It had been a week since Isse had gotten her first Class: [Soul Mage]. It was, as Siidi had said, basic, just black, but that was normal, seeing how she was only Level 4.
Deep inside her, Isse was a bit miffed. After all the ordeals she’d been through all she’d gotten was four Levels in a basic Class. Not something rare, nothing overpowered like most people in other Isekais got. Just… basic.
Sure, apparently she had an green Skill, which was graded uncommon, but that was all.
She had, at the moment, forgotten about her two other Skills: [Poison Immunity] and [Disease Immunity]. The ones she’d been given when she’d appeared in this world at the beginning of all this.
She was also forgetting that, among her sisters, she was practically the only one who’s managed to get a Class other than [Student]. She hadn’t gotten that one, probably because she’d spent years in schools and, before becoming bedbound, had been in high school. These lessons were somewhat new, but nothing as complex as studying trigonometry or einstenian physics. Or geometry. God she hated that subject.
She woke up, as they all did every morning, to a song being played… somewhere around them. She’d yet to meet any of the musicians. Once, after she’d managed to finally learn to speak, she’d asked Makira about them, but for once she’d only smiled secretively and winked, before scuttling on to another task.
Good morning, came Siidi’s voice.
Good morning. There was a yawn in her mind as she said those words.
Then she cuddled back against Anda and desired she could sleep some more. She was not ready to start another day. Sure, today there weren’t any classes, and they’d probably be spending most of their time playing or trying to learn something from the [Carers] about hunting or weaving or the likes. But that was tiring! She wanted to sleep more!!!
“Wakey wakey little spiderlings!” came Makira’s voice from the center of the clearing as she did every morning. And, like every morning, Isse wondered how the woman could possibly sound so energetic at such a time of day.
Well, truth be told, she thought the woman sounded too energetic at every moment of the day, from morning to night. She was filled with an endless energy.
Slowly, all the little arachne began rising out of their sleeping locations, be them the ground, a hammock or a hanging branch.
Isse still remembered the first days of those sisters waking up upside down and not knowing how to come down without falling. They had had some fun watching them struggle to bend themselves one way or another in an attempt to find any sort of handhold. She’d discovered, not long after, that it was some kind of hazing ritual to let them find out the hard way how to get down. After having their fun, the Carers had began putting down webs that acted as some sort of trampoline to help them get down easily.
She and Anda climbed down and happily followed Makira out of the sleeping area, towards the ‘Mess Hall’, as they’d come to call it. Yes, because now Anda, too, had began to talk. She still prefered to express herself through lots of bodily contact and hissing, but when needed she would talk. Her voice was small and clear, like little bells working together to form every word carefully.
Most of the other children were more or less the same, with a few exceptions being Catgirl and The Red Menace (the girl she’d beaten at Queen of the Tree), who were as talkative, if not more, than Isse.
As they got there, Makira skittered close: “Hello Isse! How did you sleep? Did…”
“No Makira,” she answered immediately.
The woman visibly deflated, then chuckled: “No as in you didn’t sleep?”
She wiggled her eyebrows, expecting a smile. Instead she got a frown.
“No as in ‘I’m not going to visit Grandmother for lessons’. I’ve had enough of her with those [Trials]. The last one was pure sadism.”
Makira wondered how a newborn arachne could know so many words, even ones like sadism, and, most important of all, know what they meant. She was absolutely certain none of her sisters hadn’t given into their darkest desires for pain anywhere near the spiderlings. Then she shrugged those thoughts off: Isse was a strange girl, and she was one of the Wishers. She was bound to know strange things.
“Look, I know, she was bad. A b-i-t-c-h,” she spelled that word just so the other kids couldn’t learn it. She was completely against foul language being used in their presence.
“But she did it to help you. Granted, it was scary, nightmarish even, I understand and I’m not asking you to forgive her for that. But I’m asking you to give her another chance. Everyone should get one, even old spiders that have more gray fur that brain power.”
She smiled.
And Isse snapped: “Scary? Nightmarish?” she shouted. All the other children turned towards them.
Makira shooed them on: “This is a [Private Conversation] kids, go eat,” the last part of her sentence was eaten by her Skill, which surrounded them in a bubble of silence. As effective, if not more, than a [Silence] Spell.
She turned back towards Isse, ready to keep talking, but the spiderling beat her to it: “You can’t even begin to understand what Grandmother made me and Siidi go through in that last Trial. Stars, even the other two Trials. It was the worst kind of torture I could ever think about. And she did it without even blinking, without apologizing. Nothing. Just something that had to be done! And you come here telling me I should listen to her again?”
