Act 3, Chapter 118: The soul stitching

Day in the story: 1st February (Sunday), past 12:30 p.m.—approximately 3 hours and 51 minutes remain until the record time is lost

Alexandra May

I finally felt like a true spider queen, weaving Shadowlight links into the silken tapestry of my own creation. It was an amazing feeling, and the sights were unlike anything I could properly describe with words alone. At least for the first few hours.

It sucks.

[It's very similar to what I do on a daily basis.]

Yeah, it sucks major bloodied ass. I replied while stretching yet another soul thread connecting Elle to her wasp. At least because of all this, and most likely Maya being a seer, I finally understand how Authority conflicts really unfold.

[I noticed that too during the fight against that centipede. You were pretty good.]

It's basically a conflict of truths. Two opposing Authorities overwrite part of the Universe to their own liking, and only one gets to do it at a time. Only one Authority can declare the new truth.

[Exactly. Well said.]

And a mage has a claim on how reality should be, and that's the basis of the conflict. It's resolved through the Authority output produced by the mage's psyche. So the output is important, and so is the resistance of the opposing force, both of which are correlated with their resonance level, I guess. But there are other, sometimes even external factors too, like the terrain someone fights on, the emotional state of the combatants, their understanding of the concept, or the affinity granted by the soulmark. It's incredibly fascinating.

[I couldn't have formulated it myself before you came to those conclusions. It has to be another one of your personal revelations.]

I can feel it clearly now. How someone anchors a claim through various means. Elle had the advantage in numbers against the solitary hunter. That was her relational anchor, while the creature had a territorial one. My teleportations, every single one of them, are anchored both through material anchors and through those placed in memories, giving me double the strength to oppose something trying to stop me with only a single spatial anchor. It all seems so simple in retrospect. I continued weaving another strand while using a different brain to wonder why that revelation had happened through Elle.

[She is your truth seeker, but you were the one who conceived the idea, and she instantly understood how and what to do once you conveyed it. That allowed her to focus on how her power clashed with the monster.]

Or maybe it has something to do with my resonance level too. Or the myriad other things that have been happening to me and only now became clear through the different senses I have access to. Like I mentioned, I believe that all this soul repairs and seeing the world through Maya, made that possible to me. I replied, while finishing yet another strand, realigning it properly so its melody played according to only my own tunes.

“All this… strain… only on… you.. and me.” Ali’s voice reached me in this place.

“That’s how it is.” I placed my spiritual self near another link, looking for the moment where it failed to be perfectly taut, when another idea occurred to me. “What if it doesn’t have to be that way? What if I removed myself from part of the equation?”

Ali’s thoughts drifted away from me, and it was Anansi that picked up the subject. [You want to let Personas stop being prisms of your Unbound Authority?]

Yes. Right now, they are all connected to me and siphon a portion of my magic, which allows them to exist. They can establish new links themselves, but those connections simply add up and run alongside the main branch—the one that sustains their existence. Even Gertrude, when she was mentally cut off from me, was still linked to me in that way, and every connection she created ultimately ran back through me. It feels redundant, since they are already dependent on me for their existence. Maybe it would make more sense to let them become the source of power for the various identities and animations instead?

[I don’t think it’s possible. They are all parts of your soul. The fact that they can create links on their own is miraculous enough. They need to run through you, because otherwise, how could they get any Authority to function?]

From their own. They do not have this Psyche that Piotr so conveniently named for me, but the pure Authority granted to them upon creation might be able to take on that role if we taught it how.

[You’re seeing it yourself. Your Psyche exerts or supplies the necessary energy in the form of Authority. All they do is make decisions on your behalf. Just like me.]

Maybe I could unlatch the link from myself, though, and connect it directly to one of them. Then see what happens.

[I know what you’re doing, Alexa, and I don’t think it’s the right way to approach this issue.]

And what exactly am I doing, my omniscient spider? I mocked her while tugging another strand to its limit, stripping away the Discord’s machinations from it.

[You want to reverse-engineer bound Authority. Or rather, work around it, because you're afraid that the moment you give away your power, especially to one of the Personas, you'll lose control over it. Manually forcing something to be only partially connected will only make it harder for you to learn how to... let go.]

