2

Of all the questions he could have posed, it simply had to be that one.

Quirrel shot to his feet. "What purpose?"

But Anthem did not answer. She did not turn. Quirrel and the bench diminished behind her.

"What do you mean?" Quirrel asked, louder. After an unanswered heartbeat, he was in pursuit, pausing only to rectify the stranded mosscreep with a hasty nudge.

Anthem traversed the tunnels in long, deliberate steps. Her glaive was out before her, parting the hanging moss with curt slashes.

Quirrel found himself running just to keep pace. "What do you mean?!" he repeated, the boom of his voice giving Anthem no pause.

"As I said, I have a matter to attend to. You need not accompany me on it." With a graceful leap, she crossed an acid-filled precipice.

"Yet it has only now become pressing? Is this another game?" Quirrel summoned his strength to follow and felt his gut twist as he narrowly cleared the gap.

"Not a game, no. Had you not stumbled upon me, then I would have seen this finished already."

"Seen what finished?"

She stopped just long enough to consider a trampled bit of foliage. "You yourself guessed it. I am no oathless knight, no banished queen, only a broken warrior seeking revenge."

Quirrel chased her down a path of overgrown cobbles. "Against whom?"

"A creature resides in these mossy chambers. A towering shadow, a stalking fiend. You heard it once already. Its roar alone scattered those squits."

There was a prickling upon Quirrel's shell. He already knew the answer yet couldn't stop from asking. "But why?"

She tore through some obstructing brush with a savage chop. "It took my arm, Quirrel! My martial prowess, the only thing left to me in this world. I mean to steal from it in kind, no matter what may come."

Quirrel pushed through the shredded greenery. "That creature already bested you in combat? At the peak of your strength?"

"…It did."

"Then why do you pursue it? You've no hope! You realize that, yes?"

Anthem kept her gaze low, intent upon the path.

"Your shoulder is still injured!" Quirrel added. "You cannot accomplish this!"

She strode on. The shadows deepened, and the sickly-sweet smell of rot hung in the air.

"Then it's suicide?!" Quirrel shouted.

But Anthem said nothing.

Quirrel's breath came in painful gulps. "Stop this! Have some sense! What happened to that restraint you prized?"

She wheeled on him, so abruptly that they nearly collided. "I expended it all indulging your frivolous questions! I will do as I see fit with the dregs of my life. There is no vow binding you to me, wander elsewhere if this upsets you so." And just as quickly, she was back in motion.

For the first time in their walking debate, Quirrel stopped. He felt as though he really had collided, but rather chest-first into a frigid wall. The rustle of Anthem's steps began to fade around a corner, and for the slightest second Quirrel considered turning back, washing his claws of the obdurate mantis, and going on his own merry way. But something deep within him could not abide that. He dug his feet into the damp earth and raced after her.

Quirrel found Anthem before an arched tunnel unlike the others he had so far seen. Spikes ringed its entrance, and as Quirrel drew closer, he realized that they were not spikes at all, but huge, curved teeth nearly half his height. They were scattered all about the area like warding totems and disappeared into the tunnel's depths.

Anthem stood with her glaive at the ready.

"Please," Quirrel said, "It's only an arm. A loss, certainly, but you still have your life. Do not throw that away. Do not let this wound define you."

Anthem laughed, but it was patchy and mirthless. "Amusing that you would say that. A Great Knight once told me the very opposite, that we are defined only by our scars. Every mark is an indelible reminder of failure: a nail un-parried, a club un-dodged. The shell does not record triumphs, only mistakes."

Quirrel swiped at the air with his claw. "That's miserable counsel!" He could feel the petulance in his voice, but he didn't care. "A bug is more than its shell—more than its limbs! If that Great Knight thinks that—"

"Quirrel."

He stopped.

"Thank you," she said.

"Wh-What?"

"Thank you for your time. For your words. But you have done enough. Go now. Witness the wonders of this land. Do not look back for me."

"…Must you do this?"

But she faded into the tunnel without a goodbye. The only sign of her passage was the slither of displaced vines.

Quirrel thought to follow, but his legs denied him. A stink of menace permeated the place, and his well-worn instincts urged him to leave. Quickly.

He walked a tight circuit. And then another. He strained to hear any signs of combat, but there was only silence.

"Are you really so stubborn a fool?" he hissed. Though Anthem was long since gone.

He hurled a kick at one of the giant teeth and immediately regretted it. As he knelt to clutch his throbbing foot, a stillness settled on him. "Am I?"

