Celeste dangled in a cocoon of shimmering wasp-silk, the wind tugging gently at her ears as Clawdiff spread out below like a lantern-lit map.
“Wow,” she breathed, craning her neck. “It’s really pretty from up here. You can see which streets still have power—and the glow where people are hiding together. It’s like… hopeful.”
The Gilded Wasp scoffed, adjusting his grip. His armour gleamed in the moonlight, all sharp gold plating and black glass lenses, wings beating in a furious metallic blur behind him.
“You should be trembling.”
Celeste nodded enthusiastically. “Yup. Definitely shaking.”
Her tail swayed.
She hummed.
“…You’re doing it wrong,” he muttered.
“Oh. Sorry.” She tried to look frightened.
It came out as politely concerned.
The Wasp thrust one fist dramatically toward the city below. “At last, the Council will know my name! At last, they will see the genius they ignored! I shall deliver them the Knight-Commander of Clawdiff, bound in my own perfected silk, and they will have no choice but to take me seriously!”
He laughed.
A loud, theatrical, echoing laugh.
“Mwahahahaha!”
Celeste blinked up at him. “Um. I don’t think I’m that important.”
The Wasp’s laugh died mid-cackle.
He looked down at her.
“What?”
“I mean, I’m useful sometimes,” Celeste said, “but mostly because I carry snacks and try not to panic too loudly.”
“You are the Knight-Commander.”
“Yes, but only recently.”
“You killed the kraken.”
“With lots of help.”
“You command the Knights of Clawdiff.”
“They mostly ignore me in creative ways.”
The Wasp stared.
His wings buzzed harder.
“You must be worth something.”
Celeste’s ears dipped. “I don’t think I’m that useful.”
For one strange second, the Gilded Wasp’s posture changed.
Not much.
Just enough.
“Well,” he said, voice still grand but quieter underneath, “everyone is useful to someone.”
Celeste looked up at him.
“That’s… actually a very nice thing to say.”
The Wasp stiffened. “It was not nice. It was menacing.”
“It didn’t sound menacing.”
“It was philosophically menacing.”
“Oh.” She thought about that. “Like a threat with feelings?”
“Yes!” he snapped, then paused. “No. Stop making me explain the tone of my villainy.”
The Wasp began recording on his arcbracer.
“Hello, Council! It is I, the Gilded Wasp, with your precious Knight-Commander of Clawdiff! Now you will finally have no choice but to notice me!”
He laughed.
“Mwahahahaha!”
Celeste blinked up at him. “I want them to notice me too.”
The Wasp’s laugh staggered to an uncertain stop and paused the recording.
“…What?”
Celeste looked down at Clawdiff, ears tugged by the wind.
“I mean—not in a vengeance way. I don’t think I’d be very good at vengeance. I’d probably apologise halfway through and ruin the atmosphere.” She frowned, thoughtful and sad. “But I want them to see I’m trying. That we’re all trying. There are so many zombies only me and my friends can kill, and people are suffering in the streets, and the Council just… keeps sitting behind glass like it’s someone else’s problem.”
The Gilded Wasp went quiet.
Celeste swallowed.
“I don’t want applause. I just want them to care that everyone else is scared and hungry and tired.”
The Wasp stared at her.
For one strange second, his grip on the cocoon softened.
“That,” he said, voice still grand but quieter underneath, “isn’t fair.”
Celeste glanced up.
He looked away quickly, as if embarrassed by the sincerity.
“They should notice hard work,” he snapped. “That is the bare minimum of civilisation. Effort should be recognised. Genius should be funded. Heroism should be properly documented with citations.”
Celeste blinked. “Citations?”
“Yes. Obviously.”
“Oh.”
“I had inventions,” he continued, and now the words were coming faster, anger buzzing under every syllable. “Real inventions. Not little noble parlour tricks. Systems that could have reduced poverty in the Warrens. Stabilised unsafe housing. Powered clinics. Improved water flow in lower districts. Uplifted Hybrids using their own unique mana signatures instead of forcing them to rely on Pureblood grids that were never built for them.”
Celeste’s ears perked despite the circumstances. “Hybrid mana signatures?”
“Yes,” the Wasp said sharply. “Hybrid mana and Mythic mana are not the same thing.”
“They’re not?”
“Obviously not.” He scoffed, then immediately warmed to the subject because apparently nobody had asked correctly before. “Mythic mana is raw. Dense. Direct. It comes through the prism core with very little dilution, which makes it powerful but volatile. Hybrids are different. Their mana is filtered. Layered through inheritance, biology, suppression damage, emotional imprinting, and whatever nonsense the body has done to survive being told it shouldn’t exist.”
