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I woke up when dawn’s light touched my face. I was laying on my side, with one arm draped over Imogen. My hand rested on her soft breast, her nipple between my fingers. She was breathing softly and gently; the breath of a woman who was still deep in slumber.
It was with great care that I extricated myself from her body. I sat up and blinked, stretched my arms above my head and yawned. The grove was quiet and still around me, and the campfire was reduced down to a few smoking embers.
My muscles protested a bit when I stood up, but I got my balance pretty easily. Syl had curled up at our feet at some point in the night, and she lifted her head up to glare at me for interrupting her sleep. I gave her an apologetic smile, which seemed enough to assuage her because she lowered her head back down and closed her eyes.
All things considered, I was feeling about as good as could be expected that morning. My head was clear, the air smelled fresh, and I was well-rested. And that good feeling lasted up til I looked over at the pond. Then I saw something that made me freeze up in terror.
Sitting over there, beside the water, was the biggest damn spider I’d ever seen in my life. I don’t mean that it was large for a spider; I mean that it was big enough that I could’ve fit my whole head in its mouth without issue. Its face was covered in all these bulbous eyes that I swear was looking at me, and its two front legs were noticeably longer than the rest, folded up in a way that was too much like a set of claws for my liking.
For a moment, me and the spider just looked at each other. The thing was so still I would’ve thought it was dead if I couldn’t feel the life in it. How long had it been there? How close had it come to us while we slept? Did it happen to have an appetite for two humans from New Alms and their three-eyed cat friend?
The spider lifted itself on its six non-folded legs, and it shook the two front legs in a way that felt almost like a greeting or an acknowledgment. Then, moving slowly and languidly, it wandered off into the forest, and disappeared into the trees.
I breathed out a sigh of relief, then glanced down at Syl and Imogen. Neither had stirred. When I looked back up, Ferengris was standing in the middle of the pond, his feet planted firmly on the surface of the water.
Gingerly as I could, I stepped over Imogen’s sleeping form and approached him. The god was facing away from me, his head craned like he was listening for something. I knew he’d never left me, that he was inside me and becoming me, but I hadn’t seen him fully since the ugliness the day before, and it was a strange relief to see him now.
“What was that thing?” I asked in a low voice, so as not to wake Imogen.
“The spider?” Ferengris asked, not looking at me. A bee buzzed its way down from the sky and crawled into his neck. “One of the many creatures that lives out here in the wilderness. Its species is a rare one, and can be very deadly in the right circumstances, but they’re usually docile. It was getting a drink from the spring water—you were never in any danger from it.”
“I never knew any of them things could get that big,” I said with a shudder.
“There’s a lot about the Wild humans don’t know.”
“Yeah, I kind of figured that out.”
Ferengris looked over his shoulder at me, and smiled. “Do you feel that?”
“Do I feel what?” I asked.
“Focus.”
I frowned, and I tried to figure out what it was he wanted me to be feeling. Chances were good it was something in the direction he’d been looking, so I looked over there too. When that didn’t change nothing, I closed my eyes and concentrated.
There was life all around me; trees and bugs and grass and birds and all the ambient life that fills the air. The wind was gentle and the sun was hot and the water was doing all the things water’s meant to do. The intricate pattern of the Wild was spread out all around me, as paradoxically ordered and chaotic as it ever was, with not a shred of anything out of place.
Except...
There. I could feel something some ways to the west. There was a concentration of life, arranged in an almost unnatural fashion, and at the center of all that life was an opening of some sort, a focal point for so much life energy that I feared to concentrate too hard on it in case it might overwhelm me.
I opened my eyes. There was only one thing that made sense for what I’d just felt. “Is that...?”
Ferengris nodded. “The Soulwell.”
“Your mask is there,” I said. “Wherever ‘there’ is. Why would it...?” Suddenly, I realized what I’d been sensing. “The Manufactory!”
It was so obvious. The Cerenites had constructed that big old manufactory outside the city, and they’d been pretty cagey about what they was fixing to build out there. And those weapon parts Eric’d wanted; weren’t those due to get shipped to the Manufactory after arriving in New Alms? The Cerenites needed a special place to build their army of automata, and with the amount of viarc needed, they couldn’t do it in the city—we’d already had a big power surge because of just one of the things activating.
That’s where the mask was—they’d brought it to the Manufactory, where they was building their awful machines.
The enormity of this revelation barreled down on me all at once. I’d damn near resolved myself to fading away, to Jackson Balor being no more and Ferengris taking charge. I was on the edge of making peace with my fate, and now, all at once, that peace was gone.
I knew where the mask was. If I stole it back, if I put Ferengris back into it... I could live.
I could live!
My knees buckled beneath me, under the weight of it all. I fell to the ground with tears in my eyes, hope filling my heart for the first time since Eric betrayed me. My ending, the ending I’d thought had already been written out and set in stone, could be avoided.
All I had to do was follow that concentration of life to its source, reach that focal point, and take the mask back.
I was throwing my clothes on when Imogen finally stirred. She groaned and opened her eyes, then closed them and scrunched up her face, clearly not happy with the morning sun. After a moment, she opened her eyes again and sat up.
“Morning,” I said as I pulled my shirt on over my head. It’d dried well over the night, though it was still far from clean. “I know where the mask is.”
Imogen blinked. “What?” she asked.
“It’s at the new Manufactory.” I pointed in the direction of the life energy. “That’s where the Cerenites are building their automata. I can feel it.”
“Wait. Hold on.” Imogen stood up, then frowned and tried to cover herself before snatching her dress off the branch. All that shameless confidence from the night before was gone now in the light of day. “How can you tell?”
