A grim shadow danced across the trees, feeling its way across the mulch floor of the forest. It was his own, cast from the dim light of Hitori’s sword, which he was holding above and behind his head. This was the first time that unusual property of his blade proved useful.

Most high quality weapons had an arte embedded into the material which, amongst other things, enhanced their durability by absorbing stress on the blade. It required a steady supply of malhahons to function, so the arteweaver would add some kind of indicator for the weapon’s malhahon reserve.

Normally this was something subtle, not turning your sword into a giant glow stick. His grandfather had been rather eccentric. Not that Hitori ever met the guy. He was supposedly some kind of arteweaving genius, but excessive glowing aside the sword was pretty typical for—

Hitori froze. He almost tripped over a wispy thread. Most likely an early warning system for the Weaver tribe which abducted his friends.

Stuck using this primitive system, it seems.

He had been following the sparse signs of the trail. Weavers were very adept at moving through the forest unseen, but carrying something as heavy as a human made them far less graceful.

“Oh Gordon, may I never complain about your pudgy ass ever again.”

Isn’t he lighter than you?

Making sure not to trip the Weavers crude alarms would slow Hitori down, but their presence would also make it much easier to find the center of their lair.

Carefully dancing through the increasingly dense nest of spider silk, Hitori progressed deeper into the forest. The experience was surprisingly calming. Perhaps it was the serene nature of the forest. The still air and the lingering sent of sap and earth permeated everything. If it wasn’t a murderous death trap this would have been a nice place to relax.

At last, after an eternity on the edge of a knife, Hitori found the heart of the Weaver’s territory, possibly the heart of the forest itself. The way forward was blocked with a solid wall of silk. Most likely there was some unobstructed path in canopy above, a road too delicate for someone of his shape and weight to walk unseen.

He needed to change strategies. Hitori could clear a path with a few quick slices, but that would ruin any advantage of surprise. Instead he decided to go with a slightly more explosive entrance.

Hitori always struggled with artes. They stuck to his hands like blobs of glue, and if he wasn’t extremely careful they would break. He even had trouble wearing a Bracer, which was a type of arteware used to manage other artes. It also didn’t help that his mother’s sword lacked any enhancements to aid Sword Artes.

Still, in order to qualify as a Knight, Hitori had to demonstrate the ability to use at least one arte in battle without the benefit of a training aid. He managed with a special kind of arteware, called a Hardpoint Bracer. In this case it was a choker with a small gemlike stone held near the back of his neck. The other slots were empty.

Hitori didn’t care to wear what was essentially a necklace, but it did at least allow him to do something cool. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, breathlessly repeating a short chant. He reached behind his head and touched the red gem at the base of his skull.

A point of scarlet light jumped from the stone to his finger, tendrils of crimson mist followed as he lowered his hand to the base of his sword. He drew his finger to the tip of the blade, with a fog flowing from his hand and wrapping around. He repeated this motion several times, with each pass increasing the intensity of the color, until it took on a fire like hue.

Finally, Hitori raised the sword over his head and stopped chanting.

“Knock knock.”

He dropped the weapon in a flash, and an explosion of flame surged forward, obliterating the webbing in a cone of fiery destruction. Without giving the ground so much as a second to smolder, Hitori leapt through the opening into the clearing beyond.

He found himself in a narrow chamber of leaves and webs, far longer than it was wide. Ten Weavers were inside, including two with the bad fortune of being engulfed by a wall of flames. Hitori quickly finished those off with a pair of techs, and then used his Blitz to close the distance with another target.

The Weavers swarmed Hitori, lashing at him with their spike laden front legs. He was able to stay ahead of their blows, abusing his advantage in speed. Beast metafauna weren’t able to use techs because of their inhuman shape. That was one of the key advantages humans had in battle against them.

Hitori managed to drop two more Weavers with a series of careful feints and rushes, keeping the spiders off balance and out of a defensive line. He was burning through energy at an alarming rate, already starting to feel the slow down and subtle push back from his Vital Net.

He had developed a workaround for his paltry reserve, although it came at a great cost. Quite literally in this case. Just as his Vital Net was about to veto this fight, his arm shot down and grabbed a Dragon Stim. Faster than the blink of an eye the Stim was used up and cast aside.

This was a technique known as a Panic Tech, something that would activate automatically based on set criteria. They were very expensive in terms of Vital Net memory resources as well, taking the place of potentially two or three other techs.

Hitori timed a Blitz to take advantage of the surplus energy, getting a free hit in and taking out a fifth Canopy Weaver. He didn’t have time to celebrate, as the spiders now had more room to maneuver. It was getting increasingly difficult for Hitori to keep them off guard.

He was about to scatter his opponents with another pair of Blitzes, when he caught a flash of movement in the corner of his eye. Hitori was barely able to get his arms up in time with the Impact Tech prepared. He was struck by a wooden club which, to his surprise, did not shatter on impact. He was knocked almost clear to the other side of the clearing, but managed to get his guard up and facing this new threat.

It was a humanoid creature, with a long snout and thick fur all over its body. It had clawed fingers and a long tail that balanced its hunched posture. Hitori recognized it as a Lupin, a sort of anthropomorphized wolf metafauna. He’d never seen one before, but he’d heard they were quite dangerous.

The Lupin pressed the attack, keeping Hitori off balance long enough for the Canopy Weavers to form a defensive line. It used the club with quick, brutal swipes, knocking up plumes of dirt with every downward strike. One on one Hitori could have handled it, but even one hit from the spiders’ web attack could be lethal with the Lupin in play.

