Chương 68: Objective: Thrive

Pom-Pom the ten-foot mantis person… thing was a magical girl. I had little doubt left. The decorations, the dance, the odd way of speaking; if one assumed that a distant culture far away from earth syncretically evolved the concept of a magical girl, then this was exactly what they would look like. This was a concept so incredibly specific it couldn't be explained away by mere coincidence. Or could it? And more importantly…

"Are you the only one?" I asked.

"Most certainly! I am the one and only Pom-Pom."

"I mean, in the entire city? You're the only huntress?" She nodded.

"It is so. My daughter is still in training." She raised a single finger.

"Bugsrest has ever only required one." She stood with spread legs, punching arms into the sky and showing off her mandibles with a clack.

"I am mighty!" Finally, she plopped back down on the silken cushion, chin resting in three of her — one, two, three, four — six hands.

"Yet, now you are here too, and you may be my match. The council of elder bugs may find this as grounds for snooping and… vexation." I held up my hands in defense.

"I'm not trying to stir up trouble, I'm just lost. Really, really lost. In fact, I'd like to go back where I came from, preferably after a nap and a meal."

"Back?" Pom-Pom tilted her head.

"You said you fell, and you wish to go back up, to the land of flying titans and, ekh, birds?"

"I mean, there's more than kaiju up above. I figured I could climb the outside of the big tiramisu—""It is impossible. You will perish. You won't be the first who has tried. A drink for our brave explorers!" She clicked her mandibles and tossed back her own cup of cold tea.

"What other option do I have? I can't exactly grow wings, can I?"

"Can you not?" I opened my mouth and closed it.

"Maybe if I found the right essence. It would screw with my build. Addy would be a bit mad, perhaps, though that would be outweighed by the possibility of getting to see her again." I flopped onto my back and groaned.

"The Pactmaker didn't kill me, but as far as the world is concerned, I might as well be dead." There was a long and awkward pause. From the side, two feathered antennae surreptitiously brushed across my cheek and forehead.

"That tickles."

"What is 'tickles?'""It's when someone friendly to you lightly touches you in a vulnerable location." Though it might not work for bugs, considering they were covered in chitin. Except, at the joints there was this dark, rubbery tissue. I wonder, does this elicit the same tickle reaction as for a human? Tickle tickle. Pom-Pom jumped back, head flicking to look at my hands, then her armpit, then back to my hands.

"You have such dextrous fingers."

"Five per hand."

"And six hands in all. Terrifying. It seems we have much to learn from each other." She nodded to herself.

"Until you find yourself able, feel free to indulge in my hospitality. It is just me here, my three — now two and a half — assistants, and my daughter-daughter Parsnip. There is space aplenty, and they shan't bother you overmuch." I looked around the wood-walled dojo lined with the preserved exoskeletons of long-dead bug people. The place was a bit drafty, but well-kept, clean, and safe from any wandering wildlife. I'd much prefer to sleep in my own little place in the city, but how would I go about getting one?

I was in a foreign land, with no currency, and I was pretty sure my vocal chords couldn't even produce half the sounds their language required for communication. Rico was viciously shaking his head in front of my rearward pair of eyes.

"I'll take you up on that," I said.

"I am injured, and need to rest."

"Oh?" She looked me up and down.

"Perhaps, is that the cause of your crinkled frontal limbs? I know a good amputator with strong jaws, he can cut it off in five seconds flat."

"I don't think that will be necessary."

"He offers a discount for multi-limb-jobs."

"It'll heal," I countered vehemently.

"I'm made of tough stuff."

"If you say so." Her look told me she didn't believe me.

"Just be sure to notify me before it festers too much. We will also have to plug the holes in your carapace, mayhaps think of a graft."

"These?" I pointed to my torn-up hoody, the one soaked in grime and ickiness.

"Oh, no, I'll have to wash it, but I was thinking of sewing it back together again." To demonstrate, I shucked it off, revealing a frightening amount of cuts and smaller wounds. I'd landed in the jungle on my right side, which was an entirely purple bruise. The swollen broken arms looked like the centerpiece of an art collection titled 'pain in purple'. Pom-Pom's tongue hung from her open mandibles in shocked awe.

