Months earlier
Alice sat down in her bed and sighed happily as she felt the fluffiness of the covers embrace her while the mattress hugged her backside in welcome.
A steaming cup of mint tea sat on the nightstand beside her as she kicked off her furry slippers (she’d found ones similar to those in the [Witches]’ house back in the Mountains) and looked out of her window, where snow was softly falling and blanketing the ground. She would’ve liked the cup to contain hot chocolate, but apparently the [Merchants] didn’t do runs through the mountains during the cold season, and getting the stuff imported via ship was too costly even for her. Ten gold coins for a single chocolate bar the size of her fucking hand? Never!
Damn whoever had decided to monopolize chocolate down there in the jungles south of the Mountains!!!
Still, tea was good enough, and she’d grown the mint herself in her garden. She also supposed that her Skill, [Garden: Increased Hume], was doing its job, whatever it was, since the plants were greener than any mint she’d ever seen back on earth. Or, for the matter, greener than any plant should have any right to be during winter. She’d tried to find out what this mysterious ‘Hume’ was, but no matter where she looked or who she asked, all she got was blank stares and raised eyebrows. For the matter, not even her [Perfect Recall] seemed to be able to dredge up anything from the dark recesses of her mind, so her grandma hadn’t taught her about it.
Well, whatever, so long as it didn’t kill her… she narrowed her eyes at her cup of tea, as if willing the leaves still seeping inside to talk and confirm that they wouldn’t poison her. They did not speak. Luckily.
Someone knocked on the door to her room.
“Come in Av,” she said as she moved to the side a bit, leaving plenty of space for her boyfriend to join her.
Surprisingly, after two months, they were still a thing. Oh, sure, they’d had their own share of arguments about things both serious and not so much. The first few times Alice had ended up breaking down into tears when they finished, hiding in her room, under her covers, fearing that that would be the time when Av would tell her it was over.
Every time, unfailingly, he’d come back, bearing a gift if he’d been in the wrong, or a hug and a smile if she had been the one in the wrong, saying that he forgave her, and trying to resolve the thing in a much more peaceful manner. And now here they were, sitting on a bed and looking out the window, his head on her shoulder, her ear in his hair, ticklish but not overly so.
There they sat, sipping and whispering sweet nothings as they watched the snow fall and marveled at how beautiful it was.
There was something truly breathtaking about being able to see so much snow coming down from the skies. She hadn’t seen anything like it in years now: Earth was becoming too hot for it. She feared that, one day, there would no longer be any snow falling on it and the beautiful white flakes would become a distant legend spoken of with fondness, until it was completely forgotten.
Here though? Here there was no smog in the skies. No factories belched endless plumes of gray into the clouds, no cars burned through liters of oil in their attempt at making life easier for the common man by bringing him anywhere he wanted faster. Truly, this world was a natural paradise, for, if she wanted to find someplace wild, she only needed to look out of her window, instead of needing to go on a long journey to someplace where man had already trudged on and built trails, turning the wild into an attraction. Well, at least in England. Italy still had lots of wild places in the mountains, places where the wolves still roamed. They also had a problem with hogs running around in the streets sometimes, but those were details.
“What are you thinking about?” asked Av from her shoulder. He was quite the cuddly sort, she’d found out.
“About how much I love this world,” she said with a smile in her voice.
Averick chuckled: “You speak as if you weren’t from this world.”
She didn’t freeze in place. That was what bad liars did, and she was a great liar. Instead she just sighed: “You want the truth Av? Sometimes it feels like I don’t.”
Less, these days, but it was still there: a voice in the back of her mind whispering to her that she didn’t belong here. It had appeared after her first visit to the Dream and, since then, had tried to infect her with Impostor Syndrome or something equally as stupid. She never paid it any mind, like she did with all of her impulsive thoughts about murdering people with poison (she was well trained on that front), but it had been an extra annoyance. Now though? With Av by her side and the knowledge that, with her abilities, she’d saved a man on the verge of death, she felt like she truly belonged in this world.
That, and her new ‘job’, if you can call it that. What job? Why, of course, helping people solve their problems with her knowledge. She was, after all, an [Occult Herbalist], and what better use for her Class than to help people in need?
