They left the girl behind somberly, knowing that looking back would only make it harder to leave.
Litost had gotten cleaned up in the meantime, drying his shoulder-length blonde hair with a towel that he had no intention to return. But he found them as they waited, sitting on a bench near the entrance from whence they came.
"Where's Mei?"
"Not coming."
"Why?" He frowned.
"She found her Tether, Li. So she's staying here, with Klead."
"Tch. I see…"
"You'll find yours too, don't you worry."
"I'm not worried, not yet at least. I just… sometimes…"
He sighed instead.
"Nevermind."
"Hey. When I'm not around, you're the oldest, so you have to take care of them. That's not just Tethers and strength, you know."
"I know."
He looked back at the many halls of the building, one of which must contain the sister he had grown up with. Yet, for the foreseeable future, she would be a missing page that grew ever more powerful as he stagnated.
"Are we leaving now?"
"Yeah," she put her arms on both the kids' shoulders. "But first, there's someone here to see me off."
On cue, Klead appeared from the shadows of the darkened hall. She followed him a short while as they distanced themselves from the kids, making space for a more mature conversation between herself and a very worried head servant.
"Do you remember the first time you got hurt, here in this palace?"
"No."
"Of course not," he chuckled. "But I do. You cried a lot, you know—and it made me realize how much my heart hurts when you cry."
"I don't cry anymore, though. I'm grown now. You didn't need to track me down just to tell me that."
He smiled.
"Zora. Do you know what the worst part of raising children is?"
"I wouldn't know, no…"
"Seeing them go to war. A child who goes to war with a smile on her face is a child who never comes back. Please, for the sake of all of us here, come back."
Zora laughed, with a smile that crinkled at her nose.
"War? What are you talking about?"
She looked back at him as she walked towards her siblings, towards the great maw of the Palace. That cheeky smile held strong as she left for him three words: "I'll never die!"
***
The train ride felt quick in comparison to the odious journey she had undertaken on her way there. In fact, it was almost too quiet, disturbingly peaceful even as she held fortunes on both her head and neck.
'Prosperity' was fun to play with, she had to admit, because its unique shape rolled around her fingers with a strange fluidity. Though it was currently a mere knuckle-sized orb, with just a thought the bead would expand into a five-foot long blade, shimmering in both silver and red. It was big, but lithe, perfectly suiting her graceful fighting style. Six large flowers blossomed down the flat length of the blade, each made of six symmetrical petals providing the steel with a burning crimson energy.
Fe Sin was indifferent to the little masterpiece as they sped through the city, while beads filled with magic propelled the vehicle with bursts of sudden acceleration—just like in the slings that made up the Webs.
Zora felt the malice of the Webs the very moment they got off the train, as she could sense at least twenty hostile vagrants looking for whatever hint of money they could find. These vagrants were wandering as if unafraid of the night, likely affiliated with a variety of the underworld's gangs or other collectives.
Thankfully, at least for them, they knew not to approach, because money could barely buy back limbs and it could never buy back lives.
She sighed as she passed them. All of the minor gangs and cartels held intense rivalry with each other but a strange fealty to the Spiders, the only group which they would not dare openly antagonize.
The Nest was a large building near the heart of the city. It looked like an observatory, standing tall and solitary, large but seemingly not large enough for the caliber it operated at.
It was easy to spot, as a telescope's barrel peeked out of the round dome ceiling, though the lens was faded with disuse and the metal body suffered from stolen parts.
Its size and solitude made it the prime spot for the headquarters of an organization that spanned the entire breadth of the Webs. Though that begged the question of which came first: the Spider, or the Webs? It seemed all too convenient that a figure that called itself the Spider would arise from the broken underground at the same time the Webs were made.
As the three approached, it became more and more obvious that rust and bioluminescent algae competed for the surface of the rest of the building. And as they entered, the empty lobby greeted them with a hastily drawn black-and-white spider painted on the iron floor.
Zora's footsteps rang loud on the metal, carried further by the material and amplified in such a way that her own presence sounded intimidating and distant. Litost followed, and Talin chased, each a different sound, each a bastardization of who they were.
Two elevators sat side-by-side at the very end of the hall, One had black doors, and the other gray, obviously meant for different levels of clearance. But they entered the black elevator, which had a keypad to restrict access to those not meant to see the top.
Zora shielded her hand as she punched in the code, hiding it even from her siblings. The Spider valued its secrecy almost as much as it did money: more than almost anything in the world.
