, sirrah?\" Marka is calling out as she trots into the crowd.\n\nMarka's route had taken her to a minor vantage point over the market,\nand to enter it proper, she descends a ramp. At a glance, the crowd is\nsplitting around her, and she ups her pace.\n\nThe Snurratre mantis does not react to her calling, and she repeats it\nonce and the distance closes and there is still no response.\n\nUp close, this male looks like a drying flower. Chitin old and\nunpolished, his hair-like setae falling out. There's a slight tremble\nto those legs not resting on something, a tremble she's seen in aunts\nand grandfathers.\n\nJust as a drying flower wouldn't register the sun, the male reacts not\nto Marka's approach.\n\n\"Sirrah? Are you alright?\" She has crouched down, eye level with him.\n\nMarka is speaking fast, and she frequently breaks --- the attempted ---\neye contact to the check the crowd, and gaze off toward where the\nfleeing mantis had climbed away.\n\nOh, she'd much rather bolt after them, chase them like a avenger\nincensed. But the personal element seems about as important here ---\nand, really, Marka has a vesperbane's speed and wits. She could very\nwell achieve both.\n\nIf this male wasn't so unresponsive!\n\nMarka reaches out --- and this finally prompts a reaction. He recoils.\nPalps drawn back, like disgust. But it couldn't be disgust --- what\ncould prompt that? Marka had been sure to bathe before her appointment.\n\nThe voice is rough, but from emotion or age?\n\n\"What do you want?\" he asks. \"You look like a welkinist. But that\nantennae band --- no, you don't even have that much honor. You're...\na vesperbane.\"\n\n\"Yes. Countenanced by the wardens, four years of service. I noticed you\ncried out --- I'm here to help.\"\n\nHe spits and he scrambles back and he pulls together his robe/dress. He\nsays, \"I don't want your help.\"\n\n\"Why not?\" She looks again to the wall and she grinds her mandibles.\n\"Please, don't be so difficult.\"\n\nIt is the wrong thing to say. He shakily lifts up a raptorial, as if to\ndefend from a coming strike.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" the vesperbane says. \"I just want to help.\"\n\n\"Is this your first step before you name a price, or take further\nmeasures to protect me like that last vesperbane? Or am I just a\nsignpost for you to read and locate violence?\"\n\n\"Again, I only want to help.\" She's repeating herself so much --- why\nis nothing getting across?\n\n\"But your help is not freely given. It never is, from your kind. I will\nnot accept it.\"\n\n\"I'm not going to charge you money. I've enough money.\"\n\n\"And I have no children left for you to take, vesperbane. I have\nnothing left, nothing but debts.\"\n\nMarka almost jumps, almost smiles. Could this be a thread to pull on?\n\"Debts to whom?\"\n\n\"Debts to you, and --- debts to them. Have you come to collect, as\nwell?\"\n\n\"Them --- the mantis that was fleeing, were they the one that made you\ncry out? Who are they?\"\n\n\"My wife knew them. Ran with them. She's --- She cannot pay, now. And\nwhatever she did, whomever she owed, that's fallen to me now. I only\nwished to keep my house in order. I've never had a job, and now none\nwill have me.\" He lifts a digit, and wipes at the bodily fluids beneath\nhis bruising eye.\n\nShe can hear his breaths, unsteady, heavy things. He reaches beneath his\nhead in the manner of a habit, like Marka reaching for her timepiece ---\nif he wore a necklace, he would touch it now. But there is nothing\nthere.\n\n\"I'll deal with them. They won't bother you again.\" Marka stops, and\nsmiles. \"They won't bother anyone from now on, I promise you. I'll\nbring back whatever they took.\"\n\n\"No,\" he responds. \"No. Do not kill mantids in my name, vesperbane.\nDo not put me in your debt.\"\n\n\"I'm simply here to mete out justice.\"\n\nMarka stands up. She's heard what she needed to hear, and those are the\nlast word that need to be said. Now she will go and, as a knight would,\nset wrongs aright. Recover that necklace, and anything else they might\nhave been taken.\n\nCould this exchange have gone better? Was there any comfort to be given,\nafter he recognized that she was a vesperbane?\n\nShe's just barely able to hear a response coming after her as she walks\naway.\n\n\"Does the world need more of your kind's justice?\"\n\nMarka crouches, and leaps very high into the air.\n\nWhen it is said that Marka has a vesperbane's speed, what exactly this\nmeans can vary. Speed is a simple advantage, and centuries of banes have\nstiven to be ever faster.\n\nA muscle is a bundle of fibers, anchored to exoskeleton. If every muscle\nfiber flexed at once, it could tear tendons from chitin like grass\nblades plucked. But a vesperbane pulsing with the blood of bats can\neffortlessly heal torn muscle fibers and buckling chitin. This is low\nhanging fruit and common to every vesperbane.\n\nWith more study, though, one can alter the structure of the muscles\nthemselves in the name of force. One can reshape their chitin and\nendocrinology and grow an unnatural excess. If one were particularly\ndaring, one could try dispensing with biology entirely, try to construct\nsomething more artificially effective --- an approach, granted, one sees\nmore among the percipients than the vesperbanes, when one sees it at\nall.