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Mmm, would there be retaliations?… he started to wonder again.

Al woke up with a start.

In his dream, Becky’s children were born prescient, with a tint of green in the eyes, due to the amount of psychotropic laced reindeer she had ingested a few days before the conception…

Oh my Flove, what have we done

The confusion that Claude had made on the spiders ranks had been all that Phurt had waited for.
In her agitation she hadn’t felt the signals that the Mother had been hurt during the fight.

The only thing that obsessed Phurt now was that a way was now clear for the giant spider to go nearer the “wortex”. She could feel it, it was coming from the elder tree, the roots of which went spreading miles and miles away.
Perhaps she could subjugate that raw power, consume it wholly and become one with it.

But, as she went closer and closer, she started to feel as if she wasn’t the one eating or absorbing it, but the reverse was true. She started to struggle as she felt sucked into the wortex, crying as she felt doomed to oblivion, as old Narani had been telling them. How stupid had she been, she should have heard her. And as the Mother was now dying instead of becoming the new Mother, she was now about to die with her.
But now was too late for laments. She had to embrace her destiny, and if it meant to die, she would, with pride.

They all had felt it simultaneously. Armelle and the Snoot on the borgulm tree, Yuki and Rafaela, waiting with Anita near the perimeter made by the spiders, and Akayli the werelynx, carrying the mummified parents.

— What’s happening Claude asked to the owl

— One of the giant spiders went through the hole, and we’ll have to follow her said Yuki to Anita.

— The good thing is that the turmoil will keep the wortex opened a little longer Akayli thought to himselves.

Armelle, go open the way now the Snoot whispered to the owl, then poofed away in a gurgling liquid sound.

— They won’t stop those nasty buggers! Tearing apart all our beauty machines! Awww, poor Vessie will be devastated! Gloria said sadly, coming dangerously close to the spot
— Watch’out Glo! Sharon cried as a menacing magpie came cawing at her while the others were ripping the machine apart in gruesome metallic sounds.
— Bugger! Bugger! cried Gloria Won’t bloddy poke me eyes! She started to wave her arms and kick out in erratic movements to brush out the bouncing and flying bird.

— STAY CLEAR! the voice of Sha thundered a few moments after, and before Gloria could notice anything, a big thud with a crunching sound went zooming past her.
— Bloddy brilliant Sha! Gloria said, spreading the fatty fingers of her hands off her face to look at the magpie crunched under a coconut. Not so proud now, bloddy bugger! she sniggered at the bird.

She almost giggled as she looked up on her friend. In a second, she understood how the coconut had been thrown. Ye’re bloody genius Sha! Wouldn’t have thought of using me bra as a sling! she beamed at her nearly naked friend wearing all but wrinkles and padding.

— Oh the buggers, won’t get away with it! an all bucked up Gloria said, stripping her bra off her opulent breasts.
— Dammit, they got something! T’s‘all shiny like a crystal ball! Must be a U.V. lamp or something
— They won’t get away with it! We’ll knock ‘em out one by one those nasty buggers; any more coconuts by yourself sweetie?
— Got aye few pomegranates here
— Go fer it!

— Will you stop the jig now! You want to make us both end up in a tree or what? an exasperated Armelle snapped at her uncooperative passenger who stopped as soon as the clear voice of the owl had been heard.
— A talking owl now? Is that a bad spoof of Jurassic Park?
— Oh stop the sarcasm Armelle said, rolling her eyes almost by reflex at the remark, and quickly coming back to her sense after she started to lose direction in an unexpected loop stunting, scratching her wings in low branches and ending on all fours on top of a big borgulm tree .

Greetings little poohs, the grinning Snoot, all liquid fur red with the juice of the fruits greeted them. The Snoot has been expecting you and you

Armelle was aware that everybody would be there in any minute now…
The one who had come from the wortex wouldn’t hold long in the middle of these huge creatures. He had managed to injure or even kill a few of them, but though he showed no trace of fatigue yet, his body was bruised.

Ah, she sighed, feeling herself on the brink of doing something stupid. Taking a few deep breaths, she hold them until one could see the beautiful snowy owl starting to inflate like a rubber balloon, her size became twice, or thrice bigger than usual.

In a few minutes, she was as big as the mythical thunderbirds of the Native myths.

Taking a look at her waist, she sighed again. Hope I won’t get any stretch marks…

She then pounced on the heap of fighting bodies, and came back in the airs holding Claude in her talons.

