* Author : E. Catherine Tobler * Narrator : Christiana Ellis * Host : Matt Dovey * Audio Producer : Devin Martin * Discuss on Forums PodCastle 795: The Indigo Mantis is a PodCastle original. CW for insects, arachnids, and beheadings PG-13 The Indigo Mantis by E. Catherine Tobler Indi walked into the bar, seeds crunching under tarsus. The bar was her usual hangout, but tonight a trio of mountain pine beetles occupied the worn corner of the long pine counter. She hadn’t seen their kind here before and her antennae twitched. She cast a glance to the tree’s thick trunk, but there was no sign the beetles had started their terrible work: no pitch tubes, no bark dust sprinkling the orange conk floor. As she watched them, a trio of aspen bark beetles waddled in and joined the mountain pines. There were high legs all around and excited chitters. It was clear to her they were up to no good — borers didn’t meet without cause. The beetles were small and she could have eaten all six in two bites, but she stayed clear. Technically, they hadn’t done anything wrong; she supposed beetles liked a night out as much as any bug. But they were a threat, and she would be damned before this grand old pine fell to their machinations. The Crimson Waste stretched to the west as far as the eye could see, trees consumed from the inside out by the insidious beetles. Aspens remained plentiful, but the boys were looking to move ever east, through richer stands of pine and fir. “Indi?” Her eyes flicked to the black carpenter ant who spoke her name, and she joined him on the opposite side of the bar. She hadn’t come for beetles, after all. She sank onto a leaf going dry around the edges and looked at Joe. He was handsome, dark and gleaming under the twilight that filtered through the branches, despite the scar that rippled over his left eye; he’d taken a bad hit from a wood wasp’s ovipositor some weeks before. He flicked one leg out, brushing her chin. “Your usual?” Indi shook her head, leaning away from his touch. “You said you had a lead,” she said. She rested a green forearm on the pine bar, studying him. He looked no different than he had at their prior meetings, always a cop and never just a friend. The way he held himself, he was ready for anything; she didn’t think the beetles stood a chance if they leapt for the pine’s trunk. This part of the tree wasn’t Joe’s regular beat; he’d come up from the understory two days before because he wanted to help her, said he had a lead and — “You said you knew who killed my father.” Joe leaned back in his leaf, mandibles working as he regarded her. Indi didn’t wonder what he saw; she knew. She was just a mantid, tracking the soulless creature that killed her father. She was emphatically not The Indigo Mantis, the crime fighter who swung from overstory to understory and back again to save those less fortunate because she couldn’t yet avenge her murdered father. Word had gotten around that she was good at crime fighting, too, so she stayed with it, not ready to devote her life to a city department the way Joe had. She waited for him to speak, her distinct indigo wings tucked carefully away, beneath the frill of a simple brown cape. “Well.” Joe lifted a piece of scrap paper from the bar, turning it over so Indi could see the scribble there.