In Her Web She's Caught (Solo)

[Lillith]

In Her Web She's Caught (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdeZXdfGSH8)

1997


The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unfolds a plan of her devising,
A thin premeditated rig
To use in rising.

And all that journey down through space,
In cool descent and loyal hearted,
She spins a ladder to the place
From where she started.

Thus I, gone forth as spiders do
In spider's web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken thread to you
For my returning.

E.B White

[Ruby]

The cave's opening was a totem to danger, and the party of intrepid adventurers stood before it trembled silently in the chill morning air. Six souls had been gathered for the purpose of this undertaking, and Ruby looked to each of them in turn as the twang of frigidity in her breath snapped down as icy pain in her chest. Lilith, herself, Blank, a guide to bring them to the gates of hell and a Shinto shaman to perform the binding ritual...this was their requiem in the mountains of Akashima, their fellowship damned.

"Shall we set up camp and rest, or is the adrenaline in our blood eager to not be wasted?" The red headed mistress asked with a whisper, careful not to waken the oni that no doubt slumbered in the shadows beyond the stalagmite bordered entrance.

"I have no preference," Lilith replied, busy unpacking the contents of a small chest and setting out the innards on a large slab of slate, laden with lichen born a century ago. It was late enough in the day but still early to hear bird song, and the dew was long evaporated from nature's caress. "We should entertain the idea of embarking sooner, rather than later, but there is no hurry either way."

Ruby nodded, and set about replacing her long travel dress with the now all too familiar wrapping of decorated metal she had purchased in the bazaar of Scara Brae many months before. It was a little battered, and worn from conflict, but it had become a second skin as familiar to her than the leather under layer of her habitual evening wear or stage attire. She immediately felt the warm tingling sensation that accompanied the wearing of Wainwright's Heart as the belt fashioned itself about her slender waist, and she immediately felt more confident, passionate and willing to stare their daemon in the face.

"Then when Blank is ready," she looked over the shoulder to try and catch a glimpse of the swordsmen, who was sat with his back to the party cross legged and in prayer, "we shall see what webs fate has woven for us," she looked back at the cave entrance, "and what tangible form this creature has." As birdsong broke over the camp, the priest and the guides huddled together and recited their own mantras, clutching beads and idols with deep suspicion and terror. Ruby swallowed the dryness from her throat, and stepped a little closer to catch wind of the scent that drifted from the under dark.

[Lillith]

"Do not fear it," Lillith appeared by her sister's side, twirling her tanto in her palms to keep warmth flowing about her tired limbs. Whilst in peak physical condition, it was a three mile journey from the village of Tokyun into the very heart of the forest, and even her uncle's famous steamed dumplings and Crestview Soup only stretched so far to sustain. "I have heard the tales since I was a child, called it many names, but never once did she settle under my skin".

She turned and picked up a small satchel, and threw it over Ruby's shoulder like a maid dressing a lady of the house. She resisted with a stubborn grimace, but her nimble offence overrode Ruby's reluctance to be mothered when it was her duty to mother others eternal. "Unless you wish to fight and clash steel with ghosts, you will carry the altar components dearest sister," her words crashed against Ruby's ego and she ceased to interfere. Lillith strapped it down tight and caressed the hem of the metal skirt lovingly.

"Thank you."

"For?" Ruby cast her a glance but settled back onto the cave, distracted by the enthralling dominion of the mystery it contained, but still paying enough attention to give her sister heed.

"Saving me."

Ruby smiled.

"I would sing The Last Song a thousand times to have you by my side, and a thousand times more in sacrifice to give you the life you have so for so long deserved. But," she turned on her heel, free of the cave's enchantment at last, and rested both hands on Lillith's slender shoulders, "please stop thanking me for it - Lucian is dead, but many Akashiman's will also die if we do not do our duty."

Lillith cursed under her breath and broke from Ruby's grip. As she walked over to the crate she had been tending minutes before, she tramped the grass down and her boots levelled swathes of the world beneath her feet in her uprising. She knew by 'duty' that Ruby meant servitude, and she had fought too long and hard with the Tantalum to be contained by Duffy's broken promises to the Ixian Knights and the one named Sei Orlougne.

"Monster hunters, pariahs, murderers, self-titled heroes, who is Duffy to draw is in with their lot without so much as a thought for our opinions?" She looked over her shoulder at Ruby, and dropped the lid back onto the crate with clumsy, loud and cankerous movements.

[Ruby]

"Duffy had good intentions when he made that pact with Sei; it was his hand in the assault on the Obsidian Tower that turned the tide in our favour, if you remember?" Ruby raised an eyebrow, one that formed as much of a thrust of steel as her words.

Lillith dropped her shoulders, and showed her regret with twiddling thumbs. "Forgive me."

"I understand your frustration, truly I do, the things Duffy did, the things we did to ensure our freedom in this world were sometimes horrifying, but look at the world around you, what do you see?" She opened her arms wide, gesturing to the bounty of nature that encompassed half of Corone's secretive mountain realm.

For a moment, the only sound to break the silence were the mantras of the guiding party and the occasional last gasp of a raven or crow, hiding in the canopies on the fringes of the cave mouth, eyeing their potential feast with feverish curiosity. Ruby watched her sister machinate and ruminate between leaf and blade of grass and behemoth rock encrusted with decay, and hoped she would arrive at the same conclusion.

"I used to see home."

"It is home, and that is precisely why we must work so hard to protect it. For too long the Oni have slumbered, twisting the strands of fate and taking lives and territory as their fickle whims see fit. Now that heroes are less occupied with their own existentialist plight, we can do something, we can ravage the horrors like your grandfather once did!"

Tugging on her ancestral strings seemed to perk her sister up enough to have her sheath her blades from her ambidextrous fingers, eternally held to hand even as she worked, and for her to honk up her dress and pin it into a skirt for ease of movement and dexterity, and nod readily to the guides to signal their readiness.

"I wish only to tend to the needs of the people and be rid of this creature once and for all, when we get home, this will be the last deed we do for the Ixian Knights in a long, long time...do you hear me?" She wagged a finger at Ruby and as they both chuckled with matriarchal glee, red hair and black locks caught the sun in jolly union.

[Arden]

Blank opened his eyes.

He did not need to look over his shoulder to see where the disturbance was coming from, and reluctantly, he set about clearing away the incense and tea set that had encompassed the focus of his meditation.

Whilst he was seldom found to be a religious man, and some would say found to have any conscience or morals at all, the presence to the very heart of Akashima itself had brought about a paradigm shift in the swordsman's mind. He had been born here, centuries ago, and his very life was woven into the fabric of the ziggurat's and life blood of the country, even if his body had ascended into a new form many times since he had been the Janelle once known in these lands.

He set the last of the cups into the small crate, decorated with ivory swans and rose petal motifs and closed it with a satisfying click. He blew away the ash from the small rock her had used as altar and table and pushed himself upright with a polite bow and one last muttering thank you to the wind kami that dragged his blessings away to be heard.

"I can only assume," he turned sullenly, "that such laughter mean we are ready?" He walked back amidst the camp and set the crate down gently next to the provisions and horses, and approached Lillith and Ruby with his arms crossed over his chest.

"Sorry Arden," they said in unison, with surly looks of school girl mischief dropping to the floor.

"<It is time to leave!>" He called to the guides and priest, and they burst into a frenzy of activity to seal away their possessions and take staff and arms up into their trembling hands. The lacquered heaviness of his Akashiman was a bumbling attempt at regalia, but he succeed only in a simple monotone drone that clearly marked him as a foreigner in his own home.

