The Unmaker

It was dark in the cave. Heavy with spores, the air clung to the tongue like damp cotton. Pale, luminous mushroom stalks bowed under their own weight, casting a dim pink and violet sheen across the sandy floor, and the walls were sweated with black mold.

It was a terrible place to work in, to be sure, but even still, the girl sniffled as she worked on her knees.

Her nose was red and runny. Her four arms moved quickly and awkwardly, scraping and slotting together pieces of black chitin plates in the sand. Around her, scattered in messy piles, were dozens and hundreds and thousands of pieces of them, after all—but there was no easy way to get around it. Someone had to piece them all back together, and…

She wedged one thigh plate into the pelvis frame she'd arranged earlier. It tilted wrong. The angle was off. She yanked the plate out and tried a different one.

Still wrong.

One arm set a ribcage down. Another lifted it back up. A third reached for a skull fragment, hesitated, and set it back again. Her bottom-right hand clenched the chitin shard she used as a cutting tool, stabbing it into the sand beside her.

The humanoid shape she was trying to build had no complete head. No complete hands. The spine curved the wrong way. Its chest was too wide.

It wasn't right.

None of it was right.

Her breath caught. She dropped one of the knee joints and watched it bounce off another plate with a brittle click.

Her shoulders trembled.

Then, in a quiet, seething tantrum, she screamed and kicked the entire thing apart.

The sandpit exploded in pieces. Plates went flying. A claw bounced off the cave wall. Dust and spores rose in clumps around her as she stomped and kicked and crushed everything she'd built, and when it was all ruined—when the form was once again broken into bones and shell fragments—she just fell to her knees and cried.

Again!

Wrong again!

Why is it—

"Calm down," a voice said gently from the entrance of the cave. "You're okay. There's no need to cry over another minor setback, is there?"

She looked up through blurry eyes, but she didn't wipe them.

From the shadows in front of her, a tall lady stepped into view. Her dress was long, woven of black silks that didn't stir as she glided across the sand, and her mask was smooth, dark, and shaped like the head of an assassin bug—that was, teardrop-shaped and elegant in the way of predators. She moved without sound.

"... Don't tell me to calm down," the girl said, sniffling. "Don't tell me anything if you can't help."

So she got up—and immediately charged forward.

The lady caught her in open arms as the girl flung herself into her waist. She wrapped all four arms around her and sobbed into her side.

"I can't do it," the girl cried. "I can't… I can't remember what he looked like. I… I can't put him back together."

The lady stroked her head gently. "That's all right. You'll remember eventually. You've remembered more already than any of us ever dared hope."

"No," the girl said, voice muffled by tears. "No. We don't have time. Every day, his parts get more and more scattered. They get buried or broken or… or…"

Her breath hitched again.

She didn't finish her sentence.

She stood there trembling for a while, her arms still wrapped around the lady's waist, and only once her sobs finally dulled into hiccups did the lady gently pull her back and kneel down to her level.

"... I've received letters from the others," the lady said softly, her voice echoing through the fungus-drenched dark. "Do you want me to read them out for you?"

The girl rubbed her eyes with two hands and turned away, back toward the sandpit of parts and utter ruin.

"So?" she muttered. "What do they have to say?"

The lady reached into the folds of her dress and withdrew five weathered envelopes, their paper darkened with travel stains and age. She opened the first with careful fingers.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Regalia writes that the plans for the Upheaval Flood are nearing completion," she began, her voice calm and low. "The Attini Empire will be ours in under three years. However, she writes again that her ants have already recovered all they can. There are no more parts to be recovered from the south."

The lady slipped the first letter aside and opened the second.

"Corpsetaker reports progress too. With the fall of the Whirlpool City six years ago, he writes that his 'Corpse Artillery' is nearly operational. The Deepwater Legion Front will collapse within six more years. But, at the same time, he says he has already had his bugs scour every reef and vortex. He believes there are no more parts to be recovered from the Deepwater Legion Front, either."

The girl's shoulders shifted slightly.

A third letter was opened.

