Why does a spider keep building and rebuilding his web even after it is destroyed again and again?
The Spider’s Dilemma. Isse had wondered, from the day Grandmother had asked her that strange question, what was its meaning. She’d understood that the spider represented the arachne. Or rather, she’d thought it was about the arachne… in plural. As in, more than one.
But the question was literal: spider. Only one. Always, only one.
Because, [Always, One Survived]. One. Not many, not a few, not two. Only… one.
Why does he do it? Why does he keep building?
She had answered, at the time, that it did it because it could.
She had been an idiot.
In her Mind Castle, locked out of the world, she looked up at the constellations she had conjured from her memories of Earth.
And knew that her answer had been childish.
Why did the spider build its web again?
The Question, the Dilemma, it didn’t ask why it should keep doing it. Of course it would build its web. It was a spider. It…
It didn’t know better. The only thing it knew to do was make webs to survive.
…
How… simple.
In her Mind Castle, at the top of the tower where she and Siidi had pressed that button what felt like ages ago, ‘becoming one’, as Grandmother so succinctly put it, she began laughing.
It was a loud and shrill sound.
So loud and shrill it was, that it quickly became painful.
But what was a little throat pain compared to losing everything you loved in a single night, and all because you were… different. Because someone higher up said it was right to kill her kind.
She laughed, and tears streamed down her eyes now as the sound became more a wail than a laugh.
How funny! Now she understood how black people felt nearly every day of their lives.
It was oh so funny!
The castle around her began to shake slightly, cracks appearing in the walls of her mind as she laughed and cried and wailed and shouted and thought about how funny it was. How stupid the answer to that Dilemma was.
Why did the spider build his web after it was destroyed? Because it didn’t know better!
She felt someone embrace her, gentle arms hugging her middle and lifting her from the ground where she lay staring at the sky with tear-filled eyes.
Her head was tucked in the crook of someone’s neck.
Siidi.
She smelled of blood. Isse had never noticed. Probably because the two rarely spent time this close.
Her hand began stroking her hair gently as she began whispering a strange song she’d never heard before.
We’ll meet again,
By the Underdark,
Lost to these endless halls
Who remember, by the dark,
All that’s gone to the crows.
We’ll meet again,
By the Endless Seas,
Right on the islands loved,
Of pirates’ domain weighed and seen,
In memory of their sins.
Isse stopped listening. The words just mixed together as a sort of background as she cried her heart out on Siidi’s shoulder and tried to understand how to keep going.
She wanted to die, to join her sisters, her family. Grandmother had clearly told her that Death kept them all warm and safe in Her, not allowing the gods to judge their souls. She knew that, if she died, she would get to meet them again.
But, at the same time… that Skill. That Legacy. [Tradition: Always, One Survived]. She was the last one. If she decided to end it here, she would disappoint all of them. Their deaths, the deaths of every single arachne in the history of this world, it would all be rendered meaningless. And then, how would she look them in the eyes?
No, she would live. She couldn’t just give up.
She would build a new web. Be like all the other imbeciles who’d come before her, and start from scratch.
Because she was an arachne.
Because that was all she, all her race, was good at.
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When she opened her eyes, she could still feel the lingering phantom of Siidi’s embrace.
She turned around on the ground.
And noticed it didn’t feel like the hard packed, burned down, ground of the scorched clearing where Grandmother’s corpse-ice-statue stood. It felt like… wood. And it was moving underneath her.
What?
She looked around, expecting to see only the ashen remnants of the forest. Instead she saw snow plains extending everywhere the eye could look.
Did it snow while I was asleep?
Possible, but that’s not where we are. It feels like a wagon.
A wagon? So someone’s carrying us somewhere.
Astute observation dear. That’s what you usually do with a carriage. The question is: who’s carrying us? And where?
For a moment, hope welled up in Isse’s heart as a fleeting thought about one of her sisters surviving and taking her to a safe place sprouted in her mind.
