"[Instead] I warm my hands upon the flames of the flag, /
To recall the downfall, and the businesses that burnt us all."
Arc 2 "Quiet Riot", Chapter 2/6
"...Why, I've scarcely had the courage to go shopping these mornings, all this news about 'gang violence' has everyone on a knife's edge!"
"It's absurd!" agreed the fellow noblebug. They were in the hallway of their apartment complex, walking together on their way to a company dinner at a distinguished club bistro. "Ever since that cacophony at the Tower of Love, everyone has been paranoid of when or where the mafia will strike back. Look here; I've bought myself a small alarm bell, I can ring it if I feel there is any danger imminent!"
Strapped to the wealthy bug's hip was a gleaming silver cowbell on a stick; security reduced to a fashion statement.
"Ooh, how quaint! I'll need to find one such bell myself!"
They approached the elevator, glancing expectantly at a Menderbug operating the elevator lever. The lesser bug saluted them, before heaving themselves over the lever with all their weight, not a word said. The noblebugs stood and waited for the elevator to arrive on their floor.
The doors opened, and roared.
Scattering back, the nobles watched startled at the woman riding the motorcycle inside the elevator, the thrumming engine seeming to make the whole foundation of the building quake.
Valleri gave her neighbors a coy grin. "Excuse me."
She rolled slowly, causally down the hallway, weaving between the two bewildered noblebugs to her room. None of them noticed the drops of crimson blood she trailed behind her, clutching at her abdomen, grinning through the pain.
Several days later…
White-collar crime is just like any other giant money-making scheme; it has to be treated as a business. Customers are served, competitors are eliminated. Take any big-shot, cold-hearted corporate head and put him in charge of a mafia, and he'll hardly notice the difference. It's no wonder that politics, business, and crime all go hand-in-hand so well, like a happy little ring-around dance that's destroying the world.
Walsh plucked at the tip of his pipe, fiddling with it with all four hands, just to keep himself distracted. "My point being, we need to be cautious of our investments, especially in such dire times."
The beetle seated across from him nodded, obedient. "Of course, sir."
"So of course," Walsh's hunking form leaned against the table, seeming like the silhouette of a tower collapsing onto whoever was unfortunate enough to be standing below him, "You understand my skepticism to be throwing even more money at some… organization, that I've only just heard the name of."
"Speaking of skepticism," the beetle advisor's eyes glanced around. "Not to change the subject, sir, but is this not rather… open, for such a discussion?"
They were both seated at a desk, Captain Walsh at the head and him sitting in a smaller chair before the Deepnestian crime boss. It was a proper desk, furnished from fine amber shellwood and populated with quills and silkpaper. In the drawer beneath, a magnifying glass and three pairs of reading glasses could be found, as well as a utility knife, a combat knife, a survival knife, as well as steak, fruit, and bread knives, all lined up and organized. Their conversation was illuminated by a cool Lumafly lantern, glowing against a marble bust of Walsh's own mug, as well as a golden nameplate simply labeled "CAPTAIN".
It was also stationed in the center of a large boat, drifting down the river in the City.
A dozen of Walsh's "employees" lined either side of the boat, rowing it downstream – of course, all female. In the center, wooden beams suspended a tiled, sloping roof, designed to lead the eternal rainfall back into the river below. Dangling from the edges of the roof were Lumafly lanterns in yellow stained-glass spheres, illuminating the dark rushing waters in gold. Behind and around Walsh, four silver, razor-sharp connecting needles – scissor blades – were embedded into the wooden deck, within four-arm's reach. Walsh and his desk were safe from the weather under here, but there weren't any walls.
"Nonsense," he handwaved. "It's difficult to eavesdrop on anyone from the middle of a river. Besides, this is deep within my territory, and our security detail has all of these streets surrounded."
"Your territory, sir?"
Walsh huffed, coughing on his pipe. Three hands waved the smoke out of his face. "What's your name again?"
"Fidlar, sir."
"Fidlar," he droned. "You're familiar with the basic principles of warfare, yes? Borders against borders. This section of this river is firmly within my own turf. Spies and assassins may slip through the cracks, but nearly everyone who dies in warfare is on the front lines. Nearly every soldier, anyway."
He didn't need to be reminded. The current death tolls as a result of Topaz's civil war were twenty-three bugs from Walsh's family, seventeen from Donovan's, zero from Luca's… and so far, over two dozen civilians.
"Luca and Donovan started this war," he growled, claws balling into fists on the desk. "And all over a weapon that's smaller than a hatchling's training nail. Couldn't even be discrete about it; they practically blew up the Teacher's Archives trying to get the goddamn thing, and neither of them even succeeded."
Fidlar perked up. "Neither of them?"
"Neither! As it stands, we don't know what happened to Blue's murder weapon. For all I know, that Valleri girl has it," he spat out her name. "But at this point, nobody cares about the damn gun anymore, it's about the incident! Donovan's men were openly opposed by Captain Luca himself, in view of the public eye, and now I've been dragged into the mess, too!"
Some hot tea would be nice right about now, Fidlar found himself thinking, shivering from the frigid rain just outside. "But… Why bother, sir? If it's Captain Luca and Captain Donovan's problem, why get involved?"
"Because of Blue!"
Walsh's hands slammed onto the desk, rocking the boat and causing some of the rowing bugs to glance back at him from under their hooded cloaks. Walsh heaved over his desk for a minute, collecting himself in his anger. The ghosts of everyone who'd died for him in this foolish war were weighing on his shoulders, and on his next words.
