Oh, what a fun little trick, a teasing deceit.

  The lens is clear, no fog, no shimmer,

  Only a divine clarity and a will to look deeper.

  Spin, Madame Spider, spin a little weave,

  For the plot is unravelling in your bid to deceive.

  Thumpthumpthump.

  Rivin’s heartbeat is pulsing through his ears; his blood, once frozen solid, is now a rushing, thriving current. His chest hurts, and he grasps it, coiling his fingers into his shirt, trying to cage the fleeing pain. Failing.

  Was that her? Was that Lachesis? Or... Was that Mother? The same black hair. The same damaged blue eye. She knew the song. Had her lips been moving? Had he heard anything at all? He doesn’t know, and he doesn’t trust himself. Not here. Not now. Not when—

  “Baby—” Clotho starts, reaching for him, but Rivin snatches him hand away, steely eyes narrowing as they scathe across her shocked features, nasty and cold.

  “Don’t call me that,” he hisses, pale in the face, before dropping his head to gasp at the floor, glaring heatedly through a sickening, spinning blur. Why are his knees weak?

  “You look pale.” Clotho attempts once more to console him, gently padding his shoulder with concern.

  “What about Coel? Abi?” He grinds through clenched teeth, grasping his head, and her breath hitches before she answers:

  “Th-They’re safe…”

  “Don’t lie!” He roars, drilling his knuckles into his temples.

  You don’t remember me…

  “No, no… that wasn’t right.” Rivin tries to move towards the door, but his legs don't work and he crumbles into a pile on the landing. “I can’t leave them—!” He wheezes before the sound is cut off by a yelp; a sudden zap of electricity jolting through his brain stem to toss him forward, but he catches himself, steadying a palm against the wall, panting hard and flushed in the face.

  “Stop resisting,” Clotho speaks evenly as she kneels besides him, suddenly far less the timid sheep and much more the anchor, her urgent eyes having rested into knowing. “She’s speaking to you, isn’t she?”

  Rivin can't hear much of anything beyond the buzz and the melody.

  But I remember you…

  “O-Open the door," he chokes out. “I ne—eed to hear Coel say it.” Say that he’s safe. That he feels safe. That any of this is normal.

  Clotho leans into his ear, cupping it. “Let her in, Rivin.”

  “S-Stop…” he pleads.

  ‘Twas not so long ago…

  “Stop!”

  There’s light. It’s growing—growing beyond all vision and demanding him, demanding all of him.

  “Reach for it.” Her breath is wet and hot on his skin even through the silk.

  You broke my heart in two…

  “The Mother of Moirai seeks to show you your fate.”

  I don’t want to see.

  Tears on my pillow…

  A giggle. Shadows spinning. He was so small.

  Pain in my heart…

  She might as well have been an angel. The holy kind.

  Caused by you….

  “Let her in.”

  He has no choice. He is engulfed.

  A trap set in sunlight, he basks in the lie,

  She’ll show you a truth, with the bitterness outside.

  But do take the bait, oh child of mine,

  For like cats and the curious,

  The journey’s the price.

  In an instant the world flares out and spins into discs of ultraviolet colour. His body is weightless and not his own and then pulled towards something else, dragged over galaxies of dotted black canvas and suns and red-faced moons and then he is—

  In shoes.

  His very first pair, and he’s looking down and over knobby scraped knees before being lifted again, all at once, but not by the cosmos, rather by slim hands beneath his arms that twirl him beneath the ceiling and dance with him like his feet can touch the ground—they can’t, but he’s giggling anyways, laughing and warm, before she cradles him close, holds him fully, and glows down over him with those blown-open and loving eyes like he’s the littlest babe in the world and not a boy who's wearing his first pair of shoes.

  Mama—Mama—! He tries to cry, but he only makes sounds like tinkling, like wind chimes blowing in the breeze.

  “If we could start anew,” Mama sings, so beautiful as they spin; her hair the thickest curtain of black. He’d like to hide in it. Scurry away from the world again. “I wouldn’t hesitate,” she’s humming now, but he still understands. She smells like flowers, like home when it was safe.

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  Don’t go. He thinks on instinct but corrects the thought through spilling tears. I have to go.

  “I’ll gladly take you back,” Mother continues, stroking his hair, “and tempt the hands of Fate—”

  CLICK.

  Like a switch, darkness. Complete and suffocating. Rivin drops to the ground hard, groaning as the wind is sucked free from his lungs, a splitting pain shooting up his side. The floor itself ripples beneath him despite being solid and cold, and when he can breathe again, he realises he can hear it moving beneath his fingertips, thrumming like a bad note underwater.

  He climbs to his knees, glancing around desperately, before pausing to draw breath, settling back to resist the growing panic, steadying his heartbeat and brushing his hands lightly across his face, fluttering his fingertips across his lids. His eyes are open, but he can’t see anything. “Where… am I?”

  “Psst.” Something whispers from beside him.

  He turns his head, “Wha—?”

  CLICK.

  The light snaps on, shedding a lone and flickering spotlight across a single figure in the distance, gaunt and bent within a gnarled oak throne.

  When Rivin looks over, he’s not sure what he’s seeing. Not sure he can even make sense of it, for when he tries, a buzzing grows within his brain, burning the backs of his eyes.

  He can perceive that they are a thin copper robe slowly rotting away and into particles before his very eyes, fluttering like golden flies in the light. It wears a full-skeleton ensemble, from the skull to the phalanges, the tinny fabric both innards and sometimes flesh, fitting over invisible organs and muscle before shifting to hug hip, torso and face.

  “I have brought you here for a reason, Ghost of the Undark.” Lachesis speaks, her voice grating on his brain, forcing him to cradle his head.