But then she remembered her new Class: [Last Survivor].
And she felt like falling asleep again and disappearing in the darkest corners of her Mind Castle, in a place where even Siidi couldn’t reach her.
She looked.
And saw an old man.
The same old man from her vision yesterday.
Wait, so he wasn’t a hallucination? asked Siidi, clearly as surprised as Isse.
…Apparently.
Her brain was taking some time to analyze what was happening.
Then: “Ah, you’ve woken up I see. Eat, girl. There's food in that sack near you. It's not really good, but it's better than nothing.”
And she finally realized what was happening.
She crawled back, baring her teeth and hissing like a rabid animal as she raised her hands, fingers like claws, ready to fight using even her nails if necessary. The fangs she used to inject her venom came down, ready to deliver their not-so-lethal charge. After all, Anda had told her that her poison was probably more useful as a weak mana potion than as actual poison.
“Now now, there’s no need for any of that,” said the old man in a kind and calm voice, not even turning around.
“If I wanted to hurt you I would’ve left you there to wallow in your pain. The King’s probably already sent someone to check how things are going, especially since whoever was at the head of that army has probably died in that fire.”
Mutually assured destruction. One of the Hunters’ most known tactics, said Siidi with a weary sigh.
“Who are you?” asked Siidi, trying to calm her heart. He was an old man and he was traveling alone on a simple carriage, which meant he was either insane or very sure he could take on anything that tried to trouble him. Grandmother had been very clear about how dangerous old people were.
“Me? I'm an old man enjoying his vacation. My name’s Albert Sirion, I’m a [Clocksmith], currently going back home after a month of vacation down south to enjoy the warmer weather there. Not a fan of the cold: these old bones always start creaking when the winds change.”
A [Clocksmith]? A man who made a living crafting and, possibly, selling, clocks? This man was traveling alone through a country and talking to her as if he were talking to just a normal, human, girl. Which… she looked like. She hadn’t noticed, but she was wearing the dress Aru had made for her from Shifting Silk, which hid her spider half thanks to some kind of illusion and made her look completely human. If she weren’t in the situation she was currently in, she would’ve probably fallen back on the wagon’s wooden floor and started crying again. How had she died? The [Seamstress] must’ve been one of the first victims, what with her being completely unable to fight.
“Yeah, nope, you’re shitting me. No way an old man who’s only a [Clocksmith] is traveling all alone in the dead of winter. Either the King in this place has somehow killed every single band of thieves and brigands or you’re playing dumb.”
The old man chuckled: “I see you’re already feeling better.”
“Stop. Acting. Dumb! Who are you?”
The man finally turned around to look at her from the front of the carriage. Isse could see two horses tugging them on but that didn’t matter. What mattered was the slightly sad smile on the old man’s kind face.
“I’m not lying little one. Want me to give you a Truth Stone to test it out?”
She cast two Spells, [Detect Truth] and [Detect Lie], as the man said that. The first came out as positive, the latter negative. He was not lying.
“So the King is that good?”
“He’s an ok man,” said the old man, his right hand leaving the reins as he made a so-so sign with it, “I’ve seen better. But I’ve also seen worse.”
Isse grit her teeth as, ever so slowly, the sadness inside her began turning into anger and hatred: “Well, your so-so King caused the death of my entire clan!”
Albert shook his head: “No my dear, that would be the people from your clan that attacked that defenseless village a few months ago and killed everyone in it, together with the College of Memoirs taking an interest in the matter. The King just gave them the means to kill you.”
“And you think that makes him blameless?!” she shouted.
The old man shrugged: “Are you blameless, child?”
There was something strange in the old man’s voice as he said that. It seemed just a tad colder.
Then he shook his head: “Stupid question, that one, sorry. It wasn’t your fault. Rest, girl. The journey ahead of us is long.”
Isse and Siidi both asked the same question, for they were suddenly one, and they would stay so for the next minute. [A Minute, United].
“Where are you taking us? And what makes you think we’ll come with you?”