"That is… not part of your skin? Truly? Soft-skins are so curious. You must teach me more, I have so few references for your kind."

"Which brings me back to my earlier point: How do you know anything about humans?"

"Through my prized possession!" She produced a tattered, worn, water-damaged booklet. It was a manga. A magical girl manga.

"The paper is so smooth, and the images so varied. It must have been hand-crafted by an artist of the highest renown. It may be the only one of its kind in all of Bugsrest, nay, in all the layered world!" Everything makes sense now.

"I see." I coughed into my hand.

"Well, while I'd love to continue this cultural exchange, any longer and I'll fall asleep while sitting up."

"Of course. Certainly. I will… yes, I will defer my interest to the morning. Have a good rest-time." She stood up, and made a clacking trill with some part of her body.

"Daughter-daughter!" A light pitter-patter rang through the floor above. A latch in the ceiling opened up, and a smaller, much more lithe mantis person jumped through it, landing on her feet after a flip. Her carapace was much more spiky, like a katydid, which didn't preclude her from wearing a neat blue scarf around her neck. She licked one hand with her long tongue while giving me a side eye.

"Yes, mother-mother?"

"Were you lapping from the honeydew jar again? You won't outgrow your carapace if all you eat is sugar. See to our guest. Let them be rested, washed, and fed by the time of my return." Pom-Pom got up; she made some gestures to one of the display-exoskeletons of bugs. I shrunk back as the definitely hollow and dead carapace came to life. Its clawed hands reached into the ether and deposited two ghostly maces and a pair of shields and hooked swords into her hands, weapons which turned solid within moments.

Pom-Pom twirled once in place, then she leapt out of the door.

"Didn't she just come from a hunt?" I asked Parsnip, the smaller mantis, once she had left. She just looked at me for a long while.

"There was a call. Can you not hear the thrumming in the earth?" We paused. If I listened closely I could barely make out a distant, rhythmic drum.

"Still, isn't she exhausted?"

"It is her duty," Parsnip said.

"She must always be ready and always respond."

"I see." Just like a Custodian.

"Your Spanish is pretty good."

"I was practicing. Mother-mother says it is never enough."

"Is a mother-mother like… a grandmother?"

"What's a grandmother?"

"The mother of your mother." She hummed in place, tracing a groove in the wood with her leg claw.

"I suppose it is similar enough. But also, not really. Her focus has always been on my education rather than my genealogy."

"Ooh, bug education. What are you majoring in?"

"How to replace her," Parsnip said matter-of-factly.

"In three year's time when I am grown, her chitin will be brittle, her eyes clouded, her strength faded. Perhaps she will fall in battle, and I must take my mantle early. Perhaps that day is today. Practice to perfection is the smallest sacrifice to forestall such sadness." Woah. That's a lot of weight to carry for a… I stared at the bug.

"How old are you?"

"Two."

"Wow." Bugs matured fast and died fast. And yet they thought, fought, loved too probably. It appeared to be a very day-by-day type of life, focused on the here and now. There was something tragic about it. I reevaluated the spiky mantis standing in front of me. She may be two years old, but she was not a toddler that could barely run. Parsnip learned a whole other language before most kids fully mastered their own.

"Quite the realist for your age, huh?" She bobbed her head.

"Beating people up is hella fun." I got up, slowly remembering that I'd been lugging a huge-ass bloody liver all around with me.

"I, er, don't suppose you know what to do with this?" Parsnip tilted her head.

"It is yours by right of conquest. You must eat. Strength can only be gained from the dead if you are willing to admit their worthiness as foes or friends. And if they are worthy, then you eat." Aaand there's the cannibalism. Welp. Guess I know what's happening to my body if I die down here. Despite being full of megafauna blood, my stomach grumbled. The last time I ate anything substantive before that was by sucking the juice out of an Aphid's butt.

