One second, the train was still roaring down the tracks, metal wheels grinding against the rails as the vibrations rattled through Kita’s boots.

  Then she heard Zora cast “stop the train”

  “... Wait,” she began, “what are you trying to—”

  Before she could finish, the train jolted. . Both Kita and Machi’s knees buckled, and Kita braced herself against the wall of the final carriage, convinced for a split second that all twenty carriages were about to flip off the tracks and go flying into the fungi forest.

  But it didn’t.

  Instead, she heard the exhaust pipes at the front of the train screaming and hissing out plumes of smoke. She felt the engines rumbling and jamming all the way at the front. She felt the mechanical arrays beneath her feet unlocking, deactivating, each and every carriage’s individual brakes punching down into the tracks like drills into the earth. The sounds were deafening—metal grinding, brakes shrieking, and the emergency stop mechanisms locking in place.

  Zora shouted “detach this carriage from the rest of the train”

  Kita’s breath caught as she looked up, watching as the rest of the train—one carriage after another—was flung up into the air.

  For a moment, they hung like massive shadows blotting out the sky. Time seemed to slow as all nineteen carriages broke off from each other. Then they began to twist, fragments of wood and steel all shattering as they soared over their heads. They were breaking apart mid-flight, pieces of shattered debris raining down, and Zora cast his final spell with his wand pointed in their general direction.

  "Ignite,”“and fall upon the ants, fury incarnate.”

  His physical sound wave of a spell took on , burning red and orange as it rippled out of his mouth, darted onto the tip of his wand, and then shot out at the flying carriages. In an instant, the coloured waves ignited the carriages and turned them into giant fiery balls. In an instant, it was as if the sky itself had caught fire—and the glowing sky of burning wood and metal shot down like meteors, streaking toward the swarm of Giant-Class silver ants chasing after them.

  The fiery shrapnel drove downward with lethal precision. Each fragment pierced the ground like a spear, skewering giant ants and making the ground rumble. The screeches of the dying swarm echoed through the fungi forest as blood and flesh exploded into the air, and she forced herself to look away, her grip tightening on her blades. The train—or what was left of it, their final carriage—was still gliding slowly forward on the tracks, but Zora had made it brake as well, just not as violently. It was slowing down now. The screech of metal against metal grew louder and louder until they finally came to a halt as well, settling on the tracks with a final, hissing groan.

  And while Kita watched the forest burn in front of her eyes, her breaths shaky, Zora stepped up next to her with his hands clasped behind him, smiling softly.

  “I’m not strong, you see, to imagine myself stopping the train with nothing but my own strength,” he explained, tapping the wooden floorboard with his heel as he did. “But that is why, before we set off on this trip, I talked to the factory workers. I talked to the great engineers under the Nohoch Lord’s command and had them explain to me how the train worked. Which levers must be pulled to activate which brakes, which arrays must be stopped to achieve maximum deceleration—I can’t imagine myself punching the train to stop it, but I imagine myself pulling the right levers and detaching the right metal cuffs to stop the train as violently as I can.”

  Kita didn’t respond.

  Neither did Machi, for that matter, because they were both still staring out at the burning forest in front of them.

  “... Well, not that the end result between ‘stopping the train’ by pulling the brakes and ‘stopping the train’ by punching it to a halt with brute force is any different,” he said, humming softly as he hopped off the end of the carriage, treading upon soft, burning earth as seventy giant ants burned to cinders around them. “But my magic is one that demands curiosity and learning on my part. The more I understand a construct, the easier it is for me to cast a spell to either ‘construct’ it or ‘deconstruct’ it. I cannot to learn how to build a train from all its constituent parts from the engineers once we get back, because I would then be able to cast spells like ‘repair the train’ as long as all the parts are within my reach. How convenient this magic is, hm?”

  The acrid stench of burning chitin and wood filled the air, but Kita fought to keep her breathing steady as she hopped off the carriage as well. Her boots crunched against the gravel-strewn tracks. Zora strode ahead, his hands still clasped calmly behind his back, while her pulse was thundering in her ears—her hands were slick with sweat despite her twin sawtooth blades sheathed neatly at her sides.

  “My lady.”

  Machi’s voice snapped her out of her daze. Her attendant rushed toward her, hopping off the carriage as well, and Machi’s hands were all over her in an instant, tugging at her arms and turning her this way and that as she was inspected for injuries.

