Orn opened his eyes to see an unfamiliar ceiling. A lantern hung from the ceiling, and provided dim light making it obvious that he had been rescued from the mine. However, that meant he had no idea where he was. It vaguely reminded him when he was small and recovering from the goblin mother in the village. This is not the first time this has happened to me, he thought as the similarity occurred to him. I have to stop doing this.

He grimaced as a strange taste filled his mouth, and he frantically looked around for something to wash the taste out of his mouth. The room was sparsely furnished, but he saw a pitcher and glass on a small table beside the bed. He reached for the pitcher as soon as he saw it, and ignoring the glass beside it, started drinking.

This medicine tastes terrible, he thought as he eased the pitcher down and swallowed. He grimaced as the aftertaste seemed to come back. He took another drink from the pitcher, and heard the sound of steps coming from the other end of the room.

As he eased the pitcher down a second time, he noticed a partially open door, and Kao standing beside it. She was watching him with an expression he had not seen her make before. He smiled at her and took another drink, trying to removing the lingering taste of the medicine. He swished the water around and swallowed.

“Not even using the glass?” she asked suddenly appearing at his right. “You get bit by one spider and suddenly you go feral.” She dramatically rolled her eyes.

Orn laughed, or at least he tried. He coughed as the water went down the wrong way. When he regained his composure he looked to his laughing friend and was about to respond when the door opened.

He turned to see Adles in the doorway followed by a large armed man in a kilt.

I thought Adles was joking about those, he mused. He quickly sized up the man towering over Adles, and decided to keep the thought to himself. However, he was not above sharing his surprise with Kao. But when he turned in her direction, she had disappeared.

“How are you doing?” Adles asked, motioning for the man to stay at the door. The large man nodded and turned to guard the door.

“I am fine,” Orn wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “I just drank too much, too quickly trying to get the taste of medicines out of my mouth.”

A strange look passed over Adles’ face for a moment only to be replaced by a smile. “I am glad. I was worried when I found you asleep and you would not wake up.”

Orn remembered the spiders biting him, and the world fading away. “They must have used a lot of venom on me. Thank you for getting me out of there.”

“I should be saying that to you,” Adles said sitting on the stool beside the bed. “Besides I was the reason you were there in the first place, but you still came after me when I was taken.”

“You were taken by monsters. Leaving you was not an option,” Orn replied with a shrug.

“This is why I keep telling them you are the hero here,” Adles shook his head. “They are trying to give me credit for all this. I keep telling them it was all you, but they talk as if I did everything.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“I am good with you taking the credit,” Orn replied smiling. “It would be nice for my mother to hear about someone else hunting an unreasonable number of monsters. She panics whenever she hears about me doing it.”

He looked up at the ceiling for a moment, before returning his attention to Adles. “I will admit this scared me,” he swallowed remembering being able to do anything more than play dead in the face of the two coming spiders, and hoping Kao’s plan worked. He had come close to dying many times before, but laying down and giving his life up to fate terrified him. “Thank you again for getting me out of there. What happened after I passed out?”

“I was knocked down before I had a chance to pull my sword,” Adles replied. “How about you start, and I will pick up from there.”

…

“Orn, there were no living spiders when I woke up,” Adles said after Orn finished. “I cut my way out of one of those bags and found you laying face down on one of the dead spiders. I never saw a living one bigger than my hand.”

Orn stared at Adles who paused for a moment before continuing. “The one you were laying on. Its legs were torn off,” Adles leaned in and whispered staring at Orn. “It looked as if something had been eating it.”

Orn stared back confused. “That does not make any sense, nothing eats monsters. Yes, goblins will, but goblin kin would killed and eaten me first before the spiders. There is no way they would have left me like that. I do not know...”

Adles leaned back and sighed. “I do not know either...”

At that moment time seemed to stretch. Adles voice distorted as if someone was stretching out the sounds of the words he spoke. Then he froze completely. Orn tried to move, but while his body tried to shift it was as if the air around him had become a cage holding him in place.

Then as fast as it began it ended.

“Are you alright?” Adles asked the fear obvious in his voice. “You just shook violently.”Adles did not wait for Orn to reply and instead yelled at the door. “Get Brother Francis now!”

{The Loom}

Clo stared at the floor. The space where Kao had been was damaged. No, not where she stood, she corrected herself. Where her shadow was.

Clo watched as the pure white floor, slowly began to fill in the cracks and depression from when Kao had stood. It was not possible to damage the room, and yet it had occurred. It was also not the only impossible thing to occur, though the other was much more terrifying.

“How long are you going to stare at the floor?” Atr asked angrily.

Clo looked up to see her sister still holding her hand to the side of her face, where Kao struck her. “How long were you going to hide what you did?” Clo responded her anger leaking into her voice despite her intention.

“As I told our sister,” Atr replied through gritted teeth. “I did not interfere with the healer’s ability. Nor did I turn her toy into some sort of puppet. She has lost her mind. You saw how she woke mother.”

Clo failed to repress a shudder at the memory. For a split second they could feel power surge behind the door on the far wall. The universe held its breath as their mother teetered on the edge of waking before drifting back to sleep.

“I saw that you altered the plan to put him in harms way then hid it from us,” Clo said glaring at her sister. “the subtle changes you had me make were intended to cause this.”

“The change was to make him aware of the spiders. I did not put them there or force…” Atr began only to stop as Clo stood quickly knocking the loom’s bench over.

“You hid your plans from us,” Clo growled, advancing on her sister. “You lied to me about changes you had me make.”

Atr’s eyes moved from Clo’s to stare at a point to her right.

Clo followed the direction of Atr’s and noticed she had raised her hand. She slowly clenched her hand into a fist and lowered it to her side. Then, she turned her attention back to her sister, as irritation at Atr’s action warred with her own momentary lack of control.

“You…,” she took a deep breath trying to calm herself as she stared into her sister’s eyes. “You will never. Never. Alter the plan again without my consent. Do you understand?”