Chapter Text
The runt didn’t know when they stopped flinching every time the fire crackled.
Did it no longer scare them, or were they too tired to care?
An amber glow flickered across the shelter of their mother’s body. The dark shell gleamed without a trace of flesh to be seen. Smoke pooled beneath the curved flank, swirling in eddies stirred by heat and the ridges of the exoskeleton’s interior surfaces. The smoke poured through cracks in her shell and streamed up to the hole in the den’s ceiling.
They hadn’t been paying attention when the warrior built the fire. They were too intent on the meat the warrior had brought, gulping it down as if their siblings were still in the nest and ready to take the meal from their jaws. All that mattered was that the warrior had returned from their errand, and as long as they attended to whatever business they had over there, the runt couldn’t devote much attention to them.
The runt twitched at every sound the fire made. Tensed up and ready to run until their limbs trembled. Some deep primordial reflex telling them to escape the dancing shadows and the red glow. The first spark from the flint had fascinated them, but as the red embers grew and breathed smoke, they had recognized that this was a thing of danger, though they didn’t know why. They should flee. Instead, hunger won out and they stayed.
The first time the warrior tipped a slice of meat into the fire, the runt shrieked and lunged.
The runt was small and weak, but fast. The warrior was faster.
The warrior shoved the runt back just as the runt’s claws grazed the meat. Fat sizzled, popped, and burned their fingers.
They shrank back in realization of what they had done. The bounty had been asked for, but not yet earned. The warrior was merely reminding the runt of the fact. “Ssss…. For meatsss… usss have trade… usss promise! Not lie! Save meatsss!” The runt grasped the longclaw left by Mother, by the Huntress, and pushed the weapon toward the warrior. They had offered the longclaw when they asked for the passing bug to hunt for them. Of course the warrior would insist on payment. It was the only thing of value that the runt had to bargain with. “Sssave! Sssave!” The warrior didn’t move. “Take! Trade! Agreed!”
Wordlessly, the warrior plucked the meat from the fire and held it aloft.
“Themsss taunt? Like sssiblings sstrong? Stronger than the runt, usss know!” The meat steamed, making noises like a living thing, and its smell filled the nest. It was enough to drive the runt mad.
The warrior held the meat out toward them.
The runt suspected another trick and snatched at the morsel with all the speed they could muster.
Raw meat had been good, but the seared meat burst flavorful between their jaws, delicate juices flooding over their tongue. So lost in their new ecstasy that they only realized they had burnt the roof of their mouth after swallowing.
Oh. The warrior had not been taunting them. Did not gloat. The warrior showed them how to arrange sticks over the flames, how to arrange the meat to cook, and left the runt to their feast.
The fire still made the runt’s muscles itch and legs twitch, half-expecting it to roar into a conflagration, but it only roasted their much-delayed birth-meal, provided warmth that Mother no longer did, gave light and made shadows dance like stalking beasts.
The runt congratulated themself for their keen choice in appealing to this bug for aid, though they hadn’t seemed a hunter (the runt knew there hadn’t exactly been many – or any – options. It had been ask, or starve). The warrior was something that Mother’s brood-songs had not touched on. The runt’s entire world had been the egg and Mother’s voice, until it all faded into the hunger that drove them to hatch through the once-impenetrable shell. Then it had been the den, the hissing and claws of siblings driving them away from the meat they could smell, and hunger, hunger, hunger. The hunger was quieting now, enough for Mother’s brood-songs to trickle back in, to think of anything except the gnawing in their belly.
Mother told them of the hunt, of the dance between hunter and prey. Mother told of the shining bugs from above and their haunted songs echoing ghostly in a nest of metal. How they could not be trusted and must be dispatched but not eaten. The shining bugs were things outside the dance and their songs unnatural. Sometimes, Mother spoke of bugs further beyond, who had unfamiliar dances, who didn’t act as hunter or hunted, but upon the stalking, one would learn if they were a fellow hunter, or to be hunted. All natural bugs knew the dance, for it was blood and claw and fang, and all bugs sang their blood, their claws, their fangs, no matter how they might learn other songs. Not the shining bugs. They were empty, haunted things, without blood, their claws and fangs forgotten in favor of metal.