Albert turned back to the road ahead and answered: “To answer your first question, we’re going to my home in the city of Tedam. As for the other one, nothing. Nothing is tying you to me girl. If you wanted, you could just up and leave right now, and I couldn’t and wouldn’t stop you. But then, what would you have afterwards? Only your sorrow and an unfulfillable desire for revenge. I, on the other hand, can give you a home and, maybe, a chance to change things. Who knows,” he chuckled at that. A low, bitter, sound. Like a soldier telling his child that the war he was going to fight would bring about something good.
There was something of Grandmother in him. She thought that, had the Elder been a few centuries younger, she would’ve been able to give her a look like that, chuckling in exactly that way.
“You call it unfulfillable. We call it a matter of time. Levels make everything possible, are we not right?”
And at that, the old man openly laughed.
“HAHAHAHAHAHA! Sure they do! They can make the possible impossible, but here’s the thing: Leveling takes time. In the time it would take you to get your Numbers high enough the current King would’ve long since died of old age.”
“It’s a single man.”
“And you’re an idiot, girl. I know for a fact that arachne train their young to be analytical in everything, and you’re a [Soul Shaper] if that wasn’t enough. If you wanted to attack the King and kill him, you’d have to get inside a heavily warded and guarded city, reach the royal palace, surpass every [Guard] and ward there, make sure you’re not noticed by the dozens of [Rogues] or other people like them posted inside, actually find the king and then, finally, stab through powerful defensive magic, all while he fights back. It wouldn’t be impossible, but the logistics are complex, as you can see.”
Isse could say nothing at that. It was all she could do not to let her jaw drop.
This man clearly wasn’t just a [Clocksmith].
So she did the next most logical thing: she used an [Appraisal] Spell.
But all she read was this:
Albert Sirion. Age: 65.
Class:
* [▒▒▒▒Clocksmith], Level ▒▒35.
* ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒, ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒
She stared at the words and frowned. Apparently, he had not lied. He really was just… a… [Clocksmith].
Wait a moment! they thought in corus.
There was something strange about the result of the Spell. It was… foggy. As if something was trying to hide the actual details of the Class. She recognized this. Grandmother had trained her to recognize alterations to [Appraisals]. What Grandmother had never told her, though, was that said alterations could be partial. From what she’d been told, one could either hide everything about their Classes and Levels and name, or not. This was unprecedented.
But it didn’t matter if this was new or unexpected: she’d been taught how to overcome the barrier. The fact that it was only partial made it easier to unravel, actually.
She reached out with a tendril of her mana and, while keeping the [Appraisal] Spell up, feeling its little drain on her Mana Pool, she touched the ‘fog’. The moment she did, the world changed in front of her eyes: she was still there, in that wagon, staring at the old man’s back, but at the same time her eyes saw a misty lake, its waters calm and flat, milky white from reflecting the fog.
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A grizzled old man sat at the edge of the water and looked at the world around him, a cane lying at his side, a leg missing.
The old man wasn’t, of course, Albert. He was just the way the Spell that hid his Skills saw itself. A personification.
She still remembered the first time she’d succeeded in piercing Grandmother’s barriers and reading a little bit of her actual Class. How she’d told her that all Spells, being crafted from Mana taken from the world itself, were alive, in a strange sort of way.
At the time she hadn’t really cared. All she’d had eyes for was Grandmother’s Class:
[Wintertouched Clan Leader of Magic and Memory]
…
It was better not to remember.
She looked at the old man and skittered towards him. Spells or Enchantments that blocked Skills were always long term and were cast to last. Because of that, they usually felt… lonely.
So she sat down besides the old man and did so in the real world too. She put a gentle hand on his shoulder and Siidi did the same as she reached them, sitting and telling the old man a story.
He smiled and, because of their kindness, decided to look the other way for a while, letting them see what Albert was hiding.
