The young vesperbanes watch the unconscious defector, mandibles prominent and sharp. You glance back at Maune and bite your maxillary palp. Still sitting on your mother's back, you grip her thorax, dactyls squeezing against her chitin. You might've made a nervous squeak but you aren't sure if anyone hears. Spiracles twitching, you wonder if you have it in you speak right now, and say what you mean to say. To berate the vesperbanes for their callousness, to demand that they spare Maune, to tell your mother to say the right words and fix it all, make things simple and pleasant again. You always had excellent composure, and this is what keeps you from loudly crying out and making it plain obvious just how young you are. Still, Tlista nods at your wordless squeeze. Does she understand how you feel right now? Do you even understand? "It's pitiful." The words strike out in the silence, and it's an instant before you --- before anyone --- realizes who spoke. Tlista continues, "A defect, a missing bane, and yet she's done your mission better than you children have." "What?" It's not a rebuttal, it's hardly even an inquiry: the words are pure shock, and at this the green vesperbane's antennae are frozen, splayed in the air. Internally, you mirror the reaction. Praising a defect? You haven't even had a vesperbane's education yet, and you understand how wrong that is. "You mentioned your parameters earlier, didn't you?" she asks, tossing her head in the direction of the bulky red mantis. "That you are to render aid to Shatalek if needed? Have you? More to the point, did you not all but state that pursuit of the ambrosia witch is entirely irrelevant to your orders?" Red is stepping over, forcefully nudging green aside to stand before your mother. "With all due respect madame," she starts, "you no authorityn. You've been relieved of duty for years. We've humored you out of kindness, but you really are in no position to be---" Tlista's raptorial foreleg snaps out and smacks Red across her face. It was a backlegged strike, so no spines impaled her. The imago says, "Have you wondered why it is that you were able to pin down the witch, where so many before have failed?" Green is speaks while Red is rubbing her mandibles and backing away. The smaller bane says, "We assumed she simply wasn't a priority. There are far too many defects in the heartlands --- it's natural for the weakest not to warrant a waste of our scarce resources." "She was coming to Shatalek, to warn us of the danger, inform us that the stewartry would be sending teams to keep control on things." The two vesperbanes glance back at the slumped mantis. "Tell me, why did you take the time --- waste the time --- tracking down this defect? Time that you could have spent ensuring the safety of my town?" "Ma'am," Green starts, "are you acting to shelter this defect?" It's a high crime, you remember. One of the highest; unmitigated guilt of such entails execution. "Do you think," Tlista's voice is tending low; rather than the highs of objective command, the tone of her words became something personal and inviting, "it's a coincidence that I'm stationed in the village nearest to the witch? That she is acting in our interests? She is my jurisdiction." You don't let your confusion march onto your face and ruin her ploy. "If that is the case," Green starts in a voice making a tangible effort not to call beetleshit, "why would our master tell us of her bounty? Why, if the defect supposedly accounted for?" "There's another thing that doesn't add up," Tlista says. There's something --- confident about the way she flatly ignores questions, setting her own pace for the conversation. "You said this was a B-rank mission. For world-scar investigation, that part makes sense." Your mother leans forward, antennae extending out toward the banes. "But you're wretches. Barely even wretches, banelings. Yet B-rank missions require the presence of a fiend." And the banes fall in line with he course your mother sets, Green dropping her inquiry to instead respond, "Our master is working with the vindicators at the mound to secure it. He is an arch-fiend." "And just who is your roach-brained master?" "Dlenam." For once, your mother is thrown off balance; she jerks back at the name. "Of course it'd be him." She gathers herself up, and sets her thorax erect. "Tell your master to knock some sense into you next chance he gets, hear me? Before you fuck up another mission. But for now, go do your jobs, and ensure the syndics of Shatalek are aware of what's occurring." A midleg is flung back behind her emphatically. It clips you a little. The vesperbanes stare at your mother for a beat, Green with wariness written into the angle of her legs, Red with open-mouthed, wide-mandibled indignance. But ultimately, she is right and they know it. Her correctness costs them several hundred claws. Green is the one who starts walking away first. When she passes behind your