Her charms seemed to actually work and her concoctions made using herbs harvested from her garden were surprisingly effective. For a while she’d theorized that was what Hume meant: something to make herbs generally better. She’d had to discard that theory when she’d tried to create some poison from foxgloves and, after testing it on multiple rats, saw that it wasn’t more effective than poison crafted using plants from outside her garden.
Maybe it was because I was using rats. Maybe I should use bigger animals.
She paused in her musings, then thought better of it: But then what would I do with the corpses?
Always the practical soul, Alice put the thought of animal experimentation without risk of accusations of animal cruelty (at least, excessive accusations) to the side and instead just enjoyed the falling snow.
“So, are there any events in the near future I should know about? Any festivities? Any more ‘Silken Weeks’?” she asked, her voice soft but, at the same time, surprisingly clear and vibrant. Frowning, she looked down at her cup of tea, squinting her eyes to see if something else had ended up in her drink.
Av took a sip very slowly, because he was a pussy who feared to burn his tongue. Ha! If you didn’t burn your tongue on the last sip of a cup of tea then you hadn’t really enjoyed it!
…Thought a very grumpy Alice who’d burned her tongue the day prior and still couldn’t taste food quite well.
“Well, there’s the Day of Creation. It’s at the end of Zaston, next month. We celebrate the day the Gods created our world and all that lives on it,” his voice, too, came much clearer than normal. What was happening?
Alice hummed, silently thanking Av for not asking her why she didn’t know about it. He knew she had a secret and still respected her decision to keep it to herself.
“Do people give each other gifts?” she asked, swirling her cup of tea and, again, inspecting it for any abnormalities.
“Nope. Well, unless you count donating money to the churches as giving gifts.”
Alice frowned and, for the first time in the last twenty minutes, moved, facing Av: “Wait, so that holiday’s just a way for the churches to rip people off for their money?”
He shrugged: “No? Yes? Yesn’t?” they both chuckled at that last one, “It’s… complicated. Tradition says that you should give money to the god you wish to receive a blessing from, and the more you give the greater the blessing.”
He smiled: “So you can very well imagine how many donations the church of the God of Commerce takes on every year.”
Alice saw nothing to smile about in this practice. It reminded her too much of how the church back home had acted during the Dark Ages, asking money from people in exchange for granting them a ticket to Heaven. Of course, back home, God was dead, killed and buried by humanity and its actions (the best thing they’d ever done, if you asked her), but here? Maybe the gods were real? It was a possibility. One she didn’t care to explore. Stars, she hadn’t even gone to Gunsee’s church since her arrival, and not only because it was small. She cared not for petty beings who believed themselves superior to her just because they’d made her.
Actually, they hadn’t, now that she thought about it. She was from another world! Which meant they had nothing on her. All that had happened to her, all that she’d done, it had all been her and her alone. Ok, maybe not alone, she couldn’t forget about Albert and, most important of all, Averick… she noticed only then that their names all started with As.
The Three As, she thought to herself, Nah, doesn’t sound cool. How about… The Triple A. Yes!
She snorted at her little videogame joke that nobody would get the reference to in this world, causing Av to look up at her from her shoulder.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
She looked back down at him, lying on her shoulder, and in lieu of an answer kissed him on the lips.
When they separated, panting a little for breath, she simply said: “I’ve decided. This year, instead of giving money to stupid churches, we’ll be giving gifts to each other. How do you like the idea?”
A few moments later, he kissed her back, and that was all the answer she needed.
Soon enough their cups of tea lay abandoned on the floor as the room was filled with the noises of their lovemaking.
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The Dream welcomed her like an old friend.
Or so she liked to think.
The eternally setting sun shone gently on her mask as she opened her eyes and found herself in a field near the cave where Albert kept the kits when they weren’t training. Said Albert, who she’d once called ‘Fox Man’, sat on a tree trunk nearby, slowly sipping a glass of wine made from memories. From the perfume that wafted towards her, carrying a whiff of a story being told in an old hotel along a deserted road, she guessed it was the same vintage he’d let her taste way back when she’d first appeared in the Dream.
