As Yume collects herself, Hypatia shines the light down onto her electronics-infused block of concrete. She fidgets with it for a moment and then sets it down onto the web. A green light begins blinking on it before locking in and staying lit.
The block starts vibrating in intervals. Ba-dun ba-dun bbbbbbbbbb repeating or and over, sending waves down the tunnel. The tremors are intense, and they both sit down against the slope.
Hypatia’s ear-to-ear grin is harshly juxtaposed beside Yume’s genuine terror. Hypatia tries to reach over and comfort Yume, but it’s not doing much to her moral. Sitting in a creepy web unable to see or hear isn’t the most comfortable of predicaments.
A few more cycles pass and then Hypatia reaches over and shuts the block and her flashlight off. Yume can still feel the harsh vibrations from it running through her legs. It’s strange though, the vibrations aren’t going away. In fact, they are getting stronger.
She can feel her bones vibrating against each other. Each passing moment it grows and grows. She turns to Hypatia for some kind of support, but with her flashlight off, it’s impossible to see her.
Yume extends her hands towards Hypatia when suddenly, the vibration comes to an abrupt halt. She begins to frantically search her surroundings trying to locate her. All she can feel is the slightly sticky web. She rolls around grasping at the walls until she grabs something.
It’s hard, not like Hypatia’s arms or legs, but more like metal or plastic. Almost instantly after contacting it, it moves away. Then she can feel something heavy pushing down on the web near her chest. Suddenly another on the opposite side of her, and then another, and another. All around her something is pressing down. In the midst of all this silence something speaks at Yume.
“Why are you here?” it says in a long, drawn out voice.
Whatever it is, it is quite pleasant to listen to. The words flow out beautifully.
“I…I’m here with Hypatia!” She says in a stuttered yell.
Once again, no sound comes from her lips.
To her surprise, she gets a response. “I see…I see. I shall escort you to her now.”
The web around her body eases up as the things that created pressure grab her body like a plushie in a giant claw machine. She’s being pressed against a hard surface with sharp bristles poking out of it. She turns her face away to avoid any scratching.
Whatever she’s pressed against begins to move rapidly down the tunnel. She is being held by two appendages while the rest navigate the web. The momentum, coupled with the loss of several senses takes the blood right out of her head. It’s dizzying and anxiety-inducing.
Yume grows the nerve to ask this thing the question burning her lips. “Who are you?”
“I am Weaver, former textile engineer of The Chamber. You must be Adam’s child. Yume, correct?” It says, elegantly.
“Yes, that’s me. How did you know that?”
“You’re carrying something awfully dirty on your wrist. I was told this day would come, long ago.”
“Hypatia made sure I had this thing with me. It’s the King’s gift.”
“We do not honor Shingetsu’s lineage here, Yume. Do not utter such presumptuous words again.” It snaps.
“I’m sorry, I meant no offense!” she tries to walk her words back. “I have only seen Shingetsu, in memories.”
The being carrying her does not respond further. Yume takes the hint that it’s a sore subject and stays quiet for the remainder of the way down.
After what felt like miles of tunneling turns, they meet with level ground. Very slowly, sound begins to travel once more, and Yume can hear the creature’s steps along the ground. A faint light appears off in the distance from them. They are making their way towards the source.
The hard surface that Yume is pressed against begins to shine from light coming from the ground. Each step taken causes the dirt to glow vibrantly blue before fading away.
“Bio-luminescence!” Yume yells, excitedly. “I remember learning about this in class!”
“Ah, yes. Biological life thrives in our home. There’s a lot more than soil that glows here.”
Yume looks around as the area fills with more light. Surrounding them are large glowing mushrooms, some three or four feet tall. Falling from their gills are millions of spores, all emitting their own lightshow.
Yume turns her head back against the surface to rest her neck that was beginning to ache due to the angle she had it at. Upon doing so, she gets a clear look at what’s holding onto her.
Eight long, hairy legs that lead into an equally hairy abdomen. Towards the front are several pincers that could rival even Rosie’s. She has been hitching a ride under a spider, with a leg-span in the range of sixteen feet, maybe even more. It’s gargantuan. Yume tries her best to not scream in horror, as she’s always hated spiders.
She puts her fears aside for now, as it seems this spider doesn’t want to kill her. At least, not at this very moment. It’s the little things you tell yourself that make you feel better in a predicament like this.
They cross through a circular opening that leads into a much larger room. This room has multiple hefty pipes that feed into pools of deep red and shining blue. The pools and pipes line the perimeter of the room.
