“Isse, come on! It’s time to get up.”
That was Albert’s third attempt at making Isse get up and out of the room.
“Noooooooooo!!!”
And that was Isse’s third response.
“Please don’t make me come in Isse, you have a busy day ahead of you.”
“The day can wait… for a week.”
“Isse you’re starting to worry me. What’s happening?”
“N - No - Nothing!” she answered all too fast, her cheeks flushed as she tried to hide inside her hammock, unconsciously producing webbing from her abdomen and weaving it into her ‘flying bed’, slowly turning it into a cocoon.
“Alright, I’m coming in, please be decent,” said Albert with a sigh as he turned the doorknob… and found he couldn’t open the door, because Isse had had the presence of mind to block it with her webbing using a simple system of pulleys that allowed her to use her spidery legs to keep it shut with minimal force on her side.
“Isse, please, open the door. I promise whatever’s happening I can help.”
“You probably could, but it would be a bad idea. Just… leave me alone.”
“Isse, please, tell me what’s happening. If you don’t give me an actual reason I will enter.”
Isse stayed silent as she put her face in her cushion and screamed a little. Why was this so embarrassing? She wasn’t some kind of blushing virginal maiden. She’d done and said much worse in her life, both back on Earth and here. Airm, she wasn’t even a virgin anymore! So why was this so hard?!
Siidi, a little help?
I don’t know sister, never had the problem, I was always among arachne, and the dwarves didn’t ask questions.
Fuck!
Again, that’s probably what you’ll want to do in a bit.
“Ok, I’m coming in,” he said.
She sighed and tensed her spider legs, making sure that the door wouldn’t open no matter how much strength Albert applied, unless he had a Skill that amplified it.
Then she heard him whisper something through the door: “[Sanctuary: No Door Unopened].”
A shiver went down her spine as she heard something wrong, something sick, emanating from the words, as if some slimy monster had come out of the old man’s mouth and had just tried to crawl on her, biting and tearing but only managing to get a single drop of blood out of her… in her mind. Then the sensation solidified and she felt it: there was blood in his words. He had a Red Skill.
The door to her room opened, gently, slowly, and it didn’t matter how much she strained the biological pumps in her spider legs, it wasn’t enough.
Then the door was open and Albert stepped in.
Immediately she hid inside her hammock, only now noticing that she’d actually nearly cocooned herself in.
“I’m sorry Isse, but you wouldn’t explain things, and don’t think that hiding inside your… well, it’s no longer a hammock I think, but whatever, will protect you. I promise, whatever you did, I won’t get angry.”
“Do - Don’t come close,” she said, her cheeks on fire as she tried to burrow even further in her cocoon, some ancient instinct deep inside her finding the feeling of being surrounded and hugged on all sides by something very comforting.
“Then tell me what’s wrong!” his voice didn’t get any louder but she could clearly feel both the impatience and worry in his tone.
She stayed silent for a moment more, battling with her fucking needless anxiety, before she whispered: “I’m in heat.”
Albert blinked: “What?”
“I said I’m in -”
“No no, I heard that, I’ve got Skills to enhance my hearing. I mean, what does it mean? Is it like with animals that go baby crazy every few months.”
Isse’s face turned the same red as fresh lava pouring out of a volcano at his words and her head shot out of her cocoon: “DON’T PUT IT LIKE THAT!”
He stumbled back a step in surprise at her rather explosive reaction, before chuckling: “I’m sorry dear but that was the politest way I could put it.”
Isse opened her mouth to say something, then closed it as she noticed something: she was looking at Albert, a male, but didn’t feel the need to jump his bones and then turn him into actual bones to feed her growing young.
Siidi, wasn’t I supposed to want to fuck anyone that was a male?
Technically, yes. Practically it’s a bit more complex. Our instincts recognize friend from foe and we can also usually feel if, by mating with someone, our children will be stronger or weaker.