“Albert, do you ever wake up from the Dream?” she asked him as a greeting as she allowed herself to lay on the ground and feel the soft grass on her back. She willed a pillow to appear under her head and marveled at how real it felt for being something that wasn’t really there.
“As little as possible, Garda.”
That was her name in the Dream. One of the Rules of the Land stated that nobody should ever tell their real name in here. It was an old Rule, created during a time when some [Dreamers] could quite literally kidnap your mind inside the Dream and just… lock you inside, leaving your body behind in the Waking World. What they did with those bodies is a story better not told. Some things deserve to be forgotten.
The Rule remained even now, centuries later, in a time when the practice had disappeared completely (or so she thought), and it was nearly a Tradition. Airm, it probably would have already become one if it wasn’t for the fact that the Land of Dreams was too impermanent, too… less, if that makes sense, to make the existence of things like Memories and Traditions and even Laws possible. Also, the System found it hard to make the Land collaborate most of the time.
“Wait, really? You don’t wake up?” she asked.
Albert shook his head and motioned her close, an empty glass appearing in his hand.
“No, I do have to wake up sometimes, but… there’s not much for me to do in the Waking World,” he chuckled bitterly, “If you can believe it, I used to wake up even less than I do now. So no, let me correct myself, I do have a reason to wake up more nowadays, but she’s very much like me: she prefers the Dream to the Waking.”
Alice nodded and sat down beside him, taking the proffered glass and watching him pour out from the bottle.
“Your found yourself a lover? I never met her.”
He shook his head: “Not a lover, no. A daughter, of sorts.”
She wanted to ask him more, but he deftly tipped his glass of wine into his fox snout and drank greedily, a dreamy smile forming on his lips. Clearly it wasn’t something he wanted to talk about.
“I’m sorry Garda, there are no lessons for me to teach you today. Truth be told, I taught you most of what I know: you took to the Dream like an alcoholic takes to liquor. Better than expected.”
“Shouldn’t it be ‘Worse than expected’?”
“Doesn’t matter, you get the gist of it. Again, sorry, but tonight… I’m not feeling well. Please… give me some time. That’s all I ever need when I end up like this.”
Alice tilted her head to the side for a moment, truly looking like an animal, before nodding and waving goodbye. She had been in Albert’s situation more than once and knew that, sometimes, it really only took some alone-time to help. Some people would say something along the lines of ‘You should never be alone when you’re this down’, to which she would say that the presence of other people would just make her uncomfortable. This was probably the same. And if it wasn’t, well, she was the last person someone should ask for tips on psychology.
As she walked out of the clearing, hearing the distant laughter of the Kits coming from underground (that actually sounded more ominous than she’d thought), she suddenly became very acutely aware of something sitting in the pocket of her pajamas.
Looking down and putting a hand in she felt something circular, small and extremely smooth, except for four little holes. Frowning, she took out the object.
Opening her fist, she saw it was… a simple button. A white, bone, button.
A…
Button…
…
How could she have forgotten? The spider girl. The arachne. It had been months ago. She had promised she’d come back! And then she’d just f̴͓̚ŏ̶̫̥͋ŕ̶͍̹g̷̪͕͒̍ő̶̢͆ẗ̸̬́̚t̸̠̣͛͝è̷͙͈n̶͔͘.
How did she get there in the first place though? Right, she’d just touched the button and it had brought her to that girl’s ‘Mind Castle’, as she’d called it. Why wasn’t it working now though?
That was when she saw it: a red thread. It was tied to one of the holes and it was so thin it might as well not be there. And yet she could see it. No, she was certain, she was probably the only one who could see it.
A thread of destiny.
“Bring me to her,” she whispered to the button, to the thread, to the Dream and its impossible logic that sometimes she could bend to her will in the name of traditions that weren’t quite yet Traditions, ones coming from another world, ones that were new or, sometimes, so old they’d been forgotten, making them new again.
And the thread? The thread tensed up. It disappeared into the distance, she noticed, away into the horizon where the sun didn’t sit, in that place between sunset and purple sky where there was true darkness.
The thread pulled.
The sky shook.
