No pain at all.

None.

Simply impossible. No healing draught was this efficient. No healing plant either. Even the Goddess’s favour wasn’t quite so potent. Accelerating healing required a delicate balance between what the body was capable of, and the resources needed to effect repairs. It’s why the Goddess acted through them, her healers, and did not allow them direct ability.

Only She could understand and ascertain the complex needs of healing and then weave the infinitely complicated threads of life to restore a wound or cure a disease. Without Her divine capacity, there would only be the alchemical solutions and those were far from ideal.

But a single drop doing more than the finest, most refined accelerant?

Sil’s head spun.

Beyond her terror of the creepy thing bobbing up and down on Vergil’s shoulder, and the threat of whatever Erisa wanted with her, she had a duty to discover what this healing water truly was. If she could just get a sample of it, somehow, or find its source, then…

Oh, she was giddy with the ideas of what she could do then. This could change Edana in unbelievable ways. It’d make her and her sisters unneeded in truth. The Goddess would finally rest and gaze upon a grateful world, her long service finally at an end.

“You’re… radiant.”

Vergil looked at her as if he expected to be struck at any moment. He had his helmet clasped to his belt by a string of spider silk.

He was coming into his own. Tallah would be pleased to hear of how much of a help he’d been throughout this whole ordeal. Yes, they’d take the safeguard off him and offer some trust instead. He’d more than earned it.

“Sil?”

“Hmm?”

“Are you alright?”

“Absolutely.”

She’d make it her mission in Grefe to discover the secret. It was her moral duty to do so, to bring it into the light, away from this place of ruin.

There’s a certain psychoactive component and effect to it as well. Wonder if it’s intentional.

Regardless, this was no longer about survival. She would ensure that they did anything to help whichever side offered them the secret. Didn’t matter which it was, as far as she was concerned.

“Spider, where did you get the healing water from?”

“From the flowers.”

“What flowers?”

“Mother’s flowers.”

“Where are those?”

“Lost to We. The false mother guards the birthing hollow jealously.”

“Are you lying to me?” The idea did enter her mind but was the creature even capable of it? Or rather, was she capable of trusting it?

“What is lying?”

It didn’t matter. She needed to regroup with Tallah and then they would set about turning this place upside down and inside out until it provided what she wanted.

“Are you alright?”

“For the last time, Vergil, I’m fine. I feel wonderful.”

“You’re making a very scary face. It’s why I ask.”

A thought occurred to her: would it have worked on Vergil? Could his chip give them a good chemical analysis? It had in the past—spotty, true, but it was still better than nothing. Blast the boy and his better nature. “You should have drunk the bead instead of giving it to me. Your Argia could have given me an analysis. Maybe a formula for it.”

“You were sick. I thought you were dying!”

“True. Still.”

“Are you really alright?”

Now he was getting on her nerves. This was so much bigger than her. One life for a solution to so much suffering? Not even a conundrum. Even the Goddess couldn’t always reach everyone to solve everything. Sometimes even her divine grace couldn’t save the fatally wounded. The demon touched. The terminally sick. Some diseases could simply not be healed without killing their host.

The numbers of Her sons and daughters were limited, their overall presence paltry in comparison to the constant, overwhelming need for them. Alchemical healing could only be used for so much, brewed in so much quantity, deployed only so often. Beyond a point, alchemy simply lost potency.

A true paradigm shift was right here, in this gods-forsaken place! And she was to be the conduit for its delivery. Maybe that’s why the Goddess had been watching her. Maybe—

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She walked face-forward into a tree. Some kind of butterflies, large and garishly coloured, startled into a swarm and detached from the trunk to rise up into the red glow above. The beat of their wings sent leaves and fine powder floating down over her.

She would’ve screamed. It had come right into the back of her throat, built up by a sharp intake of breath. But Vergil clasped a hand over her mouth and pointed a trembling finger forward.

Her gaze snapped angrily to him, then followed the line of his notice.

Maybe ten paces forward and a couple off the line of their path, hanging between some of the thicker trees, partially obscured by the foliage, was a web. A spider hung in its centre, legs grouped two by two in the terrifying shape of an X.

It was as large as a destrier and nearly perfectly camouflaged against the forest wall. It twitched a claw and shifted minutely on the web. Black orbs seemed to regard them with passive interest.

“Sil?” Vergil whispered at her.

She drew back, sharply. The spider twitched in its web, one giant clawed leg touching a hair thin strand. The scream nearly ruptured past her common sense.

“Sil, don’t move.” His whispers were insistent as he turned to her. “You’ll draw it.”

Her feet sank into the mushy ground with a soft squelch. The nightmare twitched again, almost imperceptibly. She fought to swallow the keening whine inside her chest, making her nerves rattle with the effort.

Vergil in front of her, whispering urgently.

