Bloodcrete (The Weirkey Chronicles Book 6), page 10
"They should still obey you, because you carry the scent of the royal guard."
"And you think the termites left a weirkey behind?"
"Everything valuable to Slescans was taken," Yeshir said, "but the irrelevant was abandoned with them. The weirkey would not have decayed, so you only need to follow your compass to find it."
Nauda did see that the largest needle had been shifting, so if she understood correctly, there really was a weirkey in the region. But she had been planning to navigate the surface, not three-dimensional tunnels. This was going to be an ordeal, and she wasn't as confident as Yeshir that no one else had moved in.
In any case, it was too late to back out. Nauda was placed on the ground with exactly thirty-six of the army ants. No scouts or other species at all. She had to wonder whether the reason was that they didn't care about her, or that they weren't willing to take the risk. Even though the spires seemed completely dead around her, Nauda couldn't help but imagine bugs pouring out of the tunnels to eat her.
This was the most alone she had been in a long time. Technically she had her signals: small discs of sublime materials that were paired, so that damaging one would damage the other, even in another world. She had one to signal Fiyu and another for the Blacksilver Authorities, so technically she could call them. But it had been stressed that she should only use the signals for times of great urgency, so she was a world away from anyone who could talk to her.
For the first day, Nauda only kept an eye on the compass as she found a place to camp. If this search wouldn't be over quickly, then sustainability was more important than speed. She had more than enough food for herself, but the ants would eat through her supply of leafpuller goo in days. They'd landed in a broad space between columns, not so far from the unclaimed territory beyond.
Once she confirmed the ants could forage, Nauda set up a basic shelter beside one of the smallest mounds. She explored the interior, just in case. The good news was that it appeared completely abandoned, and there was little junk remaining to distract her in her search. The bad news was that the tunnels in the mound extended underground, likely across the entire city.
While she made preparations, Nauda tried to get some sense out of her compass. The needles were moving more rapidly now, so at least she was getting some feedback, but she wasn't sure how to interpret the information. Another problem to deal with.
After several days, Nauda was just beginning to feel like she had a strong grasp of her environment. That lasted about an hour before she stumbled across a beetle mound. They didn't look exactly like her leafpullers, but she saw them pushing balls of the material the towers were built from. It seemed like their mound had been placed so that they could process that material.
When she walked closer to investigate, ants swarmed from the mound.
"Wait!" Nauda shouted at them even though she knew it wouldn't do any good, then the battle was joined.
Her own ants fought back instinctively, and for a moment the sides clashed. Nauda caught one of the ants with her staff and swept it through the others, intending to turn the tide. It turned out not to matter: there were fewer enemy ants than her own company, and they seemed smaller and weaker. The battle ended in minutes with only injuries on her side.
It would have been nice if they could have questioned the prisoners, but of course her ants had no mercy. She had to yell at them to prevent them from attacking the beetles, who huddled in their tunnels. Thankfully her ants obeyed and returned to cluster around her.
"Not so abandoned after all," Nauda said to no one in particular. She had hoped that one of the beetles would speak up perfectly clearly, but she was ignored. "Well, I guess it's time to try my healing. You. Come here."
The ant she commanded limped forward. Nauda bent down beside it and took the injured leg in both hands gently. She had utilized her sublime honey several times, including on wounds she'd caused herself, but this would be a much better test. It felt strange to draw cantae from her soulhome in such soft waves instead of for an offensive technique, but she stuck to her training and tried to mend the damaged limb.
To her surprise, it didn't take very long. When she set the leg down, it seemed stable, if weak. Nauda grinned up at the ant... which regarded her with no expression whatsoever, then moved away.
"I'm humbled by your gratitude." Her words got no response whatsoever, but another injured ant crawled forward to be healed.
Of course they could understand the benefit to themselves, if nothing else. The ants finally acknowledged her now that they needed something. Nauda had wanted to use her healing on someone important to her, like Fiyu or Theo, or at least some of the friendly beetles. She told herself that at least she was getting a lot of low pressure practice this way.
By the time she was finished, she had been able to heal all but two limbs. She certainly couldn't restore those that had been bitten off, so she would have to hope that was good enough. This might have been a small colony, but she imagined that other groups had made their way into the abandoned city as well.
The entire time she worked, the beetles just watched them. Nauda gave her ants one more command to stay, then approached. One of the beetles had a wound on its side, presumably taken during the battle. It flinched when she approached, but submitted to her touch. Up close she saw the differences from the beetles she knew, and she thought their faces were much less cute. Still, they seemed harmless.
While she was struggling to heal the larger wound, another beetle approached her from the side. Nauda gripped her staff just in case, but it stopped some distance away.
[Symbiote?] it asked. Nauda doubted they could read her expression, but she couldn't help but smile.
"Yes. Symbiote." She focused on her signal scents as she tapped herself with one hand, then the injured beetle. "Heal."
[Beetle-friend. Smell.]
That puzzled her briefly. She wondered if her own hive of beetles had marked her in some way. These were two very different hives, but judging from the way these beetles reacted to the ants, the lot of beetles might be the same everywhere. Perhaps this would be a step in the right direction.
