I’m going to ask a stupid question: have you ever been anxious?
Yes, I know, as I said, pretty stupid question: of course the answer is yes. And if anyone else dares state that they never felt that sensation I won’t believe them. Or I will attempt to out them as demons from Hell or aliens come to invade earth after seeing how fucked up humanity is because of the two world wars.
Anyways! Isse was anxious. Extremely anxious. Butterflies-wrenching-your-guts-into-new shapes anxious. And seeing how she was an arachne there was a lot down there for that purpose.
She stared up at the walls around [Lady] Serafia’s home, then upwards still some more, at the night sky, at the glimmering stars that looked down at her, cheering her on and judging her every action. The moon… wasn’t full. It was waning, its form just a little wedge of white in the otherwise total darkness between stars.
As she looked up, she noticed that one of them seemed extremely close to the moon, nearly touching it, noticeable now only because of how little light the moon was shedding upon the lands of the living.
She shook her head: the sky was unimportant now. What mattered was the wall in front of her and the Ward Spells that were there to keep anyone uninvited out.
Her dress of Shifting Silk clung to her figure and turned the same color as the walls she was facing, hiding her head underneath a cowl of pure darkness, the sensation not unlike a tight yet gentle and kind hug that left her feeling a bit more relaxed. Every little thing helped.
Are you ready?
Isse took a very deep breath, feeling the lungs of both her human and spider half fill up more and more, her body raising from the ground with how much she was breathing in, before she let it all out in one, silent, long, huff.
She wasn’t ready. She probably wouldn’t feel ready for many months more. But she had to do this, if only in the memory of all her sisters. This was, after all, her first true step to avenging them.
I’m ready.
She activated her [Mana Sight] and watched as the world was filled with threads of all the colors she could imagine and more.
Carefully, slowly, she picked out of her sight the threads she didn’t need, the connections between people all over the city, the random [Message] Spells being flung around like a ball between kids in a backyard, all of it, until all that was left were the walls and their enchantments.
No backing away now, she thought.
I’ll be watching your back.
She smiled at that, feeling genuine warmth in her chest: Thank you, sister.
In her mind, she felt Siidi smile, before she turned and started looking at the world around Isse.
She looked at the many threads woven through the bricks and mortar, saw their patterns and the barbs sewn into them together with the many, many, bells. A single wrong movement and she would’ve caused an alarm to sound and, if she was unlucky, one or more of the defensive Spells would’ve probably shot her dead.
So she did the most logical thing imaginable: she reached out with her hand and placed it on the wall, and then reached deeper, an afterimage forming in her sight as a spectral hand reached out and touched a point in the spell’s weave that wasn’t barbed or alarmed. It still felt as if she’d just touched a live wire, but the sensation was nearly… pleasant.
She felt the mana flow inside her and hastily dove deeper into the spellwork, leaving behind her body to stand there in the dark with Siidi to keep guard.
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What does a defensive spell, like [Ward] and [Alarm] and the likes, look?
The answer is: it depends. On the caster, on the people or place it is cast on, on what the world’s mood is that day, on what was eaten by the caster that morning and, sometimes, on how long it’s been since he or she last bedded someone. That’s a lot of factors, yes, but since nobody in this world has the ability to look at a Spell from the inside anymore it doesn’t matter. Actually, nobody in the world knows that’s a thing that can be done, which is stupid, because one wouldn’t even need to be a soul mage to do it: all that’s needed is to change one’s perspective and all would be revealed.
Isse was still relatively new to the concept of working with a Spell of any kind from the inside. She’d done it exactly three times: twice with Grandmother, and that one time with Albert, when she’d looked through the fog hiding his true Classes. Or one of them, at least.
Her idea of what a Spell could look like, as you can imagine, was very limited.
So, when she’d entered inside the spellweave itself, she had expected the usual wintery forest or something small like that foggy lake.
What she hadn’t expected was a fortress…
In a wintery forest.
“Well, at least they’re consistent,” she said loudly after a while of just staring up at the giant walls covered in snow and ice.
“Wasn’t expecting to see the Wall from Game of Thrones.”
The fortress was, as already stated, enormous. But not enormous in the sense that it was big to the point of impracticality, making it impossible to carefully guard the walls. No, on that front it was quite small, probably… actually, probably no bigger than the actual villa. No, it was big in the sense that the walls were so high she was forced to step back a bit and crane her neck up to the point where she was certain it would hurt if she stayed like that for a minute.