"Do you have any sort of plan, beyond a leap of faith into the dark?" As he waited for a reply, he pulled on his tunic and strapped the material over his damp skin; even his usual resilience to the cold and preference to fight semi-clothed was overridden by the unknown contents of the under dark. He stood in stark contrast, dressed in white and with auburn hair tied back, to the floral décor and armoured Valkyrie figures that were his eternally annoying companions.

[Lillith]

"A plan?" Lillith simply chuckled.

Blank rolled his eyes and they all moved as one towards the cave, the three Tantalum in the lead and the guides and priest bringing up the rear-guard with a huddle of nerves and nervous, cautious glances. With every step closer, they pointed and superstitiously jeered at the many rocks engraved with runes that lay scattered about the foot of the cave.

"They are Vigil Stones, to bind the oni into the cavern," she knocked a small pile of them over with a heavy kick of her boot, "they don't work - it is the shrine at the heart of the cavern which keeps the Lady in the dark, though she must grow in power if she can form a vision beyond its confines - a lure, if you will," Lillith continued into the breach of the cave, and stared up at the jagged roof.

"Our intent is to find the creature, subdue it in conflict, and whilst we riddle with it, you, Ruby and myself, the shaman will perform the ritual that will return its soul to the Shrine and bind it's will there for another century or so."

Blank nodded, satisfied enough with the general run of the mill gung-ho approach that seemed to form any attempt at heroism by the rag-tag group wherever they went. He guessed their lives were too chaotic, and he too deep in the structured order of The Scourge to appreciate any other method than surgical precision.

Lillith smiled one last time, before allowing a serious nature to fall over her like rain. With a snap of her heel she turned into the dark, and clapped her hands together with a mighty clang. A wave of light rushed down the length of the cave mouth, a gentle blue to soften the shadows that did not blind not give their presence away too much. The ancient magic which bonded the light into the two small chunks of rock in her palms had been made especially by the shaman, and would last for many hours - "let us go, and be on your guard..." she stepped forwards, and her friends followed her shogun oratory.

[Ruby]

Ruby felt a shiver roll down her spine as her boots splashed into a rock bed puddle, and the leery atmosphere of the forest darkened further still. Whilst she had been in grave danger before, both in the arena of war and the heart of madness, this was a strange and unfamiliar territory, and the stories of the Oni and Kami of Akashima had been drilled into her as ghost tales ever since Lillith had arrived in the city of Scara Brae, many moons ago.

"What exactly is it we hunt, this Lady?" She braved a question, dragging back her words with a hushed voice. She crept alongside Lillith, who strode almost defiantly over the rubble as the grass and dirt faded and the heavy stonework of the under dark grew in deftness and in precarious unevenness.

"The Jurogumo?" Lillith asked pensively, and spoke without turning her head away from the shadows cast by the glow stones. "She is a Spider Daemon, a vicious Oni corrupted by jealousy and lust."

Ruby felt the comparison even though Lillith did not spell it out to her. "Is it mortal?"

"No spirit is mortal, but it has a body of flesh and blood that flickers between corporeality and ethereal state, through the shadows of the world, so we can kill it, so to speak."

Ruby frowned, and let the party settle back into silence as they continued through the opening corridors and the light of safety behind them faded from view altogether. She suddenly felt very isolated, even so close to her most trusted companions, the severance of daylight was crushing on her chest and made her under lining fabric cling to her damp and salty skin. There was no other sound except the faint dripping of water through the cliffs overhead, and the occasional splash of a careless foot into a pool that could potentially be an abyss.

The Crimson Mistress suddenly wished she had the nerve to ask sooner, and to then extrapolate herself from the assignment without sounding so encouraging all the way here...spiders were not her strong point, and she had a sudden sinking feeling that undid her usually stoic and commanding aura. She fell back behind Lillith, to Blank's side, and lingered in his menace so as to feel protected by something fearless and undaunted by the horrors of the world.

[Arden]

Blank followed Ruby's retreat and smiled weakly as she stopped and stepped into the same stride as he was. He held on to the hilt of the Rheilhand, to impose an image of a brave and morally encoded samurai; whilst he was far from it, the visage no doubt would give a protecting impression.

The Spider Daemon had killed many men in recent weeks, and those deaths and the haunting wails of the widows left in the Oni's maudlin' wake had cracked Blank's normally flawless façade of sanity and devout commitment to nihilism. They had travelled from village to village and up the cliffs to the Tea House Lillith & Ruby oft frequented on a trail of storytelling that hearkened his soul, from the first death, Noriko's husband, to the very last, a trio of hunters from the capital city, he had slowly succumbed his first objections and agreed to accompany the sisters on their quest.

He had been a Spirit Warder in a past life, bound to the illusions of a dying tradition and a defender of the very same essence he protected now - friendship and freedom. He ratified the approach by equating it to an absolving act. Through the conflict with the Jurogumo, he could forgive the sins of one of his many past lives and seal it away for eternity in the confines of The Aria. Whilst Duffy and Ruby had the gall to bring their old selves to life with song, and to dance on the world's surface with their kith and kin in plain sight, Blank was too disgusted with his own self to suffer the shame of their being.

"<No rest for the wicked,>" he muttered.

"<No love for the tireless,>" the priest replied, smiling over Blank's shoulder and bowing in the twilight.

Blank paused for the briefest of moments, stumped that a child hood motto was still woven into the myth of his homeland. He hung his head in shame and penance, and marched on in pursuit of Lilith’s quickening pace, and the increasing tension that threatened to crack the veil of time as it slowed into a frozen stream of nothing.

[Lillith]

"You do not need to be scared, Ruby."

It had been almost an hour since anyone had spoken, and the group travelled at their set pace for miles through the perma-dark, jumping and pausing in nervous union at every awkward shadow and flickering illusion cast by Lilith’s light. Her customary handling of Ruby's brash nature had weighed on her as the rock had turned slowly to crystal, and they broke out into a vast spherical expanse that shimmered and glimmered in an oceanic array of colour.

"I'm not scared, just worried."

"The tori is not far, it will soon be time."

"Torii?" Blank asked, stopping to adjust his clothing catch his breathe. The group broke into a loose arrangement of nervous forms at the centre of the sphere, which was devoid of rubble or clutter or form beyond the entrance, and a single small tunnel continuing in the same path on the far side.

Lillith rolled her eyes and made a trill cluck, "You forget your ancestry too quickly Arden, though I admit I often become confused remembering the Nihon Skoki - the traditional history myself. The torii, in the simplest description possible, is the gateway to the shrine which is the centre of the jurogamo's power, and her prison."

She crashed the stones together with a sharp intake of breath and closed her eyes as they erupted in a wave of powerful, piercing light. For the briefest of moments, the entire sphere shone with such radiance, the party had to cover its awes and Basque in the awe of the crystal underworld under the safety of cloth and fingertip. She had played here as a child, and prayed at the temple to appease her dedication to Amaterasu Omikami, the sun goddess, who was the object of the Lady's eternal jealousy.

"I feel an ill omen in the air, it is clear that the temple is compromised, and that the Lady will not stay contained for long if we do not act. This crystal under dark is the first of the ante chambers, there are two more before the torii, and then we shall be able to enter the shrine itself." She brought the stones together once more, and let the magic flow between them until the light stabilised into a less blinding aura.

"<May the Musubi guide us,>" said the priest off the back of her words, bowing at Lillith as he did so.

She smiled at him politely, drew her kunai from her belt and held them to the stones. The cold pang of metal and rock formed a focus for her senses as she broke from the group and made for the tunnel.

