Chương 43: Chapter 36 — The Thrum

⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── Current XP: 3, 650 / 10, 000 They moved in silence. Jenkins had the iguanas hitched before the light fully arrived, working by feel and long habit, each buckle found without looking. Lady Nutter carried her second-best trunk to the wagon herself. She did not ask for help, and nobody offered it. The hatbox went on after, and then Fenwick's bag, and the whole operation took four minutes that felt considerably longer. The dragonflies had not moved.

Max walked to the wagon last, watching the branches overhead, watching the slow iridescent pulse of wings catching the climbing light. He put his hand on the wagon side and looked at Fenwick. Fenwick nodded. Jenkins clicked his tongue at the iguanas, very softly. They moved. The wagon wheel made the squeak on the first rotation that Fenwick had been waiting for, and which Jenkins pretended not to hear. It kept turning. They kept moving. Fifty feet. A hundred. Two hundred.

The road curved ahead, trees thinning at the bend, the first real gap in the canopy visible. Another minute and they would be on the open road. Another minute and the canopy would be behind them. Lady Nutter's trunk shifted in the wagon bed. A single scrape of wood on wood, barely a sound. Everyone heard it. Nobody moved. The dragonflies didn't move either. Fenwick let out a breath he hadn't decided to hold. The gap in the canopy was closer now.

The light was different ahead — open sky, pale morning, the road widening where the trees pulled back. Thirty feet. Twenty. The sun cleared the treeline. It came in at an angle, low and direct, falling across the upper branches in a slow sweep. The dragonflies had been motionless all night, cold-stilled, bodies locked in the chill that had settled through the dark hours, wings spread wide and still. The light found them one by one.

Where it touched, the iridescent scales caught and held the warmth, and the bodies began to move, slow at first, a twitch here, a wing-flex there, lethargic waking of something that needed heat before it could function. Then the thrum started. Low. Resonant. A sound that lived in the chest rather than the ears, building as more wings caught the sun and more bodies woke, and the cold released them one by one until twenty-three sources became twenty-three at once.

"Jenkins," said Fenwick.

"On it," said Jenkins, who had already put both hands on the reins and planted both feet, the iguanas shifting uneasily beneath him. Max was already moving. The first dragonfly came from the left, fast and low, five and a half feet of chitinous purpose moving at a speed that had no business belonging to something that size. Max's sword cleared his back in the same motion as his step forward, the Mittelhau coming around in a horizontal arc that caught the dragonfly across the eyes.

It veered blind into the treeline, wings thrashing against the branches, the sound of it loud and brief before it went still. ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── +100 XP — NEW CREATURE TYPE: x2 BONUS APPLIED TOTAL: +200 XP Two more came from above. Fenwick's Magic Crossbolt, four bolts of crackling force, two hit the nearest one. Removing the head of the cervix, the membranous neck region that connects the head to the body.

The head landed a few feet away from the body, which sent it tumbling into the road, headless. The further dragonfly caught the last two bolts. Two wings were sheared off the right side. The wings fluttered down, and the crash of the body hitting the wagon's side caused a loud bang in the early morning, and caused the wagon to lurch. ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

+100 XP +100 XP Lady Nutter grabbed the wagon rail. One broke toward Jenkins. Jenkins had the whip out before it reached him — a long crack that caught the dragonfly across the wing joint, a sound sharp enough to cut through the thrum. The dragonfly dropped, still twitching, into the road directly between the iguanas. The iguanas looked at it. They ate it. Jenkins watched this with the expression of someone filing a useful fact about iguanas for future reference.

The dragonfly that had been circling wide came in from the right while everyone was watching the one that had hit the wagon. It was the largest of them, the one from the branch above the wagon, body six feet long, wings spreading nearly nine feet across. It got Lady Nutter by the shoulders.

She made a sound, controlled, furious, the sound of someone who had been having an extremely difficult two days and had reached a limit, and then she was rising, the dragonfly's wings beating hard, gaining altitude above the wagon. Max went up the wagon. The side rail, the seat, the luggage — three steps that covered the height in the time it took the dragonfly to carry Lady Nutter's feet above head height.

He left from the highest point in a flying lunge, closing the distance fast, and got his hand on the dragonfly's body as they met. The dragonfly beat harder. Max swung the sword one-handed, the grip shifting, and the cut came down diagonal across the joint where the wing met the body. Clean. Final. The wing separated. ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── +100 XP The dragonfly dropped. Lady Nutter dropped. Max caught her.

They hit the road together, Max taking the impact, Lady Nutter on top of him, the sword somewhere behind them in the dust. He had one arm around her and one hand on the road, and he was already pushing himself upright, and looking over Lady Nutter to ensure she was unhurt. She looked up. The hood had come down in the jump.

The morning light was full on his face — the dark eyes, present and focused, the pale grey skin that was the grey of early morning rather than the grey of something gone wrong, the scar at his throat that had closed but not vanished. Not a living face. Not the face she had been trying to peek at from the corner of her eye for two days. She had been told the hero. She had expected a human — a knight, perhaps, or a soldier, the kind of hero the stories described.

Someone with a sword and a name and a face that belonged in a ballroom. The face looking down at her belonged nowhere she had been before. Grey skin. Dark eyes that were doing something she could only describe as checking on her. The scar at the throat. Something behind all of it that was present and focused and, she realized, waiting to know if she was all right. It was not a human face. It was looking at her with more care than most human faces had. Max looked at her.

"Safe," he said. Lady Nutter looked at him for a long moment.

"Yes," she said.

"Thank you." She said it out of habit, someone who had been raised to say thank you correctly regardless of circumstances, and in this case, also meant it. Max set her down. He went to find his sword. The remaining dragonflies had lost their coordination when the largest went down. Two more came in loose and uncommitted, easy targets now, the pack instinct broken, and Fenwick's Magic Crossbolt and Max's sword took them before the others reached the treeline and kept going.

⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── +100 XP +100 XP The road was quiet. ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── Current XP: 4, 350 / 10, 000 Max crouched beside the largest dragonfly and examined it closely. He moved along its length. Stopped at the segment behind the head. Found something. He brought it to Fenwick. It was small.

A disc, maybe an inch across, made of dried flesh — hardened to stiffness, dark with age or process, the edges uneven in the way something crudely cut from flesh with little care. A symbol had been drawn on it, in dried, dark blood, written words of control. Fenwick looked at it for a long moment. He recognized what he was holding. Necromantic.

The word sat in his head with the weight of something from the Order's restricted section, the texts he had read as a novice with the detached interest of someone who expected never to need them. He needed them now. Someone had made this. Someone who knew how. He looked at the dragonfly. At the road ahead. At the road behind. At the empty place where the footman and the driver had been. He put the disc carefully in his notes pocket, wrapped in a blank page. He took out his notes.

⟨ [SYSTEM PRIVATE LOG] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── [Sindy — Private Log — Day 67] The charm is a disc of dried flesh, approximately one inch across. A symbol drawn in dried blood. Necromantic in origin. It was on the dragonfly that took Lady Nutter. Someone made this. Someone with the knowledge and the willingness to use it directed these dragonflies at this road. The swans were killed. The footman and driver were taken. The dragonflies didn't eat them. I am adding it to the thread. The thread is getting longer.

He said, "Safe." She said, "Thank you." ▌ Becca, if you're reading this: ▌ He caught her. ▌ She didn't scream when she saw his face.