"Oh dear me. Master, what have you gotten yourself into?" A soft, light tone sounded in Erik's ear at a whisper. In those words, Erik heard a depth of love and affection he had previously only associated with his mother. That was layered in with amusement and concern. Smooth as silk, the words rolled in his ears and settled in his head. A welcome sense of calm eased the raging panic that had consumed him when his danger sense vanished.

It was familiar. Erik knew this voice. He couldn't think of where he heard it, couldn't put a name to it, but it was definitely someone he knew. It echoed in him. And the lovely voice wasn't done talking.

"Tsk tsk. Honestly, I do wish you'd called on me in a less dire situation. This is hardly the proper time or place for a lady to make her introductions. Truly, master, your manners are atrocious. You're lucky that I love you so." The voice was coming behind or around him; Erik didn't know. He couldn't see. The white stands of his own shroud had wrapped entirely around him in a thick cocoon. He had no idea what was happening in the tunnel. All he could see was white.

"Wha?" Was all he managed in response.

A burst of tittering laughter followed his words. Erik suddenly noticed that he could hear. The sounds of raging monsters continued, but it was heavily muted as if coming through a thick wall. "Come now, master, let's get you put back together. Those miscreants did quite a number on you."

At that prompting, Erik remembered he was still dying. A leg gone, deep gut laceration, obviously multiple internal ruptures to major vital organs. That's not even mentioning the sizable chunk of shoulder he had lost. His medical mind ripped into the information and began trying to find the best treatment plan. Erik reached out within himself to control the strands of Stitch hovering around, willing them to bind his wounds. He would hemorrhage to death before the bile from his ruptured organs killed him. Stopping the bleeding was priority one.

Nothing happened. The strands ignored his mental commands, and Erik once more remembered that he couldn't feel his aura. He also happened to notice that it was unnecessary. Thick swathes of Stitch already bound his stump, gut, and shoulder. Every other minor injury he had gathered throughout the fighting was similarly treated. All of it was expertly done, in his own professional opinion.

"Just a moment, master. The mutt refuses to give up your leg." A hint of malice seeped into the angelic voice, though it wasn't directed at him. There was a heavily muffled yelp, and his leg came flying through the wall of white around him on strings. It wasn't looking great. Big chunks had been ripped out, and two toes were gone entirely.

"Oh no. I'm afraid I can't fix the missing toes, master. Unfortunately, I am still bound by the limits of my nature." The voice sounded genuinely apologetic. Somehow, this was the moment his mind decided to catch up with the situation.

"Uh, I'm sorry, but do I know you?" Erik asked, somehow feeling bad even as he said it.

"Oh, master." There was genuine disappointment there. Erik winced. "I'll attribute that to your rather awful state. You know who I am. You always have. Now, why don't you go ahead and say it for me?"

And it clicked. Somewhere deep down, it clicked. Erik had known her from the moment he came into existence. For as long as he had been alive. He just hadn't met her yet.

"Sauma."

Another giggle, "Oh, it's lovely to hear you say it. I knew you were just a little overwhelmed. That was quite the whiplash, I'm sure. From horribly maimed to safe in my cocoon. I'm sure it was a shock. And we hadn't even properly met yet!"

As she talked, strands were stitching Erik's mangled leg back to the stump, covering up much of the damage but failing to fix several missing chunks. Erik wasn't going to be getting those back. He was crippled until a more competent healer could have a go at him. At the same time, his missing shoulder pulled in from behind him, reconnecting with his body.

"There!" A pep entered her voice as Sauma finished patching up all Erik's ills. "I believe it's time for some proper introductions now that the worst is past. Would you oblige me, beloved master?"

Erik dropped to the thread-covered ground, no longer suspended. "You saved my life; I'm pretty sure you could talk me into just about anything, Sauma."

She giggled, her voice coming from right behind him. "You're incorrigible, master."

"Cae says that a lot." Erik laughed. "Now, are you going to introduce yourself?"

There was a subtle skittering sound. "I…I find myself suddenly nervous. I realize we've known each other the whole time, but meeting you now suddenly has my hearts all aflutter."

"C'mon." Erik chuckled. "We don't have all day. I'm dying to know." He refused to turn around. Erik got the sense that Sauma had been deliberately holding back on revealing herself to him, and her attempt at being mysterious suddenly backfired when she got cold feet.

"Oooo, don't rush me, master. I've only been manifest for a matter of minutes." Sauma admonished.

"That's fair. I'm just worried about my friends." Erik said. He had no idea how their fights were going.

