Act 3, Chapter 110: To follow the thread

Day in the story: 1st February (Sunday), past 5:30 a.m.—approximately 10 hours and 51 minutes remain until the record time is lost

Maya, the seer

I listened to Alexandra’s poem with curiosity. As soon as she began speaking what the brain web had helped her create and spin within our shared mind, the air carried an invisible thread of Authority within it. It was one of steady growth and defiance, of reaching for someone’s potential. Concepts of that potency, and yet applied with such careful precision that the flower, in the span of those few verses, reached its full maturity.

She intended Jess Hare to be the one who studied this avenue of art in full. She’d be perfect for it, as she already was the one who was supposed to be the talker. But that would have to wait until after we were both done with the malady that had us in its grip.

I left her then to her own devices while I flew through the cavern entrance into the Well, where the Weaver’s Tree was placed now. I rushed through the curtain of water and descended from above like a hawk toward the crystalline web. Builder spiders were hard at work in here, spinning their little webs anchoring them at the crystal and through the waterfalls to secure them to the walls. Just another layer of protection, meant to make it all that much more difficult to find and destroy the soul core. It was difficult to imagine someone doing that, with the Domain already connected to the steel container dropped onto the ocean floor, but we knew that Dragons—those true ones of Elven origin—had enough Authority to reach through the universe by way of a mage’s soul alone and access their Domain that way. And if they could do it, that only meant that crafty artificers, mages, or even wizards, as we had learned today, could do the same.

My task was simple on the surface, but deceptively complicated because of its magnitude. I had to tune in and study all the links that connected the soul core to anything else that wasn’t, at the same time, connected to Alexandra, and hopefully find the one culprit that made her life that much worse. However, due to the sheer number of builder spiders inside the Domain, it was a Herculean task. Apparently, just like us, Ali inside the soul core had trouble giving away Authority, and all of it remained unbound and still connected to her. And while normally Alexa—and thus all of us—did not see those links as our own, I knew from my previous interactions that as soon as I touched the bark in any way, they would unfold before me.

I dreaded that moment.

I knew how it would look to me, and yet I flew toward the nearest branch and landed upon the webbing there. The crystal was warm against my skin, and the silk the spiders had left made a pleasant cushion that allowed me to nest there comfortably. Lying on my back and looking at the ceiling of the Well's cavern, dotted with the endings of the shadowlight veins, I closed my eyes, letting my Seering version of Aura cast me adrift upon the ocean of currents.

And oh, good Reality, an ocean it was.

I drifted within an impossible cosmos woven from light. Countless strands stretched away in every direction, glowing with every color of the rainbow and countless hues of Authority that existed only to the soul. They crossed and intertwined until the darkness itself became secondary, less a void than the velvet upon which that celestial web had been embroidered. It resembled a galaxy spun by a spider-goddess—a living constellation whose stars were not suns, but stretched junctions and highways where identities, connections, and animations met.

Every Shadowlight strand hummed with quiet motion. Some pulsed like beating hearts, carrying rhythmic waves of brilliance. Others shimmered with flowing currents, as though rivers of starlight streamed through them. Looking across that endless lattice felt like standing inside the skeleton of Reality itself, seeing the hidden framework upon which the world had been suspended. A world created by me, and supplied with meaning by me.

There were so many different spiritual senses pressing against the core of my aura from every direction. Identities that smelled of dew-covered webs stretched across morning meadows, shining with delicate shades of grey and silver while sounding faintly like strings being plucked. Others carried the scent of sweat and tears, or the feeling of directionlessness. There were presences of ever-consuming nothingness that somehow sounded like the Looney Tunes theme, or felt like the wet, uncomfortable pressure of an eye following my every movement.

Within that immeasurable tapestry, I found many such familiar structures.

The Shadowlight links between Alexa and the soul core did not simply run alongside one another. They twisted together in elegant double spirals, more intricate than strands of DNA, orbiting each other as though bound by invisible gravity. Their separate colors danced together until, at distant junctions, they merged into singular, impossibly brilliant filaments that continued onward as though both had always been parts of a greater whole.