"We're criminals. Scumbags. Some of us, monsters, even. But at the very least, Blue didn't deserve to die like that; ripped apart, soaked in hemo, and with the case going stone cold. It happened entirely out of nowhere, seemingly for no reason. He deserved better. Or at the very least, he deserves to have his killer punished.
"That gun was what killed him, and the only woman who could be any kind of lead is running loose in this very city. I don't know what Luca and Donovan want with it, but I'm fighting so that Blue can have justice, have closure. I don't care about anything else."
He finally sat back down, the tension fading away from him. He took a long drag from his pipe, staring off into the distant darkness, fidgeting. Fidlar stared in patient silence, obedient.
"If my men could understand my reasoning, they'd gladly lay down their lives for me."
Fidlar watched. His expression was blank, not even blinking as the second-hand smoke drifted across his face. He'd become a statue; hardly breathing, not moving, staring at Walsh expectantly, tense patience burning in his eyes.
Walsh sat up a little bit straighter. "...Now. What were you saying about funding these, Quiet Riot fellows?"
Like he'd said a magic word, Fidlar was suddenly reanimated, the Captain's advisor giving him the widest grin a bug could manage.
Beneath the endless roaring of machines, the Crystal Peaks was usually quiet. It was the industrial powerhouse of the whole Kingdom, churning, chugging away far out of sight and mind, sustaining Hallownest's growing economy, thrumming like a mechanical heart at the top of the world.
Up its veins, railways ran, specialized cargo trams transporting processed crystals out into Hallownest, in exchange for other raw materials from other parts of the Kingdom that could not be found in the Peaks.
One such tram was rushing into the Peaks, metal wheels pounding away like a rapid heartbeat. The wind rushed past it in a vortex, causing her white and silver hood and cloak to billow behind her, held together by a single golden chain across her chest, its fasteners stylized after dreamcatchers.
As she held onto the roof of the tram, electric blue eyes scanned the tracks ahead. Right on schedule.
A screech rang out, fiery sparks flying from the tram's wheels as it came to a grinding halt at the station. The Peaks didn't exactly feature the King's finest men, but three guards came down to inspect them. The platform was otherwise deserted.
As they looked up and down the cars, preparing to unload their contents, a sniffle came from the shadows between the cars. They pointed their spears, on alert.
"W-Who goes there?!" one asked, stepping forward.
Another sniffle. From the darkness, a small child emerged, shivering and crying.
The guards lowered their spears, looking between one another. None of them had any idea what to do. The child was completely defenseless and was on the verge of bawling his eyes out; did he get lost and somehow wander onto the wrong tram?
"A-Ah, what's your name?" one of the guards asked, stepping forward to try and console the child.
"L-Lenny," he said. "I-I'm Lenny."
The guard turned and nodded, silently telling the other to run for their superior. The bug nodded back, turning heel and running up the platform to see if someone else would know what to do–
From another gap between the cars, arms reached out, grabbing the guard and pulling him into the shadows with muffled screams.
The other two bugs saw. They startled up to their feet, grabbing their spears again on alert. Glancing between the child and where their partner vanished, they both decided to run ahead to investigate the threat.
And abandon a helpless child in the process while danger is imminent, putting themselves first. They'll get what's coming to them.
One of the guards was lagging behind. As he huffed along, he had no way of defending himself from the dart that shot out from the shadows, the sedative within causing him to pass out immediately.
The first guard heard the body fall, and spun around, turning his back to the shadows. Hands reached out from behind and restrained him, keeping his mouth covered so nobody could hear him scream. A figure raun up, nail in hand, raiding the blade high above their head–
And slammed the butt of the hilt against their head, knocking the guard out instantly. The one restraining him slowly let him down to the ground, keeping his mouth covered until all three guards were unconscious on the ground.
They had no names. No faces. Only a mission.
The doors to one of the tram cars opened, and out stepped a hulking red figure, his armor and mothwing cloak giving him a presence far larger than the room could hold. Crescent ram-horns curled up from his head like a sliver of a moon, and he stared down his soldiers with tangerine eyes.
"You know what to do next," Xero ordered. "Now, go."
The armored knights ran off into the darkness, proceeding further into the Peaks. They would continue to dispatch every guard, miner, and manager that even approached their infiltration route, ensuring the mission would go as smoothly as possible.
Quiet Riot could not fail here.
Xero turned, coughing into his shoulder; pulling away, he scowled at the orange phlegm on his sleeve. His tangerine eyes caught on the child, who had stopped crying some time ago.
He glanced upwards. "Remember that the grub is your responsibility, Witch of the Wastes."
From the shadows stretching along the roof of the tram, sapphire eyes glared down at him. With ease, she swung her legs over and dropped down to the floor, crouching low next to Lenny.
"He is for now. But it is your company he seeks to join, not mine."
In one of her metal arms, Aenema patted Lenny's shoulder, holding the child close to comfort him. He was tense, and his eyes were still watering from the fake crying, but she could tell he was anxious to get started on his first mission for Quiet Riot.
Under her other metal arm, she was carrying a mixture of Sporg extract, home synthesized sulfuric acid, and hydrolyzed glycerol from Uomas, all mixed with ground sawdust and packed into a brick. It was embedded with a small cap filled with a low explosive powder composed of sulfur and charcoal, with cords running from it to a small pocket watch of her own design. The entire contraption was wrapped neatly in sewn canvas.
"Well, you're the one who brought him here," Xero insisted. "He's your charge. Now, let's move."
–bzzt–
"As luck would have it, one of America's two most powerful villains of the next decade–
–Has turned loose to strike terrorinto the hearts of men!"