As Isse looked down into the lake, she saw many things: cogs and wheels and springs littered the bottom, as was to be expected, even though some of them looked… rusty. And then her eyes lighted up as she saw something she recognized more: a knife and a mask, hidden among all the gears, as if, even inside the Spell covering his Class up, Albert had been trying his hardest to hide, to forget, that part of himself.
Immediately, new words appeared from the fog covering her Appraisal Spell:
* [Spymaster of ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒], Level ▒▒
“You're being naughty back there girl," said Albert as, suddenly, the old man in her vision took the cane by his side and bonked first her, then Siidi, in the head. It was gentle, it didn't even leave a phantom sensation of pain, but it was enough to distract her and end the constant flux of mana that was letting her see the fogged up lake.
She batted her eyes and looked at Albert again, suddenly feeling a little emptier and sadder as Siidi's certainty left her. Her Skill had run out.
"And you're lying, [Spymaster]," she said back, trying to put some snark in her voice, but she felt tired again. It wasn't worth it.
The old man chuckled: "I'll admit, I should've known better than trying to outsmart an arachne Soul Magician with that simple trick."
Isse's head rose as a little fire of hope tried to light up in her chest. She smothered it before it could catch.
"You speak as if you'd ever met one of my kind."
Albert smiled his sad smile again. And didn't answer. That... could've meant anything: from a yes to an 'I heard stories from a friend' up to a simple 'I was just making a conjecture'. Had she wanted to, she could've taken the answers from him, delved deep into his soul into the Heart, the place where he kept all of himself as he was, the place that defined him as a living, thinking, being, and scrambled things around, turned him into a puppet, forced him to tell her the truth. But the truth was, she didn't want to. And Grandmother had never taught her the fine details on how to do that. Only that it was possible.
No, all she really wanted to do was sit down and go back to sleep, now that the anger was gone.
"Seriously, girl, eat. You haven't eaten in a day. Then, you can go back to sleep. If you want them, there are some blankets back there for you to keep warm. That dress can't be hot."
He was right, it wasn't. She wondered, for a moment, how she hadn't noticed the cold up until then.
... Was this how emptiness felt?
She looked at the sack and opened it: inside there was some hardtack and some jerky. Travel rations. Pochi had told her many tales about how some of the [Soldiers] under her command, when she'd still been training among humans, had found interesting ways to make the food taste better, from using grass, up to accidentally poisoning themselves when they'd used the wrong plant. They'd even said it had been worth it.
Isse knew she could've done that same thing while also being safe, she had [Poison Immunity] after all, but she was sure that, no matter what she used, it would all taste the same to her: like dust and ash.
She ate, and wasn't surprised at being right.
"There's some milk in there too. Was keeping it for myself, but you can have it, although I fear it will be cold."
Isse ignored him and instead went for the water. She wasn't a child. She hadn't been even when she'd been reborn in this world. Sure, for a while she'd allowed herself the chance to feel like a child again, but the time for that was gone.
She crawled towards the blankets and promptly fell asleep again after she'd made a nest out of them all. No silk, though: she didn't want to be caught white handed.
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She opened her eyes back in her Mind Castle.
The place looked just as she’d left it: white, grand, marble walls, covered in fancy decorations and etchings, all surrounded by a grand double colonnade in corinthian style. A library, its walls made out of wood and gray stone, was fused to one side like some sort of benign tumor, the reflection of Siidi’s soul. At the very center of the giant palace-cathedral where she was the only goddess, was a garden occupied by a single irish oak that reached higher than the highest tower.
But she didn’t see any of that. She didn’t even rise from her very comfortable Siidi-cushion.
“Could you stop calling me a cushion please?”
“No.”
Siidi sighed and sat more comfortably on the suddenly pillow-covered floor.
“That’s new,” said Isse, her voice muffled by her face facing her soul half’s tummy.
“You just never stay long enough to get to see these.”
Isse didn’t answer. Or rather, she answered by hugging Siidi hard as she began to hiccup violently.