“I told you: I can feel it,” I said. “It’s Ferengris’ instincts; his ability to sense things like this. I share it. And the sensing’s getting stronger and better because—” I stopped myself. Didn’t want to dwell on the reason for that; not when I was in such a good mood. “Well, it’s getting stronger.”
She looked me in the eye, then nodded. “So you’re planning to steal it again.”
“That was always the plan,” I told her. “We’re just doing it a little later than we thought. The Manufactory’ll probably have horses; carriages or carts or something. We can use them to get back to civilization once I’ve got the mask. We can finally end this.”
There was fear all over her face; fear and uncertainty. “Or the Cerenites could capture us.”
“True,” I admitted. “But you saw what one automaton could do. Can you imagine a whole army of those monsters, marching through the streets, enforcing the Cerenites’ law?”
Imogen shuddered. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll go with you.”
Not long after that, we was trekking our way through the woods. Breakfast wasn’t a luxury afforded to us that morning, so we walked on empty stomachs. Well, Imogen and me walked on empty stomachs, anyhow. Syl disappeared and came back with a mouse tail hanging out of her mouth.
Our only guide was my own feeling of where the Manufactory was. I moved fast—faster than I thought I’d be able to. My feet avoided roots and rocks and other obstacles with ease, and I wove my body through the trees like I’d tread this path a hundred times before. Imogen was not so blessed. She stumbled and tripped and cursed and was constantly asking me to slow down.
With difficulty, I obliged. The mask was getting closer with every step, and I was eager to take it back and free myself from the Wild God. But I could feel Imogen’s hunger, irritation, and fatigue. I could feel it like it was my own, and I could feel it with the clarity with which I felt the trees all around me and the water flowing slowly through the bayou.
It was the Wild I was feeling. At times, I almost forgot I even had a physical body. The world was my body, and I was aware of the dirt and the plants and the animals in the same way I was are of my own fingers and toes. The flesh and blood of Jackson Balor was just one appendage in my body of everything.
The sun wasn’t even a quarter of the way across the sky by the time we reached the edge of the island. We stood in the mud and looked out through the trees to the other shore across the water.
“How are we going to get over that?” Imogen asked.
I closed my eyes and reached out with my god-senses. Only a little bit to the south was a point where the bayou was only around ten feet wide, where the edge of the island and the edge of the mainland almost came together. And there was something else there too—something I recognized.
“There.” I pointed. “There’s a place down that way where we can cross. But you ain’t gonna like how we do it.”
“Why?” Imogen asked, but I was already heading for the crossing. I figured it’d be better if she saw it for herself, rather than me wasting time trying to explain.
Together, we made our way down to the place I’d sensed, and Imogen froze up when she saw it. “What the fuck is that?”
The bayou certainly narrowed here. There were trees on the opposite shores that grew out over the water, their branches extending to the point they was intermingling. Using those branches to get across was out of the question, though—they were too flimsy, you see.
Luckily, or perhaps unluckily depending on one’s perspective, there was a nice and sturdy bridge stretching out across the water. Thick pale ropes extended from tree to tree in a big intricate net. Up in the branches above, hidden in the foliage so perfectly you’d never see it unless you knew exactly where to look, was the spider from the pond that morning.
“It’s a spider web,” I said. “Look.” I pointed out the spider in question. Imogen’s gaze followed my finger, her brow furrowed as she searched for whatever I was gesturing at amid all the leaves and branches. Then her eyes widened and her mouth thinned.
“No,” she said. “Absolutely not. I am not crossing that.”
“The spider won’t bother us none,” I assured her.
“How can you possibly know that?”
Maybe it was all the anticipation that’d built up in me, or maybe it was the sense that the mask and my freedom were finally within my grasp, but I was feeling giddy. “Don’t you remember?” I asked with a big grin on my face. “I’m turning into a god.”
Imogen just stared at me.
“Follow or don’t,” I said as I approached the web. “I’ll come back for you.”
I reached out my hands and grabbed onto the thickest and sturdiest of the ropes. It was a bit sticky, but not as much as y’all might’ve expected. I climbed up onto the web, grasping whatever strands looked strong enough to hold my weight and balancing my boots on the lowest ones.
The spider watched me from up above. I glanced at it to confirm it hadn’t moved, then started shuffling my way cross the water.
I was halfway over when Imogen made her decision and followed. Syl, I was impressed to see, hopped up onto the lower rope and ran across, balancing on it so perfectly I wondered if maybe the cat might’ve been half-spider herself. She wove between my legs and passed me by, jumped down into the mud on the far shore, and sat there watching us as we continued on our journey.
Soon enough I was standing beside Syl on the mud and watching Imogen. There was a stern expression on her face that I assumed was concentration, and her every movement was slow and deliberate. When she grasped the web, her fingers held onto it tight and desperate.
She was terrified, that much was clear. But still she made her way across. I gotta say: her determination impressed me.
When she finally made it all the way across, she took a series of deep breaths and held onto her chest. I let her calm herself down while I looked back at the spider. It’d come out of its hiding spot a bit, and it was watching us with what I’m pretty sure was curiosity. “What are you and why did you just climb over my web?” it seemed to be saying.
I waved at it, and I did my best to project a sense of gratitude over to the creature. Can’t say for certain how well I succeeded, but I like to think I got the point across.
“A spider...” Imogen muttered. “I can’t believe I just did that. By Perdition, what am I doing? Fuck, I fucked a god last night...”
“Not entirely,” I told her, and started off in the direction of the Manufactory. “And hopefully not for much longer neither.”