Today was going to be the best day in Isse’s life in this world (or as close as it could get), and she didn’t know it yet.
Her morning started like many others: she opened her eyes groggily at the sound of Albert’s gentle knocking, her brain attempting and failing to connect with her limbs, particularly the ones of her spider half, which flailed around aimlessly for a few moments before she got them under control. As always, she’d stayed up late into the night to read.
“Good morning Isse. Breakfast’s nearly ready, come on!”
She groaned and buried her face into the pillow, wishing with all her heart that the world could end right that moment.
It didn’t, so she slowly rose from her comfortable hammock and skittered down the wall to the floor, brushing aside errant strands of silk from which she had started hanging random trinkets she found cute. On a few closest to her bed were gears of different forms and sizes, none of them actually used for making clocks (they were used for decoration alone); on others hung small bells she’d bought at a local market which tinkled in a relaxing way whenever she was mad enough to open the window of her room and let the cold in; others still were the home of small wooden animals, birds mostly; finally, in many corners, the webs of some of her new friends were slowly being woven and expanded. Yes, you’ve heard that right, her room was filled with spiders. City spiders, small and harmless ones, but they’d started growing under her care. She’d even gained a few Levels in her [Pet Owner] Class! She was Level 6 now! And one of her new Skills was [Pet: Increase Intelligence (Minor)].
Which led to her cute little spiders making much more complex webs that sometimes ended up having some quite mesmerizing patterns. She’d also started to suspect that recently they were making that sort of webs for her entertainment alone.
Was it speciesist to say that arachne liked spiders? Maybe! Just a tiny bit. There had been some arachne who’d hated the guts out of them in the past, considering them inferior, and there had even been rare cases of some arachne being arachnophobic. That one must’ve been hilarious. Still, a good majority of arachne had indeed loved spiders, but not as much as frogs.
Isse still missed Marquis du Fly, her pet frog.
She skittered up a wall towards one of her new pets’ webs, placing her hand close to it. A few moments later a rather larger than usual jumping spider walked drunkenly out of her hiding spot and crawled on her extended fingers. She smiled and brought her close to her face, where the little spider nuzzled her cheek. She patted her head and thorax with a finger and put her back, before going to repeat the operation with her four other pets in the room.
And all the while she greeted them.
“Hi Red,” she told a spider with slightly reddish fur.
“Hi Cat,” she continued with one that had a very lightly chestnut colored fur.
“Good morning Aru,” she told the one who made the most beautiful webs.
“And hello to you too Iada,” she said with a smile to a spider that was still very skittish around her.
And what about the spider she’d greeted first? Why, of course, her name was: “Hello Grandmother.”
The dead should never be forgotten.
And yet… she couldn’t bring herself to use the names of the two she’d held closest of all: Makira and Anda.
Slowly, with an air of melancholy, she skittered out of her room, gently closing the door behind herself as her passage made the bells jingle and the wooden birds clack against each other.
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Her morning was spent, as always, training with Albert in clockmaking. He was slowly teaching her the intricacies of gear placement. It was, unsurprisingly, the most complex side of his job.
Still, it was an interesting brain teaser, and the challenge had gained a few more Levels in her [Clockworker] Class.
It was as they were finishing that she decided to ask him a question: “Albert, can I ask you something?”
“Sure. Ask away, I’ll answer anything.”
“Is it good, or normal, to have as many Classes as I have? I’ve got four now.”
“Ah, yes: [Shadowed Soul Shaper], [Last Survivor], [Clockworker], [Apprentice Musician] and… ah, right, [Pet Owner]. Which has Leveled recently.”
As he went on Isse’s mouth began opening, slack jawed.
“How - ? You gave me a ring to make sure people couldn’t [Appraise] me.”
“Yes, but I’ve got Skills that allow me to see the progress of my apprentices. Don’t worry, they just tell me their Classes and if and when they Level up, nothing more. It doesn’t even work on particularly high Level people.