"<We will need more than Musubi, sensei, we will need fear itself.>" Blank and Ruby looked at one another, shrugged in ignorance, and followed with quickened pace.

[Ruby]

"Do you think she will be okay?" Ruby leant over to Arden and whispered in his ear, an air of superiority dripping from every word. Her light hearted nature seemed to bounce back off the re-assuring proximity with an end to their ordeal.

"Lillith is made of stronger stuff than you are able to realise, her ties to Akashima are strong, now that she has had the time to take stock of her rebirth." Blank did not catch her gaze, and continued without hesitation, hand still on his sword and eyes set on the black circle on the far wall.

"I was hoping she would have spoken to you, said something - discussed the old days?" Ruby skipped, and tried to enamour her prey with kindness and nonchalant interference. She did not manage a very convincing display.

"Ask her, if you feel bad for doing what you did, ask her." He broke his façade and prodded his free finger at Lilith’s back. "But not now, she is focussed, keen, parochial - I doubt she is even still Lillith, the shogun and the geisha are powerful aspects of her psyche, it is from them, and in turn The Aria that she now speaks."

Ruby slumped, and returned her concentration onto keeping a level footing as they climbed the curve in the sphere and entered the tunnel. She remembered their discoveries together fondly, as they both came to terms with the talents gifted by The Aria, the essence of the Thayne Tantalus. Hers was song, and through her words she could craft new realities. Duffy's was adoration, conjuring past lives and heroes from the pages of his plays and books. Blank's was destruction, the ability to delete and re-write history as if it were a scene scribbled from the parchment...

Lilith’s moniker in the world was to channel the very essence of Akashima itself. With a slug of water from her hip flask, laced with a hint of gin lavender and lime, she tried to quash the thought of what would happen if she began to channel the very thing they were hunting...her sister was every bit as malefic and corrupted as she was by power, and control over men...

What if it were her web in which the rural idyll of Akashima were caught?

[Arden]

With a stern flex of his muscles, Blank pulled his blade from its sheath and with his free hand, pulled the sash which kept his top secure free with a whip of wind. His senses drove his thinking, and his mettle forced him forwards with a flap of bare feet and a rush of adrenaline.

He had zoned out for the briefest of moments, but caught the attack in time. Lillith had crested the slope and half disappeared into the shadows when her stones had simply died, a blue pinhole darkened like an eclipse of the sun. The long tendrils of black that had crested up around their sister had been a tell-tale sign of danger, and he ploughed into the tunnel with a gasp of air and a pain in his chest.

"Lillith!" He screamed, "<Lillith-sama!>" His voice, coarse with exertion rattled and echoed along the tunnel as the last burning light faded, leaving him ensconced in the darkness of the underworld.

He shuffled forwards a few feet, oblivious to the cries of fear and shock coming from behind him, and felt his feet edge against something warm. With a slow, cautious descent, he knelt to place his fingers on the object, and lifted his blade over his head in a defensive stance in-case it were a lure.

He felt the connection, and shuddered. It was unmistakably blood, warm, thick and non-luminescent...the kami of Akashima were corporeal, and their life force ectoplasm - if it had been the death throe or last stand of a kunai, he would have seen the evidence with his own eyes. He stared into uncertain territory into what he presumed to be the direction of the shrine, and with a longing thought, prayed for her safety.

"<Fly safe into the night sister,> may Tantalus guide you." His heart raced so much that his enamoured state went from one language to the other, one parable and prayer to the next.

[Lillith]

Long ago, the Spirit Warders fought a secret war with the Domino Oni Undarn, who dwelt deep in the earth beneath the cliffs of Tokyun. In their final assault against the spiritual fold of the spirit, they rallied the villagers to arms about their ancient rituals and confidence, and marched their peon host into the cavernous maw that lead to his lair.

Through ichor and grime and nightmarish apparitions, the villagers, mere mortal men and boys, were lead to their doom. As they arrived through a great portal of stalagmites, skeletons and blood running from the walls, they stood little chance against the gibbering horde of decadence and horror that swarmed out from beneath the wings of the Oni Lord.

An army is not always for winning battles, however. As the bulk of swordsmen and feeble spear wielding farm hands were torn from existence, their souls sent to the afterlife in honour for their country, the Spirit Warders slipped silently through the chaos and surrounded Undarn; six souls against one, six blades against a thousand screams. With great trepidation and resolve, the Spirit Warders fought and finally sealed Undarn in a six way wrought spiral, a Vigil of ancient power that still binds his shadow in the catacombs beneath the cliffs this day.

On the wind swept heights of the cliffs there stands a gate, a temple and shrine to those brave souls who died that day. Its red poles are bound with messages from pilgrims and ancestors who climbed the cliffs in homage or traversed the long road around the rocky heights. There is a row of bells, which tinkle in the gusts that roll down the valley ahead of the roiling sunshine that glimmers across the surface of the river Kane; six in total, each one progressively larger than the last.

My grandfather told me this tale each night, before bed, for the first five years of my life. My parents often lulled me to sleep with more traditional tales of the okiyas, the palace and the jade clad dancers of the Akashima way, but my grandfather saw in me potential – hidden depths like the coral beneath a virulent tide, or a pearl beneath the pored and scarred shell of an oyster. What good the tale did in my early years I cannot guess, but now, I am drawn to the Tenpuru on the cliffs, and wish to pay those who sacrificed their lives for my home village’s future the respect they deserve. I shall climb the cliffs along the pine road, and look down across Tokyun as my forefathers did, and behold the glory of yesterday.

[Lillith]

Lillith trudged through the mud and the wind and the rain and the snow for what seemed like a month. In all actuality, she knew at the back of her mind it had only been a week, but the journey needed a little more depression to make it as bleak and decrepit for her soul as it felt. A woman’s right was hyperbole and erratic paranoia, after all. She had begun her journey to Tokyun a week ago, setting out from Jadet to the South via caravan, and had arrived a day later in the town of Underwood, deep in the heart of the Concordia forest.

It was a region she for all intent and purpose knew rather well, but during a turning of the seasons it was a strange and perilous land, even for a native to the island. She had hired a guide and set out the morning after amidst the market foray and disgruntled workers and travelled via wagon until its heavy wheels could trundle through the undergrowth no more. They had departed by the old way stone and the statue of the kami Kanesa Nobuo, an ancient saint of sorts she had no interest in, but one which had marked the traditional entrance to the secret land of Akashima for centuries.

There were many ways into and out of the mountains, all of them marked by statues or similar landmarks hidden by time and foliage and darker things where evil was permitted. As the Spirit Warders dominance of the borders between Radasanth and Akashima had faded, too few men and too many perils, so too had the safety of travellers between the two realms. Her guide had assured her, as had her memories, that this particular route, which took a wide berth of the more jagged peaks and took them through a delicate woodland valley into the heart of the Jade Forest, would pass without beast or monster to assail them.

Whilst they had both been correct in that regard, the weather had decided to throw everything at them. The dust track and dirt trail had first turned to mud as heavy rain like jewels descended. The wind rustled the barley and tree tops for two days straight, and then all descended into chaos with a light smattering of snow as they rose into the mountains before descending into intense heat as autumn went undecided into the last glimmering light days before winter. Her guide had been lost in the snow drifts, and her pack had been re-organised to contain the essentials of survival with the essentials of glamour, and as she strode onto the flats of Kunyong and looked out across the glistening fields and the forest edge beyond that marked the halfway point, she sighed with desperation and fatigue. She felt defeated before she had even begun her trials proper, after all, paying homage to the dead would do her soul no good if she died on the way to do so.

