"Ia! Father of Omm! Spider-Mother, Zath! Weaver at the heart of the cosmos!
Thou art the present, the future, and the past..."
Everything was ready. Amamiya Rin drew a deep breath and chanted the incantation he had learned from Hirano Yuji, each syllable rising and falling in measured cadence.
The sound rolled through the cramped room, yet no echo came back. Every syllable seemed to sink into the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the way water drops vanish into parched soil.
The air in the room changed. It grew heavier, until his lungs had to work harder than usual just to pull a breath in.
The candles at the four corners still burned, but the flames began to stretch, climbing inch by inch, shifting from ordinary orange-yellow to a pale blue-white with a faint indigo shimmer at the edges.
Amamiya Rin noted the strange transformation without a flicker of expression, repeating the incantation — or rather, offering up a prayer to a certain evil god.
On the tenth repetition, the reflection in the mirror set out before him began to change as well.
The candle's reflection in the glass had come loose from its source. It no longer swayed in time with the real flame; its rhythm had grown slower.
Amamiya Rin noticed his own image in the mirror going blurred, as though mist were rising from somewhere beneath the surface. Something indistinct was seeping through the glass and into the real world.
Reality began to bleach out.
The deep brown of the doorframe faded to grey-white, the cream of the walls to a paler grey, the dark red of the floorboards to a grey that was almost black — like a photograph left too long in harsh sunlight, stripped of its saturation.
The edges of objects blurred too, as if everything had slipped out of focus. There was no longer a clean division between the doorknob and the door panel; the table legs bled slowly into the floor. Space itself seemed to be stretching, length and width and height losing their old definitions, and even Amamiya Rin felt the unbalanced numbness of a man who has crouched too long and can no longer trust his legs.
He could feel that he was still standing where he had been standing. But the space around him was no longer the world he knew — and it was not a dream either. It hung somewhere in between, in an atmosphere that belonged to neither.
He surveyed his surroundings calmly, and saw that the cobweb in the corner of the room was spreading.
Threads extended outward from the center, branching, twining, weaving. They swallowed the ceiling, then the walls, then the floor, creeping past beneath his feet.
Those strands gave Amamiya Rin an odd, inexplicable impression: they were not a spiderweb at all, but the latitude and longitude lines of space itself.
And at the center of that grid, a great white oval bulged outward. That was... a cocoon?
His expression turned peculiar.
That thing was nearly half a meter across. Was it truly meant to crawl into a man's belly?
Just then a seam split open along the cocoon, and eight short, thick legs pushed their way out. Bristled limbs forced the silk apart, revealing a giant spider well over thirty centimeters wide.
Its body was bloated to the point of deformity, its dull, desiccated carapace giving off a cold light that belonged to no earthly thing. Eight squat, powerful legs braced the heavy bulk, coarse bristles standing erect along their length. Its eight compound eyes were a turbid dark grey, and in them settled an alien, malevolent intelligence no ordinary mind could ever bear. Meeting that gaze produced a wrongness that could not be named.
Amamiya Rin looked straight back into those compound eyes, his own gaze untroubled, carrying only a trace of curiosity and appraisal.
Then the voice came.
(You have summoned the servant of the Master. Speak, then, summoner. What is your wish?)
The giant spider had not moved its mouthparts. The voice simply arrived inside Amamiya Rin's mind, like a conversation held soul to soul.
"If the spider god truly governs the border where dream and reality meet, then I wish for my physical body to pass freely between the Dream World and the waking world. No — to put it more precisely, I wish for the self that exists in dreams to be able to appear in reality," Amamiya Rin said, unhurried, facing the creature's interrogation head-on.
(If you seek a boon from the Master, you must first render the Master service. Offer the Master a sacrifice, or transform yourself or an offering into a child of the Master to aid Him. In return for such service, the Master will show you the roads between worlds — including the road into dreams — and grant you every desire of your heart.)
A wave of cold radiated from the spider's body, and the voice reaching into Amamiya Rin's mind turned heavy and solemn.
