“Yunaria, dear, you’re sure you're ready? No last minute implants, no farewells, no… anything you need? Who knows how long you’ll be gone.”

  Laying back and looking up at Mom, I smile and shake my head, cuddling Oraxia to my chest. “I’ll be fine, Mom. I’ve been preparing for this trip for weeks. Now… I just need to have faith in our plan, and our wills.”

  Grabbing my hand and holding it to her chest, she nods with a somber and proud look. “Good… make it back… no, I know you will. Return ascended, and we’ll release your research to the community together.”

  Smiling and nodding, I give her hand a squeeze, trying to make her confident… and I feel it work, my will very slightly tweaks hers, thanks to how much faith is put into it from her. With how much she believes I could do anything.

  And with that, I lay back fully, staring up at the ceiling.

  “Yuna… do you trust me?”

  “Oraxia… of course I do. I’d trust you to the ends of the earth.” Feeling her little fuzzy head nuzzling into my chest, I smile a little, before yawning.

  Her voice in my mind goes silent, as I go over it one last time… I left my notes to Mom, to proofread and edit to become proper scrolls. Things for the community to learn from, should my soul perish or survive this dream.

  I’ve got the soul lattice, I’ve got Oraxia, I’ve got preparations… and I’ve got tools on my belt, in case they come with me into the dream.

  Yawning, I feel sleep overtake me like a wave pulling me under.

  ‘Time… to… learn……’

  …

  ***

  Opening my eyes, I’m anywhere but home. Above me is a stone, warped surface of a cave, the formations along it bumpy and protruding randomly.

  Only… it’s hovering in the air as a ceiling, making me wonder if it was made without gravity affecting it.

  Feeling her wake up in my arms, I slowly sit up, looking down at Oraxia. “Well… we made it. To your home, right?”

  Nodding, she crawls around and onto my back, looking over my shoulder.

  “The Weaver’s Dream.”

  I’m inside a cave, and stepping to look outside the small pocket of safety, I see… much of the same dark grey and black stone making up this world. All of it like it was bubbling, before suddenly cooling all at once, like a flash freeze formed it.

  There’s no water, endless stone pathways go up and down through massive valleys and mountains, of which, I’m at the end of a valley. And looking straight up… all I see is many, many jellyfish, floating through the gray cloudy sky as if they were in water. Blue, transparent jellyfish.

  No… wait, they’re trying to move, but bouncing back and forth on a fine thread…

  Eyes widening and letting out a gasp, I hear Oraxia confirm my thoughts. “A Soul Weaver’s web… it was made out of one of the odd floating thing’s souls.”

  Taking a nervous breath at the pure scale of it, I look at the sky a second time. Deeper… it’s not all grey. It’s got thin black webs going across it, the sky covered in a giant net.

  No wonder there’s no birds here, they’d all be hunted. Or were.

  But if they’ve hunted all the birds… they’d be turning their sights to the grounded prey now.

  Prey like me.

  Taking a deep breath to calm my nerves, I direct my thoughts at Oraxia again. “Where… where to?”

  “...to high ground, so we can see the land better, and I can try to recognize my laying grounds. Then… we go there, or to any other landmarks that seem promising.”

  Nodding, I start walking through the valley. Down here it’s not very wide, maybe six feet or so, but far above it widens so a plane could easily fly through.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Shaking my head, I speak quietly, my voice echoing up the cavern walls. “It’s… this place feels like it were made of lava that cooled or something… made by something huge.”

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  “...I believe, it was likely made the same way I make dreams.”

  “Wait, weaving like you do? Could… could you really do this?”

  Her voice sounds embarrassed. “No. But maybe an ancient Soul Weaver did… one that took a vast willed human soul, and liquified it, weaving it into this before it solidified again.”

  Vast souls… they’re what we call the old, strong willed souls. Ones that can handle untold knowledge and impart their will unto the world.

  “But to do this… how vast must it have been?” “I don’t know. But… do you feel it, in the stone?”

  Raising my eyebrow, I close my eyes and focus on my soul lattice. It’s… no, it is picking up something. I didn’t notice it because it hasn’t left.

  It’s the same trace of soul, the same almost… fingerprint, or feeling, as when I started walking. As if this all is of one soul, as she said.

