Imagine, if you will, waking up from a dream. Imagine opening your eyes and jolting upwards with the energy only fear can give you. Imagine looking around in the darkness and taking a deep breath, as you realize that it was all a dream.
Then imagine remembering, stretching out your hand towards your legs, and touching instead the soft-but-coarse fur of a spider. Imagine feeling the unfamiliar and yet so familiar weight of another person wrapped around you and breathing lightly in their sleep. Then imagine realizing that all you remember is real and that dream, likely, was more than just a dream.
This is what happened to Issekina as she woke from the terrible nightmare of a grand castle inhabited by an arachne of old. As her mind echoed those words:
[Condition: Hostile Halved Soul]
The words distinctly felt red, if that made sense. Because how could a word feel like a color?
For that matter, what the hell did that mean?
It means we’re not friends, little one.
Helpfully answered the Voice.
It means that I’ll help you, because I have to, since this is my body. But at the first occasion, I will take back what is mine.
What a beautiful thing to wake up to, don’t you agree?
Issekina sighed. She’d been alive for not even a day, and already there were problems. And big ones, if she decided to trust the Voice.
She looked down at her little fuzzball of a friend, and caressed her hair, combing them a bit. The little girl answered by snuggling just a tiny bit more. Trapping Isse in the hammock. Now, wouldn’t it be funny if nature decided this was the moment to call? It surely would have, and for that reason it did. Isse realized in that moment she felt full, and wondered just how the hell an arachne went to the toilet.
When she asked herself that question, a sound started playing all around the clearing.
It was sweet and gentle, like a mother’s caress on a child’s head. Like honey in a hot cup of milk. It was that, and then it was refreshing, energizing, like the sight of mildew on grass as you breath the fresh morning air.
It sounded like a harp.
And it came from all around her, as if there were hundreds of players all around them playing the same song with perfect synchronicity.
Isse looked around, her eyes widening in wonder, as she felt a different energy fill her body and take the place of her fear.
All around her the little arachne started to wake up, batting their eyes, getting used to the suffused light of the clearing.
Anda untangled herself from Isse and looked around in amazement, just as uncertain and surprised as everyone else.
I missed this.
Said the Voice, her voice dripping with nostalgia. She could almost feel the smile on the arachne’s face in her mind.
What is this?
This, girl, is a song. Written and executed by the ‘Silken Choirs’, the arachne’s orchestra. Death gave us an understanding of soul magic, and the knowledge of harmony necessary to manipulate souls. From that was born our music.
She could almost see it: spider people attacking entire human settlements, overpowering every [Guard] and [Soldier] there, not taking any prisoners, and all the while, in the backlines, their [Mages] disrupted the magic of their enemies, distorting the spells to their will, while [Musicians] played a song of endings and trapped the souls of their enemies in the strings of their instruments.
The image sent a shiver down her spine. Problem: it wasn’t caused completely by the revolt of seeing people being massacred. No, there was a kind of guilty pleasure there, a desire to become that powerful.
Whatever you’re doing, stop it!
She told the Voice. To which, she heard a cackle.
I’m just showing what was. The emotions you’ve felt, that’s all ambition. It seems there’s something worthy of an arachne in this head of yours.
It’s wrong.
It’s what we are. What you are. Accept it, it’ll make everything easier.
Why should I be a literal killing machine? Why can’t I, like, be some cute girl and live a normal life? That’s exactly what I asked for when I died.
Tough luck then, little thief. You cannot be a ‘cute girl’, as you put it. Not among any other race in this world. They would try to kill you and most probably burn the body just to make sure you won’t come back.
She sighed internally as thoughts of Murphy’s theory fucking her lives up flitted through her brain.
And then Makira skittered in the field, smiling as wide as yesterday. No, even wider, if that was possible. Was it just her, or did the corner of her mouth actually reach her ear?
"Good morning, little ones! It’s time to wake up."
Surprisingly, her voice wasn’t loud, despite being energetic. It was enough to get the arachne to come down from the trees, but not to the point where one would jump in displeasure.
