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Chapter Text

It loomed; an unfathomable silk chrysalis suspended by tendrils that clung to the decayed metal plating surrounding this room. Hornet watched as the thing gently rained frayed silken dust down on top of the spikes and stone platforms that facilitated her ascent — foreboding architecture that no normal bug could have easily climbed. Perhaps at the height of Pharloom’s dynasty there had been mechanisms and structures for the highest members of the chorus to use whenever they sought an audience with their God. Perhaps they were never intended to be climbed. Pale bugs loved control but hated requests. The Palace of Hornet’s father was much the same, all spikes and guards and silence.

She breathed slow and even, lightly plucking harmonics on her Needolin, a bit of a nervous tick she had developed on the haunted roads leading to the Citadel. It had been an age since Hallownest had provided a challenge worth the red cloaked weaver worrying about, its husk now full of bugs whose regard for her was not unlike how their ancestors regarded her father and his knights. On Pharloom’s roads, she found the background sting of her nerves invigorating and her anonymity refreshing. But now, in sight of the pale being that kidnapped her, in sight of the end, her nerves did not sting in a way she enjoyed. It had been a slow thing, helping the bugs she met in Bone Bottom, Bellhart, Songclave, and all that hid in between them. She was forced to become a legend again, as payment for the tools and power she required for this final duty: making a choice on behalf of all the bugs who lived and died beneath her and the Pale tyrant.

The beast contained inside her bristled and so did the setae that lined her chitin, both reacting to the ebb and flow of her internal dilemma — to live to see a world better than the one she found or to craft a world as she desired. Weaver or wyrm?

A small, subtle sound drew her attention. She leered down from her perch, just in time to catch the Caretaker of Songclave as he snuck out through a hole in the hull of this chamber. His words echoed in her head: contact made will stir the snare alight, but only your needle's song will awaken the spell in full. When that moment arrives, you'll see it clear. The shaman had been like those in Hallownest, easily settling into the role of mentor, gently tugging at the threads of those desperate enough to use their services. It was before her birth, but she was certain a similar snail had made similar promises to her father, nudging him to accept the certainty of The Radiance’s return and the need to call upon that thing that oozed beneath all. What happened after would always be the Pale King’s crime; though, in truth, the shaman alone had paid for it and more in the halls of the Soul Sanctum. Their ancient plot echoed in Pharloom’s audience chamber, filling Hornet’s mouth with something that tasted like singed thread. The trap she helped the Caretaker make lay somewhere above her, graciously not a void child born of vast genocide. Her sin was a little silver thing that waited for her song.

The void is a weapon only in the sense that it kills. It is a weapon like a cave-in, a thing that will do the job but not in the exacting way of a hunter; it is mindless collateral damage. Void is not a bug, it is nature, and nature, while not intentionally evil like Pale Beings or their sycophants, can be cruel. She did not have true wyrmsight, but she could see far enough while at rest to know what would come immediately after she made her choice. Bind the pale monarch to her or give her to the void? Death would follow.

The fragments of the weaver’s melody accompanied her as she traveled again along the roads of Pharloom, appraising all who relied on her. Fleas safely hidden past tunnels of toxins; bugs clinging on to life in camps, bars, towns, and anywhere satisfactorily hidden from the haunt; graveyards whose promise of rest was betrayed by accursed silk. Throughout her quest to build the snare, the right choice was an easy one to make; all bugs but her will die. If it meant that the ones who survived could live in peace and freedom, then it mattered not the damage she and her co-conspirators caused. A belief, once solid, that now teetered on the razors edge of her tired mind. She traced the features of the fair bugs she met on the path, while trying to block out one that wouldn’t leave her mind — a silken thing that lay asleep in a field of white flowers, whose determined expression lay at the end of one of her paths, staring briefly at Hornet before vanishing into the dark.

Hornet stood and walked up to the platform to claim her audience. Her nail sung as she swung it through the air to her side and she watched a thing beyond bug rise from the silken sun. She had made her choice and she hoped that Lace would understand.

This slumber was deep, deeper than Lace had slept in an age. Like all sleeps she dreamt, like all dreams she occupied a body different than her own. Few remained to explain why. Her mother? Uninterested in dreams. Her scorned sibling, Phantom? Uninterested in life. It mattered not; in dreams she found things that her waking life never held. During the long, empty years after the first fall of Pharloom, her dreaming spirit had naught but automatons made by the Architects to inhabit; clockwork creatures who, even stilted and pre-programmed, somehow felt more free than she had ever been. Before the decay though, she got to live endless, fragmented lives as vaultkeepers, reeds, pilgrims, chorus members, beasts, and everyone in between. Even fate couldn’t bear to fully commit to her tortured existence as a vainly constructed, empty shell, granting her these brief reprieves whenever Mother Silk deemed her too uninteresting to keep awake. With the arrival of the spider, her dreams became a true joy again; flickers of the lives of the new pilgrims released into these old halls.

In this dream, something was different; she assumed a form she had once before, long ago. Through another’s eyes, Lace found a world covered in green, framed by the makeshift window of a branch woven house far away from bug or beast. Once, she had secreted off to the still green lands beneath the Citadel, Mosshome and Far Fields, to search for this quaint hideaway. She never found a hint of it, hidden so well that it made her furious. Old envy emptied as Lace soaked in the peace of this rare dream. She could feel the shape of the familiar thing — a tall, fragile bug with beautiful translucent wings no longer capable of flight. When fluttering they released a beautiful tone, vibrations that emerged as air leaked through tears cut by some long gone foe; they whistled and she harmonized with them, humming a forgotten melody as she sharpened a cruel looking nail. Her claws and shell bore the marks of old wounds. This task was one of habit; peace had found this simple bug after a life spent surviving. She paused her labor and stared at her home, a large bed for two, dining utensils and preserved food, a small fiddle hung gently on the wall. Outside, a whooshing sound triggered a quivering in the bug’s heart, which Lace clung on to. In her silken waking life, it had been inconceivable to desire someone’s presence. The maker of the noise reached the door and the moment it opened Lace awoke.

Lace’s first thought was, Mother won. Past the ache of her soundly beaten body was the light tickling of webbing that filled the air. It clung to her; an amount of silk that she had never seen, even at the height of her mother’s power.

Lace’s second thought, as she stared up at the strands of white dripping from above, was, No, Mother’s gone. She tugged at the places in her mind that Grand Mother Silk once lurked and found nothing. No instruction, no demands, no hunger. She tested it, thinking the words, I will leave Pharloom. When no voice rose to strike down her disobedience, a deep vertigo rattled her empty frame.

Wearily she stood, her body mostly restored from her fight with the spider, cuts inexplicably covered with some type of cross-stitching unlike the way Mother Silk repaired her. She wove her way through the webbing towards the golden exit that led up to the ventrica lift’s terminus and further onward to her mother’s domain. The climb was near silent despite its difficulty, each jump and grapple proving to Lace that the threads, which Mother Silk once used to fling her around the kingdom, had been severed. Eventually, she reached the entrance to the rotunda that crowned their Citadel, a room she visited so rarely in the last days of her mother’s rule. After pushing through the thick undergrowth of silk that lined the amphitheater, she reached a large pocket. A tiny gasp left her silken maw and she fell to her knees — far above, encased in silk, was a familiar horned, black shape, now with six legs jutting from its sides. The lines of silk that held it in place twitched as it shuddered.

“Spider, what have you done?” Lace stayed like that for a while.

The form above her could certainly detect her presence; there was no way to walk these halls and not disturb the webbing that filled them, vibrations carried back to the weaver at their center. Lace ripped her eyes from the shuddering, newborn goddess and assessed her surroundings, spying the slow and subtle movements of weaving. An already enormous, segmented tail, which threatened to belong to some silken monstrosity, lay on the floor, threads slowly adding to its length. Instinctual fear, a sensation that her connection to Mother Silk once suppressed, now writhed; it begged her to leave before whatever the tail would be awoke. Frozen panic was interrupted by a flash of red peaking out of the blanket of silk on the floor. Slowly and carefully, she uncovered a neatly folded red cloak, a strange silver contraption, and a familiar needle. The metal of the Citadel groaned, spurring the lithe, silken being to snatch up all that remained of her rival and flee down the tower, past corpses of bugs that hadn’t truly lived in an age; past sites where she enacted her Mother’s cruel demands; past dense forests of silk that covered everything, yet strangely haunted nothing. She could outrun them, but she could not outrun the sickening truth: who would tell her what to do now?

Webs made a maze of Lace’s former haunting grounds, leading her this way and that until she collapsed just on the outskirts of the courtyard which held the first shrine. She could not cry like natural bugs, but her body still felt the tears, simulated like how her body felt the bite of the spider’s nail without need of a true nervous system. She felt silly and useless, unwilling to delve deep enough to know why she cried, beyond knowing it wasn’t for her Mother at least. It was always her dream to end the life of the monarch, though their tether meant she could never admit it directly. The little bits of misdirection and manipulation the silken puppet was permitted all went to taking advantage of the weaver-spawn unexpected escape, testing the spider’s mettle and then drawing her up the citadel. A bit of bait on a silken line set as a trap for the beast, but not quite the trap her Mother thought it was.

A small shuffling sound caught her attention, and Lace sat up, eyeing the forest of tents surrounding the building at the center of the shrine. She had spent much of the last months stalking after Hornet, just out of sight. In this courtyard, she watched the spider helping sickly, injured pilgrims lured to the citadel, silently bringing supplies, speaking with the small pilgrim who never stopped singing and the strange bug who played at being a member of the derelict Caretakers order. It was of course empty of life now. Too empty, Lace noticed — not a shell in sight. She stood, pin at her side, and waited. Something beyond senses shifted and she lunged, her razor-sharp point just barely touching the carapace of a large bug carrying a bag of supplies on her back.

Lace slid back into her characteristic sardonic self. “Such barbarity! To think one would take advantage of a poor, lonely thing trying to catch her breath.”