— If you have an idea, then tell it quick, said Akita, this place gives me the creeps.
— Remember how Kay’s having this nice werewolf form in his shape-shifting bag of tricks?
— Yes, but he cannot really hold it for very long… Wouldn’t be easier if you just teleport us or something?
— Well, the thing is, yes, that would work for us, but that would take too long to teach you, not to say the parents. We can’t really count on their cooperation for now… and it’s perhaps better that way, because I’m not sure they would really believe they can do it anyway.
— So the real question is, Kay interrupted, how do we move quickly with two stoned weights?
— Exactly. My suggestion is that we combine our energies. I must say I’m quite fond of the werewolf outfit, it’s brawny and forces respect, and besides, you and Akita know how to operate it.
— I think I get your point. So how do we do?
— Just let Kay merge with you, and I’ll facilitate the anchoring, said Araili.

Kay started to swirl around Akita in a swoosh of air, while Araili faded into the background to become a force-field around them, getting tighter and tighter, until all three were a ball of light and poofed back in the form of a twelve-feet tall impressive werelynx.

GRRRREAT, growled Akayli the beast. Let’s move on.

Baring his claws, he delicately tore off the mummifying silky threads to unwrap the two parents, and taking each of them under the hairy soft grey arms, sprung out of the nest to the forest in quick bounces.

The portal has opened, we must hurry said Araili

Araili had felt something more, that he didn’t want to share yet with Akita and his spirit dog Kay. He had felt that something, or someone was trying to make its way from the wortex. However, the whole area was tightly held in a sort of quarantine by the giant spiders. Their genetic ancestral memory was aware of previous huge bleedthroughs like this one, and they had what humans would call “prophecies” amongst their kin, of such occurrences being heralds of tremendous upheavals.
Araili, who was extending far beyond this guise of a lynx that he had taken now, smiled when he thought of how some of his earthly medieval focuses would have been similarly frightened by natural events like eclipses.

It did not take long to them to find Anita’s parents. They were right at the spot that the big arachnid had just left, wrapped in silky spider bandages with little skin left to breathe.

— They seem alive. checked Akita. Heavily sedated, but alive… Now, we’ll have to get them out of here quick.
— I think I have an idea smiled Araili.

Claude had finally came out of what he thought was just a strange tree, but then, his preternatural senses where telling him something was wrong. This place looked different. No, this place felt different.
And smelt different too.

There were soft sounds, crawlings he could hear, very near his place. They were coming from him, but he would fight.
He jumped on a tree, and in a few vigorous movements, was perched on top of it.
He almost gapped when he saw the black circle of huge spiderly creatures around his tree.

They were staying at a distance from the wortex. But for how long… He couldn’t wait for his death.

From the top of the tree, Claude jumped unscathed. Taking a look around, he found exactly what he needed.
Breaking a few sharp bamboos poles, he started his move to the black circle in a prodigious and accelerated run.

From atop a nearby tree, Armelle was considering the whole scene. The wortex would probably last a few hours, perhaps a bit more. Anita, Rafaela and Yuki were about to be here soon, she had warned them of the spider circle, so that they would hide until she has found them a way to get through.

She had not expected someone to come out of it. That may be her way…

Phurt was coming closer and closer now. She could feel the surge of power, and the trepidation raising all the hair on her legs. She couldn’t possibly confront all of the sisters. Not yet.
She had to find a way to get past.

As if Arachneiax, Goddess of her kind had heard and answered her plea, a dying cry, confusion, and call for help came to her senses from a border of their circle. A perfect diversion…

The woman’s voice raised softly in the dark, like a velvet caress, or the sound of a purring cat.

Life was long before I met Georges. Not unbearable, but so long and lifeless. Days would pass, and nothing new would happen but the same matter the previous days were made of.
Though I no longer align to these limitations, I was once human, born to Earth, as Georges was, in a not so distant past. Like most of my people, I was not feeling special. But my will was strong and my desire to survive too. I survived poverty, lust and violence. In the crucible of these emotions I’ve melted my fears, and it was there I found Georges too.

A curtain raises in the dark. A palace in an exotic tropical place. Brunei? Al doesn’t know this place…
A young dark haired woman in a small room, around sixteen, perhaps a bit less, disheveled. She looks wildly around her, her rags stained with dust and dirt.

Enters a tall woman. She doesn’t seem local. British perhaps. She’s elegantly dressed, thin mouth, high cheekbones, apparently in charge. A maid follows her. She can speak the girl’s language.

