The day when Desina’s punishment was executed and the little ones were named, Grandmother decided not to give Isse her afternoon lesson. She told her to relax and take some time off instead. Not that the little arachne complained: she was, as any good student, always willing to accept some reprieve from lessons. Even ones where she learned how to bend reality to her every whim.
She spent the afternoon playing in the playground with her sisters while the younger spiderlings were a general nuisance to everyone. No, like, really, Isse couldn’t believe it hadn’t even been two months since she’d been born, and how much everyone had changed since then. The little arachne were stealthy in the way only children could be, moving around like Level 40 [Rogues] with decades of experience, and therefore managing to jumpscare their older siblings more times than anyone was comfortable or willing to admit.
Luckily for, well, everyone, Makira returned out of the blue with her usual smile.
She’d just walked into the clearing, seen the chaos, looked back wistfully, as if already missing the calm from outside, then slapped her hands together and somehow managed to convince every single newborn to join her into making what was probably the biggest game ever of cat’s cradle.
That woman must have some kind of Skill, thought Isse.
Probably. She’s also just very good with kids, agreed Siidi.
That night the clearing where they slept was a lot more filled than usual. The [Carers] had thought about expanding it or making a new one, but in the end they’d all agreed it would be too much work when they already had the space. Plus, the older newborns, as they liked to call them, would understand what it felt like to be the big sisters they would one day be. A win win for everyone!
So it was that Isse found herself hugging Anda and being hugged by the spiderling who’d woken her up that morning by sitting on her. From what one of the [Carers] had told her, the girl’s name was Silfaria. She’d also said that Makira had already started calling her with the nickname Sila. She could somehow remember the names of every single arachne in the whole forest. And no, it wasn’t a Skill.
So here she was, falling asleep while sandwiched between two of her sisters, warm and calm and happier than she could remember ever being all her life, even back on earth. There was just something… right, about being like this. About being loved and loving right back without any subterfuge or ulterior motive.
This was something she truly loved about the race she was now part of: no matter what, they were always together. There was no infighting, no wars among themselves. They weren’t like humans, and in particular they weren’t like humans back on earth. There, nothing and no one could truly be trusted, except for your parents, and you heard stories about how some of them treated their children. You were born in a cruel world that never gave you anything for nothing, while expecting everything in return, sometimes, again, for nothing.
And people wondered why the numbers of suicides were so high.
Isse wasn’t sure, in her sleepiness, whose thought that had been, hers or Siidi’s, but it didn’t really matter, for they were one.
Anyways, it was a bleak way of seeing life, but she’d been here for over a month and, apart from the not-quite-gone-over trauma of Grandmother locking away her memories and making her believe she was going to forget everything, life had been good. No, great! She’d had time to go over her past life now, and come to the conclusion that, really, it wasn’t worth even trying to go back. There was nothing there she couldn’t get here. Well, nothing except for a phone. She’d lost count of how many times she’s wanted to scroll down a Yutub page.
With that small desire in the back of her mind, she drifted off in the land of dreams, ready to have a chat with Siidi in her mind castle.
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Alice twisted and turned in bed, unwilling to leave the comfortable warmth of the covers and the comfort of the Dream. She’d just woken up from effectively suffocating to death because of a poison she’d made and subsequently drunk in the Land of Dreams in an attempt to convince herself it was, indeed, poison, all to kill a giant centipede Nightmare that sometimes looked like a man wearing a cool hat.
She wondered what Herman or Averick would tell her if she told them what she’d been through. The former would probably look at her as if she’d drunk down the Greater Potion of Sleep with a good helping of strong alcohol, while the latter would just pat her on the shoulder and say he was happy she’d finally stopped being grumpy.
In the end, she managed to get her ass up and off the bed. This was a work day, after all, and she didn’t care that Herman had told her not to worry about it. He’d said he was sure the potion would knock her out for the night, possibly the entire day. But she felt too energized to stay in bed. At least, she was now that she’d gotten up.
She walked towards the kitchen, and that’s when she felt it: there was something in the pocket of the trousers she’d fallen asleep in. Her eyebrows slowly reached for her hairline as she put her hand in and touched something warm and smooth, like a river pebble left forgotten for too long in a pocket. She took it in her hand and, ever so slowly, as if she were handling a bottle of her dangerous acid, took it out.
