Bondsfungi: Chapters 21-22 (The Weirkey Chronicles) (Patreon)

A patron asked me to share their post on the subreddit. I thought this was a nice idea, so if you're interested in seeing more fanart of any of my work, consider leaving suggestions.

Other news: the second audiobook will be coming out soon! Please look forward to that, and support if you want to hear Travis Baldree's Senka voice.

Meanwhile, this week's chapters introduce some new elements. I'm curious what everyone will think. ^-^

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Chapter 21

Nauda threw herself into a crevice, holding her breath as another one of the bugs passed. For a moment she thought for sure that it had noticed her, but it eventually trundled onward. She let out a sigh of relief and crept deeper into the tunnels.

She hadn't run into anyone else during her travels in Slest, so Nauda had tried to become familiar with the various species of bugs. The wild varieties were generally a bit smaller, the size of her head instead of her body. There were segmented, war-like hives that viciously defended their territory and sometimes sent out long lines of scouts that she'd stayed far away from.

But these rotund bugs seemed to be harmless. She'd begun thinking of them as leafpuller bugs because their main activity seemed to be dragging leaves and other materials back to their mound. Each of them had a horn on the front of its head, but the tip was dull, suitably only for penetrating leaves or digging into soft dirt. Unlike any of the other species she had observed, they never fought anyone. When they bumped into one another they would rub horns, almost as if apologizing, and then trundle along.

Unfortunately, she had no choice but to sneak into their mound, because she was running out of food. With so little floor space available, Nauda hadn't made a full storage room for her soulhome. She'd had a little bit of food lying around, and had scavenged a little more, but hunger drove her to desperate measures.

Outside, the humming began. Most evenings, for no purpose that Nauda could determine, the beetles would gather in clusters and begin vibrating their wings. They soon shifted to different notes that harmonized with one another, then began a beautiful melody. At first she had been concerned that it was a warning or alarm of some sort, but every night they gathered together they simply made music.

Now she was using that opportunity to try to steal from them. Nauda began exploring the tunnels more rapidly, since almost all the beetles were outside. Finally she discovered it: a room filled with large golden globules. She saw the beetles creating and carrying so much of it, she knew they must have a storage area. It was actually closer to one of the other entrances and she'd gone in the wrong way.

Gently approaching one of the globules, Nauda poked her finger through the thick outer layer and found the liquid as thick as honey. It actually might be partially honey, since the leafpuller bugs seemed to live in harmony with ordinarily sized bees. They blended the mixture out of fermented leaves and other materials, and though she wasn't sure how it would taste, the bugs seemed to subsist on it.

She flicked her tongue against it, paused, and then licked more. The mixture wasn't as sweet as honey but had a strong earthy taste. Above all, it tasted delicious to her hungry body. Nauda scooped more of it into her mouth and also began shoveling globules into her soulhome. They kept well enough on their own and she could find a jar of some sort if necessary. Her concerns about incompatible food melted away as she gorged herself on the goo.

All that vanished when she heard a rustling and saw one of the bugs standing in the entrance to the storage chamber. It stared at her and then let out an odd grunt. Before she could think of a way to slip around it, the bug moved in and began poking her with its horn.

Not dangerously, even if her body hadn't been reinforced by cantae. It just insistently pushed her out of the room. Several other bugs appeared, grunting as well, and they all formed a wall horning her out of their mound.

"Sorry, sorry..." Nauda didn't know if they understood her or why she was apologizing, but she felt a bit guilty stealing their food. The gentle bugs seemed distressed by her presence and just wanted to push her out.

When she fled she heard the buzzing stop, the harmony breaking and then finally going silent. Nauda waited outside the range of the mound, guilt mounting even as she inventoried all of the goo she'd stolen. Eventually the bugs returned to their thrumming music and she felt a bit of relief. It looked like they had plenty of the stuff, so it wasn't as if they were in danger of starving.

Nauda had made herself a camp in the boughs of a large tree, one of those with enormous leaves. Fortunately, the leafpuller bugs only seemed to gather leaves on the ground and they kept away pests, so she was relatively safe there. Still, just in case her theft had triggered some reaction, Nauda stayed awake late into the night after the bugs had stopped humming and gone to sleep.