The bug was completely unfazed. She shifted the large sack and replied, “T’was just trying to enrich meself, now that the halls are empty of the haunt.”

A giggle found Lace. “Industrious little bug, even here at the end. To whom were you planning to sell your stolen goods? The silk? The silence?”

“If the good miss lowers her weapon, mayhaps I can show you.”

Lace regarded the old bug, staring deep into her weary, yet fearless eyes. With a scoff, she whisked the pin away, suppressing a wince caused by her still aching body, and sheathed it. “Lead onward, good bug.”

They walked around to the other side of the bell, and Lace watched as the bug shifted a large sheet of old, metal plating to the side, revealing a hole that led deep into the candle lit, musky remains of the Whispering Vaults.

“Our dear founder, may she rest in peace, created this hole before heading up to die.”

Keeping her voice even, Lace asked, “How do you know she died?”

The merchant-thief stared around at the endless blanket of webs that draped everything. “Just an old bug’s hunch, I’d say.”

The last remaining droplets of Lace’s playful energy evaporated. Anxiety rushed to replace it; was this a trap laid by this lone remnant of Hornet’s silly excuse for a town? Her newfound survivor’s instinct counseled her to walk away, but it could not oppose the colossal reality that hers was a life extended far past its expiration. The other side of her secret wish, hidden between the lines of her manicured, child-like demeanor, was to be freed from a life that was never hers by any means necessary. To put it simply, who cared how she died now, especially when there seemed to be no other path to take. With a courage grown from hopelessness, Lace silently followed the bug down the rickety wooden ladder, letting the darkness that held the last recorded memories of Pharloom smother her.

Bathed in gentle candlelight, sitting in the company of far more survivors than she expected, Lace struggled to accept that the old bug — who called herself Jubilana — hadn’t lured her into a trap. Above them was a grotesque, confusing sight: the false Caretaker, now disrobed revealing his strange, swirling shell. He hung from the shelves of scrolls by large, black tendrils that emerged from his body, emitting a powerful energy that ruffled the outer silk of Lace’s construction. She half listened to the small bug that spoke.

“After the red maiden left, there was that terrible din from above. The old Caretaker led us here, while our noble guardians Garmond and Zaza safeguarded Songclave’s descent—” His voice choked very briefly when he said those two names. Whatever call required him to stay strong and stable was as strong as the one that once called Lace to stay cheerful and obedient. He continued after quickly finding his strength. “Our Caretaker named me his successor, rose up, and sang a strange prayer. Whatever t’was, it shielded us from the silk.”

Lace broke away from gawking at the suspended martyr, and spoke, “How long has it been since the sound?”

“Oh— a few days, by my count. Seven meals. Time passes slowly here in the dark.” Lace recognized his voice from eavesdropping on Hornet’s conversations — Sherma as the spider called him. His was a sickeningly hopeful voice that grated against Lace’s angst and fatigue; not even his brutal ascent of the Blasted Steps could beat it out of him. Here in the dark and dust it clung to hope, but the despair peaked out.

The Whispering Vaults creaked lightly, wood and parchment perpetually settling in despite an age passing since its construction. It was a sound like a polite cough or a tap on the shoulder, its presence made known to those who sought its knowledge and hid from the outside alike. Even with the silencing of the endless, irritating whispers of its keepers — bugs whose thirst of knowledge long ago lost sight of purpose — this was still a place simultaneously quiet and cacophonous. The survivors of Songclave regarded its each creak or groan with exhausted trepidation.

“You knew this red maiden well?” Lace said, finally.

“She was my friend! But, I can’t say I knew her well. Her’s was a quiet manner, guarded yet endlessly chivalrous; always looking out for her fellow pilgrim.”

Lace stood and made a gesture telling Sherma to pause. Quickly, though not as quick as she used to be, she scaled back to the top of the vault and then returned with the needle, contraption, and cloak she hid earlier, not wanting them to fall to some band of thieves. The small crowd of bugs stared as she laid it at Sherma’s feet. He gently touched the nail, before pulling out his bells.

Maiden Red, strong of will,

Bless her care, her thread, her steel,

She fought for us until the end,

Rest easy now my friee-end!

The song caused the bugs around them to weep and Lace to cringe, a reaction she barely attempted to hide. Strange emotions plagued her shell, emotions beyond the playful mirth and blind loyalty she had been strictly permitted before. A novel, sickening thing bubbled beneath the surface of her ever-innocent expression: she still hadn’t decided whether to tell these bugs the truth, that their beloved savior remained above, a slumbering goddess whose will was not yet known. A cruel, ancient side of Lace wished to pop their bubble and watch if the bugs would despair or worship their red friend; naïveté was a weapon she kept as sharp and subtle as her pin. A new, aching side of Lace reckoned with numbness and disbelief. Weeks of watching Hornet’s trek towards her doom had not given her any more insight into the enigmatic figure than little Sherma had, but it had convinced her that godhood was not something the spider sought. In fact, her only interests seemed to be the brutal defeat of any foe that stood in her way, petting soft creatures, and acting embarrassed anytime some bug she saved tried to thank her. It was disgusting, saccharine, irritating, and it consumed Lace; espial became stalking. She was jealous of these bugs and their simple grief, free from the truth. They knew nothing of the obsession and confusion that once whirled in the spaces that Mother Silk deemed unnecessary to fill, and now spilled unchecked into the rest of Lace’s cavitied, fabric shell.

A pall spread rapidly through the crowd and Lace had enough. “I am going to peruse the library. Don’t have too much fun without me.” She left before Sherma could respond.

The shelves wound around themselves, walls of scrolls that detailed the age her Mother wove, written in ink by countless fools that fell into her service. A distant echo of Lace’s birthright filled her with reverence, reverence that tarnished as it touched the air of what her role in that empire amounted to. A knight without a liege, a daughter without a mother. She wandered aimlessly past the empty shells of vaultkeepers and scrollreaders, until she found herself nudged gently, by web and wood, in to the psalm cylinder listening parlor, a small room she had visited long ago after ending the life of the previous keeper before Cardinius. Not two steps in, a shout filled the room. In a flash, she leapt, pin ready to strike.

A voice that grated like misaligned gears filled the moldy air. “Wait! Wait! No harm is meant. She should not strike.”

Lace’s fabric heart beat fast, silence quickly replaced with fury. “You fool! If death is your wish, there is no better way to have it granted than startling me—“ Fury then calcified into a flickering sensation, often denied to the ageless, of seeing someone familiar. “Cardinius?”

“Yes! Yes! He serves. Loyal and last.” His voice was ground down by age. A few more blinks of timeless life, and Lace would have missed her chance to hear it again.

“Serves what?” A giggle erupted from Lace’s mouth. “Grand Mother Silk is dead, and her empire with her. We occupy a corpse with no family left to morn.”

The long bug inspected Lace for a moment, and then in a low, coarse voice replied, “Serves weaver-thing, now. Same as thee, told he.”

“I do no such thing! She was as much a fool as you. I am cut free from all; severed just in time to join the world and drown in silk.” Lace laughed viciously at the absurdity of it all. “You’re so fortunate, Cardinius, that your treachery only came to light after I lost my purpose. Worship whomever you wish.”

“Weaver-thing left cylinder. Newly made, new knowledge passed. Strict instructions bequeathed down needle’s edge: for Silken-thing’s ear alone.” He vanished up into the recesses of his archive, leaving Lace struck with the blow of his words.

The clicking sound of the cylinder loading into the player pulled Lace out of her haze, followed by the gentle recorded sound of plucked strings; a tune she recognized as coming from the weapon-instrument resting a few floors up at Sherma’s feet. She instinctively fingered the shape of the notes on an imaginary viol, a habit developed untold years ago, after her Mother forced her to learn music for her entertainment. It was a strange tune, one the spider played when she thought she was alone, sitting on a bench, staring strangely at nothing.

“What is this?” Lace hissed.

“Weaver-thing left message, inscribed on cylinder, but spoken for you now; miracle that it is for you to find loyal Cardinius still living, Silken-thing. Spider’s Nest, below Moss and Bone, spirit held in glass and stone.”

Weavenests, strange temples constructed by the results of Mother Silk’s first attempt at motherhood, those elevated spiders that fled to rear their own spawn in secret. Their nests stood forever locked to all but their kind. A younger Lace wondered at what they hid, though she was forbidden from entering them, even after Mother Silk ensnared a final living key, the traitor weaver, Widow. Of course the spider, with her aggravating freedom and nosiness, had found a way in. Old jealousy gnawed at the edges of Lace’s silken periphery.

She flung her spite at the long living antique. “Oh, an errand from beyond the grave, is it? That spider really thinks she’s in charge of me!”

“Weaver-thing said to respond to resistance, rejection, with her words, You’ve always followed me.”

An eep left Lace’s lips. The words horrible, conniving, and spider pinged around her head like loose bells. Even locked in strange, silent godhood, that pathetic spider thought she had the upper hand — and she did. Lace was a petulant child, one who delighted in getting away with everything she could without ever breaking the illusion of her innocence. But, in the end, her construction was one that desired an order; a tapestry of dedication and vanity woven in the shape of a perfect daughter. With a huff she launched herself away from the parlor, ready to ignore aged shouts that never came. Moments later she reached the remnants of the former denizens of the first shrine.

“Maiden in White! We were worried.” Sherma’s trademark joviality was restored.

“Where’s the needle?” Lace spat, before seeing the small shrine the bugs had crafted — a makeshift grave for no one. Anger rippled down her seams, only to be interrupted by an enormous, all-encompassing shudder that rattled the scrolls on the shelves and yanked out the breath of the assembled company, followed by screams for mercy. The rumbling subsided and Lace turned to face what remained of Hornet’s wards.

