When Isse woke up that morning, it was with her stomach rumbling and, at the same time, twisting into non-euclidean knots.
Because, today, one week had passed since the first time Grandmother had called Isse in for her… ‘session’.
She feared walking inside that white clearing, being looked at by those white, seemingly pupilless eyes, being touched by those thin and perfect fingers with pearly fingernails, and hearing those words: [Trials of the Mind]. It... well, scared probably didn't even begin to describe it.
But, at the same time, she wanted to be there. Deep inside her she wanted to see those images of her life, those possibilities that had been taken from her. She wanted to see her parents’ faces again, her friends, the boy she’d fallen in love with, even though she’d never seen his face in her entire life before she was forced on that damned hospital bed. She wanted to see the faces of her children. She wanted to disappear in those illusions. Maybe it wouldn’t even be bad: she would get to live the life she wanted, and Siidi would get the body she so desperately desired.
Please stop that! You’re making me sick! Are you so weak willed you’d rather live a fake life?
It seemed a lot like Siidi’s voice, but she was sure the other half of her soul wouldn’t be so supportive of her. She’d probably try to convince her to give in.
Yet the resemblance was there.
She skittered down the tree trunk her hammock hung on and went to have some breakfast, Anda walking besides her as always, her smile as bright as sunshine. Yesterday the teacher had complimented her for managing to write down the whole alphabet, and she’d been chittering in joy ever since, showing everyone the little smiling, yellow, star on her piece of paper.
Skala was clearly a manipulative genius because now every little arachne was striving to obtain that wonderful smiley star!
Luckily, even Isse was managing pretty well. Sure, Siidi’s constant groaning of boredom wasn’t exactly helpful, but the ex-human had always been good at school, even if she disliked it, like most students did after years of studying. She had the right mindset about it, though, and that helped.
It also didn’t hurt that Skala had a very powerful Skill: [Class: Improved Learning]. A Gold Skill, it had been given to her when she’d breached her Capstone. It let her students learn things faster and better than most. Basically: the things they crammed inside their heads would stay there longer. Hopefully even take permanent residence.
Seeing her level, which was over 50 from what Siidi had explained, since Golden Skills didn’t show up before then, she had succeeded on that last front multiple times.
But today it didn’t matter, because she had to go to Grandmother.
And, when breakfast ended and the children began leaving, seeing how nobody was coming for her, as she began hoping the Elder had forgotten, Makira appeared. That woman could be a lot stealthier than she lead to believe.
"I’m afraid it’s time again, little Isse."
The Smiling Woman placed what she probably thought was a reassuring hand on the girl’s shoulder, but it only managed to make her feel even more anxious.
Still, she followed her. Because what choice did she have? She couldn’t exactly run away, she barely knew how to live in this body. And she knew more or less nothing about the world she’d been brought into.
So she walked dejectedly behind Makira as, as always, she tried to lift her mood, chattering away about random nonsense.
It was only after a full minute of this that she looked down and saw it had been for nothing. So she fell silent. And that attracted Isse’s attention. That, and the fact she’d stopped walking, making her bump into her spider half.
"Isse… I know it’s hard."
She said that, and the girl felt like laughing, because that was the mother of understatements. But, when she looked up, she saw that she wasn’t smiling. No, Makira was staring right into her eyes with the expression of someone who knew exactly what she was talking about.
"I know how it feels. To go through one of mom’s [Trials]. She doesn’t know to wear kids’ gloves. She thinks that making the challenges easier will not help you, even though you were born not long ago."
She smiled bitterly.
"She was born in a time when we were dying away, disappearing from this world’s face. In a time when we feared we would be Forgotten. She was the last one. She went through more than any living being should. She cannot accept weakness among her own. She’s seen us die once, she won’t allow that again.
"I know this won’t help you. I don’t know why Grandmother is doing this to you. But I know that, in the end, you’ll thank her. Maybe not immediately. Maybe, at the end of it, you’ll hate her and want to kill her. Stars know I did."
She chuckled.
And Isse pointed right at her, as if to ask 'What did she do to you?'
