Goldie walked through the darkness.

Forms in the void pulsed with apparently hostile energy. At first, the spider twitched every time something moved around her. Even after she had experienced the emanations on a dozen distinct occasions or more, the movements of the powerful shaded things were still disconcerting enough to send a little shiver through her body whenever she perceived them.

This was never meant to be a place for a spider—perhaps for any sentient creature. It was probably particularly bad for Goldie, who brought her own share of anxieties with her.

Great, dark, old things dwelled in the endless darkness. A part of Goldie’s mind cursed her willingness to go and explore an environment that had intimidated even Adon the first time he had visited. A place where the butterfly still was not entirely comfortable and welcome, she believed. An inherently dangerous plane.

However, she did her best to remain focused on the path that Adon’s vision had laid out for her. That had been the point of the vision that he had shown them.

She found that the path was still there, somewhat preserved in her memory, a safe route through the darkness. She could almost see it as a visual representation before her eyes, like a complex series of dotted lines stretching out, twisting, and turning in the dark.

If she just kept her focus on the path, nothing could harm her—or so she kept telling herself.

As Goldie held her eyes steady on the way forward, the lurking powers in the dark seemed to pulse a little less energetically, or perhaps she simply became better at ignoring them. An intense focus had fallen over the spider. Dimly, in the recesses of her mind, she knew the shapes in the void were still calling to her in their myriad ways, but their strange siren song was faint.

Goldie remembered how Adon had described the way his own brain worked at times. She had seen him lock in on a task for hours at a time, in a way that Goldie had only ever approximated when she was weaving a web.

The spider had the presence of mind to wonder if she was experiencing that heightened level of focus now, temporarily, as she tried to reconstruct his path to healing magic from memory.

Reconstructing a path of travel is not so different from weaving a web, she thought.

But mainly she avoided musing and kept her attention on navigating.

She did not allow herself to think of the potential consequences of stepping off the path—of walking up and touching the wrong shape in the darkness.

The orange orb of her magical power followed Goldie as she negotiated the dark space, though it provided little real assistance in understanding her surroundings. The light only told her where things were that she might want to avoid—hardly even gave her a clue as to the shape of the dark universe around her. It was like this place was only made of shadows and dark shapes that defied understanding—made of things that swallowed light up rather than allowing it to simply fall upon them.

The void hid its secrets well.

Goldie felt only a minimal curiosity about this space, squelched as it was beneath the sharp tang of fear.

How did this place get here? What was it really? Who or what were those things in the darkness? Those were questions she might have asked herself.

In practice, her actual attitude to those questions might have been summed up with the phrase, Who cares?!

She just wanted to find her way to the exit, after she located the power that Adon had wanted to pass on to her.

Confusing geometries unfolded themselves before her eyes, impossible shapes that grew more convoluted as she moved.

Goldie tried her best to ignore them and simply keep walking.

They just want to pull you in and eat you. That was what the primitive, instinctual, animal aspect of her brain told her.

Several times, she thought she heard voices. When that happened, it was all she could do to maintain her pace of travel—not slowing or stopping and thereby giving the source of the sound the opportunity to try and pull her in, but also not breaking into a run and potentially losing her way.

The spider walked until she did not know how long she had been walking. Until her mind was almost numb, and the idea of giving up felt like it would be a relief and a mercy.

Then, suddenly, a shape loomed in the dark distance. Goldie’s instinct was to run, but she’d had plenty of practice in the unknown stretch of time she had spent in the darkness suppressing that impulse.

As she looked at the shape, she recognized that it felt smaller and less malevolent than the other monstrous forms she had encountered earlier. Perhaps not a malign entity at all, as she dimly realized. In fact, her fatigued brain perceived a certain gentle warmth.

Is this it, Adon? Goldie wondered. The focus that had driven her had led her to this place, but now her brainpower seemed fully spent. She could not remember if this was the same ending of the path that Adon had experienced.

The spider held off approaching the shape for a short time, wary of her own reactions, holding very still and waiting. But the smallish entity did not call out to her, nor taunt her, nor reach after her with twisted limbs shaped from the darkness—an event that she knew had occurred at some point before, though her tired mind could not say for certain whether it had happened to her or Adon.

At last, caution gave way to optimism. Goldie had already decided to make the leap into this void. She had trusted Adon’s memories to guide her, and they had brought her this far. If Adon had survived this place and emerged with more power, so would she. And she was not likely to find a more welcoming presence in the darkness than this one.

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Goldie took another step closer, and suddenly the shape hovered in front of her. If she had not already steeled herself and decided to put her fears behind her, she would again have turned and run from the unexpected movement.

As things stood, she instead held very still, as invertebrates are capable of doing, and she examined the form before her one last time.

