…
How to start?
It is not an easy thing, you know?
Starting again and again. One time is an unhappy happening. Two times a coincidence. Or destiny.
Isse didn’t know. She just laid in the hold of Moon’s ship, wrapped up in a silken cocoon as she cried. She hadn’t noticed until she’d been brought down here. A very small, very simple, but extremely important detail: Albert was dead. The thread that bound her to him had broken. Now it laid on the ground beside her, frayed at the edges where it had broken off, slowly unraveling before her tear stained mana sight.
She didn’t wail, it wasn’t like her to do something like that and, truth be told, it would’ve been useless anyway: crying wouldn’t bring him back. Heck, crying in general was useless, just a waste of time, a waste of water and a waste of breath.
This was all –
Why does the spider keep building and rebuilding his web even after it’s destroyed again and again?
The words resounded from the back of her mind, and slowly grew louder and louder at its forefront, until they were a cry, a scream, begging her for an answer, for understanding, for knowing.
Why did he do that? Why keep going? What reason was there to keep doing the same thing again and again and again and again? Why would anyone hurt themselves so much over something so temporary, so fleeting, so…
She placed a hand on her belly.
It was flat and, actually, slightly muscular now that she noticed. She traced her fingers over the lines of her abdominals, then went lower, caressing the area where her human half met the spider half, where skin turned to fuzzy fur. And then she stayed there, knowing that she was not alone. Pregnant. A mother to be, soon.
That was why. For them, for the little lights in her, for the kids that would grow up… into the same world as her. A world that hated the arachne.
Or does it? asked Siidi, Does it really hate us? Not everyone does. Albert didn’t hate us. Alice didn’t, nor did Liam, nor do the two helping us now.
They’re a minority.
So what? In your world’s history, during the second world war, rebels were a minority for the longest time, and then they won the war!
That was mostly in Italy and France…
So what? They did it!
Isse didn’t try to change Siidi’s mind. It was useless right now. She knew her soul half was just trying to cheer her up – after all, she’d never been particularly fond of Albert – but she just… didn’t feel like… anything.
Why does the spider keep building and rebuilding his web even after it’s destroyed again and again?
The question nagged at her. It wanted an answer. It wanted meaning. The Spider’s Dilemma, that writhing monstrosity that had plagued the arachne as a species since its creation. The question with no real answer, the open ended story with senseless violence beneath, like an octopus trying to wrap its tentacles around her mind, peering at her thoughts and –
The spider does it because he foolishly hopes it won’t happen again!
She shouted this in her mind and the monster immediately retreated, satisfied that an answer had been given.
Siidi sat silently in the Mind Castle, repeating the words she’d heard, shaking her head in sadness. She would’ve loved oh so much to tell her she was wrong, to try and change her mind but… everyone had their answer to the Spider’s Dilemma, an answer that couldn’t be shared nor changed. It was theirs, bound to them by a chain of ancient memories. Different answers for different people that reflected their lives.
Siidi hoped that Isse’s answer would change again. Stars knew she’d changed hers so, so many times.
As Isse laid there, crying and releasing muffled sounds of pain, they both heard footsteps… and decided to ignore them. They were on an airship, of course there would be people walking around, even though technically there were only two people aboard.
What they couldn’t ignore was the gentle kick that came through the web. Why couldn't they ignore it? Because it touched Isse’s thorax, too close for comfort to where her eggs were developing.
With a hiss the arachne’s hand shot out of the cocoon, tearing it apart, and went to grab the foot, which shot away with great haste.
The webbing fell from her eyes and she got a good look at the woman who’d disturbed her, Moon’s companion. The [Pilot] had introduced her collaborator as Shriya. The woman was a [Druid] and had no fear to show so: her hair was tied with branches that seemed to grow right out of her scalp (had she planted them in her flesh?), her eyes were green as the depths of a jungle with a sort of otherworldliness to them, her thin lips so pale they seemed to be one and the same with her equally pale face. She wore simple white robes with green trims and, on her head, she had a small green bowler hat that fit really well with her whole apparel.
She raised an unimpressed eyebrow at Isse as she spoke: “Get up girl, the clouds have parted and the sun shines, you’ll miss the sights. You won’t get to fly around anytime soon.”