“Anyways, to answer your question… well, let’s just say there’s no real way to say if it’s right or not. People have been debating on whether or not it's a good thing to have many Classes for millenia now. Some say that people should choose one Class and Level only that one, while others say that having many Classes is the best idea because it allows them to Consolidate and create more powerful and interesting Classes. The truth is, in my opinion, there’s no right approach to Leveling. I’ve met people who stuck to their one Class all their lives and became extremely good at what they did and I’ve also met people who had six different Classes that could beat my ass in a few minutes. It all comes down to what one desires: some people are certain that they want to do one thing all their lives and will stick to it, while others are uncertain, try many things, get many Classes and from there… who knows.
“So, Isse, I don’t know. It will be something you’ll have to find out on your own. You’re young, you have time.”
And then they went back to assembling.
Albert’s fingers were nimble and slow, methodic, as they assembled, gear by gear, the watch he was working on. They seemed like an entity all on their own, disconnected from the rest of his body, such was the stillness of his body and of his calm, brown eyes. It was mesmerizing to watch, his left hand holding a screwdriver that he sometimes swapped for another while his right firmly took hold of a pair of pincers. He would take a gear from a small pile by his side, all of which would seem identical to the untrained eye, examine it for a moment, and then gently put in place, while his other hand moved the screwdriver with a magnetic point towards a nearby set of very small screws and took one. Then he would close his fingers around the handle and start turning, his wrist’s motions sure and precise, nearly mechanical in nature, like the clocks he made, tightening the small screws in place, but never too much, for that would hinder the gear’s turning.
She looked at him work like that for a few minutes, the silence between them companionable and relaxed, the kind that could be found between a group of friends sitting around a campfire in the woods as they ate, maybe as someone played a guitar. That would’ve fit well right now.
She wanted to ask him if he would be willing to spend some coin on buying a Song Crystal to put in the workshop, one with some relaxing melodies to work by, but then she decided against it. To speak right then would’ve broken the spell of this magical moment.
So, instead, she went back to work. She was clumsier than he was and much slower. She also had to reference several sheets with diagrams for the gears she had to use and where to put them. Apparently Albert had spent an entire night drawing them.
Then she fell into a trance of her own and, like Albert, forgot about everything other than the work in front of her.
It was several hours later that someone knocked on the frame of the door leading into the workshop and coughed.
They both turned towards the disturbance and saw none other than Virgo. The man was glaring daggers at Albert.
“You forgot to let her eat? Again?”
Yes, because this wasn’t the first time they’d both forgotten to eat as they concentrated on their work. They both turned at the same time to look at a clock hanging from the wall in front of them and saw it was well past one in the afternoon, around the time Isse had to take her violin lessons.
Albert turned back to look at the irate [Musician] and, after a moment, calmly said: “And you’re late.”
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In the end Virgo allowed her to eat a quick lunch he bought her from a nearby inn, some kind of soup that tasted good considering how bland it looked. Apparently it was some meat broth mixed with… stuff. It was good, and that was what mattered. It was also filling, another thing that surprised her since she was quite the voracious eater, as all arachne were.
Then she found herself sitting on the ground of the backroom Albert had given them to train her musical skills, her legs hugging her spider half gently and kneading it in a relaxing manner.
“You should really learn to take care of yourself,” sighed out Virgo as he sat down in what was probably the most comfortable chair in the house.
“I do.”
“You both forget to eat most days.”
“We don’t! We just have… late lunches. Very late ones.”
He raised an eyebrow at her, clearly unconvinced.
“I swear!”
He sighed: “You’re too young to develop a fucked up schedule girlie.”
“Hey, I’m seventeen!”
Nearly eighteen actually, in Earth birthdays. She was still six months away from her first year of life in this new world.
“Yeah, so? Just because sixteen is the age of adulthood doesn’t mean you stop growing.”
Well, for that matter arachne never really stopped growing, ever, as Grandmother had shown.