She spoke loud, filled with a confusing cocktail of authority and determination that felt uncomfortable and unfamiliar. “Well, I’m too young and pretty to die crushed under the weight of our shining Citadel. Any who wish to seek safety, should follow me below.” She grabbed what remained of her Weaver-thing and stood aside to wait for her new traveling companions in peace and quiet. The spider’s order would be followed, at the very least to sate Lace’s curiosity, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t make the journey take however long she wished.

To Lace’s surprise, all of Songclave joined the migration, though not all willingly. Jubilana moaned about the hidden treasures she was leaving behind, ignoring the reality that her captive clientèle was hardly an endless source of wealth, now that Pharloom had well and truly ended. Sherma stared sadly at the walls as they passed by, doing his best to hide his desire to stay. The Citadel of Song had meant something to to the little Caretaker. While it almost certainly didn’t live up to his hopes in the end, he wore his wish to remain just barely under the surface of his supportive smile. The façade got under Lace’s silk; much as she once took pride in her deadly watch of these halls, she was as much its prisoner and she was its sentinel. There was nothing now, cut from her god as she was, to love about this temple.

Their one shot at reaching the Grand Bellway was foiled by a thick knot of webbing that filled a makeshift stage Lace had once permitted survival to. A little entertainment of her own, which she somehow managed to keep secret from the matriarch. Somewhere deep inside the knots likely drowned her favorite clown.

At the precipice of the stage, Sherma plucked a red quill from a parchment filled, wooden table. An act of thievery he appeared to immediately shrink away from. “Ah— maybe I should—“

“Take it.” Lace cut him off, her voice suddenly brimming with delight at this chance to corrupt the saint of Songclave. “The dead won’t need it. But, what, pray tell, will you use it for, little bug.”

“I would— keep a journal; of all we saw here, and of all we will see below. Surrounded by all that history, I felt a wish to add to its number. For one day the shining citadel may be restored anew.”

A loud crash interrupted their conversation, and the two turned to face the source — Jubilana returned their gaze while continuing to pilfer the coffers left over from Trobbio’s cabaret. “The dead won’t be needing it, right, good miss?”

Lace giggled and led the company away from the stage. The temporary reprieve soured with each step, a dawning acceptance that their last shot at escape was a secret exit, one she took no pleasure in taking. Not only was it somehow substantially more dangerous than the wailing cliffs to the citadel’s west, it was haunted by a shade she had no desire to face, and vice versa she surmised. Ever since being led into the grasp of that blasted vaultkeeper, she couldn’t trust that all of this wasn’t some intentional ploy by her new spidery matron. Unlike her Mother, there was no voice in her mind confirming anything. Just walls of silk and a hunch, a true weaver’s manipulation. The mismatched caravan of former pilgrims made their way to a service elevator; group by group they descended deeper below.

It was here in the tunnels below the underworks, that Lace realized how foolish it was to invite Hornet’s ragtag collection of pilgrims along. Beaten and tired, their procession was slow, up sheer walls of stone, past jagged spikes, through caverns filled with the ancestors of weaver-kind, the only sign of life they found since the calamity, mindless beasts that Lace dispatched with easily. It was a slow journey, but one with no casualties, to Lace’s shock. After every bug was safely crawling through the now inert pipes of the exhaust organ, she admit that she had wrongly judged those that ascended the steps to the citadel. Not true admiration, jaded and bitter as she was, but they were a lucky bunch, at least. Pipes gave way to rooms; rooms led to a small recital hall housing the old organ keyboard.

“These pipes were for an instrument!” Sherma exclaimed, his voice still bearing misplaced enchantment for the husk at the end of his pilgrimage.

Lace followed his gaze. “Very astute, little—“ Her sarcasm caught in her throat as she spotted a long pin resting on the floor before the organ bench, laying haphazardly next to a small pile of unwoven, blackened silk. Needle scars, which previously went unnoticed, shone brightly on the walls and floor; not every wish Hornet granted was a happy one.

Shaky steps; quivering claws; shame, which felt like tiny burning pinpricks in Lace’s back, bored into her by the assembly of bugs that watched. Her inexperienced mind buckled at how stupid she felt bringing an audience to witness her grieve, though the drama was one her Phantom would have loved. There was never any guarantee of what she would find in these halls. A small part of her hoped maybe she would find them, though she knew they would see through it in an instant. She could almost hear Phantom’s shrill voice, chiding her for using them as a salve for problems she was too scared and bewitched to fix. The long pin dyed her silken claws with soot and the invisible sensation of tears returned.

A gentle claw rested on her. “Would it help if I were to sing a prayer for your friend.”

“No, Sherma. Phantom hated prayers.” She rose and carried the pin over to the organ bench, placing it to rest against the instrument she hoped provided her only sibling with some comfort before the end. “We should keep moving”

They made camp at the top of the shabby, wooden structures which led down to Sinner’s Road, a gentle spot free of any immediate peril. Lace stood first watch, a misdirection that granted her a moments loneliness with her thoughts. Forelegs outstretched, she whisked her dainty, deadly pin in the air, guiding the Silk Flies that always seemed to follow her around. Their glow illuminated the thick, toxic mist that engulfed her, shifting gently, carried by wings whose movement didn’t appear guided by drafts of air; somehow here and not at the same time. She wondered if one of them was Phantom, if the silken golem children of Grand Mother Silk got a true soul. Lace did not cry, but she did sing ever so quietly; a melody learned long ago under the tutelage of Conductor Buffetto, a taciturn instructor to the pliant Lace and sullen Phantom. A duet for viol and plectrum, the melody of Lace’s part flowed off her silken tongue. She played so little music in recent years, missing the talent of her sibling’s accompaniment, but all the music she ever learned lay still just under the surface waiting to be dusted off. Mother did not find her brief attempts at solo works interesting enough to distract from her plots. But Mother Silk was good and gone, and for Lace, while not convinced that this was anything more than a way to bide the time before her silken form finally came undone, there was a thrill and a sadness for singing this old relic again.

“That’s a beautiful melody, dear maiden.” A gentle, sage voice said behind her.

She sighed. “It’s missing most of its parts, little Caretaker. But—“ a thank you died on her lips. It wasn’t a phrase she ever said to anyone other than her Mother, always a forced thing, in gratitude for something she never wanted in the first place.

He continued, “I believe it’s my turn to stand watch. May rest find you while we have time. You deserve as much and more for saving us.”

At those words, Lace imagined that she was starting to understand how the spider felt, undeserving of gratitude; ever aware of her ulterior motives; more monster than hero. She silently regarded the bug before asking, “Do you know that these are, pilgrim?” She pointed her pin at the glowing flies that fluttered in the fog.

“They are light flies, I believe. But, I know not what they are called here, regrettably.”

Lace stared into the slightly illuminated dark. “Little ghosts, is what they are, though once they were called Silk Flies. They are the souls of the citadel — pilgrims, choir, leader, pawn, all. They haunt this land, Sherma. But, they are quite peaceful, and they make a useful light source. Wake me up if you see or hear anything.” She turned and found a small empty place to lay, falling asleep to a distant, whispered prayer.

O little silk, O little fly,

For what keeps your spirit bright,

Path to take, rest to make,

We thank you for your lantern light.

Chapter Text

Sleep did eventually find Lace, but not an easy sleep. She felt it now, walking ahead of the few dozen survivors of Songclave, weariness clinging to her silk shell. In her long life, she had never truly learned the limits of her form; whenever Grand Mother Silk desired the experience of having a daughter, she would rouse Lace with new silken energy. Would she need more sleep to recover, now? Could sleep actually provide any respite to her aches? How fragile was she? Following their banishment, Phantom had been permanently cut off from Mother Silk’s healing. Based on how long they lingered and the damage done from their fight with the spider, Lace reasoned that she had some amount of resilience. Wearily, she eyed the deep pools of muckmaggots that writhed beneath the long, aging wooden boardwalk that creaked loudly each time she stepped forward. No matter the extent of her remaining strength, falling into a pit of those silk hungry pests would be the end of dear, old Lace.

As perilous as they were, the pools of death that filled this place were not her primary concern. Even in the shallow sleep the previous night permitted, her light left again to fill the mind of another’s — a creature scurried quickly through the underbrush, alongside many more of their kind. Dense, dark foliage, which grew out of corpse, muck, and soil alike, identified its whereabouts as the nearby Bilewater. While there were any number of foes desperate to unspool Lace’s silk, the residents of that poisoned place had made a name for themselves as pilgrim killers; revenge for their home, poisoned to keep the citadel shining. Lace could not give her newfound ability to sympathize with her Mother’s victims any serious thought; seeing the Stilkin in her dream confirmed that the path through that swamp would not be safe. She had foolishly accepted the responsibility of guiding Songclave to safe pastures and she would see it through. If Hornet was capable of these tasks, then so too was Lace. At least, that’s what she thought before discovering that the exit towards Greymoor was locked up tight, and this time not by silk.

Something was leading them to Bilewater, and Lace had a very strong hunch of what; a hunch that swirled around inside her like sludge. She had witnessed such feelings in the eyes of bugs born fragile before and wondered now at the purpose it served. In the brief amount of time she had the capacity to fear her own demise, all it had done was annoy her. It never diminished, even when she knew her decision was forced; it screamed as she led her pilgrims into the thicket of Bilewater, unwilling to listen to reason or provide alternatives beyond nausea and heightened awareness.

“Gah!” a young, winged pilgrim lost his footing, nearly slipping into the assured death of the muckmaggots.

Eyes wide with frustration and fear, ears ringing at the sound, Lace spun around and silently confronted the bug. He made frantic, silent gestures of apology, which she ignored. Her dream provided no clues to the exact location of their stalkers, all blackened, poisonous ferns and moss exactly like that which surrounded them now. Past the ring in her ear, Lace found only silence, which did not reassure her that the bug’s carelessness hadn’t been noticed. There was still only one path to take. Lace stepped carefully, pin at the ready, down fading boardwalks, up treacherous moss covered cliffs, and into the large cavern that spiraled up, back towards the Citadel. Staring up into the thick fog that filled the air, Lace acknowledged that if they found the path to the Bellway cut off, then their only hope would be to return right back to where they started, passing straight through the Stilkin village.