Isse looked at the gruff birdkin woman in pure surprise and shock. Not only she wasn’t scared, she looked downright pissed at her moping, and add to that the fact she’d invited her to… basically touch grass. Who in Airm was she?
A druid. From Eva’s jungles. She’s probably seen things scarier than us in that place. Stars know we hated it and never tried to get more than a foothold among those trees, explained Siidi.
“Who are you?” still asked Isse.
The woman raised an eyebrow, looking absolutely nonplussed and slightly impatient, as she answered: “The name’s Shriya, as Moon already told you, and I’m a [Druid]. Don’t bother asking my exact Class, I won’t tell you. Now get up and come on out.”
She turned around with a huff and walked away, up to the stairs that led to the deck.
A moment later Isse followed her, her slow mind grasping at the simple order, at a possible distraction.
Skittering a bit faster she stood by the woman’s side, looking at her hair. For some reason her mind concentrated on her ears. She’d expected they’d be pointy… like Tobias’. Someone as ‘green’ and bound to nature as a druid would’ve felt more… right as an elf. Or half elf.
“What? Do I have something in my hair? Other than the hair clips.”
“Is that what you call those branches?”
“It is their function.”
Isse stared at the woman, disbelief slowly creeping its way in her: “How can you and Moon be friends?” she asked.
That caused Shriya to finally react as she turned her head with a hard stare at the ready: “Why shouldn’t we be friends?” she asked defensively.
“Well…” tried to answer Isse, suddenly feeling cowed, “You’re… very different.”
Shriya glared down at her, stopping on the last step. Light seeped from the crack underneath the door leading out, staining her feet a light yellow.
The inside of the ship was illuminated with the help of some kind of glowing moss that grew in beautiful patterns all over the ceiling. If she hadn’t been wrapped up in her little cocoon she could’ve spent hours just staring at it and trying to find increasingly outlandish patterns in it. The only problem with it was that the light was rather dim, coloring everything in a grayish hue.
Isse didn’t know why she was hyperfixating on all these small details. Was it a coping mechanism? A way for her mind to not think about everything that had happened, everything that she had lost again?
“We are different, yes, so what? You’d rather the world be made of identical people? You’d rather a forest be made of a single type of tree with all the plants in neat little rows?”
“N – No!”
This woman was scary. How? She’d studied under Grandmother for Stars’ sake! There was nothing more terrifying than her!
Still she felt like using a Skill to… do something. To calm herself down, or calm the person in front of her.
So she just did that.
[Influence Emotions]
She had rarely used that Skill. Or rather, she’d used it only once, with Makira, and the woman had scared her so much afterwards that she’d decided to never again use it. As Skills went this one was, by far, her most dangerous one.
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Indeed. It wasn’t her Fireball, or her lightning and arrows or any of her other abilities, no, by far that set of three Skills, [Perceive Emotion], [Touch: Transfer Emotion] and [Influence Emotions], were the most dangerous she had. Because if one could control someone’s emotions, their feelings, they could do anything. They could cause people to fall in love with them, become obsessed with them to the point they’d throw themselves off a bridge if they received the order. They could start wars by proxy simply by making a [King] feel hate towards someone else whenever they were mentioned. The possibilities were endless and, hadn’t it been for Makira’s intervention back when she’d first used the Skill on her, she could’ve gone down a very dark road indeed, especially after the Fire.
Now though, broken as she felt, jittery from nervousness and anxious because she was in the presence of a complete stranger and at the mercies of a woman she’d only met once in a bar, she just went and activated her Skill.
Influencing someone’s feelings wasn’t easy, she’d learned that much from Grandmother. The easiest way was by finding the Core of their soul and changing things around in there, which would lead to a fundamental transformation on the individual. Isse, though, didn’t have the time for doing something like that, nor had she completely lost her mind, so she just tried to change the woman’s mind.
Her Skill looked inside her, searching her mind and emotions, asking her: What shall we change?
Isse tried to instill calm in the Skill, that it may be given to Shriya. The Skill tried to do just that… and failed. For there was no calm in her. There was only one thing that came close to being calm, and that was her feeling of… death. Of slowly dying inside. So the Skill used that!
And suddenly the serious expression on Shriya’s face froze in place as a foreign sensation entered her mind. An emotion she was certain wasn’t hers. A mix of dread, sadness and resignation, all mixing together into a gray, uniform mass that made her feel empty.