“You’ve gotta re-learn to eat well and at the right time of the day. Albert’s at the end of his rope, so he can do whatever the fuck he pleases -”
“Language!” came the [Clocksmith]’s distant shout.
“Fuck off!” shouted back Virgo.
“Anyways, he’s old, he can do what he wants. You, on the other hand, should take better care of yourself, especially because you’re my student, the first one I took in over two decades, and I don’t want you to start withering away or something.”
“But I’m not! I’m eating well! What does it matter if I eat at midday or if I eat at two in the afternoon?”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Virgo sighed, then shook his head: “It doesn’t, but it’s a matter of habits. From ‘eating at ungodly hours’ to ‘forgetting to eat’ the step is very narrow. Trust me.”
For a moment he sounded troubled, then he shook his head and began rummaging in his bag of holding, taking out his violin. It looked worn, just like hers, and simple in design. One might be led to think that a man like Virgo, also known as the King in Yellow, would’ve commissioned some kind of strange design for his instrument of choice, but they would’ve been wrong.
“Now, let our practice begin. Let’s start with the musical scales, then we’ll go over the basic exercise routes again, and finally I’ll let you try your hand at an actual song.”
And so they did.
Since she’d started training with Virgo nearly a month ago she had developed some skills and Skills. She was now a Level 7 [Apprentice Musician]! But she also hadn’t managed to increase her connection to the Violin. Albert had said something about doing things that the original holder of the Relic would’ve done, but she wasn’t even sure of who had been its proprietor to begin with! Well, ok, she had a theory that it had been the man whose statue had talked to her in Winter’s Last Stand, but she wasn’t sure, and even then, nobody seemed to be quite certain of who he had been.
Still, it didn’t matter what she was meant to do to unlock the potential of the Relic. It was a violin, therefore, before she did anything on that front, she had to learn to play it, and play it well.
Now, while Virgo seemed to have become kinder in his attitude, his training regimen was still as pleasant as a punch to the face. Every time she made a mistake he would point it out immediately and make her restart from the beginning of the training exercise. Sometimes, if she made the same mistake too many times in a row, he would slap her hand, making her hands sting, and tell her to stop. They would spend the next minutes in complete, total, silence, as he tuned his instrument and attempted to tune hers, with little success since the pegs wouldn’t turn no matter how hard he tried (which wasn’t much, he was definitely still being delicate).
In the end he would give up and let her start again after he was sure her fingers weren’t hurting anymore.
Was it the right approach to teaching? She didn’t know. What she did know was that, somehow, it worked.
Then, finally, after one and a half hours, they stopped with the training exercises and he took out another set of sheet music. That’s another thing: she hadn’t expected this world to use the same method as on Earth: five lines, circles, treble clefs and all. She had asked him how they’d been created and he’d said it had been a rather recent development. Apparently a [Musician] from around a thousand years ago had appeared and decided that the way things had been done so far were unacceptable. He’d then introduced this new method to write down songs, that they may be passed on to future generations, and this way gained the love and appreciation of the entire community of [Musicians] the world over.
Still, it was strange that someone from this world had had the same idea as the people from her original world.
“Now let’s try actually playing something. The training is good for you but it’s the most boring thing ever.”
“Then you could just allow me to play the interesting stuff. It comes out better anyway,” she said with a huff, puffing out her cheeks in annoyance.
He shook his head: “No, I cannot. It would be irresponsible of me as a teacher. To you it seems that playing the actual songs, the ones that sound better, is easier, and I won’t deny it, at the beginning it all seems so much easier. But without the training, without the parts that you hate, the small songs that sound bad, you would never come to understand the true nuance of things.
“The songs I’m letting you play, like this one,” he showed her the two pages of sheet music she was learning to play, “They’re easy. If I let you play more complex things, well, you’d probably learn to play them, in time, but you would learn them wrong, learn them with small mistakes that would carry over when you start trying to play true music, small mistakes that would grow to a point where you would be unable to play and, sooner or later, just downright give up. Trust me, I saw this happen many times in my life.