In the center of the room is an enormous mound of web that has a pillow-like appearance. Resting on top of it are three more spiders. Looking at them face on now, Yume desperately wishes they had friendly, inviting faces. Not all wishes come true, unfortunately.
The mugs on the three of them are enough to make your stomach turn in disgust. Before Yume can prepare herself for the personal hell she’s in, Weaver drops her onto the ground.
“Hey now, be careful with her, Weaver!” Hypatia calls out.
From behind the web-mound, Hypatia emerges, carrying a small spider. Well, it’s better described as a smaller spider, considering it’s about the size of an infant. Hypatia gracefully sets the spiderling on the mound and runs over to Yume to pick her up off the ground.
Hypatia brushes the glowing dirt off Yume’s clothes and squishes her cheek in excitement.
“We’re here, Yume! I see you’ve already met Weaver. Over here is Mygal” Hypatia points to the dark spider on the left, “and there is Morphae.” She points to the right towards a thin, spindly spider.
The two spiders on either side bow their heads in a collective greeting. The spider in the center hasn’t moved at all during this interaction.
“Who’s that in the middle there?” asks Yume.
Instantly a shrill, haunting voice fills her head.
“This is the body of Halon. They are no longer with us, but their spirit carries on.”
The spider on the left appears to be the one producing this thought.
“Halon’s endeavors are the reason we are here today and not still amongst The Chamber. Halon pioneered the transmutation of waste into elixir. You may know this as fixer where you come from.”
Yume bows her head solemnly. “I am sorry for your loss.”
“We do not mourn Halon’s death. They left a legacy to be carried on, a vision to be fulfilled. We just ask you respect that as we have respected you.”
Yume nods. “Of course.”
“Well! Now that we’re all acquainted, what say we get down to business?” Hypatia says.
Mygal and Morphae creep down from the mound, encircling Yume and Hypatia. All three of the creatures pull their legs up and rest their abdomens on the ground, staring up at Hypatia. It’s seemingly an act of respect.
“Since our attempt at safely bringing the sacred node from the pinnacle was initially squandered, we had to make a last-ditch effort. Adam was under intense stress as The Chamber knew his identity and were hunting him down.” Hypatia pauses to take a breath after such a winded sentence.
“Long ago, before the events in the pinnacle, he had to cut ties with his wife Yua and daughter Yume to ensure that The Chamber didn’t kill the entire family due to Adam’s association with the Constellation. Thanks to some clever memory-hooking, Yua and Yume were given a clean slate with The Chamber after Adam left. Adam knew this was the only safe place to store the node. Under the guise that he was going to see his daughter one last time, Adam snuck into his old dormitory and snuck the node into a possession of Yume’s.”
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Hypatia looks towards Weaver with an ear-to-ear grin.
“Show them, Yume.”
Yume reveals the bracelet to all three spiders. Mygal’s legs tremble a bit at the sight of it, subtly trying to look away.
A new, gravely voice pierces Yume’s mind. “That is VILE! PUTRID!”
Weaver responds. “I know, I know Mygal. This is our burden. We must follow Halon’s wishes. This is the final stretch.”
Mygal sheepishly uncurls his legs and looks deeply into the red node on her bracelet.
“All the lives lost, just to create this? It’s but a pebble beneath my legs. A rotten speck on our soil.”
Weaver moves close to Yume, pressing his pincers on the node.
“May I?” He says.
“I…I guess so!” She squeaks out.
In a swift motion, Weaver pops the node off of her wrist and carefully runs it over to a valve in the array of various tubes and pipes.
Yume looks towards Hypatia.
“What are they doing to it?”
“They’re fixing it, darling.”
With a hefty clunk and a torrential rush of liquid around them, the pipes begin to glow a faint red. The fluid flowing through begins to gain speed, creating an ominous hum. As the tempo increases, so does the glow of light.
The light becomes centralized on a small point in liquid. It spins around them far too fast to see now aside from a strobe of changing colors. Red to orange, orange to yellow, yellow to green, and finally, green to a deep blue.
All the sudden, a deafening crash bounces off the walls surrounding them. Bright blue liquid splatters all around the room, led by the singular point of light. It shoots around, burning a crater on each bounce. It hits the ceiling and spins violently in place. Dirt falls onto Yume’s head as the projectile digs straight up.
After a few tense moments, it loses momentum and falls to Yume’s feet. Laying on the ground beneath her is a node, emitting a comforting blue glow.
“Oh my God! You changed its color!” Shouts Yume.
“We have changed much more than its color. This node is no longer property of The Chamber. It has been cleansed.” Says Weaver.
“Cleansed?” Asks Yume.
