The spirit world is broken and in desperate need of a restoration. True heroes and ancient beasts that once walked are now a thing of the past. Between the empty spaces of forgotten treasure halls there are whispers of one who has returned. One lege...
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The light inside the paper space that cradled Anari was cloudy and crepuscular. She awoke already glamoured and lying on the top half of her bunk bed. The bottom was overcrowded with half potted plants and a whole mess of gardening tools.
Anari rarely came down from the top bunk. She had everything she needed. Her sketchbooks, gameboy, snacks under her pillow. And built into the wall, there was a door to a refrigerator. Anari opened it, knowing what would be waiting for her inside. She reached for a sweetly decorated package and popped it open. The unleashed aroma made her feel like she was standing inside of a bakery. She bit into the egg tart and for a moment, she was soothed. The walls of her room moved and swirled in various, whimsical patterns. The pastel tones darkened as her glamour dropped. Her bunk bed faded away, as did all of the plants and mundane objects. Naked, true in her essence, Anari balanced on a bed of silk that she had woven herself. The groovy apartment had given way to a webbed labyrinth. The walls that had once appeared close and cozy were now concave and cavernous.
The air echoed with muffled cries. Anari swallowed the last of her egg tart. She didn't want to respond to those cries, but she had put them off long enough. She leaned back until she was upside down, letting her four back legs splay open. It was so much easier to think upside down.
The suffocated sounds were coming from her prey. She had cocooned the two Yingchi bastards in silk nearly a week ago. Nothing too tight. There was room enough for them to breathe. But they weren't all that happy about it.
She could eat them both. Heaven knows she needed the fuel.
Still, they were trolls, which were not popular among the spiderfolk for their flavor. They were big too. The bigger the prey, the longer it took to die.
If you stay here belly-aching all day, you'll never eat.
Anari fought back the urge to get to work on the trolls. She was a professional after all. So she reached for the thread that would wire her straight to her employer.
Her heart casually thumped as she dialed the line. She knew she didn't do anything wrong. The mission went as planned with only some minor hiccups, but he didn't need to know about all of that. It was normal for her anxiety to spike whenever she had to check in with the director. He was a Sun, afterall. One day she was his best agent. The next, she was his biggest disappointment.
It was all up to Luck now.
The line rang. Anari held her breath until she heard the click.
"Next Dimension Inc, please hold."
Anari steadied her breathing. She usually was put straight through to the director. Why was Tabitha answering the phone?
"Management speaking." Sun Bai's gruff baritone caught her off guard.
Anari wanted to keep the report as short as possible. As she went over the details, she could sense the amusement in his silence, as if he were waiting for her to get to a punchline. When she was done, he held out the pause for a while before asking, "And you phoned me because . . . ?"