It pulled harder, for it had heard her request, for it to accomplish its purpose, to unite two souls. It had been of another color, once, but its permanence with the girl sometimes named Alice, sometimes Garda, had changed it. The depths of the change were too great to be explained by words, for the soul is much too complex to describe and the bond between two souls connected by destiny is more complex still. The only thing that could be said was that this was a Thread of Destiny. An image, a false copy in a place that wasn’t and, if all went well, never would be, but it was still that.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
What was a Thread of Destiny? Well, in ancient times, when the Parcae, or Moire, or Norns, had still been the holders of Fate, they wove it in the form of threads. Weavers of Destiny, it is said by some that the Ball of Yarn given by Ariadna to Theseus had been made with thread from the Fates’ loom to unite them. What isn’t said is that the thread, so kindly given to her, had been bound to Theseus’ father. Now cut, the thread told the story of the man’s death by suicide.
It makes no sense? It is not the myth that you knew? Well, how can you be so certain this isn’t how the story went behind the scenes? People always look at the words and try to find meaning in them, they never look at how some things happen, at the story behind the story.
Anyways, the point is, a Thread of Destiny, a true one, is an unstoppable force that will do anything to make sure the bit of fate it represents actually happens. And in this case?
In this case the thread pulled. It pulled so hard that that space between twilight and false star bent and twisted, moving towards Alice.
Then… it snapped. The space, that is, not the thread.
And the sky swallowed Alice.
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It was dark. Like the spaces between the threads of the Web of Worlds. An all consuming darkness that ate and ate and ate and was always hungry and the Spider couldn’t work fast enough to connect everything, but what was the purpose of the work if, in the end, the Nothingness was going to eat everything anyway? Why, of course, to give them all a chance to escape its hunger, give them refuge. Already, there are places on the Web for those who managed to escape. Or there will be. Or there were. The problem, as you know, is that Time doesn’t look at the Web.
But how did Alice know all this?
She didn’t, that’s how.
And she wouldn’t when this ended.
Then it was less dark.
And Alice opened her eyes.
“Whoa, that was surreal. Amazing!”
She couldn’t quite put her finger on what had been so surreal about the experience, she just knew it had been, even if it was already slowly disappearing from her memories. Had this also happened when she’d come here the first time? Had she forgotten… actually, what was it all about? Oh, right, the sky had gone strange and now she was here. Right right. Nothing special, not for Dream standards.
Looking around, she smiled as she recognized the walls of the monastery-cathedral-palace with a library sprouting from one side like some kind of benign tumor, her eyes quickly locking on to the highest tower of the building, which was somehow covered and also not by the giant tree growing at the center of the building.
She took a deep breath… and immediately choked. The air smelled of dust and ash, particles of the stuff swirling around in great clouds she hadn’t noticed until then.
“What’s happening?” she asked herself. With how much ash there was around her she half expected a forest to have been burned to the ground, and yet she clearly remembered there not being anything here other than the ‘castle’.
“Isse? Are you here? It’s me! Garda! Do you remember? The girl from the Dream!”
There was silence.
Then a tremor as the ground underneath her feet shook for a few seconds, a small earthquake. She lost her balance, falling to the ground as she watched in horrified fascination the tower wobble as if it was made from some kind of jello. For a while she feared it would break apart and fall to the ground, but then the tremors stopped and the building settled down, temporarily disappearing behind motes of dust and ash that had been raised from the ground.
When it all cleared up, an imposing figure stood over her. Her body looked human from the waist up, with long dark hair cascading behind her and reaching her waist, where, instead of legs, a spider’s thorax stood on eight legs. She was lean and her muscles were tensed as if she were ready to leap at a single hostile twitch of her body. To Alice it felt like the woman was emanating a strong aura of bloodlust.
“Hi Siidi,” she said, raising a hand in uncertainty, waving shily. She suddenly felt very much out of place.
Two heterochromatic eyes stared down at her as, very slowly, the arachne bent down to put their eyes level with each other.
She really was quite the tall woman… heh. Gods she felt really out of place.
“You’re the fox. The [Dreamer] who invaded our Mind Palace months ago.”
Her eyes narrowed as she looked at her and Alice got the distinct feeling that she could see right through her mask.
“What are you doing here?”
Well, that was easy to answer at least, and she hadn’t even threatened to kill her yet! Progress!