Look at you. Just a few hours with the emotional part of you restored, and you've already grown so wise.

[You're being dismissive.]

Fuck, yes, I am. I thought my idea was cool enough to try, but now, thanks to you, it just feels depressing.

[You can still try that other thing you envisioned. Connecting me directly to the soul core's spirit inside a body.]

Oh, that you have nothing against. Why am I not surprised? I gritted my imagined teeth while continuing my work on the threads and their realignment. I'll do it because I'm curious who you really were when you were whole, Ani, not because you want it. You got that?

[Yes.]

On that subject, I need you to hop over to Maya in your physical form, so I can check what makes you, you. Jump, jump, my little spider.

Anansi obeyed without hesitation, and while part of my attention remained focused on the restorative work, I had already created enough leeway to consciously and effortlessly take control of Maya. Such were the perks of having dozens of additional and properly working brains.

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And so I was flying through my Domain with full command of this miniature body.

There were no wings on my back, no propellers to push, no manipulation of the Domain's gravity. I simply flew because that was the birthright I had wrestled from the Universe and bestowed upon this spiritual form of myself.

A gentle breeze carried the scents of pine and ozone from the woods surrounding my encampment, while I listened both to the chirping of the songbirds and to the songs they actually sang to one another. Masterpieces they had learned from the memories I had lent them through my soul core.

The wind was a little chilly up there, high enough that I must have looked like a falling star from below, but the sun gave me the warmth I needed. There was a freedom in flying like that. It wasn't the freedom I sought in life, but it was a kind I thoroughly enjoyed.

I rushed downward like a peregrine falcon. My dive was quick and precise as I aimed for a clearing within the forest, beside one of the caves nestled among jagged rocks. My little spider had helped make herself a hideout there, and she was on her way from the inside of it to greet me.

The grass below swayed gently, flowers scattered across it continuously bending with the wind. But when I came to an abrupt stop just inches above them, the shockwave of my arrival sent a ripple through the meadow. Instead of every blade and blossom leaning in the same direction, they all turned away from one another, radiating outward from the single point where I had stopped.

The bunny-spider that conducted my magic finally unburrowed herself from her den and hopped out to meet me. My eyes weren't the only ones watching us.

All around, curious looneybunnies hid among the foliage and the arboreals, concealed behind leaves, trunks, and branches. They observed me with a curiosity that bordered on something more than animalistic. Their noses twitched along with the whiskers as they tried to catch a scent of what was happening in here, while their eyes watched.

I extended my hand and let my seer’s sense pour out of me—into, over, and around Anansi’s physical form. Within that liminal space, I found the most obvious link: an invisible strand of shadowlight stretching away in two directions, one toward the core and the other toward my own body, where my soul remained localized. It flowed between us, carrying the necessary expressions of Authority.

I liked feeling them. Perhaps only because they were mine, but to me they were nothing but pleasant, and I knew by now that this was not true of all magic.

Every Authority carried its own spiritual sensation. Some spoke through sounds made in the realm of the soul. Others revealed themselves through colors, shapes, scents, pressures, or the way they disturbed my balance and altered my sense of where my body ended in relation to them.

Identity was like that. Whenever I touched it, I felt myself slipping free of my body. Not torn away, not violently wrenched from flesh, but released—as though the body had opened its hand and finally allowed me to go. It was liberating. It smelled faintly of petrichor, that cool, earthen scent rising with the rain. And while my shadowlight was prismatic by nature, a restless rainbow of shifting hues, Identity itself was Maya blue.

Connection, on the other hand, sounded like a breathy whisper and felt like the warmth of someone’s private air brushing against the back of my neck. It was soft and cradling, almost intimate, yet unbending in the way it occupied space. It did not press or force itself upon anything. It simply belonged there, and refused to be denied.

Animation, the last of my soulmarks, came with the rhythmic thumping of a running cadence. Step after step after step. Someone running without pause, unable—or unwilling—to stop.

When I focused more deeply, another sensation unfolded beneath the rhythm: color touching paper and canvas, pens and brushes gliding across their chosen mediums, and the vivid trails they left behind. Every line felt like motion given shape. Every stroke carried the promise that something still and lifeless might, at any moment, begin to move.