Clearly, the woman was good at charades, because she understood what the little girl was asking.
"Me? It’s not a good story, little one. Just know that scars aren’t always visible to the eye."
That said she started walking again, looking back now and then to see if Isse was following and if she had other questions.
Which she did. She stopped at some point, and pointed back at the Smiling Woman, then crouched on the ground and, with her finger, wrote something on the ground in clumsy, big, letters. She still hadn’t quite grasped the alphabet completely, but she still managed to write the beginning of a word that had caught her attention: Forgotten.
She wrote only the first four letters of the full word in Irevian, which she somehow knew was Gonrem, before she was stopped.
"What I mean with Forgotten?"
Isse nodded energetically.
"Well, it means not remembering something, naturally."
Isse’s shoulders dropped and she sighed (which sounded like a resigned hiss), giving the woman an angry, and cute, glare, which got a giggle out of her.
"Well, that’s technically what it means. But you felt there was more to it, heh?"
She sighed and, after looking around, nodded: "Memories are important, little one. They have power and meaning. A moment in time, forever crystallized in people’s minds? That is true power. At the same time, forgetting means disappearing. Truly, completely."
She smiled bitterly: "I’m certain that, if we died, if, finally, the whole world managed to exterminate us, it would try its hardest to Forget us. Delete us from the books, not talk about us to the children. Gone, impossible to bring back. I know it doesn’t sound like much, little one, but once you grow older you’ll probably understand. After Grandmother asks you our old Question and you give a satisfying answer."
That said, she turned around and walked away. She didn’t speak until they reached Grandmother’s clearing, at which point she motioned her inside. Then she sat down. She wouldn’t leave her alone.
Isse slowly walked towards the Elder, shivering slightly.
"Welcome back, Issekina and Siidi," she whispered, low enough that only the girl and the Voice could hear.
Grandmother opened her eyes and looked straight at her.
She moved her left hand towards them, and they flinched away. That didn’t stop the old arachne from reaching out and touching their head, whispering those nightmarish words: [Trials of the Mind].
----------------------------------------
Isse opened her eyes and stared at a battlefield. The sun shone over her head, hot as hell, in a blue, cloudless, sky. The earth she was standing on was perfectly flat, nearly smooth, but just two steps away it became coarse and muddy, footsteps clearly visible everywhere.
And, right there in the center, stood Siidi, her spidery form clad in light armor that covered her body and her spider half.
Oh, also, in front of Isse was a big, red, button.
"Once upon a time, I met a good man. He never admitted it, but he was. He liked to say that it should be possible to solve any and all problems by pressing a single big, red, button."
Isse turned towards the source of the voice, and saw Grandmother. She was sitting behind her, completely still, as always, but her eyes weren’t looking at her. Not even at Siidi, for the matter. No, they stared further still, somewhere on the horizon. Her eyes were closed, sure, but she’d long since understood that couldn't stop her.
She looked up towards the horizon, thinking she would see something, but there was nothing. Only the sky, some distant trees, and a city on her right, surrounded by high stone walls that let her see only the very top of a belltower. The gates were open but there were no people in the streets or on the walls. The place was dead.
Inevitably, her eyes moved back to the red button in front of her: "What happens if I press the button?"
She spoke with her voice, and it surprised her. Sure, she knew she was in her mind, but at the same time being on this battlefield took that away. It was nothing like she imagined a place like this would look like. For one, there was no blood, no corpses, no trenches. It was nothing like she'd learned in her history classes.
That’s the thing about wars: most people remembered the youngest ones, like the First World War, and compared everything else to those smoky battlefields filled with silence interrupted only by gunfire, until one of the two sides charged and all hell broke loose.
"You will solve your problem. Or begin to. Siidi, she remembers wars, fighting, killing. She craves such things. You will give her what she desires."
Her voice never wavered or changed as she said this, as if she were talking about the weather and not about forcing someone to fight for their life.
"What if she dies?"
"Does it matter?"
The answer she received was so sudden and to the point it left her speechless.
"She’s been living inside your head like a parasite since the day you were reborn. She has developed a Red Class that will lead to you disappearing one day, devoured by her soul. Why should it matter to you if she lives or dies?"