Celeste stared at him, wide-eyed.
The Wasp’s wings buzzed harder, pride creeping back in.
“It is strange, really. Elegant. Miserably under-studied. When I discovered it, I thought the Council would finally have to listen. But no. They took no notice. Too unstable, they said. Too niche. Too dependent on Hybrid participation.” His voice sharpened. “As if that were a flaw.”
Celeste’s face softened.
“That sounds incredible,” she said. “Your inventions could have helped people.”
“They could have changed everything.”
“I think they’re cool.”
He froze.
Celeste smiled up at him, warm and utterly sincere. “And I think you’re cool for trying.”
The Gilded Wasp hovered there in absolute silence.
His visor angled down toward her.
His wings made one tiny, awkward click.
Then he jolted as if remembering himself.
“Yes, well,” he barked, puffing up again, “naturally my brilliance inspires awe even in captured commanders. Tremble before my underappreciated social infrastructure!”
Celeste nodded seriously. “I am trembling very supportively.”
“That is not a thing.”
“It might be.”
“It is not.”
“But it sounds like it should be.”
“Stop making my villainy sound emotionally healthy!”
“Sorry.”
He pointed dramatically toward the cliff face ahead. “Enough! To the lair! Where you shall witness the full scope of my genius and despair!”
Celeste tilted her head. “That sounds like a museum.”
“It is not a museum!”
“A dramatic museum?”
“It is a hidden cliff-side command sanctum!”
“Oh,” she said, brightening. “That’s much cooler.”
They banked hard toward a sheer cliff face veined with quartz. The Wasp landed with a clatter of gold boots, pressed a sigil into the rock, and the stone peeled open like a petal.
Inside—
Gold.
Honeycomb arches.
Jewelled panels humming with mana.
Platforms suspended on thin, glowing filaments.
Drones asleep in hexagonal cradles.
Celeste gasped so hard she forgot to breathe for a second.
“Oh my stars.”
The cocoon dissolved, setting her gently on polished amber glass.
“This,” the Wasp said proudly, spreading his arms, “is my workshop. My sanctuary. My—”
“—this is the coolest lair I’ve ever seen,” Celeste finished, eyes sparkling. “Is that a grav-coil stabiliser? And—wait—is that a variable resonance tuner? You tuned it to candy harmonics but offset the pitch so it doesn’t collapse—oh, that’s clever.”
He blinked.
Once.
“…You understand that?”
She padded closer, careful not to touch anything. “A bit! Arcade showed me something similar, but yours is—oh, you layered the shielding instead of stacking it. That saves weight. And these vents—are they for heat or sound?”
The Wasp’s chest puffed. “Both. Obviously.”
She clapped her hands, delighted. “That’s brilliant!”
He tried to sneer.
Failed.
Settled for smug.
“Most people just scream.”
“Well,” Celeste said, peering at a rack of compact drones shaped like jewelled insects, “most people don’t get invited to a flying hive full of gadgets.”
“I kidnapped you.”
“Yes,” she agreed cheerfully. “But with style.”
He stared at her again, deeply irritated by how difficult she was to monologue at.
“I suppose,” he said, recovering with a dramatic sweep of his cape, “as my prisoner, you are entitled to know the calibre of mind that has defeated you.”
Celeste smiled politely. “That would be nice.”
“Do not make it sound like tea.”
“Sorry.”
He led her through the hive, explaining each device with increasing enthusiasm: the sting-darts calibrated for nonlethal capture—mostly—the jetpack upgrades, the cloak emitters that folded light like origami, the venom-channel gauntlets, the compact wing turbines, the silk cannons hidden in the ceiling.
Celeste listened with rapt attention, asking questions, making soft impressed noises, never once mocking.
The Wasp lifted one finger. “First. I am a master engineer.”
“That makes sense. Your armour is really impressive.”
A second finger. “Second. I am an aerial combat specialist.”
“Oh, that’s why your turns are so smooth.”
A third finger. “Third. I am an expert in silk-binding, venom delivery, pressure harnesses, compact flight engines, mana-reactive plating, infiltration doctrine, psychological warfare, tactical stagecraft, and dramatic entrances.”
Celeste’s eyes widened. “That’s a lot of qualifications.”
“Yes,” he said, puffing up. “It is.”
“What’s your name?”
He froze.
Then slowly pointed at her.
“You do not get my name.”
“But you said the Council would know your name.”
“They will know it at the moment of my triumph.”
“So… soon?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“Maybe.”
“That’s alright. I’m bad with names sometimes anyway.”
“I am not giving you my name.”
“Okay.”
“I have enemies.”
“I do too, apparently.”