I found it within the link that bound the spiderbunny to me. She smelled of petrichor and shone with a blue as open and weightless as the sky. She sounded as though she were running from me while, at the same time, remaining warm, close, and profoundly connected. It was pleasant, taking that brief glimpse into her, but I let the sounds fade and ignored the pressures of warmth against my soul. I focused instead on scent and color, searching through them for the Identity itself.

Slowly, I extended one finger and touched Anansi’s body. At the same moment, my spirit reached into that other, invisible space, found the Shadowlight link, and fastened itself around it.

When I drew my hand back, the thread followed. Rainbow hues spilled in its wake, a silken cut of prismatic light drawn through the soulspace as I pulled the strand away from the center of magic to which it had been bound.

The spiderbunny’s body struck the ground and twitched, still stirred by Animation’s power to provide movement, but there was no Anansi behind the reins anymore. Instead, I held what the Universe recognized as my Anima balanced upon the tip of my finger—something both spiritual and physical, because my seer’s body existed in the liminal and material worlds at once.

With that fragment of my guardian resting in my hand, I flew toward the Weaver’s Tree.

I swept past the buildings and over the flower-covered meadow stretching between them, then plunged through the concealed entrance to the circular staircase. I darted between falling walls of water and crystalline branches, descending until I reached the base of the tree, where its roots vanished into the floor of the well-like cavern.

There, I extended my left hand toward the bark while my right continued to cradle Anansi’s Identity. My fingers brushed the warmth breathing from the tree. Then my spirit pressed farther, passing through bark and crystal and the countless interwoven currents of magic within.

At the luminous heart of thousands of links rested the Identity of the spirit that remained of Shadow Alexandra. I reached for that as well.

The moment I touched the glowing star, its corona stirred and a single warm strand unspooled from its light, followed my retreating hand, and coiled gently around my palm.

*I’m ready,* Alex whispered inside my mind, but I already knew. He had been working beside the art-crafters, painting the final details onto the model we intended to use for this strange experiment.

Holding both links now, I rushed back through the physical world. Once again, I wove between crystal branches, waterfalls, walls, and columns, then burst into the open air and flew until I found myself standing before the last Persona I had helped design not so long ago.

From the waist up, she looked like me. She had freckled skin and slender arms that ended in fingernails looking more like claws. Long brown hair spilled freely over her shoulders in loose waves. Even her face was mine, except for her eyes, which were entirely black and depthless, like a spider’s.

Below the waist, every resemblance to humanity ended. There, she possessed the body and abdomen of a spider, supported by six long arachnid legs capable of carrying her wherever she wished to go. I had once imagined her as a battle-ready Persona, or perhaps as a body Anansi herself might wield. Back then, however, the vision had been incomplete.

Now it wasn’t. I knew what she would become. A bridge between the guardian of my soul core and my Anima. A being shaped to recreate, as closely as my art and Authority allowed, the emotional and mental capacities of my Shadow.

I reached into the motionless model and placed both links inside her.

Anansi’s Identity wound around Ali’s. Their colors bled into one another, mingling and intertwining until they formed something neither had been alone. An iridescent sphere blossomed inside the empty body, still tethered by one strand to me and another to the Weaver’s Tree. A new Identity that I shaped into being, instead of just creating it in my mind, or asking the Universe for the blueprints.

Alex stood nearby with a brush still resting in his hand, watching his work await its first breath. I reached through his aura and issued the command.

Let Ali-Ani move.

Shadowlight links burst outward in a radiant torrent, rushing toward those I had placed by hand. They seized upon them, folded around them, and wove themselves seamlessly into the new pattern. For a moment, Ali-Ani’s body shone from within, every painted line and crafted shape illuminated by the magic racing through her.

“Finally,” the spider-human hybrid said as her head tilted to one side and her black gaze shifted from Alex to me. Her fingers twitched first, then her entire arms. One spider leg scraped softly across the ground. Another unfolded beside it. The rest followed in a slow, rippling sequence, each joint awakening in turn. A heartbeat later, they lifted her abdomen from the floor, raising her into the air with the languid grace of someone waking from a long and dreamless sleep.