Lace’s gaze peered upward for only a moment, when she detected an imperceptible shift in the wind. Before a single sound could leave her mouth, a dart flew from beyond the fog and pierced the shell of an older pilgrim holding up the rear. The elder slumped over right as Lace found her voice.

“Run!” She charged forward, out of sight of the cavernous cliff sides, down the claustrophobic path which hopefully ended in salvation, the tiny, frantic footsteps of the pilgrims in quick pursuit behind her.

Barely out of sight of the main chamber and its frail light source, another barrage of poisoned darts flew towards the panicking group of bugs and their lone protector. Lace blocked them and responded in kind, lunging forward towards a dense bit of folliage and plunging her pin directly into the shell of a Stilkin not quick enough to escape. In a single motion, she kicked off from the still dying bug and landed back in front of her party, a smooth flick of her pin removing any viscera and disguising the aches that wracked her nimble form.

“We’re trapped!” A terrified pilgrim shouted.

Lace blocked two more darts before shouting back, “Back to the cavern! At least there, we can face our doom with some dignity.”

Regret wracked her body as the impact of her words rippled around her, cries of despair that a different savior would have likely been capable of quelling. Lace didn’t know the first thing about comforting anyone. But, if this was to be her end, she would not go quietly. Sherma, ringing his bells and singing a prayer garbled by the chaos erupting around them, led the party into a small covered space just off the path. Possessed by a feeling that felt indistinguishable from both bravery and lunacy, Lace stood in between her bugs and their hidden assailants; she placed one claw behind her back, feet en garde, pin pointed forward. Fire filled her empty chest as she deflected dart after dart, catching the occasional combatant as they flew through the air and striking them low. She laughed and screamed melodically, uncaring of the attention she drew. Perhaps, she called it to her, desperate to show Pharloom what she was capable of, desperate for the straightforward task of combat, her sole purpose in what was likely multiple, uncounted lifetimes. The cavern carried the echoes of her pin and her voice up and up, towards the place she once called home.

A group of trappers lunged at her in unison, three wooden spears struck at the same time, only to find her pin — a sharp cling rang out and Lace vanished. An instant later, she reappeared, standing tall in the middle of her assailants; their bodies silently collapsed and tumbled into the murk below. She was a marvel, a weapon honed over a thousand of years, the blade of a dead god playing babysitter to the little that remained of its cult.

The taste of blood in her silken mouth turned sour as an enormous roar filled the cavern: a Bloatroach, leashed by chains to two Roachkeepers, whose heavy footsteps rattled the fragile boardwalk.

With a voice that struggle to stay even, Lace said, “Little Caretaker.”

“Yes, maiden.”

“Head for the Bellway. Do not wait for me.” She ignored the growing despair in the pilgrims’ eyes and flung herself into the air. A glowing light appeared to surround the floating, poison filled monstrosity. It sparkled, briefly illuminating the after images of a desperate, tired fencer. She carved as much out of the beast as she could before slamming down into the boardwalk, shattering the weak planks beneath their feet and sending all falling into the sickly, green death below.

Time slowed for Lace; she watched as the Roachkeepers panicked, their heavy chains and spiked armor dragging them deep beneath the infested grime. In their desperation, they lost control of their colossal pet, which thrashed at the clean pin cuts Lace inflicted. Its lumbering body crashed into cave wall and Stilkin alike. It mattered not to her; it was time for Lace to join her sibling and learn if the self she had just begun to feel would flutter away to light some peaceful, empty cave.

A rush of wind — Lace found herself in an embrace, soft and furry and big, her assured death robbed as she was carried through the air to safety on what remained of the boardwalk. Before she could make sense of her new predicament, a loud shout echoed through the cave.

“ENTOOMAA!” Through the brown fur of the being that held her tight, Lace could see a strange, whiskered bug, riding on a beetle with large black eyes. He galloped towards a mixed battalion of Roachfeeders and Stilkin, piercing each with his long, bronze lance.

With a frustrated huff, Lace’s savior unhanded her. “Grr… bug not flea, hide behind.”

Lace scoffed. “I’ll do no such thing. I would have had them if their shoddy workmanship hadn’t collapsed under me.”

A louder huff exited the fuzzy barbarian’s mouth. “Fool creature, die if wish.”

Lace watched the ball of fur and muscle launch into the air towards the still writhing bloatroach; above her, she brandished a devilish looking tusk ripped from some impossibly sized creature. The club came down hard on the head of the injured monster in a smooth, powerful motion. A sickening crack echoed through all the caves and crevices of Bilewater, an impact that sent the giant beast hurtling towards a large assembly of Stilkin and Sinners, crushing them all at once.

“ZAAANZIBOOOO!” The whiskered bug shouted, seemingly signaling the final defeat of his foes.

The sound followed Lace, who had already sped off down the tunnel after Songclave’s flock. The loud thuds and light galloping of her rescuers followed behind her, but she did not register their presence as she cut down trapper and hunter alike, while wallowing in a new horrible panic her severed form was now capable of feeling — fear for the life of another, an irritation that she had never known in all her long life. As she sped out of the end of the tunnel and dove down towards the Bellway, she resolved to never again be responsible for anyone. Not seeing any sign of her frail group of companions in the descent, she launched off the wall into the entrance of the Bellway, her silken tongue drowning in the taste of iron.

“Please, be safe.” She tried to say, but her words were lost in an incomprehensible roar that flung her back to the ground.

Lace hit the floor and rolled, eventually finding her footing and launching forward towards the beast.

“Wait!” A little voice shouted.

By some miracle she stopped just before piercing the Caretaker with her blade. Much to her surprise the unknown creature was similarly halted by the little pilgrims voice. They stood still. Tiny drips of humid born grime plinked against the metal bells that filled the room. Lace’s eyes adjusted to find the strange steed that her former rival somehow trained. She regarded the giant, then the little saint, then the trembling group of pilgrims, and finally collapsed to the floor under the weight of her aches and annoying new emotions.

Lace slipped in and out of opaque dreams, occasionally waking to the sensation of a scaled thing shifting underneath her, flashes of dim torchlight reflected off of the ringing tunnel walls, and sound of a dozen footsteps crunching as they displaced tiny bells. Beast dreams lacked anchors; strange images filtered into eyes not designed to make out the faces of friend or foe; sound warped in strange ways as ears listened for impossibly quiet prey; bodies frozen in positions with no concern for boredom or discomfort. A pharlid waiting in a hole for dinner or a muckmaggot swimming sightlessly in an aquatic habitat more beast that fluid, these were maybe the closest Lace ever came to not having a dream. Even then, the simple thoughts from the things whose body she briefly shared were ever present: eat, wait, consume, rest, run, hide. It seemed a far simpler life; perhaps the weavers resented her Mother because their strange, farseeing minds could peer back to the time before they were plagued by things like wanting a child or hating their birth. Now free to hate the machinations of her own creation, Lace too found a solace in the sightless being her mind grabbed onto — a brief release before a faint and familiar smell ripped her back into the caverns of the Bellway.

The color red filled her vision; her face was buried in a cloak, laid to cushion her from the discomfort of resting on countless little bells. She felt it with her claw as she pushed her body up. The memory of this smell had formed in the too brief moments of contact between her pin and Hornet’s nail. The animal part of whatever her brain was made out of had clawed on to it, rendering milliseconds of intimacy into the familiar. It was a earthy, full smell that elicited an incomprehensible emotion; it fell into the same category as the nauseous panic that bound her to her little group of survivors. She stood up, almost too irritated to notice that her aches had improved. Next to her, the Bell Beast lay snoring, surrounded by a brood of children. Carefully, she stepped over the little ones — out of the Lace shaped hole they made — and carried the shawl over to a small fire surrounded by her now surprisingly chatty pilgrims.

“Ah! The knight has awoken. Come, join us around the fire, sister.” The voice of the whiskered jouster filled the haphazard, metal walls of their refuge.

Lace hesitated, only just realizing that she had never sat in casual conversation with strangers before, never spoken with bugs beyond taunts in combat or, more recently, orders in fearful exodus. Silently, she handed the red garment to Sherma. Then, in a stilted, overly-formal voice, she said, “Can you carry this for me? In your sack? And, the contraption if you still have it? I can care for the needle. We may need them in the days to come.”

With reverence, the little bug took the cape and said, “It would be my honor.”

The old warrior leaned in to get a closer look at the garment. “Ho. Now, that’s a familiar shade. Sister knight, by what means did you come across this?”

Before Lace had the chance to concoct an answer to the question, Sherma spoke, “She found it in the Citadel. ‘Tis all the remains of the brave maiden red.”

“Aye, I feared as much. Bravest warrior dear Zaza and I ever did see. It leaves me ill at ease to think some foe could best her. Dark times befall us, though we are not without bravery yet.” He looked up at Lace and gave her a wink.

Uncomfortable and uncertain, Lace raised her voice, though the result left her embarrassed for how shaky it emerged. “Thank—” her body reeled from the word, but she persisted. “—you, for rescuing me. And, the furry warrior too. Does she travel with us?”

“Oh, Vog? No, she returned to her people past the sewers at the citadel’s edge. She was quite gracious in assisting my return to my charges. Which, to continue with my tale, dear Caretaker, after Zaza and I escaped those white, melted beasts we found ourselves wandering aimless in that poisonous labyrinth. If not for Vog and her caravan, we would have made a scant meal for some unseen thing! Together, Vog, Zaza, and I braved the vile paths of Bilewater, attempting to find a single way to to return to Songclave. But, the old ways are locked up tight behind that infernal webbing. In retrospect, a fortunate thing, considering you had long since fled that place! Even more fortunate, was that your brave protector thought to shout for help. We heard her yells and easily found our way back to you.”

Sherma nodded his head. “Yes! Songclave finds itself rich with blessing and protection — a sign of our providence.”