The vehicle hitched for a second, gears sparking with electricity and magic. It always gave her pause, peaking her heart rate for a split second before they quickly shot towards the top floor without a hitch.
The doors opened to a dark room with a tall ceiling, made of both glass and metal and hosting the giant telescopic lens, though the inside part was broken off at the base.
A cold chill clung to the air, as the shadows dominated the room to obfuscate anything that relied on the dim bioluminescence of the nighttime Webs. Perhaps this was purposeful, as even now the Spider was an unseen thing, a folk tale that made its presence known.
Zora remembered the first time she entered this very room. Her very first mission, when she was but an escapee of the Iron Palace with nowhere else to go. The one who picked her up had not been the Spider itself, but she had been told to seek its audience regardless.
At that time, the Spider's presence was far more intimidating. Even its hollow puppet, which it had conjured using its magic, had a predatory presence about it—as if anyone who stepped in the room had already sealed their fate as prey.
"Hello?"
The chair back then was the same now, scarred and patchy but held together as if kept from death by a strange power. Its back was facing her, allowing her to see the strings that held it together, but as if activated by her voice it began to move to face her.
As it turned, she saw the Spider—at least, she saw the shell it used to present itself: a patchwork scarecrow with a smiling face. Big colorful button eyes and a sharp-toothed grin stared her down, unfamiliar but not in itself intimidating. Rather, it was the depth of the presence itself, the sound of the heartbeat, that scared her in that moment.
"Ah… a little rascal joins us."
"Hello? I'm Zora…"
"Hello, Zora," its mouth quivered, as the puppet vibrated with signs of life. "Welcome to the Nest."
Young Zora looked into its false eyes, seeking some semblance of humanity, finding nothing but harrowing hatred. Not at her, no, but at something beyond her—something greater and grander, perhaps at the world itself.
"Um… The man named Kinney brought me here."
Yes, she was afraid.
"Did he tell you what we do?"
"You… hunt Ashin."
"Yes."
The button eyes pierced through her soul, drawing out the guilt that hid in her heart.
"You came here knowing this?"
Zora watched with fear and awe as the puppet slithered up to her, its long and lifeless fingers wrapping around her chin.
"Yes. I want to- no, I will- hunt them."
"Why?"
"I want to leave."
"Leave? Where would you want to go?"
"Outside of Fe Sin, past the Ceiling. To the ocean."
"Good…Yes, that's good, Zora. Come, and I shall set you free."
The Spider accompanied her on her first hunt. It wasn't too difficult, but this was the first time she had taken matters of life and death into her own hands. Up on Tesson's mountain, life was cushy, to say the least, so something like death was a concept far removed from her mind.
Even as a vagrant, she had hurt people, but 'life' was still sacred. She refused to take it away, afraid of what that meant for her. Afraid she would become more like her father, that her blood would ignite in a burst of transformative guilt and drag her from her humanity. Afraid to be an Ashin.
She shivered as she used one of the Spider's blades to pierce the beast's throat. It looked like a large rodent, a creature that was weak enough for her to tear apart with just her bare hands.
Before she met the Spider, she would have run away from it; run from her kin so as to avoid unnecessary confrontations. Yet it had died so easily in her hands just now. There was no struggle, no desire to hold on to life; there was merely an acceptance of death by her hand.
It bled red, and it died.
She couldn't help but cry, as the fur matted with blood stuck to her hands and churned her stomach.
At that time, the puppet stood over her with its hands folded behind its back. Zora did not wail, nor shout, yet her tears flowed freely nonetheless.
"Which is better, Zora? Which is more reflective of the truth of power: to be born strong, or to gain it through immense effort?"
It was the first emotion she'd heard aside from hatred. Perhaps her tears had triggered some deep-held emotion within the creature that had forced it into some introspection.
"In my life I have come to believe it is the latter. In my experience, however, it is demonstrated by the former."
The Spider still looked at something beyond, a great distance away, measured not by space but by time.
Zora had buried her first kill, but it had also given her resolve. There was a family in one of the apartment units that came outside, despite it being night in the underground, who gave her a loaf of powdered bread.
"Thank you, young lady! Thank you!"
While the rodent's fangs would chafe her skin at most, it could easily tear through the throats of these fragile humans. She had saved them, just now.
If it was for the sake of others' safety, wasn't killing monsters okay? It proved she wasn't one of them, after all…