Arianna came too slowly. Her head felt muzzy, and her breathing was labored; her limbs were heavy and somewhat numb. Surely that was not a good thing. Was she dying?

  That wouldn't have been surprising, given the shivers wracking her body and the cold sweat she could feel soaking her tattered clothes. Though she was rather sure she should already be dead... or maybe this world of swamp and mist was already the afterlife.

  Feeling unconscious trying to pull her back in, Arianna tried to sit up. She was sure that, should she just get her body moving a little, she may actually be able to keep her eyes open this time. Cautiously, slowly, she managed to get a hand under her painful, thin body and lift herself into an obtuse angle, when she now rested on a bony elbow.

  A growling noise suddenly had Arianna's attention. She had been so out of it that she'd nearly forgotten about her two animal companions... except she was pretty sure that she could just make out three forms in the dim cave around her. Her vision was still clouded by fever, but she at least knew that the large white shape had to have been Vilkas.

  It was the other two forms that were harder to make out. They were roughly the same size, and given her poor vision, they both looked like dark and shadowy blobs at the moment. The wolf sat several feet away, growling at the pair of dysmorphic blobs, unaware that she had regained consciousness. Or at least a semblance of consciousness, that is.

  <-as vile-mouthed as I remember! > Snapped the spider, unheard by the woman, so she and the other two spirit beasts were unaware that it had woken up.

   Varnas, the avian replied. He was perched on a small boulder near the pool of water, the rock giving him just enough height to be out of the arachnid's reach. Not that she could do anything to him in her current, pathetic state. Not now that he had regained some of his former glory as a spirit beast.

   grumbled Vilkas, his irritation spilling over into an audible growl.
  Vilkas wasn't often so rudely snappish. Not with creatures that weren't the obnoxious raven, at least. But the continued abysmal state of his master was weighing heavily on his soul, causing even him to lash out.

   The spider sighed, lowering the two legs she had been using to try and swat at the larger bird. Varnas just glared down upon her, his ruby eyes gleaming in the darkness.

  "Vilkas... Varnas?" warbled a weak but immensely welcome voice.

  In a second Vilkas was on his feet and padding towards the master. He could see that, though she was awake, she was barely so. Her face was both pale and flushed at the same time; her rosy cheeks and forehead were a sickly contrast to the white of the rest of her flesh.

  As Arianna slid her fingers through his fur, Vilkas could tell that she was still shivering terribly. He shouldn't have left her side to reprimand the others. Keeping the master warm and as comfortable as possible should have been his highest priority.

  Arianna squinted past the wolf, still unable to make out the two shapes at the other side of the cave. Having heard the warble of a raven, she knew for certain that the higher of the two—probably perched on something—was likely Varnas. But she couldn't quite make out the shape of either of them.

  "Did you have another friend?" she asked rather breathlessly. She couldn't remember ever feeling so sick. Then again, she really couldn't remember anything from before the swamp. She did sense that this was pretty bad as far as illnesses went, however.

  A cool nose brushed her forehead, and the wolf nodded.

  "I see..." she said, even though she really couldn't see at all.

   teased the raven, hiding his worry over the master with sarcasm as was his way. He croaked down at the spider.

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  As for Spider, she decided to ignore Varnas. They had known one another long enough—even though they were not close—that she was used to his knife-like words. She inched slowly closer to the girl who Vilkas had claimed might just become her new master.

  Spider couldn't even remember her old master any longer. She thought that her god often manifested in the form of a woman, and she vaguely remembered that she enjoyed drinking. But that was it. Her god had been one of the first to meet their end at the evil goddess, and Spider had mostly been alone since.

  She knew that Varnas was correct, that humans held a natural fear of insects... but she could not deny her need to get closer to the girl. She may carry the shape of a human, but even to her own weakened and milky eyes, it was clear that this girl was on her way to becoming a god in her own right.

  Well on her way if she was able to claim two spirit beasts, as a matter of fact. If Spider could also become one of the girl's subordinates, then perhaps both of their lives could be saved. Vilkas had explained what he and the poisonous-tongued raven thought was happening with her: that she was having trouble filtering and containing all the toxic mana in the dome.

  While the energy was fueling her rapid growth into a godlike form, it was also poisoning her. She was still too young and inexperienced to handle the massive amounts of energy she was sucking into herself, and sharing that energy with spirit beasts seemed to be providing a bit of a stopgap for the time being.

  As soon as Spider had entered the cave, she had felt the immense amount of energy spilling from the girl named Arianna. However, unbound as she was, as sickly and near death as she was, there was only so much that Spider could do for the girl...

  "Ello there..." Arianna slurred as the blurry form drew nearer. She could see that it was significantly smaller than Vilkas and seemed to move across the ground rather than fly, as Varnas could.

  When the creature's shape started to become clearer, Arianna had to admit a slight twinge of instant revulsion. But quite quickly that, too, vanished into her sea of apathetic emotions. Perhaps it was a visceral response to seeing a spider. especially a spider large enough to be confused for a dog at a distance.

  But that initial rejection vanished fairly quickly. Rather, Arianna saw herself examining the creature with an appraising eye. She didn't really know how to tell a healthy spider from an unhealthy one, but something about the creature's slow and deliberate moves made Arianna think that this particular spider was not in good shape.

  Its hair was patchy, its eyes were a milky white, and the usual fluid movements of a spider were now halting and jerky. It was like all of its limbs were stiff.

  Despite the haze in her mind, Arianna remembered the state that Vilkas and Varnas had been in when she had first met them. This spider seemed even worse than that.

  She did know of something that—she suspected—had helped with that, however. It wasn't lost on Arianna that, after naming Vilkas and Varnas, she had woken to find that both had become remarkably better off. She also understood perfectly well that these creatures were no ordinary animals and that they were highly intelligent.

  So, even though they did not have a shared language, Arianna decided to try and get some answers from Vilkas before the fever took her back to the world of dreamless sleep.

  "Is she like you and Varnas?" She asked, trying to keep her voice steady and clear.

  Varnas seemed to squawk in protest, but Vilkas nodded his head under her shivering hands.

  "And she needs a name?" Arianna didn't know why she simply assumed that this arachnid was a female; she just did.

  A look of surprise crossed the wolf's face, but he again nodded.

   said Varnas, fluttering his wings.

   Vilkas snapped back.

  The last time Arianna had named the creatures, they had gone through drastic changes, and she had gotten inexplicably better after being sick. She could only assume that Vilkas or Varnas had gone out to find another creature to bestow a name upon.

  Arianna really had no clue as to what magic was at work when she named these mysterious beings, nor did she have the faintest idea of the consequences for doing so... but she did know that she didn't want to die, and if she stayed this way, then death was likely to come for her. And this Spider was being recommended by Vilkas, who was really the only being—even above the often waspish Varnas—that Arianna found that she could trust.

  "Alright... then you can be—" She thought for a moment, and a name came to mind. She hesitated only a moment. Not because she was afraid to give the spider a name, but because she was worried that it was a little too similar to both Vilkas' and Varnas' names. However, she shrugged it off. So long as she could tell the names apart, that was all that really mattered. It wasn't like anyone else here spoke the same way she did.

  "I'll call you Voras..." she said, and immediately she felt the energy drain from her body, to the point where the 'z' sound at the end of the spider's new name slurred out of her mouth, coming out as a comical "- Vorassss."

   Vilkas said as his mistress' hand dropped. She fell back against him, passing into the void of sleep just as swiftly as the mana exited her body and rushed towards Voras. Arianna had just claimed her third spirit beast.