[center][h2][colour=gainsboro]Ea Nebel[/colour][/h2][/center]

Ea Nebel flicked her long scarf out of her face and its tail flew off to one side, the Monarch's colours snapping in the wind like a banner. It was curious just how windy the innards of this wreck could get. A hot metal shell, seized in place, played many tricks with the desert air; here cool, here windy, here stifling and dry and full of dust. She cocked her [abbr=A barrelled crossbow, suitable for aiming at high angles or loading with musketballs.]slurbow[/abbr] with a windlass and shot her grappling hook up onto a high ledge, across a wide gap that had probably been a colossal hip socket. 

Tug, tug. Firm enough to shimmy her way up. She hauled herself up the rope with her gear, out of the dead machine's femur and into its lower body.

Astus was everywhere here- his materials, his notes, his greasy handprints. It was quite galling. Ea Nebel had forced herself to enter by a maintenance port on the heel only after much stomping about and muttering on the cool night sand outside. [i]'So long as you bear no hate in your heart...'[/i] Well! She felt entitled to be a bit [i]miffed,[/i] and her outburst, frankly, had been far [i]too[/i] composed.

Well. What was done was done. She'd said all she needed to say. No time to bear grudges. She would work through her feelings on the Astus incident here, now, and leave them behind in the sand. She had every intention to be worthy of her grandfather's gift, no matter how... 

...

...Garish. Besides, Ea Nebel was planning to build a house, and it is very bad luck to draw the shape of a house with a heart full of anger. She did not want to be reminded of this episode by the walls of her own home.

She thought all this as she walked down some kind of hydraulic chute, dragging the Doomclaw along its metal wall, its new ivory hilt snug in her gloved fist. It left a ghastly metallic screech and a gash as tall as she was, rusted to powder. Then she conjured a spiked club and buried it in every control panel she passed.

[colour=gainsboro]"Oh what's this?"[/colour]

Treasure! Ea Nebel dropped her club and it dissolved unnoticed, her fury lost in the fun. Something shiny in a delicate socket. She pulled off her glove- her otherworldly scarf, always exactly as vivid as it was in direct sunlight, somehow did not provide any illumination whatsoever. A white flame danced on her fingertip, and there it gleamed: a bright golden ring, set with a heart of jade that glowed soft and green, like the Monarch's own throne.

[colour=gainsboro]"A gift!"[/colour]

She slipped it on, watching glyphs of her own divine will fade in and out of the air around her fingers as she did. It was the perfect size for a woman's hand. Ea Nebel extinguished the light and rotated her wrists together, watching it glow opposite the blood diamond on her other hand.

[colour=gainsboro]"You really are too good to me, Voligan..."[/colour]

[hr]

[i]Groi-groiiii.[/i]

The demigoddess didn't move. The Iron Boar scraped the dust vigorously with both its forelegs, but still, no sign that she had heard- still crouched over on knees and elbows, head stuck under a scraggly bush. This was improper. Scrounging in the dirt was [i]his[/i] job, and he did it much better, anyway. The giant hog sniffed and wandered off.

Ea Nebel rested her chin firmly in her hands and watched the scene under the twigs with big-eyed fascination. What a cute bug!

It was a wasp. Not a hornet or a yellowjacket or some other stinger-happy eusocialite with an obnoxious sweet tooth. A proper wasp, built like a bull-ant, with spindly splayed legs and a narrow body, marked here and there with the most brilliant orange. Even the wings were tinted. And a [i]big[/i] wasp, at that. It marched staunchly on over the gritty, twiggy sand, dragging with it a twitching huntsman spider bigger than Nebel's palm. What a [i]splendid[/i] insect!

She reached out slowly with her pointing finger, and it dropped its catch immediately, scurrying and buzzing back and forth around it in angry semicircles. She withdrew her hand and it went back to its business. She summoned the Monarch's scarf onto her neck (she couldn't wear it [i]all[/i] the time, good [i]heavens[/i]) and held it with her other hand. This time, the wasp let her stroke its wing.

It was a mud-dauber, she learned. A gravid female.