"Today is your first actual day among us! That means we’ll be doing a few examinations and checks, and then let you be for the rest of the day. It may be boring, but it won’t take too much. But first, breakfast!"
Now, they had eaten yesterday, do not fear. It’s just that Isse had forgotten about it completely seeing how, like, she was now a spider. There were more pressing matters in her mind. That morning, she got a reminder of what that entailed.
Now, you remember the description about how arachne slept? About how chaotic that was. Well, now imagine a large group of children capable of climbing trees, swing from them and, most important of all, with a rudimentary understanding of how to use their own spidersilk to make simple things like ropes, would fare when they had to wait for their food.
The older arachne didn’t even try to put some order in the chaos, only intervening when things got a bit too out of hand, like when one of the children somehow managed to make a noose with their spider silk and nearly hung another girl with it.
Still, in the end, everyone had their breakfast, and miraculously without a single casualty being made in the process.
What was on the menu? Why, naturally, meat.
Someone clapped their hands twice, the sound reverberating louder than it normally should. It was, again, Makira.
"[Listen Well]! Everyone got their food? All of you? Perfect! Now, don’t start eating just yet! Hey, I see you, yes, you back there. Put that steak down."
She pointed at an arachne in the back, who guiltily put her steak down on her plate.
"Good, now, time for your first lesson. Us arachne are half spiders, which means we can get nutrition in two different ways. The first one is the simple, most direct one, which is just eating. Then there’s the second, faster, way, which is sucking the nutrients out. Observe! First you cocoon the food source."
And, as if it was nothing, she took a piece of random meat and covered it in spider silk, cocooning it.
"Then you inject it using your fangs to start to slowly turn your food into a sloppy paste of nutrients you can then suck out for an on-the-run meal. Yes, I know, it sucks, pun intended, doesn’t taste like much, but that’s what you do when you need to get somewhere fast and can’t afford to stop."
There was a reason Isse had first called Makira the “Smiling Woman”, that being she always seemed to smile. In that moment, she stopped abruptly, looking more serious than she had ever had… in the twenty four hours she had known the woman. Which, admittedly, wasn’t a lot of time, but she felt like it had been enough to understand part of the arachne.
Now this I hadn’t missed at all. The constant sensation of doom just lurking around every corner. Reminding you you’re never safe. Only downside of being an arachne: everything hates you and wants to kill you. Except spiders.
"Now, I want you all to try to do this, while I and the other [Carers] go around giving you another round of food, since the process of ‘sloppification’, as I personally dubbed it to the general dislike of all my sisters, takes a while to finish."
Now, Isse made the mistake most arachne did when they first heard about this practice: she asked herself the question “How bad could this possibly be?”
To know the answer, she’d have to wait approximately four hours. She clumsily cocooned the nice, good looking and extremely appetizing steak in her spider silk, then was stumped. Makira had talked about using her fangs. How did that work? Where were they hidden? And why had she talked about them as if there were more than two?
Gods be damned, that’s what you get when it’s not a natural born arachne. You don’t even have the instincts we have from birth!
Well then, can you give me a hand?
The Voice sighed, then she felt a distinct and surreal sensation of nodding… inside her head.
Well, at least I’ll get to use one of my new Skills. [Would You Kindly] bare your fangs?
Issekina felt a shiver go down her spine as a feeling of numbness overtook her mouth for a single moment, as if someone had placed an ice cube there out of the blue. Then she felt muscles and tendons move without her control in her face, contorting it, and suddenly her mouth felt fuller.
There, that’s how you do it. Remember the sensation, because that Skill is now on cooldown for who knows how long.
She opened her mouth and passed her tongue over her teeth, feeling the presence of canines that, she hadn’t noticed, weren’t there a few moments ago. Then her tongue slid backwards and she finally noticed four other little bumps just hidden under the skin.
She sank her teeth in the cocoon, and felt more hidden muscles in her mouth contract, feeling some kind of fluid trickle out of her teeth into the little sack.