\n\nMarka, however, has studied the purest art of vesperbanes. Enervate is\nphysics, not biology --- governed by rules rather than tendencies.\nScrutable rules. And the fourth rule of enervate physics is that\nnerve-repulsion is proportional to energy density over the cube of\ndistance.\n\nFor this reason, Marka's back is lined with black pores, which\ncorrespond to holes in her armor. Black nerve exudes from these pores\nwhile behind them, a chamber fills with dense, compacted enervate. The\nsecreted enervate thrums full of energy squeezed into it through\nchemical combustion. Energized, it repulses the mass of enervate in the\nchamber. Chamber-bound enervate is anchored to her body, but the\nrepulsive enervate is not.\n\nThe result? Propulsion.\n\nThere's a few problems with this --- mantids are heavy (around a dozen\nkilograms) and that repulsive enervate? It's gone. You can't recover\nit, drawing it back would undermine the very force they're intended to\nimpart. And its repulsive force is not reserved for the chamber --- it\nrepulses itself: in seconds it will dissolve into a fine mist, and you\nfly far away.\n\nBottom line, this technique is expensive. Enervate is a finite\nresource.\n\nA less obvious fact is that 5 meters per second won't tend to stay 5\nmeters per second for long --- there's an impediment called atmosphere.\nAir resistance gets quadratically worse the faster you go. But the sixth\nrule of enervate physics is that enervate attenuates incident forces.\n\nMarka coats her armor with enervate, and air that hits it not only fails\nto impede her, but the mass is engulfed by her enervate. She's learned\na technique which allows her to direct that mass behind her, and fire it\noff alongside the energic enervate. That's rule seven of enervate ---\nelement preference. Presented with a denser material, the engulfed\nnitrogen is shunted in favor of metal.\n\nAbout a kilogram worth of mass is in a cubic meter of air, and and a\ngood chunk of that's getting tossed out behind her several times a\nsecond.\n\nNow, this level of fine manipulation isn't free --- it costs energy as\nwell. But it doesn't cost enervate, which makes it more sustainable.\n\nMarka estimates she spends about half a kilogram of enervate in that\ninitial burst --- out of the five kilos she keeps in her soul. She burns\na few hundred, maybe a thousand kilocalories.\n\n(Is using enervate techniques above a civilian crowd dangerous? They are\nin broad daylight, and Marka starts out high enough above the crowd that\nthe hot sun sees the mist of repulsive enervate grow transparent and\ndissolve into nothing before gravity takes it. When enervate's energy\ndensity gets too high, it fissions to simpler forms --- the simplest\nbeing harmless to mantids.)\n\nAll of this reasoning and calculation is very much an anathema to speed.\nSo none of this goes through Marka's head. It once did, though. Now\nit's all trained and rote.\n\nWhile the vesperbane descends in an arc toward the far wall, she slips\nout her timepiece and checks --- for all the frustration of that\nconversation, it had taken at most five minutes.\n\nMarka lands forcefully, her momentum causing the pole to crack but hold.\nShe's leaping from tarshold to tarshold and pole to pole now,\nscrambling for the tops of buildings.\n\nIn the time that's passed, a civilian could cover a few hundred meters.\nLess, given the terrain --- but even that didn't matter. A truly\ncareful runaway would have their trail twist all around, snaking behind\nvisual obstacles to foil a late pursuer like herself.\n\nWould they be truly careful, though? It'd require having seen her in\nthe crowd, realizing at a distance that she was a vesperbane, and making\nthe leap of logic that she intended to do anything. While already having\nback turned, climbing away, and probably not till now having any prior\nthought of such a threat.\n\nThink, Marka. What is her problem, simply stated? She does not know\nwhere the mantis went. (She likes thinking this way, imagining her\nconcerns as equations she simplifies, terms canceling.)\n\nHow can she reduce or eliminate that uncertainty? Asking the fearstruck\nmantids staring at her if they've seen anything? Scanning the rooftops\nfor signs of passage?\n\nOr just looking: southeast of her, at --- she estimates --- maybe\neighty meters, a mantis with a head poking above a wall on someone's\nroof that is designed like a porch.\n\nIt's the mantis, the probable assailant. Same dark clothes, same\nyellowish eyes, same impression of a concealed weapon. (Her eyes were\nsharp, if not Brismati-sharp.)\n\nOh, and they jump startled when she looks over.\n\nThat part of her that yearns --- as any warrior yearns --- for\nchallenges droops antennae at that. After all, this could have been a\nchallenge if the mantis had but hid.\n\n(But that's a petulant complaint.)\n\nMarka chases.\n\nWhat conveys speed? The cheap banestone cracking ",
  "title": "Interlude 1b"
}