Isse kept walking in the forest, delighted at her new dress. It was a simple joy, one she thought she’d never get to feel again. After all, she was in another world, and she was an arachne. Which meant, as the Voice had once said, that she’d never get to stay among other races and live a normal life, with normal comforts.

And, after seeing the shirt Makira had made for her, she’d thought that would be the extent of her clothing: something made on the moment to cover herself.

She had been proven wrong. Again.

Why didn’t you tell me arachne could make such things?

Because I died before that woman was even born, duh. And because you didn’t ask.

...Fair enough.

She shook her head and kept walking the way the old arachne had told her to go, hoping to find her sisters.

So, wanna talk about you? Your past? The fact that Grandmother knew your name?

There’s not much left of my past in here, answered the Voice, giving Isse the strangely clear certainty that she was pointing at her own head, Just a bunch of scattered memories that come back now and then. Happy moments, glorious fights, that one memorable breeding. You know, the usual things. I had even forgotten my name before Grandmother told me.

Wait, you forgot your own name?

Ehm, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I died. People are not supposed to remember their past lives when they reincarnate. It’s surprising that I still have the memories I have now. Probably some mishap caused by you taking my rightful place.

Look, I’m sorry, ok, but I didn’t have a choice. I don’t even know what happened.

Oh, that’s simple: you died, the System noticed your soul among the thousands that die every day, and it chose to bring you here.

...Lucky me… I guess?

Lucky indeed. You should thank your probably inexistent God. Or your favorite stars. What is it with you humans and your strange ways to define fortune? Stars don’t bring luck. They just watch all we do. Stupid little voyeurs.

That got a chuckle out of her.

She walked for what felt like half an hour, but was probably just a few minutes. She’d always found it funny and unnerving how time seemed to stretch like a rubber band when you didn’t know what you were doing. How mere minutes could become hours in the blink of an eye.

She walked, and the forest didn’t seem to change one bit. Always the same trees, the same variations of colors. Surprisingly, green was the rarest among them all. As if the forest itself had thought it was too boring and decided it wasn’t worthy of her. The trees themselves reminded her of old birches: brittle bark that you could easily peel off with your fingers to reveal the younger, smoother, inner bark. The whole rainbow surrounded her, and then some, the leaves a spectacle of colors that put the beauty of a clearing covered in autumn’s fallen leaves to shame.

It was disorienting. It was breathtaking if only you took the time to stop and look.

She did, for a short while. And the Voice, too, silently looked through her eyes, feeling what she felt, and smiling slightly. She didn’t remember much of her old life, of the places she’d seen when she was fighting, of the wonders and horrors she’d witnessed. She got the feeling she should be grateful for losing all of that: she’d get a second chance to feel that marvel. And never remember the nightmarish sights. She was sure, for one, that she’d never seen these woods. They were something new. Something young. It made her hope, for a moment, that the world had changed in the right way.

Isse began walking again, and, after a while, reached a small clearing. It was, like all the places she’d seen that were actively inhabited by arachne, covered in spider silk from top to bottom, turning it all into a white wintry-wonderland. All that was missing was the actual snow.

Her sisters were all there, or at least she thought they were. She hadn’t exactly stopped to count them all. Which would’ve been a hopeless endeavor, seeing how much they moved around.

She walked in, and was immediately spotted by one of the [Carers]: Makira.

She had long since come back from her short meeting with Grandmother and was currently chatting with the others, keeping an attentive eye on the kids. But she stopped when she noticed her.

"Oh, you’re back! I was beginning to get worried for a moment there. Are you alright dear? Still feeling unbalanced from your meeting with Grandma? She can have that effect on people, don’t worry. She means well. Usually. Oh, and I see you met Aru, our [Seamstress]. I noticed because of the new clothes. Normally we wait before we let you young ones get some good ones. You grow so fast. I imagine she made it as a present to make you happier. Good girl."

The barrage of sentences hit her like a car going at full speed, leaving her momentarily disoriented.

"Calm down Maki, you’re going to give her a headache." shouted another [Carer].

Her features tried to show resignation, but she couldn’t control the small smile that appeared on her face.

"Yeah, yeah, don’t worry, I know when to stop."