  Feeling a shiver run down my spine, I speed up my walking. “Freaky… reminds me of how regular spiders eat their prey, though. Liquifying their insides, before eating them. Huh, very similar actually.”

  “The scrolls do question what came first, the arcane, or your world, for a reason.”

  “I doubt there’s a right answer to that.” At her silent nod next to me, I keep on my path.

  Checking my pockets, I find I have my tools, though I doubt they’ll work. A knife and machete would do nothing to a giant spider, just going by the size of their webs… well, this valley is only as big as its leg, most likely.

  Climbing up the steep hill I find, I almost stumble back and fall, barely catching a groove in the floor to not eat shit.

  “That could’ve been bad… okay… let’s use the stake I brought…” Grabbing a steel rod from my back, I stab it into the stone with a hard slam, just barely making an indent to pull myself up on.

  And that took so much force my shoulder is sore… “this… is gonna be one long climb…”

  “Sorry I cannot help.”

  “It’s fine… I’ve got it.”

  Now, without time to waste, I start my exhausting hike.

  …

  …

  What feels like hours later, I feel like I’ve barely made any progress. “My arm is killing me… why is this taking so long… like I’ve climbed mount… uh… I don’t know what sis called it, Rest or something.”

  “Mount Everest?”

  “Yes, that!” Turning to look back at her, my chest sinks.

  I haven’t moved more than two feet!

  “What the fuck!”

  “Shh! Don’t alert anything!”

  Covering my mouth, I lower myself back down the hill and sit at the base of it. “We’ve been moving for like, hours, and we’ve gone nowhere. How? Why?”

  “I don’t know… reality works strange in dreams, rules don’t function as they should.”

  “I know that. Sis told me about her time in the mirror world, but this isn’t that. We have our memories, my exhaustion, so how is this working?”

  Scratching my head, I almost want to pull my hair out with this. Almost.

  ‘Maybe it’s a closed loop? Going up sends you back down? Or maybe there’s a hidden path? Or…’

  “...I think it’s a soul web. It traps you without making you think you’re trapped.”

  Eyes widening, I nod. “It makes more sense… we’re in a spider’s domain. Not everything needs to look like a trap, just gotta keep us busy… and I just alerted it we’re in its house…”

  “Turn around back where we came, there should be some place we can travel without getting stuck.”

  Looking around, I see nothing but sheer walls anywhere but the infinitely looping ramp. But following her direction, I head back to where we started, already tired.

  But, not like I can quit now. Or at all. If I do that, I die, simple as that.

  “But how would a soul weaver even fit in here? Not like dream weavers are born here to use this trap.” Lacking a good answer, I just keep going.

  Searching for any irregularities, I think I spot something… a sheer wall of course, but between two large protrusions from the wall, I see something glistening.

  Walking over to it, I look closer- before a sudden blue goo shoots past my face and cuts my cheek, drawing blood, all before I can even stumble back and clutch my cheek. “W-what the?”

  Spear drawing back in, it slinks away into the stone, as if it were never there.

  “Some slime creature… but I think it just showed us the way out.”

  I barely react to her voice, frozen from nearly dying. A bit to the left, and it would’ve gone into my eye…

  “Yuna? Are you okay? Big sis?”

  Realizing I’m hyperventilating, I force my breathing to calm down. In, and out. In, and out.

  …better.

  Slowly approaching the stone on high alert, she senses my confusion and explains. “The spear was much thicker than could’ve fit without collapsing. So I think you can fit through the crack if you try.”

  Nodding slightly, I touch the stone- finding it’s much wider in the crack of the wall than I expected. Walking into the stone, I find it warping and opening up in front of me, revealing a cave that reeks of death.

  ‘Ugh… terrible. But at least I’m out of there.’

  Turning back, I see the crack I came through is huge, a doorway, but the world beyond it seems shrunken compared to it…

  “So strange.”

  “Very… want to sit and study it, or?”

  “No, let’s get moving, I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  Smiling at her compassion, I keep moving through this next cave, not finding a trace of the slime who cut me. Though my cheek stings a little still.

  Such a scary thought… being trapped without knowing it. Glad we found a way out.

  ___

  Well? What do you think about this twisting reality?