–bzztzt–
"These Peaks are the primary industrial powerhouse of Hallownest, as well as its main source of limestone, quartz, marble, iron, and basalt. It's also the origin of these mysterious 'pink crystals', scarcely seen in an unrefined form outside of the mines… Quite the variety in such a small space."
Aenema held her metal arms close to her chest, eyeing the area with cold eyes from underneath her recluse hood. She and Xero needed to move quickly, but carefully; by now, a majority of the staff in the mine were captured and being rounded up elsewhere, but there was always the lingering chance that someone was hiding in the cracks. They couldn't allow witnesses for this or any operation; if they were identified, they would need to do something ugly.
"The Kingdom is extremely dependent on the output of this mine," Aenema continued to explain, more for Lenny's sake than Xero's. "Crippling it means to cripple Hallownest. A strike to a weak point, a vital step in attacking the White Palace itself."
It was almost too quiet in here, if not for the Quiet Riot soldiers rushing past them every now and then. That, and the machines that kept grinding away, even without anyone to supervise them. Pink light danced across scarred stone.
Lenny paused mid-stride, before he had to run to keep up. "W-What're we attacking the White Palace for?" he asked. "Aren't they important?"
"Important to those who benefit from wealth and status," Xero interrupted. "But times change. Rulers grow corrupt, and can be replaced."
Aenema nodded. "Let us not be slaves of the gods… Whatever gods are."
Xero coughed again, stopping in his tracks to hunch over into his cloak. He seemed to wither, half-dying right before Aenema's eyes, until he managed to stand up straight again. "This Infection in my chest… It whispers. Shows me truths I had never wished to see. The only justice for the wicked King's crimes is death."
Orange hemo stained his crimson claws, and he clenched it in a shaking fist.
"The only justice… for the sake of my child."
Aenema stopped and turned, recognition flashing in her arctic eyes. "Oh? I wasn't aware you had taken a mate, much less fathered young."
"I haven't," Xero clarified. They continued down the mineshaft hallway, closing in on the heart of the Peaks. "I've never had a mate. But Lenny here is not the first child I've taken under my wing, with dreams of being a hero-knight. I raised that child as though she were my own blood. In a sense, she is the reason I am here now."
Xero turned to look Aenema in the eye, orange glow meeting blue. "Overthrowing a god for my child's vengeance… You don't believe this sickness has me delirious, do you? Am I in over my head with arrogance?"
Before Aenema could respond, something lunged from out of the corner of her eye, and Lenny cried out in pain.
One of the miners – or prospectors, judging by the wealthy monocle over his eye, had grabbed Lenny and held a knife to his throat. He yanked Lenny backwards, glaring at them with orange madness in his eyes, practically frothing at the mouth.
"You! Don't move!" He wrestled with Lenny in a chokehold, the child crying out as he fought in vain against the arm holding him hostage. "You're responsible for this chaos, aren't you?! Did you spread this Infection here, too? I've got your faces!"
Xero reached for his nail, but paused when he saw Aenema holding her metal arm out, fake claws lax and pointing at the deranged prospector.
The Infected swung the knife in the air towards them, backing away as he spat. He wrenched the struggling Lenny closer to him as a meatshield, "Stay back! Stay back, or I'll cut the kid's throat open!"
Aenema didn't move a muscle, hand outstretched.
From under the shadow of her hood, electric blue eyes burned fury into him.
The shaking grip around Lenny's neck suddenly loosened, and he stumbled forward, collapsing to the ground. He scrambled away from the prospector, only to freeze when he heard the knife clatter to the ground, looking over his shoulder at the bug who held him hostage.
The madness in his eyes had gone shock-still, and the glass in his monocle cracked.
His face was melting.
A shrill, blood-curdling screech tore from his throat, claws raking across his mask, pulling away with scalding-hot molten chitin and hemo, staining and burning his hands as he mutilated himself to try and stop the burning pain. He stumbled backwards, only to fall onto his back, screaming as his face melted and dripped against the stone floor like hot wax.
Aenema's eyes sparked, and her fingers twitched.
The prospector exploded into a great ball of flame, burning him alive as his screams shot into howls, an animalistic, tortured sound being the only thing left of him. Even his melting, charred corpse couldn't be seen from the blinding heat of the inferno.
And then his screams stopped. Lenny and Xero stared in horror, the flames reflecting orange in their wide eyes. The prospector was gone; all that was left where he stood was a charred and disfigured corpse, and a raging bonfire.
"...I couldn't call you arrogant, nor do I find your anger misplaced, Xero."
The red mercenary general looked over to see Aenema, her back turned to the fire, only her blackened silhouette visible. The reflections of fire danced across her iron fists, arms crossed over her chest, her white hood waving in the wind from the explosion. The Peaks smelled of burnt flesh and sulfur.
"The gods we rage against hold us as their tools, their slaves. Gears grinding in a societal system that has grown sick in decadence, a flawed machine of their own design, existing only for their own obscene pleasure. A normal life, within the control of us mortals, is impossible with their coexistence. Livings cannot be made, passions cannot be pursued, families cannot be raised, in peace.
"What better reason to kill the gods of old, than for the futures of our young? What we leave in this life for those in the next – in children or in our work – will one day be all that remains of us. It is nature to give your whole self for your own blood. And Xero, I would be a hypocrite to call you wrong for wanting to destroy the world for your child."
She stalked off, leaving the frozen Xero and the trembling Lenny behind. Flames of the inferno whipped at her back as she strode deeper into the darkness.
"After all, a mother never forgets."
"Misotheism"
noun
The belief that God exists, but is unworthy of worship, and is not wholly competent or good; "hatred of God or gods."
Six Years Ago…
Sylvia loved her new little brother.