Lace thought back to her impulsive battle cries and struggled to accept the compliment for what she knew was recklessness. She did not argue, however; speaking with multiple people at once was scarier than any battle she had ever fought. She tread water through the calm joviality of the fire, like a babe not yet taught to swim.

“Ah! How rude of me, dear knight, I must have lost my manners in all our trials. I am Garmond, and, as I’ve said, my noble steed and dearest friend here is Zaza!” The beetle responded to the sound of its name by looking up towards Lace.

“I am called, Lace.” She replied.

“Well, sister Lace, you bear much in common with sister Hornet. Quiet as can be, but a demon behind the blade. I’m a lucky, old bug to spend my twilight years fighting along such magnificent warriors. Watching your finesse for even a moment is all the proof I need that no one is better suited to look after the red knight’s blade.” He gestured to the needolin, which lay resting in a pile of goods carried by the pilgrims. “A curious thing, that; I thought it was only I who wielded a musical weapon.”

Lace’s head spun, old muscles worked overtime to trace the intentions of this Garmond, to predict what manipulations his kindness would lead to. But, they were unused muscles, atrophied from untold years letting the mistrustful, manipulative voice of Mother Silk do all the worrying for her. She watched blankly as he lifted his hornlance up from a long sheath on the floor and brought it to his mouth.

Garmond continued, “I’ve spoken quite long this night. Let me instead fill our rest with a tune from whence I hail.” A deep inhale and then a low, brassy tone filled the tunnel, reflecting off distant bells and returning back to overlap with the next note in his mournful song.

An assumption that took hold of Lace long ago, that solo music was unworthy, crumbled to dust in front of her. It felt profoundly disadvantageous to like something as much as she liked the tune that filled the cave. Back and forth she tried to explain it away, dispel the magic that it cast on her; she failed. It was a heavy, gorgeous thing, which grated slightly against the short, boisterous bug that molded it. The outside world faded away, leaving only the wisps of this memory; a thing that had barely survived destruction by the Citadel and its hate for anything that didn’t serve its purposes. The old decree, which declared that only choral music lulling the Mother beyond bugs to sleep would be permitted, a law that saw countless artifacts like this fill the air for a final time. It picked up speed and volume before the end, returning to the motif that heralded its start, but this time freed from the doom it once sang. The last note rang out, and a shudder traveled down Lace’s silk.

She stood impulsively and collected the needolin from her party’s belongings.

“Ah! Yes, sister Lace, let us share in music. It’s been a long time, but I know an old song that calls for just such an instrument. Let us fill these tunnels, which once granted passage to our red comrade, with the sound of her sword and our remembrance of her.”

“I never learned songs not played in the Citadel.” Lace said, attempting to hide her sudden embarrassment.

“Not a worry! If that haunted place once taught you to play, I’m sure it taught you well enough to accompany this old, haunted song. I’ll start first, and you can follow when it possesses you.” Garmond sat up straight and steeled his ever jovial expression before singing, his voice old and grave, but fitting the shape of the words he sung.

Lace listened, enraptured, to the slow, somber lyrics he sang, her silken claws gradually finding arpeggios and harmonies that slid neatly beneath it. Timid at first, only just starting to emerge during the first chorus, but by the middle of the second stanza she had settled in to a way of playing she heard once during the Citadel’s consumption of a green land, now lost; a tune played by a surviving bard, brought to the Memorium to perform amongst what remained of his flora — his talent ordered on pain of a death he was given in the end anyways. After finishing the song, they took it again and together Lace and Garmond wove a spell on their pilgrim companions.

A breeze descend down hill and limb
Budding thing overcome with awe
Thou struggle to lift leave with the wind
Thine roots deep buried in sod
Fly not dear bud stay here with thine father to reap and cleave and sow
The wind it calls for us not to falter till green and gold and glow.

Guro, that lance is weighted with reason
Thine claws too young for the task
Pray let thine father wait just one more season
‘Fore peace and joy art past.

Dear bud that wither for wind and weather
Our harvest hath seemst to slow
But steel your worries and heed thine father
Our hardships will not keep us low
Oh bud in toil you lingered too long thou father hath eaten his share
Take from our stores ye will grow stronger and we will pass the year.

Guro, that lance is weighted with curses
Thine claws too old for the task
Pray let thine child take up your purpose
For peace and joy art past.

Long lives require that one might suffer
Dear bud our duty is known
No drought or failure can steal our pasture
In truth we’re blessed for our home
The hills that sang with wind and rain now stark with rock and road
In homes for seed we’ll lay our slain and pray that green might grow.

Guro, that lance is weighted and buried
Theire claws too gone for the task
A father and child no longer to worry
Our peace and joy outlast.

No applause followed their performance; all that huddled around found perch in the words, except for Lace, who thumbed the thought of a parent begging their child to lay down their weapon. Garmond laughed and spoke kindly to her, though she could not parse his words other than to nod and avert her eyes. Lost in the kneading of this bruise, her brooding smothered everything around her, except the strange weight of her rival’s old blade. Her companions left to find rest, leaving her to sit, cradling the needolin and staring deep into the flickering of their meager fire. At some point, the embers threatened to perish, and a slight figure placed a log to take over their duty.

“Lost in thought, maiden white?” Sherma said.

“I— Yes.” Lace said quietly.

Sherma sat across of her. “I count myself lucky for so many things; for the friends I’ve made on my pilgrimage; for the chance to restore the citadel and rekindle its purpose; for the trials I overcame and grew from on Pharloom’s roads. But, tonight my fortune was hearing you two warriors rest from your causes and share your music with us.”

It, like every compliment, like every kindness, curdled as it touch Lace’s mind. Her eyes stayed frozen, fixated on the flames that embraced the new kindling.

Sherma spoke again, “You are very much like her, you know?”

“Like who?” Lace knew the answer already, and the spite trickled into her voice because of it.

“The maiden red, Hornet.”

Lace sat up, some of the spell’s magic removed. “I am— not like that spider. I would ask that you not say that again, little Pilgrim.”

Sherma looked up and smiled, gently. “I apologize. That must have been rather daft of me. All I mean is that you are burdened with a quiet duty and power, but that, sometimes, something more peaks out. The maiden red was much the same. She never accepted gratitude and often stayed quiet, but she would stay near us and play that instrument, just to hear us sing.”

Lace felt like an amateur fencer practicing against a master, she was off balance and graceless, her hit — her demand of Sherma — felt brutish and embarrassing. Lace recoiled from it. “You did not know me before all of this, Caretaker; I believe, if you had, you would think very differently of me. Thank you for waking me from this distracting fire, I should take a walk — make sure we’re safe.”

Lace stood awkwardly and strapped the needolin to her back. As she walked away down the tunnel, she tried desperately to ignore the sensation of Sherma’s concerned and sympathetic eyes.

The rest of their journey was uneventful, though the peace worked only to distress Lace further. The pilgrims treated her no different, a mix of reverence and familiarity that confounded her. Sherma seemed to not remember her embarrassment, content to act like she was still his friend. Worst of all, Garmond seemed unable to understand the cause of her silence, talking to her incessantly about chivalry and quests. Though, after a while, Lace settled in to the rhythm, listening to his stories and allowing him to fill in the silence with what he thought she would say. At the very least, it meant that she didn’t have to think up responses; in her vulnerability, that was as much of a win as she could hope for. They trekked alongside the Bell Beast and her children, who seemed surprisingly content to walk their tunnels despite how clearly they were built to gallop through them.

The only break from the endless ringing terrain came near the end of their journey. The claustrophobic tunnel opened up into a cavern of bells, in the middle of which hung a monster beyond reason. The Bell Beast growled at it and Lace and her traveling companions stopped to gawk. Large, black segments cascaded down a serpentine body, each plate accompanied by cruel looking appendages, and eventually ending with a vicious set of fangs and eyes. If it were still living, it would have made quick work of this fragile group. However, the beast hung in the grip of an giant, silk claw, nine razor sharp fingers, like spears, piercing its body; silk magic on a scale that Lace had only ever seen in the aftermath of the spider’s ascension. While the other members of her group murmured their thanks to whatever defeated the thing, a single, burning thought grabbed on to Lace: for all the damage the webs caused, it hadn't harmed those who aligned with the spider. Her mind turned to the memory of that twitching shade high above in the citadel, and she wondered why, for all the times she tried desperately to end the life of the weaver-spawn, she had been included in that number.

They did not linger long and, past a few turns and a final stretch, Songclave and their guardians reached a part of the Bellway they could climb out of. After bidding farewell to the Bell Beasts, they ascended up into the welcoming light of Bellhart.

A tall, intimidating figure stood before them. “Poshanka! Edges sharp and senses keen! We bid you welcome to the last refuge in Pharloom.”

Amongst the sea of sighs — the long awaited exhale as Songclave's bugs saw their nightly prayer answered — and confronted by the tall warrior before her, Lace might have let herself be caught off guard. But, her warrior’s training had gone on far longer than the lives of any of these bugs combined. An instinct beyond skill pulled her attention to a figure standing back against the bell covered walls. She donned a familiar blue shawl, which covered all her features, save a pair of eyes which stared, fixed on Lace, bearing an expression as lit by familiarity as it was fury.

Chapter Text

After the fall of the Weaver’s rule of Pharloom, the final straws that once ignited their rebellion against Grand Mother Silk, the puppet daughters Lace and Phantom, awoke. The two had lain in her chambers, inert and dreamless, since the moment those usurpers successfully sang their Mother into accursed slumber. None remain to pass on the intentions of that higher caste, but what is known is that the Weavers, without explanation, abdicated and fled to distant lands. The Conductors and their Chorus, once trained to help maintain the spell over the silken beast and her artificial children, inherited the kingdom. The Weavers left them not power, but a duty to keep Pharloom out of the claws of that thing of silk. But, history is easily re-written. Generations passed, and the fading strength of the Chorus’ song, weakened by short-sighted despots and fools, permitted the slumbering Monarch’s sleep to lighten just enough to rouse her Pale children.

