Chitin and Cellulose

An Abandoned Mining Road, Central Ulimaroa

 

She hadn't procured as much treasure from them as she had hoped, sure, but traveling along the forgotten dirt roads snaking through the Ulimaroan badlands had enriched her in other ways. Whether observing Ulimaroa's striking landscapes up close, swapping tales with fellow adventurous spirits, or stumbling upon structures left behind by the miners and prospectors of yore, she never failed to make new discoveries on these excursions. The constant novelties more than made up for the dangers of traveling so far out into the wilderness, and, she could proudly say, she hadn't died of dehydration or mauling yet.

 

Yes, on all her treks through Ulimaroa, Amita had never encountered a threat she couldn't manage.

 

(temporary faceclaim edited from work of artist yiyippieee)

 

On this day, however, she worries not about any threat to herself, but about the safety of another. Anticipation gripping her heart, she hastens off the trail without concern for the wisps of dust rising in her wake. She hadn't encountered any cats out here before today, but from what other than some lonely, distressed feline can the mewling originate? She can't let down a pitiable, abandoned creature…

 

Sprinting over bare rock, she spots it – a deep fissure in the ground. No, wait. That's no natural fissure. The edges are too neat, and its corners too sharp. That's a trench, purposefully dug out of the ground, and a deep one at that. A mine operated at the end of this road long ago; the miners had likely dug this trench as a trap. Had the cat fallen into it? If so, then…

 

Before her thoughts can spiral into a worst-case scenario, she catches a flash of purple. Following it, her eyes settle onto an unexpected shape. Is that… a woman on her stomach, sticking her head over the edge of the trench? The cat's owner, perhaps?

 

No, wait… Amita cups a hand to her ear, listening intently to the whimpering. It's too loud to be coming from within the trench, and there's certainly no cat in view. The only possible source of the pitiful sound, then, is the woman seemingly peering into the trench's depths.

 

"Hey!" She calls out as she makes a beeline to the woman's side. "You hurt? What're you doing here?"

 

Evidently hearing her shouted questions, the woman jolts. She scrambles to push herself up onto her hands and to raise her head. Looking back over her shoulder, she meets Amita's gaze with puffed cheeks and a deep frown. She tilts her head, looking Amita up and down as her pouting gives way to curiosity.

 

"You're no bandit." The woman breaks the silence, furrowing her brow as she continues to scrutinize Amita. A tinge of indignation colors her voice.

 

"I mean… no? Of course not," Amita ventures. "I asked if you were hurt. You had notice I was coming. What kind of thief gives away their approach?"

 

"An expert thief, so confident in their abilities that they don't require the element of surprise to achieve their aims." Slowly, the purple-haired woman rises to her feet and turns around, drawing up to her full height… of about a head shorter than Amita herself. "Only the most discerning and well-studied of thieves would know to target the current Maiden of Miare, so of course I would assume any bandit targeting me would possess the utmost confidence."

 

"Sure, but," she begins, sidestepping a dissection of that logic, "I'm not a bandit, I don't know who you are, and I'm not sure where or what a Miare is. I pick through old junk, not swipe it off of people. The name's Amita. You wanna tell me why you're out here all alone looking down a hole in the ground, maybe?"

 

At the request for information, she breaks into a grin. As if she had been waiting for someone to ask all along, she tilts her chin up and puffs out her chest. Beaming with pride, she launches into an explanation. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Amita. I am Akyuu of the Hieda lineage – but you can call me just Akyuu!  I am the ninth Child of Miare, and so am I the ninth compiler of the compendium of all knowledge, the annals of all history, the Miare Chronicle! The bearer of the cumulative wisdom of the ages, there is naught I cannot answer, and no problem I cannot overcome! I peer into this pit in the earth on account of my notes!"

 

Watching Akyuu make her grandiose proclamations, Amita stifles a chuckle, unable to keep from smiling. The disconnect between her words and her delivery is almost comical. The girl's pompous as hell, sure, but she seems so earnest about it. How long had she been waiting to rattle off this little spiel? It's less like being talked down to and more like humoring a kid really excited to introduce themself to someone.

 

"Oh, you're taking notes on it?" Amused and intrigued, Amita prompts her to go on.

 

"No, not on the pit itself. I was taking notes on the landscape and climate. I only recently moved here, and no member of the Hieda lineage had ever dwelt here before me, so I'm getting to know the region. Everything was going fine, but then a gust of wind came along and carried most of my papers off with it. I chased after them, but they fell down there," Akyuu says, gesturing over the edge of the pit. "I'd jump down to retrieve them," she adds, her cheeks puffing out once more, "but someone littered it with spikes."