  “Are you hurt?” Machi demanded, her voice tinged with panic. She knelt slightly, examining Kita’s legs and boots for blood or burns. “Did any of the debris hit you? Did—”

  “I’m fine,” Kita said softly, nudging Machi’s hands away. “Even if I were hurt, I can heal myself with my army ants.”

  Machi hesitated, her worried gaze flicking over Kita one last time before she relented.

  “Alright,” she said, stepping back. But her fingers lingered on the hilt of her knife sheathed behind her skirt, her knuckles whitening.

  Kita shook her head slowly as the two of them followed after Zora, leaving their train carriage behind.

  And the scenery unfolding before her made her stomach churn.

  The forest was a blazing inferno, flames licking hungrily at the twisted trees and fungi that surrounded them. Giant silver ants scrambled in every direction. Some were engulfed in flames, their legs spasming as they let out unearthly screeches. Others lay impaled on jagged shards of metal, their massive bodies pinned to the ground like grotesque effigies. All were burning. None was spared. She couldn’t help but shiver a little, her body caught between the oppressive heat of the flames and the cold dread that clawed at her chest.

  Her gaze lingered on one giant ant in particular. Its legs flailed weakly before it stilled, its once-massive and imposing form reduced to a smoldering husk. She swallowed hard to suppress the wave of nausea rising in her throat.

  “Stay close,” Machi said, her voice low but steady as she placed a reassuring hand on Kita’s shoulder.

  Before Kita could respond, though, Zora stopped abruptly. His sudden pause made both girls halt in their tracks.

  “... What is it?” Kita asked.

  Zora didn’t reply. Instead, he raised his wand and pointed it at one of the surviving ants—a massive creature limping away from the carnage, its silver carapace streaked with ash and blood.

  “Come here,”

  The spell yanked the giant ant back with an invisible force, dragging it across the scorched earth until it knelt before him. The ant thrashed and snarled, its mandibles clicking furiously as it tried to free itself, but Machi reacted instantly. Her knife flashed in the firelight as she unsheathed it and darted forward. In one swift motion, she severed the ant’s legs, mandibles, and jumped onto its head, pressing the silver edge of her knife against its neck.

  Zora thanked Machi with a little nod, though Kita was certain he hadn’t needed the help. As the giant ant twitched, its bloody stumps for mandibles still snapping in futile defiance, he tucked his wand away and clasped his hands behind his back once more, bending forward slightly so he was eye-level with the creature.

  “In the far northeast, where language is homogenous and singular, the people call the empire the land of a thousand tongues,” he began, “and while there may be severe repercussions for doing so, all men speak freely here. I see no reason why you cannot do the same.

  His spell rippled out of his mouth, diffused all over the burning forest, and then made the air shimmer around them. Kita and Machi only looked worriedly around for a brief moment before a strange sound caught their attention—they whirled back to stare at the immobilised giant ant as it began to .

  “... Vile creatures,” it hissed in a guttural voice, sharp and venomous. “Filthy… wretched… .”

  Kita took an involuntary step back, her hands immediately shooting down to her blades. “It’s… talking?” she whispered. “In… the Nohoch tongue, no less?”

  Zora glanced at her, his expression unreadable. “Do not be afraid,” he said, shaking his head. “It is no Insect God. It is but your run-of-the-mill Giant-Class ant.”

  Kita frowned. “But—”

  “Even the Swarm has its own tongue,” he said plainly. “And I told you: even the rank-and-file grunts are not unintelligent the way most of humanity seem to believe they are.”

  Kita’s grip on her blades tightened, but she didn’t draw them. Instead, she watched as Zora knelt before the ant, his expression calm but focused.

  “Who’s leading the ambushes on the convoys in the northwest?” he asked simply.

  The ant snarled, its mandibles clicking furiously. “Burn in your human fires,” it spat. “Rot in your own filth.”

  Zora’s expression didn’t change. “What about the Magicicada Witch, ‘Reverberator’ Decima?” he asked, his voice still steady. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about her, would you?”

  And the change in the ant’s demeanor was immediate. It didn’t have a human face or anything, but she was immediately able to tell by the way it suddenly ‘retracted’ its killing pressure, tried to suck in its aura—its defiance was , and she watched as a flicker of fear passed through its compound eyes.

  It was scared, and knowing that made Zora tilt his head almost… content.

  As if he’d expected this outcome to begin with.