“Yes, I am. Because I understand what you went through. I went through it. And now look at me,” she opened her arms wide, showing herself off.
Yeah, that explains why she’s more unstable than a [Fireball] being fed too much mana.
“Siidi says she now understands why you look more unstable than… a [Fireball] with too much mana, whatever that means.”
Makira batted her eyelids a few times in surprise, then laughed: “Oh, it’s been a while since anyone told me that. Good pun Siidi, good pun. But it wasn’t Grandmother who made me… unstable, as you so succintly put it. That’s… collateral damage. The effects of a scar that cannot be covered. Grandmother helped me come back to my senses with her methods. I know how bad they are, I know they can leave you… we don’t need to talk about it.
“Point is, she helped me. And she helped you. And now she wants to help you more. She promised she would be kind this time, and she always keeps her word. Says she learned that from a Dealmaker of some kind, now that I think of it.”
Isse looked at her for a moment, curiosity and suspicion mixing and mingling on her face and in her mind. She wasn’t completely convinced.
“Let’s do it this way,” added Makira, “If she acts up again like she did before, you get to do something to me. A prank, color my fur and hair, make me wear the silliest thing Aru can think to make. Anything. Deal?”
She offered Isse her hand, wiggling her fingers expectantly.
She hesitated for a moment, then, thought: Fuck it!, together with Siidi, and shook her hand.
“Perfect! After lunch I’ll come to get you!”
----------------------------------------
The morning passed, lunch came and went, and now she was following Makira trying her hardest to look like she’d rather be anywhere but here.
“Don’t make that face Isse, it doesn’t suit you,” she said with a light chuckle. Not for the first time, Isse and Siidi desired to know the secret to her eternal happiness. She never ceased to smile, always had something funny to say and could probably make the dead laugh if she put some effort to it.
“I still don’t trust that she won’t be as bad as before.”
She huffed and crossed her arms, looking like a little girl ready to throw a tantrum. Truth be told, since she’d come to this world, Issekina had began to actually act a little more like a child. Especially after the third and last Trial, where she and Siidi had managed to ‘become one’, as Grandmother put it.
She didn’t know why. Truth be told, she hadn’t even noticed. It came naturally. Siidi, on the other hand, could’ve told her it was a collateral damage from the Trial, a scar, as Makira would put it, that came from the wound that had been her mind bleeding memories away, the only thing keeping it all together being that one memory from her childhood of her climbing a tree.
And here she was, an adult and a child at the same time, the teen from that hospital and the girl on the tree. And, ever so slowly, the girl was trying to take the teen’s place, to cover up the time lost with something happy. A basic coping mechanism: ignore the problem until you manage to stop caring. But never forget.
They reached the clearing where Grandmother apparently spent all her time.
Only, this time, it wasn’t just a place filled with white spidersilk.
No, instead, right in front of the overgrown arachne, stood a small table, carved out of white wood that reminded her of birch. A little tea set of two cups and a teapot, accompanied by a small plate of what looked like chocolate chip cookies.
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“Well little one, the time has come for me to leave you in the clutches of the evil Grandmother!”
She turned towards the elder arachne and shouted: “Please Mum, go easy on her or I will regret it!”
Then she turned around and scuttled away.
Grandmother looked distinctly unimpressed, but since that was her default expression Isse couldn’t tell what was actually passing through her head.
She slowly walked towards the old arachne and sat down on the ground on the other side of the table, in front of a tea cup. It was made to look like a tulip but, other than that, there were no decorations whatsoever. It was, obviously, as white as snow.
“You really like white, eh? You’re probably a winter person as well.”
Her tone was half joking, but the moment she mentioned the word ‘winter’ a smile appeared on Grandmother’s face. Isse was so shocked she just stared at her.
“Yes. Winter is my favourite season.”
For once, there was emotion in her tone. A kind of fondness she remembered hearing in her own grandma’s voice back on earth when she talked about how she and her granpa met. Like she was remembering a long gone lover. Or a very old friend.
She reached towards the teacup and asked: “Do you like tea, little one?”
Isse indeed liked tea. Black tea to be precise. With only one spoonful of sugar, but usually she just drank it without even that. She had standards, and her family had a big tradition for all teas. When other kids her age still ate milk and biscuits for breakfast, she knew how to distinguish a common black tea for a green from a chai and knew how to infuse a good blend.
She’d thought it normal, at the time, and had been very surprised when the other children in her class told her they either didn’t like tea or outright didn’t know about it.
She also wasn’t against coffee, but while she liked the taste of a cappuccino or an espresso, she’d long ago found out that the caffeine did little to her.