Good. In a few hours you’ll understand just how bad it can possibly be.
She lifted her face from the now slowly changing meal and looked at her friend Anda, who had her usual look of curiosity on her face as she stared at her own cocoon, seemingly willing it to do its magic faster.
And she’s going to be in for a nasty surprise as well. Poor thing.
Isse decided not to ask any further questions. Mainly because one of the older arachne walked by her with a dozen plates (actual plates too. White ceramic, little trims on the borders. Did they produce those?) with a steaming steak and placed it in front of her and her soulmate.
At that point all thoughts of strange meat sloppy and pessimistic spiders in her mind disappeared and she dug in. The meat was medium rare, done in such a way that it practically melted in her mouth. It wasn’t particularly tasty, in that there were no spices on it, probably to account for the fact that newborn arachne would probably find that way too much for their senses. But to her it was just like eating a dish at a three Michelin stars restaurant and discovering the chefs had forgotten all the herbs existed. It was good, but it was missing something.
And now you’ve managed to ruin a perfectly good meal. Thank you.
Not my fault I had some good food in my past life. Unlike you, probably.
Arachne were meant to be fighters, not cooks. This is probably the best food you’ll ever get someone to cook for you. It’s not like we can easily obtain spices, or send one of our little ones to apprentice with a [Chef].
But you have to admit the food I ate was way better than this.
And you have to admit the food you’re eating is way better than what you ate in that hospital.
Touché.
She dug in again. Sure, the meal wasn’t the tastiest thing she’d ever eaten, but it was also the best thing she’d had since walking in that sterile room nearly a year prior. Her diet there was strictly controlled, all food checked to make sure it wouldn’t upset her stomach and cause some adverse reactions. There’d been a period when her disease had made it impossible for her to eat, meaning they’d had to pump the nutrients directly inside her stomach. Luckily for her, that hadn’t lasted long: the doctors had managed to cure that part of her malady. Unluckily, that hadn’t been enough to stop her premature death.
So she ate and appreciated the meal more than before. The Voice approved of the approach. Apparently it, no, she, felt what Isse felt.
A strange peace fell upon the clearing as the little arachne ate and, finally, stopped moving around, playing, and roping each other.
The [Carers] sighed at that and, chuckling, started talking to each other, reminiscing the times when they had been newborns, asking if they, too, were this fiendish, and laughing all the while as they reminded each other of the stupid things they’d done in those times.
The atmosphere gave Isse a strange feeling of familiarity. It made her feel warm inside, warmer than she’d remembered being in her last year. Maybe this life wasn’t so bad.
And then there are moments like this one. The moments where you don’t regret being born an arachne. Treasure them, little girl, for there won’t be many.
For once, Issekina didn’t answer back. She just nodded and kept eating, the food somehow getting better with each bite.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Apparently, when people said that company made all food taste better, they weren’t lying.
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"Now, little ones, we’re gonna… hey, you, stop that right now! As I was saying, now we’re going to… no! Girl! Stop eating your sister’s hair right this instant! You just had breakfast, gods be damned. What do they feed you now? Ok, so… you right there! I already told you to stop!!! Ok, [Everyone, Calm Down]!"
The small clearing came to a stop as the Skill touched every child and, apparently, even the small birds and other animals that were kept in little cages over the newborns’ heads.
"Well, and my sisters said that Skill was useless. Ha! Anyways, as I was trying to say before, today we’re going to test how powerful your poison is. This isn’t going to take a lot of time, and afterwards you’ll be free to do whatever you want for the rest of the day."
"Now, as you already know, you were all born with three sets of fangs. One is for the digestive fluids you use to make your… fast food, as Makira sometimes calls it. But you’ve probably felt you have two other sets. The second one, the one you have to use right now, lets you inject your poison. The third is for something else entirely and you won’t be told to use it for a very long time. So, do not use it. [That’s an Order]!"
The second Skill washed over the children and immediately made their desire to use the third set of fangs fade. Or rather, it bottled it up somewhere in their heads, not to be opened for a very long time.
