Trigger Warning for chapters 18 - 26: Arachnophobia, gore (similar to cannon SS).
The rest of Kallen's time at the Awakened academy passed in a strange, suspended quiet; like the hush before disaster.
He attended class, honed his Aspect in secret, and avoided further confrontation with Cale and Sunless. The Aegis Rose scion had taken to watching him from across rooms with a calculating stare but made no move to approach.
Nephis remained an enigma. She was present but distant.
Only twice more did Kallen share a meal with Cassie—as she preferred to be called—and Sunless. Both times, the pale boy ate in taut silence. Cassie, for her part, was content to let the quiet linger.
Caster, the Legacy, proved far more approachable, as the young man carried himself with quiet confidence, and the two had struck an easy camaraderie.
And so the days slipped by.
Far too soon, Kallen found himself standing before Awakened Rock's final speech before the solstice.
He barely heard a word. Ariel's whispers slithered through his mind, relentless:
"They're all afraid. They're all afraid. They're all afraid."
Of course they were, it was obvious. The air itself was charged with dread thick enough to choke on.
He walked Seren to her room, tears streaming down her face the whole way. She had held quite well over the past few days, but she had begun to cry a dozen minutes ago and wouldn't stop. Silent sobs wracked her small frame.
There was nothing Kallen could do about it, and it hurt him deeply. The helplessness gnawed at his heart.
"She's afraid of the dream realm
"She's afraid she's going to die.
"She's afraid she's going to die.
"She's afraid…"
"It'll be okay."
Kallen helped her into the metal pod. He pressed his hand on her shoulder, transferring the charm he had received from his first nightmare.
Its enchantment: [Fear is the Mind Killer], would help calm her fear. He had told her as much, but it didn't seem to be making a difference. Her fingers gripped around his wrist as she lowered into the pod. It was as though he was the last solid thing in the world.
He had to forcefully remove her hand to close the door and get himself to his own pod in time. He whispered the words: "I'm sorry," over and over as she begged him to stay.
The hallway outside her room was a gallery of terror.
Kallen left for his own dorm with a deep-set scowl on his face. On the way, he caught sight of Cale standing rigid before his pod, staring at it as if it were a coffin. He saw Caster muttering something to himself, trembling.
Somewhere else, Cassia was helplessly trying to orient herself in the unfamiliar space, touching the walls and strange pieces of machinery with her hands. She was crying.
Changing Star Nephis, the last daughter of the Immortal Flame clan was looking down at her hands. Underneath her skin, soft white radiance was slowly growing brighter and brighter. Her face was contorted in a grimace of harrowing agony.
Sunless, ever unreadable, murmured to his own shadow like a man already lost to madness.
Kallen swallowed hard and climbed into his own pod, steeling himself with a grimace. He too, began to tremble.
Then in the vast echoing darkness, he heard:
[Welcome to the Dream Realm, Kallenir!]
~~~
Cold.
Kallen's eyes shot open, only to meet unyielding blackness.
A slight itch came from his nose, and when he moved to scratch it, he found his wrists bound. In fact, his whole body was locked in place. He groaned, recognizing that the only thing he could move was the wrist of his left hand.
Kallen thrashed against the iron-strong bindings, his pulse hammering in his throat. Whatever held him in place cut into his skin as he twisted, the metallic scent of blood mixing with the damp, earthy air of wherever the hell he'd been dumped this time.
"Fan-fucking-tastic," he said through gritted teeth.
Giving himself time to calm down, it seemed he wasn't in immediate danger just yet. He summoned Puddle, who he couldn't see appear, but he could hear the creature's muffled chirps outside his prison.
His next course of action was to summon Hydra, his khopesh. Though his left wrist was free—including his hand, his arm was still bound.
"Puddle," he whispered. The beast squawked in response. "Good, you can hear me. Take that sword from my hand and cut me out of this."
Of course, the small creature was a dormant beast, which meant that despite its deceptive size, it should have been strong enough to at least hold the one-handed weapon in its tiny mouth.
It wasn't.
Puddle uselessly snapped at the blade, struggling to wrap its mouth around the handle. The only thing it did was knock the weapon out of Kallen's hand.
Damn it.
Kallen dismissed and resummoned the weapon, shifting his grip. This time, he angled the curved edge toward his trapped leg and sawed.
The khopesh's enchantment flared—slicing left, then right—but his desperation made him careless. The blade bit deep into his flesh.
He choked back a shout.
Then there was skittering. Nothing happened for a moment, but then slowly, agonizingly, light began to seep through the silk above him.
He briefly considered activating his Knight tideform and busting the hell out of his binds, but the act would leave him utterly spent. So he waited.
And when the iron was unwound above him, he craned his neck just enough to see the monstrous silhouette of a giant spider perched on a web. Eight obsidian eyes gleamed like polished metal, and its mandibles twitched as it sensed his blood.
Kallen stopped breathing. A single bead of sweat trickled down his forehead.
Then a chorus of chirps erupted down the corridor. The spider's head jerked and it lunged away, vanishing into the shadows of the distance.
Puddle you glorious bastard!