So, basically, you’re telling me Albert is safe because he’s old.
Yes, probably. And because you consider him as someone important to you. Like some sort of father figure.
That one struck a chord in her heart and she withdrew slightly in her cocoon. Because it was right. And because she feared what it would mean to admit it. What would happen if she lost him too? What then?
She said that, but there was another thought deeper in her mind, one she had no desire to acknowledge, and it went more or less like this: What would happen when he inevitably dies? Because he will die, and it will be our fault.
For once Siidi hadn’t been fast enough in killing the thought and Isse felt its presence and what it said.
“So… can I help?” asked Albert, bless his kind heart (and oh how he would’ve laughed at that one. Him? Kind? He considered himself many things, but not kind), distracting her from the spiraling thoughts and giving Siidi enough time to put an end to them.
“Apparently you’re safe but… it would be better for everyone if I didn’t stay around other men. Unless you feel like having grandchildren and a body on your conscience.”
He chuckled: “While I’m not against the idea of being the ‘cool grandpa’, I’m rather scared about the body part, mixed together with the fact that you’re too young to have kids.”
That caused another blush to appear on Isse’s cheeks, or rather, it caused the one she already had to intensify, but it also made her giggle slightly down her throat, a sound she suppressed because it would only have caused more embarrassment.
“Well, alright, I guess you’ve got yourself a vacation from both the clockworking and violin lessons then. Would you like me to bring your food here?”
Hesitantly she nodded her head, before saying: “Thank you Albert. For understanding.”
He smiled and, for once, he looked his age: like a kindly old man who’d seen a lot and wanted nothing more than to help in any way he could the coming generation. A sort of grandad, truly. His eyes crinkled up and for the first time Isse noticed the wrinkles on his face.
How many years does he have left to live? she wondered. And had she known the answer she would’ve probably cried, for they had recently become nine because of a sacrifice he had made.
Nine years. Plenty of time for most people to do anything they wanted, no time at all for many others. Albert knew he could’ve gone for more, lived longer. Airm, he could’ve lived forever. But he was tired. So, so, tired. That was why he had decided to put a timer on his life: to have the certainty that things would end.
And that knowledge made every single thing he did so much sweeter, so much better. Every bite of food tasted like the first time he’d ever stopped to taste what he was eating as a child; every sip of wine felt like he was drinking from a bottle of the finest brew to ever be made; every night he fell asleep and knew for certain that tomorrow was another day, that he would wake up, and that he would get to experience it all again. And who cares if he decided to spend most of that time making, repairing and selling clocks to people? He hadn’t had the chance to do what he wanted for all of his life, so every gear he put inside a mechanism felt like a personal accomplishment, reminding him that he had gained the right to this more than anyone else.
He knew that, one day, he would go to sleep and not open his eyes again, that someone would sooner or later come to check on him and find his dead body lying on his comfortable mattress, a smile on his lips. Maybe the night before he would get blackout drunk, talk to people, give away his fortune to some random beggar or lucky passerby, because he knew there would be no tomorrow for him to wake up to.
It was beautiful.
It was why he had the Class he had.
His actual Class. The one his ring hid as [Clocksmith].
The Class he’d gained through countless years of working to reach the point he was at right now, a path that had been, paradoxically, simplified by a very bad mistake he’d made in his younger days.
His true Class: [Timesmith].
A Class that had allowed him to finally, finally, shape his destiny, shape the time he had left to live, giving him a reason to exist.
So he smiled and looked at the last gift he would give to himself and, maybe, to the world: a daughter, even if she didn’t know he considered her as such, who could understand passion and sacrifice, who could have a bright future ahead of her, one without hatred and fear and true sadness. One last gift.
[The Favour the World Owes Me], he thought.
He would do anything for her. Even give up one of the ten years of life he had left to live.
“It’s my pleasure dear.”
Then he turned around and left the room, going to the kitchen to get breakfast ready.