Something about that memory made me remember a line from a pop science magazine that linked miniscule differences in pheromone composition between two neighboring ant nests and their eventual conflict that wiped out the weaker one. They couldn't understand each other and because of that committed atrocities. Between Earth and Bugsrest, there was no doubt which side was stronger. The differences between bugs and humans were much larger than just slight discrepancy in smell.

The scope and scale of atrocities committed by humans on other humans was long, and now that I'd discovered an entire sentient race living a couple miles below human-held territory, something had to be done. I need to make friends. That's the one thing I can do for certain. Humans are friends, not food. And the same goes for bugs. So. Time to immerse myself in bug culture. I made a sad noise as I bit into the raw liver. If I was going to make it back to my girlfriend, I was going to have to survive first.

Strength could be regained, limbs too, but there was so much more to do, and only one me. +++ And so a day later, I lay there, groaning in an empty, human-sized silken cocoon that must have once belonged to a giant moth or something. It was comfortable and inviting, and yet I was sweating, twisting and turning. I'd slept terribly, not just because a small sharp something was poking me in the rib incessantly. Slowly, I opened an eye, staring down at Rico.

"Get up get up get up."

"I'm awake, I'm awake." And I had a massive headache.

"Ugh. What is it?"

"She's staring right at us." There was a pair of mandibles not three inches from my face. I could see down the bug's esophagus, an opportunity for which any entomologist would kill for. Actually, wait, wasn't this sorta dangerous? The mandibles snapped shut with a sudden clack that had me jumping in my cocoon. Parsnip made a chittering noise which the system translated as a snicker.

"You flinched!" A prank. It was just a prank. I tried to get up and chop the bug on the head, but just sagged back down.

"Rude. So rude." She stopped chittering, tilted her head, then ran off, probably to get Pom-Pom. And indeed, moments later there were two humanoid mantises at my cocoon, hard exoskeletal fingers poking me incessantly.

"She is incredibly warm," Pom-Pom commented.

"Perhaps she has sprung a leak?" Parsnip offered.

"There is an awful lot of wetness around the holes bored into her carapace.

"It's just a fever, ugnf." I rolled away, because the round glass bug-light they were waving in my face was doing terrible things to my headache. God, I had two hundred Body and it was killing me.

"Water. Hungry." They returned with more cold tea, and a bowl of green goo. I tried a mouthful, only to cough it up and retch at the rank taste.

"She doesn't seem to like glibber," Parsnip noted.

"Then we will have to find her something else to eat." Pom-Pom seemed confident she could find something I could swallow.

"What hosts would we be if we let our guest die of hunger?" I groaned, mumbling in a dazed stupor.

"Meat. Veggies. Blood." They didn't get any veggies, and the meat was raw. But the bowl of blood seemed to nourish me more than any tuber or t-bone steak ever could.

"More." They gave me more. And as my condition wavered back and forth, some part of me almost wished for them to eat me alive, if just to stop the pain. +++ One week later, and the worst was over. My broken arms no longer ached, my forehead was no longer trying to split itself in half.

The staple food I'd ended on consisted of raw tubers of a plant that tasted like horse radish, the blood of a mammalian or avian herbivore, and the gooey insides of a type of wild beetle, which Parsnip told me wasn't cheap and Pom-Pom assured me was not a problem. After learning of that, I practically forced myself to eat the green goo.

It was cheaper given how much I saw both mantises eat, and while my stomach was on the fence, my vampire and spider instincts loved the feeling of sucking up a mouthful of the jelly. One way or the other, my strength was returning. And now I was in this mother-daughter pair's debt. Honestly, it was sort of my fault as well. I almost died from that stupid liver.

It turns out that, just like polar bears, the giant lizard-bird-hippo accumulated a crapton of what I supposed was vitamin A inside its liver through its diet. On the one hand, it was nice to know that I couldn't die of something as simple as vitamin A poisoning anymore. On the other hand, the headache was frankly abhorrent, even through the pain reduction of [Vampirism I]. Also, it made me lose my hair. Thanks, liver, very cool. Stolen novel; please report.