Of course, that didn’t stop a certain child with a sometimes helpful voice in her head to ask:
What’s the third set of fangs for?
Oh, that’s for mating. You inject a male of any species with it, and they’ll be ready to go, and go for quite a while at that, even if they’re shitting their soul out of their asshole. I think you can very well imagine what would happen if you used that on a child.
Not for the first time since she’d been born, Issekina regretted receiving an answer.
That’s just how it works girl. We do have to reproduce somehow, and there aren’t exactly many people willing to go at it with an arachne… Well, actually, I think I once met a freak who was into one of us. Had a [Fetishist] Class or something like that.
Wait, there’s a Class for that?
Of course. There’s a Class for everything. From [Loafer] to [Airbender] to something as esoteric as [Gorger of Tears and Stars].
...You just invented the last one.
Yes, but there’s a good chance something like that once existed. You got the point. So be careful what you do, you might well end up having a Class you don’t like, and once you get one removing it is quite difficult.
Noted.
There was this strange ambivalence with the Voice. On one side, she acted like she hated the guts out of Isse and wanted her gone. Then there were the moments when she acted like a kind woman who wanted to help her. She really didn’t know what to think of her.
"Now, kids, each and every one of you take one glass and fill it up with your poison. We’ll then see just how potent it is."
And so they did. Every arachne took what reminded Isse of a shot glass and, some more, some less, carefully injected some poison in them. It felt quite satisfying, leaving a lovely feeling of emptiness in the girls.
"Remember, little ones. Arachne never stop producing poison during their whole life. That means you’ll have to regularly empty your glands if you don’t want to, well, for lack of a better word, explode. Don’t worry, it’s unlikely you will forget since it’ll become painful."
Said the woman who Isse had come to call “The Teacher”. She reminded her of an elementary school teacher she’d once had who somehow managed to keep a class of unruly and decidedly unwilling kids in check and make them study. And this one managed to do her job only thanks to her Skills. She shivered as she thought just what that old teacher could have done in this world.
When every child was done, they waited in line in front of the Teacher, glasses in hand. Unsurprisingly, no one poison looked like the other: there were always some small variations in color.
"Very well. Now, be patient for just a few minutes more. And please, don’t do what I’m about to do. I have the Skills to do it, you don’t."
That said, she took the first glass and watched the girl in front of her with calm eyes and a little smile. She observed the poison, which had a greenish hue, sniffed it like a sommelier, and drank the whole thing in one go, as if she were taking a shot of vodka and not what looked like highly lethal poison.
She let the thing stay in her mouth for a moment longer, taking in the taste, and gulped it down. She didn’t even bat an eyelid.
"Hmm… tastes like citrus. Low mana density. Third grade poison I’d say. This much should manage to kill an adult lizardman in a matter of seconds. Yes, you’d be perfect for the assassination squads."
She smiled and waved the girl away, motioning for the next one to come.
And that was how it went for every single one of them. Every poison was tested in the same manner by, Isse would discover in the future, the [Sommelier of Poisons], and given a rating from first to seventh. Granted, up until now no one arachne had managed to obtain a first grade judgment, but that was going to change soon. With Anda nonetheless!
When the little ball of darkness offered her glass to the older arachne, whose name had changed from “Teacher” to “Poison Lady”, it was smoking. Like, literally, the glass was smoking as if someone had put a cigarette inside.
The Poison Lady’s eyebrows raised to meet her hairline as she took one sniff at the rising smoke and recoiled.
"Nope, not testing that. I don’t have any [Acid Resistance] Skills. Little one… Anda, am I right?" the woman asked the girl, who nodded -This is a first grade poison if I’ve ever seen it. Now: [Acid Proof Glass]. That should keep long enough for me to actually look into it."
She then proceeded to put the glass carefully on the table.
And then it was Isse’s turn.
She offered her glass to the woman and she repeated the usual ritual. When she drank the poison, her eyebrows soared high into her hairline as she put it down and looked at Isse with a concerned look.