That was easy, since she had too much to do to sleep anyway. Nauda had somewhat lost track of the days, but she thought that she had been soulcrafting for just over a week. While keeping an eye on the real world, she stepped into her soulhome and began to work fusing bricks together for her second floor.

When she hadn't been able to find anyone else within range, Nauda had decided to change strategy entirely. Even if help wasn't coming immediately, Fiyu or Theo would eventually come to find her. Meanwhile, the world was largely more dangerous than the leafpuller bugs, so they would all be facing threats. Nauda believed that the best way she could help any rescue efforts was by soulcrafting as much as possible.

She had two high priorities, and right now making bricks from the reclaimed stone would help both. First, she wanted to finish her second floors as quickly as possible so that she could make the first floors into pure heart chambers and dedicate the second to more precise uses. Second, her heartoak was getting taller, almost to the height of her second tier, so she needed to catch up and roof it off. It had taken much of the week just to replace the last of her temporary bricks, so there was too much to do.

Unfortunately, her second floors weren't just single rooms, instead divided into chambers for different aspects and techniques, so they required a lot more bricks. Nauda eventually slept, without anyone or anything targeting her. The next day she woke, ate some of the leafpuller goo, and went right back to work.

Around mid-day, a line of the most vicious bugs marched up to the leafpuller mound. Nauda spotted a number of them that looked almost human, and considered approaching them, but decided to wait to see what would happen. They didn't move like a war party, and as she watched the leafpuller bugs all vacated their mound to allow the line entrance.

Nauda's curiosity slowly turned to confusion as she saw the line reemerge. The new bugs all carried golden globules on their backs, so many that they must have emptied out the entire mound. Others carried a translucent goo that Nauda hadn't seen before, but it felt like a sublime material even from a distance. Some of the humanoid bugs carried leafpuller eggs. They all marched away, without a word being uttered, leaving the leafpuller bugs with nothing.

It couldn't have been a robbery, since it all appeared so orderly. Nauda wondered if the leafpullers were actually more like animals, being farmed by the more organized groups, but they seemed more active than that. In the wake of the line, the bugs crawled around apparently aimlessly for over an hour. Eventually they returned to work making new batches of goo, a bit listlessly.

That night they didn't make any music and Nauda felt the absence.

The day after, she began exploring the region more carefully. She hadn't noticed any trails before, but after seeing the line of bugs, she now suspected that some apparently empty areas had been carefully cultivated. Their nest must be far to the east, but they'd made a road so they could come and take what the leafpuller bugs had created.

Somehow Nauda felt simultaneously more and less guilty. The small amount she had taken meant nothing, when their stores had been entirely emptied by the dominant species, but she felt bad for the leafpullers. They went back to their routines with a sort of resigned determination that broke her heart.

"Well, hello there!"

Nauda nearly leapt out of her skin and stared upward. Tythes was standing in the sky, wearing a bug as a hat. He lifted it to her respectfully and grinned, much less respectfully.

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Chapter 22

Still disoriented from muddled dreams, Theo didn't hesitate: he slammed his strongest gravitational field around him indiscriminately. As he struggled to his feet he reversed it, even as his eyes barely made out the chaos around him.

Bodies and fangs and weapons thrashed in the air. Theo looked past them for the source of the scream and saw the House Crimson soulcrafter being savaged by several insects. They were all floating within his field, but the ants didn't seem to notice, biting over and over again even though their target appeared to be dead. Closer to the sleigh, Kathina had also been woken by the scream and come up slashing with both swords, though she was now trapped in the air as well.

Since none of the attackers seemed capable of resisting his gravity, Theo examined his surroundings more carefully. There were insects on all sides, so the group must have surrounded their camp before moving in. He observed two different types: the giant ants he'd commonly seen as well as unusual humanoids that appeared to be somewhere between insect and mammal.

"Think they followed us?" Kathina asked. Reminded of her presence, Theo lowered her to the ground with a secondary field.

"I don't know how they tracked us, but that's the most likely explanation," he said. "It's regrettable that they didn't attack while one of us was on watch, or we might have avoided any deaths."

"They might have waited for the weak link." Kathina glanced toward the floating corpse, which the ants were still tearing into, without any particular emotion. "At least he was worth something before he died."