“And lastly, without these bases you wouldn’t be able to learn to do the most important thing when it comes to music,” he said that last part with a rare smile on his lips, his eyes looking up at the ceiling as if seeing some impossible and beautiful sight.
“Which would be?” she egged him on, the look in her eyes clearly saying that if he didn’t give her a straight answer she’d lynch him.
“To forget the rules and play with the heart.”
Isse stared at him.
Yep, that’s it, we’re lynching him.
She rose to her feet and got ready to jump at him, maybe gouge an eye while she was at it, but he beat her to it and slapped several dozens pages of sheet music on her head, making her sit back down.
“I’m not kidding you. That is the most important thing a [Musician] must learn to do. We are raised on rules, but to truly become great we must forget said rules and play as we will it.
“The trick, as my father explained it to me, is that the rules we so wish to forget will be remembered by our bodies, by our hands, and whenever we play, forgetting about the world around us, about the rules, we still apply them enough to turn something natural, something new, into something better.”
His smile disappeared and he went back to his usual ‘resting-bitch-face’.
“Now, let’s see your progress on the song.”
And progress she had.
But the song itself… it wasn’t much, she could easily tell. For a moment she remembered the ones played by the Silken Orchestra back in their Forest; she remembered waking up nearly every morning to the notes of a new song as they all looked around, trying to see the mysterious musicians and always, inevitably, failing to spot them.
So this song… it wasn’t much. It was nothing. But it was hers, and for that it mattered.
When they finished, having played and replayed it for a good half hour as, every time she finished, Virgo pointed out a small mistake here and there, she was exhausted.
That was when the man coughed in his fist a bit to attract her attention.
Looking up from storing her Violin and its bow in the case she saw a small piece of paper in his hand.
It was yellow in color, obviously, because it was Virgo we were talking about. On it was written something in a fine print that not many humans would’ve been able to read at that distance, but she was an arachne and her enhanced senses allowed her to see what was written on it:
Ticket for one Entrance at the Yellow Court.
Signed: Virgo Eclante, the King in Yellow.
“Is that a ticket to your concertos?”
“Indeed. The Yellow Court will unite this evening at exactly eight o’clock. I suggest you wear something yellow, although it isn’t necessary.”
He handed her the ticket and she took it gratefully with a smile.
Still, she couldn’t help but notice: “Wait, only one? Are you not inviting Albert too?”
“That old fart wouldn’t understand the difference between a violin and a clarinet. Also, I don’t like him.”
Looking at him for a moment Isse wondered if she should try to defend the man who had taken her in and was teaching her so much… but in the end she had to agree, he was right. Albert had no musical ear. Years spent working with clocks had completely destroyed it.
She rose to her feet and, before Virgo could do anything, she hugged him.
“Thank you.”
He stiffened up in her embrace and, unlike in those novels, didn’t soften until she let go.
“Please, don’t ever do that again,” he said.
She raised an eyebrow: “So, wait, next time I want you to do something I’ll just have to menace you with a hug?”
He shivered again and she smirked evilly.
Then she sat back down.
“Thank you. Really.”
Virgo had seldom seen such a genuine smile. The only other times he had was whenever he played in his concertos, whenever the Yellow Court came to be and he could see the people finally give up their masks and show their true selves as they had fun and forgot about the world outside. It was a risky choice, and he’d long since learned not to invite most of the nobles of the kingdoms he visited for fear of them showing their true colors and ruining everything. For a long time he’d agonized over that after one time when things had gone very badly.
Then he’d received a Skill that had solved his troubles: [Visions of the Yellow Court].
It allowed him to get a glimpse of what someone would look whenever the Court united.
He’d used it on Isse the first time he’d seen her. He’d promised himself that, if he didn’t like what he saw, he would find a way to wiggle out of Albert’s favor and never think about it again.