"...Little one…"
She stopped, as if pondering what she was about to say.
"Well… your poison tasted like water. Which is to say, it didn’t have a taste whatsoever. It also didn’t have much kick in terms of, well, poison. It’s Seventh Grade. I’m sorry."
She heard a few snickers around her.
The Poison Lady immediately turned towards the direction of the sound, her eyes homing on the one who had produced the offending sound.
"Maybe before laughing you should let the adults finish, hm, Sixth Grade poison?"
The chittering girl immediately shut up.
"As I was about to say, you girl have nothing in terms of poison. It probably qualifies as actual drinking water. But it has a high mana density. You could make Mana Potions out of this. Or drink it directly, but I would be against the idea, since it would probably still make you sick. Unless you have some levels in [Poison Resistance], naturally."
Issekina nodded and sighed internally. And here she was, hoping she’d be more special, only to discover that her specialty was being the worst at something. Well, apart from the high mana stuff. For the matter, what the hell was mana?
Stars, are you actually serious? I know for a fact your world has fantasy stuff everywhere, and you don’t even know what mana is? Didn’t you, like, do anything fun during your life?
Well, playing Dungeons and Dragons wasn’t exactly high on my list of things.
Because you didn’t have any friends.
You shut the fuck up and take that back, I had plenty of friends. We just weren’t interested in that kind of stuff!
Yeah, yeah, sure. They really were your friends! Absolutely! They were such good friends that they didn’t even visit you once at the hospital. Really good people who really cared about you. Right, right.
The sarcasm emanating from the Voice was palpable.
Look, I may be the spirit of an old arachne who thrived in causing massacres and blah blah blah all the stuff the propaganda wants people to believe, but among our people we understood what allegiances, bonds and friendships meant. Stars, maybe we understood, no, still understand such things better than most people. So let me tell you girl, you were alone. You just didn’t want to admit it because it was going to make you feel worse. And that’s understandable. Still, don’t make the same mistake here. I don’t want to rebuild my reputation when I get this body back.
The whole discourse would have been heart warming if it wasn’t for that last sentence.
Just fucking explain to me what mana is and stop looking so much in my past life. It’s gone anyways.
Right, right. Anyways, mana is…well, to put it simply, it’s the soul of the world. It’s everywhere, permeates everything and exists in any and all situations. It can be manipulated, its nature changed and bent into the shape we desire. That’s what [Mages] do. They tap in the mana inside themselves and manipulate it to create spells. Then, when they exhaust themselves, the mana around them simply goes and slowly fills their ‘reservoirs’ back to capacity.
Then what do Mana Potions do?
Well, that depends on the potion. They’re usually divided in two categories: Fillers and Accelerants. The former is just concentrated Mana in a bottle and gives you a quite literal infusion. Fast, but it risks hurting you in the long run since the mana in there isn’t usually pure enough, and the body has to purify it for you. The latter are ten times more difficult to make, but they’re safer, and tend to have benefits on the long run. They practically open up your Mana Pathways and let the natural Mana around you in faster. It’s slower than the Fillers, but the effect lasts longer, you don’t poison yourself, and if you keep using them for a very long time you can open up your Pathways in a permanent way.
The explanation was surprisingly straightforward.
I imagine you used those a lot when you were alive.
Nah, I wasn’t a [Mage]. I was a [Warrior]. Went into the thick of battle and felt the blood of my enemies cover my sword and my body. Their screams were my music, my laughter the lyrics, and all the rest was just background noise.
…Aaaaaand she decided to stop the conversation there.
Still, the fact that she was only good for making some potions left a bitter aftertaste in her mouth that had nothing to do with her apparently tasteless poison.
She wanted to prove that she was better than that, just as good as her little soulmate Anda. So what if she couldn’t burn someone’s body away with some acidic poison? She had something better.
She still remembered the strange box that had appeared in her mind when she’d died. The box that had given her a second chance. And she remembered the words it had said:
[Poison Immunity] Acquired
If what the Voice had told her of this world was right, then she was completely immune to any form of poison. And technically the acid in that glass right by her side still counted as poison, right? What would the other arachne think if she managed to do something not even an adult could?