 

Amita steps forward and peers over the edge of the trench. Just as Akyuu said, a bunch of papers and index cards lie scattered amidst the spikes. "Figured it was a Heatmor trap. They should've dismantled it before they abandoned the place."

 

"A heat more trap?"

 

"No, a Heatmor trap," Amita clarifies, correcting Akyuu's over-enunciation. "Heatmor are a kind of fire-breathing anteater. They eat metal ants. They used to consider 'em a big problem for the mines in this part of the country. You'd get Heatmor starting fires in mining camps by accident, so mine bosses would have deep trenches dug and filled with spikes. Since Heatmor are used to searching for ants in disturbed ground, they'd jump down to investigate the glint of metal below, and that was it. The whole trap's a relic of the past now. Not only are they cruel, but they made it worse for the miners. Without Heatmor to keep their numbers down, those ants started connecting their burrows to mines. Whole colonies would drive miners out."

 

"A design with unintended consequences…" Akyuu marvels at the explanation, her eyes shining with wonder as she looks up at Amita. "Did the anteater population ever recover?"

"Dunno," Amita answers straightforwardly. "Ask me about traps, not animals."

 

"You wouldn't mind if I interviewed you about traps sometime!?" Akyuu practically jumps at the thought, her hands curling into fists as she leans forward with anticipation.

 

"Sure, sure. But I thought you said you already have all knowledge?" Amita teases.

 

"All knowledge observed or acquired by the Hieda lineage," she concedes. "We weren't everywhere at once."

 

"Well, if you're still learning… let me see if I can help you out with those notes. We just need to cover the tips. Big jump, but we'll be fine as long as we have safe footing… Problem is, we'll need a way out… I take it you don't have a rope or anything?"

 

"Huhuhu." A smug laugh passes through Akyuu's lips, the chronicler rooting around for something on her person. "I have a tool better than a rope," she reports, flinging an arm above her head and proudly presenting a calligraphy brush. "This is my magic brush – the Brush of Miare! With it, I can replicate any spell, incantation, charm, or magical technique recorded in the Miare Chronicle! I only need to copy the strokes corresponding to the details of a power, and I can wield the power as it was written."

 

Getting more gentle skepticism from Amita than amazement, Akyuu pre-empts Amita's question. "The chronicle is… massive," she admits. "We've recorded so much history, it's next to impossible to unpromptedly recall a power with the level of granularity required to replicate it. It's… I would analogize it as picking out specific blades of grass in a field; the only way to succeed is to devote an immense amount of time to the task or to have a way to narrow the area you have to search through. To help me narrow the search area, I've made citations for certain powers and written them on notecards. Knowing the original caster and the context a spell appears in helps the memory to surface. I know I brought some sort of levitation spell, but the citation for it…"

 

"…is down there," Amita finishes for her, looking again at the notecards lying in the trap. "You can get back up if you get your hands on the cards, but you're powerless to get to 'em safely."

 

"I did snatch this one before it blew away!" Akyuu eagerly thrusts a notecard at Amita's face, delightedly waving it around as if saving a single card were an accomplishment. "It's for a frost explosion developed by the scholar Hiber! According to his demonstration in 1816, by concentrating cryonic energies within himself, he could put them under such pressure that they would explode outwards, leaving all in their range coated in a thick layer of ice!"

 

Indulging Akyuu's babbling, Amita considers the power for a moment. "Couldn't you ice over the spikes, go down, and chip through the ice to get to all your papers?"

 

"I considered it, but Hiber was resistant to ice by a method he never revealed, and I'm not. I'd freeze myself solid if I used it. I only took down a citation because the technique is fascinating."

 

…right, okay. She brought a power she can't even use. This girl needs all the help she can get. Keeping the thought to herself, Amita shrugs. "Oh well, no biggie. If you're sure you can get us up, I can cover the spikes. Give me a sec, 'k?"

 

Akyuu nods, giving Amita the chance she needs to get to work. She takes a step back, lifting her arms slightly and straightening out her spine. Standing tall, she closes her eyes, and a layer of skin begins to peel away from her back. Akyuu looks on with intense curiosity, watching as Amita's skin pulls away as if it's snakeskin, all while still leaving another perfectly intact layer of skin in place beneath it. As more of the upper layer of skin shuffles out of place, the process comes to resemble something between a snake's shedding and mitotic division, it soon becoming clear that a second Amita is budding off from the first, connected to the original back-to-back.