----------------------------------------
What do you do when you decide to quarantine yourself in a room?
The answers are many and extremely variegated and, ultimately, aren’t answers at all, because no matter what, boredom will eventually set in.
Isse found that out after her first day of doing nothing but reading.
The morning of her second day in her room she took the book she’d been reading yesterday in her hands, opened it up to where her silk line she used as bookmark lay in wait and proceeded to read exactly seven pages before closing it and groaning.
“I don’t wanna read.”
Well I do, so open that book and let me, you can just lay there and watch the ceiling.
A smile crept on Isse’s lips as she opened the book again and waited a bit to let Siidi finish reading the page before turning it. She’d long since found out that the arachne living in her head read just as fast as her and she knew her rhythm well.
Meanwhile she did as she’d said and stared at the ceiling, wondering what she could do to pass the time. Reading was out of the question for now, she’d clearly exhausted herself, and her little spiders were being more skittish than usual these last few days, as if something was worrying them.
She looked up at the ceiling covered in white webbing and let her mind wander, thinking that maybe she could start fantasizing about… anything, really, and lose herself in the images. She used to do that a lot when she was a child after all.
Sadly she’d also grown out of that phase (or so she called it), and so her mind instead wandered to her memories. In particular the memory of a place that was just as white, no, whiter than her room, with a ceiling made of white webbing that covered the sky completely, hiding it from sight.
Grandmother’s clearing.
She closed her eyes and, behind the eyelids, saw that incredible shade of white, like freshly fallen snow in the morning before people started throwing salt all over it and shoveling it off the roads. She’d never realized just how white it had actually been. How funny!
In the darkness behind her eyelids, lit by that white and a ghostly light, she turned around and looked everywhere, seeing the colorful trees in the distance and… an ice statue.
Grandmother’s statue.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
It stood there, a sad smile on her face as she looked in front of her, in the distance, where her last hope for her species was running away.
Isse didn’t know it, but this was the moment before the giant fireball that had killed all of them, the moment when she’d accepted her death happily because she’d done it: she’d destroyed the last remnant of the Hunters’ power.
She looked at the ice statue and… didn’t cry. Instead she bowed her head.
I didn’t like you, but you were a good person, one who would sacrifice anything for a glimmer of hope. Thank you.
Wind whistled through the countless threads of white, creating a sound like a distant sigh.
Then the statue crumbled.
And meanwhile, amidst the ashes covered in snow of what had once been the Forest of Tusca, the ice statue of an ancient arachne that had stood against countless attempts at being destroyed, be it with magic or swords or hammers, a statue that was now surrounded by countless others that had once been soldiers, the ice made a grinding sound imperceptible to most ears as the lips on her tired face twisted slightly upwards and something in its eyes seemed to change, making her look happy and, finally, at peace.
Anyway, Isse opened her eyes and looked back up at her white ceiling.
And decided to try to create a Spell.
----------------------------------------
The threads of people’s lives slowly disappeared in her vision, leaving only the white room around her with her toys and decorations, all of it covered by a strange, whitish, fog, thin enough that it could be ignored, but still there. That was what she really needed right now: mana. The world’s soul.
She raised a hand and made to pluck something in the air, getting it close to her face. From that point and up to her fingers a single thread extended, thinner than an actual thread and sort of shiny for some reason. A thread of mana. Grandmother had spent an entire lesson just teaching her how to pluck them right, and another one afterwards to teach her how to weave something that didn’t exist the same way everything else did. Turns out that using reality itself as your loom was surprisingly easy, you just had to tie a knot in the fourth dimension! Or so she had started to call it. Grandmother had said something about tying a knot ‘on the other side of the first Anchor’, whatever that meant.
Anyways, she looked at the single thread and tried to think about what she could do with it. Grandmother had told her that weaving magic like they did was usually a matter of imagining what she wanted to do and letting instinct guide her, but the last time she’d tried that had resulted in her attempts fizzling out into complete nothingness.