And right there, in her hand, was the seed Wax had given her.
How is this possible? It was all in a dream.
And yet here she was, holding the seed made out of… something Wax had given up. Warm as sunlight on a mild spring day. A warmth that came from inside, from an invisible source. Like a little piece of starlight held in her hand.
… Not the strangest thing that’s happened to me in the last few hours.
She smiled, then gently placed the seed on her bedtime table. She knew a good place to plant it.
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The day passed without a hitch. She worked with Herman on a few orders, the gruff bearkin telling her the whole time she should leave, ‘less she mess up one of the potion recipes and end up burning through a cauldron or, worse, an alembic. But nothing like that happened, and in the end the beastkin practically threw her out of the shop saying something on the line of ‘You’re the only person I know who could stay awake after taking that potion.’
The whole day she couldn’t stop smiling. And when she finally met Averick, he actually told her he was happy she was no longer grumpy, making her laugh so hard she doubled over, attracting a lot of strange looks on the street. But that was normal: she was, after all, the strange girl of the town. The girl who’d forgotten everything about the world, yet somehow knew how to do alchemy.
She spent the evening eating and drinking at a tavern with her [Runner] friend, managing to imbibe an impressive amount of alcohol and still walk straight, although her cheeks were red as not-quite-mature tomatoes.
Before she knew it, she was back home, changing into her nightie, ready to go to bed and use what was probably her new favorite Skill: [Fall Asleep].
This time, she wasn’t lucky enough to be in bed.
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The first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was the Dream’s strange sky perpetually locked in sunset, sun and moon looking at each other from opposing sides of the horizon.
The first thing she felt was the soft grass under her body. So soft in fact that she wondered if she could actually fall asleep in the Dream and if it wouldn’t kill her.
The second thing she saw was Albert staring right at her, covering the view of the sky.
The second thing she felt was something probably made of wood hit her in the head hard enough to make her see stars and for tears to form in the corners of her eyes.
“Next time you decide to suicide poison a child’s Nightmare, tell me in advance, or I swear on Soma I will bind you to a chair and tell the kits to do whatever they want to you.”
She snickered: “No! Please, anything but that!” she fake pleaded.
Albert sighed, then chuckled: “I never saw someone choose to die so easily, even in the Dream. It must’ve been painful.”
Oh, it had been. A lot. Feeling her muscles constrict, being unable to breath because her own diaphragm couldn’t move, slowly yet rapidly suffocating. It had been one of the worst experiences in her life. And she had loved it.
She still remembered the endless hours spent in the labs, training to become a pharmacist, how, during all those hours, she had worked with dangerous, acidic and/or potentially poisonous substances, how her mind kept telling her to test them on herself or someone else, to watch the spectacle of one’s death unfold.
She knew it wasn’t something that happened to most people, or at least she thought nobody got such precise and constant intrusive thoughts.
Oh, how many times she’d thought about taking some of those beautiful foxgloves, or Digitalis Purpurea as was their official name, outside campus, brew a good cup of, as she liked to call it, ‘foxy tea’, and offer it to her teachers or people she disliked, watch their eyes slowly turn yellow as their hearts gave up and they saw monsters in their hallucinations. And, during the rainiest days, when things looked grim, how many times she’d thought of doing the same thing to herself while looking in the mirror as it happened. She’d done it once, actually. Brewed herself a cup and spent a few hours staring at it as it cooled down, her mind going in circles as she wondered what it would feel like. In the end she’d tossed it out of her window and, probably, poisoned a nearby curious squirrel.
It all excited her in a way she couldn’t put into words.
Because of all that, when Albert said those words, she smiled, and her fox mask smiled with her.
“It was worth it. Every single second of it,” she said.
A shiver went down his spine upon hearing this. One could interpret these words in many ways, but he knew all too well that tone of voice. He had heard it from many others in the Dream, people who weren’t completely right in their heads and knew it. They kept themselves in check in the Waking World, but the moment they stepped in the Dream they let go of every chain and rule they put upon themselves. Sometimes they became monsters. Most of the time, they became extremely high Level. He hoped Alice wouldn’t turn into a Leveling Nightmare.
“Well, it worked. How much did you Level from that?”
She smiled excitedly and nodded: “Oh, right, I’m now Level-”
Albert bonked her in the head again with a stick. He really liked doing that.