By the time Nauda had finished with the wound, more beetles had gathered around her to stare curiously. It would have been awkward if she'd failed to heal the gash, but she managed it well enough. There was less hesitance in their signalscents, and her ants had remained at a distance obediently... she was getting somewhere.
"Hello." Nauda stood up to address the entire hive. "I need to ask you some questions."
Chapter 9
Having Fiyu would have been convenient, since they could have carried out all their investigations under cover of her stealth technique. Nauda would have been best-suited to speaking with the local Fithans. Navim could have helped collate all the demonic data, and even Tythes had more taste for the political maneuvering.
Basically, Theo was starting to think he was the worst possible person for the task.
As he walked around the outer limits of another farm, he reminded himself that it wasn't really true. Anyone below Ruler tier would be in serious danger, and his range of abilities made it possible to handle multiple jobs alone. Krikree would definitely be a worse choice, since she'd already attempted to eat several of the local farm animals. But he missed having allies with specializations of their own.
So far he had mostly confirmed the lay of the land. Demon attacks were on the rise, but the farmers hadn't discerned any pattern, and they were more personally invested in finding one than he'd ever be. Finding a precise origin point was more difficult because the demons always emerged from the dust storms and crawled onto the plateaus.
Theo left that problem for later: the most important information was the political balance. He'd avoided soulcrafters from the Asplundat Movement on multiple occasions. According to local farmers, they were constantly offering protection in return for control, and they'd taken over a few plateaus to the far north by force. That meant their arguments about outsiders as the source of demons mostly fell on deaf ears, but they had enough military power that they didn't really need propaganda.
The local Fithans of the Dustwind Plateaus struck him as hardy and fiercely independent. Their soulcrafters were stronger than average, but that only meant they had an unusual number of Archcrafters. If the Asplundat Movement or the Ruling Cities decided to invade, they'd be swallowed regardless.
"Stranger!"
Theo whirled to face the voice, just in case it was an attack. Too late he realized that he'd been relaxing his gravity senses instead of using them fully. In any case, it was just one of the farmers he'd spoken to not long ago, a Fithan man getting along in years. Archcrafter, but clearly past his physical prime.
"You know we don't want help from anybody," the man said as he approached. "But there's demons again, lots of 'em. My kids went out there, but I don't think they can take this group."
"I'll do what I can." Theo used a fully powered gravitational field to launch himself into the air, over the farm. He could sense a lot of points of mass moving quickly, but for picking out the individual combatants he'd need to use his eyes.
The farm was composed of several houses surrounded by large fields of crimson crops that reminded him of corn. Most of the fighting was taking place on the western side of the plateau: it seemed like the farmer had trained all his sons and daughters, but they were being beaten back to their fences. Another group of demons was crawling from the southwest to flank them.
Theo used an inverted gravitational field to fling all of those into the air, likely hard enough to kill them. The fight beside the field was more difficult to parse, because the demons had managed to combine into at least two second stage demons. He simply dropped everyone into the air and neutralized their momentum in the air with another field.
All of the Fithans appeared startled, while the demons continued to attack in mindless rage. They might have killed one of the younger soulcrafters if Theo hadn't picked off the demons nearest him with torsion bolts. For the first time, Theo was held back by not being able to cast quickly enough. He had been gathering secondary materials for an enhancement chamber on his third floor, but it was still lacking.
One of the second stage demons wasn't so easy, but Theo flattened it to the ground with layered gravitational fields. While killing off the demons hung helplessly in the air, Theo realized that he'd accidentally suspended Krikree as well. In the robes and mask he'd used to disguise her, she was hard to make out except for the antennae poking through her hood.
"Demons eat beetle food!" Krikree declared. "Krikree help. Krikree do good?"
"You had the right idea, I just didn't see you." Theo shifted his inverted field to lower her to the ground, only for Krikree to dive into the field again. But she'd actually moved carefully: she threw herself toward one of the floating second stage demons, properly accounting for the neutralized gravity.
While she tore into that one, Theo picked off the remaining demons. He could easily have used a miniature singularity to kill the one trapped on the ground, but he tested a torsion bolt as well. It managed to twist apart one of the demon's limbs, but couldn't penetrate the torso. The voidflint chamber on his third floor had made his torsion bolts a little more intense, but apparently it still needed work.
Most of the farmers appeared to understand that he was there to help, so Theo lowered everyone to the ground. Now that the demon numbers were thinned, and especially with Krikree present, they should be able to finish off the others. Their help mostly slowed things down, but he figured he should leave them their pride.
Once they had things under control, Theo floated toward the edge of the plateau. The dust storm roiled just a few feet beneath the plateau surface, and more demons crawled from it. Instead of using a gravitational field, Theo tried to use his gravitational senses to find demons within the dust and kill them before they even emerged. The abyssfluid within his soulhome strained in multiple directions, so his senses were rather fuzzy, but they didn't really pose any threat to him.