“It’s because you’re too inexperienced. Give yourself time, young one.”
That was what she had said.
Well, now she was a lot less inexperienced. And sure, her magical studies had been stagnating ever since the fire, but she’d also gained some Levels in her [Soul Shaper] Class, even managing to upgrade it.
Surely it would work now, right?
Only one way to find out!
Closing her eyes she thought about what kind of Spell she’d like to have and, after but a few seconds, the idea blinked on in her mind: Fireball. The dream of any and every person who’d ever thought of magic since the creation of D&D, the most perfect Spell to ever be invented!
Then she remembered that arachne had a… shall we call it natural enmity? Yes, a natural enmity with fire. After that fatidic night she understood well why.
Still… childhood dreams will stay childhood dreams and she wanted the ability to throw fire at her enemies, so to Airm with it!
Now, do you ever have a feeling like you have something in your mouth and all you can think of doing is bite down and try to break down that piece of nothing into smaller parts until they disappear? No? Never? Well alright then, how about this then: have you ever felt a sensation like something pulling you towards a specific location or action? Like when, as a kid, while answering a multiple answers test, you didn’t know the answer and after a while of staring at the page you got this strange pulling sensation towards a specific letter? Now that, that was the feeling that pervaded all of Isse’s movements.
Looking at that one line in front of her she slowly began feeling like her hand was being pulled towards her left, so she followed the direction, pressing her thumb on the thread in the place where she’d stopped before and pushing, changing her perspective slightly for but a moment as she saw the thread enter a hole that had always been there and, as it closed, remaining trapped on the other side.
She did this for a while, watching as a strange pattern formed in front of her eyes, just as nonsensical as the other times she had tried this.
Soul Magic was the magic of the world, the magic that manipulated it and forced it to create what one wanted. It was, in short, the basis of all the schools of magic in the world. It was magic at its most unrefined state, completely wild and, therefore, much more prone to backfiring horribly… although arachne had been gifted by Death with the innate ability to… suppress that problem.
To put it in another way, do you remember how Isse said that the few times she’d attempted what she was doing now the Spells had fizzled out? Well, for any other [Mage] attempting what she’d been doing the ‘fizzles’ would’ve been a full on explosion of mana taking whatever form it wished. You couldn’t even attempt to guess what would come out. That was actually how magic was first studied: random people being sacrificed to make random spellforms and then people with [Thought Acceleration] Skills seeing the Spell’s Matrix as it formed and writing it down.
A method that worked perfectly, caused the deaths of dozens of people and allowed the advancement of magic as a whole for centuries… until people found out that to cast even more complex Spells you needed to be able to write spellforms in the fourth dimension (although they didn’t call it that. Instead they just said that a [Mage] had to ‘write upon Time herself’).
As for the part of that magic school that allowed one to manipulate actual souls… well, the reason for that is simple enough: souls are made of mana. Very complex formations of mana (self replicating mana to be exact), but still just that. That was why it was easy for the gods to recycle them.
Anyway, when Isse was finally done she looked at the spellform with squinting eyes, trying to get a feel for whether this was going to work or not and, when she was sure, she allowed the threads of mana to absorb her mana, activating them. Because that was another thing to remember: just ‘drawing’ the Spell wasn’t enough because, at the end of the work, it was still made from mana that was on the same level of power as the world’s, something that could work on simple things like basic [Light] or [Candleflame] Spells, but not with anything else. Using one’s own mana though allowed to separate the spellform, turning it into a spell matrix, from the ambient mana, then casting it.
She let her mana go and watched as the Spell finally, after all this time…
It fizzled out again.
“FUUUUUUCK!” shouted Isse in frustration, her legs flailing around wildly.
“Language!” came Albert’s muffled voice from the floor below.
Does that man have [Detect Cuss Words] among his Skills? asked Siidi when she finally managed to stop laughing.