Pom-Pom had noticed that, after I failed to eat more than half of the liver, Parsnip had scurried away with the rest and hid it behind her cocoon for snacking. She was scolding her, to the point that I only ever saw Parsnip with a dirty rag in hand, cleaning the house top to bottom.

"You seem to have lost your feelers," Pom-Pom commented, gesturing at my hair. She found me inspecting the bug carapaces upon returning from a hunt. Maybe I just imagined the ghostly hands that had emerged from it before.

"They will grow back."

"I suspected as much. Still, it is a shame. I understand that your kind uses them for decorative purposes, often to signal mates."

"I suppose that's a frank way to say people like to be pretty."

"Your reproduction occurs on the basis of attractivity, not more… reasonable markers?"

"I… what?" In an oddly human gesture, she gestured to curl her biceps.

"You need your mate to be strong. Otherwise, your progeny will wither. Damning them to uselessness is the cruelest fate one can give, and planning ahead is a must for a mother."

"I suppose for humans, prettiness is a marker for healthy genes? The biggest threat our populations faced for the past thousands of years were disease based, so a bit of mixing and matching means not everyone gets wiped out by the same disease all at once." Pom-Pom sighed.

"Perhaps it is that simple for your species." I nodded, noting that there was a new scar on her carapace. This one was on her lower torso and looked like it came from a blunt impact, small hair fractures running up and down. They were hard to notice with anything but superhuman perception, but they were there. She must have been in moderate pain.

"Everything alright?" I asked. She made a twirl.

"I am alive."

"Beyond that." The twirl faltered towards the end, forcing her to catch herself with a sudden step. She clacked her mandibles.

"It is nothing you must be concerned about."

"You gave me food and water. I might have died otherwise. And now you're hurt because of me." I flexed the hands on my broken arms. The swelling was mostly gone, though I was under no impression that I could put any weight on them. I regenerated from injuries fast, but not that fast. What normally took six to twelve weeks now took one to two, but that was just talking about how long it took for the bone and not the muscular atrophy, which would take even longer.

A month, that was how long it would take to be back to full strength. Four weeks. That is still insanely fast. I sighed and turned to Pom-Pom, who was busy testing how much she could turn her torso until the wound caused her to flinch.

"Let me help you. I'll come with you on your next hunt."

"Bugsrest has only ever had one huntress," she chittered.

"I… do not know how people would react to such an upheaval of tradition."

"Why would people not like having more huntresses to protect them?"

"One is plenty. Two is scary. Three is an insurrection." She hung her tongue out in what I understood was her version of a sigh. Her next words came as a whisper.

"Do not tell Parsnip, but… I believe that the time for huntresses is coming to an end. Compared to an army of better and better armored soldiers, even I am not so special. They even know magic! Only a bit though, but it is enough. Eventually, the only skill I will be able to boast of is that I can dance, and there are already many dancers."

"Oh." We watched Parsnip clamber up the side of the building and continue onto the roof. Her enthusiasm could almost make up for her lack of cleaning skills.

"Why not tell her?"

"Because despite everything, she still dreams of becoming a huntress herself, like legends have told." She stared for a while at the nearest mummified carapace.

"I fear I've been too much of a good example of one." I stood up.

"How can I help?"

"You don't have to."

"I've been sitting on my butt for seven days now." The only indication of which was the timer on my system.

"I can hunt. Let me come with you on your next sortie."

"I will admit, funds are running low. Perhaps we shall go and hunt." She paused for a while, watching fireflies zipping through the air.

"I was on patrol earlier today. There was only a minor incident involving a frostfire crab. Their meat is cheap and their carapace doesn't hold, but they are preyed upon by the violent twister-turner, whose tendrils do fetch a neat price. Apropos, what does your stomach say about shellfish for lunch?"

"It says I'll probably be back in bed for another week if I eat it raw." Pom-Pom twisted her head until she was looking at me upside-down. It was a gesture I'd come to understand as confusion of the highest order, of utter bamboozlement.

"I… is there another way to eat it?"

"Yeah. Fry 'em, cook 'em, stick 'em in a griddle. Do you people do barbeques? I could show you how to do it."

