The moonlight lay rigidly on the fanged protrusions of the insect nest entrance. The night wind swept through the dark entrance, looking down at the few remaining soldiers, carrying away the mix of insect limb debris and the stench of blood. Any sound in the desert deepened the weariness and silence of everything and everyone after the battle. The team couldn't leave yet; they at least had to wait until the next morning to assist the gnome craftsmen in blasting and sealing the main roads within the nest.
Bossia sat on the ground, glancing at the distant area where the dead were placed. They weren't all corpses; some were just unrecognizable fragments. These remains would be piled up and burned on-site. In Silithus, discarding or burying corpses was taboo, as it would feed the Silithid insects. There were no burials here, and transporting the bodies outside Silithus for disposal was unrealistic. Turning to ashes in the desert was considered a privilege compared to being incinerated in the fortress's crematorium, better than disappearing into the flames with unidentified flesh. The soldiers still in the nest were mostly there to collect the bodies. They carried complete corpses or bagged remains up to the entrance. In the darkness, the parts they carried looked like extensions of their own bodies, turning them into monsters crawling out of a mad throat.
Bassario lay unconscious beside Bossia. The dim light made it hard for her to see how much pain remained on his face. Bossia often wondered if a person was temporarily dead when unexpectedly unconscious without dreaming. Unable to predict losing consciousness or estimate when they would wake up... One reason people find sleep pleasant is knowing they will wake up feeling better. She didn't want Bassario to experience temporary death but also didn't want him to dream, as it would almost certainly be a nightmare.
She didn't fully understand what had happened. Just when she was struggling to breathe because of the imprisoned, barely alive people, Bassario suddenly charged forward and slashed at the nearest egg-like structure. He severed the thick, vein-like tissue, but the person inside didn't fall. Bossia saw gray-white tube-like structures growing from the inside, piercing several places on the person's body. The "person" no longer looked human: hairless, extremely thin, with transparent skin revealing red muscles. The lower right leg was gone, not bleeding but dissolved. Yet, he was still alive—Baucia saw his gray-white nasal cavities moving and heard hoarse breathing.
Bassario looked up at the person with extreme tension and excitement that frightened Bossia, like a sailor staring hopelessly at a breaking mast. He backed away and then rushed to another egg, cutting it open. There was nothing inside—no, Bossia realized, just barely connected skull and chest bones. Bassario muttered something, then swung his sword down wildly, almost chopping off his own leg. Bossia mustered the courage to approach, but Rahol stopped her. "Don't go," he said. "He'll hurt himself," she replied. At that moment, Bassario stood before a third egg, gripping his sword with both hands and stabbing down as if to pierce the obstruction and the person inside. The sword lost strength halfway and stuck below the egg, and Bassario collapsed. Bossia hurried forward, turned him over, and saw his tightly closed eyes and bulging forehead veins, thankfully uninjured. Rahol ordered a mercenary to carry the unconscious Bassario and told Bossia to accompany them out of the nest.
The sequence of events happened so suddenly that Bossia forgot to bring Bassario's dropped sword. She began recalling the barely human figures inside the eggs. For some reason, seeing them made Bassario lose control and faint. She wasn't worried about his physical health but felt a more urgent anxiety.
The night wind carried the scent of burning corpses; Bossia felt nauseous, exacerbated by the memories of those human-like forms. She covered her nose, wanting to move Bassario but unsure if it would wake him. Moments later, the wind changed direction, and she lifted her head, trying to rest, but closing her eyes brought stabbing pain. Gray-white, like being inside a stomach, flesh dissolving into tumors—
"Hey. Take this."
Rahol's voice. He had just come up from the entrance, handing out Bassario's sword. Bossia looked up at him, took the sword, and placed it between two rocks. Rahol didn't leave. She closed her eyes towards the ground, and they were silent for a while.
"What's going on?" Bossia looked at Rahol again.
"I told you to pull him away."
"I couldn't."
"Couldn't you be flexible? Act scared, say you dare not go in…"
"Stop it. You're avoiding my question. You knew what would happen, so you wanted me to take him away."
"I didn't know he'd react like that. He played the hero all day and now look at him."
"You didn't want him to see what was inside. You know what's going on."