— Where is my mother? Let me out of here! she starts to cry
— I’m afraid this is not possible, Salome. For your safety,…
— What do you care about my safety!
— For your safety, Salome, hear me, try to behave. The Sultan is not a man without a heart. He loves beautiful women, and that is what probably saved your neck, considering what all what your mother did wrong to him refusing to pay taxes and her obstinate and bare-faced smuggling. Listen Salome, this might save you, and might save your mother as well.

The curtain falls on the scene, where Salome hopes to have found a friend of captivity with this woman.

A few years later, still in the golden cage of the harem, occasionally asked to service the lustful and violent Sultan, I start to go explore the depths of my misery. My inner world was a safe sanctuary, a haven from the pit of hell where I was now living, after my childhood years of hard work in the forest. There, where no one was given the key to enter, I became aware of him. I first thought he was an imaginary friend, a messenger from the other world, greeting me to a sure death. But he was real. He started to talk to me. About what I could do, like him, be a Traveler, if I wanted to.

The curtain raises again. Young Salome is lying on her straw mat, in a seeming delirium. She moans, whispers, weeps, laughs. No one in the harem seem to care any longer. She is probably possessed, but the Sultan still find her suitable, she can’t be touched.

A roar can be heard in the palace. The big black-bearded Sultan Ojylam the Second, ogre look on his face, summons his guard.

— Don’t worry Salome, the voice of Georges whispers in the dark. The Sultan is mad at Madame Chesterhope. She has just fled with his precious crystal skull, but he won’t find her. She’s a skilled Traveler too, as soon you will be dear Salome, once you have learnt my last tricks, and we soon will be united.
— Why that stupid crystal skull?
— Don’t worry about it… This one is the Birds Skull. It carries lots of information and magic in relation to the Birds Realm, but it should be the least of your concerns. We’ll find Madame Chesterhope even if she’s clever at hiding between dimensions. Only concern for you must be to get out of here.
— The Sultan will know I told her about it… I should have known, he was so proud of this object, and so protective too… And she was so curious…
— That’s why we must hurry now.

And so we were united for the first time. Lots of other lives have occurred afterwards, different paths at times, but always we have found each other again. Eternally bound, in a most sacred bound…

The day had been long. Actually, from an outside perspective he had been apparently sleeping almost all of it, so it was not appearing as if it could be a really exhausting day at all.
But Al had been extending his body researches in the subjective. He’d started to play again with his various dream bodies he had known the existence of for quite a while now, though he hadn’t yet found the time to experiment with them fully enough. An idea he owed to Sam, who he had been pleased to hear about his unusual experiences in the Australian bush, or more accurately, in the Dreamtime.

Playing with these various “bodies”, or qualities of attention and perception, he was aware that his thoughts on the recent events occurring in their story was still unfolding in the backstage of his attention. A rehearsal perhaps…
Nevertheless, he was delaying the actual representation, for he felt he was not yet ready for it.
He could feel lots of information waiting for him to download them and process them. But he wanted to do it with clarity.

Last try had not been very convincing… He had dreamt of a midget Tina, in a flowing mauve and lemon chiffon dress. Of course, in the dream he had taken great care of not hurting her feelings, all the more since she seemed so fond of the dress. He couldn’t really tell her that the dress was giving her an enormous butt and that she was rolling her hips comically when she was walking… Impossible…
While dream-Al was searching for words to truthfully convey his appreciation of whatever little thing that could be left to appreciate on that dress, dream-Sam had been quick to tell dream-Tina she looked like fairy Nuf. What had he said! She soon started to weep noisily. Fairy Nuf, as anyone knew, is a purple-clad plump grumpy fairy, with a pointy hat and she couldn’t possibly look that bad.
Speak about clarity…

Al tried again to concentrate. Taking deep breathes.

He could feel more and more clearly the presence of the woman. Her aura was beckoning, and she seemed to want to share information with him —pieces of information he would be free to tell others or not, it didn’t matter.
What mattered was that there was this deep desire for this information which was coming from him; and equally as deep as his, her own desire to share was palpable.

“ Salome ” he whispered “ I am ready to see… ”
He soon started to fall into another lucid dream…

Al took another pleased look at the animated stereographic pictures of himself he had been pleased to see in a special feature of Wisp. Oddly enough, he usually didn’t care to appear in such an outlet of officially held beliefs (now that most people were indeed living those previously-considered-odd concepts described issue after issue, it wasn’t like it was unofficial experiences any longer), but considering the amount of readers, he couldn’t have just turned down such a proposition of coverage.