The warrior carried metal. The warrior shone. Their mask gleamed with its own light in the darkness of the den. Perhaps if the runt hadn’t been so hungry, so desperate, they would have been too cautious to reveal themself. The warrior sang no song, haunted or otherwise, but moved with the silence of a hunter, sat with the stillness of an ambush predator. This was not the stilted Citadel’s dance Mother warned of. The warrior must be one of those beyond bugs Mother had spoken of, had marveled over to her brood. Maybe like the Skarr, each with different roles where warriors did not need to hunt, but Mother also said this was because the Skarr never traveled alone, and the warrior was alone.
The runt still didn’t understand why the warrior had helped.
They took a slice of meat from the fire and held it out toward the bug across from them. If they didn’t want the longclaw, perhaps they wanted to share the feast? The runt didn’t want to share but the uncertainty over the warrior’s motivations was growing more painful than the waning hunger pangs.
The warrior shook their head.
“Then… why themsss here?” The runt asked. What else was there?
Outside, the roar of a ductsucker made them freeze. The warrior straightened and unfolded themself in a single fluid movement. They drew their weapon – long, deadly metal, heavier than the haunted weapons sticking out of the ground – and strode to the den’s entrance.
“Staysss outssside,” the runt explained to the warrior. “Mother-sssmell keepsss out.” They glanced toward Mother’s shell again. Little of her smell lingered as compared to when they first hatched. And when the smell of a strong Huntress faded enough for cowardly, lesser hunters to dare enter, what then? The runt couldn’t defend the den. They had been to the threshold, they had seen what lurked out there.
The warrior seemed to ignore them in favor of studying the outside with their weapon at the ready. After a time, they turned, looked first at the runt, then Mother’s shell, face tilting back to take in the bulk of her. The runt couldn’t help the rush of pleasure at that. Mother was big. Mother was greater than any other hunter in her territory and all respected her Huntress smell. How good that there was someone to appreciate that, to know that the runt was like that –
The next bite of meat turned to ash in their mouth. The runt was not like that. They were what Mother was not. All the pride Mother earned was precisely why the runt had been left behind. They had no ability to claim any part of Mother and they understood, then, what the warrior was here for. Mother had no flesh left to offer but the runt had still tried to claim something of her. Something it would not be able to hold onto, any more than it could claim a place at the feast.
“Wantsss… den?” The runt began stuffing as much of the feast into their mouth as they could. How long before the warrior’s patience ran thin?
The warrior’s approach was unhurried. There was nowhere for the runt to escape and they went still, and flinched as the warrior raised a hand.
The hand touched the top of their head, lightly, much as Mother had caressed the eggs. The claws (sharp, strong!) scratched the base of one horn before lifting away. The warrior waited until they had the runt’s full attention and sat slow, deliberate, between the runt and the entrance, their back against Mother’s shell. Watchful. Watching the entrance and the runt. If the warrior wanted the den, they were in no hurry to claim it. They had no reason to run the runt off. The runt was no competition for resources and whatever weakness the runt’s presence advertised to hunters outside, the warrior did not fear. This could change if the warrior became hungry. But why feed the runt, if the warrior tolerated them because they wanted to eat them later?
Strange. The bugs from beyond were strange.
**********
The runt woke to unfamiliar comfort. So comfortable that the runt startled the rest of the way to wakefulness before realizing that this was the first time they had woken without feeling hungry. The weight of satiation was an anchor, ready to pull them back into sleep, if they allowed it to.
A foreign warmth lingered in the den. The warrior’s fire was long since extinguished –
The warrior was gone.
The runt sat up in alarm. When had they fallen asleep? The last thing they remembered was the acceptance that the warrior planned to take the den from them, the sight of the warrior settling near the den’s entrance, watchful of their surroundings but without watching the runt directly… and now they were simply gone?
They were alone, as they had been since their siblings finished Mother’s feast, waking without the remnants of nightmares, of things that hounded their sleep, things that gnawed and hurt as much as their hunger did during their waking hours. Now both were gone, along with the bug who had brought the respite. They did not know if it was the lack of hunger – their lifelong friend, banished – that filled them with the need to follow, or the warrior’s absence.
Or maybe it was simply their limbs eager to move, to leave the den as the siblings had. The runt had been too weak to venture beyond. Yet, danger was still outside the den. The runt was – will be – a hunter, but for the now they are small, hunted, without the protection of siblings. The warrior was not a hunter, but neither were they hunted. They were something else. They –
– had left the longclaw, and their scent-trail of metal and emptiness leading outside.