Siidi let her cry. She knew how it felt, to lose it all. She’d remembered it just a few months ago, during Grandmother’s second Trial. She’d remembered her sisters of blood and battle. She’d remembered their names, their faces, their likes and dislikes, their deepest desires. The love they had for each other. Their shared will to bring death to those that would ever bring harm to their race.
She had cried for a long time afterwards as she realized she had truly, finally, lost them. That, even if they came back, they wouldn’t remember her, and she wouldn’t be able to recognize them.
“Siidi, what was that song you sang before?”
And at that, the old arachne who sometimes was young, raised an eyebrow.
“I didn’t think you were listening,” she whispered, her heart aching as she remembered the song’s meaning again.
“I stopped after a while, but it was… good. Sad, nostalgic. Seems… fitting.”
Oh, she couldn’t even begin to imagine how fitting it was.
“Could you sing it again?”
Siidi didn’t answer. Instead, she began singing again. The name of the song was simple: ‘We’ll Meet Again’. But, among her kin, it had been known with another name: ‘Our Last Song’.
So it was that Siidi sang the arachnes’ last song.
We’ll meet again,
By the Underdark,
Lost to these endless halls,
Who remember by the dark,
All that’s gone to the crows.
We’ll meet again,
By the Endless Seas,
Right on the islands loved,
Of pirates’ domain weighed and seen,
In memory of their sins.
We’ll meet again,
By the Highest Peak,
Right where the snows don’t flow,
In memory of our bed in silk,
Burned by fake wolves.
We’ll meet again,
By the Countless Stars,
Right on those laughing steps,
Where the Lookers always died,
With a smile on their face.
We’ll meet again,
In Death’s embrace,
Right by your sisters’ cheers,
Where I may at last rest,
Forever in your love’s embrace.
The song ended. When she heard Isse’s regular, calm, breathing, realizing she’d fallen asleep here as well, she began singing anew. She couldn’t do anything for Isse: she couldn’t take her pain, both physical and emotional. She couldn’t take her place and guide their body for a while to let her rest some more. She couldn’t even help her, because she didn’t know what to do next: she hadn’t been among the survivors, and all she had ever been good at was killing people with a sword.
So, if that was all she could do, she would sing herself raw just to give this little girl the reprieve she deserved before starting again.
Like they always did.
----------------------------------------
Siidi didn’t know how long she stayed there, gently petting Isse’s hair and spider half, singing their last song.
She only noticed that her soul half’s breathing, at some point, changed, becoming more labored. A nightmare, probably.
She placed her hand gently on her shoulder and began shaking it gently.
Isse’s eyes snapped open and looked right through her for a moment, the air around her changing color and becoming red for a single moment.
Don’t you dare, you Stars damned machine of those stains on this world’s existence. Don’t you dare mark her with Blood. She doesn’t deserve it.
The red disappeared just as suddenly as it had appeared. Had it come to that, she would’ve found a way to take on the burden of that Condition. She was, after all, a [Soul Curator]. She could find a way.
“Siidi?”
“It’s alright dear. It will all be alright.”
Isse nodded, hugging her tight again.
They stayed like that for a while, until, finally, Isse spoke again: “Who wrote that song?”
Siidi smiled bitterly as she kept on stroking her soul half’s hair: “That was a love song written by the Witch Of Spiders for her lover.”
“Can you tell me about them. Do you remember them?”
Siidi nodded: “Their story is… strange. The strangest among our stories. It began thousands of years ago, during my time, and it ended after my death.
“To start, the [Witch] was a human.”
Isse looked up from her belly with surprise painted on her face.
“Really?”
Siidi nodded: “She was our first and only ally among the humans. She came to us as a child, barely ten years old. An [Apprentice Witch] at the time, she loved spiders, and after her mentor was raped and killed by human soldiers because she refused to help them in their war, she decided she would rather risk dying at the hands of ‘giant spiders’ who would, at least, respect her body, than risk living and dying in a world that clearly saw her as nothing more than a piece of flesh that could think.”