“Here’s another Rule you should learn, one that applies not only to the Dream, but also the Waking World: never reveal your exact Level and Skills to anyone. It’s information that can be used against you.”
She sighed: “I hate this. Why can nobody be trusted?”
“Because this world is so filled with people rotten to their core that the world itself might as well be a giant zombie left under the sun.”
“Can’t I trust you?” she asked, a bit of hostility worming its way in her voice involuntarily. If Albert heard it, he didn’t care.
“You can choose to trust me. And I can promise I won’t reveal the information. But it’s always a choice you must make,.” his tone had become serious again.
Alice sighed and reined in her nerves before nodding: “I’ve managed to reach Level 10 and am now a [Dream Poisoner]. Got a funny Skill too: [Poison: Enhance Taste]. Because I thought the hemlock poison didn’t taste like much!” she chuckled. Apparently this world’s System had a sense of humor.
Albert nodded: “Very good. Very much so. Now I won’t ever eat anything you make.”
“Oh, come on! I’m not that much… ok, yeah, I can see where the sentiment comes from. But I won’t be poisoning you or the kits anytime soon! Also, I’m pretty sure you could survive anything I give you.”
“Just because I won’t die from falling down a mountain doesn’t mean I should throw myself down.”
“You kidding? If I could I’d do it just to show off! Maybe learn to surf down the place like it’s a wave on the sea? Yeah, that would get me a boyfriend no problem!”
“Or it would scare anyone with a dick in a mile away from you. And probably also those without.”
“Tsk! Clearly you’re just an old fart in the Waking World because that wouldn’t happen.”
“And clearly you like mountains and don’t have any sense of self preservation, but we’d already ascertained that last one.”
They looked at each other, then burst out laughing. And couldn’t stop.
Albert summoned his ‘Bonking Stick’ and used it as a crutch, while Alice fell to the ground after a while. The small clearing around them bloomed to life with flowers of all colors and form, some real, others clearly not so much. The ones around her were mostly poisonous in some form or nature, going from the purples and blacks on Nightshade to the light purples of Wisteria to the reds and oranges of Caladium. Albert, for his part, was surrounded by boring roses and tulips and you all get it.
They stayed like that for a while, surrounded by flowers and laughing, not a care in the world. But, in the end, even such good things had to end. They calmed down, tried to wipe away tears from their eyes, and remembered they wore masks.
“Well, after what you did yesterday, I decided to show you a bit more of the ropes. You’ve got talent there, and I have every intention of developing it. So today will be a private lesson for you. I’ll teach you how to move around the Dream, maybe start on some Reshaping, and we’ll develop your weapons.”
“Speaking of which!” she said, turning her eyes to the ground and spotting the Nightshade immediately. It was a rather hardy plant, growing in the mountains, on rocky terrain and in the shadows of the trees. It was kind of strange seeing it here in a little clearing away from the snow whitened peaks.
The leaves were oval, the margin uninterrupted and quite long. But what interested her right now weren’t those. No, instead she began gathering the deep purple, nearly black fruits.
Atropin and iosciamin my beauties, come to mama.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
Those were the two main active ingredients she was after. They were present in the leaves as well but in much smaller doses.
Now to turn you into paste and get that sweet sweet juice of yours.
She looked around, then remembered one of her new Skills.
“[Tools of the Trade]!”
And immediately, right in front of her, appeared a set of instruments: from a simple mortar and pestle up to an honest to god alembic, it all looked like it had come out of a medieval book about alchemists, but it was in pristine condition, all made from fine ceramic and blown glass, completely sterile and probably easy to wash.
On the side were scalpels and glass pipettes with a rubber bulb at the top that reminded her of a pacifier, alcohol and, strangely enough, a tea set, a roll of cigarette paper and a few rings.
“What are these for?” she asked aloud, taking the latter in her hand. She looked the ornate ring left and right, observed the small ruby (probably fake), poked it, and nearly threw the ring away from her when she felt it move, imagining she had broken some precious jewel even though she’d just thought it was fake.
But the small ruby didn’t fall to the ground. Instead, it revealed an opening in the ring.
“Oh, that must be a poisoner’s ring. You put the poison inside, and when it’s needed you just pop it open and pour it somewhere. Understandable, since you did say you got [Dream Poisoner] as a Class. Although, I don’t really get the tea set.”