She couldn’t understand him, not with the creature looming just above his shoulder, getting larger by the moment. It could come for her at any moment!

Her back touched a fern and she yelped. Or would’ve.

Vergil’s hand on her mouth pressed harder, his face covering the sight of the monster. The sound bounced back down her throat as she choked on what she had nearly done. She swallowed against his palm.

“Are you all right?” he asked in an urgent whisper.

She shook her head, tears welling up. Every ounce of courage she’d drummed up to there had melted away at the sight, gone without a trace.

“Can you take my hand?” Vergil looked as terrified as she felt. “Take my hand and close your eyes. We’ll guide you.”

She could only shake her head. Taking her eyes off the monster?! Impossible.

If I close my eyes, I won’t see it coming.

“Sil, please.”

She tried to look by him, but he moved in time with her gaze.

“I’m deathly afraid of chickens, Sil,” he whispered urgently, a strained smile on his lips. “I know you don’t believe this, but if you take my hand and close your eyes, you will not be harmed.”

It took a few more heartbeats to will herself into doing just that. Finally, she clasped his hand with both of hers, let out a shuddering breath, and shut her eyes against the looming doom.

“It is not of We,” the spider whispered in her mind. “It is of the ones who feed all of We. It will not attack if not food. There are more. Tread with care. We mustn’t disturb their task.”

She stumbled over roots and tried not to react when leaves and creepers caressed any of her exposed skin.

“Careful here. Leg up,” Vergil instructed in a hushed whisper. “There are webs everywhere.”

Sil cringed, bit her tongue, and did as instructed. She trusted the boy’s guidance and did her best not to embarrass herself further.

“You can open your eyes. Just don’t look back, ok?” he said.

They crouched beneath a large, deep-green fern. Webs stretched beneath, like tripwires ready to spring unseen traps. Sil recoiled at the sight, drew in a sharp breath, held it. Exhaled.

“Where to?” she asked in a whisper.

“Follow We. Follow. It is safe,” the smaller spider insisted, drumming its front legs feet against Vergil’s shoulder.

They skirted around the perimeter of the hunter’s reach, careful not to disturb even one strand of webbing. It stretched far from the waiting spider, gossamer thin lines connecting into a network of forewarning. They backtracked and went farther around. Then they backtracked again as they ran into one more hunter waiting on its terrifying web.

“How much farther?” Sil asked as Vergil lifted a low-hanging branch to check for webs beneath. Above it, streams of spider silk stretched taught among the trees. The only way forward was to crawl.

“Not far to the passing. Not far now. No no.”

If the spider lied to them, Sil would stomp on it. Preferably by using Vergil’s head.

“If you feel any sort of pain, you let me know immediately,” she said by way of distraction. “We’ll move back if it seems we’re getting too far away from Tallah.”

“So far, it’s fine. It’s not even hot.” Vergil palmed the back of his head, scratching around the blistered skin circling the stud.

She swatted his hand away, “Leave it alone or it’ll get infected. We’ll deal with it when we’re safe. Your vitals?”

“Argia says I’m fine. Keeps swearing at me though. Might be breaking down.” He shrugged as if that didn’t sound worryingly ominous.

Sil decided not to push the subject. For as much as she’d been healed, her channelling was still blocked. Even making a sprite proved impossible, as if she were completely cut off from her illum flows. An effort to draw in any power only resulted in a blistering headache and feeling sick to her stomach.

They crawled in truth now, face down through the soft earth. Webs stretched above in a way that was impossible to bypass. Had they wandered this way on their own and alone, she was convinced they’d be dead by now, caught unawares by one of the great camouflaged critters.

Things slithered by her hand, squirming beneath her weight. Black and red worms poked out of the earth and disappeared beneath again. There were bugs the size of her palm, unimpressed by their passage, crawling up and over her hands and fingers. Even some smaller rodents that poked out from beneath dead leaves to stare with large black eyes at her.

“There’s a whole ecosystem in here.” She forced herself not to react and focus on moving forward even as something made a determinate effort to crawl into her boot. She kicked at it and felt a wet squelch spreading down her leg. Bugger.

“Much food here, yes,” the spider answered. “Hunt only big food. Small is too small.”

How this all balanced was another thing to ponder on later. Preferably back in Valen. Preferably drunk off her arse on strawberry wine.

They emerged into a clearing. More a narrow gap in the vegetation, where a pool reflected the lights above and cast eerie, rippling shadows across the rest of the forest. Sil found herself staring at a kind of elkana on the other side of the pool—really, must have been like ten paces across—as it drank. It was small, about shoulder height to her, and built thin and wiry. It raised an eyeless head in their direction with tentacle-like feelers testing the air.

It bolted back into the forest with a short, echoing cry of panic. A sharper cry followed, as if of pain, then silence.

“Food for We,” the spider crooned, a hint of pleasure coming through its psychic connection.