Cranzalar stepped lightly onto the plateau, the charred air in his lungs a now-familiar discomfort. His companions waited around the lambent sigil printed on the ground. A diagram of Shallows’ soul, Firuzeh had called it. That book of hers – the Archive – was dangerous; maybe as dangerous as the other sentient item his friends possessed.
But probably not.
Diafani had almost finished her preparations for True Resurrection. She just needed the diamond Cranzalar had brought. Well, he’d grabbed a few, just to be safe. The next few hours could end with all of them dead.
He stared at Vi. She was occupied with the task at hand, sweat beading below the tangles of her hair, so she didn’t notice his scrutiny. The shadows on her face… were they just a trick of the sullen light of molten stone below? Or something more sinister?
Vi met his gaze and flashed a brief, sheepish grin. She was nervous. Who wouldn’t be?
*
The diamond hovered over the rune, spinning like water down a drain. Firuzeh did her best not to fidget; there wasn’t any need for action yet. They’d raise the Royal Psion, convince him to help. Then it’d be time to act.
There was a crack as the gem shattered, still spinning. Its shards spread out, forming the constellation of a humanoid figure, and then Shallows stood before them, naked as the day he was born.
Or summoned? Or, uh… Firuzeh scrunched up her eyebrows. What did Tieflings even do?
Well, Shallows was here and now he had trousers on.
‘Right,’ said Firuzeh. ‘Diafani here has resurrected you, again. You need to do something for us in return.’
*
The plan was thus: Shallows would send both Vi and Uzi into Vi’s subconscious, in a sort of vision-quest-autoexorcism. Once there, they’d need to meet up, find the Mind Spider lurking in Vi’s brain, and forcibly evict it.
Vi eyed Cranzalar as she sank into the chaise longue that Shallows had fabricated in his office back in Floodwall. It was comfortable, but the grip Cranzalar had on his weapons kept her tense. His job was security; if Shallows tried anything funny, if anything tried to interrupt, Cranzalar would be there to stop it.
He’d apologised for the attack Vi had stepped in the way of earlier. Vi had apologised too, for the mask’s retaliation. They’d cleared the air. She didn’t need to worry.
Still, she kept thinking of his hand on the hilt of his flail as she shut her eyes and listened to Shallows’ explanation. Uzi was whispering some warning or other to Diafani, too. It was okay if Vi was tense. Everyone was.
‘I’ll need to bond you together if you don’t want to be separated,’ Shallows was saying. He certainly didn’t sound tense. His tone was of the type used when, say, selecting coffee to go with brunch. ‘Which means there’ll be an initial period in each other’s memories. Just find your way through. I’m sure that afterwards, the Weaver will come to find you. If you’re ready, give the word and we’ll begin.’
Vi could feel her breath, hot before her face, as the mask began to manifest again.
‘Do it,’ she said.
*
‘Keep an eye on Cranzalar,’ Firuzeh had told Diafani. ‘I’m worried he’s just going to attack you both as soon as Vi and I are unconscious.’
‘Why would he do such a thing?’ Diafani was probably being rhetorical, or sarcastic, or some combination of the two. Frankly, Firuzeh was still finding it hard to believe she was working with them at all.
‘Because he’s doing what he thinks is right. And he’s got a lot of rage bottled up. And his God wants the Royals dead.’ She paused. ‘There’s a lot of layers to it, actually.’
And then Shallows was doing whatever Psionic thing they’d asked him to do, and suddenly Firuzeh was in a spacious, open room. A roaring fireplace, plush rugs over rich wooden floors, a grand staircase leading up to a landing with fine art lining the walls.
A nearby open window brought with it the scents and sounds of spring in full chorus, and through it Firuzeh could see a sky so blue it looked like a child’s painting.
I’m in the Feywild, she thought, peering around. Or the memory of it, anyway.
Before her, a tall man in gleaming armour paced back and forth, a mix of pride and rage on his face. He was bellowing out oration on the strength of his army, his prowess in battle, and the inborn right of his family to go forth and conquer.
Firuzeh’s eyes had just finished an involuntary roll when she noticed Verischa.
She was much younger – perhaps not even in the double digits, as far as age went – but her eyes and hair were already unmistakably familiar.
So this asshole must be her Dad.
As Firuzeh watched, unable to affect her surroundings, the younger Vi’s mouth moved. There wasn’t any sound. Perhaps Uzi was out of earshot, or perhaps Vi simply didn’t remember what she’d said, but Vi’s Father certainly took notice.
He whirled on her, but froze mid-shout.
Not metaphorically, mind you. Firuzeh had begun casting Ray of Frost, and despite her currently incorporeal nature, it seemed her magic could affect her surroundings. A thin layer of ice coated the memory of Vi’s Father as the cold power hit him.