There was no time to think about her ruthlessness given the present situation. Theo stretched his senses as far as he could, particularly into the sky, since the dawn light was cloaked in mist. No sign of flying beetles or other groups, but that was no guarantee of their safety.

"Is it draining you to keep them all in the air like that?" Kathina asked. She jabbed one of the thrashing ants with a sword, sending it drifting into others. "I can kill them off."

"No, this might be our best chance to acquire information, if there aren't more coming after us immediately." Theo gestured over his shoulder to the sleigh. "Fly around and check if there are any stragglers, or signs of another group."

"Got it." She let her swords slip back into her soulhome and leapt to scout.

Meanwhile, Theo closed his eyes and focused on other signals instead. If the colony had been able to track them based on so little, their pheromones must be stronger than he thought. The biggest threat would be if the suspended Slescans were currently sending signals bringing the entire hive down on them. All told he saw only a few dozen, so he suspected this was just a scouting party.

[Kill. Incursion. Kill. Obstacle. Kill. Obstacle. Distress.] Now that he was thinking about them properly, he no longer heard the words as sounds. He took a deeper breath and the chorus of signals grew louder, streaming from all of the insects.

The majority were still broadcasting [Kill] and [Obstacle], but more were beginning to send [Distress] pheromones. Theo hastily began working gravitational fields and points of mass, pushing all the scouts into a smaller area and trying to draw all their pheromones back to the ground. His gravity would have been incapable of stopping shouts for help, but the pheromones were slow-moving and, as he felt the messages concentrate and double on one another, he thought that he'd managed to capture all of them.

Of course, the colony would have some mechanism to track the scouting groups that it sent out, so that was only delaying retaliation. Theo wasn't sure whether or not they would write off the scouts as a loss or if they would scorch the earth to pursue them. Fortunately, he might finally be able to get some answers.

He wasn't sure what to make of the soldier ants' soulhomes, which were broader than most soulcrafters but taller than sublime beasts'. Well, humans were animals, so perhaps the line wasn't as sharp as most assumed. They felt strong enough to be a threat, but they were highly specialized and their exoskeletons were somewhat weak. Most likely he could have crumpled them with gravity, though he held off until he knew whether peace was possible.

The humanoid Slescans were more promising, since they felt distinctly like Archcrafters to him. They had lumpy soulhomes of sublime mud, without any shielding walls, but anyone who could soulcraft had to possess at least some sentience. One of the nearest appeared somewhat male, if facial shape was any indication, so Theo walked to stand in front of him.

"Can you understand me?"

"Kill! Incursion! Kill!" The scout thrashed more violently as Theo drew close, four arms each holding a knife and all flailing wildly. He'd stopped emitting the [Kill] pheromones and instead belted them out in a quick staccato sequence. Theo heard him clearly, but had no idea if the soul translation was working the other way.

"We aren't here to fight you," Theo said, "but you attacked us."

"Enemy! Kill!"

"No, we're not enemies. Not enemies." Theo concentrated, wondering if he could somehow emit a spiritual pheromone, but that just made his head hurt.

Besides, he thought that the Slescan understood him, he just didn't care. Theo examined him more carefully, wondering exactly what this species was. Roughly humanoid aside from the four arms, an odd waist that looked somewhat like a thorax, and a pair of antennae. Yet this one had a head of light green hair, like a mammal. Green skin as well, though that seemed like a trivial detail compared with the odd mix of mammalian and insectoid features.

The face was the most unusual, mostly flesh but with chitinous plates emerging from the neck to the mouth, which was a lipless line. His eyes had black sclera that glinted like an insect's facets, but had green irises in the center. Despite the fact that he kept shouting "Kill!", his face showed no visible anger. In fact, it didn't show any emotion or movement aside from the antennae, which shook wildly.

Though this species might be a native inhabitant of Slest, Theo found himself wondering if they were mammals that had been transformed to match the world. They certainly acted more like insects than simians, responding with raw instinct and completely unwilling to engage. Even though they should have noticed it was useless, all of the living Slescans continued thrashing in the air.

