“There’s something strange about the direhound,” Quessa replied quietly to the gray nymph.

The atmosphere has changed now, after they’d at last seen and heard a third flare. Gone went the panic of uncertain failure, anxiety at what they would do to help. There is still cause for fear, still things to dread — but they were back to the clarity of mission parameters. The plan marched on.

Just a few paces from them, the black and white ant stands, that one’s single remaining antennae working dutifully, a foreleg stabbing at a map drawn in lines in the mud. She can see the squiggles representing the gully ahead: their destination, where this would all end. If those crosses are their group, they wouldn’t be far now.

The map is lit by torches placed adjacent to illuminate, and beside each stands a major at attention, antennae outstretched. Quessa idly eyes them, but she’s trying to listen to the gray nymph, to hear out his plans.

His latest suggestion? Use her nouspells — her secret, Yanseno said you shouldn’t use these carelessly nouspells — on the direhound — on the mammal — to confuse or hinder it.

“Is that good or bad?” he asked, after a few moments without her following up on her comment. “Do you think it’ll work?”

“It shouldn’t, not effectively. Nouspells target the nous. Bugs, intelligent bugs, have it. But beasts… it’s faint, underdeveloped, yes?”

He nodded as if he’d heard it explained before. He murmured, “It’s not all there is to intelligence, though. Beasts still have feelings. Ooncerta always said…”

“Still, without a full nous, so many nouspells just can’t take hold. Except… it’s speculation, not even my own speculation, but Yanseno got a good look at the direhound out there, and… you know how he’s a sensor? He sensed, and the direhound… it had almost sentient levels of nou-enervate. But not in the brain. The brain seemed normal, for direbeasts — within the norm, at least. No, this was spread out, flowing through the body, and without the aura of nousomatic nerve. Wait no, I messed it up. Not flowing, pulsing — he said it was as if the blood had a mind.”

The gray nymph glanced down at his endowed arm — he’d reapplied the bandages, at some point, but they were bloody. He seemed to think on what Quessa suggested. “Is that… well, does it make sense? Could it be possible?”

“I’ve never heard of anything like it. Whatever it is… maybe nouspells could interfere with it. But we can’t plan for that.”

“So we’ll… what? Can you hit it with that stunning spell?”

“I… I’ll try. But we can’t plan for that, either. I haven’t mastered it. And Yanseno doesn’t want me using it if he’s not there to watch, and I —” She stops, and then she cringes because the nymph’s eyes don’t miss her tarsi making the signs. She casts a nouspell on herself, and continues, “Nevermind, we should get into position.”

Words formed on his palps, but they die in motions as chirping and waving torches draw both their gazes to the forest beyond.

It wasn’t the direhound.

Treading closer, Quessa makes a tarsign, coils twisting in preparation for a bane blast, should she needed to cast one.

But she didn’t. Not yet. As they near the torchlight, she recognizes an ant she saw earlier. Paler chitin, with pretty brown cloth. The new ant approached alongside a limping major.

Had there been another attack? she thought. Quessa scanned the ranks of their ants until her eyes stopped on recognizable blue weft. “...Bites Water,” she names after a moment, calling for this one’s attention as she crosses the distance. “What’s the situation? Can you find out for us?”

Meanwhile, after directing the major to lean beside another, the paler ant breaks off and makes a straight line for the black and white clothed leader. They enter quiet conversation, backs turned.

She had heard the other group light all three flares. But…

Quessa taps the gray nymph. “How many ants were there, with the other group?”

“Well, there was that little one and three bigs ones?”

Quessa nods. That meant now, all the other ants must have been routed here. Still, the red nymph and purple nymph had used all three flares. Had they managed to keep the plan on track all on their own?

Bites Water is breaking off from the group of ants, stepping back toward them. This one’s antennae now work anxiously. When the blue clothed ant stops in front of Quessa, the chirps that interspersed the communication are hesitant, low keyed. The bright, sharp light of Quessa’s riftlight spell cut harsh shadows on the ant’s face that feel almost appropriate.