Her head moved away from the horizon, her eyes now staring right at Siidi.
"She has brought nothing but worry to you, trying to change you, force you to leave control of what was given to you by destiny. She will keep doing that."
Those were all very good arguments.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
She turned towards the button. If she pressed it, Siidi would die. She would be free. But it was wrong. She couldn’t just cold bloodedly murder the other girl. She was, after all, inside the body that was meant for her. She was the unexpected guest.
"Do you think she would hesitate to press that button, Issekina?"
That got a chuckle out of her.
"That was so cliché of you to say."
Grandmother’s only reaction to that was to slightly raise an eyebrow.
"But it is true."
She lifted her arm and pointed at the increasingly confused Siidi, who’d found weapons fastened around her waist.
"She would look at you, then press the button and watch you die."
"Yes, but I’m not Siidi. I’m better than that."
"Then you are a fool, Issekina of Clan Silksoul. You are the greatest fool of all. Because your idea of ‘being better’ will kill you. The world doesn’t care. It doesn’t see you as you see yourself."
She pointed at Isse, in particular at her human legs.
"The world will only see this."
She snapped her fingers.
And an image appeared in front of her. An arachne, like her. She had her same chestnut hair and spider half, her same eyes. It was a mirror image of her. Then the image hissed, showing her teeth, a man appeared out of nowhere and screamed as she tore his throat out. She watched herself as she killed throngs of screaming humans and other… living things that looked nothing like humans.
She closed her eyes. She couldn’t look anymore! But the image was there, behind her eyelids, showing the massacre she was causing.
"Stop!" she shouted.
And everything stopped.
"I’m nothing like that," she shouted, turning towards Grandmother.
"That is not what other living things will see. That is what Siidi will make out of you if you let her stay."
That gave her pause. Her anger rapidly boiled away, leaving behind only cold fear. She didn’t want that.
"Then press the button," said Grandmother, as if she’d just read her thoughts.
She turned towards the big, red, button, and placed her hand on it.
Then, without allowing herself to remember what she’d just seen, because she sure as all hell didn’t feel keen on seeing herself cut a man in half with a halberd, she pressed it. There was no need to think about it. Grandmother was right. This would help.
Not for a single moment did it come to her mind that the Skill used by the Elder was called [Trials of the Mind]. Trials. Not Execution.
Nothing happened for a while.
There was only silence.
Then, a shout. Siidi. Something had just appeared in front of her.
It was a man, dressed in a black cloak with a red trim, a fedora on his head, two short swords in his hands. Under the cloak she saw he was wearing chain armor.
He didn’t look special, but she immediately saw Siidi freeze for a moment in what she believed was fear.
She was wrong: that was not fear, it was pure, seethin, hatred.
Because the man attacked, his hands and arms moving with the same fluidity of water, closing the distance between him and the arachne in an instant. Before he could touch her, though, Siidi moved, her many legs pushing upwards and back, and she dodged.
The man didn’t stop and kept attacking, not giving her a moment to think or extract her weapons. Or, at least, he tried.
Siidi shouted something and the air in her mind shook and crackled. A crack opened in the sky, and words poured in her vision.
[Requested Skill Lost. Cause: Death]
[Request for Protocol - Remembrance Received]
[Reason for usage of Protocol: Trial Skill]
[Reason Accepted]
[Skills Temporarily Returned]
[Attention: Skills and Classes will be Reset at End of Trial]
[Have a Nice Day!]
The crack in the sky closed and Siidi stepped away from the man, yet her step was a lot longer than it was before, as if she’d taken ten all in one.
"What was that?"
"An old trick Button Man told me about. I’ve waited so long to try it."
When Isse looked back at Grandmother, she saw the woman's mouth was crinkled around the edges in a small smile. A fond smile. Who was this… Button Man?
Siidi smiled as she finally managed to get a sword out of a small bag on her waist. She launched herself at the man, weapon raised in the air, maniacally laughing. The man raised his swords and crossed them, ready to block the attack and potentially disarm his enemy, maybe even hurt her. He whispered something, probably a Skill, but it did nothing, because when Siidi’s sword made contact with his own there was no clang of metal on metal. No, her sword just cut cleanly through the steel and cut the man’s head in half.
