Mythshaper
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Chapter 49 - The Nursery
🕑 Added 2024-03-23 19:32:08 +0000 UTC
“Solace, what is this corruption about? Why have I never heard about it before?” Marvel asked, controlling her emotions. For creatures with inherited empathic power, emotions come as easily as hunger, but she would only be labelled as a kid if she was led by her emotions all the time.
Solace didn’t answer immediately. “Did you gain an Empathic Corruption Resistant Skill?”
“I did,” Marvel replied. “I didn’t take it immediately, but everything went bad, and I had to take it.”
“Good. How far you have improved in it?”
“Its an E-rank skill, but I get it to 48% just battling with that… you know,” Marvel said.
Eventually, Solace quenched Marvel’s thirst for information. “You never know about corruption because we have done everything to protect you from it. It is the greatest threat to our livelihood, a threat you cannot fight just by being powerful. That’s why we had kept the majority of you in the dark until you’re ready to face it.”
Marvel wasn’t easily convinced, even though her respect for Solace had no bounds. “But wouldn’t it be easier if you taught me how to defend against it?” she questioned. “I merely got in contact with it and I have already reached 48% mastery of it. Wouldn’t it be better if I knew more about it?”
“It would have,” Solace agreed. “And I would have taught you about it soon, but you decided to sneak out on your own when I was busy with other matters.”
“That...” At least Marvel was embarrassed about her daring acts. “I mean, why aren’t we taught about Corruption in school? It seemed like something big that we should all be aware of.”
“Trust me,” —for some reason, the elder spider seemed immensely old. Beaten. Lost— “knowing it doesn’t make it any bit easier.”
“But—”
Solace cut her short. “You have seen nothing of it yet,” she transferred. “Come on, I’ll let you see what we are dealing with. You can bring along your friend as well, though she must maintain her mental defence all the time.”
“Don’t worry,” Shai snapped with venom in her tongue, “I won’t even think of disabling my mental barrier.”
Like before, Solace was amused instead of offended, however, the image of the good granny was already destroyed in Shai’s mind.
“Good, let’s go then.”
The path was longer than Shai imagined. Thankfully, she didn’t have to slither away like she always did. Marvel carried her as they swung away, using her webs, or scaling the wall downwards.
The elder spider was silent most of the time, as she was leading them, though it appeared Marvel knew the way. She mentioned something about a Nursery, where newly born spiders and the eggs were tended.
It was only when they reached the vicinity of the destination that the elder spider spoke to them. “You have experienced corruption first-hand. What do you make of it?”
“It’s madness,” Marvel said immediately. “That lizard is not qualified to advance to Iron rank at all. It was so dull-headed, yet its empathic pulses were somehow so corrupting. Without the [Concept of Empathy] I would have never resisted it.”
“You’re not wrong, but Empathy makes you more vulnerable to it unless you know your way around it,” Solace said and turned a few of her eyes at Shai, who latched onto Marvel. “And what about you?”
Shai thought of hissing indignantly, but with her mind clear, she decided against antagonising the elder spider, who might even be scarier than the White Death.
“It is an incomprehensible level of insanity,“ Shai said, swallowing a breath. “It is deranged, raving, and highly contagious, coming with the promise of power. The greed for power is almost impossible to resist unless you know what you’re signing yourself into. There is no sense in it, only mindless devouring and scraping whatever comes your way...“
Shai paused after a while, noticing she was repeating herself, just demeaning it more with each sentence.
“Hmm, looks like you had a deeper interaction with it than Little Marvel. Count yourself lucky that you came out sane.“
I did not, Shai thought, not entirely at least. However, she doubted how much of it was related to the corrupted Essence of the Feast.
“So, you two already know how grave of a danger corruption is to you,“ Solace continued, nearing the chasm, which was apparently the Nursery. “Now imagine what it can do to underdeveloped minds.“
Solace jumped into the chasm, shooting webs into the high wall. Marvel followed suit in a similar fashion. Shai felt an ethereal push against her being as they entered the nursery. She dismissed it, thinking it was some protective measure.