"Specifics? What exactly am I required to do?" he asked bluntly.
(You have two choices,) the giant spider said.
(The first: the chance to become a servant of the Master. I bite you and inject my venom. If you survive, know that the Master often selects His faithful from among those who live through the bite of a venomous spider. Of course, the Master selects His food by the very same method.)
Amamiya Rin's eyelid twitched.
What kind of choice was that?
Get bitten first; and if you lived, you only earned a chance at being chosen as a believer — and if you weren't chosen, you might end up as that evil god's dinner instead?
Only a raving fanatic would pick that one.
(The second: sacrifice. Offer your viscera to the Master. Your shell will go on living, and one day in the future, the you of dreams will replace the you of reality. When that day comes, you must present the Master with a woman. She will take your place and become the Master's servant.)
So that was the road Hirano Yuji had taken.
Amamiya Rin turned it over in his mind.
It was also the option he had intended to choose from the start. He simply hadn't expected to be handed two.
Still — two options or not, weighed purely by safety, there was little to separate them.
Both depended on the power of that spider god. The first carried a very real chance of ending up as the spider god's meal. The second meant handing over a portion of yourself as its meal up front, and then, one day, delivering another meal... no, a servant. Serving the spider god, presumably. What that service entailed, he didn't know, but at least it probably wasn't being eaten.
He hesitated.
The difference between the two felt slim to him. But compared with the first, riddled with uncertainty, the second was the steadier bet.
It was only a sacrifice. Even granting that a curse from a higher-dimensional god or demon was irreversible — as the Apology Demon's disfiguring curse had been — it hardly mattered.
Cut a piece of flesh from Tomie and a whole new Tomie would grow from it. He could simply offer up the Tomie who was still an outsider to him.
"I choose the second—"
He hadn't finished when the giant spider cut in.
(With your potential, the Master would be delighted to make you one of the faithful.)
Amamiya Rin's eyes fixed on those compound eyes.
It had lasted only an instant, but he had caught it: in that single moment, the creature's attitude had shifted.
(Yes. Your potential is unlike an ordinary human's. Unlike any believer who has ever sought the Master. You merit preferential treatment.)
It said it again, and this time the voice was different. Before it had been cold. Now it carried an eagerness it could not quite hold down.
(If you survive the bite, the Master will accept you. You will win the Master's favor and become a Spider-Human. There was once an offering named Lariba Woz — among humans he was a lord — and even him the Master did not accept.)
All eight legs shuffled forward an inch at once, bristles standing on end and aimed at Amamiya Rin like probing needles. Its body and its will both expressed the same thing: urgency.
And that made one fact plain to Amamiya Rin. To the Dream God standing behind this spider, his own worth was... apparently considerable.
Why? Because of his Long Dream? Or had the cultivation he had done inside the Dream World created something the Dream God valued?
His brows drew together, his gaze growing heavier.
He had only ever wanted to complete the ritual quietly, borrow the spider god's power, and get his wish. Being singled out for attention had never entered his calculations.
Attention like this was not a good thing for him. For anyone with a sound mind, it was not a good thing.
(Hesitate no longer. You will not die, because you are chosen. You will receive the Master's favor. You will walk the web that spans every world and every age. Every wish you hold will be fulfilled.)
Even as it urged him, the giant spider advanced. Eight compound eyes stared at him at once, his face reflected in every one of them, each eye brimming with greed. It could hardly wait to sink its venom into him, and no answer he gave was going to alter its will.
It — the Gray Weaver — did not require Amamiya Rin's consent.
Before the revelation came, the Gray Weaver had not cared which option he took.
Either way, a human would end up as the Master's food, sustenance to help Him keep His strength, or be transformed into a child of Atlach-Nacha to serve Him, and in the end become part of that web.
But not now. The human standing before it possessed qualities greater than any human it had known. Once he became a Spider-Human, the Master's work would be advanced enormously.
"Look out, big brother!"
At that moment a third voice rang out.
