- Scene from Sina Household past

  Two hours before midnight.

  Dahlia sat alone at the pond’s edge, casting the reel on her handmade fishing rod for the last time to pull in the final floating piece of beetle chitin. By the time she reeled it in and trudged back to the giant willow they’d made their camp around, her stomach was already growling and her legs about to give under her—so Ayla slid in from behind and poked her calves gently once, making her yelp as she fell onto her stomach.

  The twins laughed and helped scoop up all the beetle chitin she’d dropped, dumping them all into the pile of insect parts she’d gathered over the past eight hours. Amula was busy polishing her boots with a clump of wet grass, Jerie was playing a bouncy tune with his eyes closed, and Raya was laying on his back, groaning in terrible pain. Issam, on the other hand, seemed as cheery as anyone could possibly hope to be in the midst of the carnage; he’d been cooking pots upon pots of sweet carrot and cabbage soup over a small campfire for a few hours already, and still he showed no signs of ever stopping. His mantis scythes were chopping ingredients on their own while his hands tended to the flames, stirring the soup with a ladle he’d brought from the shelter.

  She felt a little twinge of jealousy in her chest as she sat up straight, wondering how he could look so professional at cooking when she was sure she’d spent more time cooking for both her and her father the past two years, but… he Issam after all. They weren’t on the same level.

  Eria commented idly, as Issam continued humming a soft tune while stirring and she picked up a few insect parts, piecing them together to see how they could fit each other.

  She touched her chest plate, over her stomach where she’d been stabbed by Raya’s spear and kicked by Amula’s boots.

  she thought.

  Of course, she knew that already, but she’d been actively avoiding any attempts at combining multiple types of insect parts—if she fell into that sort of ‘perfectionist’ mindset where she could spend as much time as she wanted on every Swarmsteel, she’d end up spending too much time just sitting around, and that was time spent not heading back home.

  Time was precious. Time couldn’t be wasted.

  That was why her pocket watches couldn’t be rewound.

  Even now, her chest ached a little, wondering if her father was doing alright… but Eria spoke reason. of them were in any condition to keep on travelling today after their crash landing into the garden. A good night’s rest wouldn’t benefit her as much as those who’d actually suffered a fair amount of non-insignificant injuries, but she was also more than capable of realising the reality of the situation now—if she didn’t want to die, she to work with other people.

  So, now she had to sit down, and now she had all the time in the world to tinker with new Swarmsteel.

  Her hands moved on their own, not needing the ticking sounds of her pocket watch anymore. The crackling on the bonfire was enough, and Jerie’s soft-toned music was enough.

  While the twins rushed back and forth to pilfer more vegetables from the garden, she picked out the largest intact pieces of the robber fly’s wings and estimated their dimensions with her eye, placed flat against the soft bed of grass. If she wanted to make full-on mantles like the moth mantles the twins had, she wouldn’t have enough wing fabric for everyone, but if it were only short capelets that could defend their shoulders… that could work.

  For now, she got to work laying out all the wings on the grass. Four mantles and three capelets for the seven of them.

  Her chisel was still rusted, but it was sharp enough. The steel thread glimmered in her eyes as she followed the lines of destruction, and faintly she felt she heard someone speaking next to her. She ignored it. She carved out ten, fifty, a hundred scales from a single beetle chitin, and started pressing each one into the robber fly’s wings, all evenly spaced. Then she curled the scales’ sharpened edges into the fabric, making them stick before flipping the wings over to interweave the edges—making sure the scales wouldn’t fall off even during violent, jerky motions. Melee fighters needed to be able to endure harsh blows, and runners like her needed to be lightweight. If she could do that for every single piece of apparel–

  “Dahlia.”

  She stopped breathing. Someone was tapping her shoulder. She turned, she looked, she reeled instinctively; Issam smiled mischievously as he pushed her a bowl of vegetable soup.

  “Everyone’s already eating,” he said, tilting his head at the rest of them, and she blinked a few more times for good measure before looking up at the sky—moonlight was dimmer, and all they really had was the campfire to light the garden. “Let’s just finish our meals and then go to sleep early tonight, alright? We’ve got another long day ahead of us.”

  “... Mm.”

  She pushed the mantle in her lap aside to make way for the hot wooden bowl, and it was only when she picked it up that she noticed something else off to the side. There wasn’t one, not two—there were already three completed mantles sitting next to her, and for their part, the twins were just staring. So was Jerie. So was Amula, and so was Issam as he pulled back to the campfire to pick up another bowl, scooting over to hand it to Raya.