[Lillith]

The bull-grass rustled beneath her heavy boots as she strolled over the flats with a slower pace than she had settled into descending into the valley. The crisp, clean air allowed her a brief respite and invigorated her body enough to give it drive and need to reach a suitable rest location. At the centre of the flats, which were a savannah landscape with jagged gorges and raised plateaus where long ago the earth had shaken itself into a maze of scars and sanctuaries, stood a large tree.

Lillith remembered that it was called Kodokuna, ‘Lonely’. She made for its shade and admired the dense olive foliage which covered its branches, despite the dying gold and browns of the distant forest in front of her and behind it somehow survived amidst the death and lemon scented winds of winter slumber. There was a word for such trees, where once they had been revered as spirits unbridled by nature, the common gardener and budoku had called them ‘evergreen.’ The backdrop of the razor Spire Mountains in the distance and the forest which covered most of the valley asides the flats cast it in favourable and awe-inspiring might, and Lillith felt relieved that her journey thus far had been rewarded.

It was a shame; she thought to herself, that no-one else was there to share it with her. Irony abound, the Lonely Tree and the Lonely Woman met for the first time in utter solitude. They accepted one another’s company with baited breath, and Lillith clambered up the cracked earth stairs with dirtied hands and a scuffed nape to place a single digit on its haggard bark and praise thanks to the earth for its bounty. Its leaves shone from underneath as the sun pierced it’s canopy and the heat faded into a cool shade which relaxed and satisfied the deep heat in every limb. She settled on the tree’s trunk with her back to the approach, and her front to the sheer drop which cut off half the plateau from the grassland below.

“Akashima,” she whispered to herself, afraid that someone might here her confession. “Your daughter is home at last.” With cumbersome movements she slung her pack and its weight to the ground to one side, and rested against the tree for a moment to collect her thoughts. She slid and slumped to the ground and closed her eyes to listen to the distant roar of the wind rolling down the valley, and the gentle rustling of leaves overhead.

[Lillith]

An hour passed with little activity, except for the passing of a crane overhead and a squirrel in the branches of Lillith’s wandering companion. She squinted up at the little red dot in the leaves and smiled, before pushing herself upright to stretch away the stiffness in her joints. It was only noon, she guessed from the position of the sun directly overheard, but it would be a good few hours until she made it deep into the forest into the familiar territory of her birth place and the shelter and safety from the dark it allowed.

She rummaged in her pack for her water skin and drank deeply from it. Whilst many sources of water existed on their trail through the mountains and in crystal clear streams and around hondens deep in Tokyun’s woodland, she had grown accustomed to Scara Brae’s unpure water and did not wish to sour her travels with illness if she was even slightly careless in choosing a source to drink from. She thought it a little ironic, that she could only feel at home in her own home by bringing along with her some small part of her home.

With swift motions she strapped her pack to her back and adjusted her clothing, and walked to the first rung of the geographical steps that lead back down to the flats. She made a blessing with her hands to the tree for its cover and conversation in her brief daydream, and walked out into the bull-grass with confidence in her stride. There was roughly a league between Lillith and the edge of the forest that marked the halfway mark between the entrance to the valley and the northern region. The south was open, the north steadily grew into a denser and mountainous forest terrain, split in half by the great river and finally, it reached the spear tip shaped valley where Tokyun itself sat at the foot of the cliffs as the rest of the world passed it by.

Above the village stood the precarious wind swept temple Lillith hoped to see. She distanced herself from the thought of the journey head, so as to keep herself strong and able to continue. There were many leagues of forest to traverse before she joined the flow of the river to the heart of her birthplace, and a steep climb up the cliff path which zigzagged into the rock and many hours to return to the flats and the distant docks of Jadet beyond. With a deep sigh, she quickened her pace and settled her gaze on a point in the distant tree-line, not letting the corrupted earth and the shadows that flickered in-between the gorges distract her.

[Lillith]

From the density of the air and the sudden swell of heat that struck Lillith as she crossed from the open flats to the first stringent trees, she guessed that it had been a summer of abundance and an autumn season which had not relented in its heat or its ability to encourage growth. Lush brambles laden with early fruits, already ripe cluttered the trunks of the sycamore and lychee trees which grew in light clusters as the forest came into existence. Delicate yellow blooms peppered the grass as it shortened and turned eventually into a dense layer of pine needles and dead leaves, mulching beneath game footprints and time into a safe-haven for insects and next summer’s life.

For a city dweller, nature had little hold over her in the grand scheme of things. She was a woman beholden to sparkling trinkets, fine wine, finer men and of course, the idyllic pursuits of the stage wherever and whenever it was available. Lillith found that she was awed, all the same, taken aback by the hustle and bustle of the forest even so far away from its heart. She compared it to the city of Scara Brae as she walked silently with her jaw gaping, swamped with the sheer amount of detail and sound and sensory information that washed over her. She traced every little mushroom and every little rock pile cast to the moss that she passed.

This must be the suburbs of the forest, the sprawling, rural mass of residential territory that occupied a space between acknowledgement and obscurity yet somehow maintained the identity of the inner city prominent few. Lillith concluded that she must explore the city in its entirety when she returned, if it offered even a slither of the same beauty the forest did, she would see another side to her home from home she could ill afford to miss. “Domo arigato gosaimasu,” she mumbled, keen to be heard but not keen enough to draw whatever lurked out of view to her presence.

Forgiving herself the distraction she quickened her pace and nimbly clambered over moss peat and fallen trunk as the forest went from a light tree-line to a more suitably feral environment. Vines trailed from branches and muddy bogs peppered the coarse and arid earth that offered a traveller a single, precarious path across the depths that awaited a careless footstep or drunken fall. Used to the environment and headstrong to the warnings her diseased guide had given her, she made no such mistake, and soon found herself two leagues north, and two leagues nearer the unknown. She did not notice, too out of breath and deep in thought, that the birdsong and the wildlife of the flats had faded – there was no sound but her own, and the distant roar of the river.

[Lillith]

So stubborn was she, that in her ascent, she missed the absent hum of the Kami in the trees, or the constant ever present threat of the oni that rampaged with wanton abandon through the evergreen glades and along the scintillating cliffs and diamond heights of the distant mountains that signified the end of Akashima, and the beginning of the long and radiant sea. She fell silent as she stepped over clod and fallen tree trunk, and remained unaware as the forest darkened and decayed with every moment of advancement through time, day and dawn.

"How I miss you so, sweet Akashima," she mumbled finally, looking up as a crack, a snap of a twig broke her concentration.

"Who...goes there?" She asked the tree line, lips pursed with concentration and hands moving slowly to her tanto.

The sway of leaves and the delicate rustle of the wind through the boughs filled silence with fear for several minutes, until she was satisfied that it must have been a passing doe or a ferret in the rustling undergrowth. With a sigh, she rested at ease and continued her journey to her village and the prospects in the mines beneath the Great Gate Ablaze that overlooked most of the kingdom with the grace of her ancestors bound to it's arc.

She was gladness in all her long haul that Duffy had bidden her to secure mithril for their endeavour in airship building, for it had offered her the opportunity to revisit her childhood one last time before she truly became a lady of the world and the kingdom she knew and cared for as a bright eyed innocent girl vanished into the antiquity of reverence, tradition and xenophobia.

"Somebody, I will return, a new woman and a new charm in my heart, but until then," she clambered up an incline thick with mud and dead leaves, and suddenly realised that she was not alone.