Isse groaned and closed the book.
Hey! I was reading that!
If I’m bored you’re gonna be bored too, decided Isse.
Fuck off! Oh, well, I can binge watch the TV series you still remember.
…Can you share?
Fall asleep and I will.
What followed was an intense session of ‘attempting to fall asleep in the middle of the day on command’, which, as you know, is an extremely complex activity that often results in failure. Luckily, for once, Isse managed it and, in about half an hour, she was fast asleep and sitting beside Siidi, looking into the screen of an old cathode television at the first episode of, very appropriately, ‘The Magicians’.
They huddled up together and watched, all the while Isse tried to ignore the heat building up in her belly.
----------------------------------------
When she woke up next she groaned.
The world was too much.
The smells were too strong, the lights and colors too bright, the sounds from outside too loud and the smells too… smelly. No, seriously, she thought she could smell the sewage water from underneath the street.
Her only sense that didn’t feel overwhelmed was her touch, her spidersilk caressing her skin gently whenever she moved.
In a desperate attempt to escape the world she burrowed back into her bed turned cocoon and tried to shut everything out, succeeding, but only slightly.
It wasn’t this bad last time, she whined internally.
Last time there were no men anywhere nearby and you had Anda to help. Now you’re in a big city and there’s tons of men walking just outside your window. Your body knows that.
Can I make it stop?
I don’t think so. You’ll just have to endure it for a week.
If it’s this bad just now I don’t know how bad it’ll be in a week.
Probably no worse than this, lied Siidi in an attempt to console her sister.
Come on, try making some magic again. It’ll distract you.
At this point Isse felt desperate enough to try it.
So she twisted and turned in her cocoon until she felt comfortable enough, before raising her hand and doing the same thing she’d done… yesterday, at this point. She and Siidi had spent the entire afternoon and night watching her memories of the TV series.
She twisted her perspective for but a moment, allowing her fingers to hook a small amount of mana, turning the world’s soul into her loom for her to craft threads out of. Then she pulled and saw the slightly luminous thread of mana extend from nothing towards her pointer and thumb.
She set to work, trying to feel that instinct from the other times that should’ve helped her craft a new spell, but she failed.
Again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And every time that instinct seemed to become harder and harder to grasp at.
Until, after her latest failed attempt, she just groaned and let her arm fall. At least this had been a helpful distraction.
She also felt tired, probably because of all the mana she’d wasted.
She closed her eyes, promising herself she’d only take a short nap, but when she opened them again the sun outside her window was up high in the sky and Albert was knocking at her door, bringing lunch. She ate it ravenously, thanking the old man all the while and asking him how things were going. He answered that all was well and that she shouldn’t worry about him, before leaving her with a new book and a warning to get better.
Then she burrowed back inside her cocoon and tried to isolate the world outside anew.
It was getting worse: she could smell them now, the men walking outside the house, in the streets, and every time she caught a whiff of the scent the fire in her belly seemed to burn just a little brighter.
Calm the fuck down you dumb uterus. I don’t want children.
Her body seemed to disagree as the sensation flared slightly.
Fuck it, let’s try some magic again.
And she started working anew.
Only this time even her concentration wasn’t enough to distract her from the fire burning inside her. She didn’t feel aroused gods dammit! It felt more like a needy child constantly prodding at her and telling her to do something and she couldn’t make it stop! A nuisance, that’s what it was.
Oh, so that’s what they meant: men are for breeding, women are for loving.
Yeah, ok, now it made a lot more sense.
She tried again to concentrate on the spellform, on that sensation of ‘guidance’, but found that it had disappeared completely. Blinking, she tried to get a feel for it again, maybe she’d just gotten distracted. But no, it wasn’t there anymore.
What was there was the heat.
And it moved now.
Ok, what the fuck?
Yes indeed, the heat was moving slightly inside her, sort of like that sense of purpose that had driven her in all her attempts at making failing spells.