Perhaps her sleep was still too deep then to fully control both of her eternal silken spawn, for Phantom quickly became disillusioned with their creation and cast off their daughterhood and duty. In the end, Grand Mother Silk poured all of her energy into Lace, turning her into a conduit for her manipulations. The innocent, virtuosic Princess of Pharloom wielded her charm and wit to beckon the bugs of the Citadel to more and more reckless use of silk; those who dissented, who remembered the words of their former arachnid rulers, discovered that guile wasn’t all she wielded. Through her, silk became a source of endless innovation during that golden age, contributing to countless advances in weaponry, robotics, and medicine. But, there was a cost for its use. Even in enchanted coma, it belonged to the Mother; each thread ingested was another thread she could tug on from within her dreams.

The air of Pharloom grew so thick with microscopic silk particles, that a single breath would fill the tracheae of a bug, later seeping into their muscles, blood, and minds. Years passed and bewitched bugs forgot. The duty of endless singing grated against the kingdom’s desire to enjoy the fruits of their brutal conquests over Pharloom’s neighboring kingdoms — a desire that their silk free ancestors seemed to not possess. Growing dissent led to the creation of the automated chorus by the Second Architect, an event celebrated with much fanfare, including a concert where the beloved Princess Lace performed a gorgeous arrangement of the song that kept her Mother asleep. Her talent delighted the attendees, who did not yet realize that whatever magic that song possessed did not extend to automated voices.

So it was that the first domino of Pharloom’s possession fell, a chain reaction that would spin out of control, stuffing more and more silk into bug and beast — shells filled to bursting — until the only life they could live was as a little marionette, wielded by the now fully awake God of Silk. A violent consumption fueled by revenge and Pale hunger that was always doomed to topple.

Strangely, or perhaps inevitably, it was broken by the very thing that was its catalyst. As powerful as Grand Mother Silk was, even gods have limits, and the more silk she haunted, the less attention she could give to Lace. Waking machinations called for ever greater use of her powers; armies animated to defend the Citadel; parties sent across the world to capture the descendants of her first, traitorous children; haunted threads sent on the wind to summon commoners from further and further away. That Silken Beast engorged herself, and, between tearing, slurping, gulps, Lace would find herself temporarily freed from control. Not enough to act, but enough to entertain strange impulsive feelings — jealousy and anger at her fragile construction, her lack of agency, her long, cruel life.

In the days before Mother Silk’s demise, as she poured her energy into killing the red cloaked weaver-spawn that drew ever closer to her chambers, those little moments grew longer and more frequent. Pockets of freedom where little, obedient Lace could ponder a question — how different was she really from the bugs she had filled full of the haunt?

Her guess, before her spider put an end to the nightmare, was not at all. She assumed that the death of the puppet master would be the end of the puppet.

At the moment of her Mother’s defeat on the end of Hornet’s Needle, an untold number of silk haunted bugs collapsed; Lace was not in their number. Their shells littered the rooms and roads of Pharloom. Each corpse on the path to Bellhart served to further highlight Lace’s naïveté, to reveal that she had asked the wrong question. In the middle of Bellhart, surrounded by the lucky few spared from her family, averting her eyes from glares of the last living member of an order that once bound itself to its machinations, Lace finally asked the right question — did her lack of agency absolve her of all the evil she wrought?

She looked back to the spot where the Pinstress stood and found it empty. As soon as she got the opportunity, Lace resolved to flee. Any that remembered who she was and what she had done were right to cut her down; a grim acceptance dissonant with her irritating, new survivors instinct. If it came down to it, she would even allow it as payment for her crimes, but not before seeing to the order from the Weaver that set her free.

Lace was in the middle of searching for an easy way to sneak out of the little bell filled town, when the tall bug who greeted them stepped up to her and knelt down to look her in the eyes, an act that Lace took slight offense to. “Warrior from the Citadel. My thanks to you for escorting survivors away from that cursed place. I am Shakra, wielding rings.”

“They— were simply traveling the same direction as me. I will be leaving soon to complete my task.”

“Is it not the way of your people to give their names? I shall not ask it, if so.”

“That is not so.” Lace grew more flustered at the intense expression of the strange warrior. “I am Lace.”

“Well, Lace Wielding Pin, I too once pursued a quest in this land, one which led me to help many strange bugs. That quest is now finished. I would not keep you from yours, but I would ask if you, in your travels and time in the city above, saw a bug that helped me see my oath fulfilled?”

At this point, all the bugs she traveled with and the residents of Bellhart stopped their light conversations and turned their attention to Lace and the tall bug accosting her. An already torrential level of panic, caused by the Pinstress’ recognition of her, grew unchecked. Still, Lace worked to even her voice, to hide how much she already knew about the bug in question. “Who was the bug that—“

“Ah! Brave sister Shakra. It was through sister Lace that we learned the tragic news. I shudder even to break it to you, but honor requires it of me. The noble knight, Hornet, has fallen.” Garmond strode up behind Lace, placing his comforting claw on the now shaking silken bug.

Shakra sprung up from her crouched position. “It cannot be so! How did you discover this, Lace Wielding Pins?”

Lace’s voice turned fragile. “I—“

Sherma reached into his sack and pulled out Hornet’s red cloak, presenting it before Shakra. “It is so. The Maiden White brought this to us before guiding Songclave to safety. Though, in truth, I still struggle to believe it.”

Shakra let out a loud, horrible cry and brought her claw to her chest. “There are no words. I am a disgrace to my tribe. Here my friend has died in glorious battle, but I do not feel joy for her bravery. I feel fury! My heart breaks to sing her song-sending. Lace Wielding Pin, you must tell me the place of her defeat, I must go to her.”

“She—“

A bug, bearing the mark of the Citadel, rendered as a strange bronze hat, let out a despondent wail. “ Our faith is tested! First our beloved Pinmaster goes missing in the web cursed remains of the woods, and now our dearest resident and protector has perished! What hope is there?”

Chaos broke loose around Lace, voices and cries of bugs facing their fragility, despairing the death of their savior, grasping at the uncertainty of the future. It whirled around her in the same way that the political debates of the forum used to. But, unlike then, there was no Mother Silk to assume her form and bend the will of the din to her — pull taut the strings of her possessed victims. It was just Lace, still drowning in grief and fear and mortality, unable to pierce through the mob, to continue her careful watch for the danger she knew was waiting just out of sight.

A claw reached out to touch her. She jumped away from it and screamed, “She’s not dead!”

All fell silent and stared.

“Maiden?” The little Caretaker’s gentle voice broke the silence.

Lace stared into the eyes of the bugs around her, whose one bit of good luck was never running into her before all of this; bugs that, just weeks ago, she would have murdered in cold blood, with no ability to say no or to spare them, with no capacity to feel her actions.

“That spider is not dead. She killed the beast above the Citadel and assumed her place. She covered the world in webs. I lied! I couldn’t face it.” Her words came out clumsy and violent, her body reeling from her gracelessness. “If you wish to see her, climb. Climb, pilgrims, to the Citadel! Find the slumbering goddess that lurks there! The goddess weaver who spared me — who should have killed me instead.”

The crowd stepped away from the shouting silken being, opening up a path that, in a flash, she disappeared down, past the bell homes, down a shimmering hallway, and out into the webbed, green murk of Shellwood.

Lace sat on the edge of a splintered pier, staring into the gentle, mossy water. A pond skipper drifted by, the first sign of life she had seen in the glade. It skittered, drawing close to the floating shell of a pond catcher who likely died the instant her Mother did. It had taken careful navigation reach this spot. The dense webbing cut off direct paths through the woods, requiring her to climb up and down the trees and cliffs that guarded this oasis. Thankfully, the same webs that hindered her progress would prevent any but the most determined from reaching her. She tossed a stone into the water, saving herself from continuing to stare into her own eyes, at how tired they looked.

“I was wrong about you, Spider.” Lace said to webs. “I couldn’t understand why you saved me. But, you didn’t, did you?”

The density of the webbing muffled the sounds of the little bit of beastlife that remained unseen in this fertile place.

Lace thought about the evening prior in the bell tunnels, sitting at the campfire, of the guilt she felt for enjoying their polite company. She thought about Garmond’s songs and Sherma’s friendship, easily given. She pictured what their expressions would be, once that Pinstress told them the truth about her.

Lace looked up at the webbing that interwove with the canopy. “You gave me the chance to know exactly what I had done, that I killed mountains of innocent little bugs, with full lives, songs, and stories. You let me see what it could be like to want companions, knowing full well that it would never last — that I would ruin it.” Lace paused, her voice catching on silk tears that pretended to slide down her artificial throat. “My Mother could only dream to be so cruel.”

A distant call cut through the webs, muffled, indiscernible. Lace stood quickly and unsheathed her pin, careful not to make a sound as she listened.

“Help me!” A frail voice from deeper in the woods, in the opposite direction of Bellhart.

“Hello?” She called out.

“Dear, oh. Please! Anyone?!” Fear gripped the voice.

Lace quickly shifted her weight between her legs, trying to weigh how likely it was that this was the trap her former companions laid for her, before deciding it didn’t matter. She leapt off her perch and sped off into the woods; the very least she could do was spend the little time she had left not hurting more innocent bugs. The calls stopped, but a loud, furious scraping sound took over as her guide. She followed it through web and wood, cutting when she could, climbing and crawling and re-navigating when she couldn’t. The trail ended in a steep incline, concealing a shaded ledge, past which she could make out the disconcerting sounds of scraping and sloshing. She bounded up into the dark, holding her pin before her. The path was pitch, save for a little light from above the canopy which illuminated a web covered statue depicting stacks of common pilgrims. Cautiously, she moved deeper in, past grave markers and weeds, when something rushed out from the shadows.