Now that she was even closer, she saw that it was a vaguely wispy shape, like cloth. An outline that was completely dark—hidden from a clear view by dense shadow even as she stood right in front of it.

All right, she told herself. All right.

Goldie reached out and touched the shape. Instantly, warmth began to flow through her body.

Why was I so worried? she thought.

She allowed the pleasant energy to wash over her, and all seemed right with the world. She felt her body and mind memorizing this feeling—this power and the method of its use.

So, this is healing.

Knowledge slowly, steadily flowed into Goldie’s brain. She had no actual injuries as of the moment when she touched healing magic’s power, so it felt like the figure in the darkness compensated by giving her a theoretical understanding of how it worked.

This is not necessary, she thought. Adon’s vision already—

It was at that moment that Goldie began to hear voices. The sound was so jarring that it almost brought her out of the void, but she recognized the voices and took a moment to focus on what they said before she did anything.

“What is happening to Samson?” That was Rosslyn speaking.

There was a long pause.

Then: I’ll go to him!

And that was Adon.

What is happening to Samson? she wondered.

Goldie instantly returned to herself and looked around. She was horrified by what she saw.

—

As Samson walked through the void, his head kept turning to look after the new and strange sights that greeted his eyes.

The place was horrifying but fascinating in equal measure.

He had some instinct that the place wanted to kill him, but he found many of the shapes alluring nevertheless. The shapes that occupied the darkness did not seem to be able to harm him without touching him, so he allowed himself to look freely.

He tried to follow the path that Adon had laid out, too, but there seemed to be a conflict between his curiosity and the focus required to remember the way.

Samson recognized the conflict and attempted to navigate it and perform both mental tasks at once—allowing his eyes to wander and following the safe way that had been laid out.

He failed.

One moment, he knew where he was going and what he was doing, and he was on his way to the healing magic that Adon had wanted to pass on to him. Time passed, and for a while, he thought he was doing well at following the path.

Then, quite suddenly, Samson knew he was lost.

How embarrassing.

Even after he knew he had strayed, Samson’s most pressing concern was what Adon and Goldie would think.

Although he was an old man in some ways, in this, he was a child.

Samson considered popping back out of the dark space and going to Adon. If his brother had recovered from expending so much energy sending Samson and Goldie the vision earlier, then maybe he would be willing to do the same again.

The little spider shook his head at that idea.

Just going right back would be even more embarrassing than returning much later and saying he had lost his way and was never able to find it again. Samson was not the type of person to simply let life happen to him. He was a problem solver.

The spider stood in place for several minutes while he considered his options.

He could go back, but he felt a strong desire to reject that course of action.

He could try to find the path again and hope that by picking up the trail, he would find his way to healing magic—perhaps a little later than his mother, but still a successful trip.

But there was a third option, and after considering his choices, he liked that one the best.

Samson determined that he would discover something new.

If he found a new kind of magic, it would impress Adon and Goldie and—more importantly, of course—it would add to their total wealth of knowledge. Adon would be able to probe Samson’s mind and find whatever Samson had discovered, and then he could pass the dividend of that effort on to Goldie.

Samson pressed on.

In the darkness, he saw shapes and figures that defied description—things that did not follow the rules of geometry or physics as Samson imagined he understood them.

He tried not to let that bother him so much. He wanted to look deeper, to understand what he was seeing. He wanted to know that he would bring something of value back to his family and make them proud.

He knew he had been nothing but a burden thus far, no matter what his mother and Adon might say. Samson still held the same basic ethos he’d had as an old human. He was not really a baby. He was a strong individual. He could pull his own weight. He would show his worth and earn his keep.

When I acquire new knowledge for us, I’ll prove that I can be a support to Adon, Samson thought. I’ll finally contribute something unique to Adon and mama’s skillset. There was a slight childishness to the tone of his inner voice as it explored that thought. Samson didn’t notice it.

He explored for an indefinite amount of time, staying away from anything that looked terribly evil or predatory. There were a lot of figures in the darkness that had limbs that looked like tentacles or appeared as if they would impale him with a touch.

Finally, he came to a figure that looked like a sort of impossible shape—almost like an optical illusion.

Samson remembered that Adon had mentioned wanting illusion magic, but he had never found it. The spider shook with excitement. If this was the power of illusions that Adon had been so interested in, then Samson was incredibly lucky to have stumbled across it.

It’s fate. Maybe this is why the Goddess dropped me off here. This is the big contribution I can make to Adon.

A warm feeling flowed through Samson as he thought of discovering something new for his brother—for his whole family.

The spider recalled that the way to harness the power of one of these statues was by physical touch. He reached out with one leg—tentative, no matter how he tried to pretend to himself that he was confident—and made contact with the statue.

And then he felt something terrible beginning to happen.

The statue pulled at Samson, and he felt his Mana start to disappear.