 

After a moment, the division completes, with the second Amita splitting off from the first. Before Akyuu stands Amita, no different than before, and a second Amita, identical on the outside right down to the appearance of her clothing, but hollow on the inside.

 

"It's like a cicada's shell," Akyuu notes aloud, utterly fascinated. "A hollow copy, an image of the original! How'd you learn to do that?"

 

"I didn't really learn it," Amita responds, the process more mundane to her. "I've just… been able to. Went to a bunch of doctors until they found one able to tell me I've got chitin for skin instead of keratin. For whatever reason, it regrows fast." She pauses as she digs into her pocket, pulling out a small grenade-like device and handing it to her clone. "I don't know the how or why of it, but it lets me do this."

 

"You know what to do," she tells the clone, offering it a pat on the back as she assumes her previous position and begins splitting off another. With no further prompting needed and with Akyuu watching it intently, the first clone pulls the pin from its grenade and leaps into the trap.

 

As the laws of physics dictate, the clone impales itself, spikes piercing its chitinous outer layer. Not entirely alive to begin with, it doesn't so much die as go inert. A few moments after the clone's impalement, the grenade goes off, releasing not a conventional explosion, but a misting of peculiar purple liquid. The Ultra-Bitter Spray soaks the inert clone, hardening its chitin to stone – just in time for another clone to jump in to repeat the process. In time, four clones jump in and petrify themselves, forming a semi-stable platform atop the spikes.

 

"They're like eusocial insects." Watching the process unfold, Akyuu muses on the nature of the clones. "There's no self-preservation. It's as if their only instinct is to assist their progenitor."

 

"Pretty close!" Stepping over to confirm they have safe ground below, a chipper Amita affirms Akyuu's observation. Satisfied with the stability of the petrified clone platform, she hops down into the pit, beckoning Akyuu along while launching into an explanation. "As far as I can tell, they basically come with two instincts. If I'm in danger, they'll try to protect me, and if not, they'll go looking for some way to d-, uh, go inert so I can use their bodies."

 

"Is that useful?" Too consumed with questions to be fearful, Akyuu makes the jump without hesitation. Stumbling upon landing, she nearly faceplants onto the stone floor, steadied only by Amita grabbing her and pulling her back fully upright.

 

"I get a lot of mileage out of it. Distractions, making floors or ramps, getting a bludgeoning tool… Plenty you can do." Without further ado, Amita gets down on her knees and gets to work, carefully snaking her arm through the spikes and gathering up the lost pages and index cards. She hands each paper to Akyuu, the chronicler lighting up as she finds them undamaged.

 

Seeing no more around, she soon stands back up. "That all of 'em?"

 

"Everything's heeeeeeeeeeere!" Akyuu reports, bubbly and overjoyed. "I have the card I required for our ascent, too. Can you wrap your arms around me?" Amita follows Akyuu's instructions, getting a firm grip as Akyuu refreshes her memory and draws her brush. "This levitation technique was developed by the magician Odira, evolving the former dominant technique of the time by allowing for free vertical travel through the air column," she rambles as she swishes the Brush of the Miare about.  In short order, she rises, Amita hanging off of her.

 

The pair soon crest the edge of the pit, landing back where they had started with their job complete. As they separate, Akyuu clutches her papers tightly, dancing in place as she looks up to Amita. "You were a great help in getting me out of that bind. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thaaaank you! First thing when I get back to my room, I'm writing down what you did for me, and as soon as I'm back in my study, I'm transferring it to the chronicle so it persists through all of time!"

 

Amita chuckles once again at Akyuu's earnestness, finding herself smiling as she watches her happy little dance. This girl's hopeless. If she keeps wandering around on her own out here, it's only a matter of time before she has an accident. "We're pretty far out of town, you know. Maybe I should walk you back, make sure the weather doesn't catch you off-guard again. You have some more spells you could talk about, don't you?"

 

"Do I ever! And not just spells! There's all of history to discuss! Or… all of the history I've read so far, but that's far more history than most know!"

 

"Alright then! Walk and talk. C'mon, follow me," Amita prompts, waving Akyuu along.

 

Yes, truly she never failed to make new discoveries on these excursions. She may not have found a cat, but she did find a charmingly cute runt all the same!