Chapter 21 - The Father
- Excerpt from ‘Secret Sina Household Journalinal Entry’, Written by Sanyon Sina
… Her dad rose on two crooked insect legs, and Dahlia froze with one hand clamped over her bleeding left eye.
She couldn't make herself blink.
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She couldn't make herself stand.
It wasn't just fear that shot through her as her dad rasped something incomprehensible. It wasn't just terror that clouded her judgement as he drew closer, spine so hunched his elongated claws screeched against the floorboards. Her body thrummed with nervous energy that clawed up the back of her throat, trying to escape as words she could say to bring him back to his senses, but they all died on the tip of her tongue without a sliver of confidence behind them—what ‘strength’ she'd managed to muster by walking into her house alone evaporated the instant she recognized that black bug form of his.
A ‘true’ bug.
And she knew why he looked like this. She’d known for two years that he looked like this, and having slaughtered and eaten a horde of giant insects who’d come his way the past day must’ve made his mutations appear even more prominent.
But, somewhere in the back of her head, she’d always thought he’d eventually recover… and then she could believe it was all just a horrible, horrible nightmare.
This was no nightmare.
This killing pressure was real.
He lunged for her head with a guttural screech, and Amula surged through the front door at a speed she couldn't follow, knee flying from ground to sky as she knocked him to the back of the living room.
Raya cut through the wall on her left a half second later, stepping in calmly, while Jerie moved in another half second later with his flute already pressed to his lips. A sharp, ear-splintering wail screeched out of the instrument, and her dad's chitin plates trembled as though they were trying to shake loose from his skin—but that wasn't about to happen. Bloody tendons connected them to his body, his insect claws having devoured his fingers, and the cicada flute only made him scream and cower on his knees by the sofa. He wasn't falling apart. He wasn't dying or trying to run. Jerie grimaced and moved closer, attempting to knock him out with sheer volume and obnoxiousness with the flute–
But that was their first mistake.
Something slid from beneath her dad's arm, stabbing forward on a few cracking joints, and Jerie would've been skewered through the stomach had Amula not pulled him back at the last second. The song stopped. Her dad clawed to his feet, teeth chattering as two extra insect arms exploded out from behind his waist, their bone-like talons every bit as sharp as his mutated claws. Amula yanked Jerie and Dahlia further back as Raya took another step forward, grimacing at her dad's unnatural, bone-breaking stretches and contortions.
Her dad was only just now warming up.
Eria whispered.
Raya tapped his spear twice on the floorboards, making everyone except for her dad jolt in place.
“... Doctor Sanyon,” he said with a quiet, sombre voice, before dipping his head with one arm curled behind his back. “You may not remember me, but you made my spear and crossbow long ago, when I used to climb up the cliffs every night to pester you for powerful Swarmsteel.
“I also injured myself a lot during training, and you never charged me a single coin for looking at my wounds.
“I…
“...
“... I’m grown up now.
“I don’t like owing people favours.
“So I’ll repay everything I owe you right here, right now.”
Dahlia’s bristles tingled with anxiousness. Amula and Jerie must’ve sensed what was about to go down as well, because of them dashed forward, fanning out on Raya’s left and right as he stepped it for a straight thrust to her dad’s chest—a triple-pronged attack by the strongest students of the Bug-Slaying School.
Against any giant insect, she was sure the attack would decimate without encountering even a shred of resistance, but her dad stood still. His two metre frame hulking, looming over all of them. Raya stepped into the shadow of his body cast by moonlight, and there was a small silver gleam as his claws ripped out something ball-shaped from the pocket of his mourning clothes; it was a ball Dahlia recognized all too well, a celebration toy that’d normally do no harm to anyone whatsoever.
But Dahlia herself had made it, a few months ago, when the bug trader had asked her to make something ‘deadly’ for once. She’d not made anything like that ever since, but the one her dad held in his claws now was a prototype that was even dangerous than the one she sold to the bug trader.
Her body moved.
She felt pain in her ankles as she kicked a piece of wood at the back of Raya’s head, knocking him slightly off kilter. The moment he lost his balance, her dad crushed the bombardier beetle bomb in his claws. Flames erupted. Tiny nails flew in every conceivable direction, the flanking seniors forced to whirl mid-air and brace themselves with their capelets and mantles as the living room shattered like glass. Raya howled the exact same moment Dahlia curled herself into a ball, and all she could do was hope he hadn’t been hit too hard by the Swarmsteel of her own making.