“I’m here to visit Isse, like I promised,” she very intelligently decided not to say that she’d promised this months ago and had forgotten. For some reason.
“Ah, yes, like you promised several months ago and then forgot,” said the arachne as a sinister smile appeared on her face.
Suddenly Alice felt something pointing right at her throat and, when she glanced down, saw it was a… giant fountain pen? She blinked four times: “Is that a giant pen?”
Siidi pressed the [Improvised Weapon] to Alice’s throat, causing it to actually, somehow, manage to pierce through the skin: “Is that really what you should be worried about?”
Alice shrugged: “This is part of the Dream, more or less, I think, so yeah, you can kill me alright, I’ll just wake back up in the Waking World with a bad memory.”
Death didn’t scare her, not after she’d poisoned herself on purpose to kill that Nightmare months ago. The experience had been painful and horrifying and… she’d actually liked it. Although she’d since abstained from suicide in the Dream: she feared the path giving into those desires would take her down.
After a brief staring contest, Siidi closed her eyes and sighed, turning around and beginning to skitter away: “Leave,” she said without turning back, “You’re not welcome here. Be glad that I’m letting you go instead of torturing you: I know for a fact that sensations in the Dream are as real as in the Waking.”
Alice cocked her head to the side, before she began running towards the arachne disappearing into the ash: “At least tell me how Isse is. Is she alright? Is she -”
Before she could finish she felt a sharp stabbing pain in her thigh. Looking down, she saw the point of the pen had pierced right through her pajamas and deep into her leg. Dumbfounded, for a few moments she stared down at it, before her mind registered that this was supposed to hurt and it actually began hurting.
“Porco dio!” she shouted as she fell to the ground and grabbed at the pen, trying to get it out, then remembering that that wasn’t a good idea, and then being given no choice as Siidi appeared over her and began pressing the pen down into her injury.
“I told you to leave. I gave you a chance. I tried to be kind, like she was before, but you… your kind never understand. You’re cruel, senseless, heartless pieces of shit who know only how to hurt those you call enemies in the worst ways imaginable.”
She leaned down, her eyes staring right into her mask’s eyes, her lips thin as paper as she continued: “You call us monsters, and I won’t say you’re wrong. We were made to kill and pillage and destroy. But what’s the difference between us and you, huh? You kill and pillage and destroy too. The only difference is that we were never given a choice in this, it was our purpose. You on the other hand? Your kind, all the other species, you all could’ve decided to just be peaceful, to be kind to each other with no ulterior motive. Instead you became what you are today. At least the arachne could live together without going to war among each other!”
She pressed harder, tears now forming in Alice’s eyes: “We are monsters by creation and necessity. You lot are by choice. Which one is worse, eh?”
She twisted the pen around and gouged out a piece of flesh, and Alice cried out at the sudden spike in pain. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. She was just meant to visit Isse, spend some time with her, maybe even cuddle a bit.
“Look at this place. Look!” she took her head in her right hand and, with a strength she didn’t expect, lifted it from the ground, making her look at the clouds of dust and ash all around the Mind Castle.
“This is what your kind do. Destroy and destroy and destroy meaninglessly, leaving behind nothing!”
She looked her in the eyes again: “Your kind killed my clan, my soul half’s clan, a few nights ago. They came with fire and swords and tried to burn us alive. We are all that’s left.”
What? she wanted to ask, but the pen was suddenly and brutally removed from the wound and she was thrown to the ground.
When next she looked up she saw there were tears in Siidi’s eyes, streaming down her cheeks: “YOU DID THIS! ALL OF YOU! We’re the last of our kind! I had to watch them all die again! We had to watch our lives go up in flames even if we’d done nothing wrong! Just because of what we are!”
Alice tried to speak: “I - I - I’m sorr -”
She didn’t get to finish her sentence as Siidi pointed the bloodied pen at her neck: “Not a word, or I will make that leg look like a gentle bite.”
Before the situation could escalate further though, a new voice joined them. A small, feeble, voice, nasal and half choked out: “Siidi, what is it?”
Immediately the arachne over her froze in place, clearly thinking about what the best approach to the new situation was.