She looked Isse over… and shook her head, suppressing the sudden anger at being the target of a Skill like that.
“So that’s how you’re feeling. No wonder you’re so scared. Most people just understand my prickliness is part of my character, while you… well, I wouldn’t want to be in your place.”
She turned back to the door, opening it.
“I’m sorry for making you feel so uncomfortable.”
She stepped in the early morning sunlight, already looking more lively, and motioned her over: “Now come, the world is beautiful from up here.”
She wasn’t lying.
----------------------------------------
Have you ever watched the earth from high up in the skies? Have you… have you managed to do so on Earth? I remember planes being around back then, but they were small, for the military. I’ve heard they’ve become quite big in these last few decades. Honestly, I don’t know how they do it, just fly around willy nilly when they should be falling with how much they weigh. At least here in this world things make a lot more sense: they use those giant balloons and, with a few Skills, they can move around with the same grace of a ship at sea.
Isse had never traveled by plane back on Earth. Her family had had plenty of places they could visit by car and, really, they’d never really felt like leaving for other countries. They’d been happy like that, chuckling amongst themselves at the thought of all those people willing to spend thousands to go somewhere else.
Now, as she looked at the changing scenery underneath, she wished they’d actually done it.
It was wonderful, mesmerizing and downright hypnotizing. She hadn’t stopped looking for the last… she didn’t know. Maybe hours, maybe minutes. The sun was higher up in the sky but the balloon over her head was big enough to cast a shadow that protected her from its rays.
She watched as they passed over snow covered plains where little animals and monsters moved around, fields of winter crops from farms outside of cities or downright in the middle of nowhere, forests of green and gray and white and even a few villages. Always, though, Moon steered them clear away from any cities, probably in an attempt to keep a low profile.
As she watched the beautiful scenery she managed to forget everything: from the pain and loss of Albert to the more distant nostalgia of living in the forest to, finally, the answer she’d given to the Dilemma in that moment of desperation. It was all still there but, for now, it was kept safely away, at bay, incapable of actually hurting her. A beast in a rusty cage: you knew it would soon fall apart but, until then, you could safely not worry about it. And afterwards, for when the time came to actually face the beast… she hoped a [Tamer] would be there to help her out.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” asked someone by her side.
She glanced there for a moment and saw, standing there, Shriya. A small smile had formed on her lips. It made her look cute.
Isse nodded.
“You were in the forest they burned,” said Shriya. It wasn’t a question, so she nodded again.
They stayed like that for a while more, just admiring the slowly changing scenery. The winds this high up weren’t fast, so their own movements were calm, the same way she imagined a gondola ride in Venice would feel. The massive construct of wood, bone and chitin swayed underneath them, lulling them into a state of numbness and respite.
In the end Shriya asked: “What was it like?”
Isse took her time answering: it wasn’t something she did often nowadays, remembering those days. Not all her memories were colorful yet, it would still take time, probably months, for Siidi to repaint them all, but what was there as it had once been made her feel pain and nostalgia. Still, after a while, she spoke: “It was wonderful.”
The floodgates opened and she couldn’t stop talking. She told Shriya about the sleeping clearing where she’d spent the first few months after her birth; she told her about the long corridor in the trees where they ate, their ‘mess hall’ as they liked to call it; she told her of Grandmother’s eternally white clearing, a fragment of winter forever trapped among those trees; she told her of Aru and her ever changing tapestry that rushed the coming seasons, her little silken plushies animating the place more than any animal ever could; she told her of Makira; she told her of her soulmate and her little sister that had woken her up by sitting on her chest the first time she’d met them.
She told her of Siidi and their fight for dominance, of the Trials they’d faced and the lessons they’d learnt afterwards. She told her all that and so much more.
At some point they stopped in mid air, the sails being furled back up, and Moon sat down beside them, offering some well cooked meat to eat with a few raw vegetables on the side. A good meal, simple but filling, although she found herself asking for seconds afterwards: the children were already demanding more.
In the end, though, she had to ask: “Where are you going to bring me? I’m not going to stay aboard for long, you’ll be killed if I do.”
There was a sense of finality to those words, a certainty that came from this happening twice already.
Moon, for the first time since she’d met her, looked thoughtful at that.