A slow, caustic breath escaped his body, and he stood. "So it seems."

As Quirrel pressed through the vines, they seized and snagged at him, enjoining that he turn back. The tunnel was stifling and dim, saturated with a feral redolence that made every step harder than the last. He silenced the morbid chatter in his mind, suppressed the tremor in his arms. He had committed himself to the path, just as Anthem had.

With a bloom of light, the vines parted, and a verdant cavern opened before him. Within stood Anthem, and beyond a strange sort of cave occupying the center of the floor. The cave was composed entirely of leaves, and like the tunnel entrance, its opening was ringed with giant teeth.

Quirrel swallowed the lump in his throat and placed himself at Anthem's side.

She gave him half a glance. "It is too late to dissuade me."

"Oh, you needn't worry, I've abandoned that folly."

"Then why do you linger? See to your own quest while you still may."

Quirrel made his best attempt at an easy shrug. "But I am seeing to my quest! If I'm to witness this land's wonders, then I'd best begin here. I can think of few things more extraordinary than a hero's duel."

Anthem's defenses slackened. She turned to him in full. "What?"

Quirrel loosened his nail from its silken belt and drew it for the first time in what had somehow felt like ages. "I would be remiss not to experience this myself."

Anthem was stone-still for a moment. "It seems I was right," she whispered. "You are indeed a strange one. But as you wish." And she returned to her battle stance.

"So," Quirrel said, scanning the room, "where does the creature lurk? In that cave, I'd wager?"

She almost laughed. "In? No."

Within the darkness of the cave, six luminous eyes snapped open, and a roar—the very same that had frozen Quirrel in his tracks—ripped through the cavern. The earth shook, and Quirrel staggered, but then the roar suddenly stopped.

A rasping voice reached out through the ring of teeth. "A scent. Close and familiar. The prey returns. But why?"

Anthem took a step forward. She lifted her glaive and pointed its piercing tip at the glowing eyes. "Rise, monster! You will not catch me unaware again."

There was a rumble, something like amusement. "It is wounded. Yet it seeks to hunt me. Bold. Stupid. This time I will take its other arm, then it will understand its place."

With a great trembling, the cave rose into the air, shedding leaves and twigs like layers of dust. An emaciated body, segmented and midnight black, held it aloft.

Quirrel startled, falling back a step. He labored to comprehend what he beheld. The cave was its… head? Those shadowy segments its limbs? The tooth-ringed cavity its mouth?

"Steady," Anthem whispered. "or it will wield that fear against you."

Quirrel closed both claws around his nail. "Right!"

The creature loomed, massive and terrible. Its long, pointed fingers flexed, and Quirrel couldn't help but notice that each was the length of his own body. "It brings aid," the creature observed, setting six eyes upon him. "A sorry sort of pack."

"Why so verbose, monster?" Anthem asked. "You did not spare me a single word at our last meeting. Do you hesitate? Is that cowardice I sense?"

The creature's retort was a roar so intense that Quirrel could feel his organs vibrating. It leapt, cratering the earth with the force, and soared through the air. With clutching hands extended, the creature descended toward Anthem.

She let out a warning shout and threw herself to one side.

The creature impacted in a geyser of dirt and pulverized stone. Its arms threshed this way and that, slicing the veil but not finding their target.

With a shriek and an arc of sparks, Anthem's glaive slashed the creature's back. It grunted—in either pain or surprise—and darted out of the weapon's range. The creature retreated into the heaps of foliage ringing the cavern. After a rustle, it disappeared without a trace.

Anthem stepped out of the hanging dust, shaken but intact. "Be wary! It will strike where you are most vulnerable!"

"Weak," growled the creature. Its voice carried from somewhere beyond the wall of green. The acoustics of the place made it impossible to pinpoint. "Without strength it cannot harm me, not then and not now. Yet still it hopes to try."

There was a rush of air, a murmur of disturbed leaves, and a high shadow upon Quirrel's shoulder.

"Look out!"

Quirrel dove, and a dread hand slammed into the ground where he had been standing. He rolled and skidded to his feet, spinning about to face the creature. But it was not there. It had vanished back into the foliage.

"How is that hulking thing so swift?!" Quirrel shouted. He withdrew to the center of the cavern and Anthem followed, pressing her back to his.

"Keep your wits," Anthem said. "We are performing much better than my last encounter."

"But have we even scratched it?!"