"I'm keeping track of them for you, master. They're all fine. Cat is tiring slowly, but her particular style would let her stall to the end of time. Caeden is positively ripping into a truly massive hoard of Ash Reapers. I believe he may be more than a little concerned for you." Sauma rattled off a status report.

"That's nice. Maybe we should go tell him I'm fine." Erik said pointedly.

"Fine, fine. I'm just dragging this out at this point."

"Now you are?" Erik tried to suppress a smile.

"Hush, master. Please close your eyes and turn around. I would ask you to do this on my terms. I only get to meet you for the first time once, after all." Sauma giggled.

"Sure." Erik had no problem playing along with the pretty-voiced lady. Squeezing his eyes shut and doing a twirl, Erik waited.

"Open please, master."

Erik did as instructed. He found himself looking directly into the featureless golden orbs that constituted Sauma's eyes. Around those eyes sat snow-white lashes. In fact, every inch of her sharply-defined aristocratic features were rendered in the palest white. Even her lips were ashen. Long tresses of hair in the same color fell down around her neck and along her back, meeting with a robe styled similarly to the Academy one that Erik wore.

Contained within that robe were the definitive signs of the largest chest Erik had ever seen, clothed or unclothed. Sauma was stacked. Erik lingered for only a moment, not feeling an ounce of the attraction he might have normally. Long slim arms led to pianist hands. Long-fingered and dexterous. Passing her hands, which sat crossed over her sternum, Erik arrived at the real showstopper right where her robe stopped.

Her spider-body. Sauma was an arachne.

Eight long and thin legs covered in white chitin. A broadly built abdomen where her butt would be. And sticking out her front were the pedipalps, the normal mouth-bits a spider has. He could see a pair of fangs the length of his pointer finger shining slightly, tipped with drops of clear fluid.

"Dang, Sauma," Eerik smiled, "I gotta say, you're a way cooler Incarnation than Caeden's Toolbox."

A soft golden blush colored her milky cheeks as his Arachne Incarnation bowed her head. "Thank you, master."

"So, what's going on out there? It's super weird not having defensive sense." Erik shivered, his mind focusing on the complete absence of his most trustworthy ability.

"I think I can rectify that to some degree." Sauma frowned, and her back legs moved in a blur. In moments her spinnerets had churned out a white robe very similar to her own. It was essentially the same as Erik's own, just without the damage from all the hits he'd taken and the black sections made uniform with the rest. "If you wear this, it will connect you to my web. You'll be able to feel vibrations and gain an awareness of everything within my web. It's not the same as danger sense, but I believe it might alleviate your concerns."

"Thanks, Sauma." Erik immediately stripped shamelessly. Sauma might look like a beautiful woman, but she was his Incarnation. Essentially, a part of him. Erik couldn't feel any less attracted if he tried. The most he could do was aesthetically appreciate her beauty, but any kind of sexual attraction simply didn't exist. The same applied to her. Sauma wasn't a living creature and had no biological imperatives. She would never be hungry or create waste. She didn't even need sleep, which are all things a normal arachne would have.

He needed her help at one point. The severed leg had been maimed so heavily that it couldn't properly support his weight alone. Sauma created a brace made of her webbing that made walking awkward but let him move independently. Which was more than he could have expected with several large chunks of muscle missing. His leg looked like a hunk of meat butchered by an amateur. Most of the meat was gone, but several hunks remained. He was honestly surprised the whole thing hadn't been bitten to pieces.

"Alright, let's see what we're dealing with."

Sauma nodded, dropping the cocoon.

{}

Cat was bored. She hadn't expected to be when she was expected to hold an entire tunnel alone, but she definitely was. It all came down to how little she personally could do. Her specters were autonomous and competent. She wasn't handing down orders or managing the battle line with the raving monster hoard. She was in the back, where she couldn't see the action.

When she first dropped into the tunnel, it was exciting. She manifested a hundred specters to fight, the maximum she could currently hold. Each specter had a minuscule ongoing cost for her to maintain them, and a hundred ate up most of her regeneration, leaving enough room to let her shroud slowly restore itself. The mass of soldiers, archers, workers, two Guardians, and a Knight fell on the emerging monsters like a proverbial ton of bricks.

For the first ten minutes, Cat was wholly focused, watching the fight and waiting. Until she realized she didn't know what she was waiting for. Her specters were formed with the knowledge she created them with. All were full combat veterans, most of them being her ever-reliable soldiers. They could hold the line essentially indefinitely without her input.