“I don’t know girl. The plan’s to bring you to Eva: the jungles are vast and, really, nobody wants to explore them other than us jungleborn. Alternatively we could try our hand with the dwarves: I hear they can become friends with anyone, I’d wager they could accept you. But really, no, I have no idea where we’ll be going, and our mysterious patron never specified where to drop you off.”
Isse nodded… and looked down.
“Maybe I should leave now? You brought me far enough away from the city for me to find a good place to hide. What if they stop you? What if someone finds out you helped me, an arachne?”
Moon shrugged: “Bah, they can try to stop me. They’ve tried my whole life and failed, I’ll find a way.”
Shriya glared down at her friend and, with a snap of her fingers, a branch bloomed out of the wood beside Moon, quickly moving to smack the back of her head.
“Oww! What was that for?”
“That was for being stupid and insensitive. If people find out we helped her then we’ll be hunted all over the world. You never had to fight the whole world, just the institution and bureaucracy of the churches.”
“That felt like fighting against the whole world would’ve been more pleasant,” she grumbled under her breath.
“I’m sorry to say this, but Issekina here is a danger beyond anything we ever had to deal with.”
Moon raised a finger to protest but was stopped right in her tracks by her friend: “And no, that Overgrown Arboreal Golem doesn’t count. For one, again, it had no risk of causing the entire world to start hunting us down for Crimes Against the Preservation of Life.”
Moon lowered her finger and pouted, sighing: “Look, Shriya, I know what you’re thinking, I understand, but I won’t leave her alone here. It’s not just about the money, I can’t stand to abandon her.”
The [Druid] stared at her friend… and nodded.
“Alright, I understand. We’ll make for Eva then. Hopefully –”
She didn’t finish the sentence, for a crow landed on the railing beside her and cawed loudly, making her jump in surprise, her arms raised as if ready to blast the poor bird to pieces.
The crow looked at her with beady, black, eyes, then looked around, its eyes settling on Isse after a few moments.
And then it spoke: “Arachne! Arachne! Bring her to the Kingdom! The Kingdom of Occultism! A favor! A favor is to be repaid!”
Moon looked at the bird, an excited smile forming on her lips: “The crow’s talking!” she shouted, jumping to her feet and moving towards the bird, her face bare inches from its beak. Isse wanted to worry that the animal would try to blind her, but instead it ruffled its feathers and jumped a little closer.
Then it cawed again and spoke: “Mad pilot woman is welcome! Lover of mad pilot woman too!”
Shriya spluttered and tried, uselessly, to correct the bird, but had to surrender when Moon (who was, apparently, her girlfriend?) squeed in delight and grabbed the bird, beginning to caress its head.
“Can we keep it!” she asked.
The [Druid]’s defeated expression said it all as she nodded.
Still, Isse had to ask: “What’s the Kingdom of Occultism?”
Shriya answered since her girlfriend was still playing with the incredibly happy crow: “It’s a new up and rising nation. Appeared out of nowhere one day, claimed a coastal area to Irevia’s east and has since been doing its thing. Everyone who visits the place says that the people are strange and everything feels mystical, so that’s how they got the title. The man leading the nation is only known as the King of Crows. A pretty apt name, I’d say.”
The crow, now settled on Moon’s shoulder, cawed in approval and nodded his little head.
“To the Kingdom of Occultism! A favor is to be repaid!”
A favor…
Isse began chuckling when she realized the meaning behind those words. Someone was helping her… to repay a favor.
She began laughing, tears streaming down from her eyes as Siidi, too, chuckled mirthlessly in the back of her mind, trying to hold back her own tears.
Albert. This was all Albert’s doing. Even in death he was helping them. One last favor.
Isse cried, she didn’t know for how long, but this time? This time the tears were of relief, of catharsis.
She didn’t know why, but it made her feel better.
So much so that, in the end, she fell asleep, curled up right there on the bridge.
And, in that fitful sleep, the System spoke.
[Shadowed Soul Shaper Level 25!]
[Skill – Mana Well Obtained!]
[Last Survivor Level 10!]
[Skill – Progeny: Enhanced Magic Affinity Obtained!]
[Conditions Met: Apprentice Musician -> Musician!]
[Musician Level 10!]
[Skill – Proficiency: Violin Obtained!]