Anthem grew quiet. The only sound was Quirrel's heavy breathing.

"I know of a way we might succeed," she whispered, "though it would ask… much of you."

"Ha!" Quirrel lowered his voice in kind. "What have I to lose? I'll hear it."

"You must drop your guard and allow it to take you."

"Pardon?"

"I have witnessed its habits. It prefers to understand its prey before the kill. The creature will grapple you first. As it prepares to disassemble you, it will be vulnerable. At that moment, I will take its arm."

There was a wild flutter in Quirrel's chest. "Disassemble me? Have we no other option?"

"None."

Quirrel willed his heart to slow, reminding himself that there was no choice to make. "I'll do it."

Anthem nodded. "Then approach the brush. And do not flinch."

Quirrel's legs were like lead, but he did what was asked, making a show of prodding at the bushes with his nail, all the while feeling the creature's eyes upon him.

"It believes me deaf, does it?" a guttural voice asked. "That its whispers are not a screech to my senses?"

In an explosion of leaves, a gray-black blur shot out to snatch Quirrel by the torso. He struck with his nail on reflex, but it was slapped from his claw so forcefully that every joint in his arm popped. A second blow fell on him, and the world spun a mad dance. Once it slowed, Quirrel found himself suspended in the air, eye to eye with the creature.

"It thinks too much of itself," the thing said.

Quirrel tried to cry out, tried to offer Anthem some warning, but the hand clenching his chest made that—and breathing—impossible. He scratched uselessly at the carapace of the creature's arm.

Across the cavern, Anthem crouched, her long legs bulging beneath her. She leveled her glaive, braced it against her side, and shot forth like a thunderbolt. She flew in a perfect arc, glaive readied for an overhead slash. But as she neared, the creature whipped around. It lifted Quirrel as though he were a nail meant to parry Anthem's blow.

There was no time, no way to stop. A vision of decapitation flitted through Quirrel's mind. But at the last instant, Anthem twisted about, altering her blade's trajectory. The flashing metal narrowly rounded Quirrel's body, and instead connected with the creature's wrist.

Another scream of metal on carapace, another sheet of sparks. Anthem's warped momentum sent her slamming to the ground. She rolled and pitched, her glaive clanging away into a dark corner. She slid to a stop and lay very still.

Quirrel fell, impacting flat on his back. He sprawled, dazed and coughing. Where was the creature's hand? Surely Anthem had severed it. Despite the protests of his shell, Quirrel pushed to a sitting position.

"No," he breathed.

Several paces off, the creature—not a mark upon it—towered over Anthem's unconscious body.

Extending two, ebony fingers, the creature grasped Anthem by the arm and dangled her in the air. She came to and began to thrash, kicking at the creature. It closed its other hand around her torso and squeezed until she stopped.

"Enough," the creature said. "This hunt is finished. A noble prey knows when to embrace the end."

"Bring me my glaive and I will show you an end!" she snarled.

The creature only chuckled and began to pull. Anthem's arm strained in its socket. There was a sickening crack. She did not cry out, however, which gave the creature pause.

"It does not wail. It does not fear." The creature's huge, bushy head lowered for a closer look. "Is it even the same prey?"

Quirrel lurched to his feet but before he could act, he was just as quickly back upon the ground. The world tremored around him, and his legs barely heeded any commands. The blow he suffered was proving much worse than it had first seemed.

"Go on! Take it!" Anthem cried, forcing the words even as she choked. "But slay me this time, or I will have your life if it takes my every limb!"

The creature hummed, an ugly, graveled sound. "It is fiercer now. Interesting. But ferocity is nothing without strength." It tensed, preparing to rend Anthem's arm.

But then came a pattering. A wet, dribbling sound.

The creature stopped.

Blood, pale green and glistening, was streaming down its wrist and onto the parched soil of the cavern floor.

The creature looked from the growing puddle, to Anthem, and back again. "You wounded me."

"As I promised," Anthem gasped, "free me—and I will do—far worse."

The creature laughed in great, rippling waves.

Quirrel fought to his knees but could manage no further.

"Long, long has it been since I saw my own blood," the creature said. "Greater beasts than you have tried and failed to draw it, yet here I bleed."

The hands slackened, and Anthem dropped from the creature's grip.

In a dizzy burst, Quirrel dove forward, catching her as best he could, though he served more as a cushion than a net.

The creature carried on as Anthem gulped and heaved. "You are stronger now than you were before, and yet weaker. You could not pierce my shell when last we met, yet now you can with only a single arm. You were nothing but listlessness and fear, yet now you are audacity itself. How?"