"A culinary culture exchange? How splendid!" She perked up, did a little twirl. Somewhere in the distance, a low, bassy horn was blown. Suddenly, all her enthusiasm was leeched out of her.

"Another sortie. Ekh." She flexed her hands,"Perhaps you can secure dinner together with my daughter."

"Of course." I nodded.

"I'll show her exactly how a Custodian shishkebabs a crab, or whatever that twister thing is." +++"I lied, I'm not showing you anything, this jungle is so screwed up!" I yelled, high-tailing it away from a horde of cyborg crabs. Nobody ever told me they were armed with frost-lasers. By any law of physics, frost lasers didn't even make any sense!

"A good huntress is versed in the art of running away," Parsnip shot back, the smaller mantis person keeping up with me despite my many modifications. She knew the landscape better than me. Every oversized leaf and branch she dodged slapped me in the face. A white beam of ice clipped an overhead branch far above, instantly crystallizing it. The added weight sent it plummeting. With my second set of secondary eyes on my forehead, I had the pleasure of watching the branch fall and grow in size. And grow. And grow.

I took a left, only to run into one of my body doubles running the opposite way. Without small camera drones and a line of sight that wasn't interrupted after ten feet by giant leaves and shrubbery, it was impossible to keep track of them. The only thing I knew for certain was how many there were, and only that because whenever one died it lightened my mental load. We ran head-first into a swarm of invisible wasps.

Parsnip flourished a curved blade of chitin as large as she was, twirling her entire body before releasing the energy in one massive whack. She sliced one of the wasps in two, drenching herself and the gathered crab legs in its fluids and the parasitic egg-grubs it kept in a pouch next to the poison gland. Before they could latch onto her soft bits, she leapt onto a giant puffball, the white fluffy seedlings sucking up the liquids and brushing the grubs off within seconds.

With a jump and a sharp twirl, she shucked them off in every direction. The rain of many-colored fuzzy seedlings was like a magical spell, dazzling and wondrous. Then one stuck to my face with a wet smack.

"Akbth! Watch where you're shooting that stuff!"

"Many apologies! I am used to hunting alone." The low thrum in her voice was a note of happiness, close to laughter. I had to admit, I was grinning too, despite the pain I was in. The running was agitating my partially-healed arms which were still glued shut in silken casts. We'd gone to a weaver in Bugsrest who produced the stuff by the bucketload. It smelled tart, but combined with [Elasticity] reducing the arm's elasticity until it was a solid, unmoving chunk, it did its job nicely.

Parsnip disappeared past a ravine up ahead. I followed suit, leaping over the edge of a two hundred feet fall and onto a truck-sized leaf. The stem bent under my impact as I slid to the tip, then stuck to it with [Sticky], gauging my target with my body hanging upside down. There was a hole on the underside of the ravine, barely tall enough to allow a person my size to enter, but plenty wide for a bug.

The springy leaf rebounded and I stopped channeling [Sticky], letting the stored force catapult me straight through the vent of dirt. I tumbled into Parsnip's arms — ow, ow, spiky, ow — and together we rolled in a pile of too many limbs down one of many secret chutes, all of which led to the huntress' cavern. It spat us out with a plop onto one of many piles of coarse, yet soft cushions. The mantis popped from the pile, loose strands of silk poofing all around.

"Magnificent display! Your sense of direction is impeccable. Only the landing requires improvement."

"Story of my life." I groaned.

"I thought I could help you hunt. But I'm down a couple arms, and this place is still pretty scary. Sorry. No food for us."

"Ah, but on the contrary." She reached behind me and plucked two wriggling parasitic grubs off my back.

"These grubs sell for good tablets to a mate-maker. They don't grow out of their aggressive nature, but their inheritances are splendid for the vicious roaming type." I got precisely none of that. Whatever. Let it make sense later. Wish I could've contributed more willingly. I held up the staff I'd nicked from one of Fowl's clones. And there was this thing too. [Reticent Boomstick: A nigh indestructible six-foot-long stick used as a physical component for wizard spells. Has opinions. Currently, the Boomstick dislikes you for antagonizing its master, killing its master, and stealing it from its master, causing any and all spells you cast with it to fail.] The stick dislikes me. … why do I feel slighted? I sighed, draping an arm over my eyes.