  For part, Raya was still lying on his back, legs crossed and his spear being used as a pillow.

  “I don’t want it,” he said.

  “Just eat the thing,” Issam said.

  “I lost the fight. This is my punishment.”

  “Oh, Great Makers. What will I do with you?” Issam muttered, as he placed the bowl next to Raya’s head and scooted away, rejoining the rest of the group. “We know you didn’t kill anyone. Sure, you might’ve whacked Dahlia and the twins harder than you needed to, but we don’t hate you or anything. Your spear’s a sham, your crossbow’s a sham, I doubt you were even awake when the cocoon fell from the sky. You probably spent the entire past day cooped up in the loo or something, and just realised this morning–”

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  “Everyone died right in front of me.”

  Raya spoke, with such casualness, that everybody stopped sipping on their soup for a second.

  They waited to see if he’d continue.

  He didn’t.

  “... We ran from the Bazaar when the cocoon landed in front of us as well,” Issam said quietly, and everyone lowered their heads. “We weren’t the mantis that stood in front of the carriage. We weren’t the bug-slayers we thought we were. If, for some godforsaken reason, you think weak because you couldn’t protect everyone in front of you, then what in the Great Makers’ good name would we be–”

  “Weaklings.” Raya shrugged, rolling over so his back was turned towards them. “Them, too. Our fifth-year classmates. They died in a single hit to that lightning hornet. The graduates, too, and the guards, and everyone who stood up against it—it’s no normal giant insect, and I can’t beat it with just my spear and crossbow.”

  Dahlia lowered her bowl, frowning when she felt she saw the slightest twitch of a muscle underneath Raya’s tunic.

  Eria didn’t miss it either.

  She immediately shuffled over and pulled his shirt up, making him hiss and whirl on her, but everyone saw it in that brief moment as well: the veiny web-like wound dealt just between his shoulder blades, charred black as though he’d been doused in liquid fire—or zapped by an extremely precise bolt of lightning.

  Raya snatched up the bowl Issam had placed next to him and started downing it greedily, glaring at all of them as he did.

  “I didn’t lose,” he mumbled between breaths, between swallows. “I didn’t fucking .”

  “... You still lost to Amula,” Issam shrugged, taking a loud sip of his soup as Dahlia returned to her seat. Her brows were still furrowed. “It doesn’t matter if you were injured. Amula was also injured after our fight with the beetle on the bridge. You lost. Now eat the soup slowly or you’ll choke–”

  “We’ll fight again.”

  “No we won’t. We to work together to protect the people in the shelter. If we don’t–”

  “Then nothing changes,” Raya said, tossing the bowl aside as he wiped his lips with his wrist, looking them in the eye one by one. “The hole in the ceiling won’t close. What’s to say more Giant-Class bugs won’t crawl in after a few more days? What’s to say that lightning hornet isn’t calling more bugs down as we speak? Will this end if all you do is hide in your shelter and pretend the rest of the undertown isn’t completely annihilated?”

  “...”

  “No. This won’t end. Run and hide all you want, but now that the Swarm is here and that lightning hornet is at the heart of it all, it to die. Then we can see to escaping to the surface before more bugs crawl down here.”

  Aylee shook her head as she took a loud sip. “The surface? We can’t go up there. There’s on the surface but the Swarm.”

  Ayla dipped her head mid-sip. “We don’t know that. Maybe there survivors on the surface and they know what’s been going on down here. Maybe they’re even sending bug-slayers down to help us right now.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” Raya said, as he returned to lying on his bed, legs and arms crossed behind his head. “We don’t know a single person in a hundred years of recorded history who has been to the surface and back. All the giant insect parts we have are from other Undertowns where Giant-Class bugs occasionally manage to invade. Nobody’s been to the surface in a hundred years for a reason.”

  “It’s impossible to think there’s living on the surface, though,” Issam murmured. “Think about it—that lightning hornet is nigh-unkillable right now, and the Swarm has overtaken Alshifa, but we’re still alive. We’re still here, hiding in the shelter and in this garden. Maybe there small refugee towns on the surface we just don’t know anything about. Hey, maybe the other undertowns are doing fine as well, even though they haven’t sent any bug-slayers over to help us out–”

  “Um. I have… a confession to make.”