Alice looked down at the finely decorated porcelain tea set. And remembered something she’d read once.
“That’s probably an assassin’s teapot. These beauties have two compartments, one for the liquid poison, the other for the tea, and when you pour they mix together and nobody’s any wiser for it!”
And indeed, when she opened the teapot, there was a small wall dividing the ‘chamber’ in two. She looked at the handle and, sure enough, there was a hole on top. She turned the beautiful object around, and there was a second one right in at the base of the handle.
“It’s quite simple. You close the hole on the top, liquid comes out from the left compartment, and vice versa. Or you can leave both open and pour a bit of both. It’s quite ingenious!”
Albert was staring at her the same way a parent looked at a child on christmas morning as they opened their presents and explained exactly what they did: which is to say, he understood close to nothing about it, but he was happy she was happy.
Next Alice checked the rings again. And saw something she really didn’t like.
“This one’s silver,” her voice was mock serious as she looked accusatory at the little ring.
“So?”
“They’re bad for poison. Silver is pure. Metal of the moon, some call it where I’m from. Tarnishes when it encounters something impure, like poison. Whoever made this Skill either doesn’t know what they’re doing or is trying to figure out if I know what I’m doing.”
She threw the ring away. It disappeared before hitting the grass.
And, somewhere far away, in the place between reality and Nothing, the System observed the girl with mild curiosity. It had never heard of what the girl had just said. It knew that silver was pure: in its database it was classified among the
It examined the girl’s statement, running a few simulations, and indeed silver did tarnish when it encountered poisons, but only specific ones. It was nowhere near as efficient a method of detection as the girl implied. Yet, as it looked at the words again, it knew they were true. They were a form of…
The System couldn’t feel emotions, for those had been long since sealed away by Lorma, the Goddess of Love and Desire. It had to be impartial, after all, or the Game wouldn’t be as interesting. Still, if it could, the System would be surprised: for this was the first time in two thousand seven hundred and nineteen years it had witnessed someone believing in something that was classified as
It gave the girl, Alice, some more attention.
“Never heard of that, but I’m not exactly an expert,” said Albert. He didn’t tell Alice, but the air around her had changed. It was more focused, just like her, but, again, it was becoming sort of gray, losing color as sadness wormed its way into her. For a moment there, he thought he could see a figure kneeling in the grass beside the girl. An old woman with a kind smile.
But it was all gone as fast as it had started.
Alice didn’t say anything to that. She just put the small berries she’d taken from the Nightshade inside the mortar and began turning them into paste. When she was done, she looked around at the many instruments in front of her and saw five vials. She took one and, after rummaging around for a while, found a sieve and a funnel. She placed the former inside the latter and began pouring.
“Why five vials?” she asked as she waited for the sieve to do its job.
“Oh, because five is the number of stories,” said Albert matter-of-factly.
“...Run that by me again please.”
Albert’s mask raised an eyebrow questioningly. How could this girl not know? Had she lived under a rock all her life? Had her parents never told her a single goodnight tale? He shrugged. He was curious, but he knew better than to ask.
“Numbers have meaning in this world. Some of them at least. For example, One is the number of Everything. Two is the number of Love. Three is the number of magic and rites. Five is the number of stories. Seven is luck, Eleven is Silence and Thirteen is Misfortune. If you want something in particular to happen, just do things by these numbers or their multiples and they’re more likely to happen.”
Silence. Then: “So, let me get this straight. If I wanted to, say, buy someone’s silence, I’d have to pay them in eleven coins?”
“Or a multiple, like twenty two. But yes, usually it’s just eleven.”
“But why five?”
“Because dreams are stories. Everything we do is a story, because it’s not real as it is in the Waking World. So most of the things we do is in fives.”
“That… doesn’t make sense. But who am I to judge?” she chuckled.
Albert joined her with a laugh of his own.
And not ten minutes later Alice was done with all five of the vials.
“Do you think I’ll be able to use this Skill in the Waking World? It’s so fucking useful!”
“Language Garda,” said Albert. Alice turned around and saw him holding a cup of tea and looking extremely unimpressed.
“You’re only missing a maid outfit and you’d look perfect,” there was a smile in her voice.
“Hmpf, I’ll take that as a compliment. As for your question, you could use it in the Waking World, but I don’t believe you’ll get all these tools. It’s just a low level Skill after all.”