She wasn’t sure where that train of thought was coming from. It was completely unlike her. But who cared, right? After all, as she’d said, this was a completely different world, and she was in a different body. So she could let herself change.
That was why she took the no longer smoking glass in front of her and, before the [Sommelier of Poisons] and [Silken Carer] could do anything, drank it.
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Somewhere, in a place between the Sixth and the Seventh Veil of the world, a single step away from the absolute Nothingness that awaited outside reality itself, a being that was unlike anything on this green, damaged, planet, older than anything other than the Gods themselves, who had created It, sat with what could be considered its legs crossed.
The being was the personification, nay, the physical, if anything on this Plane could be considered physical, form of the System. That which gave Classes, Levels and Skills to all living, sentient, beings of this world that had reached a certain level of sapience. Which meant that the numerous species like humans, lizardfolk, gnomes, dwarves, beastkin of all shapes and sizes, goblins and many more such as vampires and shadows, had the ability to become more than their bodies would normally allow, if they were worthy of it, while the same didn’t apply for animals or lowly monsters.
The System was the closest thing to an omniscient and all-seeing god in this world. It was probably a better God than the one in the memories of the little girl who’d been lucky enough to cross its path when this world and hers had collided after a failed ritual.
And, while It observed everyone in this world doing a better job than a certain Santa Claus, a single, small, fragment of its mind focused on what the little human turned arachne had done.
It remembered giving her, in accordance to its protocols, the ability to be immune to poisons and diseases. It was a simple wish to grant, completely inside the parameters. But now it had to stop and think for a moment: the thing the girl had just imbibed was clearly acid. Its eyes saw the liquid, read its capacities and properties, and showed it that it was acid, which clearly meant that the girl’s Skill shouldn’t protect her, letting the dangerous substance burn right through her mouth, leading to severe blood loss that would most likely lead to her death in atrocious pain.
But, at the same time, another side of itself argued that the acid had come from a poison gland inside another arachne, which meant the substance was to be considered as poison. Which meant that the girl’s Skill should come into effect.
In the split second between the glass touching the girl’s lips and the acid entering her mouth, the System debated whether the Skill should come into effect or not.
Then, as it was about to choose the former idea, a stray thought, a little suggestion implanted a long time prior, pointed towards the absolutely normal reasoning behind the second idea, making it notice that, indeed, since the acid didn’t burn through the Shadow-Arachne’s mouth, then it should be considered poison.
In the end, the System agreed with itself and, after adjusting a small parameter, put the situation out of its mind and went back to fully observing the world.
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The acid, now considered poison, touched the girl’s lips and tongue. She tasted mint, and her eyes widened at the sweetness of the substance. It was one of the tastiest things she’d ever imbibed.
She gulped down the contents of the glass and smacked her lips in satisfaction.
The [Sommelier of Poisons] blinked in surprise, the scream of horror trapped in the back of her throat as she waited for the child’s stomach to melt away and kill her.
Instead, she watched as Isse put the glass back down and stared right at her with… was that actually smugness?
No, surely there must have been something wrong.
Or maybe she’d just taken another glass?
The woman put a finger in the glass and touched the still wet bottom. She hissed as the remaining acid immediately started eating away at the flesh of her finger.
She nearly shouted a very inappropriate expletive, but managed to bite it back. Grandma knew just what Makira would do to her if she heard the children say that as their first words.
"You, little miss, are in big trouble." she said after a moment, before pulling on Issekina’s ear and walking away.
"Children, you may leave and have some fun. Oh, and [Don’t Touch Anything]!"
She then started walking away towards the deeper reaches of the woods, towards the clearing where Grandmother resided, all the while making sure to pull as much as possible on the newborn’s ear and nearly shouting at her about how stupid she’d been.
Well, and I thought I was crazy.
Said the Voice.
Issekina, even through the surprisingly great pain of having her ear pulled, couldn’t help but smile a little.