The Unmaker

The sun was almost gone by the time Dahlia reached the hundred and forty metre mark.

Her breath came in sharp, fluttering gasps as she dangled from one of the colossal spider legs curling out from the edges of the city, her body flattened against its dark, dried out chitin. Even now—months after the battle against the Spider Gods—the legs of this slain Spider God still jutted from the ground, its legs sprawling skyward in a grotesque arc that cast long, bent shadows over the sandstone rooftops.

So, naturally, these legs were the only thing they could 'hike' in the middle of this desert city.

Her claws scraped as she clung to the slope. Sweat itched along her brow, but she didn't dare lift a hand to wipe it off. One wrong move and she'd slip. That was all it'd take.

"If we die doing this, it'd be the lamest deaths ever," she muttered into the chitin, stabbing a knife into a seam and dragging herself another half-step upward.

"Don't die, then!" Alice said breezily from above.

Dahlia looked up, wheezing.

Alice was walking. Not climbing. Walking. Her four hands were tucked neatly behind her back, her bare feet sticking casually to the spider's steeply sloped leg as if gravity just didn't apply to her. Her oversized red cloak fluttered with the wind, and she wasn't even winded. Not even a little.

"Come on, hurry up!" Alice called back down. "We'll miss the sunset at this rate!"

"I am hurrying," Dahlia gasped, "I'm just… just not cheating!"

Alice laughed and kept walking, disappearing over the last ridge near the top. Dahlia could've sworn she heard her humming. Mocking her.

With another groan, Dahlia drove her claws into the next chitin plate, knifed upward, and finally—finally—heaved herself over the edge as well.

She collapsed flat on her back, panting hard against the creaking spider claw. Wind howled around her, loud and high and… surprisingly cold. It wasn't exactly the most stable place in the world, either. The tip of the claw was maybe ten paces wide, and it swayed ever so slightly under their weight, just enough to remind her how high up they were.

But the view more than made up for it.

The City of Feasts stretched out beneath them, a sprawl of golden sandstone and flickering orange torchlight. The Sharaji Desert beyond rolled out like an ocean, a sea of soft shadows and red dunes fading into the horizon. At the end of the world, the sun was just beginning to dip, bleeding colour into the sky.

The clouds shimmered like silk. The sky seemed too wide for the world. This was easily the highest Dahlia had ever been, so when Alice patted the claw next to herself with her face turned away, Dahlia slowly crawled over and sat down beside her.

Both of them sat with their legs dangling over the edge, and for a few minutes, all they did was sit in silence watching the sky bleed into the night.

"... It's pretty, huh—"

"I wanna show you something," Alice said quickly, turning to face her.

And Dahlia blinked.

She wasn't looking at her own face anymore.

It wasn't completely the same.

Alice's hair was still the same ashen white, but her eyes were a bit sharper now. Her cheekbones stood out more now. Her brows were angled in a way that made her look fiercer and tougher, and even slightly older.

In essence, she no longer looked like a complete mirror of Dahlia.

"I changed it," Alice said, grinning as she pinched her own cheeks. "What do you think?"

"… Why?"

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"Because I liked this face you made when you killed Apocia," Alice said, eyes crinkling with amusement. "It was really cool. You looked angry and unhinged and just a little bit insane. I wanted a face like that. Now I feel like I'm one step closer to figuring out just what the hell you are!"

"That's… not a compliment," Dahlia muttered, her ears going hot.

"It is! Come on, that was the face of someone who killed an Insect God! You don't think that's cool?"

"Not really."

"Well, it should be," Alice said, harrumphing and crossing her arms as she did. "In any case, now we don't look like identical twins anymore. Not that anyone cared. Everyone already knows I'm a weirdo."

"So you do know that about yourself, at least," Dahlia muttered back.

They sat there quietly for a bit longer. The sun was half-sunk now, bleeding gold and wine-red light across the city. Everything below looked smaller and gentler from here. Even the ruinous parts—the craters, the half-burned rooftops, and the rusting husks of dead bugs still yet to be removed—all of it looked harmless when the sky was this big.

Dahlia pulled her legs up and hugged her knees loosely.

"Hey," she mumbled. "Thanks… for the party."

Alice grinned and kicked her heels against the chitin edge. "Well, you're welcome. How long ago was your last party?"

Dahlia tilted her head, thinking. "I don't remember."

"When's your birthday?"

"We don't throw feasts and parties over it, if that's what you're asking. It's not that special anyways. Food has always been a little scarce in Alshifa, so—"

"That's no good!"

"... It's not?"

"All humans must celebrate their birthdays," Alice said, wagging a finger at her. "Bugs don't. Tens of thousands of them are born in nests every second, but we humans pop out one at a time. We're wholly unique. We're wholly individual. We all deserve a day for that, no?"

"I… guess?"

"When's your birthday?"

Dahlia opened her mouth. Then she paused.

She didn't remember.

It'd been years since she last 'celebrated it', and given how the calendar in Alshifa was different from the one used by the rest of the world—

[Month Bug, Day Twenty-Two,] Kari said quickly. [That is your birthday converted to the Brightburrow Calendar.]

[Coincidentally, that is today, and today marks exactly one year since you left Alshifa.]

Really?

[Really.]

[You must've forgotten to celebrate your birthday last year, but who would blame you for it? You were busy killing that Mutant-Class firefly back then.]

"... Month Bug, Day Twenty-Two," she said softly. "That's… my birthday."

Alice blinked. "For real?"

"Now you're saying the same thing I said to my Archive."

Alice beamed like she'd just won something. "Well, I guess I spared myself from having to buy you two cakes! You already had your fill of it today, right?"

"You didn't buy me the cake. Uncle Safi made it for us."

"Aw, but I told him to do it, so—"

"What about yours, then?" Dahlia let her head fall back and laughed into the wind. "When's your birthday?"

There was a brief pause.

Then Alice leaned back, folding her arms behind her head. "It's already passed this year."

"Then, what about next year?"

"Nope."

Dahlia narrowed her eyes. "Why not?"

Alice looked pleased with herself. "Because it's more fun this way."

"I'll find out. I'll ask Uncle Safi."

"He doesn't know, either."

"Don't you want me to celebrate it with you?"

"You'll be there with me." Alice shrugged. "That's all I care about."

They bickered like that for a little while, voices rising and falling with the breeze. For once, Dahlia didn't care how stupid she sounded. She didn't worry about saying the wrong thing or whether she was being annoying. Alice had already seen her at her worst, and somehow, she still wanted to sit beside her and copy her face.

That had to mean something.

For all her mysteries, Alice… was a friend to keep by her side.

And now that she was a Hasharana as well, she'd do her best to keep up.

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[Mission Received from the Worm God]

[Investigation Request: Head south to the Attini Empire with the Hangman. Reports from the Hunahpu Region claim that the long-dead Mantis God, 'The Beast of Ka'lan', has been spotted in the region. Investigate its traces and locate it as soon as possible]

[Find it and kill it, Hasharana]