Wooden beams fell from the ceiling, letting in colder moonlight, harsher winds. Still biting her lips, she forced herself to open her eyes and look through the smog—her dad was still very much alive, limping towards her with half his face peeled off his head.
Raya scrambled to his feet, left ear missing, closing the distance between them in a flash. In another moment Amula jumped out from behind the table she’d used as cover, and the two of them landed simultaneous thrusts and kicks; the honey bee spear caught in her dad’s left claws, the bombardier beetle boot caught in his right. His body trembled, a low growl escaped his throat. In a single, smooth movement, he spun in a circle and his claws cleaved along the motion, rending the spear’s stinger in half and severing all of Amula’s right toes in the process.
Maybe Dahlia should've reacted the same way Raya and Amula reacted, by bouncing away from her dad in pain and apprehension, but… then it in her eye.
The little trail of steel and silver dust, flaking off his claws.
He could see the steel thread, too.
She blinked, her vision going dark, and when she opened her eyes again she was sitting propped up on her dad’s lap.
She finished her blink. She was back in the living room. Splinters and broken insect chitin flew as her dad cleaved up a storm, tearing entire floorboards out to throw at Amula and Jerie. Raya sliced through all of the debris with ease, but without an ear his footwork was unstable, his sense of balance slightly off with every forward thrust. Her dad dodged and swung his claws again, shattering the tip of the honey bee spear as if it were just sugar glass. The back walls shuddered. Metre-wide cracks splinted across the ground, blood trails flying as Raya retreated with a pained hiss.
Another blink. Rushes of maddened frenzy. Amula was ready for the counter cleaves this time as she leaped in close, a roar of fire bursting from her boots as she twirled through her dad’s slash. The sickening of her heels smashing into his right arm showed she’d done some damage, but not nearly enough. While she recovered and tried to land, one of his extra arms shot out and slashed where her ankles touched down, the senior losing her balance completely. The other extra arm would’ve shot through her throat had Jerie not screeched a single shrill note right in his ear, shattering the windows and pummeling her dad through the bedroom wall.
A hundred prototype pocket watches flared to life with a chorus of discordant as her dad flew through the closet, smashed through the desk, and recovered before he could hit the bed. He regained his bearings. Jerie couldn’t draw another breath quick enough. Raya and Amula stepped in to defend their flautist as her dad came out swinging, ten steel threads trailing from each of his claws and connecting to her classmates’ throats.
The flurry of slashes was unending, aggressively aimed at the trio’s Swarmsteel as though her dad was actively trying to dismantle them. Harshly. Violently. Every bone in his body continued to snap as he jerked his limbs like they were hung on wires, every wound he sustained regenerated over with dagged black chitin. His vertical amber irises were unblinking, neither Raya nor the seniors could find a single inch of opportunity to move in close.
If all they did was continue playing on defence and trying to draw it out as a battle of attrition, Dahlia knew for sure they would lose—her dad, after all, was a man who’d eaten the past two years.
His life had been starving.
His struggles had been silent.
Yet when his steel threads twirled around him, intertwining, enveloping his body like they were the threads that pulled his limbs along…
… All she could notice was how much brighter her steel thread was, going from the tip of her scalpel to the patch of skin over his heart.
She could see it.
She could feel it.
And when a pocket watch rolled across the floorboards to bump into her right hand, her hands moved to pick it off the ground and tuck it behind her waistband by themselves.
Amula and Jerie were sent flying out the windows. Raya skidded backwards with the blunt end of his spear dragging through the floorboards, bleeding from his ear and panting like his life depended on it. Maybe if they’d arrived sooner and her dad hadn’t been allowed to fight off as many giant bugs as he had, they’d be able to subdue him without much trouble… but she’d made them take detour after detour, pausing here and there, slowing them down with her indecision and cowardice—so at the very least, in front of her own dad, she didn’t want to appear like a coward.
Even if his killing pressure made him want to hurl, she didn’t want to clench her fists in fear.
Chisel in her left hand, a scalpel that’d rolled over to her in her right, she turned the dial on her pocket watch and drew a slow breath to clear her mind.