Kallen redoubled his efforts to get loose, sawing as delicately as he could at what he'd figured out was spider silk wrapped tightly around him. It was an arduous process, but he needed to work as quickly as possible. Puddle wouldn't buy him much time.
It was only a short time later that Kallen had freed himself enough to allow his arm a sliver of movement. That sliver evolved into more and more freedom.
But then something happened. A familiar pressure built up in his head, eerily similar to what he'd experienced by way of his Aspect Legacy months ago.
The pain grew, compounding before exploding into a painful vision that stole his sight away.
A crimson spire tore through his mind, jagged and terrible, its peak lost in storm-wracked clouds. Beneath it, a crimson labyrinth sprawled like veins of blood across the surface. Kallen gasped as he saw something spiral around the base of the spire, shifting as if to strike.
His vision snapped back to the present just as a spider lunged to his right, just beyond the reach of his blade.
He dropped Hydra, fingers splaying as he called upon his dormant aspect ability. Blood surged up his legs and then spiraled down and around his arm like a coiled serpent. A fraction of the sticky liquid remained smeared across his skin—barely enough to satisfy his flaw.
Just enough coverage, however thin.
He clenched his fist. The bloodshot forward, a bullet fired from the rail of his own arm. [Amplifier] flared. [Revenge] ignited.
The shot slammed into the spider's iron-plated underbelly with enough force to crack stone. The spider screeched, its metallic legs scrabbling for an anchor as it was hurled backward into its own web.
Hydra flashed back into his grip. One slash. Two. The remaining silk parted. He wrenched free, strands slicing deeper into his flesh as he tore loose with bared teeth. Blood sheeted down his arms and chest, webbing him in crimson.
Kallen gasped through the pain as his charge of [Revenge] was suddenly replenished.
"Puddle!"
The Veilray materialized in a swirl of indigo mist, tiny paws landing on his marred shoulder with a squeak.
For a heartbeat, the recovering spider hesitated looking into Puddle's eyes, their whirlpool pupils deepening into a strange void.
Kallen had come to find out that the illusions the little Veilray could produce weren't a manifestation of its ascension to the devil class. That had been the mind attacks. Instead, the illusions were a byproduct of its unique physiology, the same way these spiders could produce devastatingly strong silk.
That meant that, though he was just a dormant beast, he was at least capable of small illusions. And with Kallen's help, the two could produce something a little less miniscule.
Fear hit the spider like a war hammer's strike.
The nightmare creature shrieked, scrambling backward so violently that it tore its own defensive web apart.
Kallen didn't wait. Silk rained around him as he surged forward, blood already whipping from his fingertips. The liquid snapped like a red razor lash, shearing through two chitinous legs where the armor was segmented.
The spider buckled to the ground and he slammed Hydra deep into its eye cluster. Black blood sprayed in a sickening arc.
But it wasn't dead yet.
Puddle vanished into his soul sea as Kallen noticed one of the spider's barbed legs spearing toward him. He twisted, too slow to deflect the blow.
Pain.
The limb punched through his forearm, stopping a hair's breadth from his eye.
A terrible cry ripped through Kallen as he pried his blade loose with his free hand and hacked again. And again. And then again.
[You have slain…]
He kept hacking.
[You have received a…]
The words blurred. Kallen pulled the blade out of the spider and slammed it down again. Fetid blood drenched him, spraying his face, but he kept swinging.
He shouted, slashing the thing over and over and over. He kept swinging until his body gave out and the spider's revolting head was a ruin of chitin and blood.
Kallen collapsed to his knees, spider leg still jutting from his arm.
His eyes remained wide and darting, he scanned the room feverishly, scouting for any immediate threats, but the spider he had killed was it. Nothing more was coming.
Only then did he realize he was in a tight corridor, the walls, ceiling, and floor all made from unimaginably dense spider silk. Kallen's weapon fell from his limp hand. He craned his neck to stare at the ceiling, heavy breaths wracking his chest.
Was he in a nest of these monstrous spiders? Judging by the distant sounds of skittering and clacking, he reasoned that he probably was. It would explain the silk everywhere.
Puddle coalesced beside him in a puff, flopping to the gore-stricken floor and inspecting the dead creature before him. After a few seconds, the little guy dove into the spider's corpse, seemingly unbothered by its putrid blood and mangled head. He tunneled through the nightmare creature, pulling out a shining soul shard.
Unlike normal Sleepers, Kallen couldn't absorb the things. He had found that out when Saint Bloodwave tried feeding him some. It was a secret kept between the two of them. Puddle didn't understand any of that and likely just thought he'd like the shiny object.
Still, Kallen reached out his right hand—the good one—and patted the little Veilray on its head. He would have smeared blood across the creature's head if it wasn't already covered in it.
The soul shard was useless, it wouldn't help him at all, but strangely, the genuine act warmed his heart enough to calm him. If only a little.
"Good boy," Kallen rasped. He took a deep, sighing breath. "That's a good boy."
He looked back to the desecrated corpse of the spider's head he'd smashed to a bloody pulp. He glanced at his hands, covered in blood, only then realizing just how far he'd gone. Perhaps he'd lost control. Just a little.