A pilgrim, at least at first, but revealed by the trickling light to be contorted nearly beyond recognition; little claws, legs, shell segments all held together not by chitin or muscles, but by pale, oozing stalks. It stretched the bug to a form far bigger than what it could have been in life. In the dense parts of the webbing that filled these woods, Lace had seen areas where the silk was so thick it fused together, forming white, fibrous tendons and flesh. It was this same haunted matter that spilled out from the thing before her, an obscene quantity of silk shoved into this poor bug’s corpse. The monstrosity lumbered over to her silently, its mouth hanging open, barely attached by thick ropes of silk. One claw, which dangled from the end of a long bit of fused silk, held on tightly to a pond catcher’s polepin. It jerked the weapon around, striking it haphazardly against stone, weed, and grave like a whip.

There was a certain strength that Lace had discovered in her new fragility, a way that time seemed to slow as her mind played out all the ways a thing could kill her. It made her careful and exact. Pin forward, she walked around the thing that soundlessly thrashed as it approached her, waiting for just the right moment when—

Cling! Lace blocked the blow of the weapon, knocking it clear from the creature’s claw, and vanished, emerging in the air behind it. She stabbed furiously, slicing at the thick silk that held it together; the artificial tissue snapped and groaned as the beast it possessed fell apart on the floor. In a final confirmation, she shoved her pin into the head of the thing, hopefully severing it from being further haunted. The thickened silk undulated, knotting, turning the body it possessed backwards and inside out, before it twitched and went limp. A thick silence set in around her.

“Hello?” She called out into the dark.

A little head emerged from deeper in the graveyard. “Hello! Is it dead?”

Lace gestured the body at her feet.

The lanky bug scurried over to Lace and grabbed her silk foreleg, startling her. “What a monster that was! Plinney is quite fortunate for your rescue.”

Lace inspected this Plinney, still unsure that this wasn’t some sort of trap. “Tell me, sir bug, what brought you out here at a time like this?”

“I was visiting the burial spot of my dear, departed Melatolla. It was always a dangerous trek, but one morning all the haunted pilgrims and pond bugs simply died. What luck, I thought! I journeyed out to spend the day here in reflection, when that deep webbing descended.” He let out an enormous sigh of relief. “I had been trapped here for a few days, resigned to die peacefully alongside her, when that monster emerged from the shell of some poor, fallen pilgrim.”

A little shuffling sound interrupted Lace before she could respond, and she shoved Plinney behind her. “Was there just one?” She whispered.

She could feel Plinney’s shivering against her back, fear barely letting him get out the word, “Y-y-y-es?”

Another quiet shuffle broke the silence, and Lace lunged at it, cutting down foliage and revealing a small deceased pilgrim, its body split in two, connected by that same thick, melted silk. The poor thing did not attack, seemingly unable to lift from the dirt. Lace pointed her pin towards it and watched. Occasionally, the silk would re-animate shifting slightly, before becoming stricken with convulsions and collapsing again. As it did so, the eyes of what remained of the face would faintly light for just a moment, before turning dark again. The haunt that coursed through this new form of silk seemed uncertain about whether it wanted to exist or not. With a sharp motion, Lace bisected it, sparing the little bug from even a moments more of haunted indecision.

She turned and faced her new responsibility. “Let’s leave.”

Lace had no illusions that returning the missing Pinmaster would grant her amnesty from whatever awaited her in Belhart. But, neither could she bear to leave Plinney stuck in these woods. So, they worked together to navigate the webbed labyrinth, while she tried not to think about the end of their hike.

The silence began to irritate her. “Why do you visit the grave?”

“What?” Plinney asked, seemingly confused by her line of questioning.

“I— have never visited a grave before, so I do not know why a bug would.”

With a gentle, parental voice that confused Lace, Plinney replied,“You innocent thing, I pray that you live a long life without needing to.”

Her irritation rose. “I already have lived such. I’m not as young or as innocent as you might think, Pinmaster.” With an aggressive flick, Lace sliced through a patch of webbing, allowing them to traverse into a new area, the floor of which was littered with long deceased, wilted phacia.

“Ah, my mistake. Well, I guess, I visit to be with Melatolla and my memory of her.”

“What was she to you?” Lace asked.

With a voice that overflowed with feeling, he responded, “My mate, my greatest love.”

“Did you not get enough time with her before she died?” Lace asked plainly.

The question stopped Plinney in his tracks. “I get the sense that you speak sincerely, so I will answer sincerely. No. I put so much of myself in my work, always mending and sharpening pins for the Citadel. I toiled, as if she would always be there, waiting for me after long days and nights. One day she wasn’t.”

Lace faced her new charge. “All in Pharloom are called to work, what other choice did you have?”

“Perhaps, I didn’t.” He answered, his voice gripped with a sadness foreign to Lace. “I recall Melatolla herself telling me she understood many, many times. It does not matter. I regret it, because life is short and— I wish I could have spent more of it by her side. Maybe… maybe, I would have never been able to choose differently, but that regret is my burden to shoulder now.”

“I— am sorry.” She racked her brain for normal questions to ask bugs about things like this. “Why do you still live if she is gone?”

Plinney looked at her strangely. “You know, when you saved me, I was struck with an eerie sense that you reminded me of someone. But, now I don’t think so. She was quiet and deadly like you, but she did not ask questions like this.”

Finally, a familiar feeling, self-loathing, visited Lace. “I’m sure she didn’t. I get the sense that spider always knew what to say.”

“Oh, so you are familiar? No, that’s not what I mean either.” Plinney’s expression became serious and reflective. “She is a noble warrior; our hero. I am forever indebted to her. But, she always seems to tell others how they should feel. I get the sense that she is longer lived than she looks, perhaps also like you. I’m sure she is right about many things, but, for me, I prefer to answer questions. Not many have talked to me about Melatolla like this.”

Another strange, uncategorized feeling filled Lace’s form. She wondered how many more of these there could be. For the time being she named it pride. “Thank— you, Pinmaster. Since you were sincere, I shall return it to you. I do not feel skilled in conversation.”

The bug laughed. “You would not be the first fencer I knew that struck better than she spoke, though I think you sell yourself short.”

Lace kept quiet at that.

Plinney reached out a gave Lace a reassuring touch. “To answer your question, I stay alive, because if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be able to remember how it felt to love her.”

“Even though you hurt her?” She asked.

“Even so.” He answered.

They continued to walk down the path, coming in view of a lift to a lower area of the Shellwoods. The silken thing and her bug companion squeezed in, barely fitting together and descended.

“Did she ever forgive you?”

“No, she didn’t. I never apologized and she never asked. It’s too late now.”

“Are— you happy to keep living?”

Plinney considered that question longer than the others, for almost the entire length of the lift ride down. They exited the metal, woven structure and he answered, “It is hard to live. I have been guilty of wanting rest, wanting to rest with her. But, this life is what we are given, little Fencer, and while there may never be reason given to horrors that befall us, like these webs, we can at the very least try to make it a better place for as many as we can.” He paused and then gestured to Lace’s pin. “Would you mind if I gave your blade a look, when we return to Bellhart. It is rare that I get to work on a true pin of the Citadel, and I would like to give it a good sharpening with a bit of pale oil that your… spider left with me. It is the least I can do for your coming to save me.”

Lace bristled slightly at the suggestion that she was her spider, before realizing how much she wanted to have her pin sharpened. A little bit of light entered her eyes. “Yes, I would concede to that.”

Silently they finished their journey down the mostly web free path towards Bellhart. The gateway into the city appeared; a crowd had formed in front of it, headed by a figure in a blue shawl. Plinney rushed to greet them.

“My friends! I’ve been saved. I present to you my hero!”

An old, wizened voice emerged from beneath the shawl. “Step away from that thing, dear Pinmaster. You do not realize what it is.”

Behind the Pinstress stood the few bugs that Lace had ever really known, countless eyes that she dared not stare into, for fear of what expression would stare back. So, she focused all her attention on the blue shrouded warrior before her, observing her stance, weighing her prowess.

“What gives you pause, monster! I’ve not known the ghost of the Citadel to give bugs the benefit of a fair fight.”

Lace was not good at peaceful conversation, she decided. It was strange, clumsy thing, full of rules of mortal import and unruly, inconsequential improvisation in equal part. But this was a type of banter she was an expert at. “No fair fights! What mockery, what insult! I am a fencer with honor, trained by your great great grand-mother, Pinstress, or have you forgotten who your family once bound itself to?”

The old pin wielder drew her two blades, assuming a form that sent Lace back in time to the first of their order. A delightful, old crone whose life did end by Lace’s hand. Their’s had been a relationship solely through training and combat; Lace had been granted no other forms of intimacy, and so she treasured every bit of it.

“Enough!” The Pinstress shouted. “You and your kind have haunted this land for far too long. I will see it ended now.”

Lace laughed like a song. “A dance? Oh, I’m out of practice, but I accept.”

Her opponent launched at her, duel pins striking in a sweeping cross, which Lace bounded through, unsheathing her pin just in time to block a barrage of thrown darts. In response, she lunged faster than sight behind the cloaked woman and let out a flurry of strikes, which met only air as the aged warrior floated away.

Lace lunged at the floating Pinstress, just barely missing a blow.“Ah! You’ve the same silly cloak as the spider.”

“How dare you summon the needle bug here! You think your lie still stands, silken devil?” She struck Lace’s pin hard sending her down to the metal and wooden dock before the gates to Bellhart.

Lace hit the ground, but transitioned easily into a roll before leaping after her foe, striking back just as hard. “I can’t say I take your meaning!”

“You killed her!” The pinstress shouted, her shell glowing for a brief moment before her blades came out in giant sweeps that skirted across the water of Shellwood’s swamp, cutting droplets to shimmer like temporary diamonds.

“I already—“ Lace spun between a rain of little pins, expertly dodging each, before vanishing again. With wide eyes the Pinstress scanned her surroundings, before just barely spinning around to block the lithe fencers mockery of her and her sister’s sacred charged art. “— said that she’s not dead! Go look for yourself, you old fool.”