Instead Hitori decided to ignore it, for the most part. The Weavers were weak in a straight fight, and even bunched up his Blitz tech would be able to push through their defenses. Unfortunately he was going to have to burn off even more Vital Energy now, unable to afford maneuvering the spiders into position for one of this cheaper techs.

There was nothing for it though, so Hitori laid into another Weaver with a pair of Blitzes, dropping it with the final strike. With only four remaining, and Hitori having to stay out of range of the wolf, the spiders were having a much better time dodging his attacks. He burned through four more uses of his most energy expensive tech before finally taking down one more.

His Vital Net was once again running on its ‘Peace and Harmony’ platform, and it had the majority vote. He was going to have to appease it once again with a Dragon Stim. Visions of his plummeting net worth danced across his eyes as he let his Panic Tech run without complaint.

His hand slipped over a bundle of furry digits and then dutifully went through the motions of using a Stim without the benefit of actually having one. In his Vital Net’s defense, it made excellent time.

If Hitori had the good fortune to reincarnate, he was going to make sure to add a workaround to what was, in retrospect, a pretty obvious weak point. The Lupin cut Hitori’s Stim holster away with its clawed fingers and tossed the pouch into a tangle of leaves and webs.

“Well, shit.”

Hitori was struck in the back by a sticky bundle of thread, followed by two more. The fine ends of each strand slithered over his armor with alarming speed, ensnaring his arms and legs. He could brute force his way out, or at least his techs could, but he didn’t see the point of struggling.

Rather than bundle him all the way up, the Canopy Weavers seemed content to bind his arms to his chest and his feet together. The lupin plucked the sword and dagger out of his hands, and took a moment to pat Hitori over, looking for other weapons.

It settled face to face with him, peering into his eyes with animal curiosity. Its own were like a ring of fire, blue, dangerous. A yellow light flooded its pupils, and then burst past the irises and beyond, eventually settling into a something like a mask of glowing mist.

Something passed between Hitori and the wolf, which hooked into the back of his mind. An idle thought wondered at the idea of psychic transceivers, a doubt about their absence in his species.

Doing your damn mind trick again?

“Again, little glimmerfly, you fail to grasp the power of the web,” a strange voice said. It was faint, as though from a great distance, but deep, rumbly, and a touch musical. “But no matter, you need not understand for me to weave you into it. Bring them before me.”

The Lupin’s eyes faded to blue, and it motioned to the pair of canopy weavers holding Hitori before turning away. They stepped past and dragged him forward, letting his feet scrape on the rough surface of the forest below. He was carried a short distance, to a T-shaped junction in the clearing. At the end of this intersection was a shrine with a wooden spider statue.

This was not going great, Hitori decided. He was tied up, worn out, a freaky wolf creature embarrassed him in front of the spiders, and he was probably going to be sacrificed. Oh, also, he just got all his friends killed with his stupid plan. He should have gotten an instructor to practice with them, hells, maybe even asked Bridget. She’d been looking for a chance to kick his ass for years.

Of greater importance, but somehow less concerning, was the fact the Lupin spoke to him without moving its mouth. Metafauna that could use human speech were rare enough, and usually birds. Ones that could do it with their minds were something else entirely. Still, it hardly seemed pressing.

What really bothered Hitori was the familiarity of a voice he definitely never heard in his entire life. There was no way he could forget something like that.

Not that it mattered. As soon as they got him up there the Lupin was going to tear out his heart.

Yes, you’ve gotten yourself into quite a bit of trouble indeed.

As they approached, the spider in the shrine appeared less a statue and perhaps more like a living tree. At least, parts of it did. Other parts seemed to be so exquisitely carved that Hitori wouldn’t have been surprised if they reached out to grab him. Even the blending was perfect.

Naturally, given that it wouldn’t have surprised him, Hitori wasn’t surprised at all when four of the spider statue’s arms reached out and grabbed him. That his heart almost broke his own rib cage at the same time was purely coincidence. Obviously, one should also ignore the undignified thrashing as Hitori was dangled face to face with it.

“What the hell do you want from me?”

I’m guessing lunch.

As he was not panicked at all, Hitori definitely didn’t need to spend a few seconds slowing his breath and calming his heart. The few seconds he spent doing so were merely ceremonial.

Taking in the new evidence, Hitori was forced to conclude the spider statue was, in fact, not a statue at all, but some kind of unfortunate creature fused with a tree. Half its face, and the bulk of its body, were largely made of wood, the fine details were subdued by the bark exterior. Most of its limbs appeared to be wooden, rooted into the ground.

The creature’s other remaining eye was massive, a well of tar and shadow capped by a bubble of gleaming pitch waiting to pop. Wisps of faint, yellowish light swirled up from the bottom, feeding into a cloud of fog at the surface.

The light surged, taking the form of a sickly, pale mist that flooded the eye and splashed into the outside world. The freed mist spun itself into faint threads, and then vanished from sight. Again, that strange hook sensation embedded into him, an itch in the back of his mind.

“At last, you return to me,” the voice said. This time it was stronger, but as rough and vaguely musical as before.

“Who are you?”

“Oh my, how unbecoming, forgetting your old friend like this.”

I’m sure we were never friends you damn bug.

The voice laughed, and the spider creature shook in its wooden bindings. “I suppose not, little glimmerfly. Besides, you do seem a touch different from last we met, and I suppose I’ve,” the voice darkened, “well, undergone some changes of my own.”

Hitori laughed, although he wasn’t sure why. It seemed he’d decided mockery was a winning strategy.

“Laugh while you can, soon you’ll be dislodged from your perch, and I’ll have the freedom you crave.”

I’d like to see you try.

Something pulled into his hand, and pain pierced the base of his skull.