Theo tried to talk to some of the others, but they all displayed similar behavior, attacking uselessly whenever he got near. He took the weapons away from a few of them, noting that they were crude but unquestionably crafted, far beyond what any animal on Earth could accomplish. A few of the humanoid Slescans wore clothes, but seemingly at random, just occasional shirts or wraps. They didn't appear to have any genitals and he realized that they might all be sterile workers.

Just when he was about to give up and check on Kathina, Theo noted that one of the hanging humanoids wasn't actually dead. She had a sleeker carapace than the others and held four spears loosely, her body slumped and her antennae drooping. When Theo approached her, she looked at him but didn't move.

"Enemy." Her voice was soft and it didn't sound like her heart was in it, so Theo took a step closer to talk to her.

"We don't want to fight you. You do understand me, right? We're not your enemy."

"Not enemy?" Her antennae lifted slightly.

"No. Can you tell me why you aren't struggling like the others?"

"Futility. Attack failure. Enemy too strong. Conserve energy."

He folded his arms as he considered the longest sentence he'd gotten from any of them yet. Some of the phrases resolved as several words in his mind, but the actual sounds she was making were all singular. As if verbal speech had been adapted to the insectoid method of communication and perhaps even thinking.

"Could we form a truce? Is that possible?"

"Come. Krikree report." Her voice was even softer, so Theo took another step closer to listen.

Abruptly she lurched in the air, two of her spears digging down into the ground to push her forward. Both her upper arms leapt up to impale him with the other two spears. She attacked absolutely soundlessly, her mouth closed and her eyes glittering black and green.

Theo immediately flattened her to the ground with stronger gravity, of course. While she struggled against it, he took away her spears before neutralizing her gravity again and pinning her to a point of mass in the air.

"Futility." All four of her limbs hung limp, and this time Theo thought he saw real despair in her eyes. "Gambit failure. Krikree distress."

That same sound again. Since it wasn't translated, he could guess... "Is your name Krikree?"

"Krikree." She repeated the sound and stared at him with those blank insectoid eyes, which was not exactly helpful. Theo raised a hand to touch his own chest.

"I'm Ivo." Best not to spread a pseudonym he'd used on another world, plus he predicted there was a good chance that it would get repeated.

"Ivo-what?" Krikree snapped out the phrase and waited expectantly, then began repeating it with more animation, her antennae trembling. "Ivo-what? Ivo-what?"

He rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed, but at least he was getting somewhere. "I don't understand."

"Krikree is soldier caste. Krikree is scout. Krikree is Blue-Red-Blue hive. Krikree is Archcrafter. Ivo-what?"

"Well, you need to understand that our colonies aren't like yours. We don't have castes."

"Not!" She practically shouted the phrase, but when she didn't continue, Theo shrugged it off and kept talking.

"I'm from another world. Norro Yorthin hive, you could say. I'm a Ruler, but I think you know that." When she continued staring at him, Theo decided that it was time to continue with a gentler approach. "If I let you down, are you going to attack me again?"

"Krikree failure. Krikree obey."

Though he stayed alert while he lowered her back to the ground, Krikree showed no signs of attacking him. Instead she dropped down onto her haunches in a strange posture, her lower arms balanced against the ground. Her upper arms raised to her antennae, running over them repeatedly as if to smooth or clean them. When she finished, she tilted her head to the side, and though her face displayed remarkably little, Theo thought he saw curiosity there.

"Norro Yorthin hive what?"

"I'm not really sure how to answer that." Ignoring all the scouts still flailing around them, Theo sat down cross-legged across from her. "We didn't want to come here, it was an accident. But we're in your territory, aren't we?"

"Incursion bad. Kill."

"Yes, that does seem to be how it works. The colony must have leaders, queens or ranking soldier castes. Would it be possible for us to form a truce?" Around them, the endless [Kill] pheromones finally got to Theo and he glared at them in distraction. "Can you make them stop sending signals, at least?"

"Krikree is scout." She stared at him for a time, her antennae wiggling in broad circles as if tasting the air, and he reflected that this encounter was even stranger for her than for him. "Just scout. Caste too low. Krikree just scout."

"Alright, I understand that. But there must be a way we can make progress."

While he was considering his options, Kathina finally returned, gently lowering the sleigh beside all the thrashing scouts. Krikree immediately stared at it, uttering "What? What?" until it landed. Then, when Kathina stepped out and swept her hair back, there was a sudden change in behavior.