The Guardians and Knight were quick to deal with any bigger threats that showed up, like Hairy Holes and Rock Trolls. Working together, they were hard to beat. At worst, they could turn the monster's all-out charge into a battle of attrition, which her tireless constructs would inevitably win. Every Troll was eventually stabbed and punched and peppered with spectral arrows until even its remarkable durability couldn't sustain it.

Of course, specters fell, dissipating into nothingness. A worker would come and signal to Cat what kind of specter she needed to make, and a new soldier or archer would form to fight. She was constantly riding a knife's edge of just barely having enough shroud to maintain the battle line. For a while, that was exciting. She felt a constant pressure as her reserves had to continually dump back into the fight.

Then that got boring as the line never got closer. She wasn't losing more than she was gaining, so the threat of running out of shroud slowly vanished. The fact was, her abilities were perfectly suited for this kind of fight. With a limited area for her enemies to attack from and an objective to defend where she was just stalling for time, she couldn't lose.

As far as she could tell, none of her specters, with the notable exception of her more powerful Guardians and Knight, were killing many monsters. Everything coming her way was in the 3,000 to 5,000 IP range, which none of her weaker specters could take down alone. They just didn't hit very hard. Normally Cat would overcome that gap with superior numbers, but the circumstances meant that advantage was gone.

If she was left to her own devices, it would take Cat days to whittle down the monster hoard. With hundreds of monsters and only three specters dealing any real damage of note, it would be a slog. They couldn't break through, as her specters could survive just as well as the monsters could and were intelligent on par with a human, but she couldn't kill them fast enough for that to matter.

If Lily hadn't sealed that third tunnel, Cat would have died, taken from behind and overwhelmed by another hoard. It was…frustrating. She was handling the problem perfectly well but so slowly that it was painful to watch. This was the main problem with her specters. They were expendable, reliable, efficient, and durable. But they weren't powerful.

Cat wanted powerful, and she had no idea how to get there. She kept trying and trying, mnemonic after mnemonic, specter after specter, but nothing worked.

Sighing, Cat idly ran her hand along her Cloak, letting the unique material play across her fingers. She might as well take a nap or something. She felt so unnecessary to her own ability. Plop down some specters and let them go; that was all she ever did.

"Having fun?" A voice barked out from behind her.

"Eep!" Cat jumped in the air, completely caught off guard. The last twenty minutes had bored her out of her mind. Unfortunately, her stalker was ready and willing to abuse her lack of attention.

"HA!" Erik folded over, laughing. "Oh, I got you good! I wasn't expecting that!"

Cat started to relax before she nearly jumped out of her skin again when an actual Arachne followed along behind Erik into the tunnel. Fortunately, she managed to not produce another uncharacteristic squeak. It was damaging to her self-established capable badass image. The arachne was following closely behind Erik, hands demurely folded with a posture and general air that made Cat think of a house maid. She was also extremely attractive, with a chest that gave Cat some interesting ideas.

"Who's your friend, Erik?" Cat asked, hoping he would drop the laughter. She couldn't help slipping into a slightly flirty tone. Intelligent non-monster, non-human creatures were rare, and the CA classified them as animals, like a dog or fish. That's not how people treated things like arachne.

They, like dragons and phoenixes, were treated like a foreign nation, for the most part. Whatever island they lived on was generally left alone. That made them incredibly rare to see, especially arachne. They couldn't leave their islands, unlike dragons and phoenixes. You were more likely to meet a monster version than the genuine article. Having…relations…with one was usually frowned upon, especially since the Church was all about shrouded supremacy and humans were the only creatures that could have shrouds.

Cat didn't discriminate like that. She didn't know how a relationship like that would go, but this pale arachne woman was hot enough that Cat was willing to try.

Erik shut her hopes down immediately.

"Off limits, she's my Incarnation."

Cat pouted. "Boo! Wait." Cat paused. "So, Caeden gets a bunch of flying magic house tools, and you get the gorgeous spider woman with generous curves? Since when did you have any kind of luck that wasn't bad?"

"Ha ha." Erik mock-laughed. "Very funny. Sauma, this is Cat. Cat, Sauma."

Sauma bowed politely. Cat felt she might have curtseyed if her spider half didn't make that incredibly awkward. "It's wonderful to finally meet in person, Cat. I hope we get along."

Cat offered a genuine smile. "Nice to meet you too."

"Great," Erik clapped his hands, "now we can wrap up here and go help Caeden. Lily is almost in fighting shape too. I think we're almost done here."