mother, she says, "Your wisdom is quite appreciated, madam Tlista." Red passes next, stomping, giving your mother a wide berth. Last is the quiet one, whom they called Shimare. She leaps from atop the roadside ridge, landing silently on the stone path, standing thin and tall. Her wings flare wetly open. Her forelegs and midlegs come together to form a sign, and then the skin inside of her wings begins to glow brightly red. Why does a nymph have wings? She begins to walk softly after her teamates, but Tlista extends her left midleg, stopping her. "Shimare... of clan Brismati?" A nod. "Tell me, do you know Alaremu? Has she moved on? Has she remarried?" Shimare stands still for several heartbeats, and then finally speaks. "Aunt Alaremu is dead." And then it is Tlista who stands still while Shimare dashes away toward her team. But mother gathers herself quickly, and she forms a sign with forelegs, and whispers something reverent you can't make out, even riding on her back. Looking up, she seems to remember what you're here for, and she crouches in front of the catalyst of all this trouble, the ambrosia witch. "You owe me one Maune. You really do." A blue antennae shifts sluggishly. Is she awake? "Mother," you say, "those vesperbanes, they weren't very nice." "No, of course they weren't," she says, and her next words are a mutter, seemingly to herself. "Of course. Give a nymph power over matter and mantis, pile on responsibilities that would crush an imago, and let the vespers have their way with them --- and then wonder why vesperbanes are the vile mantes bugs hate." A wet cough. "It --- a nightmare, isn't it?" That sharpens mother's attention. She looks up. "You're awake." "You.. here. Tlist?" "It's me. C'mere." When she steps forward, a squawk cuts through the nighttime silence. Faster than an antennae can twitch, a black form is slicing through the air and lighting down between the veteran and the defector. Experimentally, you reach out and the bird rounds and squawks at you. It's Reva, the witch's familiar. "Calm it boy. They're- they're help." The bird steps to the side, but remains staring between you and Tlista. "My daughter said you think there is a way to save you." "Two ways... But I have a preference." Tlista waits. The witch's breath is slow, and you wonder if she's slipping in and out of awareness, or devoting all her energy to holding on. "Reva, show them." Mother prods you until you get off her back. Off you go. You're replaced by the much larger ambrosia witch, slung limp and gracelessly but steadily enough that Tlista begins to walk after the bird. It's a journey even deeper into the woods. The stone path turns to gravel and then mere trampled dirt. The soundscape turns to the aerial winds, seeking purchase below the canopy, and sleepless chitterring things. As you wind deeper (and wind the path does), the trees grow bigger and stranger. Those artful, alien workings of the weevils on the branches of the trees seem to teem and infest your surroundings the deeper in you go. "Mother?" "Yes?" "Does that mean I'm going to become mean if I become a vesperbane?" She pauses for a moment, considering. "No. You always have a choice, Eifre, remember that. But, if you become a vesperbane, it will try you. You'll be angry, you'll be tired, you'll be very confused, and most of all, you'll be hungry. It brings out the worst in someone." She takes your tarsus again, and squeezes it. "But your worst can still be wonderful. You really want to be a hero, don't you?" You smile, and say, "Heroes get to read all the best scrolls!" And your mother gives a single pulse of laughter, and that's enough. You walk beside your mother on the left, and you notice the midleg which the nerve-ooze had attacked is darkened and sluggish. Throughout the woods, there lingers a sweet, spiced smell you've always faintly associated with the edge of the ambrosia, and now it grows until it becomes entrenched on your antennae. You don't like the smell. It's not because it's unpleasant --- it's strange, but almost enticing (as it naturally would be, having heard the stories of ambrosia weevils). No, it's that very promise the smell holds that embitters you. You could ignore it while your mother carried you, but now as you're forced to walk on your weak nymph legs, you realize: you're hungry. You would have long have eaten dinner on any other night. But today, you're forced to do more on even less. You reach out and grasp your mother's tarsus, and she gives a squeeze. You hold her hand as you follow the crow ever deeper. And you know before Reva slows down that you have arrived. Thicker, taller, wilder --- the trees grow here. But that alone wouldn't account for this: before you rises a mass of branches and leaves taller than any building in Shatalek. Maybe it's a massive hill that just happened to form here --- you can't tell, because the growth is so thick the plants are a shroud. The bird leading you (leadi