The Personas gifted with a mage's power formed even stranger geometries. Separate strands descended into them from both the Weaver's Tree and Alexa, each carrying its own spectrum, only to converge within the Persona itself. There the countless lights folded inward instead of spreading apart, collapsing into impossibly concentrated beams before continuing toward the things they nourished with magic. They reminded me of gravitational lenses—gathering the light of an entire cosmos into a single impossible ray—yet they were prisms as well, for every Authority they granted caused new radiant threads to bloom outward into the world. They were paradoxes made visible, both gathering and scattering light simultaneously.

Elle blazed among them like a newborn star, her nexus brighter than any other. Only Alex rivaled her, though his radiance was different and more focused, less like a newborn flame and more like the white radiance of the coals left by the fire.

I pulled myself away, severing the connection and hovering above the crystal tree below. I needed a breath before I continued. That brief overview had left me strained already, and I hadn't even begun to focus on or discern any of the individual threads. I looked down, swallowed the air, and landed softly again, this time sitting cross-legged. I intended to meditate through this conundrum.

Upon opening my soul's eyes again, I found myself in the middle of that vast network. Anansi reached toward me with a helping leg, rearranging the brains in great numbers to become mine and help with understanding and computation. Almost every strand drifted with slow celestial grace. Some merely quivered, ripples so faint they resembled the distant twinkling of stars through an atmosphere. Others swept through broad arcs, tracing elegant curves across the immense web as the beings bound to them crossed the world.

The strands belonging to both the Tree and Alexa flared wherever they met, those junctions shining the brightest amid the cosmic lattice. With Anansi and the borrowed minds guiding my thoughts, those overwhelming beacons faded from my awareness, as though entire constellations had quietly vanished from the night sky, leaving only the subtler lights behind.

Where this story was originally posted, the author publishes this chapter; the copy here was taken without the author's permission.

The shortest filaments had to be those that emerged separately from either Alexa or the soul core before their twin spirals embraced and became one. Following that assumption, I reached for several with my perception. One after another, they flowed into luminous junctions where their individual radiance dissolved into brighter currents, disappearing into the greater tapestry. Each confirmed thread was gently dimmed by the countless minds assisting mine until those nearby constellations faded from view, leaving the deeper heavens exposed.

My attention shifted to the longer strands. Since Alexa remained close to the soul core, these should belong solely to the Weaver's Tree, stretching across the Domain to wherever its creations labored.

The remaining short filaments vanished from my perception as well, and suddenly the cosmic web seemed far less crowded. Barely a hundred great strands remained, suspended across the darkness like bridges spun by the spiders most of them connected to. None were truly still. Every one drifted, trembled, or arced through the void with slow, graceful motion, as if unseen hands played upon them.

I was fairly certain those motions reflected nothing more than the Tree's builder spiders going about their work. Some strands quivered with barely perceptible ripples, tiny oscillations that raced along their length like light crossing the heavens. Others swept through broader arcs, their distant anchors wandering far enough that entire curves of the lattice shifted around them.

One by one I followed each radiant path, not searching for where it led, but for what refused to obey the celestial rhythm. Somewhere among them had to be an outlier—a strand that did not belong to one of the builder spiders. With Anansi's guidance and the vast web of borrowed minds shouldering the impossible calculations, the task became almost serene. The countless motions untangled themselves into patterns my own mind could never have grasped alone.

Even so, the strain accumulated overtime and eventually it became too much to ignore. I severed my connection to the lattice, opened my eyes, and drifted away from the crystal tree once more.

More time had passed than I'd realized. Alexa was beneath the Tree now, looking worse than before. She sat slumped in the armchair borne by several of her minions. I glided toward her until barely two feet separated us where I hovered at eye level, studying her face.

“It's difficult, isn't it?” It was Alexa's voice, but it came from the supplementary, painted mouth. She felt terrible. And through the soul, so did I.

“Less impossible now,” I answered, my tiny voice climbing into the pitch she disliked. I always tried to keep it lower, but excitement stole that control from me. “I'll do it. I just needed a breather.” Her expression barely changed, but soul had no mask on. I felt the discomfort ripple through hers.

“Thank you, Maya. You're doing wonderfully. I focused too much on you. I wanted to feel and see how it looked from your perspective and I got the paralysis in return for my curiosity. I'll leave you to your own devices.”

“Try dancing!” Gertrude's voice boomed through the cavern, echoing from the heights above. Though waterfalls fell all around us, nothing swallowed the force of her shout as she descended toward the Well.

“What?”