“Oh…” she pouted, then shrugged, “Well, I’ll use it here at least.”
For a moment there she almost added ‘Not like I’ll need it in the real world’, but she stopped. There was nothing inherently bad about just… crafting poisons in her home. She wasn’t going to poison anyone after all. She wasn’t that much of a psychopath.
“Well then, let’s start walking. Our lessons begin now.”
And they started wandering, the clearing around them changing into a long and winding mountain road.
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Ribbit!
Before Isse could open her eyes in her Mind Castle she heard that sound.
Why am I hearing a frog?, she wondered.
She finally opened her eyes… and saw a frog sitting right in front of her.
“Siidi, why is there a frog in my mind?” she asked out loud.
Siidi, ancient [Warrior] of the arachne who had died millenia ago, now turned into a [Mind Curator], stared down at her with her heterochromatic eyes, one green and the other red. Or rather, she stared at the frog.
“He’s not just a frog. That’s Baron Bloodsworth the First, Destroyer of Flies and Savior of our Sleep. He’s the best!”
Isse’s eyebrows shot right into her hairline, then she began laughing.
“Did you seriously call a frog ‘Baron Bloodsworth’?”
“No, it’s Baron Bloodsworth the First, Destroyer of Flies and Savior of our Sleep.”
“Isn’t it a mouthful?”
“Issekina Silksoul is a mouthful,” she pouted, picking up the frog.
“Well, I’m sorry but I didn’t choose my name. As for your… pet, I will not call him by his full name.”
She looked at Siidi and noticed one significantly important detail: she was small. As in, for once, their heads were level, instead of Siidi just towering over her.
“Why are you small?”
“Because of Baron Bloodsworth the First, De-”
“Yes yes, we get it, he has a full name. Why?” Isse interrupted the [Curator].
“Why he has a name? Because he’s the best! And because in his life he killed more annoying flies and mosquitoes than any other frog!” she smiled proudly and nuzzled the frog, which in turn croaked and touched her cheek with his long tongue in what Isse believed was affection.
“No, I mean, why are you small because of the frog?”
“Oh, right. Well, you know how I got this useful Skill, [A Memory a Day: My Past]. Well, this morning I used it, and it reminded me of Baron Bloodsworth the First. Or rather, I remembered playing with him as a child. So I decided to be a child for a while and it feels so good!”
Isse had to admit that eternal youth sounded very attractive.
“So, wanna play?” asked Siidi with a teasing smirk.
Never in her entire previous life had Isse believed playing with frogs could be entertaining.
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“Ok, this should be a mild dream. Probably an adult’s Nightmare,” said Albert while nodding. In one hand he held his bonking stick turned to a walking stick, while he cupped his chin in the other, looking at what seemed to be just a patch of air. But Alice knew better. Or rather, felt better. There was something strange about that patch of air, a shimmer not unlike that of a patch of road under intense sunlight.
“How can you be sure?”
“Because it’s not forming a door, just a small tear in this space. The more powerful the Nightmare, the greater the distortion it causes in the Dream,” he motioned her to follow him as he put his hand inside the strange distortion, pulling at it and revealing an actual opening. Red emanated from it, but Albert didn’t seem to care.
“When it’s this small, it’s either an adult’s nightmare or, well, another thing, but I’m sure it’s-”
They walked into the Nightmare and stopped. The world around them looked like a battlefield filled with soldiers fighting and killing each other with glee, shouting and screaming. And everything was red, as if someone had taken all the blood of the fallen and painted everything in it, from the ground to the sky to the clouds.
Alice stared at this nightmare and wondered, for a moment, if Albert had a tendency to be reductive.
Before she could turn and ask him though he shouted: “ABORT! ABORT! Red Skill Nightmare!!!”
He took her by the collar of her nightie and got them out of the Nightmare faster than she could say ‘What the fuck?’
The last thing she saw before getting out was, in the distance, a boy wearing suspiciously colorful clothes being cut by two soldiers with their swords as a… headless thing wearing armor slowly began walking towards him.
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“Go Baron Bloodsworth!! they shouted in unison.
Baron Bloodsworth, a frog with many talents, was currently playing inside an obstacle course set inside a pool. He was making good progress, and every time he did some interesting trick they gave him flies as a reward.
Isse cataloged what was happening right now among the top ten most fun experiences in her life.