She couldn’t see a way in and, up on the top of the walls, she could clearly see (Death be blessed for the arachne’s sharp senses) guards standing stock still and looking down to spot any possible enemy attempting (foolishly) to scale the walls.
“Well, fuck!”
She didn’t know exactly what she would have to do with the Spell, but she guessed that, whatever it was, it would be inside the fortress.
“But how do I get in?”
That, ladies and gentlemen, was the question every single [Spy] in the history of ever had always asked themselves when attempting to get into somewhere they weren’t meant to go in. Truly, today was a day Isse would need to remember, maybe put in a calendar and celebrate it every year. Stars knew most [Spies] did just that because ‘The first time is always special’.
At the moment though, like all the people who’d come before her, Isse wasn’t thinking about today being a special day. She was thinking of a way to enter inside a fortress that would probably be able to repel an army of arachne.
And, truth be told, it had. Once upon a time, exactly where the city of Scasce now stood, there had been a fortress built by the Hunters with the express purpose of being a stepping stone for a possible advance into the spiderfolk’s territory. The place had been razed to the ground eventually, naturally, officially signaling the day the arachne had conquered the whole of Irevia, but it had taken them the beauty of three years and the help of the [Sea Shaper], one of the arachne’s World Shapers.
The various Spells that protected the [Lady]’s villa had been cast with such care, precision and power that they’d decided to take the shape of something that had been made in the same way. And then, since they had been made to protect a place that was close to winter, they had added the snowy forest.
Looking up, then down because her neck was beginning to hurt, Isse thought about it.
Then she looked down at her dress of Shifting Silk, which had followed her in this projection, and had an idea.
Concentrating, she willed her clothes’ colors to change, making them white as the snow on the ground, and at the same time gray as the walls from the right angles, making sure they would allow her to mimetize.
Then she began climbing.
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The plan failed spectacularly.
Halfway up the wall, the temperature dropped so much that she felt her teeth begin to chatter uncontrollably, making steady clicking sounds that reminded her of those toy dentures that click-clacked when you charged them up.
It’s all in your head, all in your head! The cold isn’t really there, she told herself. But gods dammit did it feel real. That was the problem with soul magic: everything you did involved your soul as well as the thing you were working with. Which made everything feel real.
Then her spidery feet, which had been able to carry her weight up until then, finding footholds everywhere she needed, slipped from underneath her.
One moment she was standing perpendicular to the wall, the next she was sliding down and gaining speed at an astonishing rate, panicking inside and outside as she screamed out.
Then her feet found purchase on the hard stone again and she stopped, her momentum causing her human half to bend backwards, her elastic spine creaking a bit under the stress she’d put it in.
Breathing heavily, she put a hand to her chest and could hear the dual pounding of her hearts through her skin and in her ears. This had not been fun. At all. Siidi would’ve probably disagreed, but Siidi was also insane, so that didn’t matter.
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“Hey, you! What are you doing there?” someone shouted.
Her hearts, which had been beating wildly, stopped for a moment as her face paled and she turned around towards the source of the voice.
There, standing in the snow, their sharp eyes on her, was a garrison of ten guardsmen, all wearing steel armor with decorations of snowflakes, swords at their side.
Seeing how she took too much time to answer, one of them looked her up and down, and said the one, most alarming, thing a [Spy] could ever hear: “You’re not one of us. Wrong clothes, wrong face. I don’t know how you’re here, but you’re an intruder.”
He turned towards one of his companions and, as a unit, they turned around and began running towards, she supposed, the main gates.
It took Isse all of two seconds to understand she’d fucked up and to begin scrambling at speed after the group, swearing all the while in such a manner that Grandmother would’ve probably cuffed her, and she wasn’t someone who was quick to violence.
Raising a finger she took aim and intoned her only attack Skill: [Colorful Water Arrow].
The Spell shot out towards one of the running figures and… penetrated the armor, going from one side to the other with the same ease of a warm knife through butter. Stupefied she stared first at the fallen guard, then at her pointed finger as if it had suddenly become the most powerful weapon in the world. She hadn’t actually expected the Spell to work so well.
The problem was, there were still a dozen men left who first looked at their fallen companion, then up at her, before they started screaming and attacking her. A complex operation indeed since she was still clinging to the wall and very much out of reach of their weapons. It was nearly silly.