"Worried he doesn't seem manly to you now?"
"Stop dodging. You want to protect him, that's obvious, but you can't even admit it to me. You're the one not acting like a man."
"An old mercenary of Silithus pays dearly for such words."
"Are you deaf?" She stood up. "I said stop dodging. Tell me what's happening."
Bossia thought she might truly anger Rahol. She saw fatigue in his eyes, realizing that as captain, he needed rest more than any surviving mercenary. Beyond the fatigue, she saw the first clear signs of his true age, like facial wrinkles and loose neck skin. She noticed Rahol always pursed his lips to hide a gap exposing his gums. Like her, Rahol had been hiding things, but he had experienced more, and the effort to conceal his true self was exponentially greater. Recalling his exaggerated noble tone, Bossia suddenly felt sad, as it was a struggle to cover his true self, just like avoiding her questions now.
"Follow me." As he spoke, Bossia glanced at the still unconscious Bassario. "Let him sleep; it's fine." He added, turning away. Bossia followed.
They reached a rock wall with no one around. Bossia glanced back; Bassario was out of sight.
"He's not a child, don't act like this." Rahol said. "What do you want to know?"
Bossia felt embarrassed and quickly asked her question.
"What's happened to those... people inside?"
"It's unclear. They eat dead and rotten flesh, so it's not just for food storage. No need to let a dozen people take up a whole room. This phenomenon is seen only in large nests; I've seen it three times over the years. You saw the tubes inserted into their bodies; maybe something is being transferred or taken out. Perhaps these large nests are incomprehensible Silithid insects, and that's how they feed. They don't like dead things, so they keep them alive. Does that answer satisfy you?"
"Are they really alive? Though breathing…"
"You wish they'd die instantly inside, thinking that's better, right? Unfortunately, they stay alive for a while. How long, happily or not, is none of our concern."
"Do you have any evidence?"
"Of course. Your lover is the evidence. Hard to accept? It's the truth. He was once inside that thing. To be precise... he and the woman who gave birth to him. He was lucky to survive; the woman didn't."
Bossia stared at a spot on the right side of the rock wall, covering her nose with her left hand. Upon understanding these words, her heart pounded violently, like a falling anchor crashing into the seabed rocks. Some of the most unpleasant associations surfaced in her mind, which she had to quickly suppress.
"How... did this happen?"
"It was twenty-five years ago. I wasn't here then, so you can choose not to believe what I say."
"Tell me. I want to know."
"You might remember I mentioned there are two kinds of natives left in Silithus. One type is discarded by the Twilight's Hammer cultists, the other by mercenaries. The woman who gave birth to Bassario was a mercenary, but she didn't abandon him. She raised him here until he was three, then planned to leave with him. They followed a group leaving Silithus but were attacked by Silithid insects midway. Knowing this should be enough, right?"
"Go on."
"Some people wanted to organize a team to find them. Not just for those two, but for the others who needed rescuing too. Eventually, they found them in a place like what you saw today. The woman was dead, and Bassario was alive in a nearby cage. He only had some minor injuries... I mean external wounds."
Bossia couldn't help but contemplate the notion of "death" here. Today she saw someone who only had a basic human shape but could still breathe, while Rahol emphasized Bassario's mother's "death." She recalled the contents of the second egg Bassario cut open: a skeleton without flesh or blood. That wasn't just death but the state after death. For an indeterminate period, Bassario was trapped in the egg, while beside him...
"Anyway, he was rescued. For almost three years after that, he didn't say a word. Today might be the first time since then that he saw those things. That's all I can tell you."
Bossia believed that Rahol hadn't witnessed these events firsthand. "How do you know all this?" she asked.
"The same way you do now. I heard it."
"And because of this, you..."
"I didn't want that kid to get hot-headed and cause trouble after seeing them. Although I didn't expect him to get this emotional, it's not necessarily a bad thing."
Bossia recalled how Rahol immediately stopped Bassario from entering the room and his subsequent anxiety. This made his behavior seem strange. He protected Bassario based on hearsay after all these years. The strangeness lay in Rahol's dishonesty; in his recounting, it seemed like he was just telling a story to accompany a drink. But there was no doubt that these facts held special significance for him too.