“Uu. These ones have [issue]. The One Who [Walks] Upon [Sands : Fine] was one who [flees] the [nearness] of [evildog]. Those ones who are [Duskborn] had [distance] from [position : planned]. [Routing] of [evildog] at [then] means [routing : wrong]. Not in [gully].”

Quessa frowns. Parsing through the text the ant is showing her, her frown deepens with her understanding. Beside her, the gray nymph looks towards her with request, antennae extending outward as if reaching for understanding. Above them, a droplet of water drips from a wet leaf and splashes on the gray nymph’s antennae fuzz. The gray nymph flinches, and Quessa giggles for a second.

Then she explains it to him, “The plan was to first lure the direhound into the gully that runs to here from a little farther north, then flush it down.” She’s looking to Bites Water as she explains, the ant nodding, assuring her she wasn’t forgetting or misremembering it. “This way, we could wait for it at the other end of the gully, and lay a more sure trap. But if it’s not following the gully, it’s harder to say where it’s going to go.” The clarity of the mission was escaping them again. Was it falling apart?

Then Quessa stops. So often, recalling knowledge feels like grasping for things through a choking fog, her quarry eluding her, if only by inches. Tedious, frustrating, failure-prone — but oh, so familiar. So it’s always startling when the winds change, and the fog eases to reveal an old thought. Not clearly, but so much less vague that she gasps.

Her gaze jumps immediately from the ant to the gray nymph. She remembers a conversation they had earlier, at the tavern. “You said the direhound was following you, hunting you.”

He nods. “And the howls are like…”

“...it’s speaking your name,” she finishes. He seems momentarily surprised by her remembering.

Quessa looks back to the ant in blue clothe. “Can you tell the one in charge I might have an idea?”

Bites Water stops rubbing antennae, and the bald lengths straightening with what looks like hope. Bites Wates scurries back toward the ant in black and white. Quessa follows at stride. After all, if the direhound is already moving, they don’t have much time to get things set up.

Ants have an easier time moving through the forest than the nymphs do. The mantids are bigger, needing to step around the bushes and trees clustered far too near to each other, rerouting to places that the ants can just crawl to. Around the banks of the gully, though, the trees clear.

Not far from her, ants are huddled separately, antennating and chirping among each other. The nice gray nymph had left her, as part of the plan, and now the green nymph stands here, alone. She doesn’t even have a torch for light. She didn’t need it (just cast a riftlight), but obscured in shadow, she’s some night monster, staring at the living.

It’s just three majors, the leader, and the One Who Bites Water with them now. They had treated the first injured major, and the second wasn’t as badly off, so they’d all been fit to return to the gate. Two nymphs, five ants.

Watching the group entranced her, for all that her thoughts seemed scattered and nonspecific. She tries to focus.

Were the ants worried? Quessa wondered. Did they feel anxious at how mucked up this mission has gotten, from our mistakes?

A new thought occurred to her, shining clear in the mental fog.

“Put out your torches,” she stridulates with force, hoping it caries to at least some of the ants. “Try to hide!”

It would all crumble if the hound saw them, all the bugs and fire serving just to spook it.

The ants stare at her in reply, eyes small and black and unreadable in the distance. Before doing anything they look to the black and white ant, seeking a second, more trustworthy opinion. Seeing this clicks together into a thought. They don’t trust me. They don’t trust any of us. Quessa looks to the other nymph.

The gray nymph steps now through the gully, advancing towards a wider, dryer segment. She tries to not to see it as an arena. It’s supposed to be a deathtrap. They’d pitch oil at it, the gray nymph would light it on fire, and it would just die and give them all peace.

Right now, the other nymph holds the blazing torch lit low to the ground. They picked this place for being gravelly and dry — how the rain had left the forest so muddy the one defect in their plan. So now the gray nymph bided his time, his torch drying the ground ever further.

