The Grand Weave

Memories of the rift flashed through my mind, but I dug my nails into my thigh. The rush of pain stopped the cascade of images, and I let out a dark chuckle.

Of course, the rift included people. There was no reason not to. These souls weren't even real, not complete, half made. They existed as an idea of people with an outer shell but none of the internal components needed to make them whole.

Entrails, blood, gore, a screaming beastkin. Ritual lines, terror, bone dust. Ash for the circle, blood for the sacrifice, a soul to be exchanged. Torment and pain fuel the energy needed, while the blood serves as the catalyst for transformation.

BROKEN WINGS, BLEEDING THROATS, LET THE CHAINS THAT BIND CONSTRICT ANOTHER!

I slammed my fist against the steps and felt splinters dig into my hands. At the same time, I thought I heard the sound of bells in the distance, and I looked at the ceiling.

Out there is a horde of monsters and mayhem. Stop being stupid, Cyrus. All you need to do is survive.

Zharia, who was perched on my shoulder, gave me a quick peck on the ear, and I glanced her way. "What? What did I do?"

Zharia pecked again. "You hurt yourself; summon Áine."

I stuck out my tongue and followed her advice. Áine appeared, and I caught her. She pointed up, so I held her at eye level. She lunged dramatically and booped my nose before hopping onto my shoulder. I didn't need to ask before I started feeling her mana flow through my body.

The wounds sealed, and I rubbed away the semi-clear blood. At least the passive skill made the blood stain less.

I stared at the barrier of shadows, and my mouth dipped into a frown. It was time to decide what I was going to do for the rest of the night. They were scared, and I could have easily said fuck it and not care about the terrified family members.

It was a tempting option if I wanted to do nothing but focus on survival for the next fifteen days. And it would have been the smarter play, but something told me that was wrong. A gut feeling made me think of the fact that this was a rift designed by a goddess. A god willing to sacrifice themselves to save her people and protect them would not have added in the half-souls so thoughtlessly.

It would be pointlessly cruel if they existed solely to recreate a more realistic event scenario.

I pushed through the barrier and found the mother and father frantically whispering at each other. One of the kids gasped and pointed to the girls perched on my shoulders. Zharia chirped a beautiful melody while Áine waved to the little girl. The son looked excited, while the daughter had stars in her eyes.

It looks like being a magical princess has its perks.

The little girl tried to protest as the mother shuffled the children behind her. She didn't glare directly at me, but she had a fierce look in her eyes. It was easy to see the fear affect her hands, which made the look of a lioness ready to protect her cubs all the more powerful. And seeing that look made me more confident that these people were here for more than to be props for the slaughter.

When the father tried to position himself between us, I held up my spear and flipped it around. The movement terrified the man, but his fear turned to confusion as I planted the weapon into the floor. Stepping away from the spear, I moved back to the doorframe and placed my back against the wall.

I would let him make the first move to show that I wasn't a threat. There was little chance he could harm me. The moment he tried anything, Zharia could reduce him to ash. Though I was hoping it wouldn't come to that.

The father kept glancing between the planted spear and me. Back and forth, I was starting to wonder if he was going to get dizzy with how quickly his eyes were moving.

Finally, his nerves seem to break, and he half-shouted, half-begged, with his voice rising a couple of octaves. "What do you want?! Please, say something!"

I raised an eyebrow and waited till he regained control of himself. When he finally stopped moving in place, I waved an arm at my spear. "I'm not going to hurt you." His face twitched, but his fists remained clenched. With a sigh, I continued. "There's an invasion going on, and my familiar noticed the enchantments along the tree. I'm only here to hide from the chaos up top. So calm down. I will not harm a child."

A long minute of tense staring and deafening silence filled the room. Eventually, the mother put a hand on the man's shoulder, and they shared an exchange I was not privy to.

Whatever it is the woman managed to convey with her eyes, it caused the father to relax visibly. There was still a lot of tension in his posture, and his smile was a little off, but he, at least, stopped the waterfall of sweat that had begun to cascade down his face.

"D-do you know wh-what's happening? We received a message from our Lady Protector, Ysanna. She warned us of an evil god coming to invade and that we should try and find shelter."

After the first question, the father seemed to finally accept I was not about to cause harm without being provoked. His voice grew firm, and he looked on with worried eyes. The mother kept the kids behind her but no longer held them back with her arms. The daughter was still enamoured with Áine on my shoulder.

"I don't know." I raised a hand, and he instinctively took a step back. Luckily, he recognized what he did and had the decency to look ashamed. "I just arrived on the island. My friends and I ended up separated by the barrier your goddess erected over the city. But, like you, I also received a warning. The cultists have invaded and begun some mass summoning rituals. Before I entered the cellar, the city's outskirts were being overrun by a horde of monsters."