She tried to tell him this. The 'human', as he called himself from what little he spoke, was always so distant and shy, terrified of everything. He'd no doubt have run back off into the shadows, never to be seen again, if he wasn't half-dead from hunger and cold when they first found him.
It seemed all this endless rain just wasn't good for 'humans'. Compared to the heat of the Wastes, she could barely handle the City chill herself. 'Hy-po-ther-mi-a', she thought Father had called it. That was a big word. She usually loved to learn big words — they reminded her of all the words Mother once taught her — but this one seemed scary.
She hoped she didn't catch any colds herself, sneaking between alleyways in the shadows and frigid rain. She hoped nobody could see what she had bundled in her arms, trying to shield it from the heartless rainfall, clutching it close to her chest.
She doubled over, coughing. Her vision blurred and her knees shook; she only stayed upright by leaning against a wall under an awning. Deep breaths. Focus. Take it slow and easy. …These 'attacks' were getting more frequent.
Big words could be scary, but there wasn't a word for what was wrong with her.
As soon as she recovered, she hurried inside. Father had been lucky enough to find a charity shelter for them to stay in; it was cold, a little dirty, and the food wasn't as good as it was at home in the Wastes, but it was better than sleeping out in the rain. Dull grey walls surrounded her as she tried to discreetly sprint through the hallways, grizzled bugs and caretakers turning to look at her with raised brows, but she finally found the space Father had for them and ducked inside. Rain pattered on the dirty, cracked window.
"Sylvia! Where have you been?!" Her Father, Caesar, was immediately in her face, wiping dirt from her cloak and checking for injuries, as if she were that clumsy. She'd only broken her arm that one time playing on the training wall with the older boys back home, and she'd hardly cried at all. "Are you hurt, d-did you have any more 'attacks', or–?"
"I-I'm okay, Father!" Sylvia beamed up at him. "Where's Maxwell?"
When the 'human' had mumbled his name to her, she'd barely been able to hear it, but she could never forget it. Side-stepping her concerned Father, she pushed open the window, looking at a metal trash can just under the windowsill. She knocked on the lid like it was a door.
"Delivery for King Maxwell!"
This must've looked really strange to any bystanders. Thankfully, nobody was in the alleyway to see them as the lid slowly creaked open, and a dirty, pale face peeked out. His messy hair was short and brown, and his eyes were a vivid hazel, dark bags underneath his wild and paranoid gaze.
"...King…?" she barely heard him say.
Sylvia nodded with a beaming smile. "Mhm! Everyone says the King of Hallownest is worshiped 'cause of his pale light. You look pretty pale yourself, so that must make you King!"
Father approached her and kneeled down to look out the window next to her — Father was really tall compared to most bugs. Maybe she'd get that tall someday, too? "You look ill, if anything," he urged. "There's no good reason to be staying in that bin. You'll catch something if you stay there; why not come inside with us?"
The lid snapped shut. Sylvia and Caesar shared a look before she knocked on the lid again.
"I got something for you!" She pulled out what she'd been carrying; a silken white cloak and gloves, complete with a hood and protective cloth mask to hide his alien face. The lid creeped open again, hazel eyes landing on the bundle. Father looked appalled.
"S-Sylvia, we don't have the money for that! You didn't steal these, did you?"
She frowned, looking away, guilty. Caesar sighed, looking around as if the City Guard would come bursting in at any moment. From Mantis Lord to homelessness, having to steal for clothing; he'd fallen so far, so fast. Sylvia's disease had sent his family to hell, and here he was, going even deeper.
"I… I understand times are hard, but from now on, you absolutely mustn't do this…" After a beat, he reluctantly added, "...Unless you have no choice."
Sylvia handed the bundle to Maxwell, who took it gingerly in his muddied hands. He looked at the cloak she stole for him, then up at her, then the can slammed shut again. He was banging around inside of it. Sylvia and Caesar shot each other another expectant glance.
When the can opened again, for the first time since she'd first met him, Maxwell slowly stood up to his full height. The white cloak covered him from head to toe, completely hiding the fleshy skin underneath, and even his face was hidden by a porcelain mask; two dark eyes in the visage of a toothy grin. The back of the cloak sank down and trailed behind him like a tail, and the flaps on the hood for a bug's horns or antennae were empty, flopping over his head like an animal's ears.
"Look at you!" Sylvia smiled. "You've been so shy, haven't you? This way, nobody has to see you if you don't want them to!"
Nobody has to see you if you don't want them to.
Maxwell was still, considering this. The trash can lid was balanced on the top of his head as he slowly raised his arms in a 'V' and growled, mimicking some storybook monster as his hands curled like claws.
Sylvia giggled, feigning a terrified shriek. "Oh, no!" she laughed as Maxwell climbed out of the bin and through the window, jumping into the dull stone room with his sleek-white cloak, growling after Sylvia. He clawed at the air with one hand, while keeping the trash can lid on his head with the other. "The monster! The monster's gonna eat me up!"
Caesar watched the two children — and they were just children, despite their circumstances, he had to remind himself — play chase in their cold and dirty room, making their dull shelter suddenly feel so much larger, and more alive. It was as though in that corpse of a room, the wild spirit of the Wastes grew and grew, until the ceiling hung with foliage and the walls became the world all around them.
Sylvia laughed and laughed with her new little brother. Maxwell laughed and laughed.
Sylvia's laugh grew tired and dry.
Her voice became breathy.
Her knees became weak and shaky.
Her eyes rolled, and she fell forward into Maxwell's arms. Caesar's eyes widened and his heart went cold as he watched his daughter collapse unconscious, instinct rushing him forward to sweep her into his arms. Everything seemed to move in slow motion.