Siidi, would you like to do some target practice?
Eh?
Just come here.
But I’m supposed to be looking at the outside in case someone comes close.
Nobody’s going to come, trust me. Just come here! You’re going to like it!
A moment later Siidi appeared on the wall beside her. For a moment she stumbled downwards, her feet not quite connecting with the wall, gravity attempting to exact its price and failing miserably because of Isse, who was there to help steady her soul half.
When all was settled she looked down and, after her brain registered what was happening below, couldn’t contain herself and started laughing, a deep belly laugh filled with mirth and satisfaction.
“Oh, sister, this is the best thing I’ve seen in my life. It’s like watching a dwarf children trying to get to a cookie jar on an arachne’s highest ledge.”
Isse failed to stifle a chuckle at the mental image, then did a complete one-eighty as she realized what had just been said.
“Wait, that seems awfully specific.”
Siidi nodded, a gentle, fond, smile on her face: “It is, yes? I just remembered yesterday, thanks to my Skill. They were our friends, the dwarves. Our only friends.”
She chuckled: “The world’s forgotten, probably, which is for the better for the dwarves, but the saying ‘Even a dwarf couldn’t befriend that’ comes from that.”
She shook her head: “Sadly I lived my whole life on Irevia, so I never got to meet one other than the rare ones who betrayed Mountainhome and joined the Hunters.
“Anyways, I imagine you want me to get rid of this bunch, eh?”
Isse stared at her soul half with wide eyes: “You can’t change subject like that after dropping such a bomb. I want more information!”
Siidi shrugged: “You won’t get more, because I don’t have more. Can’t remember.”
The once-human girl sighed despondently. Damned memory loss! She wanted lore!!!
“Well, sure then, let’s keep it at that. But yes, I’d like you to get rid of them. They die rather easily apparently, so go nuts. I’ll give you aerial support.”
Siidi looked incredulously at her soul half: “You mean I can do anything?”
“Anything at all!”
“...Is today my birthday?”
“...Do you want it to be?”
“Technically we were both reborn on the same day, so let’s keep it that. Makes making presents way easier.”
“Agreed.”
“Welp, I’m going! [Soul: Armor of Kindness], [Soul: Improvised Weapon] and [Soul: Enlarge Weapon]!”
As she said those words a blue leather jacket that was very familiar to Isse appeared on Siidi’s shoulders, clinging perfectly to her body, not hindering her movements and, she could feel, protecting her as well if not even better than any mail or steel armor ever could, for it was forged out of kindness taken from a memory of joy.
Then, in her hand, of all things, appeared a giant fountain pen as big as her arm, the point of it appearing very pointy and sharp.
“The fuck?”
Siidi turned to her, raising an eyebrow, then she lit up: “Oh right! You never saw me use these Skills! I got them a while back, the first time you and I were separated in Grandmother’s soul.”
And then she turned back to the still-failing-to-attack guards below and jumped.
It would be wrong to say it was a bloodbath, but only because the guards were incapable of bleeding.
If one were to describe it in a few words? It was like looking at a violent reenactment of ‘The Nutcracker’. Which dance? Isse couldn’t tell. Maybe ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’, but then again, there was only one dancer, while the fighters were just mere marionettes who’d probably never fought a day of their life, their movements big and exaggerated, their parries wobbly and leaving more openings for attacks than anything else. And all the while Siidi seemed to dance between their blows, dodging and parrying, twirling and bending her body into shapes one wouldn’t believe possible for a species so bulky in their lower half. Oh how Isse wished she had an instrument to play right now.
When, finally, Siidi was finished, she was surrounded by snow-filled armor, the bodies already dissolving, she looked up and was welcomed with applause. This spectacular massacre had been… indescribably beautiful.
“Didn’t you say you would be giving me aerial support?”
Isse had the decency to blush: “You didn’t seem to need it.”
Siidi’s smile became slightly bigger: “Damn right I didn’t! I’M THE BEST!”
Her words echoed around them, into the forest and up the fortress walls, disappearing into nothingness.
Then Isse felt the hair all over her body stand on end as she felt an enormous charge of something moving towards them.
Without thinking she threw herself onto her soul half from the wall, tackling her to the ground and, together, forming a giant fluffy ball as they rolled away. A second later lightning blasted their previous positions as, from the top of the walls, guards shouted and began adjusting their aim.