  Dahlia raised her hand—before she’d even taken a single sip out of her soup—and she purposefully stared down at it to avoid meeting anyone’s eyes.

  Eria was perched on the rim of the bowl, staring up at her pointedly.

  It was difficult, then, for her to figure out where to start—should she just mention she ate a strange silver worm and gained a magical system? Or should she just frame what little she’d heard about the surface world from Eria as information she’d read from the library’s books?

  In the end, she wanted… to change.

  To be a little braver.

  To move forward a little.

  So she started from the very beginning once more, retracing her steps, doing exactly what she’d done back in the shelter when she was explaining how she escaped from the sewers—only this time, she started from the beginning: when she’d listened to the bug trader’s dying words. When he’d given her the Altered Symbiotic System by making her eat a metal worm. How she’d defeated the cave cricket with Eria’s assistance, and how she managed to run away from the wolf spider long enough for Issam to come to her rescue. The points and attributes and Swarmblood Art were a bit difficult to explain without being able to show them the status screen only she could see, but… Eria supported her all the way through, nodding on her shoulder whenever she started faltering and looking away.

  It was important she told them everything she knew, so they stood even the slightest bit of chance against the lightning hornet.

  And once she was done, once she started panting slightly to catch up on the breaths she’d been refusing to take, for the sheer amount of words she’d never ever spoken in one go in all her life–

  The first question came from Raya, of all people.

  “So you can see how powerful my spear is?” he asked.

  She blinked.

  Was that his first question?

  “Yes, I… can,” she said, as she squinted slightly at the little box next to his spear. “It’s an E-Rank Honey Bee Spear with two levels in strength. Truth. It's… a pretty powerful Swarmsteel compared to the rest of ours.”

  “And what are the attribute levels on Issam’s mantis scythes?”

  She looked over, and Issam shied away slightly as though trying to hide his little box. “Orchid Mantis Whetstone Scythes. E-Rank. They have one level in strength and dexterity.”

  “Hah. So my Swarmsteel is stronger than Issam’s. I win.”

  Everyone grumbled as Raya started chuckling to himself, and Dahlia looked nervously around at the rest of them, fingers twiddling.

  Did of them have anything important they wanted to say to her? Like ‘why did you keep this from us for so long’ or ‘why are you the only one who gets it’—they were all big questions, big interrogations, big stressing points she’d been working herself up over.

  Did they not believe her when she said there was a little black bug sitting on her shoulder?

  More than worrying someone was going to try to rip the Altered Symbiotic System out of her spine, were they just thinking she was lying?

  “So there people on the surface, then,” Issam mused, twirling a nonexistent beard under his chin as his head lolled up at the ceiling. “They’re skilled enough to make something like the Altered Symbiotic System as well, and they’re also strong enough that someone like the bug trader is just a ‘trader’ instead of an elite bug-slayer. That’s great news, isn’t it? It means if we do get the chance to go to the surface–”

  “There’s a chance we can find a settlement or a town!” Ayla said, bobbing her head happily in between bites of her cabbage. “It’s not completely hopeless, see? Even if the Swarm is still dominating ninety-nine percent of the surface, as long as there’s that one percent of civilization capable of holding its ground, we can get there. We survive.”

  “The people back in the shelter will be delighted to hear this, too,” Amula mumbled, as she started polishing her boots again, eyes burning in the direction of moonlight. “They’re demoralised right now thinking there’s no way to recover even if we get rid of the Swarm in Alshifa, but now we have something to look forward to. To jump to. Maybe I should just try jumping out quickly to see if there’s really something up there?”

  “Don’t do that,” Aylee mumbled back, stealing a piece of cabbage from Ayla’s bowl and trading it for a smaller chunk of carrot, much to the shorter-haired sister’s dismay. “First, that lightning hornet is still standing guard beneath the hole. You’ll be shot out of the air if you try jumping over it. Now, if you take Raya with you and use him as bait–”

  “Just kill the lightning hornet first before thinking about going to the surface,” Raya grumbled. “Also, screw you too. You twins are the ones with the underhanded, flashy distraction tricks. If anyone should be bait, it should be you two.”

  “How rude. Jerie, shatter his eardrums.”

  “Fuck you, cicada boy. And say something for once. You mute or what?”

