- Scene from Sina Household past

  The sewage room was dark, but not so dark firefly light from the surface far above couldn’t reach in soft, misty rays.

  Lines of crates dangled on frayed ropes over her head. Carts and trolleys and cans of unwrapped garbage lay spilled and scattered along the moist cobblestone walls, but between the unpleasant smells of rotten vegetables and decomposing ceramics, Dahlia felt a little sting on the tip of her outstretched tongue, between her parted lips—what tasted like burnt and charred organic matter, coming from a particular pile of trash a few metres off to her left.

  She knew the source of this scent, strong and pungent enough to knock an eight-year-old out cold with prolonged exposure.

  Tearing her eyes away from the lifeless bug trader, she crawled over to the pile of trash with her stomach glued to the ground, careful to keep her clothes from rustling. She wasn’t entirely sure how sensitive the cave cricket was, but it to be suspicious, or else it wouldn’t be standing guard before the ladder like it was waiting for something. Sharp rocks scraped her bare stomach as she crawled, and she couldn’t whimper even once unless she wanted to die.

  Eria—or, at least, the projection of the little black bug that wanted to be called that—skittered ahead of her to stand atop a particularly foul-smelling box made of bolted wood and metal latches. Since the projection wasn’t real, Eria couldn’t just help her open the box, but pointing out its exact location was already more than enough help.

  With her heart in her throat, she grabbed the box tentatively and pulled it towards her, pulling the lid slowly open to find six small coloured vials within.

  Eria commented idly, as she scooped up the vials and lay them gently on the ground next to her, hands now searching the trash heap for whatever she could use for the body of the bomb.

  “Can you find me something… something hard, but malleable?” she whispered, changing the topic as she kept stealing peeks at the cave cricket. “Also, um, something… easy to shatter. Like a thrown-out stick of wax or a glass pane about the size of my palm. And, if possible, I want some sort of… liquid resin. But just a normal tying band would also do.”

  She blinked, her hands stopping searching for a moment. “So… what you do?”

  There was a warning, but she was hardly prepared for it. It was like someone suddenly shoved a knife made of ice through the back of her skull and her world flashed white and blue—her muscles electrifying, her pain receptors amplifying, her blood running cold in her veins and her airways unclogged by a burst of air—but then she blinked again, and it was like she was seeing the whole world through a bug’s curved compound eyes.

  Her field of vision was wider, longer. The ground looked distorted and the ceiling appeared higher than usual. Even the sounds of sewage water rushing behind her felt a little calmer, like the world was moving in slow motion.

  Also, she immediately wanted to hurl, but she stopped herself before she could make a big fuss and make any noise.

  Eria said, listing everything off as it teleported around, waving at her atop one item at a time.

  With a quiet grunt, she ripped the ball of yarn down and dragged in the pliable carapace.

  “But if they hadn’t been discarded, I wouldn’t be able to use them now,” she mumbled.

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  Sweat poured down her brow as she folded each beetle carapace into half spheres, using her knuckles to press out all the unwanted dents and lumps, and then she pressed two halves together to see if they’d fit. Once she was certain they’d hold, she started biting the corks off the vials, asking Eria to keep track of which vial contained which extract. Their colours were quite stark in contrast—one azure blue and one sulphur yellow—but now she was too focused on snapping the wax glass into perfect circles with her hands to keep an eye on them.

  Each that came from the wax glass breaking made her wilt a little, but thankfully the cricket was standing just far away enough. It didn’t hear her do anything.

  “Can’t you read my mind?” she asked softly, her chin tuckered so far down it was almost touching her chest. Her hands were trembling as she tried pouring the extracts into her first two halves. “If you’re inside me and you’re some sort of super incredible Swarmsteel, then you can probably hear my… my ‘mind voice’, right?”

  Eria replied calmly, watching her place the wax glass onto one of the halves before pressing both together, tying them up with several cords of yarn.

  “Oh. So that’s why. I… um, I just wanted to know if three of these bombs would be enough to take down that cricket if I throw them at it directly–”

  “... No?”

  Eria explained.

  “So what if I do this?”

  She demonstrated, filling the rest of the bombs up in a particular pattern before binding the halves together with more yarn—and Eria stood perched atop the first one she completed, mulling in silence for a little longer.