So she just nodded and let the old arachne pour her a cup of tea.
“You know, this alone is proof that you are a Wisher. I know for sure no one else in the camp teaches you kids about the fine things in life. Tea is so difficult to find, even in caravans. It is not produced here in Irevia, and not much of it is imported.”
Isse looked inside her teacup and, after a moment, took it carefully in her hands, taking in the smell (No ‘lifted-pinky-finger’ idiocy, after all this wasn’t the 19th century and there was no risk of using too much spice for a dish).
It was quite strong, with no hints of delicacy whatsoever. A strong blend then. She sipped, making sure not to burn her tongue, ‘less she be unable to actually taste what she drank, and let the drink stay in her mouth, swishing it around. Eventually, she gulped, and waited between a few beats. Finally, she smiled.
Bitterness had greeted her the moment she’d drank, and the aftertaste left behind a feeling of fibers and leaves. This was the good stuff.
“I didn’t know there was tea in this world.”
There was no need for secrecy here: after all, Grandmother knew already.
“I was expecting there to only be strange and magical plants around, not something as mundane as this,” she continued.
Grandmother nodded, sipping her own tea: “Stories say that a wandering god came to this world when it was still being created and brought with him every single plant from every place he had visited as a gift to settle down here. Maybe one of the worlds was your own.”
A small part of her that wasn’t Siidi wanted to be surprised at the old arachne, at how she seemed unimpressed with the idea of other worlds, entire dimensions, but her more rational mind, with the help of a certain [Curator], reminded her that arachne as a whole had been created by Death himself and had been given knowledge normally reserved to the gods alone by her, so that wasn’t impossible.
“Does it happen often? Wishers, I mean: do they appear often?” she asked.
“No. They are rare. The last two appeared… over a thousand years ago. They always tend to change things radically when they do.”
A thousand years. That… was a lot. She thought about what had happened on earth in the last thousand years, from the two world wars, to the french revolutions, from the colonization race to the thirty years war to the crusades. So much had happened and changed.
“Were you there?”
At that, Grandmother chuckled: “I am old Issekina, but not that old. No, no, not that old at all.”
Silence fell on them as they sipped tea. Isse had to agree with Makira, this wasn’t unpleasant. It was actually relaxing, cathrtic even.
“Why do you call us Wishers?” she finally asked.
“Because you were granted a wish upon coming to this world. Anything you could desire, one thing, it was given to you. Death called it
Isse didn’t remember making a wish though. She… didn’t remember a whole lot about the moment she’d died. Only a sensation of warmth and suffocation. And someone crying.
Wait a moment, let me try something: [Recall Memory], said Siidi.
The moment she uttered the Skill, she remembered: it wasn’t a wish, or rather, she hadn’t been aware she’d been making it. They were just the last thoughts of a dying girl filled with regrets:
I want another chance. One without disease, without the medicines. Just me and life.
The System had heard. And it had granted her those two Skills: [Disease Immunity] and [Poison Immunity].
Which raised the rather scary question of wether those doctors had been helping her with their cures or had been trying to actively kill her.
Nah, it’s probably just a positive interpretation of ‘medicines’. After all, in the right doses, even a medicine can poison you.
Fair.
They sat in silence some more.
And then it was Grandmother’s turn to ask a question: “Tell me, Issekina Silksoul, do you know what Mana is?”
And now the actual lesson begins, sighed Isse internally.
“It’s the soul of the world, right?”
The elder nodded: “I see Siidi gave you an introduction.”
The other half of her soul chuckled as Isse frowned. She’d been hoping to surprise her.
“Indeed, Mana is the soul of the world. It is its blood and nerves. It gives life and is made of life. It can be used to save lives or take them. Watch.”
Grandmother extended a hand towards a small sappling that had managed to grow out of the webs covering the ground. The elder splayed her finger wide, and immediately the little plant began to grow. Slowly, yes, but visibly. Green leaves sprouted from the trunk, extending, looking for sunlight to feed on as a few small flowers appeared.
Then the old woman closed her hand in a tight fist, and immediately the plant began to become gray and wither away into nothingness.
“That is what Mana is capable of. Where there is much of it you will find life. Where there is none, life will begin to die.
“What I did with that sappling cannot be done to most living things: animals, humans, beastkin, they are much too complex and produce a lot more Mana than single tree, so this trick won’t work.”
Isse had heard most of that, but she was still staring open mouthed at where the sappling had been just moments ago.
I like that plant, she thought to herself.
No you didn’t. Stop acting like a dumbass from the books you read.
Hey!
“Mana can be harnessed, changed and reshaped. That is what [Mages] do.
