Struggling and failing to get out of the web, I see the huge spider slowly step down on the web.

  The torso alone is as large as a house, and I’m remembering how the arcane is so dangerous. Not just from being unprepared… but because of how you’re just prey to these things.

  “Oraxia, any way out? Please tell me there’s some secret to these webs.”

  Waving her little hands in the air to get the Weaver’s attention, she quickly scuttles down the web, pulling its attention away from me. “No… I see nothing.”

  Tail moving and getting stuck in the web- “Argh!” the pain is like a searing heat up my spine, the fur and flesh torn off already from the scramble down here.

  Instead of a break, it only gets worse as the predator approaches me again, my scream of pain having gotten its attention.

  “Yuna!”

  Staring at the weaver’s shadow, I try to at least learn what I can, in the large overcast it’s made over the temple.

  ‘Look at that… right above the temple I made as a kid… and that’s where I’m likely to die. Poetic.’

  Feeling my muscles relax, I accept my fate. No way I’m escaping this… this resonating silk. It’s got my soul as bound as my body, I can’t even want to live.

  Eyes scanning over the shadow, I feel my soul lattice warming on my back, nearly exposed in many places… yes, such an incomprehensibly large soul, just like expected… but it’s layered.

  ‘Wait, it’s layered?’

  Oraxia and I had theorized the larger souls would either be heavier, or more pure. Like it were purified and the imperfections would be lost over years or honing. But no… this weaver, it’s soul is like a big spider web, yes. But not a dense one.

  “Its soul is like many webs woven into one; it’s only as large as its shadow but layered to fill the space between it and the shadow!”

  I can hear a click from Oraxia, and I think she’s realized a plan.

  Hopefully, just in time… since the weaver is looming over me now, and I can see its fangs. It could bite me in half with those mandibles…

  “Oraxia, your kind is way less cute when so big. I hope… no, you’ve got a plan, I know that kind of noise from you. You had a breakthrough.”

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  “I… yes, just trust me.”

  Closing my eyes and trusting her, putting my full faith that she’s figured it out, I feel the shadow loom over mine…

  Something gripping my soul, fear filling it, but still, I trust she can do this…

  ‘Oraxia… you’ve got this, I know you do.’

  The web gives out from beneath me, and I fall down onto the temple, and the ground in front of it next, groaning in pain.

  Oraxia lands next to me, much less bothered by the fall, before she nudges my hand. “Yuna, get up, we need to get inside!”

  Slowly, I shift my arms into a pushup position, groaning and crying at the aching pain in them.

  Before my hands slip, and I hit the floor again. The shadow getting closer behind me, suppressing my will to fight.

  But Oraxia’s will keeps me willing just enough.

  Taking labored breaths that burn my lungs, I slowly shift myself to my knees, then my feet.

  Finally, I limp towards the goal, Oraxia leading me. I can’t even look up, I’m just following her little lead.

  “You believed in me… my will was able to beat theirs when they were focused on you… because you willed it… that’s how we can ascend…”

  The moment I see my feet cross the stone of the building’s floor, I collapse into it, my body too wounded and torn to move.

  “Yuna… thank you.”

  “Wake me up… in… a few hours…”

  …

  …

  Groaning, I slowly sit up, tension tight in my muscles like a rubber band about to snap. But… can’t sit around too long…

  Finally looking around the temple, I see it’s made of wood, with the floor made of cracked stone. The wood looks almost like a child put it together, but it somehow stayed in one piece, with various little web-like markings on the ceiling. Ones I carved myself when I was a kitten.

  “It is it… the one I made…”

  Looking down, I see Oraxia looking up at me. “That’s interesting… but there’s something more important. I found it.”

  “...it?”

  “The item we’re here for. The key to ascension, so I can become a soul weaver. And you won’t be alone again.”

  Nodding slightly, I slowly bring myself to stand. “Alright… let’s go get it… know what to do with it from there…?”

  Leading the way ahead of me, she speaks while I look at the shoddily made but impossibly standing building. “Yes… we bathe ourselves in the liquid, then when we wake up, we need to go somewhere with great importance to both of us.”

  Knowing where she means, I follow her to the end of the building, where upon an altar, a chalice sits. One made of clay, in a similar manner to the cup I made Mom as a kid. Just why is all of this here?

  Oraxia climbs up onto my shoulder, making me flinch a bit from her feet crawling along my raw back, before I reach out and grab the cup full of some heavy liquid. “Time to go home?”

  “Yes… this is the hardest step for you. It’ll be my job to work through our ascension.”

  Nodding, I pour the liquid over both of us. It smells like copper, and feels like some syrup, honestly disgusting. But I feel something within us… almost imprint or stick over one another. Like the corners of our webs- our souls, fused.

  Hearing a distant cry, one that pulls at my heart, like a baby or child’s cries, I’m pulled back to the real world with Oraxia.