A clicking and stirring sound, delicate in its nature, like silk being weaved by glass needles, could be heard in the middle of the island; but only if someone dared to get close enough.

Which Hyde was trying to prevent.

Across the whole zone where Velvet had ended, a multitude of thin, golden threads covered the ground, reaching to the broken down trees, with her as the center.

Joy. Joy. Intrigue. Delight.

As a demon, Hyde sensed human emotions, even if they were from a false copy. And, the more strong those emotions were, the more he sensed them.

‘Siberina’s’ emotions were based on Velvet’s memories of her, and, if Velvet believed her to be fearless and unafraid of pain, then the Fear that copied was too.

Even when Frenese had taken a bite out of her when they collided, Siberina had simply retreated, going back into the shadows of the night.

Hyde hoped she bled out, but that was only wishful thinking, not an actual possibility.

With his eight eyes, he looked down to Velvet’s face. It had been less than a minute since she lost consciousness, but Hyde hadn’t tried to wake her up.

He knew that Velvet had overworked herself to exhaustion, and not the kind that she could simply get rid of by purifying herself. No, this one went deeper, to the mental level.

She wasn’t close to becoming a witch, but she was toying very closely with the possibility. So, a short rest might work for her to realize that.

Now, one may ask, if Hyde knew the dangers of her decisions, why didn't he warn and advise her?

Because experience was the best teacher. Sometimes one needed to fuck around and find out, instead of being constantly told what to do.

Especially knowledge mages. If they didn’t have a real reason to avoid doing certain stuff, they would always have the nagging doubt if that was a real danger, so having them learn from their mistakes was the best way for them to grow as mages.

Also, Hyde might be a low ranked demon, but he was still very much a demon.

The only difference between him and Frenese was the rank and Paradigm.

Speaking of the sealed devil, since Velvet fainted, the chains tightened again, closing the book shut and letting it down on the ground. So it was just him right now. Well, him and…

Joy. Joy. Intrigue. Delight.

Hyde wanted to sigh. He should let Velvet rest for a few minutes at least, so he had to hold on on his own.

Well, he had been storing his own extra spider silk, plus some materials Velvet gifted him every now and then, so he wasn’t completely defenseless.

Also, Siberina had been severely damaged, and, even if her attitude didn't change, her power output had.

Hyde suspected that the more raw power a Fear used, the less they could differ from the owner’s memories. That’s why the Casrey victims were so weak, but their behaviors were different from the originals.

And it was why Siberina was so strongly insistent.

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Joy. Joy. Intrigue. Delight.

Yes, I know. Hyde complained. But allow me to not share your fake joyfulness. While he was thinking of that, his eight legs were busy covering the zone in golden threads imbued with magic.

He was on top of Velvet’s stomach, using her as a formation’s central piece, and having covered her with some protective threads. Frenese’s Book was further away, unresponsive.

Joy. Joy. Intrigue. Delight.

Flinching his legs suddenly, Hyde pulled on the whole spiderweb, moving all the threads at the same time. Some went up, some went down, left, right, in every angle, with a light emanating from them.

Multiple collisions followed, some threads getting chopped off, and some knives falling down.

Pulling more thread from his pocket dimension, Hyde hurried to fix the holes in the formation.

Leaving even the tiniest of holes was testing luck, which was the dumbest decision possible against a gambling mage. But, Hyde was a spider, and didn't need to focus all eight eyes and all eight legs on the same job.

Flickering two of his legs, several paper figurines fled off, in the direction of the feelings of Joy. Joy. Joy. Delight. Joy.

Boom!

A chain of explosions rang through that zone, followed by silence. Hyde didn't like the idea of using paper figurines as explosives, but it was the attack least possible to avoid by chance.

Igern's spears, Nebura's metals, Cornelius' blades... All those attacks were avoidable with enough luck.

His other choice for hard to avoid attacks were Syon’s sand spells, but those were more of a long term damage thing, not instant.

And he needed the instant part a bit more than the long term part.

As he busied himself with tracking Siberina, his two resting legs, the ones which supported his body, felt Velvet stirring slightly.

She must be dreaming. Hyde thought, not paying much attention to it.

In fact, his biggest worry was that the third Fear used Velvet's dream as inspiration, but he hoped it waited for Velvet to be awake before appearing.

Joy. Joy-

Anticipating Siberina’s attack, the spider web formation moved again, turning like a kaleidoscope in itself.

Come closer. Hyde taunted her in a spiderly fashion. He didn’t want her to come towards him, but spiders didn’t exactly chase their prey.

Velvet stirred again under the webs, and Hyde noticed that the chains holding Frenese’s Book stirred with her, coiling like snakes around it.

Several specks of light flew towards them, clashing with the threads.

Hyde replaced them as soon as possible, instants before more and more projectiles impacted against the web, the resulting collisions forming a spectacle of red lights under the blood moon.

A last effort? An all-out attack before her death or a trap? Hyde mused, looking around for any strange things.

Joy. Joy. Intrigue. Joy.

Siberina’s emotions signals were north-

Hahaha.

Jumping, Hyde looked up, the short flicker of the red moon’s light not going unnoticed.

A mangled silhouette was on top of him, her smile brighter than ever under the moon glow.

Frenese’s bite had taken off an arm, part of the chest and half her head. And not only that, her heart was gone, the arm eaten being the left one.

Did Velvet subconsciously believe Siberina couldn’t be killed even when destroying her heart? Or was the Fear simply ignoring that detail?

Not that Hyde had time to ponder over the question. Siberina was coming down to crush both him and Velvet.

Pulling on the threads as fast as he could afford, he uselessly tried to stop her descent by all means possible.

But none of them worked.

Igern’s spears missed, Dianthus’ golden pillars didn’t move like they should, the paper figurines were impossible to explode without harming them in the process…

In a second, Siberina was just close enough to touch them.

With a polite, yet maddened smile, betrayed by the glint of her eyes, she laughed softly at them.

Clack.

A low, hard noise rang next to Hyde.

Clack. Clack-clack-clack-clack.

Chains shot from the ground, tangling around Siberina, stopping her. Hyde felt Velvet stirring once again, just that, this time, she opened her eyes.

“Got you.” She said, before the chains started pulling in all directions, adding more and more pressure on the mangled figure of the Gambling Witch.

With a wet, crushing and tearing sound, Siberina exploded, her form going back to black goo, falling in all directions.

Hyde heard Velvet taking a deep breath, closing her eyes again.

“The Third Fear is still out there.” He said, reminding her of that fact.

“Not anymore.” Velvet answered nonchalantly, not bothering to open her eyes.

Hyde fell silent, thinking. Velvet sounded certain of that fact, which meant that she had, at least, seen the third Fear.

The dream? Did the Fear show up inside her brain? That was the most probable answer, since Velvet didn’t look exactly well rested.

If that was the case, the trial was over. And not only that. Something else he noticed was those last chains. Those chains did come from her shadow, which meant-

“Oh, Hyde?”

“Yes?”

“Un-cocoon me.”