She stopped before a small workbench, scattered with half-finished parts.
“You build these yourself?” she asked gently.
“…Of course I do.”
“They’re really well cared for,” she said. “You can tell.”
Something in his posture shifted—just a fraction.
“No one ever notices that,” he said gruffly.
Celeste smiled at him, warm and sincere. “I notice.”
He cleared his throat loudly. “Well. Don’t get comfortable. You’re still my hostage.”
She nodded solemnly. “Okay. Do hostages usually get snacks? Because I skipped lunch.”
“…I have protein honey.”
Her ears perked. “With pollen bits?”
“…Yes.”
“Please.”
He turned away quickly so she wouldn’t see the grin tugging at his visor.
Then his heel struck a coil of loose silk.
The Wasp lurched.
Celeste reached out on instinct, but the half-dissolved silk still clung around her ankles. She slipped from the edge of the platform.
“Squeak!”
The Wasp yelped and lunged, catching her a foot from the floor.
Her arms popped free from the loosened silk.
Instinctively, Celeste clung to him.
Very tightly.
The Gilded Wasp went completely rigid.
Celeste buried her face briefly against his chest plate, ears flattened. “Sorry. Sorry. I thought I was going to hit the floor.”
“You are… not hitting the floor,” he said, voice strained.
“Thank you.”
“You are crushing several delicate pressure feeds.”
“Oh stars, sorry!”
She loosened her grip, but only slightly, still holding onto his shoulders because the floor suddenly felt very far away.
The Wasp’s face, mostly hidden behind his black-glass mask, went hot enough that even the lenses seemed to fog.
He did not correct her.
He also did not put her down immediately.
“I meant to do that,” he said.
Celeste looked up. “Catch me?”
“Yes.”
“You’re very quick.”
“I am aware.”
“And your armour didn’t even scrape. Is it balanced through the wing joints or the back plate? Because when you turned earlier, you didn’t tilt like a normal flyer. You sort of… folded the air. But not magically. Mechanically? Unless there are mana vents under the wing casing, but they didn’t glow blue, so maybe they’re pressure valves? Oh! Are they linked to your breathing?”
The Wasp stared.
His wings gave a tiny, involuntary buzz.
“No.”
Celeste’s eyes shone. “They are, aren’t they?”
“They are not.”
“But the rhythm changed when you were talking. And when you laughed, the wing pitch dipped a little, like the armour was compensating for chest movement. That’s really clever. Most flyers stabilise from the hips or shoulders, but you made the whole suit respond to the torso. That must make turns much smoother, but also really hard if you panic, because then your breathing would throw off the balance unless you built in a regulator. Did you build in a regulator?”
The Wasp lifted his chin.
“I might have.”
Celeste gasped softly. “That’s amazing.”
“It is extremely amazing,” he said before he could stop himself.
Then he recoiled from his own enthusiasm.
“I mean—yes, naturally. Tremble before the flawless engineering of the Gilded Wasp!”
Celeste smiled at him.
Not frightened.
Not mocking.
Genuinely impressed.
“It is flawless. Well. Mostly. Your left wing makes a little clicking noise when you bank.”
His head snapped round. “You noticed that?”
“I have good hearing.”
“That is a prototype bearing issue,” he said defensively. “Not a flaw.”
“I didn’t say flaw. I said clicking noise.”
“It will be fixed in the next iteration.”
“There’s a next iteration?”
“Obviously. The Mark Seven will have improved altitude stability, better venom channel insulation, collapsible abdomen plating, and—”
He stopped.
Celeste leaned closer.
“And?”
The Wasp’s wings buzzed with barely contained pride.
“And wrist-mounted silk lances.”
Celeste’s mouth fell open. “That sounds so cool.”
“It does, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I sketched them in three configurations.”
“Can I see?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“I do not show prisoners my schematics.”
“That’s fair.”
A pause.
He glanced at her.
“They are very good schematics.”
“I believe you.”
Another pause.
He looked toward the workbench.
Then back at her.
Then toward the workbench again.
“You may see one,” he said at last. “Briefly. Under supervision. As part of psychological intimidation.”
Celeste nodded seriously. “I feel very intimidated.”
“You are smiling.”
“I’m intimidated nicely.”
“That is not a thing.”
“It might be.”
The Gilded Wasp carried her toward the workbench with all the grand solemnity of a villain escorting a hostage to her doom, while very obviously trying not to look pleased that someone had finally asked about his wrist-mounted silk lances.
Behind them, the cliff door sealed shut.
And far below, the Knights of Clawdiff were only just realising their commander had been kidnapped by the world’s most emotionally under-supported insect man.