"Sylvia?! SYLVIA!"
The trash can lid on Maxwell's head fell and clattered on the floor, the metal echo on dead stone echoing down the hall.
Present Day…
"And you're sure this will work?"
"Not at all," Aenema huffed.
Xero spun around to glare at her. She had been fiddling with the homemade malleable explosive in her hands, trying to decide on a good countdown time, while also trying to explain how it worked to an enthralled Lenny. Kid-friendly bomb making tutorials.
"What do you mean, you're not sure?!" Xero growled. "The entire operation hinges on this!"
Aenema sighed. "If I had more information to work with, I could conceive a design more likely to succeed," she explained. "The inner workings of the Crystal Peaks are a closely-guarded secret, shared only with the workers here on-site and with the White Palace. Don't want the secrets of their industry leaking out, I can only guess."
Xero burned at her a moment longer, before he turned away, simmering. "True enough… Most of our intel is sourced from rumors."
"That, and workplace accident reports that are required to be sent out to their local headquarters in the City of Tears, the Watcher's Spire, and to the families of the workers involved," she said. "Far more accessible information, if vague. An awful lot of miners are killed or injured in explosions, even though mining with explosives is strictly criminalized in Hallownest."
"And for good reason, too," Xero added. He wiped a splotch of hemo from his blade on his cloak. "Cave-ins, fault lines… They're unreliable and dangerous. The material is just too volatile to be used safely. Or maybe Hallownest itself is too volatile."
Aenema nodded. "We also know that the majority of the machines in the Peaks are powered by some type of 'central power unit', which we know next to nothing about. However, based on these explosion incidents near the machinery, my theory is that this power unit is sending some type of volatile fuel across the Peaks, which is in turn utilized by the infrastructure…"
She held up the makeshift bomb, patting it with metal hands.
"And if that's the case, then an explosion at the central power unit would combust all the fuel in the connecting pipelines, triggering a chain reaction that would decimate the machinery in use at the Crystal Peaks…"
"...And by extension, the industry of Hallownest itself," Xero breathed. "Is it really that simple? That one little bomb can do all that?"
Lenny looked nervous, wanting to stay as close to Aenema yet as far away from the bomb as possible. Pink neon light glowed ahead, at the exit of the tunnel they were in; the heart of the Peaks was just ahead, and with it, their target.
"It can," Aenema said, "if my theory is correct. Our intel is dubious at best."
Xero said nothing. As they stepped out of the mouth of the tunnel, the world dropped away into a great chasm, with webs of unstable shellwood catwalks stretching out across it, up it, down it, all reaching down into the heart of the mountain itself; a pounding, pulsing, purple thing, the energy pouring off of it tinging the air with static and heat that reached all the way up to them in waves. Lenny tried to peer down into the depths, but the railing snapped under his weight, and he fell back into Aenema's arms while the metal railing kept falling for tense seconds, echoing as it banged off of the rock walls on its way down.
Taking a deep breath, Xero stepped forward. "This is it… I can smell the power in this room. The presence is nerve-wracking."
"Do not forget why we are here."
"Of course not," Xero quickly retorted. Then after a beat, "Why are you here, Aenema? I've never asked you your reasons; I thought Mantises didn't care for Geo."
"They don't. And for the most part, neither do I. I serve ideals, not money. I'm just…"
She paused, turning to look down into the chasm. Neon pink light reflected off of her electric blue eyes and the metal sheen of her prosthetic mandibles, soured by the shade of her white robe. Just for a moment, Aenema's usual steely focus became wistful, silent. He couldn't make out the look in her scarred expression.
"...I've been picking scabs again."
Before he could say another word, Aenema scooped up Lenny by the waist, holding him close with metal hands as she leapt off of the ledge and into the cavernous chamber below. He screamed all the while, clutching at the arm – his only lifeline – as she bounced off of ledges and glanced across cliffsides. Xero groaned, before leaping off after her, swooping down into the heart of the mountain.
Down here, the thundering crescendoed. The whole earth seemed to quake with the rhythm of the heartbeat, in tandem with war drums. The machine – the power unit they were here to destroy – was a bloated mess of metal, valves and hissing steam, towering pipes reaching far up, veins of power running from the heart into every other limb of the industrial parasite in the mountain's body.
"A damn waste of time, putting the generator all the way down this chasm, only to send the output all the way back up," Aenema remarked. "Unless there's a geothermal aspect to its function…? No, the heat down here is not nearly intense enough."
"You said it was likely sending fuel to the rest of the Peaks, yes?" Xero nodded his head towards the central power unit. "Let's get this over with."
Aenema weighed the malleable explosive in her hands; yes, it'd be more than enough to destroy the whole scrap metal ball. Would a twenty minute timer be sufficient? Ten minutes? Five was far too short, wasn't it? She didn't know how organized Quiet Riot was, and how readily they would respond to Xero's order to immediately evacuate. She approached the power unit–
"Wait. Why not make the kid do it?"
Aenema turned her head, glaring at Xero. "What?"
Xero's orange eyes glowed against the pink crystal light. "Setting the bomb is safe enough, yes? Lenny wishes to join our ranks; let's see if he has the fury in him, the bite, to do the dirty work."
She simmered for a moment, electric blue eyes darting between tangerine ones and the bomb in her hands, before she sighed and knelt down next to Lenny. The little ant child was shaking, but he met her eyes, and took the bomb into his unsteady hands when she offered it to him.
"It's very simple," Aenema assured him in a hushed whisper. "I'll walk you through every step, okay?"