  “Ah,” he said softly. “So you just like the others I’ve talked to over the past two years.” Then he stood up straight, fixing the collar of his amber cloak as he looked over at Kita with a small smile. “Most Giant-Class bugs react to Decima’s name, but it must be blood-bound or tied by something of the sort to never speak of the Magicicada Witches. It was the same for most of the bugs even back in Amadeus Academy, when Nona first attacked—rank-and-file grunts don’t appear to be able to betray their gods.”

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  Kita’s gaze shifted between Zora and the squirming, shuddering ant. Her pulse was still racing, but now it was mingled with a growing sense of unease. “So?” she asked quietly. “What do we do with this one—”

  “It’s useless,” Zora said, waving his hand dismissively as he turned away from the ant. “Divination would suit it well.”

  Suddenly once again, the ant’s body convulsed violently as if it were being crushed by an invisible vice. Its already half-severed legs snapped one by one, blood spurting from the broken stumps. Its carapace splintered and cracked all over. It tried to scream, tried to protest, and it most certainly tried to say , but then its head caved in with a sickening crunch as well, and streams of yellow blood burst out the cracks in its chitin as its entire body went up in flames.

  Kita flinched, taking a step back as Machi hopped off at the last second as well, not a single drop of blood spraying onto her servant’s attire.

  As the two of them stayed still for a few more moments, Zora circled around the area, muttering a rhyme of “extinguish, extinguish”awfully clumsy at trying to extinguish the flames all over the forest, running back and forth between sections he’d already stopped at to cast “extinguish”

  Either way, she couldn’t stop herself from mumbling under her breath.

  “Are you always this destructive?”

  And though her voice came out much, much, quieter than she intended, the man was a sharp listener. He heard from halfway across the burning clearing and hummed back in response.

  “Not always,” he said with a shrug. “But when my kids from Amadeus Academy aren’t around to see me fight, I can afford to be a little more violent.”

  Then, he looked over at the two of them and pointed at the sky. “Now, could either one of you fire a coloured pheromone flare? We can call in the Nohoch Lord and his backup soldiers now. We’ll need a new ride, anyways, since we’re stranded here in the middle of nowhere.”

  Machi wasted no time reaching under her skirt for her pheromone flare gun, but Kita hesitated as she watched him “pull in”

  “And what, exactly, are you trying to do with those carcasses?”

  Zora rubbed his throat as he gestured around them. “Do you think those stakes are good enough?”

  Kita glanced at the impaled ants, their massive bodies twisted and broken. The sight made her stomach churn a little, but she forced herself to speak.

  “They’re—”

  “They’re not good enough,” Zora finished for her, a faint smile tugging at his lips as he turned to look at her once more. “And I have an interesting story to regale you with while we wait for the Nohoch Lord to arrive—one I never told you and your father back in the Salaqa manor’s dining hall. About a year ago, during my long march down to the Divine Capital, I encountered a village of architects far in the northeastern bounds of the empire who taught me how to carve the most brilliant and dazzling of sculptures.

  “... Sculptures?”

  “Indeed. And the man who taught me how to carve always recited the same ‘Frisha Poem’—a poem of worship to a rather small and relatively esoteric northeastern earth spirit—whenever he picked up his chisel and began working on wood,” he said, pressing the tip of his wand to his lips before pointing it out at the carnage. “It goes something like:”

  

  

  

  

  “... Then this next part is what I made up myself."

  

  

  The late afternoon sun bathed the giant fungi forest in a sickly orange glow, but Yiru’s convoy of twenty ant-pulled carriages rolled forward nevertheless, their steeds straining against their harnesses.

  The steady rhythm of their movement should’ve been soothing, but he couldn’t shake the unease that’d settled in his chest the moment he’d spotted the flare shooting up into the sky. He sat stiffly in his carriage, gripping the armrest as his eyes scanned the devastation outside the window. Burnt tree stumps jutted from the earth like blackened teeth, and the ground was littered with shattered chitin and pools of viscous fluid that glistened like molten tar. He swallowed hard, his throat dry despite the humid air.

  “Milord,” the driver called from the front. “We have arrived.”

  Yiru leaned forward, squinting through the hazy window. There it was right outside: a faint trail of coloured pheromone smoke that’d yet to completely dissipate in the sky.

  The convoy came to a halt, the giant ants stamping and clicking their mandibles as a hundred Ant Class Soldiers disembarked in practised formation. Yiru didn’t wait for his own guards to climb out first. He damn near kicked the door open and hopped out, his boots crunching on the scorched ground. Around him, his soldiers were already fanning out around the charred clearing, their sawtooth blades and anti-chitin rifles at the ready.