"Queen!" Krikree slammed her head into the ground, arms prostrate.

"Well, I'm no queen, but I suppose this is better than cannibalism." Kathina smirked, but glanced at him with an odd expression. "I take it that you've been gathering intelligence."

"Or trying to. They've all been useless except this one." Theo got back up to confer with Kathina, only for Krikree to tug on his pants with one arm.

"What-queen?"

"Do you mean who? This is Kathina." Theo gestured to her and Krikree immediately put her face back into the ground.

"Kathina-queen. Krikree begs for life. Krikree is good scout. Krikree more useful as worker than meat."

"Wow." Kathina folded her arms and regarded the prostrate ant for a while before shaking her head. "Don't worry, I'm not going to kill you if you're our only source of information. Sure, you can work for us. Just answer all of his questions."

"Krikree obey." She rose back to her seated position and thrust a finger in Theo's direction. "Ivo-what?"

"Uh..." Kathina sent a befuddled glance in Theo's direction, but now that she'd started talking, Krikree didn't stop.

"Ivo-prince?"

"Ivo? And what does that mean?"

"Ivo is mate?"

"Hah, no!" Kathina smirked at him, entertained by the entire situation, but he couldn't return her smile because he was busy trying to follow Krikree's logic. She'd clearly been raised in a society somewhat similar to an ant colony, though he needed to avoid making assumptions based on Earth parallels. This situation must be as baffling to her as when Fiyu had been thrown into Tatian.

"Ivo-drone?"

"No!" Theo interrupted before Kathina could ask about that, and Krikree swung her head back and forth between them, antennae circling wildly. "I told you, our hives organize themselves differently. We're just working together."

"What? What?"

"Okay, enough." Kathina only raised her voice slightly, but Krikree immediately cowered again. After one last glance at her, Kathina focused entirely on Theo. "I went as high as I could without your help, Ivo, but I didn't see any other groups. Just one who got away, but I killed it before it even reached the next hill. That said, if they've tracked us this far, they'll probably send more after their missing scout group."

"Then we need to move," Theo said, getting back to his feet. "I guess our only choice is to head for the wild tribes group, though we should observe them first."

They made plans over the next several minutes, with Theo checking in with Krikree as a source of intelligence. She seemed adamant that a truce was impossible, declaring "Not!" every time they suggested such an option. When asked how they had been tracked, her story was less clear, but it seemed to have involved pursuing pheromones as well as finding blood from the slain barbarian.

That made Kathina frown and she eventually silenced Krikree before turning back to him. "I think our only chance is to make a false trail, then travel further off the ground in a different direction." She drew both swords from her soulhome. "Now, are you going to complain if I exterminate the bugs? Not your pet. But if we leave the others alive, they'll only give our pursuers information about us, and I know you're not so foolish as to try to take them all along."

Theo watched the thrashing insects. Speaking to Krikree had just proved that at least the humanoid Slescans were sentient, so it wasn't a trivial decision. True, they had attacked first and killed the soulcrafter whose name Theo had never even learned. No doubt they would all try to kill them again if he released his gravitational field. Still...

"Krikree, what do you think?" He glanced down at her and her antennae stood up in alarm.

"Krikree is scout."

"Come on, tell us. Surely you must have some feelings about all of them being killed."

"Queen is life and death." Krikree returned her head to the ground. "Kathina-queen can kill. Krikree thanks for mercy."

"You see?" Kathina flipped her swords around her hands with a grim smile. "It's exactly what they'd do to us. If we do this right, we can hover the bodies out in another direction to create a false trail."

In the end, Theo didn't see an alternative. As soon as he nodded, Kathina began killing the hovering scouts. They were essentially helpless, but at least they only shouted "Kill!" and [Enemy] instead of begging. Most likely the plan would work, if they flew higher and used Krikree to check their scent. He glanced back to her, expecting to see her quivering in fear, but instead she stared at him.

"Ivo-what." This time it wasn't a question, she just gazed at him with her antennae wiggling.

Gaining a source of local information should have been a relief, but Theo had a feeling that his life was about to get more interesting in the worst possible way.