Lenny nodded, gulping. With measured steps, he approached the machine, clutching the bomb that could decimate Hallownest close to his chest, feeling his breaths press against the malleable explosive mold. Lenny wedged the bomb into a crevice between a pipe and the main body, and per Aenema's careful instructions, he wound up the pocketwatch embedded in its side to about fifteen minutes. The whole time, Xero watched the process with intrigue gleaming off of his orange eyes, the whispers of a smirk growing on his features.
"Perfect." In spite of the situation, Aenema gave Lenny a small smile. "Easy does it. The bomb is set; we have fifteen minutes until detonation. Let's–"
The earth shook again. From above, a metal monolith hurtled down into the chasm, rocketing into the earth and slamming down with enough force to make Lenny stumble, his hands running across the pocketwatch button and resetting the timer.
The metal monster rose; a giant spherical golem, blinding pink light emanating from a concave in its chest like a heartbeat. Wide, mechanical eyes beamed down at Aenema and Xero as its four arms raised into the air, stirring up the air itself with a deafening, unnatural roar, the robotic beast towering above them.
"Now what might this thing be?" Aenema asked aloud, hardly fazed by the overwhelming force that had meteored into the chasm with them. "An automaton in the employ of the Peaks… It appears to have a dual function of excavation and defense. What could be controlling it? Or powering it, for that matter…?"
Xero wasted no time in drawing his twin blades, closing his eyes and murmuring a spell to himself. His weapons glowed in his hands and began to float upwards on their own, homing in on their target as he leapt into combat. He flew high above the automaton, and with a wave of his hand, the floating blades shot down and glanced across the giant robot's metal plating with such speed that the gashs in its armor were red-hot.
"Oh, take care not to damage it too greatly, Xero!" Aenema called out to him as he landed on one of the wooden walkways above them. "I'd like to take the time to examine it, if possible!"
"It's trying to kill us!" Xero shouted back down. He fell back into the fray, hopping off of the robot's arm for a moment; as he jumped away, a flash of his nail cut the metal clean in two, the mechanical arm falling to the earth.
Aenema's arms fell across her chest again with a huff. "Tch. Take no quarter, then. Your loss, when I can't make mechanical warriors of your own."
She turned her back and raised her scarred face high in distaste. Behind her, Xero landed on the face of the mining goliath, its spotlight eyes blaring at him from below as he stabbed into each of them with both of his nails, sparks and shards flying as the lights flickered and died within, the beast rearing back as though to roar in pain and fury.
Lenny whimpered, and her blue eyes snapped open to see him cowering against the power unit, a shaking hand pointing at the bomb he had planted. "M-Miss Aenema, i-it's…"
Aenema stepped closer to examine it, and her breath caught in her throat with an intense gaze. The bomb's timer had malfunctioned when the automaton made the earth quake, causing Lenny to stumble and jostle the pocketwatch on accident.
They had less than a minute left.
"XERO!" She turned and screamed at the Quiet Riot commander, pointing a metal fist at the heart of the metal giant.
With a mechanical whirl, a jetstream of flame exploded from her shoulder, and her prosthetic arm launched off of her body like a rocket, shooting straight through the concaved chest of the automaton.
Xero stumbled back, scarcely managing to land on his feet on a walkway above. He was reeling from whatever the hell Aenema just did; before he could scream if she was out of her mind, Aenema pointed at him with her one remaining arm.
"The timer's broken!" she shouted. "Go evacuate Quiet Riot! Use the escape route we discussed!"
Xero's expression was bewildered, but he shakily nodded and sprinted back off into the tunnel from which they came. Aenema grabbed Lenny with her one arm, but the automaton, its battery ripped clean from its body, finally began to shut down, collapsing face-forward into the dirt. The shockwave was enough to cave-in the lower escape route she was going to use, startling her.
Five seconds left.
"M-M-Miss Aenema!" Lenny cried. She held his face close to her chest as she reached out with the arm she didn't have, willing her metal prosthetic to fly back towards her with her telekinesis.
Three seconds left.
The arm scraped along the dirt, wasting precious seconds in reaching her. Aenema tugged harder.
One second left.
The arm finally reconnected with her scarred shoulder–
BOOM!
The makeshift explosive detonated. The shockwave was deafening, the heat seeming to sear the very earth around them, flames and clouds of dust erupting and roaring in spirals that swallowed the entire chasm. The central power unit was completely decimated, the mess of pipes turning into warped scrap in an instant.
Shrapnel flew. A sharp metal plate, torn at an odd angle, flew across the chasm…
…And glanced across a pale, ethereal wall.
When the heat faded and the dust settled, Aenema was clutching Lenny close to her with both arms embracing him, a magic force-field of Soul sigils raised around them. Where the rest of the dirt had been blackened by the heat wave, there was a circle in the center with an absence of soot.
Lenny slowly pulled away, the tension in his body fading and his eyes opening as he realized he wasn't dead. Aenema's breath was strangled, but she eased up, giving Lenny a small, reassuring smile.
Then her eyes cast up to the power unit, and her face fell. "No!"
Aenema and Lenny both shot to their feet, the force-field fading around them. The power unit had been destroyed completely, but sparks still flew from the cables laid in the pipes, which were undamaged beyond a certain point above them.
Sparks.
"The power unit wasn't outputting fuel at all!" Aenema cursed under hushed breath. "It was some type of electric generator, these machines run off of electricity! But those explosion reports… The Peaks export sulfur, which is extremely flammable! Dust clouds must've plumed up near the machines and were ignited by a spark… The power unit was the spark, not the fuel!"
"W-What happened?!" Lenny cried. "What went wrong?!"