At the crest of the ascent, two tall figures stood, leering down at her as she scrabbled in the dirt for her final claim to glory.

"Mother..."

"Father...?"

She fell back, stunned and shaken by the memory.

[Ruby]

Ruby held a shaking hand to her bosom, and caressed the simple silver pendant which hung around her neck. It bore the weight of the party's arduous progress through the dark tunnels, guided only by luck and fear and the faint cast light of her nervous spell singing. The lights danced fleeting around their heads for only sparse seconds, but they were enough to show them the way.

Lillith had been snatched from under their noses because they had been careless, and the sight of her blood had harrowed Ruby's very soul. Were they diving deeper into death for no reason, to rescue nothing more than a corpse from the spider temptress's lair? She paused for a moment, and Blank stopped fifteen feet ahead as he realised they were growing apart.

"I...can't go on."

He sighed, but nodded understandably. "I realise this is difficult, Ruby, but we must. She has been taken from us, but we can rest assured the oni which stole her has not killed her outright. They are too fickle, too playful with the living to be done away with this opportunity."

The faint sound of water trickling down through heavy rock before falling in icy droplets to the floor of the tunnel filled the silence as she thought some more...perhaps Blank was right.

"Very well," she nodded firmly, her resolve restored enough to continue her advance. The spirit guides and behind her shuffled their feet alongside, and the caravan of wet, tired and battle weary individuals advanced closer to the lair of the oni that had stolen their dreams. They had passed the ante chamber hours ago, and the sight of webs in the overhangs and crooks of the tunnels was a sign that soon...they would learn of Lilith’s fate.

[Lillith]

Lillith opened her eyes.

She had in all honesty expected to find herself in some otherworldly realm of death and punishment.

She did not expect to awaken in a small room in her family home in Tokyun, emaciated and sodden with sweat, but very much alive. She guessed the irony of finding herself here, given the nature of her nightmare was punishment enough.

"Hello?" She said, with a strong Scara Braen accent and a careless ignorance of hospitality traditions. With a struggle, she pushed herself upright in the simple folds of the blossom patterned red sheets and took stock of her surroundings. It seemed familiar, but only by way of familiarity with the architectural style of the wooden building and it's rustic charm. She did not need to look out of the solitary window to imagine many other buildings like it raised on stilts, tightly packed and covered in orange leaves and Autumnal regret.

"Konnichiwa?" She tried once more, with a shaky attempt at Akashiman, long forgotten and resting at the back of her mind like a useless relic. She had little need for it in the city, least not in her travels. She had many assets which did the talking for her.

A small and elderly man drifted through the dangling sakura leaf blind, each strand carefully laden with dried blossoms and scented with orange and cinnamon. He did not even acknowledge Lillith, his grasp of common negligent, his care for his patient purely platonic.

He set down the bowl of steaming noodles he had prepared and bowed, before retreating in the customary fashion - a reverse walk that had always attracted giggles and belittling comments from Lilith’s contemporaries when she had been a young girl struggling to make her debut in the highbrow 'society' she had been thrown into.

With a huff, she punched the bed and resigned herself to her thoughts, the black chopsticks and the delicately nuance of real, authentic Akashiman cuisine without the sour twang of transportation and cultural theft underpinning every bite.

She almost forgot what she had seen in the woods, and what she was doing there to begin with.

She almost felt as if she were dreaming...

[Arden]

The party broke out into a vast chamber with a sudden rise in temperature and light. The long trek through the tunnel work of the Oni's tomb had taken its toll on their nerves, and the sudden return to illumination overwhelmed them.

The last chamber of the spider-one’s lair was a larger spherical cut in than the many previous they had travelled through. At its centre, there was a raised platform, rugged steps cut into the ancient rock. Atop the platform rested a small altar, burning with candles that had died and been replaced a thousand times. From the centre of the room descended a decayed column, which had been broken in time and its base used for sacrifice.

No sooner than they had all safely arrived, a sudden cold wave of fear burst out from the altar.

"<All and sundry perish at the thought of loss>".

The thrill voice echoed in the wake of the wave, speaking in Akashiman and full of contempt. A swirl of mist slowly rolled down over the platform, as if the candles were being brought to life. It gathered thickly at its base, four feet deep and of a purple hue.

"Who goes there?" Ruby cried in response, crossing her arms over her chest as she stepped up besides Blank.

The priest and guide huddle together as they made their preparations for some ancient spell or another, Blank had paid little attention to their descriptions. He drew the Rheilhand from its sheath and levelled it at the mist, uncertain if they were in immediate threat, but unwilling to take the chance. He felt ill.

"<Remember, why you came...or forever in my web she'll be caught.>"

From the mist came a beast the likes of which Blank could not conceive. It's rear end and many legs marked it as a spider, gigantic and swollen beyond all normal proportion, but it's head and spiked joints placed it in a darker category of creature than mere evolutionary excess. It snapped and snarled it's pincer like fangs as it crossed the three hundred foot gap between the mist and the entrance.

A flash of regret crossed the swordsman's gaze, as he realise the shape of the spider's leg and it's blood stained carapace were the very same as the creature that took Lillith right from under their noses.

He brought his blade across his stride as he ran forwards, determined to end the creature's devastating charge before it had the chance to take another of his treasures from the reliquary of his soul.

"<By spirit's plight and kami's blessing, be gone!>"

[Arden]

Scuttling over the rock, the spider moved as swiftly as the silent swordsman, if not more so. The tittle-tattle of its pointed limbs seemed to pierce the ancient granite and limestone with ease, and as it's advancing form wavered in Blank's pummelling stride, he wondered if it would penetrate his own skin with as much ease.

As he skipped into a spin and brought his blade backwards, twisted it and forced it forwards with the strength of his stride behind it, he forgot his troubles. The spider reared back onto its hind legs and screamed, a childish cackle with a shrill uplifting terror dredged through its upper notes. The Rheilhand cut clean through the bends of the creature's front legs, and splattered black blood in a wide arc.

"Grah!" Blank roared, feeling the weight of the spider collide with his own. It's snapping, furious maw lashed out, one bite, two bites, three; the fourth struck home with a low grab to his thigh, and the twin mandibles crushed through his flesh and brought him to his knees.

"<Swordsman!>" The priest shouted, feeling the twang of pain in the Akashiman song's aura.

"Arden!" Ruby stepped forwards, but despite her armour and her talent, she knew she could do nothing to help but pray.

No sooner than his knee was cut on the dirt, he brought his blade up and held it's point downwards. With a push of strength, he brought the wounded creature up with him. The pain of putting weight on his injury rocked his shin and rose up his side like lightning, but adrenaline allowed his muscles to extend enough for him to stand...then fall.

The sound of steel cutting into rock through the exoskeleton of another soft creature filled the chamber and silence took hold.

Blank slumped forwards panting.

"<What?>" He had expected to tumble into the corpse of the giant spider, to find his blade embedded in the gap between its head and thorax...but instead, he fell to the side of the Rheilhand, it's silver streak and curved edge upright in bare rock.

He caught the wisps of purple smoke twirling out from where the creature had been, before he realised his mistake.

[Ruby]

Ruby could not believe her eyes.

She had screamed when she had felt the mandibles crush Blank's leg, but now she could only muster a gasp and a rumour of something strange. The creature, instead of twitching and convulsing and dying before their eyes from the downward thrust...

Simply vanished.

"Blank?" She ran forwards, a dainty kick to her step. As she leant to pick her companion up from his stupor, she heard a whisper, and paused.