What he’d seen had broken his heart: a girl, or rather, an arachne, wearing a crying mask that danced hand in hand with another arachne wearing a blank mask with spots of color here and there.He’d heard the sound of laughing, of genuine laughter, as they twirled around.
He didn’t care that she, no, they, err… yes, looked like an arachne. He’d seen people turn into dragons and drakes, skeletons and dolls, giants and dwarves and fairies and other stranger things still. An arachne in comparison was nearly tame. Sure, it could mean that she was someone who would kill without hesitation, but then again, the laughter… there had been true joy there. A killer couldn’t feel such emotions while doing something as simple as dancing. Or so he’d wanted to think.
“I’m expecting you this evening then, apprentice. Don’t be late. You’ll understand then and only then what I mean when I talk about true music.”
And he left.
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As Virgo left Tobias Eclisse, Isse’s friend, arrived at the shop. He watched with his mouth hanging open as one of the most famous [Musicians] in the world casually walked out of the shop and down the street.
For a moment he considered running up to him and asking him to autograph something of his, but then he remembered the stories people had told him about the man’s unpredictable temper and decided against it. With his luck he’d end up losing his tickets.
Because yes, he’d managed to buy two tickets to the man’s latest concerto! It had taken him a month of non-stop working between helping Morra and doing odd jobs wherever he could, plus basically all the money he’d saved up in the last five years, but he’d done it! HE’D BOUGHT THE TICKETS!!!
As he walked into the shop he found it empty, but when he rang the bell on the counter someone appeared: Albert.
The old man looked down at him and… smiled.
“Ah, you must be Isse’s friend, Tobias. Pleasure to finally make your acquaintance.”
He seemed calm and well mannered, why anyone would hate him was a mystery to him.
“Yes, it’s me. Is Isse still here?”
“Oh, she most definitely is. She’s in a good mood, I’m certain your arrival will make it even better. She’s in the back.”
When he walked into the back of the shop he was greeted by tables filled with boxes and gears and clocks and watches still in the making. And, at the very center of it all, dancing on the spot, was Isse, laughing and smiling and singing a little wordless tune.
For a moment he just stood there, mesmerized and fascinated, feeling his heart skip a beat and butterflies fill his guts.
Then she noticed him and stopped in place, a slight blush beginning to form on her cheeks before she shook her head and smiled.
“Tobias!” she ran at him shouting, hugging him strong enough to squeeze the air out of his lungs.
“You will not believe what happened today!” she said excitedly once she let him go.
He raised a placating hand towards her, then lifting a single finger asking for a moment as he breathed in again. For such a small frame the girl sure had a lot of strength. A Skill maybe?
“I’m certain it’ll be great, but would you like to hear me out first?”
“Sure sure!”
She was so cheerful.
So, without preamble, he took out the two tickets he’d bought and showed them to her.
“Since you said that you never heard his music, I bought two tickets for a concert Virgo will be doing tonight. Would you like to go with me?”
Isse’s jaw dropped to the floor… and then she laughed.
What? Had he done something wrong?
“Oh Tobias, this is perfect! You won’t believe it, but,” and she rummaged in her pocket, taking out, of all things, another ticket that looked just like his own, “I have one too! Virgo just gave it to me, said it was to ‘teach me what true music sounds like’,” she deepened her voice in what Tobias believed was meant to be an imitation of Virgo.
Then she leaned down and… she hugged him again. Gently this time.
“Thank you for thinking about me.”
When she let go she was smiling even more: “But since I have a ticket now there’s one too many. We can’t waste it. So how about this? Why don’t we invite Morra to join us?”
Tobias’ smile had been frozen in place for quite a while now, but at the mention of that idea it froze even more, if that was possible.
He had wanted this to a thin between the two of them! Not… well, he hadn’t wanted an interloper, and he was certain that Morra would’ve ruined the evening!
But then, he couldn’t bear to tell Isse no, not at this junction.
So, instead, he sighed internally and, after a moment, smiled.
“Sure, we can do that. The more the merrier.”