Issekina stared.
And the other half of her soul just shouted: "SEND ME MORE! I HAVEN’T HAD THIS MUCH FUN IN AGES!"
She was shocked.
And then her shock turned into anger.
She pressed the button again.
This time, two figures appeared out of nowhere and began attacking. One was twice, no, thrice as large as the other. A giant of a man. He was holding a greatsword with a silver lining, his body covered in plate armor that left no visible gaps anywhere on his body. How he could possibly move, she had no idea. Meanwhile the smaller man, who looked like he could reach her waist at best, was holding a two-fucking-headed axe, the blade alone twice his height in width. He also had a long, black, beard that was definitely in tone with his cloak. She noticed it was the same color as the one worn by the last fighter, with the same red trim. Did they work together?
Nonetheless, Siidi attacked them, mercilessly cleaving at the big guy’s armor, trying to breach through, but she couldn’t. She had used her best Skill for that on the first guy! Still, that didn’t dissuade her. It made things a bit more difficult for her, sure, but that was the fun part! It couldn’t be interesting if they were all easy wins.
So she fought with everything she had, like she’d always done on those battlefields, trying as hard as possible not to use her Skills, because if she did then they’d go in cooldown and she wouldn’t have them for another situation.
Soon after the two guys lay dead on the ground. She chuckled, reveling in her little victory, and looked around for more.
Isse, again, pressed the button.
And four more soldiers appeared.
This time one was using a saw to fight, while another was using a great hammer. The third had two swords, just like the first guy. The fourth, instead, disappeared in one of the people’s shadows. Before he did, she saw a glimpse of a knife.
The fight was more difficult. Of course it was. After all, it was four against one.
And still, even when two people attacked her at the same time while the man with the dagger appeared seemingly out of nowhere to knife her in the back, she won. Overwhelmingly.
Another press of the button, eight people.
They all wore the same clothes, except for those that were equipped with full plate armor.
Who were these people?
This time the fight lasted longer. Siidi had to use three Skills just not to get cut down by this seemingly random assortment of people. They were good. She wasn’t sure how she could tell, seeing how they kept getting killed by the arachne, but there was something in her that told her those people were extremely good fighters. It was just that… Siidi was better.
"Hmm… she is good."
For the first time in what felt like hours Grandmother talked. And it was to compliment that girl.
Something in her went up in flames, and she screamed in rage as she pressed the button again, even though Siidi hadn’t yet killed the other fighters. But why should it matter? Why should she care? Why had she paced herself all this time? She could’ve just sent entire hordes of those people against her. After all, she could do nothing against sheer numbers!
She kept pressing.
And more people appeared.
Initially, Siidi didn’t notice. She just kept fighting, not caring about the fact that her enemies didn’t seem to dwindle.
But soon, she was surrounded, and a man wielding a spear attacked her at the same time a woman with a bladed whip as a woman with a staff in her hands shouted something and a ball of water materialized in the air over Siidi’s face.
That’s when things began getting complex.
She evaded the whip and the lance, somehow managing to entangle the former with the latter, and jumped higher than should’ve been possible, over the soldiers’ line. And yet the bubble of water over her head moved and followed her, engulfing her head and immediately trying to enter in her mouth and lungs to drown her. She managed to keep it all out, though, and put a hand in the bag at her hip, taking out a small amulet: it was a circle of stone carved with some strange script. She broke it in her grip and, for a moment, she seemed to glitch in place, her body becoming transparent, and then she wasn’t in the bubble anymore but a few meters away, safe and taking deep breaths.
Then she shouted and, for the first time, Isse heard what she said:
[My Sisters Were Always By My Side]
The air around her distorted as if trying to escape. She heard shouting and whooping for a moment. Then, three arachne appeared by her side.
"What the hell?" she shouted.
They all looked the same as Siidi: green hair cut in a bobby cut, heterochromatic eyes, one red, one green, chestnut colored spider halves just like hers. They would look identical if it wasn’t for their completely different wardrobes.