"You sound like Iadara when someone puts a casket of wine in front of her."

"That woman is the literal definition of ‘Turning your addiction into your job’." piped up another [Carer], eliciting a chuckle from the other adults.

Makira herself smiled a bit: "Come on girls, don’t gang up on her. Everyone has to have a way to stave off boredom."

And then they started chatting amiably among each other. But not before Makira sent Isse to play with her other sisters.

The clearing, she found out, was something of a play area. Only, instead of having normal things like a sandbox, a slide, a little castle or things like that, there were swings made out of spider silk, their seats huge compared to the ones she remembered from earth, when she was still in her human body, an honest to god catapult, which was used to fucking yeet a few little arachne towards conveniently placed patches of more elastic silk, and instead of your boring little castles, well, the best word to describe it would be ‘A gigantic overgrown tree that was more twisted than a psychopath’s mind’.

That’s clearly the handiwork of a [Druid], said the Voice.

What the hell is a [Druid]?

They’re mages attuned to nature. They manipulate what already exists around them to make what they want, with respect. Some kind of ‘Maintain the Balance of Nature’ shtick. They hate it when someone confuses them with [Green Mages], who tend to create nature out of nowhere. Good in a pinch, but the things they make are unstable and die off in a matter of days, if not hours.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Well now, that was interesting.

The twisted tree, its branches placed in such a way as to help a small arachne climb up its trunk, looked anything but natural.

So, wanna climb it?, asked the Voice, a hint of hope in her tone.

Not really the type to play King of the Hill. Queen. Whatever.

Oh come on! Stop being a party pooper and have some fun for once in your life.

I am not a party pooper. Stop calling me that.

A little part of her brain wondered, for a moment, if two people could even make a party. In particular, two people living in the same body. Gods, was this what conjoined twins had to deal with their whole lives?

Then prove it. Climb. That. Tree. I dare you!

Fifteen minutes later, Isse was regretting the moment she had given in to her intrusive thoughts (aka: the Voice). To say the competition to get on top of the tree was vicious would be an understatement. It was a bloody fight, where any and every tactic, no matter how underhanded, no matter how many war crimes it made you commit, was acceptable. Isse had seen, in these last fifteen minutes, more girls getting Mufasa-Betrayed than she’d seen the Lion King in her life.

At some point Anda had joined her, only to fall to the ground and get carried away by the other sore losers to form a tactic to ascend together. Alliances were made and broken at the speed it took for an Italian to say ‘Yes’ when asked if they wanted pizza for dinner.

And all the while Isse was climbing up, miraculously managing to not get thrown down. Well, mainly because of the Voice that kept telling her about incoming threats. She had a better situational awareness than Isse.

She climbed, and one of her sisters fell on her from higher up. Her hands found two of her legs and held on for dear life.

Without thinking, Isse reached out a hand and took hers, straining her young muscles to try and take her up to her level.

What are you doing idiot? You don’t help the enemy on the battlefield!

This is not a fucking battlefield Siidi, it’s a game and she is my sister.

Doesn’t matter. Let her go. Trust me, you’re going to regret it if you help her.

Isse was divided. On one hand, she wanted to help her little sister and show that she was better than the other kids, that she wasn’t a betrayer. On the other, she had the feeling the Voice was right. The only sister she thought she knew was Anda, and currently she and a group of other arachne were beginning to climb the tree again screeching for bloody revenge.

In the end, she came to a final decision and swung the girl away from her on another branch. It was a bit lower down than her, but at least she wasn’t going to have to start from the beginning.

She smiled slightly and began climbing again as the Voice sighed in discontent.

She was nearing the top when something hit her again. This time from the side.

It was another arachne, obviously. This one had short red hair, and the fur on her spider half, too, was dark red.

Isse didn’t have the chance to see more of her as she lost her balance and fell, managing at the last moment to grab a branch with her hands. Her sister loomed over her, a smug smile on her face, looming like one of the villains from an old black and white film.

(Ok, that’s a strange thing to think. I’ve never seen a single black and white film.)

She stared in the girl’s eyes and half expected for lightning to strike something in the background while thunder created the perfect cover for her evil laughter.