Before Weaver or anyone else had the chance to explain, Hypatia pipes up. “This node was bestowed upon Shingetsu to rule our world. Mind control beyond those who had nodes. It was crafted as the ultimate weapon. They only had power over those in The Ladder. With this, they could turn entire countries into a similar fashion.”
Mygal takes his turn. “It wasn’t just about control Hypatia. It would have heightened that child’s abilities. It would have given them the strength to crumble landscapes. Level cities. It would have been unstoppable.”
“Your father and I stole it days before the ceremony of acceptance. It may only be a few decimals of a percent away from completion, but it’s power is essentially at its height.”
Yume looks around the room, processing exactly what she’s been smuggling on her wrist all these years. She then picks up the cleansed node and holds it in her hand. It’s the strangest thing, but holding it is reminiscent of childhood. It’s warm and comforting, like a hug from your mother or a piggyback on your father’s shoulders.
This moment of serenity is met with immediate turmoil. Beneath her feet, Yume feels the ground begin to tremble. An enormous roar envelopes the room. Hypatia braces herself against a wall nearby and the spiders rush into the mound of web.
The dust settles for a minute.
“What the hell was that?!” Hypatia screams.
“That was not anticipated.” Says Mygal as a new wave of tremoring rips through the room.
Small pieces of the ceiling begin to smash against the ground. Weaver and Mygul rush out of the web and snatch Yume and Hypatia off their feet, pulling them inside for safety. Inside this pocket the sounds of the tremoring vanish, similarly to how the tubes leading towards this room cancelled all noise. Morphae turns to Hypatia with a grim expression in his eyes.
“The Chamber picked up on the signal of that node. How did they come to such knowledge?”
Hypatia looks grimly at Yume and then to Morphae.
“No…I don’t think that’s the reason. Yume broke my memory hook some time ago today. I didn’t think they would have responded so fast.”
Morphae stares intensely into Hypatia.
“Then so it was written in the stars. May the moon fall gracefully upon us.” Morphae says as he nonchalantly accepts his fate. “Our home can withstand this, it has before.”
“W-what?!” Shouts Yume as she feels the vibrations growing stronger beneath her.
“You didn’t know darling!” Hypatia yells in response, grabbing onto Yume’s arm.
“What…What did I do, Hypatia? What have I done?!” Yume begins to sob and hides her face between her arms.
“Yume, darling, you breaking my memory hook alerted The Chamber.”
Through her now profuse sobbing, Yume babbles out what she’s dreading hearing the answer of. “Did I cause another cull? Are people going to die because of me?” She yelps out another moan pained in sorrow.
Hypatia attempts to speak a reassurance, but a new wave of tremors slowly tear the web barrier. The structure itself is still secure, as tiny pieces of the ceiling are bouncing off, but the noise creeps in. A tremendous, guttural stream of vibrations penetrates Yume’s eardrums. It’s maddening, and makes it near impossible to even think.
Yume and Hypatia fall to the ground, squirming and convulsing in pain. The last image Yume sees before losing consciousness is Weaver and Mygul rushing over to them.
The images of the friendly spiders fade away into a sinister dark. Yume feels as if her body is melting into the floor she’s on, she can sense something warm flowing all around her. Is this my blood? She thinks, Have we been crushed beneath rubble?
To her horror, she opens her eyes to see that there is liquid all around her. It’s so faint, but glinting slightly in the emptiness of light, is a slight shimmer of red on the liquid surrounding her.
“This is my blood!” She screams as she jumps to her feet.
Huh? She thinks, as she realizes she hasn’t hit her head on the top of the web they were hiding in. Upon glancing around, it’s quite clear that she’s no longer within that safety-nest, but in a vast pool of dark red liquid. It seems infinite, there are no walls or even a ceiling.
It’s hauntingly empty. Without much time to investigate, the pool rises rapidly, completely engulfing her.
It seems so familiar, yet the room feels hostile and completely unwelcoming. The temperature of the liquid changes instantly to match her own body temperature. Without fighting the rising levels further, Yume recognizes what this is and dives down.
She takes a deep breathe in and lets the liquid fill her lungs. This must be a memory she tells herself, as all sensation leaves her body. She lets it take its course and waits for the sound of a voice or the shining light to spawn in.
Several minutes pass and nothing has appeared, nor has any light begun to shine. She’s growing impatient as this has never happened before.
She tries to speak, but she’s unsure if her jaw is even moving, let alone words making their way out. What is taking so long?
Before another antsy thought manifests itself, a sudden rush of sensation floods her body. In a split second, something powerful clenches onto her throat, lifting her out of the water. It holds her above the pool, wringing the liquid from her throat with its grip. It’s too dark to see what is holding her.
