Dante registered the warm scent of cinnamon and cloves before anything else as he drifted back toward consciousness. He was lying on his back on some sort of a bed roll, and he ached all over. It had all been a dream, he was sure. There was no way he was some long lost relative of a prince and had nearly been eaten by a giant, scaly frog demon that had killed his best friend.
No, he must have failed in stealing back his Chime from his uncle and had been beaten black and blue before passing out from the pain. Yes, that made much more sense than anything else he'd witnessed. After falling unconscious, he clearly had dreamt of his adventures and of the death of his childhood friend. Him, nobility? That was laughable.
He shifted under the blankets and found that they were thicker than he remembered. Something heavy and cool slid across his chest and fell with a clatter to the floor beside him.
Chains.
Dante tensed. Either Tobias had upped his disciplining methods, or he was still trapped inside this nightmare.
Slowly opening his eyes, Dante blinked and looked around the room.
The bedroll he was occupying was three times as long and twice as wide as what would be necessary for the teenager, and the blanket was equally massive and made from a soft material that trapped heat well. The expansive walls of the room seemed to be made of chiseled stone but were porous and looked soft and sponge-y, like bread. The space was well lit, but there were no windows, nor was there a fire. It took Dante a moment to realize that the soft glow that filled the room came from clusters of bioluminescent shelf mushrooms that also acted as literal shelves, storing various trinkets that Dante couldn't identify. Two passages led away from the room and out into winding halls that were narrow yet tall.
He remembered being trapped in the beast's slathering maw and trying to free himself. He remembered a buzzing sound and that weightless feeling. But that was it. At some point, he had fallen unconscious and ended up here, wherever "here" was.
He held out his freed hand and saw that the palm was encased in some sort of gel that seemed to act like a clear bandage. Through this gel, he could see that the palm of his hand had been sliced open in a jagged gash, but somehow, it didn't seem to hurt. He poked at it. The gel yielded to the touch but didn't break or smear, almost like it were made out of gelatin, but firmer and more flexible.
He rolled over onto one side and willed his Chimera into existence into his gel-covered hand. He was relieved when the cold black metal appeared in his palm. One of his hands was still encased in metal, though. Setting the Chimera on the bedroll beside him, Dante tried to work his other hand free while he typed his desire into the keyboard. Upon confirming his selection of "home," however, nothing happened. Typing in "the Nascent" had a similar effect.
He couldn't open a tunnel.
Dante's trapped hand was only half freed, the metal encasement yielding to him but caught on the widest part of his hand. However, he no longer attempted to work it free. Instead, he stared down numbly at his Chimera as he wondered what was wrong and how he had already managed to break it.
His friend was dead, he was trapped in an unfamiliar and dangerous world, and now his only way home didn't work anymore. He wasn't sure how this day could get any worse. His throat tightened as the hopelessness set in.
Dante heard a heavy tapping that he could only assume were taloned footsteps coming from one of the passages, snapping him from his daze. He dismissed his Chimera and shoved his hand back into the metal encasement as he rolled onto his back, snapping his eyes shut as he fell into a pretend sleep.
The approaching footsteps stopped beside his bed, and the blankets were slid from his body. Dante tried not to flinch when something cool and hard brushed against his neck before settling on the pulse in his throat. It felt nothing like the sword that had been pressed against his neck earlier that day. There was a distant, internal warmth to whatever touched him now, and it felt too thick to cut him. In fact, it reminded him of the sticks that doctors used to feel the vitals of plague victims while keeping their distance. Dante breathed in and out slowly, trying to keep his vitals normal.
The object on his neck pulled away and Dante was tucked back into the blanket. There was the sound of something large shifting as whatever had investigated him stood.
"You cannot keep it here in your room," came a voice from above him. Each syllable was overly enunciated and reverberated in a way that Dante seemed to feel each word in his bones. "We need to keep it with the others."
"It's restrained," came a second voice. This voice was higher, and grated on Dante's skull like nails on a chalkboard. "I can keep it from running loose."
"The chains were damaged," the first voice said. "This one is different in that it came restrained. It could be dangerous."
The room picked up a breeze paired with a familiar buzzing sound, although something about the buzz seemed agitated.
"There is no reason to be like that," came the deeper voice. "Quickly, take it to where the others are kept, before it wakes up. These beings are animals that do not understand our intentions. They are wild animals, and lash out as such. They cannot be tamed. We cannot have one running free in the hive as a pet."
Dante slowly opened one eye just a crack so he could see who was standing above him and instantly regretted it.
Two giant monsters, like badly proportioned mantises, stood at his bedside. Their long, stiff forelimbs explained what he had felt touch his neck earlier.
One of them was a dull brown and seemed somehow soft, as though its chitinous shell would yield to a touch. Dante then realized that this was indeed the case as the creature gestured with one forelimb, which bent in places where there were no joints and the sharp barbs underside the forearms wriggled like fingers.
The second of the two was a vibrant green that kept threatening to shift into blue. Its leathery wing protectors were raised, and the gossamer wings below them beat at the air fruitlessly, though the gesture seemed to be a display of frustration more than an attempt to lift off from the ground. Other than the beating wings, it seemed rigid, and its forelimb barbs were more like stiff hooks.
Dante yelped and scooted away in a frantic crabwalk, his chains clattering loudly after him. Both of the creatures turned toward him.
"It's awake!" said the brown one with the overly punctual speech pattern. "It moves differently than the others! It may be dangerous!"
"It's not attacking," stated the one with the higher voice. Its color faded to yellow and it folded its wings against its back as it leaned down and reached forward with one forelimb, the barbs on it softening and becoming flexible. "We won't harm you, little one."
"It can't understand you, Smorm," said the brown one. "Their language is too primitive."
Dante stared at the outstretched limb warily. "Actually, I can understand you just fine," he said in a soft voice.
Smorm jolted back in surprise and looked at the other of its kind. Both had flashed a vibrant shade of purple so briefly that, if Dante had blinked, he would have missed it.
"It knows our tongue, Ekl," Smorm said.
The grumpier one changed from brick red to its neutral shade of brown almost as though it had to force itself there. "That doesn't mean it isn't harmless."
"It is if we can reason with it," Smorm insisted before turning back to Dante. "We just want to help you and we mean you no harm."
Dante looked over the massive mantis. It seemed to be at least eight feet tall and was naturally armed with those barbs on its forelimbs. If it wanted to eat him, it probably would have already done so while he'd been unconscious. He tried to remain calm even though just looking at Smorm's terrifying appearance made his blood run cold. "I could believe that," he said slowly.
"Can you speak the language of the rest of your kind?" Smorm asked.
"Of course it can," Ekl snapped It was now Ekl's turn to raise its leathery wing covers and beat the air.
Smorm's mouthparts twitched, and to Dante's surprise, a nictitating membrane flicked across its bulbous, compound eyes. "Can you?" it repeated.
"I should be able to," he said.
Smorm folded its legs under itself so it was more at Dante's level. "We may need your help in calming the others of your kind," it said, "and teaching them our language so we may live in harmony and someday use our combined forces to take out the Hanmah."
"That will never happen, Smorm," Ekl snapped.
"What are the Hanmah?" Dante asked. "And why do they need to be stopped?"
The two mantis creatures looked at each other, and Smorm shifted, the colors of its carapace shifting uneasily. "It is a long story," it said, "but I will do my best to explain."