----------------------------------------
“Come on [Witch]. A simple curse, that is all we are asking.”
“It’s not that simple, you dumb shits! Do you have any idea of how strong their protections are? I would die before I even reached the end of the incantation.”
The five [Soldiers] chuckled as they advanced towards her mentor, the closest thing she had to a mother after her actual mother had abandoned her.
“Maybe you don’t understand, witch. You don’t have a choice. It’s either that, or death. Your presence is allowed near this city only because you are useful. And yet, no matter what, whenever we request that you do something against the arachne, you back away. Are you, perhaps, a traitor?”
Her mentor laughed out loud: “I am as much their ally as I am yours. I live for myself and my ideals, not the ones a simpleton like your [King] imposes.”
Her mentor had expected many things, but being punched in the face by one of them wasn’t one of them. The woman stumbled, her nose broken, her beautiful, youthful, face marred. She managed to grab onto one of the nearby tables and stayed on her feet, nose bleeding, a sneer of fury on her lips.
“That sounds like traitor talk to me boys. What do you say?”
The other four men in armor nodded in agreement.
“But then again, we can at least have some fun before we do what must be done to all traitors.”
The Witch of Webs, whose Class would one day become [Arachne Lover, Witch of Webs and Souls], watched powerlessly as the five men restrained her mentor and slowly undressed, raping her. She watched as she spat on them all, Binding them to her, so that, when they finally gave her peace, stabbing her through the heart, they fell to the ground with her, choking on their own blood. Her mentor had been strong, that is for sure, but she had still been young and, without time to prepare, there was little she could do.
That night, she ran, after taking everything she could, burning the place she called home to the ground.
Disgusted by men, by humanity itself. Disgusted by her very own body, because she was as human as them.
----------------------------------------
There was bitterness in Siidi’s tone, a bitterness that came from a rage that had been quenched a very long time ago.
“So one day she walked through the lines of the Hunters, reached our forests and then our city. I… don’t remember which one. It was one of the Silken Palaces, that I know, but at the time we had many.
“She was captured, naturally, but we weren’t all monsters. We had seen a little girl walk towards us with purpose, a girl who didn’t look at us in fear but wonder. So we didn’t kill her immediately, instead asking what her purpose was. When we heard her, we brought someone to check if she was being truthful, if this wasn’t a strange scheme of the Hunters, and found nothing but hate for her own race.
----------------------------------------
“Are you not scared, little one?” asked one of the arachne, hanging from one of the walls near the entrance.
The Witch of Spiders, whose name was Sealed and Hidden millenia ago, sat on the silk-covered ground, staring purposefully at the entrance, legs crossed and chin held by her hands.
“I will not leave,” she said again.
“And we’re not letting you in. You should consider yourself lucky we’re not outright killing you.”
The child didn’t answer, to which the guards sighed. Not long after one of the [Generals] stationed at the Silken Palace, a prize for numerous well gone assaults, ordered the girl bound, gagged, blindfolded and brought in. The guards, naturally, obeyed, jumping on the girl and making her scream in surprise, but not for long, because in a matter of seconds she found herself in a surprisingly comfortable cocoon of spidersilk, being carried inside.
When, finally, she was freed, she began missing the comfortable embrace.
She was in a simple, featureless, room, built out of stone, walls painted white, a simple table and chair in front of her. She was bound to another one.
An arachne skittered inside the room and walked all around her, examining her from every angle.
“You are a child,” she said matter-of-factly. To which the [Witch] had nothing to say. She was, indeed, a child.
“Why are you here, child?”
“To join you,” she answered immediately.
The arachne began laughing. And kept going. She kept going for so long that she actually had to take a seat. The little witch noticed only then how big the chairs the arachne used were. Which was to be expected: their spider halves were big.
“Haaaa, hadn’t laughed so hard in a while. Now, seriously, why are you here?”
