D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

— Kat —

The door was… questionable to look at for sure. The bits of wood that had been hammered together really stuck out and the scraps they’d used at the bottom to keep it in place didn’t help at all. It looked like quite the bit of patchwork and everyone was worried about it working. Sure they could go further overboard for the next one if it failed… but they wanted this one to work. They didn’t believe in it, but they had some hope.

Lily carefully moved her shadows to surround the doorknob and started to carefully turn it. Slowly, ever so slowly until they heard a click. The door was ‘open’. Lily glanced at the wood box they’d built around the doorknob for this moment. It was ugly, easily the dodgiest part of the construction and was just as liable to fall apart as the door itself… but they needed to try.

Lily carefully pulled the door open and it quickly got caught. The wood at the bottom catching on the door… but tellingly it wasn’t considering broken. The space behind it seemed to still be going strong. Lily reached downwards with a large flat shadow that she slid underneath the wood and then very carefully pushed into physical form. Just barely lifting the wood up a bit more. Everyone held there breath for a moment as they waited for the door to pop of its hinges… but nothing. It seemed fine.

Not wanting to risk taking too long and breaking something else, Lily got back to work. Carefully pulling the door open while pulling on the wood at the bottom to allow them both to slide along at the same time. Lily was able to slowly, carefully, inch by inch, pull the door open. Soon they could see inside and it was a mess of cobwebs and black cloth that didn’t seem to go anywhere. Still, nobody despaired, they had to make sure that the door was all the way open. Just in case.

More careful wiggling, with Kat and Hedera keeping sharp eyes out for the first sign of issues did eventually get the door open. Lily slowly retracted the shadows from the door, careful not to make them intangible all at once and instead slowly let them retreat back to their normal place. Once that was done, she transformed back into her Memphis form and hopped into Kat’s arms with a yawn. Kat gave her a brief pat on the head before reaching out a hand towards Hedera. “What?” asked the elf.

“We know this is some sort of altered space and I don’t want us to get lost after going through so much effort. If you’d prefer you can grab onto my tail but I thought you’d be more comfortable with a hand,” explained Kat. Hedera glanced at the outstretched hand for a few moments before grabbing on and pulling a dagger out with her other hand. Though… Kat couldn’t say if that was just to be ready with one arm occupied or in case Kat herself did something.

Stepping into the room was jarring. Even Kat could feel that space was a bit odd here and Lily shivered as they stepped across while Hedera flinched. What the heck was that?

[I don’t think you can make the transition so bad without it being intentional… maybe. It was so bad I’m surprised nothing got cut up when we stepped over. This is… NOT like the smooth spatial manipulation Thyme can usually manage.]

“Careful, Lily says that sensation was quite intentional and not all that much like Thyme,” said Kat as they kept moving forward. Kat used her tail as a feather duster and collected the spiderwebs that were in the way. It was not the most pleasant sensation but it was better then having it all end up on her face.

“So what… is this some sort of lair then? Or just some helper doing shoddy work?” asked Hedera.

Kat shrugged, “No idea.” Kat stepped forward as she said that trying to brush away the first of the dangling black cloth… to reveal more black cloth and cobwebs. “Hmm… there is a path we might be able to follow here between the sheets… and blocked by cobwebs. Do we try that or just keep moving forward? It doesn’t look like much of a pathway,”

And it wasn’t. The hanging cloth seemed to hang from wires higher up in the ceiling and then draped over. The ‘path’ was mostly the gaps in the hanging cloth rather then a true path… but of allegedly this whole island had been designed for the final round, so perhaps the semi-natural looking not-quite-a-path was where they were meant to go. Kat couldn’t say.

“Um… hmm…” Hedera stopped to think and Kat paused when she noticed, didn’t want to accidentally pull the elf over after all. “I don’t know. I think… I think we should just head straight forward for now. If Lily detects more spatial manipulation or something like that we can backtrack and then follow whatever paths we can see… but I’m not sure if the gaps are fully intentional or not. I mean… these sorts of things happen when you hang stuff right?”

Kat nodded, “Yeah especially when I can sort of see that the clothe hanging around here isn’t all the same size or shape,”

“Right so… we don’t know if they’re meant to be something or not. Plus, even if they are… walking forward might get us a good deal of the way regardless. Just…” Hedera paused to look around a bit more. “Be on the look out for spider monsters. Even if the cobwebs were put here by Thyme… I refuse to believe they were just added randomly. If there are cobwebs there HAS to be some sort of web maker around and it’s probably a spider,”

“Good call,” agreed Kat as they started to walk forward once again, tail hard at work to remove the excess cobwebs as the cloth was pushed aside again and again as Kat kept moving forward. Occasionally, as Hedera had hinted at, they’d see some small spiders around but they weren’t monsters. Just little things that could easily be squished should they care, and they certainly didn’t come in great numbers. Just one or two occasionally noticed. Not enough to weave all of these webs.

Time seem to bleed together a bit, as the scenery refused to change. Even with Kat poking Lily a few times to confirm there was no strange magical shenanigans going on. They just… kept moving forward. Cobwebs, black cloth, and nothing else except a few tiny spiders that often simply ran away when they reached the group.

That was until, after brushing aside one final bit of cloth they got to… a clearing? An open area? It was hard to know what to call it. The world seemed to open up, with a bit of pale moonlight dripping down despite the fact it was still day-time. Soft blue-ish white light illuminated a large structure.

It was an odd combination of a house and a web. Thick silken ropes were stuck together, stretching from floor to ceiling in what looked to be walls and support structures while bits of silk attached themselves all over the room. The house part came in when you got the centre where a ball of webs had been shaped in such a way to look a bit like a cottage, complete with a door and windows though their shapes were slightly distorted.

Kat glanced at the ground. Where before you could say ‘there were cobwebs everywhere’ it was more accurate to say that you couldn’t take a step without running into at least some cobweb. Here though? The floor WAS made of cobwebs, the walls were covered in cobwebs and they were all exceptionally thick and sturdy. Some of these silk strands were as thick as Kat’s arm. “Ok… so… what do we do here?” whispered Kat. “I mean… that place is obviously important but…”

Kat didn’t need to finish her explanation, it was pretty obvious. She couldn’t even fly over because of the light ‘dusting’ of thinner cobwebs she could only barely make out filling the courtyard. There might be a path through, they were spaced out to remain hidden but even then… there just wasn’t enough space. Lily… might be able to do it but that wasn’t a risk Kat was keen on her girlfriend taking.

“I… hmm…” Hedera glanced around. “I don’t know. I feel like… we’ve come this far so we need to go in but… is there like a way to politely knock or something? I don’t want to deal with a giant spider monster and I definitely don’t want to deal with a giant, ANGRY spider monster,”

Kat nodded in agreement. Of course, the issue was… how does one politely get the attention of a giant spider that probably lived in that house. “Wait… there aren’t any spider beastkin are there?”

“Um… no?” said Hedera slightly unsure. “At least… I don’t think so? I was under the impression no beastkin had any insectoid traits but… why else would they have a house?”