  He paid them no mind, though. Relief washed over him the moment he saw Kita standing in the centre of the clearing, back turned towards him. Her figure was unnervingly still, as was Machi, her head servant, standing a little bit behind her.

  “Kita!” he called, his voice sharp with urgency. That made the two girls flinch a little, but they didn’t turn, nor did they even acknowledge the soldiers that’d arrived to pick them up. That was fine with him. He sprinted towards her, splashing through mud and puddles of blood, and then immediately wrapped his arms around his niece’s shoulders, pulling her close.

  “You’re alive,” he whispered, his relief palpable. “If you’d died out here… if the sole heir of the Salaqa Household perished in the northwest, already known for its recent disasters, your father would—”

  “I’m fine, Uncle Yiru,” Kita mumbled. He pulled back slightly, frowning. Her tone lacked its usual warmth, her words devoid of the reassurance he sought.

  He opened his mouth to press her further when a voice, low and distant, interrupted him.

  “Of course she’s unharmed. What sort of teacher would I be if I let a child get hurt under my ward?”

  Yiru turned sharply, searching for the source of the voice. It was the Thousand Tongue’s, unmistakable in its cool, detached cadence, but the man himself was nowhere to be seen.

  Not on the ground, at least.

  It was only now, after Yiru had calmed down a little seeing his niece still alive and well, that he took a good look around at his surroundings. The clearing was mostly silent, save for the faint crackle of dying embers. Then he noticed it: a strange stillness that’d settled over all of his soldiers. They weren’t moving. Their attentions were fixed on something ahead. Some of them were trembling, their spears shaking in their hands.

  He was about to call out to some of them, but his voice faltered as his gaze followed theirs.

  Forward.

  Up.

  And then he saw ‘it’.

  It rose from the center of the charred clearing like a grotesque monument, towering thirty meters into the air. A five-pointed star it was, its form unmistakable and yet horrifyingly unnatural. The effigy was a patchwork of death, constructed from the carcasses of a hundred giant ants, their mangled bodies fused together with tangled roots and scorched debris, their limbs jutting out at grotesque angles.

  The carcasses weren’t haphazardly arranged. They were deliberately placed, twisted and warped to create the five-pointed star’s precise, jagged shape. What remained of chitinous exoskeletons caught the fading sunlight, casting sharp reflections that seemed to cut into Yiru’s eyes.

  His stomach churned. The air around the monument simply felt… , heavy with an unnatural weight that pressed against his chest. The smell of decay and charred flesh hung so thickly in the air it made his eyes water.

  “By the Great Makers good name...” he whispered, his voice barely audible. Around him, his soldiers shifted uneasily, their murmurs a low hum of fear. Some of them averted their eyes from the giant star effigy, while others stood frozen, unable to look away.

  Yiru still forced himself to step forward, though his legs felt like lead.

  “What... is this?” he croaked, his voice trembling.

  “Eerie, isn’t it?”

  Yiru’s head snapped upward, his eyes widening as he spotted the Thousand Tongue. The man sat at the very top of the effigy, perched thirty metres up casually on the jagged tip of the star. His legs dangled over the side, kicking back and forth lazily as though he were enjoying a peaceful view from up high.

  Even though he couldn’t really see anything, blind as he was.

  “... There’s plenty of usable giant ant parts at the base of the effigy, still!” the Thousand Tongue shouted, pointing at the bottom two points of the star where they stabbed into the ground. True enough, there were small mounds of charred-black ant chitin just sitting around. “It’s not nearly enough materials to restart all the production lines in your factories, but it’s enough to get you started on Swarmsteel production again. You’ll be receiving more giant ant parts over the coming months, so start collecting them and ferrying them back to Nohoch Ik’Balam. You’ll need all the parts you can get.”

  Yiru’s throat tightened. His instincts screamed at him to look away, to turn back, but he couldn’t. His eyes were still absolutely drawn to the grotesque monument. The sheer of it was overwhelming, and… given how it’d captivated all of his soldiers, Kita and Machi included, it was safe to say he wasn’t the only one who found it impossible to look away.

  Noticing his trance, the Thousand Tongue clasped his hands above his knees and sucked in a deep breath.