Firuzeh realised she was shouting obscenities at the man, and did her best to calm down.
*
Vi’s unconscious face began to twitch a bit, like she’d somehow gotten brain freeze.
Cranzalar’s vigil took this in; moved to Shallows to see if this was his doing. Moved to Diafani, watching the door. Vi’s face settled back to serenity. Shallows just stared vacantly in her direction, nothing at all behind his eyes.
It was fine. Nothing to worry—
Vi’s face was no longer her face. The Mask of the Mind Spider had drifted back to the surface.
Cranzalar was moving before he’d even processed the danger. Vi’s body sat up, the smirk of the mask cracking, giving way to a jubilant grin filled with far too many teeth. Verischa – or, the Weaver, in full control of her body – was already casting something when Cranzalar barrelled into her.
He was weightless for a moment, then gravity clawed at his ankles and dragged him back to earth. He sprawled on his back, staring into a sky so blue it looked like a backlit canopy.
*
Verischa stood alone. Static stretched in every direction; she couldn’t have said which way was east, or west, or up or down or anything. It didn’t seem like a place – more like the sense you get when you’ve been asleep without noticing, only blanketing her surroundings like fresh snow. Or, her lack of surroundings.
The wave hit her with such force she initially thought she’d broken a rib.
The static non-place had given way to Floodwall’s sewers with the Tide crashing through them, an avalanche squeezing through a packed series of corridors. Vi was smashed into walls by the water, dragged down by the undertow, washed through the city’s depths like a spider down a plughole.
She wasn’t alone. A head surfaced, gasping for air, its blue skin stark against the brackish brown water. Vi recognised the face, the horns. It was Firuzeh.
She began to swim for her, to get an arm under her flailing form. They could keep each other above the water. Just a little further, Vi thought.
They fell together over the waterfall, with Vi clutching the young Firuzeh in her arms.
*
Cranzalar sprinted through the trees, the magic of his Locate Creature spell burning in his senses. He was moving straight toward Vi’s captive body, leaping rivers, cutting through the greenery. There wasn’t time to find proper paths. There wasn’t time to slow for balance. There wasn’t time for breath.
He had to reach her, to stop the Weaver, to protect his allies. The Feywild was difficult to navigate, but there wasn’t time for alternatives.
He kept running.
When he found the Weaver, it had stopped just beyond a deep, dried up river. It was waiting for him.
He approached, wary of a trap.
‘It was very kind of Verischa here to vacate this vessel,’ said the Weaver in a voice that did not belong to the body it had stolen. ‘It’s truly a joy to stretch my legs, even if there aren’t as many as I’m used to. And I must say, it’s quite fun to have this Druidic puissance at the fingertips, too.’
It rippled Vi’s fingers to conjure up a little fireball, as if to demonstrate. Cranzalar began to move in.
How dare it act so casually? he thought.
‘Ahp,’ said the Weaver, holding up a finger, the fire winking out. ‘Cranzalar, before you go to chop off your friend’s head or whatever, there’s a few elements I’d like you to consider.’ It cleared her throat, and Cranzalar noticed the capsized house off to the side of where the Weaver had been waiting.
It had a pair of chicken legs sticking out of the bottom, one of which was badly broken. And emerging from the wreck, as if moved by a puppeteer – a fairly accurate metaphor, thought Cranzalar, without much humour – came Granny Hestia and Vi’s brother, Edsel.
But that wasn’t the end of it. The Dragonborn hatchlings Hestia had been caring for came unsteadily forward. The Weaver explained as they lined up, its voice almost parental behind the grinning mask.
‘Now, Cranzalar, I know you think yourself a hero, though from where I’m standing that could be up for debate. So, I’m going to give you an opportunity to be a saviour. There are three in need of rescue here, as a nefarious villain is about to switch their brains off. But I’ll give you a choice: you can save one.’
Cranzalar paused. He looked at Hestia, at Edsel, at the assembled hatchlings, all of them with putt strings looped around their minds like a noose.
He looked at the Weaver, exultant in its stolen corporeality, basking in its own cleverness.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. And charged.
*
Vi and Uzi had reunited. Uzi, after living through an awkward half-apology from Verischa’s father, and Vi, after having to hear Firuzeh’s weird child voice.
Now the two stood in a little autumnal hollow, waiting for the Mind Spider to crawl from its hiding place. They weren’t talking now. It wasn’t the time for conversation.
The trees shed more leaves as the sky grew dark, and before Vi had realised it, the place around them seemed haunted, the branches grasping malevolently toward them.
And they weren’t alone.
Eight long, spindling legs led up to a bloated black thorax, adorned with the white symbol of a mask where one might expect a red hourglass. A thin glint of light trailing from its spinnerets revealed a line of thread, stretching back into the darkness. And the spider’s eyes darted around as its mandibles twitched and clicked away in mock conversation.