Nothing like that happened, but the girl moved one of her spider legs and started to prick the fingers of her left hand, evidently desiring to savor the power she had right now and wanting to see the desperation slowly creep in her enemy’s eyes as she slowly lost her grip before falling down to her doom.

One… two… three… four… five…

Isse lost her grip with one hand. She tried to grab at the same branch again, because she had never understood why in those films the protagonist never did that, instead just holding on with the one hand they had left. Like, dude, you lost your grip, alright, but they didn’t cut off your hand. Be more like Indiana Jones.

But, apparently, the girl on top wasn’t so stupid, and kept batting away her hand with one of her spidery legs, while she used another to start doing the same with the other hand.

… Six… Seven…

…Was the girl actually humming?

… Eight… Nine…

She looked her dead in the eyes before, finally, removing that last finger. It was a matter of one second, but she clearly saw that, behind the glee, there was some sort of resignation. Again, she had won. And her little prey hadn’t even fought back that much. Too easy. Not entertaining enough. She was going to always be the Queen of the Tree, and it would be too easy.

Ten…

And Isse fell, the world slowing down as she looked the girl in the eyes.

What a bitch!, shouted the Voice in her mind, clearly angry.

Then, after a moment, she added:

Gotta respect that mercilessness.

Am I gonna die?, she asked as fear reared its ugly head back out.

Nah. Arachne aren’t easy to kill, remember. And the adults put a lot of silk down there to cushion all falls. Your pride is the only thing that’s gonna be hurt.

She fell. And then lurched to a stop.

Her arm hurt from the drastic change of direction, and she hissed in pain. She looked up. And right there, staring at her with what she believed was a bemused smile, was the girl she’d helped before. She could read, on her face, the words ‘Look how the tables have turned.’

They looked each other in the eyes for a moment, then the girl, unexpectedly, shoved Isse towards a nearby branch. As she grabbed hold of it with both her hands and her spider legs, she looked up, and read, in the other girl’s yellow eyes (Like a cat!, she thought), that they were even.

Catgirl, as she’d decided to call her for now, then began climbing with renewed fervor, most probably desiring to take her well deserved revenge against the same girl who’d thrown Isse down.

And that’s when she came to a decision.

She chittered towards the climbing girl, since her vocal chords were still incapable of speech. Makira had said that they should be capable of speaking in a matter of days. She’d also added that she couldn’t wait. Understandable, since she was, quite literally, a [Chatterbox]. An evolution of the [Gossip] Class.

Catgirl turned back towards her, an eyebrow raised. Isse made a gesture of two hands shaking, then pointed at herself and at the girl, then up, after which she made the gesture of a fist striking her palm.

To translate this little game of charades, she was proposing an alliance to beat the current Queen of the Tree.

The girl inclined her head to the side and thought about it for a moment, then smiled and nodded.

Ten minutes, and a bloody battle of two against one later, Isse and Catgirl were standing triumphantly at the top of The Tree, laughing in joy, as the Red Girl lay at the bottom, surrounded by a lot of quite angry arachne children.

All the while, Makira and the others had watched the scene in amusement. Their smiles were starting to become painful, but that was ok. There were worse things to be pained about.

"Ok, children," Makira clapped her hands, getting their attention, "It’s time for lunch!"

The clearing was filled with cheering.

"You’re going to have a taste of the food you’ve sloppified this morning!"

To which, the Voice groaned.

Oh Stars, no.

Turns out, Siidi was right. The meat sloppy that steak had become during that morning was awful. It’s not that it tasted bad, not really. It’s actually that it tasted of nothing. It was so flavorless that her brain decided to assign a taste similar to a few of the antibiotics she’d had to drink as a child, leaving behind a kinda sweet aftertaste.

Anda, too, wasn’t thrilled. The moment she excitedly bit into her own cocoon her face scrunched up, then she forced herself to drink down, and her face became that of an old woman from how wrinkled it looked.

She stopped eating, and something similar to a ‘Bleh’ came out of her mouth, mixed in with a bit of chittering.

It was filling, that’s for sure, but it wasn’t pleasant.

That’s when the adults came out with more normal food, laughing among themselves at the spiderlings’ reactions.

It was on that note that her quite eventful morning came to a close.