"Electricity can cause explosions, but it isn't the explosive material itself!" Aenema's thoughts were running so fast that her mouth could barely keep up; the disorientation of being next to an explosion made it hard for Lenny to focus on her words. "We destroyed the power unit, but it didn't cause the chain reaction we had hoped for; the Peaks have shut down, but all they need to do is replace the power unit, and this all will have been for nothing!"
"W-What does that mean?!"
"It means the mission's a failure!" Aenema whipped around to shout at him, a raging torrent that didn't belong in her cold, calculating eyes. "We need to retreat, now!"
Lenny's throat felt tight. He could barely breathe.
The cargo tram roared back to life as hordes of mercenary bugs, armored in scrap metal, clamored aboard the train as quickly as they could. The frantic crowd of warriors filed into the tram doors as fast as they could manage, jumping aboard, pulling other up with them, fueled by rumors of a bomb malfunction.
The Witch of the Wastes, they hissed as they pulled each other on board the tram that was already beginning to pull away with steady force, The Commander never should have trusted her. Her folly will claim us all if we don't hurry.
Did you see those false arms? Came hushed whispers of those already safely packed into the dark back corners of the car to make room for more. Those cracks along her mask? Were those from another faulty bomb?
Xero had one foot on the platform and one on the tram step, glaring up at the mountain as the cargo tram backed off the way it came. He gripped the handrail in a vice.
"Aenema, Lenny… You both had better make it out in one piece," he huffed, before ducking into the shadows of the car, picking up speed away from the Peaks.
"This is the only escape route left. Hurry!"
Aenema had leapt up the chasm with Lenny in her arms again, pointing to another cavern just beyond a shellwood walkway that stretched across the chasm. The ruined remains of other such walkways dangled down above them, smashed apart from when the automaton fell from higher up.
This one was still intact enough to walk across, but Lenny treaded carefully, his shaking legs only causing the bridge to rock more under him. He held onto the rope railing in a vice.
Aenema was behind him, urging him forward. They didn't have enough time for her to be as gentle as she'd have liked. "I won't let you fall, now move! You're a warrior now, aren't you? Finish your mission!"
As Lenny fought not to look down, a low hum filled the air.
Aenema glanced around, suddenly on edge. Something in the atmosphere was changing – waking up. It was as if the sleeping mountain itself had finally cracked open a tired eye, and reached out.
Pink crystals lined every wall, every surface, jutting out of every rock face. And from the bottom up, as though powering on some colossal machine, they began to glow even brighter, the neon pink light forcing Aenema to shield her eyes underneath her hood.
One of them, uncomfortably close and angled downwards into the pit, seemed to shine like a sun as the hum grew louder, the air around them heating up and vibrating with energy that threatened to spill over.
And then a laser beam exploded out of it.
It hit the ruined power unit below dead-on as Aenema and Lenny jumped back, the latter nearly falling off of the unsteady rope bridge while the glowing beam melted the scrap of the generator. The supercharged beam, impossibly, angled upwards to cut along the metal pipes and cables that reached out of the chasm and into the rest of the mountain.
Other lasers sounded off, the wave of overwhelming heat hitting Aenema like a wall. They burned long lines of smoldering earth along the walls, even running across other crystals, which exploded into glass-like shrapnel.
Aenema leaned over the rope railing, blue eyes glaring down into the chasm. She whispered to herself, "Just what in the hell is happening…?"
Sparks flew.
A conveyor belt of mined and smashed crystals glowed, and began exploding one by one, like a flowing river of firecrackers. They were unceremoniously dumped into the machine on the other end of the belt, fire escaping through the cracks, bolts shooting out, until the whole machine exploded.
The Crystal Peaks became a giant combustion oven. Crystals flared to life and beamed down fleeing Infected miners, cauterizing severed limbs and burning holes straight through their bodies. The heat trailed scorched earth behind the path of the lasers, slicing clean through the intricate metal machines that crowded every cavern, ripping the shellwood scaffolding like paper, scores of bugs falling into the sharp crystal canyons below.
Mindless bugs wheeling carts filled with crystals startled as the metal grew red with heat, before the detonation claimed them in a pink fireball that shook the mountain.
The wild fauna of the Peaks, crystals embedded into their very carapaces, crawled into unnatural formation, tangerine in their eyes as their lasers shredded through the infrastructure of the mining operation. Even the luxury housing of the prospectors wasn't safe, the rich supervisors of the Peaks watching in horror as their roofs caved in on them or their walls blasted them away.
Flying bugs hailed down spears of crystals at the hordes of fleeing miners, impaling and entombing them alive in pink neon, sealing off all of the exits as they burned alive in the swelling inferno of detonating crystals.
The giant metal mining automatons, pink heartbeats pounding in their hollow chests, charged their full might into the load-bearing walls of the caverns, triggering cave-ins that crushed scores of screaming bugs under tons of stone. They charged up, heavy lasers erupting from their cores as they mowed down the helpless miners, their lasers triggering more crystals to explode, before the automatons themselves erupted into fire and scrap metal.
The mountain was alive, and it was killing every last parasite in its body.
Aenema stumbled as the whole mountain shook under them, the shellwood bridge fraying and rocking. She ducked down as a laser swung dangerously close above them, and backpedaled as another cut right through the bridge–
Gravity took hold.
The only reason Lenny didn't immediately fall to his death was the vice grip he had on the rope handrail of the bridge, but he was screaming, clinging to the rope as his lifeline as the two halves of the bisected bridge fell to either side. Time seemed to slow down as Aenema launched herself off of her half of the bridge, grabbing onto Lenny with one arm and embedding her metal claws into the stone wall with her other arm.