She had no answer for the creature and only trembled—in wrath or pain, Quirrel could not guess.

The creature leaned back, lifting a hand to its darkened maw and extracting something from within. "You are not prey. I feel it now. And if you are not prey, then you must be a hunter. But can a maimed thing truly hunt?"

The smoothed shell of a long-dead bug clattered to the ground. Its surface glittered in the ambient light, revealing a scrawl of strange, runic script.

The creature crouched, bringing its eyes closer to Anthem's level. "My spare journal. All that I have learned from the beasts of this land. I offer it to you, broken hunter. Go forth, prove your strength. Stalk and kill. Decipher its meanings and grow mighty."

With Quirrel's aid, Anthem sat up. "Do not toy with me! I care nothing for your journal. If you seek some apprentice, then look elsewhere. I am here for your life, not your tutelage!"

The creature nodded, almost indulgently. "Yet you cannot take it. You are still too frail. But with time and my journal, that may change. Return to me when you think yourself ready. I will be waiting."

With that, the thing rose and paced back to the cavern's center. It shuffled a leisurely circle before laying down and once again disguising itself as a leafy cave.

And all returned stillness.

A minute of gawking silence stretched by, Quirrel's gaze upon the creature, and Anthem's upon the fallen journal.

When it became clear that the creature had no intention of springing back to life and finishing its hunt, Quirrel risked a few words. "Did… Did we survive?"

Anthem stirred in his arms. "By the whim of a monster, so it appears."

"…But what now?"

"I had hoped to pose that question."

With agonizing slowness, Quirrel tottered upright. A numbness had seeped into him, making everything indistinct and remote. He wondered if it was a lingering effect of the creature's attack, or merely that feeling of vacancy brought about by the sudden departure of terror.

Anthem seemed in no better state than he. Her carapace was scuffed and cracked, especially her arm with its spiderwebbing fractures. She sat in a ball, legs bent to her chest. "Our weapons," she said, not shifting her attention from the journal.

Quirrel pressed a claw to his pounding head. "Ah, yes. I'll retrieve them. Just a moment."

It took some time rooting through the deep underbrush, but Quirrel dredged up his nail. The glaive was soon to follow, and as he wiped stray twigs from its gleaming blades, he appraised it for damage. There was none, of course. It was a fine tool, razor sharp and expertly balanced. Anthem clearly invested much into maintaining it. Quirrel envisioned the battles it had endured, the foes it had slain, and to what ends it would inevitably be wielded…

A thought bubbled.

Should he leave the glaive where it lay? Hide it, even? Anthem had made her intentions clear. If he returned it to her, then she would surely lunge at the creature again, and Quirrel doubted the thing would be so forgiving the second time.

From the start, Quirrel had known this bid for vengeance to be utter madness and witnessing the creature's savagery in person had only hardened that truth in his mind. Without her weapon, would Anthem abandon the hunt? Would she find another purpose, one that did not end in doom?

He looked about for a crevice, a pit, a dark cavity beneath a shrub. But he stopped. Another thought rose, bursting the first.

Did he possess any right to shape her fate?

Quirrel emerged from the brush, nail upon his belt, and glaive under his arm.

Anthem was exactly as he'd left her, as though no time had passed at all.

"Not a mark upon it," Quirrel said, proffering the glaive with only slight hesitance. "A fine twist of luck."

She did not react.

"Anthem?"

The chitin of her arm crackled as she reached out and closed her claw around the journal. "It is time to leave."

Quirrel balked. "What?"

"Even a mantis' obstinacy has limits." She stood, panting from the pain.

"I'm not one to question a sound idea, but… are you really finished here?"

For a long moment, Anthem stared at the lightless jaws of the cave. "Yes. There is no reason to remain."

Quirrel gave a sharp nod. "Then let's not tarry." He sidled up to her and offered his shoulder.

"I thought you had renounced your life as a crutch," she said.

Quirrel couldn't stop his bubbling laugh. "After this most recent trial, buttressing you seems a trivial task in comparison."

"Very well," Anthem chuckled. She draped her arm over him and leaned.

But lightly, ever so lightly.

[End]

Author's Note: Well there you have it, folks. I considered continuing this story, but I feel like I've said all that's really worth saying. I hope you enjoyed the story. If you're so inclined, then feel free to leave some feedback. I always enjoy reading comments.