Vi went immediately for the web, attempting to cut through its tether to her mind. It spun with her, keeping the thread away, snapping at her as she was forced backward.
To its left, Firuzeh rose up, pulling sorcerous power into a Tidal Wave that smashed into the spider and sent it sprawling. The wave filled the hollow, but the Mind Spider found its feet and rose above the water.
It turned its psionic attention onto Uzi. Vi saw her gasp, looking confused, then panicked, then terrified. It made her forget how to breathe, Vi thought. She shouldn’t have come here. It was too dangerous!
Firuzeh slumped to the ground, and the Mind Spider advanced, stepping right over her prone form.
*
The sound of the Weaver’s victims hitting the floor was echoed by a peal of thunder like the collapse of a cathedral. Cranzalar’s flail hammered down on the Weaver again and again, and each time it hit the thud of the impact and the crunch of shattering bone drew storm clouds to the sky above.
A heavy rain fell, muffling Cranzalar’s roars of rage and anguish. The Weaver warped Vi’s form into that of a massive tarantula, but still Cranzalar beat at it over and over and over, and within seconds he’d caved its head in, shifting it back to Vi’s regular elven body.
The river broke its banks in the downpour, and Cranzalar reached up to the power in the storm, filtered it through his faith and his fury, and Called Lightning to crash down on Verischa.
The flash of light and accompanying boom faded. Cranzalar did it again.
Afterwards, Verischa’s body lay in a smoking heap.
Cranzalar stepped over to it, weapon held in a shaking fist.
*
Verischa felt time slow to a crawl as the Mind Spider bore down upon her. It wasn’t the Weaver messing with her perceptions as it sometimes had before, this was that life-or-death moment where the ancient, animal part of your brain decides to either fight back or flee screaming.
Vi couldn’t fight this thing. It was huge, terrifying; they were inside her mind, a place it had been infecting for months. It couldn’t be fought mentally.
She couldn’t run, either. Where would she go? There was no escape; the Weaver was infesting every corner of her brain. Nowhere to hide from its pursuit.
There were no options. There was nothing Vi could do.
But.
But she wasn’t alone. She had friends. She could depend on them. She could count on them to support her.
All she had to do was let them help.
She hurled a Healing Word to Firuzeh.
*
Firuzeh catapulted back to consciousness, gulping down air, seeing the bulbous abdomen moving over her head.
Her first instinct was to scramble away. But the spider would be focused on Vi. There wouldn’t be another chance like this.
She didn’t get up. She waited, calmly, pushing down the terror, slowing her breath.
When the thread came into view, she launched an Ice Knife skywards, hoping one of the frozen shards would find its mark.
Luck was on their side. The Ice Knife exploded, severingthe thread and sending the Mind Spider skittering back. Uzi and Vi stood, holding each other upright, and watched as the Spider’s grip on the hollow in Vi’s mind loosened.
Its legs scrambled for purchase, its tie to the place gone. Without fanfare or ceremony, it fell upwards, as if they’d been on a ceiling.
It was done. Vi was waking up.
*
Verischa’s eyes opened as Cranzalar focused healing energy into her body. He stepped back a little way as she struggled to move.
‘This’ll be the fourth time,’ said Cranzalar.
A thunderbolt crashed down onto Verischa’s body, killing her. Again.
Cranzalar watch grimly through the rain. After a few seconds, he stepped forward, channelling curative power once more. ‘I will kill you over and over and again and again,’ he said, as the eyes opened. ‘I can do this forever if I have to. Bring. Them. Back.’
Nothing. No response.
This’ll be the fifth time, then, he thought. But something was different.
The mask slipped, just slightly.
Carefully, Cranzalar reached down, and tipped it away from Vi’s face. There came a brief sense of vertigo; the mask wanting him to put it on… but it was weak. He ignored it and ramped up the healing on Verischa.
*
Vi was greeted by a sky so blue it looked like home. There were a few grey clouds, retreating for the horizon, but the sky above where she lay was a beautiful cerulean.
She tipped her head to the side, too tired to move properly. Cranzalar was a little way away, staring at something small and unmoving. There was grief behind his stoicism.
Lying half-submerged in a puddle between them was the Mask of the Mind Spider, its smooth porcelain smirk pressed down into the mud.
Vi breathed out. The air was cool and pleasant on her face. The rush of relief left her feeling even more exhausted than when she’d first awoken, but that was okay.
They’d done it.
They’d… something was nagging at the back of her mind. A tiny voice of discomfort, gently insisting that she’d forgotten something.
Where was Uzi, anyway?
Vi realised that the little voice at the back of her mind didn’t belong to her.
‘Uh… guys?’ said Firuzeh, directly into Vi’s head without the decency to pass through her ears first. ‘What’s going on? Did we win?’
Roll History 