“Searching is a process. Finding is a fucking process.” She spread her arms as if presenting a stage. “Perform them! I'll give your dance the bloody proper Identity!”

I looked back at Alexa. With obvious effort, one corner of her mouth lifted into the faintest shadow of a smile.

I launched upward again, stopping only an inch from the crystal bark. Professor Marla Dresden would have been speechless. I was about to force myself to dance—not for beauty, nor for spectacle, but to embody the act of searching itself. If there was one lesson she had succeeded in carving permanently into my mind, it was this: movement revealed truths that thought imprisoned. To perform was to let go of the walls one's own psyche insisted on erecting.

I exhaled. One foot settled upon the bark and the connection returned. My soul opened once more into the endless tapestry of shadowlight.

I smiled. Focusing on the feet that remained in the physical world. Then another step. Then another. Soon I was hopping from branch to branch with gentle, effortless rhythm. I remembered Marla's lecture on Internal Geography, how we had been told to discover ourselves not through reflection, but through motion—to map the landscape of the soul by walking it. So I searched.

I followed paths through crystal branches, each leap becoming another question, every landing another possibility. I twirled through empty air, landed in sweeping flourishes, flowed seamlessly into the next movement before momentum could die.

Years of calisthenics and acrobatic training carried my body almost without thought. Artistic instinct shaped those movements into something graceful, while the simple miracle of flight erased every earthly limitation. I must have looked like one of the old fairy queens from forgotten myths, dancing through the branches of the Tree of Knowledge in search of fruit forbidden even to the gods.

On one perfectly placed step, I felt Gertrude's Authority descend upon the performance.

“Let it become the act of seeking and the act of finding!” Her proclamation resonated through both worlds. I scarcely heard it, because half of me danced across crystal branches and the other half drifted through the cosmic lattice of shadowlight, tracing radiant strands stretching throughout the worlds.

The two realities began to overlap in my minds.

Worker spiders paused wherever I landed. One after another they lifted their foremost legs, gently swaying as though answering music only they could hear. Shadowlight flowed through their bodies, turning each into a tiny lantern within the great celestial web.

My dance quickened. Walking became running. Running became soaring. I swept along the branches with raised arms, launched into a soaring flip, unfurled into a flourish, rolled weightlessly through the air, landed upon a single foot, pivoted, and spun into another turn.

My body had become searching. Every glance sought. Every outstretched hand reached. Every step asked the universe where to look next.

Then the curtain of falling water burst apart. Alex Weatherlight emerged from the cascade, standing effortlessly upon his Zweihander as though the sword were a stage instead of a flying weapon. He hovered high above me and drew his guitar into his hands.

The first note rang through the cavern. It was soft and gentle. Like the first raindrop striking the surface of a perfectly still lake. Then another one followed.

I danced inside the music as though it had always been waiting for me.

With every measure my search deepened. Another strand of shadowlight yielded its secrets. Another figure carried me farther through the branches. Another possibility vanished.

Alex's melody gathered momentum, each phrase flowing naturally into the next until the quiet ripples became a rushing current. The tempo climbed, anticipation tightening with every chord, every leap, every heartbeat, as dance, music, and the luminous web of souls wove themselves into a single performance hurtling toward its inevitable culmination.

And when I landed amidst a circle of spiders, all dancing to the rhythm of a melody that had just reached its final note, when in my mind and through my intent I found myself at the very end of my quest, within the soul's space I shared with the tapestry of shadowlight links, I found the one I had been looking for: a single, completely unmoving shadowlight link that was more of a soulbond than a normal link. It stretched not from the Weaver's Tree, but toward it, binding it to the thing at the other end.

“No way!” Gertrude shouted, feeling the same Authorities I did.

“Can't be,” Alex whispered, slinging the guitar behind his back and soaring toward Alexa at the base of the tree.

At the end of my search, I discovered—and knew with certainty—that the cause of the problem, of the sickness that robbed Alexa of the ability to hold Authority over herself and her creations, was an artifact teeming with the powers of stealing, containment, and gifting. One that, upon being severed from its former owner, I had taken into my own Domain. One that had lost its powers over Debt and Fire when their owners reclaimed them, yet continued to hold Healing, Discord, and Sigils. And unfortunately, one that, unbeknownst to me, had somehow established a connection with the Domain simply through its presence within it and had begun stealing it away from me.

That damned necklace that started it all!