The liquid beneath her flows away from the area directly beneath her, leaving behind a now shining floor. The leftover liquid sparks and combusts violently, setting the surrounding liquid in a roaring blaze.
There is a tall, thin man grasping onto Yume’s neck. The flames illuminate his face to reveal piercing red eyes and an expression contorted in anger.
“WHO ARE YOU?” Shouts the man, as he pulls a dainty glove off of his hand, to reveal a singular finger with an extremely long and sharp nail.
He takes that finger and holds it up in the air, readying an attack. He thrusts it forcefully into her forehead and his head goes limp for a moment. His grip loosens around Yume and lets her fall.
Yume screams in agony as the finger slides out of her skull and she lands upon the smoldering floor. She clenches her hands across her forehead, trying to stifle any bleeding. To her surprise, there was no blood nor any wound.
The man snaps out of his sleep-like state and his eyes light ablaze in fury.
“Yume Ripley?” He says as he flies down to her, meeting her not an inch from her face.
“…Yes?” She says, trying not to cough in his face.
“Oh…this is…unfathomable. Treason must run through thy veins.” The man snaps his fingers, and the flames extinguish.
“Who are you?!” Yume screams.
“I will show you, so you will never forget your place again, my dearest peon”
The man places his hand on her face, covering her eyes, and snaps his fingers again. When he pulls his hand away they are in a new location entirely. They are within the chamber that held the giant egg. All of the audience members are gone, it is only Yume and this man in the room. From the lighting, Yume can see his face clear now.
“You! You’re the child! The King’s child!”
The man whips around and smacks Yume across the face. “I am NO child!”
Yume shakes off the hit and continues to press the man. “What did you do to my father, Shingetsu?”
Shingetsu looks towards Yume and begins to smile ever so slightly.
“Shall I fetch him? I’m sure he would love to indulge you on our activities together.”
Without even looking at Yume for an answer, Shingetsu wanders down the pathway leading up to the giant egg. Yume follows close behind, growing intensely nervous. The two stop right beneath the egg.
“Adam, we have a visitor!” Shingetsu exclaims to the front face of the egg.
Several large veins begin to wiggle and slither around the surface, revealing Adam’s body plastered to the wall of the egg, with veins tightly holding his limbs in place. His head is limp against his shoulder, looking quite lifeless.
“D-dad?” says Yume, sheepishly.
A detached vein slaps the side of Adam’s head and lifts it to an angle that faces him towards Yume.
“YUME! YOU MADE IT! I CAN’T B-“ Adam screams out before a new vein swings in to silence him.
The vein shoots into his mouth and begins choking him. Adam’s eyes well up and tears begin to stream down his face, falling directly onto Yume and Shingetsu. Yume falls to the knees of the man, grasping onto them.
“Why are you doing this? Please stop!” She pleads.
Shingetsu leans down and pulls her chin up to face him. He leans in close to her ear and whispers.
“Your father and I have an ongoing arrangement. I will see to it that he repays what is owed.” The man snaps his fingers, and the veins cover Adam’s body.
“You are sick.” Yume spits at Shingetsu’s feet.
He kicks his leg up in the air, catching Yume’s stomach in its arc. She flies across the stage and slides into a wooden podium. Shingetsu walks over to her and towers above her. He takes his hand and slams it down onto her throat.
“You are a nuisance to that arrangement.” He says and begins to choke her again. “I will extinguish your efforts, just as I have extinguished those before you. You are no different.”
Shingetsu picks her body off the ground and slams it back down, ejecting her from the shared consciousness that she was a part of. She awakens similarly to a sensation you get occasionally before falling asleep; the sensation of falling out of a dream onto your mattress.
Around her once again are the three spiders, Hypatia, and the deafening tremors. Weaver is furiously twiddling his front legs together, assembling some sort of ball out of web dispensing from his rear. He finishes the ball and detaches it from himself. He snatches three other balls off the ground and rushes over to Yume, stuffing one into each ear. He does the same to Hypatia.
Slowly the web expands into Yume’s ear and she can no longer hear the roar of thunder above them. Weaver comes back over to Yume and wipes the tears off of her face with some spare web.
He enters Yume’s thoughts “He is cruel, my dear. Do not let him scare you. You are safe here with us. What you saw was more or less a forced hallucination.”
Weaver gets low to the ground and positions Yume and Hypatia together. They grab onto each other and embrace in a tearful hug. Both heave and sob as the lingering feelings from Shingetsu’s mind leave their bodies.
The light inside the webbed room is dim, bit bright enough to make out when Hypatia begins to mouth words.
Your father is still alive. She says between bouts of screams.