In the end, she turned around and, for a moment, Alice caught a glimpse of Isse, the young arachen she’d met a long few months prior. She looked taller, although one would be hard pressed to tell seeing how hunched over herself she was, as if all the strength had abandoned her.
“It’s nothing Isse. Let’s go back to the tower, let’s rest some more,” she spoke calmly, gently, doing a complete one-eighty from the way she’d been talking to her a moment ago.
Walking towards her soul half, Siidi made sure to cover Alice’s form with her spider half, keeping her out of sight.
“Siidi, I can see the thread going through you and back there. Who is here? Are we in danger?” her voice was suddenly a bit more ‘awake’, her eyes slightly sharper. She’d changed from the person Alice had known. She was more… broken. Sort of like her, but worse.
The arachne sighed, letting her pen disappear and moving towards her soul half, letting her see Alice.
“An old acquaintance came to visit, but she was already leaving, right?” she said, turning to look at Alice with eyes that spoke volumes of what would happen if she didn’t turn around and leave. Still, she decided to ignore the look, instead unsteadily rising to her feet, only to fall on her ass again as her leg very loudly protested any form of movement.
All the while Isse looked at her with impassive eyes, not moving a single muscle to come help her. Yep, definitely changed.
After a while of this prolonged silence and looking at each other, Alice finally spoke: “Well, this is one hell of a way to kill my afterglow,” she pointed at her leg and tried to smile, managing a pained grimace.
Both Isse and Siidi raised an eyebrow in confusion, before the latter understood, her eyebrows shooting up as she attempted and failed to contain a snort, followed a moment later by a hateful glare. It took Isse a few seconds more, then her eyebrows, too, shot up into her hairline and… she began laughing.
It was a sad, bitter, sound, with notes of amusement at the very back that were trying and sort of succeeding at not being drowned out by the sorrow that filled the girl up to the brim.
Then the tide broke and she started laughing even harder, her legs giving up as she fell to the ground, curling up around her thorax, and all the while she laughed and laughed and now the amusement was truly drowned.
Soon after the sound of laughter was joined by sobbing and hiccups as she began to cry, the ground trembling anew underneath them.
Siidi stumbled and Alice… she rose to her feet and, slowly, hobbled towards the arachne as she internally cursed the total absence of nature in this place. She could’ve sprouted some opium poppy and made some painkillers.
She looked towards Siidi, determination in her eyes, challenging the arachne to stop her, and in response all she got was a glare and… a nod. A sad nod.
The arachne sighed and fell to the ground, her legs hugging her spider half and beginning to contract and relax, massaging it. To Alice it was fascinating, but right now it wasn’t what she was here for.
Finally, she managed to reach Isse and, following a tremble, fell to her knees (she tried and, probably, failed to muffle a cry of pain that shot up her leg) and wrapped her arms around the young arachne.
…
They stayed like that. Isse cried and sobbed, and Alice hugged her. She didn’t say anything, she didn’t pat her hair or try to reassure her. She just sat there, on her knees, feeling the coarse ground underneath them and the trembling going up her arms.
When, finally, she felt Isse’s arms go around her torso and hug her back, she smiled.
A smile that faded immediately after, when she heard the girl say: “Makira loved to make those jokes.”
At that moment Alice desired to have the ability to kick herself in the face, because a punch wouldn’t hurt enough. She and her fucking jokes! Why could she never keep her mouth shut?
Isse clung to her, the sobbing slowly subsiding, leaving behind only a trembling body, a stained face, and Alice’s tear-stained pajamas.
And now Alice wondered: what should she say? What could she say that wouldn’t sound stupid or remind her of people she loved? ‘You’re going to be ok’? No, that was just bullshit. Maybe, one day, these bleeding wounds would scab, but right now? In this moment, she was certain that Isse didn’t really see a future for herself, if what Siidi had said about their entire clan being killed was true.
‘Everything’s gonna fix itself’? That was even more stupid. One couldn’t leave these matters up to Time. It would just make you suffer more. When shit hit the fan and you didn’t have an umbrella, all that was left to do was clean yourself up and keep going.
That was when she knew what to say.
“You’re going to make it all ok,” she whispered in the arachne’s ear.
Isse froze, her trembling stopping for a few moments.