The father's face drained of colour, and the mother's jaw fell open. She held a hand to her mouth and stepped forward. "But all the families living there! Cyrena, Molus, Terrtor, and Finnigan lived near the southeastern quarter. They're... they're..."

Her words died in her mouth, and a choked-back sob echoed inside the room. I gave her a sympathetic smile, but I maintained my neutral expression. There was nothing I could do for the people she mentioned, and they were more than likely melting remains inside some eldritch spawn.

Just as the man went to console her, an earthquake shook the room. It came as a constant vibration that shifted the earth, but bursts of seismic thumps could soon be heard.

The parents covered their children with their arms, forcing their bodies over them. I could see the daughter begin to open her mouth, but her brother slammed his hand over it. The shaking drowned out the muffled scream.

The ground began to crack, and I watched spiderweb lines expand in the corner of the room. The lines split the sides of the wall before reaching the ceiling. During the apex of the earthquake, I heard the sound of wood shattering, and I nearly turned around, but as I lowered my shoulder, a piece of shrapnel lodged into my arm.

I nearly shouted in surprise, and another sliver of wood pinged off the steel of my boot. With a growl, I pushed myself away from the entrance and lowered my body. As the rumbling continued, the shards of wood began to open the wounds wider, causing more blood to spill down my shirt.

I made the easy decision to remove the foreign object and ripped it out in one tug. Not wanting splinters to make things harder for Áine, I grunted in pain as I dug around the hole of the wound. Thankfully, there was only a fingernail-sized splinter that had broken off. With the injury cleared, Áine got to work healing my limb.

By the time she finished, the rumbling had begun to die, and the massive quakes started to lessen by the second. When I raised my head, I found the mother's body sprawled on the floor with a large chunk of wood impaling her stomach. Her blood stained the floor red, and the father held back the two kids. His fists clenched tightly around their shirts to prevent them from running to their mom.

"Zharia, I'm going to dismiss you. I need Erebus. Áine the moment I give the all clear, load her with healing. Don't worry about the cost; I'll provide more if needed."

The girls nodded, and I stood up. The father looked at me with wet eyes; the whites were marred with lines of red. His mouth tried to open, and his tongue began to move, but no words came out.

Ignoring him, I stood over the mother and put two fingers to her neck. There was a moment where nothing pulsed, and I was about to write her off as a corpse, but then her heart thumped. It was a shuddering and weakened thing, but she still had a pulse. That meant she could be saved.

Zharia hopped off my shoulder, and I undid my skill. She returned to my soulspace, and I channeled mana into a different pathway. A good quarter of it was taken from my mana pool, and Erebus appeared before me. I caught him and quickly sent over what I wanted done.

I let Áine hop off before activating Spirit Lord's Invocation. Since there were people around me, I kept the burst of aspected mana to a small circle near my feet. The black and purple energy snaked in the air, tendrils branching off the central shadow.

There was a gasp and the sound of scrambling next to me, but I ignored it. Instead, I focused on the mother as I knelt and waited for Áine to land on her back. I saw blood coat the fairy's feet and recalled my first contract ritual. I never questioned what my blood tasted like to her.

Shaking my head clear of the thought, I leaned forward and reached for the wife. As my claws started to encase themselves in shadows, a tight grip wrapped around my arm, and I looked over to see the father's shaking fingers clenching tight.

"Please, wait. Don't hurt her. I beg of you," he pleaded, tears running freely.

I didn't have time to argue, so I forcefully removed his hand from my arm and shifted my body away. He was scared and desperate. I didn't blame him. But right now, I needed to concentrate, or he would lose the mother of his children.

We got this, Erebus, just like we practiced.

I kept my gaze trained on my hands as I gently laid my fingers near the wound. After clearing my mind, I closed my eyes and reached out with my mana sense. The skill partially activated, and my hands sank into the space underneath the skin.

Shocked gasps threatened to take me out of my trance, but I endured. This wasn't the same as removing a single piece of bone. I had to feel my way with senses I was still new to.

It took long, longer than I thought the woman had. My instincts told me to growl and shove my arms deeper. The idea that brute force would fix my problems was a tempting thought to give into.

But I let the thoughts go, crushing the anger under the shifting tide of shadows. Finally, I felt it. My hands found resistance, an area of molasses where the space was forced to bend. With a surge of mana, I gripped the shaft of wood, splinters and all, and looted it. The blend of shadow and death coiled around my hands and let me pull the shaft through the dimensional membrane.

There was no pain nor resistance. The giant chunk of shrapnel came out as if I was lifting a feather. With the major chunk of debris removed, I shook my hands to the side and let the small splinters and broken wood fall to the floor.

Now, it was time to let Áine do her thing. I could feel her pouring her mana into the wound. It was deeper than I thought, though not deep enough to penetrate the other side.