"Mammot merely reports his continued growth in size. No parts have been sent from the northeast," the lady said curtly. "Black Witch writes that 'Heavensfall' remains hidden from the humans. That plan is moving forward smoothly. However, she has attached a little something to her letter. She claimed she found it by the Fibak Ashwak Mountains near Amadeus Academy, and that she is sending more bugs to investigate—"

Before the last word left the lady's lips, the girl was already up. She rushed over, snatched the fourth letter, and tore it apart with her claws.

A tiny shard of black chitin slipped into her palm, glinting faintly in the glow of the mushrooms.

Her eyes widened, and she pressed the little shard to her chest, her breaths shaky as her eyes grew wet with new tears.

The piece was no larger than a flake of nail, but it was his.

It was his.

"... And Star Flame," the lady read, "says the north remains a snarl of stubborn fires, but fret not. He claims he will continue to hold the north, for he is not his oldest warrior for nothing."

Then the fifth letter, too, was folded and tucked away with the rest.

The lady looked straight ahead at the girl, now quiet again with her back turned and the tiny shard still cradled in her hands.

"Unfortunately, there is still no word from Pestilence," the lady said at last, shaking her head in dismay. "He descended into Brightburrow too brazenly. He remains splintered and scattered into pieces across the Plagueplain Front by the War God and Saintess Severin. If he had listened to us and not let his emotions get the better of him, he…"

The lady didn't finish the rest of her sentence. She'd complained enough about Pestilence over the past seven decades, and the girl was tired of hearing about Pestilence, too.

So the cave fell silent once again, and the girl looked over her shoulder quietly.

"... That's it?" Her voice echoed dully against the moldy walls. "That's all they have to say to me? Just more plans? They… they sent letters all the way here just to tell me things I don't even understand?"

"What do I care about the Attini Empire, or Deepwater whatever, or Heavensfall? That's not what I asked for when I last sent them letters, was it?" She turned around completely now, eyes sharp. "I asked for pieces! I asked for him, but all they give me are stupid reports, and—"

"Not quite," the lady interrupted softly, reaching into her dress to pull out five more letters. "They all sent one more letter."

The girl blinked as the lady opened each of them: one brown, one blue, one white, one black, and one red.

Then, the lady read the letters altogether, because they all said the exact same thing:

"Happy birthday, my princess."

The words landed like soft stones in the sand, and the girl just stared at the letters, eyes wide and damp.

Then she sniffled.

Wiped her nose with the back of one arm.

The other three stayed still.

"...Stupid," she whispered, her voice hoarse and raspy. "If they have time to send… to send stupid letters like that, they should be taking the heads of their enemies instead."

Her shoulders trembled. She sniffled again. Then she started coughing, and then she started coughing even harder.

She bent forward, hacking into her claws. A wet sound echoed in the cave, and flecks of dark blood splattered the ground.

The lady's expression didn't change—because it couldn't—but she immediately rushed forward and supported the girl, her voice sharpened with urgency. "You're bleeding again."

"I'm fine."

"You're not—"

"I'm fine." The girl shoved her away, staggering back with shaky breaths. "I'm not… a baby. I'm not some princess who needs her hand held. That Worm God, he… he just caught me off guard thirty years ago. That's all."

The lady watched her carefully. "But the bullet is still inside you, isn't it? Let me call the Swarmguards. We can remove it. It might've splintered, and that roach might've pushed the fragments even deeper inside you, but—"

"That bullet… he told me to keep the pain in my chest," she hissed, "so I will. I'll remember every second of it until I see him again, and when I do… I'll return it to him."

She wiped her mouth. Blood on her claws. It didn't matter. She staggered again, returning to the ruined sandpit in the centre of the cave.

Her bare feet kicked aside half-built pieces, joints and ribs and mandibles, and she looked down at them with a hardened gaze.

"... I'll do it," she whispered.

She crouched and began to pick the pieces up again. One in each hand. Her little hands trembled slightly, but she worked anyways.

Set this one down.

Pick this one up.

Sort them by shape, size, and functionality.

The Throne may still be out of her reach—not while the Worm God was still sitting dead in the centre of the continent—but the day would come when her generals weakened humanity enough in every corner of the continent. The day would come that the Worm God had to decide which front to sacrifice and which front to reinforce, and when that day comes, she would be there to slip through his defenses.

Until then, she'd be here.

She'd keep trying to remember.

She'd keep trying to piece him together.

"... There is only one Throne for one King," she whispered. "So come back to me, papa."