"How am I supposed to get anywhere in life if I can't even secure my own food?" Two feathered antennae tickled my face again. Parsnip's voice revealed amusement.

"You could shamelessly indulge in me and my mother-mother's hospitality, like a bug snug as a grub."

"... Just because I'm a burden doesn't mean I want to stay one forever."

"I am sure she has never once thought of you as such."

"And you?"

"I think you are funny and heart-throbbing and a gust of fresh air. And with perhaps a little bit of familiarity and training, you could hunt out there while I get to lavish in the honeypot at home. Also, you helped bring Hack-choo's better half back."

"The pillbug? How is he?"

"He is recovering. His strain has many redundancies, and he is an infertile dead-end, so there was not much lost." I frowned.

"That's… a bit rude."

"His kind are produced in a matriarch's womb by the thousand and die by the thousand," she said.

"Some armies use them as bait, which mother-mother has always frowned upon. But imagine, he is bait and yet he fought a great shearclaw and came back, scarred but unbroken. Among their kin, he is a legend." Well. Good for you, mister Hack-choo.

"I still don't get why you're helping me so much. Am I not weird and alien to you?"

"Yes, your stubby, wiggly fingers are quite odd," she said with a nod.

"But I would have done the same for anyone."

"Why?" She tilted her head quizzically.

"It is what a huntress does. We protect. We adapt. And when we can fight no more, we do not shirk our mantle, but pass it on." Oh. Oh! That is…

"I can't be a huntress, Parsnip. I have a life up there, friends waiting for me." She tilted her head further, in a way that reminded me that she was not at all human.

"And are you any closer to returning today than a week ago?"

"No." She clasped my hands in hers. The spikes in her carapace pointed outwards everywhere but the palms of her hands.

"Then indulge my interest. Stay." Her hands pulled mine to feel the chitin plates on her face, her arms, her chest.

"Mother-Mother is almost used up. Do you feel the difference between our chitin, the cracks in hers and springiness in mine? Her armor weakens, and her muscles wane, her sight fogs and her claws scrabble for hold. That is not what the people need to see."

"They also don't need to see a stranger taking their beloved Idol's role."

"It will only be for a while! As her daughter-daughter, she ensured that I am of strong stock, stronger than any Bugsrest has seen. I have proven myself, and yet by law one cannot be a huntress until one has undergone necessary trials. If she perishes, I will be ousted as weak and incomplete. If I perish, she will be pushed aside in favor of someone who can carry on the tradition and still sire offspring."

"I…" At that moment, Parsnip perked up. I followed her gaze, landing on six ants that walked upright, talking with her mother-mother Pom-Pom in the fields. They carried spears and round shields made of a living bug clasped to their forearms. They were half as tall as me or her, but at their front was an ant four times as large as the other ones in every dimension. We snuck closer, but even if I could make out their voices, they were speaking in a bug language.

The large one speaking to her in a clacking, popping tone that felt more like morse code than any deeper language. It gestured, pointing ever so offensively in the direction of the dojo.

"What are they saying?" I whispered to Parsnip.

"It is about you," Parsnip whispered back.

"They object to your presence. Mother-Mother objects to their objection."

"Why?"

"No clue? Actually, one clue: In case she dies, she wants someone to protect me, a stand-in-huntress. As if I need protection. Pah!" Against a single creature, she likely didn't, but against an army, an entire system? Those who stood out had to justify their existence outside of it. Huntresses may have sprouted from some sort of early necessity to create strong warriors, but now they were barely tolerated by those that had political power. Maybe that was the fate of Custodians as well.

Maybe if Earth overcame the apocalypse that was supposed to happen in ten years-ish, we too would be declared unnecessary, risky assets. The Pactmaker was afraid that the exact thing was happening to wizards. Nothing seemed more ridiculous at the moment. The wizards relied on reagents, which would continue growing, and knowledge, which in turn was also continually growing. We the Custodians of Earth relied on the system for everything from granting power to exchanging goods and services.