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“Madame. Sir. We have a problem.”
[Lady] Serafia and her husband, [Lord] Gaius Flich de Bois, had, up to that point, been sleeping in their bed, thoroughly exhausted from a vigorous session of lovemaking followed by quite a lot of cuddling. The madame was especially fond of the cuddling actually.
Anyways, they were woken up by a worried Gregory standing at the foot of their bed. How could they tell he was worried if his face remained the same? Simply put, because they knew him, and they could see the slight frown of his brows which was all the concession to showing worry he allowed himself.
Serafia activated one of her Skills, [Fresh as a Wintry Morning], and felt her mind step into gear instantly, while her husband did more or less the same, only using brute force (a few slaps to the cheeks).
“What’s wrong Gregory?”
“The defensive Spells, madame. They activated… without the ward Spells sounding the alarm.”
Serafia blinked exactly thrice at the news, her mind trying to grapple with the news: “Do you mean to say they misfired?”
Gregory shook his head: “Had it happened only once I would’ve chalked it up to a misfire and called an [Enchanter] instantly, but no: it has happened multiple times already. The defensive Spells have fired, so far, six times, following a specific path around the external walls. [Scrying] Spells were deployed on the locations but nothing and no one has been seen. Patrols are already en-route.”
The [Lord] nodded, cracking his knuckles.
“Very well. Let’s go see what’s wrong.”
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Messing around with a Spell’s weave could, and would most of the time, unless you were the caster, lead to more or less catastrophic backfiring.
That was exactly what had happened with Isse.
The moment she had allowed Siidi to kill that patrol of guards a single, thin, thread in the spellweave of the wards and defenses of the mansion had snapped, causing a chain reaction which had resulted in their current predicament of needing to run for their lives while lightning blasts and rays of frost rained around them, missing most of the time but, sometimes, managing to land some lucky hits, and they hurt like a bitch.
“What the fuck’s happening? Why did they suddenly start shooting us?” asked Siidi.
“Have you considered that maybe it was you screaming!?” shouted back Isse.
It had not been, in fact, the screaming.
Still, things could be worse. For one, the spells that were targeting them weren’t going after their actual body out in the Waking World. Instead they were following their path around the fortress, even outside of the spellweave, which was what was causing so much confusion to the whole family inside the villa.
To top it off, they managed to even pass unobserved to the [Scrying] Spells that were sweeping the whole area around the estate grounds, all thanks to a combination of Isse’s Skills: [Reduce Presence] and [Conceal Mana Signature]. For the moment, thanks to the dark dress and those Skills, they were practically invisible. It would take a [Guard] bumping into their body to get them found out.
And still they ran, causing much consternation outside and much screaming from the top of the fortress’ walls as the guards aimed for them, the intruders who had dared damage the spellweave of this old work of art, the bastards who didn’t even know what they were doing and, in their ignorance, were bringing nothing more than trouble.
The two arachne ran and turned a sharp corner, a spell missing them by no more than an inch, landing in the snow behind them and scorching the ground underneath.
A door appeared in front of them, sticking out slightly from the wall. An unguarded door.
“Let’s get in!”
“Are you mad?” asked Siidi.
“What, you think they’re going to shoot those inside, where they could hit their own? We already saw you can deal with the guards, and if I can get enough time to think I can find a way to deal with the Spells.”
Siidi opened her mouth to say something, but was stopped by the door opening and a dog walking out. A dog with white horns.
The dog turned towards them and sat down on the ground, his eyes staring.
They stopped, not even noticing the rain of Spells stopping.
“Hello again young arachne. It is truly a pleasure to finally meet you in the thought, Siidi.”
The dog spoke.
And they both finally recognized him, shouting: “Kaminskyi!”
The dog nodded, only now he looked like a gnome with a well groomed beard sitting in the snow cross legged, his chin in his left hand, his eyes clearly disapproving.
“You shouldn’t have killed those guards. You damaged the Spell, and now it’s trying to damage you back.”
Ah, they both thought, their mouths opening, then closing in sync.
“We didn’t know,” said Isse in the end.
The domovoi shook his head: “Come in. I’ll show you a trick for that magic of yours, young arachne. Do with the knowledge what you will afterwards.”
They walked into the fortress.
And outside, Gregory and the whole of the staff and [Guards] of the villa wondered what in Airm had happened.