"<You have forgotten.>"

The Akashima tongue was unfamiliar to Ruby. She had never managed more than simple statements and tea parlour greetings, and her sister's attempts to teach her the fineries of an otherwise difficult tongue had all been wasted on her. The statement of the jurugumo washed over her, and she looked over her shoulder at the misty alter, oblivious to the creature's rhetoric.

"Blank..." She took him by his shoulder and shook.

"Blank...get up".

The mists, with a deep shuddering boom dispersed.

Ruby paused, and turned to witness the smoke form into something altogether more terrifying. Atop the altar, with a menacing, yet oddly charming smile, stood the Oni Shakari, the Spider Temptress, ancient and malefic and possessing an infinite desire to beguile and corrupt. Ruby clenched her teeth and ground them to metaphorical stubs and she stood, very slowly into an upright position.

The scuttling noise from behind told her the priest was furiously drawing a circle in chalk on the rock floor, and the cackling from ahead spoke tomes about the creature's intent.

"<You must remember, if you want her back..."> The spider-daemon extended one of its hands, a mockery of human and spider forms and from the shadows of the broken pillar above, a ball of spider silk descended on many shining strands of steel-strong silk.

Even from the distance, and even in the twilight of the candles' glare, Ruby saw that it was Lillith.

"NO!" She screamed, heart pounding with anger, and words slipping from her memory that threatened to turn into song, fury, and the righteous assault of the spell-singer scorned.

[Lillith]

Lillith opened her eyes with a groggy moan, and took stock of her surroundings. Mere moments before, she had been lazily spending her days in what she believed to be an estranged uncle's bed, healing from wounds she had not suffered, and a loss she would no longer endure. When it dawned on her that she was dreaming, or perhaps, that she had been trapped in a nightmare, she screamed.

Or tried to.

She started to struggle against the tightly spun threads that encased her entire body, and strained against the damp material against her mouth. The distinct feeling of vertigo overwhelmed her as her struggles rocked her like a pendulum back and forth over the altar's bright light. With a twist, she looked down and met the spider-daemon, it's violet thorax and almost beautiful upper body inverted as she looked at it upside down.

Lillith did not look shocked. She simply stopped, and for a while, thought back to the last moments she had remembered being in the catacombs beneath the cliffs and why she was here to begin with. She remembered the party entering a tunnel, and then a scuttling noise, and then a sharp, almost excruciating pain striking her in the thigh. She had glanced down with a shot to see a giant spider, it's mandibles ripping through her leg and pulling her off her feet in a flash. Before she had time to scream it's penetrating limb had pierced down into her arm and she was being dragged into the dark.

"<You will sleep, and dream a waking nightmare of all your fears...>" The Jurugumo had whispered softly as she teetered between life and death at its many feet.

"<You will act as a lure, and they will forget you.>"

They will never forget... She thought to herself, as the sound of swords swinging and creatures screaming brought her attention to the entrance. She twisted with great effort and then found herself lowered to the creature's side. The unmistakeable sound of her sister's voice reached her muffled ears, and she laughed through her bonds and gag.

As she did so, she winced, a sharp reminder that the once white spider silk was slowly turning red, and that she, like all mortal beings, was running out of time.

She slipped into her nightmare once more, and fell silent and still.

[Arden]

Blank tried to push himself upright, but the pain from his injuries was too great. Succumbing swiftly to the arcane poisons born from the jurugumo's mist, he could manage nothing more than a faint splutter and a single, coarse word. It reached Ruby's ears, and she turned on her heel, her anger at the creature momentarily sated by confusion.

"Phoenix," he slipped into unconsciousness, even as she realised what it was he was asking of her.

Blank, despite all of his horrible deeds in the service of the Thieves' Guild and indeed, in the limelight of the Master of the Scourge, had always endeavoured to protect those he cared for. If he could not, and as he had not, he would gladly give everything he had left to give life to others. His eyes shone for a brief moment, before he used the last of his strength to think of some of the hearty times he had shared with the troupe.

Lilith’s smile graced his mind's purview first of all. To have only just discovered she was his sister was a blessing, but to have lost the chance to get to know her truly...

Ruby, her scolding tone and rapturous applause for his talent...he would miss her laughter, and her haughty spirit.

Duffy...well, what was there to say? He was a brother to the boy, and he had so much to teach the scamp about swordplay...

He faded to black, and hoped that Ruby's spell singing still had the power to cleanse and kindle his wounds just enough for him to rise from the ashes of their disastrous excursion into the dogma of the jurugumo. He heard Ruby's desperate cry drift into silence as he went, and the cold of the dark cavern finally overcame his naked skin and took the last wisps of consciousness away in it's cold embrace.

[Ruby]

The crystal cavern glimmered brighter, for just a few brief moments. The swell of energy emanating from Ruby did not go unnoticed by the Oni, who twitched and convulsed at the rising prominence. No sooner than the echo of Ruby's heel striking the stone underneath her rage, the creature set its many eyes on her fragile form and spurned the mist that swirled around its malefic form to life.

Three spiders, each larger and more veracious than the thirst leapt from nothing and closed the gap between spell singer and web slinger. The cacophony of their limbs scrabbling on the rock clawed at the minds of the guide and spirit shaman, and they gabbled incessantly between their preparations and their ancient versed, spluttered Akashima riddles that worked with the chalk circle of protection that veiled them from the Oni's lies.

"I will not stand and will not suffer,
Lies,
Transgression,
Or reprieve!"

Ruby's elegant voice, channelling the tutelage of ancient opera singers and cantors burst into life. She had long since learnt to master those first few wild moments before her song formed a life of its own, and this time, a rampant requiem for her friend's dying soul formed in swift moments. Three powerful, and equally dangerous balls of semi-invisible energy formed from nothing before the Matriarch and bounced towards the spiders.

"I am the daughter of a sundered kith,
The lover of a lonely life.

I am the sister of a dying line,
Who takes from her husband leave!"

The three bouncing energy pangs smashed into the charging spiders, and they each dissipated into a sphere of swirling red mist, which faded quickly into vermilion plumes of death. Wasting no time, Ruby brought both her arms up as if she were preparing a deadly strike on an enemy. Her eyes glowed with licks of flame, and her skirt rustled in an unseen wind.

She wiped her mind clean of the song Lilith had taught her to channel her rage into the Rampant Requiem, and instead let out the contained energies of a sorrowful, anguished lament.

"I have lost all I have loved,
All I have loved crumbles to dust,
All I survey drives my mind blind,
I am left with nought but trust."

No sooner than the opening verse of the Phoenix Paen had left her lips, she took on form more fitting of her fiery temper. The cavern, once glum, illuminated only by the plethora of candles at the jurugumo's feet, took on the radiance of an early morning sunrise, and Blank joined in the conflagration.

[Ruby]

"Sing a song for love,
Sing a song for hate,
Sing a lament for tragedy,
And burn all that you take!"

A pillar of fire rushed upwards from Ruby's slender form and crashed against the smooth surface of the temple. The very foundations of the cliff side seemed to shake, and chunks of rock and stalagmites fell harmlessly against the floor all around the brave assailants of the Spider Queen's lair.

Bereft of her children so easily, the jurugumo remained transfixed by the flames of power that cascaded out from the human. She turned to the cocooned prize she had claimed in the hopes of tricking the others into compliance and hissed through its many fanged maws. Ichor and bile trickled from her poisoned hand and she stretched out to take Lillith into her arms. She clutched the silk bound victim like a spoilt child with a broken toy.

"From the ashes of indignity rise!
From the broken flames of death, arise!
From the cry of all great nations, rise!
This paean revives your maladies!"