One of them, the one in the back, was holding a simple wand. Her hair had a single white line going down the middle, as if old age had decided to come sooner and be selective. Another one was holding what looked like a violin, a small golden monocle on her right eye. The third, and final, sister, held a short sword and, all over her body, were strapped what looked like hundreds of knives.
"Unexpected."
Another single-word sentence by Grandmother. Which, for some reason, made her even angrier.
A small part of her was beginning to wonder if there was more to this anger. It was completely unlike her to be like this. There was something unnatural about it.
Yet she didn’t really care. She only cared about seeing Siidi suffer. She wanted to look her in the eyes when someone finally managed to plant a fucking sword in her throat and swung down, putting and end to this useless show. It was Isse or Siidi. There was no other way about this.
They fought valiantly. The four of them managed to keep at bay an army of ever-increasing soldiers, killing hundreds.
The [Mage], because that’s clearly what white-stripe was, sent massive waves of fire and other elements against the enemy lines, killing or crippling hundreds every time. Meanwhile, the girl with the violin played a strange, slow, melody that, she realized, had the same speed of a clock’s seconds hand. Every fifteen seconds she reached the end of the short song, and every time a ripple went through the army and took down dozens of soldiers, their bodies rapidly decaying and turning to dust, their weapons rusting and breaking.
Meanwhile, Knife Woman was like a whirlwind of blades, moving with the speed of an actual tornado and throwing blades at every enemy she could see. And, when her seemingly endless supply of knives ended, she activated some kind of Skill that let her take the weapons of her adversaries and throw them.
It was a massacre.
But it was futile.
Slowly, they began losing ground.
And then, Knife Girl made a mistake.
She turned her back to a short man who’d had his own sword thrown in his chest, thinking him dead, but the man managed, somehow, to lift himself from the ground and throw himself bodily at her. The arachne noticed him but, for once, was too slow, and he tackled her to the ground. Moments later, she died screaming, practically turned into a pincushion. She still managed to take a few other people down with herself, but, again, it didn’t matter.
Slowly, they all died.
And Siidi kept fighting.
She was no longer smiling. She looked angry. And lost. She could hear her sisters, her actual blood sisters, die, but in the throng of bodies she couldn’t see them. She couldn’t be there for them to hear them breath the last time, or even to help prevent their death.
She remembered.
It had been like this the last time too. The four of them, resisting to give their sisters enough time to escape. There were hundreds of them: Hunters. All with the sole purpose of killing them. All with that damned Law to empower them. If it wasn’t for the Gods’ meddling, the arachne would’ve never lost.
She screamed, and fought. There was desperation, anger, sadness, loss, and much more in that scream. She had lost them again...
How could she have forgotten? She had called them here, only to let them die again. She didn’t have the right to ask them something like that.
She had forgotten that this was just a Trial. That those hadn’t been her sisters. Not really. But it felt real to her, and that’s what mattered.
She fought, sword and tooth and nail and silk.
When they finally managed to get her down for the final blow, she looked up… and saw Isse. Staring right at her, with that small smile of victory on her face. Grandmother sat behind her, her face as unreadable as ever.
Then a Hunter pierced her heart.
And all went dark.
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When Issekina woke up, they were back in the white field.
She smiled and chittered in victory.
And then froze as she heard the Voice again.
I hate you so much. I. HATE. YOU. IHATEYOUIHATEYOUIHATEYOUIHATEHATEHATEHATEHATEYOU!
And then silence.
That is, until Grandmother spoke.
"You have both failed. You will come back in seven more days. You are dismissed."
What? Failed? How?
Grandmother seemed to read those questions, because she added: "You are still divided."
Well, good fucking luck fixing that part you old hag! shouted Siidi in anger.
For once, Isse agreed wholeheartedly.
"I said you were dismissed. Makira, get them out of my sight."
And then, they were walking away. Makira said nothing as they left. She didn’t completely understand what was happening. She had suspicions, but that amounted to nothing in her experience.
She just hoped that Grandmother would find a way to help Issekina.