In fact, the only way they could have posed any threat was if the demons were summoning within the dust storm. Theo actually would have been interested to take on a third stage demon, since titans were generally considered stronger than the average Ruler. But, for better or worse, there was no sign of summoning at all, and the demon attack was dwindling.
Just when he thought he'd killed the last, his target twisted out of the way. Theo frowned and prepared to cast again as something different burst from the dust. He hesitated and the small blue figure charged directly into his knees.
"Stupid Theo, don't shoot Senka! Senka doesn't want to get shooted!"
"Senka." She looked just like she had before, and Theo bent down to embrace her before he thought twice. Logically he had expected her to be fine, but after so long, part of him had wondered.
"Give Senka yummies!" She squirmed in his grip until he finally released her, then grabbed his face. "Senka wants yummies!"
"Senka, if you're just messing with me..."
"Now! Blooky Theo!"
He sighed and rummaged inside his soulhome for something to give her. As soon as he handed her the loaf of bread she plopped down on the ground and began ramming it into her mouth. Most likely the real Senka was trapped within this bratty form, but there was always a chance she was trying to reach him through her curse because she needed food.
It was also entirely possible she was just doing this to annoy him.
"You know," Theo said, "it occurs to me that you joined us during a demon attack on Tatian. Do you have some way of following them through?"
"No talking!" Senka hurled a slobber-covered half loaf at him, then smashed her hands on the ground. "Give Senka yummies!"
He irritably handed her back the loaf, which made her bite his hand. While he struggled with her, Krikree crawled up beside them, her antennae vibrating wildly.
"What? Ivo-sister, what?"
"Stupid bug! Go away or Senka smack!"
"Food?" Krikree focused on him and pointed toward Senka. "Like beetle animals? Krikree eat?"
Theo sighed and closed his eyes. "No, this is Senka. She's a person like us, she just.. isn't acting like it right now."
"Not! Stupid. Not food?"
"Senka doesn't like the cheep cheep!"
Though he forcibly separated the two of them, Theo wasn't in the mood to deal with the squabble. Fortunately, Senka became focused on eating a rock, and Krikree subsided to emitting [What?] to herself. He thought it was just her way of talking to herself when he realized that one of the farmer's children was approaching.
"There were a lot of them," the young woman said. "We could have taken them, but it was kind of you to help out."
They definitely couldn't have, but that was as close to gratitude as the local Fithans got. Theo nodded curtly. "Was just passing through. Tell your father to keep me in mind if he ever sees anything."
"You're not one of those Asplundats, are you?"
"No, not at all. I'm... here on behalf of a group that can see the problems you're facing. You're our neighbors, so we want to do something about it, but politics keep getting in the way. So I'd appreciate if you didn't say anything, especially if the Asplundat Movement asks questions. You had it handled, I just happened to be nearby."
"Got it." The farmer examined him with some suspicion, which increased after a glance at Senka and Krikree. "These demons don't help nobody. We'll let you know if we see anything."
"Thank you kindly."
Fortunately, it seemed like they would accept that. Theo hadn't been giving anyone a name, since any of his pseudonyms would have overlapped with other politics and he didn't want to draw more attention. But if he kept getting involved this way, he might not have a choice. Saving a farm or two helped the locals, but it wouldn't solve the fundamental problem.
He picked up Krikree and Senka with a field and flew over to one of the unoccupied plateaus. Its surface was rough enough that they could hide within the rocks, as well as get some relief from the wind. After checking that nothing had disturbed their campsite, Theo removed his tent from his soulhome and sat down to get his soulcrafting for the day done.
His plan had been to rely on the materials he'd already stockpiled, but he'd discovered a useful sublime rock in the Dustwind Plateaus. Flightrock was poorly named: it didn't fly at all, it just possessed incredible inertia against all forces, including gravity. Theo couldn't imagine a material better suited to his anchoring chamber... except that its strength was only about Archcrafter-tier. If he'd found it earlier, it might have been perfect, but now he needed to adapt.
Currently he had carved a pedestal of flightrock in the center of his anchoring chamber. It was enough to begin truly using the technique, but not a satisfactory final chamber. At some future point, he hoped to find a Ruler-tier material to place on the pedestal, and combined they would have a powerful effect. That was his last empty technique chamber filled.
A few of his other chambers needed work, but one of the less obvious tasks he needed to complete was helping the grizzleroot grow. It had sent out tendrils all the way through the four central pillars of his soulhome, but it had only grown thick on the first floor. He needed the grizzleroot to be a strong column for his ascension, and ideally dig deeper into the soil of his foundation.
"Ivo-sister."
The disruption from outside made Theo's fingers slip, and he cut open his hand on the voidflint. He sighed and let the blood drip out into the central column to feed the grizzleroot. It was doing better since he'd started caring for it this way, but it still needed blood. Since he could only shed so much spiritual blood in a day without weakening himself, that was a matter of simple patience.
Once he was done, he emerged to look at Krikree. "What is it?"
"Senka-what?" She pointed unnecessarily to where Senka lay on her back, snoring loudly. "Not Senka-food?"
"Why would she be food?"