Ants wait. Their real leader must have given the go ahead, because they’d extinguished their torches and retreated to cover behind ferns and fat mushrooms.

Quessa’s antennae bounce as she too waits. Her eyes flick over the ants and the gray nymph and then to the west, hoping and dreading for the beast to emerge. She stares at the ants and can almost see the plan in execution. The soldiers will rush forward, pitching oil and throwing weighted nets to trap the beast.

Anticipation growing, she replays that image of everything going right once more, and then again, and then — the thought slips away from her. It’s all fog. She can’t see it anymore. She can find where the ants are waiting, slowly forcing her eyes to trace an arc that a net or fragile oil flask might follow.

Quessa frowns. That bothers her. What was she thinking about? Something about how the plan will play out — will it go wrong?

Her eyes settle on the gray nymph down there. His long antennae have curled tight in dread. He’s worried. She’s worried. She’s bothered looking at him — why?

What was she thinking about? She looks at the ants hiding atop the gully. They’re about to do something, right? She’s here with them. She feels jittery. Something’s about to happen. Something… bad?

Quessa sees others react before she does. The sound comes distant, muffled, but the gray nymph, the one she’s worried about, he flinches. She hears… a dog bark? Following those blue eyes…

Eyeshine in the dark. Muddy, cracked bone. She smells blood. Terrible blood. She smells something spicy — spinner ant danger pheromone.

The dog. The direhound. It’s looking at the gray nymph she’s worried about. It’s padding closer to him. He looks so scared. It jumps down into the gully.

The ants are moving forward in the dark. Wet oil catches a glint of moonlight.

Things feels so foggy. What was she doing? What’s going on?

The nymph looks so scared, she’s scared for him, why? The fog is suffocating, thoughts are like slugs. She could just stop.

Quessa doesn’t see her tarsi moving in practiced motions. She’s frightening to a stop, and she might have stopped her tarsi if she noticed.

⸢Nouform: Calming Draft!⸥

It doesn’t clear. It doesn’t fix her. The fog seems to rush back. She’s scared, and everything’s going wrong.

But she clenches her raptorials tight. She imagines hunting down the thoughts that elude her. Squeezing tight around the conclusion she’s flinching away from, and ripping it out of the fog to face it.

She’s scared. Something is wrong. The ants are rushing forward. The gray nymph — Ooliri — is staring down the direhound.

Oil glints in the moonlight.

It doesn’t click. It remains vague, but she can feel something terrible in the gaps between her thoughts. She stopped imagining what the ambush would look like, couldn’t keep thinking about the ants throwing the nets and the oil.

Why?

She’s speaking before she has the words.

“Ooliri! Stop, run, it’s a trap!” (Wasn’t it supposed to be?) “Get out of the way.”

She looks at the ants, and she thinks they’re looking at her now.

(Somewhere in the mind-fog: They don’t trust us. Why did he have to light the fire? Why was no one telling him to get clear before they threw the oil? This wasn’t her plan, was it? Why—)

The gray nymph is getting bigger. Oh, she’s moving closer, running.

He turns away from the direhound and runs like she asks. The direhound’s instinct flares to life, barking and legs swiping into a run. It favors one side — was it injured? Maybe they had a shot.

Quessa is running, but she isn’t a bloodbane. Her family has terrible constitution. She’s nowhere near catching up.

Ants are frantic now, the oil is flying, and Quessa watches the trajectories, wondering which of those they threw would have hit the nymph before she yelled for him to move.

A net falls around the beast. It trips the thing up, and it fights to be free of it. Their aims must have been off, or they underestimated its strength, because it tears itself free, tatters of rope still pulled tight around it and trailing behind it.

Closer now, the direhound lunges and its jaws close around a gray leg. He drops the torch to the ground. He has now run past dry ground, and the torch goes out in the mud.

Ooliri falls to the ground right beside it.