{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/black-nerve/eifre-quest/02",
  "path": "/posts/black-nerve/eifre-quest/02",
  "publishedAt": "2020-03-23T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "You twitch an antennae, a small part of you almost feeling almost...\nannoyed. You'd chosen this rock specifically to get away from loud\nobnoxious mantids screaming at you. But before this distracts you any\nfurther, you stop, and you breathe, and you release the unnecessary\nfeeling, letting it flow away and out of you. You always had excellent\ncomposure.\n\nVesperbanes save people, and it's your duty to endeavor to help. Even if\nit's a jarring interruption to a relaxing study. You know what the\nstoryscroll heroes would do.\n\nStanding, leaping from your study rock, you aim toward the ambrosia\nwoods. You give a parting glance --- your scrolls are safely weighted\ndown, and no one could see them from the village and try to come and\nsteal them.\n\n(One of those scrolls was a introduction to geology that you'd picked up\nout of curiosity. It's thick reading, and not your main interest, but\nyou've gotten far enough in to identify the stone as andesite, flecked\nwith tiny black crystals. It was a bright fact gleaned on a otherwise\ndark day, and you remember it fondly for that reason.)\n\nAs you turn back toward the looming woods, a whim strikes you and you\nholler a sound, loud through your abdominal spiracles, hoping to\nreassure the imperiled mantis. It comes out low and strangled and you're\ntoo embarrassed to try again, and instead you hurry toward the woods.\n\nThe grasses grow taller and darker as you draw near. You see a snake\nslither by, half-hidden in a clump of bushy ferns. Clicks and buzzes of\nlesser insects grow audible as you dash down the muddy stone path into\nthe ambrosia woods. The bushes and shrubbery get steadily thicker the\nfarther you get from the village, but the transition to woodland is\nsharp. Pale trunks shoot up from the plains like knives, and in such\nnumbers they're like a wall. The path continues into the woods, but\nbends tightly just inside.\n\nA wooden sign is nailed to a tree, former words faded under the\nweathering of years. You make a few letters: 'AMBROSIA WOOD --- T RN B'\n...Or is it 'T RM E'? Impossible to say.\n\nOne reading comes obvious to you. Turn back. The temptation is there,\nfor sure. You know what's said to inhabit the woods: witch-roaches, evil\ndruids, termites! And you know what's known to inhabit them: ambrosia\nweevils, the eerie, fickle creatures whose dominion over the woods keeps\nmantids from prying the depths, let alone settling there.\n\nThis was stupid.\n\nYou're a fourth (almost fifth! but still fourth) instar mantis nymph.\nYou have the frailest physicals among all the nymphs in pre-vesper.\nVesperbanes save people, but you aren't a vesperbane. You were deemed\nunworthy twice!\n\nIf you go back to village, you could ask one of your more fit peers to\naccompany you (Yikki would love the adventure, for sure). Or you could\ndo the sensible thing, and ask an imago! Or just forget all this...\n\nIt's a small voice in your head, but it speaks to worries that were\nalready there. And yet, the duty, the conviction, the bravado that had\nbrought you this far is still there, in fact they might even be\noutvoting the worry---\n\nBut then you hear a sound. It's a low noise, a rattling and grunking\nwhose like you've never heard. It strikes you still with visceral fear,\nas the reality of danger finally presents itself.\n\nIs this the monster already coming? Are you next?\n\nAny other would be completely paralyzed, but you always had excellent\ncomposure.\n\nDo you turn abdomen and run back to the village? Do you stand and face\nwhat's coming? Maybe you could even hide --- could you ambush the\nmonster? Or would that just make you easier prey?\n\nJust visible, a dark, enshadowed form stalks closer.\n\n::: afterword\n:::: details\nSuggestions Received\n\n> Try to hide and ambush the beaste.\n\n- - -\n\n> in terms of the quest at hand, i would try to hide somewhere and see\n> whats making the noise\n\n- - -\n\n> I would hide and gather information, whilst planning an escape path\n> because I am a multitasking mantis, and that's not my life that is in\n> danger.\n\n- - -\n\n> If it is sentient and wants to eat me, I would bore it to death by\n> declaring poetry about the andesite.\n>\n> After all, everything knows you shouldn't eat food that's wrong in\n> the head.\n::::\n:::"
}