"Hold onto me!" she shouted, barely registering Lenny's desperate grap around her waist before she flung herself up the wall, narrowly avoiding another laser while scaling the chasm wall towards their escape route.
As soon as she flung herself over the ledge and her feet hit solid ground, she sprinted forward into the tunnel as fast as she could manage while an ant child clutched at her side. More crystals exploded in her wake, just barely far away enough that the shrapnel didn't hit her.
Up ahead, rows of crystals all detonated at once; timed too perfectly. A cascade of boulders were caving in on their escape route–!
With a wave of her hand, Aenema cast another warding spell, the rocks bouncing harmlessly off of the pale, ethereal ceiling she'd created as she kept running through. The fireball was expanding outwards, gaining on them, but the light at the end of the tunnel was just up ahead–
Aenema nearly slipped and fell off of the cliff.
Their escape route had led them to a small ledge with a straight drop down, and no way to climb up behind them. There wasn't even enough room on either side to take cover from whatever was about to erupt from the tunnel within. They were completely cornered.
Aenema looked at Lenny, his eyes squeezed shut and whimpering into her side, hyperventilating. Her eyes scanned the horizon for something, anything.
The veins of the Peaks still carried its lifeblood to the outside world.
Beneath them, a cargo tram was running alongside the cliff face, rushing away from the exploding mountain. Without thinking, Aenema grabbed onto Lenny, and leapt off of the cliff just as the pink fireball erupted from the mouth of the tunnel they were just in front of.
The child screamed in free-fall, his grasp nearly hurting against Aenema's carapace, before they landed on the top of the train, nearly collapsing against the cool metal.
All she could feel was her own ragged breaths.
Thunk!
Xero, brooding in a dark corner of his tram car with his arms across his chest, cracked a single eye open to glance at the ceiling of the car as something landed against it.
He grumbled, but to himself, he breathed a sigh of relief.
"I know you're not too tall to use the door…"
Far below the mountain, in the rural town of Dirtmouth, bugs were starting to crowd the streets and lean out their windows to catch a glimpse of what was happening on the mountain that shadowed over them.
Older bugs screamed about it being the end times, mothers herded their children safely back inside.
A series of distant explosions crept up the sides of the mountain, like it was trying to break itself into pieces. Plumes of smoke clouded over, the earth shaking with every blast even from this far away.
And then, the pressure that had been building in the mountain erupted; like a dormant volcano reawakening, the entire horizon flared in a colossal fireball of neon-pink, the heat and shockwave sweeping through the entire down.
The blast was deafening, clouds of smoke from both the explosions and from the dust whipped up by the shockwave settling over Dirtmouth and turning the night even darker.
Hatchlings cried. Screams filled the streets as the sky fell.
The final blast even shook the tram as it sped away, and for a terrifying moment, Lenny thought the shockwave would send them right off of the rails. His eyes slowly peeled open to see the aftermath that Quiet Riot had left in its wake; a fireball the size of the mountain itself, cresting above the scarred horizon. Fire rained down.
He felt like he couldn't breathe. Even as the light of the explosion blinded him, the world suddenly seemed so much darker.
"M… Miss A-Aenema…" he whispered on shaky breath. "D… Does this mean we won…? Was the mission… a success? Was this… really right…?"
Lenny managed to tear his eyes away from the devastation behind them, burning into the sky like the birth of some new God, to look at Aenema.
"The crystals explode…"
He barely heard her whisper. All he could see was her intense, calculating stare into the ruins of the Peaks, shrinking with distance, the orange blaze reflecting in her eyes.
For once, there was a hungry interest burning in her ice-cold eyes.
For once, with metal mandibles, she grinned.
"The crystals… Explode…"
Chapter name and summary are a reference to Bombtrack by Rage Against The Machine.
Other musical references in this chapter include:
FIDLAR (Artist)
I PROMISE the next chapter will be about Valleri! I just wanted to establish the conflict of this arc first. I know the last chapter said it'd be 5 chapters but this chapter was originally gonna be merged with the next one, and this is already 8k words, so we split it to make it 6. I'll bring back Valleri and Hornet and all the other people in 19!
Okay so in case its not obvious. The main inspiration for this chapter was the opening of Final Fantasy 7 and i had a lot of fun writing this while listening to Bombing Mission on loop. Hell, I might even add that song to the Ethno playlist lmao. I wanted to give more love to some of the descriptions of things blowing the fuck up, but an explosion is a very "in the moment" thing, and stretching out a description of it would make it feel like it's happening in slow motion; on the other hand, making it short makes it harder to really do justice to the scenes in my head so :( I hope it was still intense and enjoyable!
I'm realizing that of all the Topaz Clan characters, Walsh is actually the most uninspired. Donovan gets his flair from Raoul Duke, Luca has a whole slew of muses for me to draw on, and I can't talk too much about the Director yet, but Walsh is very plain as far as mobsters go. I need to find a new spark for him sometime, I've heard him compared to that one spider villain from Monsters Inc and I couldn't dispute it
Speaking of muses, I finally got to add a new scene with Maxwell! I have a new muse for him to borrow from that may or may not be obvious in this scene, but I don't want to reveal too much about that here
I probably should've focused this chapter more on Xero since he's the leader of Quiet Riot but i just really really wanted to establish Aenema more and I'm not sorry at all. I have 0 skill in any kind of art but I wanted to photoshop together what Aenema might look like from in-game sprites of the Mantis Lords, and you can find the image on our Discord server (below) or on the Ao3 version of this fic; can you tell what her design inspiration is?
Please leave a comment and thank you for reading! Join our Discord server at PYXCv9tUPg