She spent nearly half her manapool till the woman's wounds were sealed. Through the soullink, I already knew the woman's pulse had steadied. And her breath was starting to equalize.

With a glance to my right, I motioned for the father to approach, and he nearly bowled his kids out of the way, scrambling towards her prone form. He picked up her hand slowly and carefully as if he feared she'd break at any moment.

His kids weren't far behind, and they joined him on either side, reaching a hand out to their mom. The squelch of wet blood was audible in the gravely silent room, making me wince as I watched their tiny hands grab onto the bloody cloth.

"Mmmm. Mmmmnngh. I-I'm... I'm alive?" came the mother's muffled voice.

The father let out a sob and squeezed her hand tight. "Oh dear, yes, yes you are. Are you in pain?"

With the help of her family, she slowly sat up and looked around with cloudy eyes. When her gaze pandered over to my sitting further away, she blinked once, then twice, before her eyes widened.

I didn't move, content to let the drama play out. I knew my form was different when I had the skill activated. For Erebus' transformation, my arms and claws were covered in white chitin that extended to my elbows. The casing covering my fingers was as sharp as any knife, reminiscent of the spider's blade-like legs.

Small scale-like plates of chitin covered my body, sprouting from my armour. The chest, neck, back, and legs were especially covered with larger splotches of the bone-white material. And to top it all off was the ring of glowing purple that coloured my pink orbs for eyes, along with a halo of black and purple energy laced with bits of floating bone.

It was certainly one hell of a look, and I didn't begrudge the little boy for taking a step back. His reaction was instinctive, and I could tell he noticed what he was doing after he planted his foot.

"Pretty. You have beautiful eyes, mister," came the little girl's voice. I was so focused on the reactions of the others that I failed to see she had crawled closer, barely a foot away.

I blinked, then laughed. It felt good to have a moment of humour after the earthquake's intensity. Casually, I reached out and ruffled the kid's hair. "I'm glad you think so. You should thank Áine. She did all the work to heal your mom's wounds."

The girl's face, which was, a moment ago, filled with wonder and awe, was now deathly serious. She bowed her head twice before raising it high and smiling at the fairy.

Endearing little one, aren't you?

I saw the boy squirming in place in the corner of my eye, so I turned his direction and cocked my head. "Is there something you want to say?"

He winced and looked around nervously. His parents looked unsure, but his sister's beaming smile made him settle his nerves and stick his chin out. "Uhm, sir? Are you a spirit?"

I tapped my claws against the stone floor and stopped when I noticed I had pierced the stone. Retracting my hand, I held up my other hand and showed my palm. It took a little effort, but a slithering cloud of shadowy smoke started to pool out of my fingers. With a wide smile, I snapped my fingers and let the mana fade away.

"That's a complicated question, but I'll say no for now." I paused and put a finger on my chin. "Would it be a problem if I was?"

He vigorously shook his head. "No, sir. I was just curious."

"Nothing wrong with that."

I stood up and examined the state of the room. Aside from a few cracks and pieces of broken stone and wood, the room was surprisingly okay. The main structure was relatively undamaged, and most cracks were thin spiderwebs rather than snaking rivers.

After doing a three-sixty spin to look for anything worrisome I might have missed on my first pass, I turned and approached the parents. They didn't flinch, which was nice, but they had a different look on their faces, one I recognized and disliked.

"Hey, stop that. Not right now. It's too soon to be giving me that look."

They shared a shocked expression, but I pushed on. "I'm serious. I'm not some hero. If you want to give me that look then wait and see if you survive first. Now, can I have one of you answer my questions?"

They shared another conversation using only their eyes before the mother was the one to nod her head and face me. "Anything. What do you need to know?"

Need? That's an interesting choice of words.

"How come the room is barely damaged? The monster that would have caused those quakes should have collapsed the ceiling on us. Why are we not buried under a mound of rubble?"

"Because the room is enchanted. When this area was built, we paid extra for a special kind of stone material to be used. The enchantment is etched on the side of the brick not facing the room."

I narrowed my eyes and tried estimating how much space the room took up. Only then did I notice a rectangular seam on one of the walls. I pointed to it and waited till she looked at where I was motioning towards. "What's that?"

"Bedroom. It serves as an extra safety measure in case they breach this room. It should be intact. The special stone was mostly used for that room's construction."

I nodded and looked at the barrier of darkness covering the door. After giving it some thought, I turned back to the mother. "How confident are you in those enchantments?"

She squared her shoulders and looked me dead in the eye. "Very. It cost us most of our savings, and we hired one of the best enchanters in town. Nothing short of a tier three monster will be able to get in there."

She kept her stoic look, and I smiled widely. My fangs were on display, and I grinned at both of them. "Expect some company tomorrow."

If I'm going to commit to this stupid, self-imposed quest, I might as well see if I can find any survivors in the morning. My hunch better be correct.