The Witch of Webs to be cocked her head to the side, since that was more or less the only thing she could move, and raised an eyebrow: “My mentor told me about these… interrogation tactics. She went through many of those. Interrogations, I mean. She said that acting like that is cliché and works only half the time.”
The arachne tilted her head to the side in the same way the witch had, and, she had to give it to her, pulled it off in a much more menacing and questioning way than she had.
“And who was your mentor?”
“A Witch. It doesn’t matter anymore. She was raped and killed in front of me.”
And at that, the [Interrogator] had to activate a Skill to control her face from grimacing. Humans. More like Hairless Beasts. And they called arachne ‘monsters’.
“Hmpf, I’m sorry to hear that, little one, but that does not explain why you are here.”
It did, actually, or she had a good guess. But she had to hear it.
“I don’t want to be among the humans anymore. They disgust me. I disgust myself. I don’t want to be like them.”
Had she been able to, the little witch would’ve wrapped herself in her arms and began rocking, for she could still hear her mentor screams of pain, hatred and violation as those men grunted in satisfaction and pleasure. Just like animals. She was nothing more than an animal. She didn’t want to.
“You could’ve run to the beastfolk if you hated humanity so much. Why us arachne?”
The little witch glared: “I’m a child. And I don’t have the money to reach another continent. And…” she trailed off.
“And…?”
“... I want to see them suffer. And the beastfolk won’t allow me that. They would probably shun me just as much as the humans because I’m a [Witch].”
The arachne stared at the little girl intently, trying to see if she was genuine. Her Skills and experience told her she was, but she wanted to be sure. If she made a mistake, she could help the Hunters. And she’d rather be burned on a stake than help those pieces of shit.
“Let me call someone.”
----------------------------------------
“We took her in.”
“In the years that followed, under some of our Elders’ guidance, she became one of the greatest [Witches] in this world’s history. With her help, we managed to hasten our advance, to conquer the entire continent of Irevia.
“But that… that’s another story. What matters is, she fell in love with one of our own. I don’t remember her face, who she was and what her purpose was among us. What I do remember is that they loved each other, a love so deep that they exchanged fragments of their souls to forever be bound.
“And then, when the Hunters began winning in the ways that mattered, sending us back, killing scores of our own, when all seemed to be lost, the Witch of Webs sacrificed herself: for love, for the race that had taken her in, allowed her to become who she wanted to be. For the family she had made.
“She cursed the Hunters. No, not just those that lived at the time: she cursed their entire [Class], the intent behind them, an entire branch of the System’s knowledge. She lost her life in the process but, since then, anyone who manages to gain one of the Hunters’ old Classes, something like [Arachne Hunter] or the likes… dies.
“Or so I’ve been told by the dead. I never managed to see the end of the Hunters.”
She fell silent.
It was a good story. A sad, good, story.
“That song,” continued Siidi, “It was a promise. A promise that they’d meet again, always, even in Death. A promise she managed to keep.”
She chuckled: “Apparently, Death is a sentimentalist.”
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She and her Soulmate kissed. A deep, long, kiss, with lots of tongue, but even more love. When, finally, they separated, their foreheads meeting, their breaths intermingling, her arachne wife said: “You don’t have to do this. Please. We’ll manage. We’re arachne.”
The Witch of Webs shook her head: “I know. But you gave me so much. Let me repay this life of joy.”
“You repaid it a thousandfold by helping us conquer an entire continent!”
“And now we’re losing it. I have to do this, love. If my sacrifice can help the arachne, can help you, survive even one more day, then it will have been worth it. Please.”
They cried. Of course they did. They spent their last night together crying, loving each other, and then whispering sweet nothings in each other’s ears.
Finally, when the moon began to descend, the Witch of Webs began to sing.
In the years to come, the song would become known as the arachnes’ last song.
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Isse woke up. Or rather, was woken up.
“Wakey wakey, little spider. There’s something I’d like you to see.”
“What? Where are we?”
The old man, Albert, smiled: “We’ve reached Winter’s Last Stand.”