“Anyways, what did you want to do here before we decided to play with Baron Bloodsworth?” asked Siidi, not taking her eyes off her frog.
“Oh, I wanted to try and train my magic in my Mind Castle, but who cares.”
“Agreed.”
Then Baron Bloodsworth did a somersault in the air, passing over a flaming pole, and they clapped in glee, giving him a fly.
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“You know, Garda, if I didn’t know better I’d say you’re the unluckiest person on this planet. Are you from Rhodar?”
“The Continent of Misfortune? No thank you, I’m from Eva.”
“The Halved Continent. Huh, figures.”
“What? Halved?”
“Yeah, you know, ‘cause of the mountains dividing it in half? North for the humans, south for the beastkin with their jungles.”
“Never heard that.”
“...Girl, seriously, where are you from?”
“You’d like to know that!”
Albert stopped walking at his brisk pace, turned towards her, brandished his bonking stick, then saw the smile on her mask.
“Hmmm, you’re learning,” he smiled back.
“I have a good teacher.”
And that’s more or less when the battle began.
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“Oh my god that’s the cutest thing ever!” shouted Isse with enough glee to raise someone’s blood sugar.
She and Siidi were currently dressing Baron Bloodsworth in cute sweaters and hats and the likes, all hand-sewn by them using spider silk. No, they didn’t just summon those from thin air, that would mean taking half the fun away.
Baron Bloodsworth the First was wearing a white long sleeved sweater with a spider-y theme sewn in the back. He was looking very nonplussed and seemed to rather dislike the activity, but the two arachne were giving him many flies so he didn’t resist.
“If making these small decorations wasn’t so difficult it would be even more fun,” fake grumbled Siidi with a smile on her face as she petted her frog’s head.
“Oh, stop being grumpy because I beat you.”
“I am not grumpy!”
“SORE LOSER! SORE LOSER!”
They looked each other in the eyes, and then fell to the ground laughing.
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“I take it back Garfa, you’re cursed!” shouted Albert as they ran as fast as they could, trying to leave the current battle between Whites and Blacks for this particular area of the Dream.
“I’m starting to believe you!” she shouted back, throwing her third bottle of poison towards a Pawn following them with a bladed whip. The glass shattered right into his mask, cutting it apart and then cutting his skin, letting the poison flow inside his bloodstream. A few minutes later, he was on the ground convulsing while the two of them kept running.
“The fuck are these imbeciles doing anyways? Didn’t you say the Dream changes?”
“It’s not about the land as much as the territory. It’s basically a dick measuring contest with actual benefits.”
“That’s the most disturbing thing I’ve heard you say so far!”
Just as she said that, Alice saw something on the ground: a button. It wasn’t special in any way, just a button that had probably fallen from a shirt but, for some reason, it called to her.
Faster than she could think about it, she reached out with one hand towards Albert, grasping at his sleeve, while with her other hand she touched the button.
They disappeared from the battlefield.
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Isse and Siidi were laughing on the ground when, suddenly, the latter stopped and jumped to her feet, her face serious, her body that of the old [Warrior]. Isse saw this, and stopped as well. So sudden. Too sudden.
“Is something wrong?”
Siidi said one word. A word that caused a shiver to run down her spine: “Intruders.”
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In a white clearing hidden in a colorful forest, Grandmother opened her eyes.
One of the strings of her grand web, one of the invisible ones that touched not the physical world but the minds of her children and grandchildren, wrapping their dreams in loving embraces to protect them, was vibrating. Something was wrong.
Someone had surpassed her wards and defenses, managing to enter the mind of… Issekina.
Have they already begun to hunt us? she wondered. No, she couldn’t allow that.
She closed her eyes again, allowing her mind to expand and contract in ways that only a [Dreamer] of old times could understand and began climbing the string that touched Issekina.
A white spider, small as a whisper and grand as a mountain, terrifying and beautiful, skittered towards her prey.
And stopped when she saw a button hanging on the string for dear life.
It was so unexpected that Grandmother’s physical body opened its mouth in surprise.
A… button?
Then she made the connection.
Button man? Is this your doing?
She didn’t hear an answer. But she backed up. It was definitely him. He had done something, changed things. She would let them play out. Because she trusted him with her own life.
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“Yep Albert, I’m cursed,” said Alice very matter of factly as she looked in the face of a very angry and probably very knife-happy arachne.