Ea Nebel had no desire to be interrupted while she built her house, especially with another massacre, so she wandered the earth seeking a fitting slave to help her intern bodies in her absence. Her delightful babiruša pigs were more than willing to help, were it not unforgivably lazy to leave any cadaver in her care to a shallow dirt grave dug by swine. As for the hagfish... she was surprised they even left bones. Very [i]clean[/i] bones.

But the mudwasp was [i]perfect![/i]

She tapped the busy mother gently on the thorax and a stiff, rubbery clone fell out of her. Ea Nebel pulled it into the sun and left the wasp to her work. She wasn't sure quite what god or goddess had built such an exquisite animal. The life mother, Phelenia? Whatever. She drew a wide magic circle around the effigy, clapped her hands, pulled them apart, and enlarged it to the size of a coyote.

When Ea Nebel was finished her happy little dance around the sunny circle, the tombwasp's front feet had turned white, like gloves, and everything else about it was black. Even the wings neatly folded over its back were black, with a faint bluish iridescence, like rock-oil. She ducked back under the bush to see what the mudwasp was up to. The spider was gone, encased in a neat clay sarcophagus, like a pot, to which the mother was constructing a lid. All done! [colour=gainsboro][i]Just like me![/i][/colour]

She tapped the tombwasp's forehead twice and one soul flew into each of its colourless eyes, lighting them up with a pale blue glow. It whirred its wings and pattered about, taking in the world with its huge eyes. 

[colour=gainsboro]"The second soul is gratis, but you'll only be able to make one for each of your eggs. You'll have to find more for your babies. Only intelligent souls will do. Your soul is feeding you with mana right now, see, and only mortal souls accumulate enough of it. If you find a body out in the open, you can use it to summon one into your egg from... wherever they go. Am I clear?"[/colour]

The tombwasp spread its wings and whirred off over the plain. The deva laughed. She wasn't worried. She'd let the giant insect keep its sting- she was of the thought that more weaponry was always better- after she'd given it an aversion to the taste of blood. That would keep it away from living targets, and leave the blood-marked Eidolon to sleep undisturbed under their shrouds.

The tired mudwasp mother buzzed away to find a meal. Ea Nebel still wasn't sure which god had designed such an elegant animal. Tuku Llantu, maybe? Perhaps Uncle Jiugui had dreamt it up in a fit of poetry and booze.

[hr]
[hider=based on my real encounters with mud dauber wasps]

The Monarch told Ea Nebel that the beast-calming shawl (now scarf) wouldn't work if she had hate in her heart, so she dutifully works through her remaining anger at Astus by exploring the dead colossus and trashing its insides a bit. This works great and she is even rewarded with a magical runic ring! It doesn't do too much for her, but makes some unlucky dwarf's job more interesting.

Cut to a scene where she reveals herself to be an insect loving gremlin girl, to the embarrassment of the Iron Boar. She finds a potter wasp and thinks it's the coolest animal ever for burying its prey in clay capsules for its young. 

Inspired, she creates a huge, gothic wasp species that lives at least partly on accumulated mana harvested from a dead soul. Born with one soul, a young tombwasp is provided with a second, mana-rich mortal soul by hatching in a simple clay sarcophagus built around an abandoned cadaver or skeleton. This ritual summons the soul of the lost corpse out of the afterlife and into the tombwasp, released again when the mana runs out and the tombwasp dies. Tombwasps are averse to blood, which keeps them from trying to entomb live mortals. [i]We hope.[/i]

Otherwise, tombwasps are quick and can bite or sting, but aren't especially smart or sturdy. Their venom is a powerful paralytic that can easily kill the old or sick by impairing their lungs, like some snakes. They will occasionally eat any animal that isn't red-blooded, and live long lives to compensate for the rarity of their breeding fodder. 

Ea Nebel can't seem to figure out who made the original animal, but we readers know better, don't we? Happy Yesaris week!

9 Vigour start.
1 Vigour spent creating tombwasps, a moderately extraordinary species. Demi-aspect action.
8 Vigour remains.
[/hider]