The pillar fell, and the last remnants of fire washed over Blank with a settling, kindling affection.

Ruby was bereft of her clothes, except for the fragments of metal she had purchased in the bazaar and bound to the magic of Wainwright's Heart. Though she was now more scantily clad, and less protected against the jurugumo's talons, she stood with a confidence that could shatter bone. Her eyes still burnt with inner fire, and the feathers in her hair had inexplicably multiplied and lengthened, so that her true nature showed itself proudly in the gloom.

With a roar, the jurugumo cut the cord that tethered Lillith, threw the cocooned girl to the ground with a crunch, and charged across the arable of darkness towards the woman that simply would not forget.

"<If you will not forget, I will wipe the memory from your corpse!>" The eight thundering limbs of the spider queen pierced the rock and kicked up a plume of vermilion mist in her wake as she advanced.

Ruby clenched both fists, bit her lip, and prayed that the spirit shaman was brave enough, and that Blank would rise from the ashes as her song, and as her heart had prayed.

[Lillith]

Lillith snapped awake from her nightmare as she slammed into the floor. Mercilessly bound to the creation of the spider queen for many hours, the sudden relief of being connected to reality renewed her hope. Even with the wounds from the Mist Spider, she struggled against the silk, loosened by the cutting of the chord and the collision with the rock.

She could hear a horrifying chorus of scream kindled with song, and a faint chant which pounded deep in her heart drifting in between the two noises. She had moments to spare if she were to turn the tide of the conflict. All the time she had been dreaming, the jurugumo had spoken of forgetting, of speaking of memories and turning the very bonds of one's past against them.

Whilst she was no great philosopher, she was lithe and supple. With the flexibility afforded by the weakening of her bonds, she slipped the kunai from her belt and began to cut through the spider silk as quickly as her shaking hands could allow.

"<I will strike you with a blow so powerful," she muttered, "you will pray for the chance to forget me...>"

She lifted her arm into the cold air, and gasped for breath as she sat upright. Her eyes settled on the mist and Ruby, and she was surprised to see the drifting embers of Ruby's dress floating up into the darkness of the temple. With her back warmed by the candles, and her strength renewed by the hope of opportunity, the daughter of Akashima pushed herself upright into a stealthy crouch and slicked forwards.

Blood dripped down her thighs, spider silk arraigned her dress with age, and her mind wandered in between delirium and insanity; but she withdrew a second blade all the same, and span a web of her very own. Her hair shone in the twilight, and sweat formed on her brow.

"<The irony of being at the top of the food chain, is that a Spider Queen is forever caught in her own web....>".

As the jurugumo reared up on its hind limbs and shrieked, Lillith ran forwards and pounced. Like a tigress she leapt up on to the creature's thorax, just as its sharpest limbs darted down towards her sister.

[Ruby]

"Do your worst!" Ruby challenged, arms flatly down by her hips and her hair rushing upwards as if she were falling.

She took on the visage of a woman scorned gladly, and stared the jurugumo dead on as it bore down on her. She expected her life to flash before her eyes, little vignettes of superficiality, yesteryear and regret. Instead, she caught a glimpse of Lillith rising behind the spider in the twilight and simply stood.

The first limb missed, pushed off target by the unequal weight pressing down on the jurugumo's body as Lillith lithely landed on its back. The second clashed against a blade and flashed a bright flare of vermilion mist, half blood, half spirit. The tension in the air could have shattered their armour and weapons by itself.

"<I will never forget my sister>."

Blank's voice, combined with the piercing sound of Lilith’s kunai through the carapace of the oni filled Ruby's chest with hope and washed away the vomiting sensation of death. Time, for a moment, stopped.

When it resumed, the jurugumo took little time to correct it's mistakes. With a scything swing, it cut a cross through the air where Blank had been, kicked it's back up and down to shake the wretched girl from its body and with whispered words, conjured from the ether a powerful spell.

Ruby stepped back as quickly as her shattered form allowed and delved once more into its memories. Somewhere in her head, amongst all the poetic licence and the long, impenetrable prose was the perfect line to sing them to victory.

With the radix of the shaman's incantations growing in volume behind, and the peril chorus growing in pitch before her, she feverishly sweated herself to a solution.

"Think Ruby...think!"

[Arden]

Through luck, or perhaps skill, Blank stepped backwards and out of the reach of the deadly cross. He quashed the thought of what those limbs would do to his naked torso, and brought his sword up to form a defence against the follow up blows.

He deflected each with nimble footwork and slight adjustments to his stance, so that each darting, fatal blow connected with nothing but air. He watched the spider's eyes grow in ferocity and fire as it grew increasingly frustrated with its inability to succeed. He had driven many a sword hand and vagabond mad in combat with the very same approach. Why force your own hand, when your opponent's greatest weakness was his own strength and drive?

The fire that had blanched his wounds still warmed his body. He could feel the combination of adrenaline and passion swirl about his veins like an ambrosia of empowerment. By all means, the wounds he suffered still hurt beyond all belief, and each twist of his leg and snap of his knee crushed his heart to the point of his mind snapping along with it.

"<But I cannot falter,>" he roared, unable to contain his inner thoughts and pain as he had once been able to do when he was cursed to silence. "<I will not!>" As the limbs crashed into the Rheilhand and knocked the wind from his lungs, he roared and screamed in anger and pain.

The jurugumo bum rushed the swordsman, and with its mass, lifted him clean from his footing and flying backwards across the temple chamber.

The retaliatory strike from Lillith echoed Blank's pain with an otherworldly scream as kunai lifted and pierced through the ethereal carapace over and over, a ferocious onslaught of revenge.

[Lillith]

Though Blank was knocked down, and Ruby powerless in her fatigue to conjure another song from her magical words, Lillith did not tire. She did not falter for one moment, even though the pain each punch and strike brought to her wounds. Each jolt up her thigh and spine was a reminder of the torment she had undergone in the jurugumo's clutches. The dream world, the nightmare realm she had been imprisoned in would remain forever in her psyche, but she would not let it pass without some alleviation of her hate.

With a pealing scream, the oni rose up on its back in a twisting, writhing, twitching mass. Before it came full circle and flattened Lillith, she leapt into a back flip to clear herself of the Oni's death throes. As she slammed into the floor, her landing far from perfect through vertigo and pain, she heard the satisfying chant of the spirit guide and looked away.

"<Bound in shadow, bound in snow,
To the limelight down you go.

Bound in time, bound in space,
Return to temple and to grace.

Bound in Akashiman woe,
Remain a slumber in crystal glow."

With a powerful explosion of light, the energies of the magical circle which the shaman had scribbled in wax and chalk were brought to bear. Ruby and Blank, now upright but shuddering in the aura of death looked away from the jurugumo as it began to implode.

Each repetition of the chant seemed to crack reality, pushing the mistral body of the spider daemon in on itself. Flesh seemed to break into mist, and mist momentarily formed a half twisted, mutilated limb or section of thorax carapace. In a matter of minutes, the horror was gone, replaced instead with a dense sphere of dark purple energy, proliferating clouds of vermilion smoke from within. It floated several feet from the floor of the chamber, spinning in the limelight of the distant candles and Ruby's fiery form, until it stopped, and the smoke ceased.

She rose slowly, with feverish sweats and shakes, but defiantly she pushed herself upright. With a weak smile, Lillith bowed to the shaman and the guide, who stared at the orb, no longer mortified or afraid to open their eyes in case the jurugumo ensnared them in its web of deceit and lies.

"It is done, Blank...Ruby, the oni is bound once more."