“But they are limited in their art. They choose to bind themselves to ‘schools’ of magic, chain themselves down in an attempt to gain more Levels and power by focusing on single parts instead of observing the whole painting.
“But we are different: [Soul Mages] look at every aspect of magic, understanding it and shaping it to fit our souls. We change the world’s soul to mirror our own. That is our power, what makes us different, what made us powerful and feared. We are elastic, we can change the world around us with the same ease we can change ourselves.”
She smiled slightly, then added: “And, of course, we have a penchant for harvesting and changing other people’s souls, but that is something much too advanced for you little one.”
Isse was, again, left speechless. No prize if you guess about which part.
How could anyone just go and talk about ripping the soul out of someone’s body so nonchalantly? It was wrong on so many levels!
“Now, I Looked at you when you arrived, and first, I want to congratulate you, Siidi. The Class you’ve unlocked has great potential even for an old [Warrior] like you. As for you, Issekina, I see you have gained the Skill [Mana Sight]. Typical. It will allow you to see the flow of Mana around you. Try using it.”
Isse could clearly feel Siidi’s pride swelling at Grandmother’s compliment and, in typical sisterly competition, she wanted some too.
So she whispered the Skill.
And the world around her was filled with color. Not a rainbow, no, it was all the same light blue, filling the clearing with a soft mist that encompassed everything, becoming a lot thicker around Grandmother. So thick, in fact, that she actually couldn’t see the woman, except for her snow white hair.
“Do you see, dear? This is Mana. It’s everywhere, but will concetrate around people and highly magical things, be they items or monsters.”
Isse saw, and it was fascinating. Not beautiful, no, that title went to the Rainbowy Water that had tried to consume her memories and the clearing where the Aru the [Seamstress] worked.
“You have seen. Good. Now, I want you to deactivate the Skill and never again use it.”
Isse did the first part, then stopped dead in her tracks at the second part.
“Why?”
Grandmother looked down at her over her cup of tea, looking for all the world like a disapproving aunt.
“Skills are crutches little one. They help you and make your life easier. They reduce the challenges of life, making it more difficult to Level. They are a reward and a chain to keep us down.
“[Mana Sight] is a useful Skill that most [Mages] get only after they surpass Level 20 or even 30, but what most people don’t remember is that it can be learned and, most important of all, personalized.
“Spells, as I said, are the way we change and reshape Mana, and [Souls Mages] can do that as easily as they can change themselves. But the first step to changing oneself is understand each and every one of your facet, every quality and, especially, defect. What we understand of ourselves is reflected in the way we see Mana in the world. The Skill, in the way it is given by the System, cannot do such a thing. That is why you will not use it.
“Now, [Let Me Show You] how it should be.”
Grandmother pointed a finger at her.
And suddenly the world around her was filled with strings and snowflakes.
Where before she had seen a uniform azure fog, now she saw a tapestry of impossible complexity filled with snoflakes that were seamlessly sewn into it. No matter where she looked, she saw patterns that hurt her brain a little and made her eyes burn and fill with tears, meanings hidden in plain sight upon every tree, every color of the world, every air current and rustling of leaves, every step of a Mimehound and every breath taken by each arachne in this forest.
There was meaning to it all, connections, everything was one in its diversity and uniqueness, like snowflakes tied together like a christmas garland.
Then it was back to normal.
“This is how I see the world little one. This is how I see Mana. This is not how you should see it, naturally. It is only an example.”
Isse stared up at Grandmother.
Then, very deliberately, sipped her tea.
She had a lot to learn, and she wasn’t going to do that with a parched throat.
----------------------------------------
They spent the next ninety minutes exercising as Isse tried to understand how to change the way she saw the world, trying to, as Grandmother put it, “impose her will upon the world”. She did not succeed, but the elder had told her it wasn’t supposed to be easy. It would take time, and at the moment they had a lot of that.
“Oh, and by the way, Issekina, when you leave, do tell Makira that I was, as she so kindly put it, a bitch. Aru does so love it when she is asked to create something to make someone look silly. And she smiles so rarely these days.”
Isse stopped for a moment, then chuckled and nodded in agreement. She didn’t even ask how Grandmother had overheard that conversation: after seeing what she could do with such a simple thing as Mana Sight, she wouldn’t be surprised if she told her she could create a portal to bring her back home.
So it was that, when she left the clearing and met Makira, with her most serious expression and grumpiest tone, she told her these simple words: “Call Aru, you’re getting dressed up.”
The next day, everyone got a good laugh out of her new outfit. Which she refused to take off for an entire week afterwards.