  Eria finally said, as she took it as her confirmation to slowly claw to her feet. Having spent the better half of the past hour laying on her stomach, she immediately started wobbling and had to stabilise herself by leaning against the wall. Eria tried to argue with her.

  Cold slithered through her gut at the mention of a path that didn’t require her to face the cricket, but she found the courage to shake her head quite firmly.

  “I… will kill it.”

  “If I don’t kill it here, I’ll never be able to face the mister after I die.”

  “Besides, you… you were the one who said it, right?” she said, managing a small, quivering smile, as she parted her legs and reared her left hand back. She gripped her first bomb as tightly as she could. “You said it. Remember. I can’t… I can’t beat it in a battle, so I turn it into a battle."

  With the hand holding her other two bombs, she turned the dial on the pocket watch behind her waistband.

  She would end this in one minute.

  With an overhead throw, she sent her first bomb flying from her left hand, the sphere detonating and scattering beetle shrapnel in a small radius around the cricket’s forelegs. The claustrophobic walls transformed the sewage room into an echo chamber of scrapes and screeching as the cricket raged, darting back from the site of impact as its antennae swiped the air in front of it.

  . Ten seconds passed as it tried pinpointing the exact location of the thrower, and on the fifteenth second she took a step back herself and clapped her hands, stomping at the same time.

  The vibrations travelled fast, and the cricket noticed. Dark, beady eyes locked onto hers, and though she knew it couldn’t see out of them, it didn’t make her feel any less cowardly.

  The moment it realised her bomb had barely left a scratch on it was the moment it stopped being so cautious. It still didn’t have a good grasp on her strength, she was sure, but at the very least it it had to be faster. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be trying to engage it from afar.

  So, it reacted accordingly. Thirty seconds passed. Batting the shrapnel on the ground away with its antennae, it pounced right at her—crossing the twenty metre gap between them within a single second.

  Just as she predicted as well.

  With an underhanded throw, she chucked her bomb to the frayed ropes overhead, an explosive flash of light accompanying the fan of shrapnel slicing through the ropes. The first falling crate missed its mark, and so did the second and third, but the fourth crate fell head-first onto the cricket. This one dealt damage. Mounds of spiky metal slag cut across its chitin, falling between its muscular joints, slowing it down.

  It a living being, still.

  Forty seconds passed. The heavy crate landing hard on its head slowed it down more than she’d thought, so she managed to pick up a plank of wood to use as a shield. Her hands were sweaty. There was a storm in her ears. The cricket, no longer unsure, pounced straight at her in pure, unadulterated rage; its body swept through the remaining crates that’d missed their mark, and its antennae were fanned out in front like they were going to spear through her chest.

  The moment its antennae slashed through the plank and cut across her forearms—she had to bite down a scream—she tossed her final bomb straight into its mouth.

  Its mandibles closed on it immediately, and the fiery explosion threw her violently back, eviscerating the cave cricket from the inside-out. Annihilation. One second its body was tight, compact, its adaptations perfectly suited for its environment, and in the next its internal organs burst through its chitin in a gory splatter of oil-like blood and digestive fluids.

  There was no screech. No dying throe. It went out just as it’d arrived—that was, without any sound whatsoever.

  And, while she lay flat on her back with her fingers still gripped around the plank of wood–

  One minute passed, and her pocket watch stopped ticking down.

  She tossed the plank, hugged her own bleeding forearms, and gnashed her teeth so hard she felt they might just start cracking.

  Eria said, waving at her from atop the dead cricket’s head and beckoning her closer.

  She exhaled sharply through her nose and tried to talk through the pain, though with a hundred emotions swirling through her chest right now, she could only really manage a quivering smile.

  “I… I killed it?”

  “I did it!” she cried, tears squeezing out the corner of her eyes as she crawled onto her knees, panting and coughing and hugging herself even tighter as she tried to contain her shivering. “I… I killed it! I won! That’s… you know, I don’t think any student in Alshifa has actually killed a giant insect before! Sure, we get called out to get rid of tiny insect dens here and there during training, but… yes! Gratitude! You really are useful, Eria—”

  “... What… What did you say?” she stammered, lifting her head slowly to stare at the little black bug. “You want me to… what?”

  Eria didn’t miss a beat as it jabbed the cricket carcass with its pointy leg.