They all stared at the creature's tomb state for several minutes in silence, before bursting into a tumult of cheers and whoops.

[Ruby]

With a sudden rush of relief and adrenaline, the fire which scintillated over Ruby's flesh began to fade. Her armour, barely covering her body in the absence of her cloth attire suddenly felt cold, heavy and tiresome. Though they were victorious in their attempts to seal the jurugumo back into the prison that was its shrine, she could not help but feel as if they had sacrificed too much to do so.

"Lillith, ask him if we can return the crystal to the dais", she said with exasperated breath.

Her sister complied, and the shaman and guide nodded together in happy union. Blank limped over to the floating sphere and plucked it from the thermal magical energy which held it aloft and rubbed it against his breast as if it were a fresh apple.

"It is a shame they are bound to these strange places, it would fetch a pretty penny in Scara Brae, should we change our minds..."

With lank, foetid hair and bloodied limbs, they each made their way towards the centre of the jurugumo's shrine. Whatever foul individual had slipped into the darkness and set her free, they would never know, but with a silent prayer, Blank placed the crystal onto the centre of the platform at the heart of the warm light of the eternal candles, and bowed. They looked every bit the adventuring, daring trio they felt, but the greatest journey still remained ahead of them.

"We should rest here for a moment, to compose ourselves and staunch our wounds, before making the trip back to the camp." Ruby did not take long to return to her matriarchal state, her long, red hair feathered by her magic was now down over her breasts in a great mane of colour. She admired it with a toss whilst she waited for Lillith to finish her solemn vigil.

"We can do nothing for the souls she has taken, sister. The patron of this journey has been avenged, her husband's soul passed on, by all means, but avenged and honoured..."

Lillith looked over her shoulder, and with a half yawn, nodded.

"Come," Ruby held out her hand as a warming gesture, and they walked over to the shaman and guide gladdened, reprieved, and no longer trapped in the spider's web. They sat by the chalk circle, and tended their wounds with torn shreds of cloth from whatever clothes they had that were not blood stained or burnt, and forged their victory song in their minds in silence and contemplation.




Spoils:

Lillith - The Oni: Tainted and poisoned by the dark magic of a Greater Oni spirit, Lillith will start to perceive kami and oni and places in Akashima where the spirit world leaks into reality. This in essence is the start of a fourth aspect to her 'personality' skills; effectively, the awakening of The Spirit Warder, and is nothing more than a descriptive skill until it is developed further.

Ruby - Song Upgrade: Ruby's hair has even more feathers than ever before, and now, whenever she sings Phoenix Paean she can take on a progressively more avian form. Her hair is no longer simply red when she attempts this song, but orange and yellow and gold too. It will now staunch light wounds of the target with greater efficiency.

Blank - Unbreakable: Blank's will, resilience and stamina to physical blows have increased to a level equal to X1.2% his current level (an upgrade which will be requested in his next profile). He is now much more resilient to interrogation, and will virtually never reveal information when pressed under torture.

[The International]

First off allow me to apologize for the time it took to post this judgment, and the mix up about the Writer’s Workshop posting. Now on to the judgment.

Plot Construction 23 /30

Story 8 /10 – Your quest had everything a good story could have. Protagonists and an antagonist, a proper intro, rising action, climax, and conclusion. Due to your amazing character depth you managed to create a climax that was more emotionally charged than the average thread I read on Althanas. The biggest issue I had was right after Lillith was taken. You could have made it clearer for the reader as to what was going on with her.

Strategy 7 /10 – You used your character’s abilities in a pretty straight forward yet conservative manor. I’m going to take a lesson from you and not dole out everything my characters have to offer on first draw. My two biggest complaints a) I had a hard time suspending my disbelief when Lillith was taken and the others did very little to stop it. I just found it uncharacteristic of Blank to not do at least a little more than he did. B) I think if you had spent a bit more time putting some more details in the cave you would have naturally had Blank and Ruby use them to their advantage. Taking cover inside a large crack in the wall, launching oneself from an elevated area within the cave, etc. a) has to do with Character and b) has to do with setting.

Setting 8 /10 – Your colorful prose and literary skill shine here. The way you describe your settings… delicious! And my imagination fills in the blanks very quickly. The best example would be at the beginning of the quest where you describe the cave. You simply stated the following.
… The red headed mistress asked with a whisper, careful not to waken the oni that no doubt slumbered in the shadows beyond the stalagmite bordered entrance.
My mind went gobble gobble gobble and filled in the rest. The difficult part is that when it comes time to use that environment you’re at a disadvantage, and you can manage to spend some more time on it.

Characterisation 23 /30

Continuity 9 /10 – This for me is all about the world of Althanas and whether or not you did it justice. Your characters made the place feel like Akashima, as did your prose and proper use of Asian backed terminology. I especially liked it when Lillith used Japanese during her dream sequence. It was sprinkled with some suffixes, ‘sama’ here and there, but you nailed authenticity right on the head for me when you did that. Some may question that, but I sure won’t. It made Akashima authentic. You did your research and you should be proud of yourself. The only reason I can’t give you a ten is just because I know you could do even better!

Interaction 7 /10 – This is tied in with the setting, character, and strategy scores. You did alright here. The actions were logical and consistent, however the fact that Blank didn’t do more to save Lillith initially leads me to question everything.

Character 7 /10 – Duffy, I can see exactly why you made your NPCs Player Characters. You have such a firm grasp of them and every time I read your material I contemplate whether I should split my own ensemble. Once again though I have to go back to Blank, and his reaction to Lillith’s abduction. It was the only problem I had.

Writing Style 22 /30

Creativity 8 /10 – Your literary devices are strong. At first they kept me entertained, and they helped give your narrative some substance. You could have given yourself even more room to flex that muscle if you had written a little more content to each post.

Mechanics 7 /10 – There were some words that were missing one letter as I read the thread. That forced me to go back once or twice to confirm that was the proper word my mind had assumed.

Clarity 7 /10 – This category was affected by the post just after Lillith was taken. It hurt your pacing and it left the reader with a question mark in his head, but I have a feeling that you did that on purpose to leave us hanging in suspense a little. Sometimes we have to sacrifice a little clarity for the betterment of the overall story.

Wildcard: 7/10
I’ll be keeping up with your troupe whether I’m judging your threads or not. I’m hooked now.

Total: 75

All spoils seem appropriate for the level of the characters. I'll approve them but you know the deal. An RoG mod will have to approve them upon level updates.


Spoils:

Lillith - The Oni: Tainted and poisoned by the dark magic of a Greater Oni spirit, Lillith will start to perceive kami and oni and places in Akashima where the spirit world leaks into reality. This in essence is the start of a fourth aspect to her 'personality' skills; effectively, the awakening of The Spirit Warder, and is nothing more than a descriptive skill until it is developed further.

Ruby - Song Upgrade: Ruby's hair has even more feathers than ever before, and now, whenever she sings Phoenix Paean she can take on a progressively more avian form. Her hair is no longer simply red when she attempts this song, but orange and yellow and gold too. It will now staunch light wounds of the target with greater efficiency.

Blank - Unbreakable: Blank's will, resilience and stamina to physical blows have increased to a level equal to X1.2% his current level (an upgrade which will be requested in his next profile). He is now much more resilient to interrogation, and will virtually never reveal information when pressed under torture.

Lillith Kazumi gains 800exp and 400gp
Ruby La Roux gains 1510exp and 400gp
Blank gains 1230exp and 400gp

Ruby and Lillith Level Up! Congratulations!

[Silence Sei]

GP-EXP added.