Shai’s [Golden Eyes] blared immediately, as hundreds of white, orange, red, and black halos of aura appeared in her sight. A chilling sensation washed through her spine, discovering she was in the midst of thousands of spiders.
“Be careful not to have any spike in emotion,“ Solace reminded them, eyeing them as both of their minds surged in turmoil. Of course, the emotions were of two different kinds.
Soon, lights came into their sights as they came across many carved crevices, decorated with intricate layers of spider webs. Dozens with hundreds of spider eggs stuck to them, others with baby spiders playing under the purview of older spiders.
“Solace,“ Marvel said, her voice low and concerning. “I didn’t think there would be so many babies in the nursery.“
“Most of the fledglings aren’t informed about the well-being of the babies,“ Solace said as she led them to a specific location. “Only those that reached a point of controlling their empathic power are allowed here.“
Marvel didn’t have to ask why all this secrecy, because the reasons were evident in front of their eyes. The specific crevice Solace led them to had twenty baby spiders, no bigger than a few inches long, sleeping in a formation that vastly resembled the Grand Dream formation. A formation whose main function was rewiring the mind.
And why do newborn baby spiders need rewiring when their minds were mostly empty? Shai wouldn’t bet on their inherited power of empathy. At least not completely.
“An unprotected mind with undeveloped empathic power is the biggest danger our clan used to face,” Solace explained, turning to Marvel. “As you can imagine, it’s easy to be affected by another person’s emotion. Even another individual’s uncontrolled emotions—take Shai’s negative emotions, for example—would twist the minds of the babies within a few days of interaction. However, it was mere minutes, moments with the corruption.
“Even the Great Mother isn’t powerful enough to block all influence of the Lord of the Feast.”
“Solace, they will be alright, right?”
“They are in a better state,” Solace said, and she sounded so sorrowful. “A couple of weeks of nourishing sleep, and they could be sent to the next phase.”
“I went through this too?” Marvel couldn’t help but ask. As with any other sapient being, her younger days were mostly forgotten. She might be able to recall them eventually when she had a higher grasp over her mental power, but clearly not now.
“Yes,” Solace said. “Not just you. Midnight, Elegy, Serenity, every one of you after Silence’s generation.
“It used to be a lot easier, you know. But all hell broke loose since your generation. We had plans. We thought we could resist for another decade, but all crumbled in two years.”
“Solace, there must be a way... You know, the Great Mother won’t just leave us like this.”
“She did not.” The Elder spider only expressed an empathic pulse of sympathy. “The only way is to evacuate, and that was what we decided.”
Marvel practically shook on her spot, as this was news for her. “Evacuate? Where do we go? This is our home?”
“The Mother has commanded us to evacuate into the gate when they open.”
“But—”
“It is decided,” Solace said. “Evacuation in three days, and you are going to help me prepare for it. It is how I decided to discipline you. If you have complaints, you can always try the Hell Chasm, who knows you might become someone like Midnight, or rather Serenity.”
“Serenity?” Marvel cocked her head up. “She was sent to Hell Chasm as well?”
“No, she just had a twisted idea of what is fun.”
“Hell Chasm is fun?”
“It depends on perspective, I guess,” the elder spider explained. “Midnight was convicted to repent in the Hell Chasm for two weeks. At that time, Serenity followed around Midnight when she wasn’t making any other mischief.”
“She even followed Midnight into the Hell Chasm?” Marvel couldn’t believe it.
I expect nothing less from the spider mama, Shai thought inwardly. However, she had a hard time imagining anything fun about the Hell Chasm. All her instincts told her it was a place she should avoid at all costs... But then there was that promise of power.
“It’s not really that bad of a training ground for the guardians, considering they had to deal with corrupted creatures on a daily basis,” Solace said.