After putting the magazine into the drawer, Al voiced the cyputer on. An expensive acquisition this cyputer, but Tina and him had agreed that this new artificial-consciousness device would be worth more than a try, and probably would help them with putting some order in the entangled threads of their story submissions. Well, of course Tina had been slightly reluctant at first, as she had felt her taxonomy skills being rebuked, but Al had tenderly reminded her with a wink that they would be soon more equipped than sooo last-century Becky Pooh.
Tina had bit her sensual glossy crimson lips when she almost spilled the beans about Becky’s expected kid who would probably teach her a trick or two on the new technology. Little did she know that Al knew a few things about this adventure …

The suave voice of the cyputer asked if he cared to read the new additions on the story.
Oh good… Al rubbed his hand with expectation, and started to carefully listen to Tina’s last additions.

Al had felt quite stimulated by what he had just had the cyputer read aloud with Tina’s sampled voice, and had to refrain himself from writing another long comment just after that. Essentially for Sam’s sake who would complain about Al being a pooper of big comments…

Old Narani is becoming too soft.
While the attraction of the hole was intensely beckoning, Phurt had been appointed by a strange twist of fate to the guard of the prisoners by the Old Mother.

Bugger Narani whisspered Phurt, why not just kill them, these stupid two-legged animals. Why the pain of keeping them alive? Good thing the daily dose of sedative venom had them quiet now. They would only scare the mooing preys. Stupid, stupid.
Of course, it would be easy to just sink a little more than usual her sharp tooth into their neck so fragile. A regrettable accident…
Phurt couldn’t help but smile a grin as wide as her hairy eight-eyed face. But she wasn’t known as the Doctor of Breath for nothing. Her mere breath could be as sweet as a jasmine scent or terribly deadly. She had never missed a target, never could have.
She was no mere Spinner; how could the Mother have put her to such a slighting task. Degrading. For her, the most promising Hunter of her generation to be doing this while they all were securing the hole perimeter.

She would have to go. Something was nudging her to move, something like a fluid water sound, that whispered that nothing could happen to those prisoners. No one would be fool enough to dare to enter the Nest.
Ahaha, why would she care? Nobody would know. And the little ones would alert her in any case.

With a prodigious jump, she sprung to the forest in the direction of the hole. She couldn’t be denied her destiny.

— Is it gone now? a voice whispered under a pile of giant ferns
— I think it is growled Araili’s voice Thanks to the Snoot’s power of suggestion, I suppose… The Snoot might find spiders eggs delicacy enough to help us in our rescue operation.
— Shall we go there now? Kay? Ready to go and report back if everything’s clear?
— Ready.

Rafaela was not finding it very difficult to jump on the rocky slopes. It was only difficult for her to remember to stay physically focused so that Anita wouldn’t fall to a certain death. And of course, even more difficult to resist to the attraction of nibbling a few crunchy thistles and brambles that grew here and there.
But Yuki’s attention was here to remind her, and so far, their progression had been smooth and easy.

But all of a sudden, the small pink nose of Yuki raised in quicker spasms sniffing the air intently.
— What? What? asked Rafaela who almost forgot her focusing. What?! Did I fart or something?

Anu who was having the time of her life jumping on the coarse back of the goat giggled at her clueless question.

— I think the spiders are moving too. We’ll be reaching the hole before them, and the Snoot tells me they won’t be moving close to it. But they won’t let anything or anyone get out of it. Let’s hope dear Armelle will spot a path for our friends.
— Not to worry, Rafaela said matter-of-factly, Army is good at spoohtting. She’s the best I know at that.
— OK, let’s move on…

Claude was finally seeing a pinhole of light, at a close distance. He could just continue to crawl out his way to the light, and he would soon be release. And to cheer him up, he reminded himself that no man nor beast he feared, with his phenomenal strength agility and speed he now had. Too bad he didn’t have any time to get a proper super-hero attire he smiled to himself.

On Tikfijikoo, the Magpie’s energy maze-cloak was now lift. The fury of the cyclone was now in its full power, and the Magpies were starting their swift deployment.
The item was left unguarded in the operation room, as far as they could tell, and in the chaos of the elements, surely a few magpies would be unnoticed.

They had to move quick now. The portal would be opened soon too. They couldn’t come back without bringing “it” back with them.