“Everything’s gone to shit, I can understand that. I can also understand what it feels like to lose a loved one, although not on a scale as vast as yours. But I know this: you’re going to make it okay. You’re going to fix this situation, you’re going to come out on top, and you’re going to show it to those who did this to you.
“Take your time, cry all you want, suffer and let it all out, never keep anything in. And when you’re ready, fight back, and drink the blood of your enemies from their skulls.”
That.
That was the right thing to say.
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Siidi had brought Isse back to the top of the tower, where she was now slumbering, as in ‘actually sleeping’ instead of being in the Mind Castle.
Now, she sat in front of Alice, looking at the wound she’d caused her.
“Want some webbing to, I don’t know, stop the bleeding?”
“I’m not bleeding Siidi, otherwise I’d already be dead here. You cut apart a few important arteries in here. It’s just painful.”
The arachne nodded: “I have no solution for pain.”
Alice shook her head: “Oh, but you do. Tell me, how sharp is that pen of yours?”
Siidi frowned: “Why?”
“I want you to kill me when we finish this conversation. It’s the fastest way to get me to wake up. Also, I have no idea how to get out of here.”
Silence fell over them.
Then Siidi laughed: “You’re one strange human.”
“Many have told me so. So far only one person meant it as an actual complaint.”
“Are you not afraid of me? Of the arachne?”
“Oh, I’d probably be plenty more afraid if this wasn’t happening in the Dream. As is, I just think Isse’s cuddleable and you’re a grumpy little shit.”
She didn’t get an answer, which spoke volumes to how serious the situation truly was. She was certain Siidi was the kind of person who loved to banter.
“Are you alright?” she asked, “In the Waking, I mean. Are you safe?”
Siidi chuckled mirthlessly: “What, you want to help?”
“I don’t know. Maybe? If you’re somewhere near where I am I could help. It’s what I do: help people.”
“Are you on Irevia perhaps?”
She shook her head: “Eva.”
“Then I imagine you cannot help. Don’t worry though: a strange old man picked us up and is keeping us safe. Isse decided to… sort of trust him. So we’re going with him.”
Alice nodded. She didn’t ask where they were going, knowing all too well that she wouldn’t tell her for fear of her actually still being a traitor of some kind.
“Please, take care of her,” she instead said.
“Always.”
Rising to her feet, Siidi made the giant pen appear in her hand.
“Any last words?”
She shook her head.
The shaking stopped when her head rolled to the ground.
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Back in her room, she opened her eyes, feeling Av’s calm breathing beside her.
Outside, the snow was still falling. She knew for certain that she wouldn’t be falling asleep again tonight.
Rising to her feet, she padded noiselessly out of the room and into the kitchen, bringing the tea cups they’d abandoned on the floor with her. Leaving them in the sink, she went for a glass of water.
That was when she noticed something strange: by her window, standing on his little feet, was a small crow with a letter held firmly by a piece of string to his beak.
What the fuck? she asked herself as she went to the window and, without hesitation, opened it, letting the trembling animal in.
The crow landed on her table and let the letter go, cawing towards her.
“Shhh, Av is still sleeping.”
The crow cocked his cute little head to the side and said: “No stealing.”
She answered back: “No thieving.”
And the animal settled down. She’d always found this practice of grandma’s quite strange, to look at crows and greet them with this phrase. Now she knew why.
The letter was a simple affair, made of waxed paper to protect it from the elements and, naturally, cold to the touch. Wax sealed it shut, but there was no sigil imprinted on it.
Breaking the seal open, she took out a small white page. It read like this:
Dear Alice,
This is [Witch] Aria writing to you. Me and my coven sisters would like to invite you to a festivity of our Class. It is called ‘The Festival of Stories’ and it happens for five days starting from the first of Zastos. We would love to host you. Do not think about Beria, she will be grumpy but we outvoted her.
Yours truly, [Witch] Aria, Commodora and [Apprentice Witch] Lili.
P.S: You should put up some anti-scrying wards dear, finding you was way too easy.
Alice looked at the letter, transfixed for a few moments. Then she smiled, turning her head up to the south, where the Tiurna Mountains could be clearly seen.
“I’d love to,” she said to the air.