Are you being serious right now? she thought, addressing her belly as if it could answer her.
The heat only flared in answer.
Siidi?
I was a [Warrior] Isse, don’t ask me about magic.
Useful as always.
Fuck off!
She sighed and looked at the single line she had traced. Then she felt at the heat, tugging at her senses, willing her to move to the right.
Fuck it, what’s the worst that could happen?
As it turns out, the worst that could happen was that, when she finished writing an extremely complex, definitely non-Euclidean feeling and looking, spellform, the moment she poured her mana inside it she felt like she was being drained, as if someone had filled a balloon with water and had now popped it with a pin.
The strength left her form as, suddenly, in the darkness of her cocoon, a fire blazed to life in the form of a rather small sphere, burning right through her silk and making her shout in surprise.
She scrambled out of her hammock, batting at the flames in a rather successful attempt at turning them off, before she ran to the window, opening it, and threw the ball of fire, no, the [Fireball], out into the open sky, watching it ascend out of her hand, following a long arch, before it exploded high enough in the air not to kill anyone or damage a building.
She huffed in relief and passed a hand over her now sweat-beaded forehead.
Then she heard a gentle cough to her side.
She turned, half expecting to see Albert standing on the porch roof of the shop, only to see Tobias standing there with a raised eyebrow and looking at the hand that had been holding the [Fireball].
“You never told me you could cast powerful Spells,” he said with a small smile.
She just stared at him, the heat in her belly raring up with a vengeance. Compared to what it was now, the heat had been more like a gentle campfire before.
“So, Albert told me you weren’t feeling well when I came this morning, said nobody could visit you. So I decided to check up on you the old fashioned way. But since you can throw around [Fireballs] of all things I get it you’re feeling better… Isse, why are you staring at me like that?”
There was no resisting the heat.
So she just gave in.
She smiled sweetly at her friend, then, without saying a word, moved forward, grabbing at Tobias slender form with one arm while with her other hand she went for his neck, bringing him close and dragging him through the window, closing it behind her with one of her legs.
Then she kissed him.
And bit down, her third set of canines coming out of hiding and injecting him with the aphrodisiac fluid all arachne were born with. Tobias gasped in surprise at the sensation, but she didn’t give him the time to think or say anything more as she deepened the kiss and waited for the ‘magic liquid’ to do its job and get him ready. He would father some great spiderlings, she could feel that.
----------------------------------------
Dear readers, nothing more will be said of what happened next, because we all know for sure what it was. I won’t sweeten the pill and say that, at the last moment, when Isse was certain she’d been fertilized, she came back to her senses and let the boy go. Of course she didn’t, she was an arachne after all: by the time he was done she’d already wrapped him up in a cute little cocoon, bound tight to keep everything inside but not to the point of discomfort. When the act was done a new instinct overtook her and it shouted something along the lines of this: The kids need to be fed.
And so she did just that: she went up to Tobias’ neck and injected him with digestive fluids (which she’d produced a lot more of than usual), her teeth easily passing through her webbing and finding his soft, warm, flesh.
Then, after just thirty minutes of lying in wait, staring at her meal, she touched the cocoon, finding the contents inside soft enough, and bit in, drinking up what had once been one of her friends in this city.
But it didn’t matter, because the only important thing was the preservation of her species, the birth of more spiderlings so that they could carry on their legacy. A legacy that could, potentially, be different from that of the arachne who came before, peaceful even, although she doubted the world would be so kind with her and her kids.
Isse placed a hand on her stomach, now slightly swollen from her meal, and then placed a hand on her spider half, over where she knew her eggs were gestating.
There was no regret in her, only happiness at having fulfilled her purpose, joy that she wouldn’t be the last arachne for much longer.
She was grateful.
And meanwhile, downstairs, the door to Albert’s shop opened and a group of ten armed people walked in, wishing to talk.