**********
Finding the warrior was no challenge. Their scent-trail was undisguised and more importantly, they carved a path of quiet behind them. The world was noisy with the calls of beasts and the rustling of the living, but where the warrior passed, there followed a hush of unease, of prey going to ground in hopes of going unnoticed.
The circles of burnt slime, arranged in arcs, marked a more permanent trail. Squits are hunters undaunted, to the point of suicidality, particularly against flightless prey. The runt was small enough to duck into cover, protected from their corrosive spit, but what of the warrior?
The answer came in a flash of light through one of the pipes that riddled the walls.
The runt had never left the cistern where Mother made her den. Even in their imagination, the entire world was contained within this single massive chamber. Yet they didn't think twice about giving chase, leaping over gaps in rotted-through metal and mortar, skidding to a halt as they came abruptly to a large section of aqueduct with its roof collapsed and open to yawning darkness overhead.
Squits swarmed the warrior.
None of Mother’s hunting songs had prepared them for the sight. The warrior’s steps were impossibly light, and they waved their blade in broad sweeps that the squits handily darted away from, until one came too close, too unwary, and the warrior ran them through with a quick jab. For the others, the warrior was not trying to strike, but was herding them. When the warrior deemed the squits sufficiently placed, they flung out their off-hand in a fluid gesture, all at odds with the lethal blades of light (light, so sharp it cut to look at) that fanned out and each pierced a squit in a burst of bile.
The remaining squits darted in to take advantage of the opening.
The warrior braced their blade against the ground. The air silvered, turned prismatic, and broke in a sphere around them so dazzling that it created additional bubbles, like the afterimages formed after staring at too bright a light. Any squit caught was obliterated, unlucky survivors bisected, wounds instantly cauterized, and the dead and the maimed fell around the warrior’s feet like a raining feast.
The runt wanted to eat. Caution kept them in cover of rubble and rot-blooming mushrooms. Not just eat. The runt wanted to learn. Wanted to know how the warrior cut down its prey so efficiently. They studied the longclaw the warrior had rejected. No surprise. Their metal weapon was longer. Compared to the runt’s claws, the longclaw is formidable, but that only served to remind the runt how weak they were. The runt watched the warrior, committing their movements to memory –
And the warrior was moving. They picked their way across the cavern, placing their feet gingerly on patches where the ground was drier and free of the accumulated biofilm that slicked most of the surface. The runt couldn’t see the reason for this. They didn’t seem to care about reducing their tracks.
They were inspecting the cavern walls. Methodically, but tentatively, they would press a hand into the layers of sludge and mold until they hit either metal or brickwork. The former they scraped their claws over with clear distaste for the shrill ringing made by the contact. The latter they considered, bracing claws into the wall, lifting themself up to test if it would hold their weight. They were repeatedly unsatisfied and moved to the next section.
The runt used their distraction to snatch up one of the dead squits, and crept back to their hiding place with their prize and pride that the warrior had not noticed them.
Why were they so intent on going up? That way lay the shining white bugs, the singing bugs, foolish as they were noisy. The warrior did shine, they supposed, but the warrior was also silent, any stalking hunter would be pleased. The runt would learn these soundless movements.
A sound like a vast voice in pain filtered down from above, reverberated in the walls and the ground. The very world cried out. Two instincts caught the runt in a stranglehold: they wanted to flee the otherworldly and all-consuming scream; they wanted to flatten themselves down until whatever made that sound moved on. The runt did neither.
The runt was weak. Stunted. This, they knew. Now they knew something else about themself. They were foolish.
A glint overhead caught their eye.
White strands of silk drifted down from the darkness.
The runt hunched away before any could touch them. When they tore their eyes off the rain of silk, they found the warrior watching them in turn and met the warrior’s gaze. The weight of that fathomless stare pinned them in place. The silk fell over them, ghosted whisper-soft over their shell, and continued to the ground. The runt slashed at the threads anyway, and hissed when their claws began to tangle –
A shadow. A breeze. Threads going slack.
The runt looked up just as velvety shadows crawled over the warrior, as if they had moved so fast that not even the light could touch them.
– The runt would learn this speed, this sharpness –
The severed silk fell harmlessly. All around the cavern, other threads touched the ground, tangled on the cavern walls, and draped where they caught, all in an eerie hush following the screams. Nothing dared move and the only sound was the muffling sigh of silk entombing the world.