  “is how you fight the Swarm,” he said, his voice suddenly growing louder, heavier, washing across the clearing like a physical sound wave. “They’re not the dumb brutes most of humanity thinks they are. They learn, they adapt, and they evolve specifically to counter the weapons we wield—but, in that same sense, they feel just like all life on this continent, and this effigy will be but one of many I will construct in the coming months.”

  The words hung in the air, their weight pressing down on Yiru. He opened his mouth to respond, but no words came. The strange mixture of horror and awe was still stuck in his throat as the Thousand Tongue patted the giant star under him.

  “They will remember this shape,” the Thousand Tongue said, grinning down at all of them. “The star will haunt them. They will see it from forests and valleys and mountains away, and they will learn to stay a wide berth from the mark of the Thousand Tongue. What better defence for a fortress, after all, than the walls a shadow of fear can build?”

  Silence blanketed the clearing, still, until it was broken in a way no one expected.

  From the carriage of the train sitting a little off to the side—the carriage remaining on the tracks—a young man in a tattered hood staggered out of the lavatory, clutching his head as he practically stumbled off the edge of the carriage. He landed firmly on both feet, though, and looked around in wild befuddlement before his eyes locked onto the giant star effigy towering over all of them.

  Then the man laughed, his shoulders bouncing as he took out a bottle of alcohol from under his cloak.

  “I go for a small toilet break, and I come back to something like ” He laughed even harder, taking a hard swig of his bottle, and then Yiru heard the Thousand Tongue laughing quietly all the way up as well. It was only now that Yiru recognised the man: he was the driver who’d brought the Thousand Tongue and Kita all the way here from the Salaqa Region. A trusted man appointed by his brother to take care of his niece.

  … But then, Yiru laughed.

  It started as a low chuckle, bubbling up from his chest like an uncontrollable reflex. It surprised even him—this wasn’t the kind of scene where laughter felt appropriate—but he couldn’t stop himself. Soon, it grew louder, more genuine, until his laughter echoed across the clearing.

  His soldiers shifted uncomfortably, unsure whether to join in or back away. Most of them started moving as the Thousand Tongue asked them to, though, heading towards the base of the effigy to collect the giant ant chitin they could use for their factories.

  For her part, Kita turned towards him, brows furrowed.

  “You’re laughing, Uncle Yiru?” she asked, quiet but sharp. She was still half-staring at the effigy, so Yiru wiped his eyes, trying to compose himself.

  “I suppose I really am,” he said, still grinning. “It’s just... Can you imagine, my dear Kita? An effigy so horrifying that it makes even the think twice about attacking our convoys?”

  Kita didn’t respond. She kept her gaze fixed on the star, her face pale in the dimming light.

  Yiru’s grin softened into something more thoughtful. He folded his arms, his own eyes drifting back to the effigy. “And I suppose this is also why my brother told me to bet on him,” he said, almost to himself. “He’s not like the Noble-Bloods or the Spore Knights back in the Capital, all wrapped up in their ideas of honour and tradition. They call him the ‘Thousand Tongue’, and looking at this thing now, I think… no. I know I will never understand why.”

  And, as if summoned by the mere mention of his name, the Thousand Tongue appeared. He pushed off the top of the effigy with practiced ease, his cicada wings unfurling like the petals of a flower, and they carried him down in a slow, controlled glide.

  When he landed before Yiru and Kita, it was almost soundless. His boots barely stirred the ash and soot beneath him.

  “Enjoying the view?” Zora asked, still grinning from ear to ear.

  Yiru turned to face him, his smile returning despite himself. “Very much so. I am satisfied.”

  Then the Thousand Tongue looked past Yiru, his blind gaze settling on Kita.

  “You weren’t bad, either,” he said, his tone bouncy and light-hearted as he patted her on the head. “Your swordsmanship is impressive. While your friends in the royal military academy must’ve messed around and enjoyed themselves on every available occasion, you must’ve been studying the blade. You’re just like me, then.”

  Kita didn’t respond. She didn’t even look at him. Her eyes remained fixed on the effigy, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

  Yiru frowned.

  Then again, it a giant effigy made out of ant carcasses, twisted tree roots, clumps of wet soil, and everything in between. She must’ve watched the Thousand Tongue build it from scratch with his ‘spells’, so he couldn’t even imagine what the hell he'd said to construct such a monument.

  The only thing he knew was that he was glad.

  Because if anyone could take back the northwest, it would be the man strolling around the clearing with his hands clasped behind his back, offering his assistance to the soldiers trying to lug the giant ant chitin back onto their carriages.

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  See you guys next Wednesday!