Revival and the shop were our greatest powers, yet outside of its reach both were worth as much as a fart in the wind. I had my spells still, yes, but what could I have done if I were a wizard, down here surrounded by so many new and doubtlessly powerful things? Wizards remained adaptable when Custodians didn't. Heck, we were mostly specialized in combat, and still the statistics showed that the exchange rate of Custodian to wizard lives in a fight was well in the favor of the latter.

We were reliant on a system we barely understood, so if someone managed to break it, hijack it, or disrupt it in some other way, we were absolutely screwed. Maybe… maybe we aren't supposed to be just weapons. The traditions of Custodians were ramshackle, built on necessity and convenience. They had no central unifying culture, besides maybe killing aliens and going to magic school for a few years. The concept of a Custodian was nebulous and unformed. Perhaps change just required a small push.

I focused back on the ants. Something needs to change, as below so above. I shook my head. The truth remained: The ants didn't want me here. They left shortly after. Parsnip jumped out of the bushes right at Pom-Pom, who dodged left, leaving the smaller mantis sprawled out on the floor with an 'oof'.

"Am I causing more problems?" I asked.

"Politics."Pom-Pom huffed, the taller mantis shaking her head.

"Now that you have gone on the hunt, they fear that I am planning to increase the number of Huntresses. They feel their gasters squeezed and their claws stepped upon. Perhaps it is just a performance too."

"Are they some sort of military force?" Pom-Pom nodded, twirling out of the way as her daughter lunged for her again.

"The progeny of one matriarch, who, sadly, lacks the foresight of her mother-mother who gave her this body. She makes more soldiers day by day, more than the council of Bugsrest has allotted for any front. They are vicious and conniving, and they have expanded our hold on the lower territories by many scores. But they eat and eat and eat. They must attain new sources of food to fuel their ever increasing hunger."

"And you're competition."

"Or they may be envious of my dancing moves." Another twirl, another dodge.

"Alas, I fear they wish for me to dance more and hunt less." They wanted her role as a huntress to become purely symbolic, a ray of hope and good publicity while they gained hold of the reins of society in the back. It was already happening, so Pom-Pom claimed.

"They just want to speed it along." She nodded once.

"Perhaps theirs is the way forward. Perhaps it is not. It is true that a huntress cannot be everywhere at once. But after a hunt, when I dance and show my winnings, I feel the awe, the fear, and the simple joy of all around me."

"Even if it means dancing with severed heads in your hand?" Her head turned 180° to face me.

"But of course, that is the pièce de résistance. Anyone can dance without beheading their enemies. It takes a special person to be skilled at both. Especially when your political rivals just happen to accidentally let a monstrous creature through their perimeter while you are supposed to sleep." She had a point.

"They're pushing you until you break."

"Then I must simply defy expectation, and defy it again, and again." And again and again. Always reacting, ad infinitum.

"You wanted a huntress to take your place, in case you fail?"

"Only for a bit! We do not care from whence you came or what body your mother-mother chose for you. You can be a temporary huntress-assistant… of course, only if you so wish."

"I'll do it. I promise. I don't leave friends behind." And then I felt it, some wisp of the promise solidifying into a solid thread between the two of us. Rico had mentioned that this forest was in part fae, yet I'd never seen so much as a hint of fae in Pom-Pom, or any other bug for that matter. Her compound eyes glowed for a moment, though I could have just imagined it. She was looking across the field with the bearings of a regal warrior queen, a valkyrie, something straight out of myth.

"Come," she said, offering me a hand with an eye-crinkling smile.

"There is much to learn." An odd giddiness took hold of me, a low-thrumming anticipation as she led me through the fields of glowing bugs and moss. From behind the hill emerged the temple-manor, and its doors welcomed me like a watchful mother. Shenanigans and Snick-snatch, the two unwounded pillbugs, were busy hauling chitin-glue and other supplies while Parsnip was sent away. She only clacked her mandibles twice, declaring that she would study the ancient art of cooking I had begun introducing her to.