It was a childish voice, somewhat androgynous, the words a little slurred.
Amamiya Rin fell back several steps on instinct. Once he had put distance between himself and the giant spider, he looked toward the source of the sound.
The Gray Weaver looked as well.
There, at the edge of the room, in a corner the candlelight did not reach, stood a child in coarse clothing with a bobbed haircut. The shadows made it impossible to tell whether the face belonged to a boy or a girl.
"What are you doing here? This isn't a place you should have come to."
The child stretched a small hand toward Amamiya Rin, the palm likewise lost in shadow. The tone was innocent, edged with scolding, exactly like a child who had seen nothing of the world.
"I'll take you out of here. Come with me."
Amamiya Rin did not walk toward the child.
He watched that small silhouette, his gaze turning grave.
It looked like unexpected help, a hand reaching in to pull him clear of danger. But with a century of practice inside the Dream World behind him, he judged otherwise: that child might well be something far more terrible than the giant spider.
Because he couldn't see. He couldn't see the child at all — even his eyes could not sound out how deep that thing ran.
And it was not only the outward form. He could hear concern in that voice, yes, but faintly, underneath it, he could feel a deeper emotion, something like—
(Don't go over there!)
The giant spider's posture had transformed completely. Its eight legs folded inward, its body pressed low, nearly flat against the floor. Its compound eyes no longer glittered; they had congealed into a flat, lightless grey. Its chelicerae opened and clamped shut, opened and clamped again, over and over, like a beast hissing a warning — or simply like a creature thrown into agitation by the sight of something it feared.
(...This black shape...)
It seemed to have recognized something, and terror flooded it, shaking even its will.
(The Haunter of the Dark, Father of All Bats, Dark Wing, Face Eater—)
The Gray Weaver's voice jammed.
As though a hand had seized its throat — and snapped the neck clean through in one motion.
Amamiya Rin saw three red points of light appear on the giant spider's body.
Then all eight compound eyes lost their luster in the same instant. All eight legs went rigid at once. And that bloated body came apart at the same moment.
Amamiya Rin's pupils contracted. A single thought cut through his mind like a blade of light.
The tender child's skin peeled away inch by inch before his eyes, exposing the unnameable essence beneath.
It was darkness too thick to dissolve. It was the shudder of bat wings. It was a burning crimson stare split into three lobes.
The Haunter of the Dark, Father of All Bats, Dark Wing, Face Eater — every one of those titles pointed to a single identity. The being that belonged to the same cosmology as the original of Hellstar Remina... an avatar of Nyarlathotep, who was born of Azathoth, Lord of All Things and one of the three supreme deities, and who is called the Crawling Chaos, the God of a Thousand Forms, the Messenger of the Outer Gods, the Father of a Million Favored Ones — the Haunter of the Dark!
"Ha—!"
The corner of Amamiya Rin's mouth twitched.
Even the composure of a tenth-stage bodhisattva would have struggled to hold in the face of this.
Less than two months since he crossed over. Barely any time at all since he'd shaken off being a cripple. A few days ago he was still dealing with a vengeful spirit's curse, and now he turned his head and walked straight into an avatar of an Outer God that toyed with the universe one-handed?
This had to be a joke. It wasn't possible.
His first instinct was to deny reality.
To deny the possibility that the little girl in front of him was that being.
Because the details genuinely didn't line up!
The Haunter of the Dark did not look like this. The avatar of Nyarlathotep who took the form of a young girl was Nyaruko, a character out of a cutesy anime, not the Haunter of the Dark. The Haunter of the Dark was supposed to be a swollen, bat-like monstrosity with a single fiery red eye cleft into three lobes.
A divergence in this world, then?
Ghroth had gone from the Star of Judgment to Hellstar Remina — so had the Haunter of the Dark, arriving in a world built mainly on Junji Ito's manga, likewise been converted into a cute little girl?
Amamiya Rin regained his calm quickly. But even after calm consideration, the conclusion still refused to fit.
Since when did anything that convenient happen in a Junji Ito world?
____
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