The blue pin maiden screamed, launching a cavalcade of attacks, the entirety of her history as a warrior, unblockable by any normal foe. But, Lace was not normal, she was divine, with spins and steps she dodged to the time of this deadly waltz, her mortality spurring her mind to faster speeds, stronger hits, more perfect moves. She didn’t know it — her focus entirely on her partner, responding to her every move — but Lace laughed loud and bright. Not the acerbic laugh of a thing that knew she couldn’t die even if she wanted to, but a laugh of true joy for the first time. She parried and dodged and struck and strutted and flew like a warrior, like a ballerina, like her life depended on it.

She could win this, she thought, as the Pinstress changed direction in a way she didn’t predict, disappearing beyond the periphery of her sight. A moments panic gripped at her fragile fabric heart when a sound pierced through the air.

“No!” A familiar little voice, belonging to a little pilgrim, who leapt between Lace and the assured death of the Pinstress’ off hand projectiles. The thing sliced through Sherma’s foreleg.

The blue pinmaiden gawked. “Little fool! Why would you—“

Lace landed between her foe and Sherma, pin held at her side, fire spilling unchecked from her eyes as she let out a desperate, miserable scream. The dance was over.

Vivace, the conductor counts her in, sturm und drang and a pin that moved faster than the Pinstress had ever seen, with a ferociousness beyond all the generational rage and despair in Pharloom. Lace, a blur of silk and new emotion — fear for the life of another, a strength beyond reason. She struck and struck, no longer feeling the time of battle, the worry of her now fragile life. Freed from concern, her moves landed with malice, formless and furious, beyond any training that could be given or learned. The warrior in blue smiled privately. It was a joy for the sisters of the Pinstress order to die in combat, to feel the sting of inadequacy, long denied.

Footing slipped and the Pinnstress fell to her knees, ready to accept this good death.

Lace held her pin to her opponents face and said, “Yield to me.”

“Wha— you can’t—”

“Yield to me!” Lace screamed.

The pinstress flinched at the command. “What? Does the silken beast’s endless hunger no longer require sating. Has your master grown soft?”

“Mother Silk is dead and she is not my master!”

“Lies!”

“Yield!”

“Admit who you serve, first! To all these bugs, and then maybe I will.” Spite boiled over the Pinstress’ old voice.

A flicker passed through Lace’s eyes and she pressed her blade closer to her defeated rival. “I serve that damn spider now!”

The Pinstress, last of an order that long ago told her to abandon its cause, for guilt of the things they did for the Silk and the Chorus, for hope of change, stared deeply into the eyes of the thing she hoped to one day rid the world of. In Lace’s eyes, she found something that made her drop hers. “I yield.”

Lace dropped her pin and rushed to Sherma, lifting him into her arms, spreading hemolyph on her once pristine silk. “You little fool, why would you do that.” Her voice cracked as she spoke.

“I was worried for you, Maiden White.” He gripped the wound on his arm. “It’s not deep, you don’t need to worry about me.”

“No, I do!” Bugs from their journey, from Songclave, rushed to them, providing ripped cloth to seal the cut, which Lace took to do the tying. “But, why would you even try to save me. I’m nothing but a monster.”

Sherma looked up at Lace, reaching up to rest a claw on her face, and said gently, “I do not believe that is true, maiden.”

Lace let her companions carry Sherma back towards Bellhart, while she stayed kneeling on the pier to feel the whole of his words. Then she stood, picked her blade up off the floor from where it lay, still in front of her unmoving opponent, and walked up to Plinney.

“Does your offer of a sharpening still stand?”

The bellhome of Pinmaster Plinney was crowded, though he liked it, cramming himself in the corner to detail the ancient pin and listen to the conversation around him. Lace sat quietly next to the now patched up Sherma, listening as Garmond and Shakra talked at length about her duel.

“Truly, an act of combat for the annuals, sister Lace! I have said before that you are a demon with that blade, but I was sorely mistaken. I humbly apologize. A dancer! An artist!” Garmond let out a loud chortle.

Shakra clapped her claws together. “Un-Daak, Lace Wielding Pin. You must fight me. I will not hear no.”

“No more fighting today, my friends.” Sherma said, his voice still slightly shaky.

Shakra’s proud shoulders fell. “You are right to ask it, Sherma Wielding Bells. I lost myself to the thrill. My offer stands, but not for today.”

Lace considered the request, still completely overwhelmed by all the talking, but no longer terrified of it. “I would not turn down a dance with you, tall bug, but there’s something I must see to first.”

Garmond leaned in. “Ah! The quest.”

Sherma spoke up. “I mourn for you Maiden White, that you carried that burden and felt unable to share it. I only wish I had been more attentive.”

“Sherma, you don’t—“

“Lace Wielding Pin, please tell us of this quest. I would know more of my friend and her curse.”

Plinney spoke up, “I think you lot may be overwhelming her.”

Embarrassment passed over Garmond and Shakra’s expressions.

Lace paused, struggling with how quick things were moving and how much she liked it. It felt wrong, but for once she chose to ignore it. “Thank you Pinmaster. But, I will share it. That spider left me a message, and I think she guided me to it with webs: a psalm cylinder that replicated a song on her needle and some words, Spider’s Nest, below Moss and Bone, spirit held in glass and stone.”

Shakra yelped and exclaimed, “Who knew the Child Wielding Nail was a poet.” Drawing giggles from Lace at the thought of someone considering that serious, old spider a child.

“What do you think it means, Maiden White?”

It was too late for Lace to turn back now. “There is a temple to the old Weavers located below Moss Home. I am going there as soon as I’m able.” She paused for a moment to consider her words. “I do not enjoy being led around by that spider. I know she is your friend, but she’s a thorn in my side. No matter her and my history, she set me free, and so I will do this task for her, especially if it means freeing you from the webs.”

The door to the bellhome opened, and the Pinstress, standing tall, though clearly bruised, strutted in. In response, Lace rose to face her.

“Oh sit, I’m beaten.” The old warrior said, though Lace did not head her words. She continued, “I’ve come to apologize. Sherma, I was careless and a fool.”

Sherma smiled gently. “All is forgiven.”

The defeated warrior then turned to Lace. “Silk-spawn, I—“ She paused. “—am sorry for doubting you. You were right to remind me of my families culpability in all of this. I enjoyed our fight, and I relinquish my aggression.”

Lace smiled playfully. “That’s too bad! Here I thought I might have a new rival. My old one is is rather indisposed of at the moment, you see.”

The Pinstress considered her for a moment. “Vexsome thing. I will fight you whenever you wish. However, I believe you should put your energy to whatever it is that the nail bug set you on. To that purpose, I’ve come to give you a piece of information that may prove valuable.”

Lace regarded the old bug cautiously. “And what is that?”

“Your new master—” a phrase the Pinstress seeded extra spite into “—had a bellhome here. No one has entered it since she vanished. I would advise you give it a visit before leaving. Good luck silk-spawn. I hope for all of our sakes that you can hack it.” The warrior turned abruptly, hiding her bright smile, and shut the bellhome’s door behind her.

Lace sat back down, quietly considering the words of her former foe, uncomfortable at the idea of her elusive and incomprehensible spider having a simple home in a town. It fit strangely in Lace’s mind.

“Lace Wielding Pin!”

Lace looked up at Shakra.

“I request that you bring me with you! Whatever curse has befallen my friend, I would see it undone. Please consider it.”

“And I as well, sister Lace. Not just for the glory of a new challenge. Whatever your past with sister Hornet, she has done much for me and for the bugs of this place. Moreover, your genius seems to put you in danger on occasion, and I would fret endlessly if I were not there to come to your aid.” Lace’s eyes lit up at that. “I would ask that you accept my hornlance and Zaza’s sharpness of mind on this journey.”

Facilities of speech were now wholly lost to Lace.

“If you would have me, I would go as well.” Sherma said softly.

Lace stared at the little Caretaker. “Sherma, your duty is to Songclave and its bugs. I can’t have—”

Sherma looked down at the floor. “Songclave is high above us, in the Citadel locked. The people I was set to take care of are now surrounded by friends here in Bellhart. I would do anything to see our home restored, even though we had it so briefly. I am no warrior, but I have a sense that you and the Maiden Red may need my bells, and I have been blessed with some skill in healing.”

Lace stared at the three bugs, who returned her stare with expectant, hopeful expressions. It was impossible for her to name the feelings that coursed through her, as inexperienced with them as she was. An internal debate, if you could call it that, quickly landed on the side of her mortality being a risk to this quest, and that numbers would be a good idea. But the truth, deeply buried, was that the idea of company was intoxicating to her, and, if Lace was one thing, it was impulsive.

“I accept.”

The door to Hornet’s bellhome creaked as it opened. It was a quaint thing, far beneath the glory of Lace’s former bed of white flowers in the cradle. She liked it in here much more, she decided. It felt comfortable; far from the spartan living arrangement she expected from the spider that destroyed her kingdom. The room was perfectly organized though, which did not surprise her; a wall of neatly labeled materials and specimen, some of which Lace recognized; a small shelf of organized notebooks, which she intended to snoop through; a neatly made bed, which elicited the image of the spider folding her covers before heading up to become god. Most shocking of all, was a luxurious looking bath mounted on the second floor. Lace found herself missing the spider, if only to poke fun at her fairy lights and other gratuitous comforts. She walked carefully though the home, as if at any moment her old foe would catch her. How much easier would that make things; the thought made her laugh, slightly.

There was no need to shuffle around looking for clues, she saw it as soon as she opened the door. Laying on the meager desk in the center of the home was something out of place. A piece of paper and a strange artifact — an old harp carved from the same material as those infernal weavenest doors. Lace lifted the thing up and inspected the strange runes that lined it, before unfolding the small piece of paper.

Hide her deep, the despised child,
Our shame shown in shell of iron.
She is a wish cast vain,
divinity mimicked in form too frail.