Mainly, that meant she was throwing various seeds, meats, and vegetables into a shell filled with water, trying to boil it with magical lightning she borrowed from another mummified bug carapace until well-done. The pillbugs watched us walk past the front door and the main room, deeper into the back of the building. Wooden walls made way for carved stone. They were lined front to back with the chitinous skeletons of previous hunters and huntresses. Briefly, I touched one, only for my system to give me a message.

[Dung beetle essence - Common] Interesting. Then, we met a door.

"This is where it all began, this is where it all shall return to," Pom-Pom said, the usual sing-song gone from her voice.

"As all aspirants, you must undergo the trials of the Kkrikitik-Asashasasha-Veks. Within this room there will be a great foe. Should you defeat them, you may plunder the shells of those within. Should you fail, your shell will be added to the collection within, your power at the beck and call of future hunters and huntresses."

"Is that how you keep on going from fast to slow to strong to nimble?"

"It is a privilege of a huntress, and a power bestowed through sacrifice. I doubt it will work on you, though if you find anything worth taking, then you are free to take it, assuming you survive. Though you may retreat to fight another day at any time, this is a lethal test, a test with seven circles. The deeper you dive, the more ancient and powerful the rewards, and the greater the prestige. I am a sixth circle huntress, for reference."

"Sixth circle, huh?" I stared at the big double doors. They were the first thing I'd seen in Bugsrest that was made of metal.

"How long did it take you to reach that deep?"

"Three years. The sixth test nearly cost me my life twice. I didn't dare delve any further."

"Hm." I definitely couldn't afford to take that long. But if anything, that just meant I'd better get started now. Worst comes to worst, I could just scout the first trial out, then run right back here. There weren't a whole lot of enemies I could beat with a boomerang, an empty bazooka that could be used as a club, and a long, hard stick, and I wasn't willing to bet the last shots of my Lucky 7 on this just yet.

However, if I beat this first one, I would gain access to all the weapons the bugs had lying around here and in the first room. I flexed my hands, secured my two broken ones tighter against my body.

"Alright. Send me in." +++ Pom-Pom listened to the clang and cries of panic through the door with barely contained nervousness, knowing there was nothing she could do to help nor hinder this odd friend of hers. There was nothing in any scripture or oral history that forbade outsiders from taking this test. Some people of Bugsrest might murmur and mutter at a soft-skin dancing through their streets, and some might laugh simply due to novelty. But they could paint her skin and give her prosthetic mandibles.

A costume, perhaps. I will have to hasten Parsnip's dancing lessons. Perhaps she can take over the public shows, while Sam assists her in the jungle unseen. She would have to attain at least the first circle though before she could call herself a person on the path of a huntress, a hunteress-in-training. The girl would adapt, though how quickly or how much Pom-Pom couldn't tell with these softskins. Given time, she might land at circle four, perhaps even as high as five.

That was assuming that she had the time of course. Twenty one years… truly, she is ancient, and wise too. Perhaps this 'deepfrying' technique she uses in reference to food is the source of her longevity and power? I ought to ask her, assuming she overcomes this trial. Which she will. Definitely. It is just a fuzzy flying acid worm. A paltry opponent. There were further cries, though since they weren't laced with the tone of pain and death, this trial may take a while yet.

Pom-Pom sighed and moved back towards the main room to ensure that Parsnip wasn't going to poison them both. Her hand clasped a curved blade made from an overlarge spiked grasshopper's hind leg, her favorite for sentimental reasons. The hand was shaking ever so slightly. She quietly clacked her mandibles in frustration, sat down on a cushion facing the hall of ancestors, and waited. An hour later, Samantha emerged, skin red in most places.

"Viggory?" Shenanigans asked. Samantha just groaned and collapsed onto her own pile of pillows. She smelled like it was time for another bath. With a short command, Shenanigans and his brother Snick-Snatch heaved the girl over their heads and ferried her to the washroom. Things aren't that easy of course. I will buy as much time as it takes. What sort of person would emerge once Sam was done honing herself against the ancestral guardians, not even she could know.