  “Let me go!” He spits, “Spare me your fates!”

  “Resistance will only make the truth harder to perceive—”

  “So spare me!” He cries, "If it changes nothing in the end!”

  “COME!” Lachesis commands and he’s willed into obedience, chin tilted up and forced her way, but the undead Matron is still bruising to the eyes and Rivin must shield them, pinching them closed behind his hands. He peeks through his fingers, a mistake.

  Lachesis only sighs. “Must I take another form?” In an instant, she morphs from a black fog and into a tall and long-limbed teen with slick orange hair and ashen striped cheeks.

  Rivin’s heart stops. No. No. Not you.

  Her voice is lower when she calls for him again, now sitting wide-legged and unrefined in the chair, lazily tapping the end of a studded bronze mace. Her—His chest is bare, marred with scars worn proudly, accentuated by red and brown paints. “Is this still a form you will listen to?” The boy smirks, rising from the seat. "A form you’ll obey?”

  Rivin might vomit. Nothing comes up, only bitterness returned to haunt. “Let me go,” he croaks. Too small. Too weak.

  “Psst.” Again, the shadows whisper. “Come with me.”

  “Wh—” His head is throbbing, striking at his temples.

  “Look this way, Baby Grey.” The warboy commands, lifting the mace between them, his grin growing ever wider as he gestures Rivin over, “It’s long overdue, wouldn’ta say? Take a seat. We don’t have much time.” The redhead looks up, tipping a hello to the blank, expansive ceiling. “She lingers here… But for how long?”

  “I’ll get you outta ‘ere, kid.” The voice beside him persists, “just take my—”

  Rivin cuts them off, “Who are you?”

  Tricky little things, that humans be,

  Made in my image, a refinement of me.

  Of interest, I find, in such coveted things,

  Such as fate in thy destinies,

  borrowed from my wings.

  “Quickly— before it’s too late,” The darkness pleads.

  “Can’t you feel it, Grey?” The warboy muses, still peering up at the nothingness. “She’s watching. Curious. It’s why I can show you. It’s why it’s the only chance I have to show you.”

  Rivin can see it now, so faintly in the black, a hand— bigger than his, heavy with rings and bangles. He looks up and closer, and he can make out… glasses. The dim reflection of thin frames.

  “What are you doing?” The voice impatiently implores. “Ghost—”

  Something shoots down his spine. He recognises that tone, different as it is now. Older. He tilts his head, squints harder to form the shape.

  “I… Know you.” He realises.

  “Damn right,” the shadow chuckles, “now lets get outta ‘ere!”

  “Stop!” The warboy cries through stolen skin, stepping away from the light. “Please, Rivin—” It’s strange to hear those lips plead for anything. Wrong. “I’m stronger here. This moment. This opportunity will not come upon you again.”

  Rivin doesn’t look, only bridges the distance between himself and the silhouette, the tips of his fingers drifting hesitantly over a cold and metallic palm. He hears steel knuckles click as they curl to cup his smaller hand and gently, gently, he is pulled away before—

  “You can’t outrun your fate, Baby Grey.” Chills race a pattern down his back as something something bile-slick and rotten surges up his throat. Rivin’s breath catches around the shape, choking out any sound. He can’t find the strength to turn his head, nor his eyes. He’s trembling.

  Soft laughter. A teasing grin he can imagine and feel, but won’t dare glance at. “Won’t you look at me?” They ask and it sounds exactly the same. Exactly like him...

  Rivin swallows. Feels his body remember its functions. His hand is still cupped in shadowy metal but the darkness doesn’t pull any further, doesn’t force. “I—” He begins.

  “It’s okay.” It interrupts, squeezing his fingers. “I’ll stay close.”

  “How?” He starts, pinching his eyes closed.

  The hand slips away. “Call for me. I’ll bounce back.”

  “Wait—!” What does that mean?!

  "Look forward."

  Then they're gone, like smoke in the fog, and Rivin sags, defeated and regretful, fingers twitching for the lifeline pulled all too quickly away. He’s still a long moment, glaring at his empty hand, before, slowly and uneasily, he looks past his shoulder and to the familiar face now standing by his side, youthful features still bathed in the flickering glow beyond them, the abandoned throne looming in the background.

  The boy smiles, that kind and terrible smile. The one that breaks his heart still. “Hi Grey,” he greets, offering a hand.

  Rivin ignores it, rising to his feet with a grunt. He pats off his trousers, and looks up, directly into the eyes of the painful and not-so-distant past. “Hi Rivin.”

  The ghost smiles wider. “She embodies the curious.”

  “I’m not curious,” he shoots back.

  The boy tuts. “Who taught you to lie?” He teases, waving a finger, "Certainly not I.”

  “You’re not him.” Rivin growls, wishing so badly that he sounded convincing. “You’re just wearing his skin to torture me.”

  The ghost only watches him with softly curled lips, with eyes that see him completely. That know. “So are you.”

  Silence. The kind that eats away at his bones.

  Rivin grits his teeth, glaring down at the floor, down at his empty, fisted hands. He doesn’t know what to say. He can’t argue. Not with him. Not with that. So he turns away, clears his throat, and says nothing at all.

  The Real Rivin waits patiently with that still-life, heart-wrecking grin. The one he'd follow anywhere. The one that he would have died for. “Won't you follow me one last time?”

  Rivin clenches his teeth, stepping forward with fisted hands and icy eyes. “Don't toy with me, flesh thief.” He hisses, striding ahead, not looking back. “Lets get this over with.”

  Here, the play opens,

  On the exquisite miss-telling.

  Of a life and a future,

  Where nothing might fell them.

  Go on, Spider Matron,

  You've got my attention.

  For what the boy learns,

  Wont dawn ‘till the ending.