  “Don’t bully Jerie. Also, aren’t we completely glossing over the fact that we just try to seal up the hole in the ceiling before checking up on the other Undertowns?” Issam said. “We don’t exactly have to go up to the surface. We’ll have to kill the lightning hornet either way, but if it’s possible we should at least try–”

  “I don’t… understand,” Dahlia whispered, as her bowl trembled in her hands and her eyes watered ever so slightly; she tried her hardest not to look at any of them directly. “Aren’t you… angry? That I didn’t tell you? You could’ve all… you could’ve all died this morning because I didn’t tell you everything I knew. Maybe we could’ve made better strategies. Better moves. I don’t… I don’t–”

  “Well, that’s because nothing has really changed even after you told us all that,” Issam said nonchalantly, as he stretched one of his mantis scythes forward to push her bowl up to her lips, forcing her to lift her head. A lone tear dribbled down her cheek. “The plan is still the same: we’ll go to your house tomorrow to get your dad, return to the shelter, and then try to gather more survivors before thinking about taking the lightning hornet on. Sure, now we know there’s people living on the surface, but it’s not like we going to check anyways, right?”

  “So, there’s no need to cry.” Issam shrugged. “Right now, we should just be focused on resting, and I’m thinking we shouldn’t go to Dahlia’s house tomorrow. Some of us should stay and continue harvesting all the vegetables we can from the garden so we can bring them back to the shelter. I doubt they’re salivating at the thought of eating bread for the rest of their stay there.”

  “The injured should stay here, then?” Aylee suggested. “I can stay with Ayla, and with Raya and Amula as well. I think out of the seven of us, we’re the four who’d been hit the hardest by the beetle… and by Raya as well. Bitch.”

  Raya scowled. “Weakling.”

  “It’s decided, then!” Issam clapped his hands, continuing to nudge Dahlia’s bowl forward with his mantis scythe such that she to eat and swallow. “Me and Jerie will go with Dahlia to her house tomorrow, and then we’ll head straight back to the shelter with her dad. The four of you should also leave this garden with all the vegetables by noon tomorrow, at the latest. I don’t want the Swarm to figure out we’re holed up here–”

  “I’m going with the girl,” Raya said.

  “I’m also going with Dahlia,” Amula said.

  Jerie said.

  “ stay here with the two of us and help us move the vegetables with your mantis scythes,” Aylee said, casting a suspicious look at Issam’s shoulder. “Honestly, you’re pretty badly hurt as well. Amula’s glass cuts are mostly superficial, but Raya did a number on you with the amount of times he grazed you. You stay. Dahlia goes with Raya and the seniors. Just the three of them as support is more than enough to make sure they’re safe, right?”

  Issam was just as surprised as Dahlia upon hearing Raya and the seniors’ request.

  “Raya’s hurt even more than I am,” he argued. “I’ll go. I know the way to Dahlia’s house. If anything happens, I can lead–”

  “The girl also knows where she lives, and I’m still stronger than you even if I’m injured,” Raya muttered. “You sit out of this one. I’ll take the lead. Maybe there are spare insect parts I can use to upgrade my spear in the girl’s house.”

  “Come on. That’s not the reason why you’re offering to help. And you too, Amula. Jerie. Why would you suddenly offer–”

  “It’s okay,” Dahlia said, as she cupped her bowl with both hands and took long, massive sips, savouring every last drop of the sweet carrot extract and munching down on the cabbage as fast as she could. “This is… really good soup. The best I’ve had in a long time. Make this for the people back in the shelter, o… kay?”

  “...”

  “I’ll be fine with just the three of them,” she whispered. “Promise.”

  Truth be told, she wasn’t exactly sure why each one of the three offered to go with her as well, so Issam’s worried face was more than justified—but there truth in Aylee’s words, and Issam more injured than he’d been letting on.

  Raya was the godsent talent, and the seniors were the seniors. They could accompany her to her dad well enough.

  “... Alright,” Issam finally said, sighing as he returned to stewing the pot, cooking up another batch of cabbage soup. “Anyone still hungry? We’ve got lots of vegetables to work with here, so it’ll be better if we eat all we can before we split up tomorrow morning.”

  “I’m stuffed,” Ayla said.

  “Same,” Aylee agreed.

  Issam didn’t bother hearing the others out as he turned to smile at Dahlia.

  “Will you be able to finish whatever Swarmsteel you’re making in another hour?” he asked. “You should sleep early, too. We all should.”

  She blinked, still surprised that he accepted the outcome so easily, but she nodded firmly without hesitation.

  They believed in her.

  of them believed in her.

  So she to make them the best Swarmsteel she could make.