Rhys turned to go, only for his feet to stick in place on Sid's web. He opened his mouth to ask Sid to release him, then paused as his anxiety spiked even without him calling on the cursed senses. I feel like if I ask him to help me, he might just help me off this mortal coil.

Sid was dangerous. Crazy dangerous. He definitely lost the crazy contest to Sid, even if Sid wasn't the kind of crazy he'd expected. He'd been thinking of a certain purple-and-green-suited clown who was usually paired with a black-robed bat person, but Sid was more… quiet crazy. You could almost hold a rational conversation with him—in fact, you could—but he might not respond the way a rational person would, as in, he might laugh at your joke, then laugh the whole time he was eating you because your joke mildly offended him. The line between Sid and extreme violence was even thinner than the line between Sable and extreme violence. Sable understood context, and knew when extreme violence was being asked of her, or at least when it was reasonable. You told her to commit violence, and she might commit too much violence, but that was it—that was the most danger Sable posed.

Sid, on the other hand, was constantly teetering on a razor's edge. He was very happy to be there, and he didn't see anything wrong with it, but one word out of place, and he would suddenly flip from laughing and smiling to tearing Rhys apart like an animal—that was the vibe he gave Rhys. He wasn't looking for a chance to kill Rhys, but if Rhys gave him an opening, he'd jump on it like a hungry wolf. It was something like being around a wild predator that wasn't hunting, just sitting around; deeply dangerous, and very willing to attack, but not in the mood right now. Too long around him, and Rhys would probably end up dead, but for now, Sid wasn't hungry, so there was no reason to worry.

All that to say that if he didn't unstick himself from his web, then by failing to escape, he'd put himself in the context of 'prey,' and Sid might start thinking about extreme violence. Even if he didn't act on his thoughts, that was far closer to the brink than Rhys wanted to go.

But how do I escape from the web?

Rhys reached out with his mana senses, sinking himself into the study of the web. It was made of silk, sticky silk that stretched in all directions. Rather than feeling out the entire web, he focused on the segment immediately under his feet, and focused his entire comprehension on the composition of the silk. There had to be something there. Some part of the silk that was considered 'thrown out,' or otherwise trash. Some kind of opening that he could exploit to break free.

Nothing. He found nothing. No openings. The silk had been deliberately placed there by Sid. Its composition was something he had determined with great intentionality. Nothing about it had been thrown away or abandoned, since it was the place Sid currently considered home; even if he was leaving it, it was only momentary; he fully intended to return to, or at least continue using, this web. It was well-constructed, too, with no flaws in its form that he could use to latch onto and call trash. Everything was well-calibrated, intentional, and well-built. It wasn't flawless, but it wasn't so flawed that he could use those flaws to call it trash.

Come on. There has to be something!

He threw himself into the search, digging deeper, deeper. From simply looking at the material, he dove into it, looking at the proteins and adhesives that formed the silk. Now that his mana senses were stronger, and more finely honed, it was easier for him to see the tiny particles that formed it up. Earlier, he'd been able to sense his own cells, internally to his body, but now he could sense the particles in others' items, past the halo of mana that coated anything created by a mage. As a cohesive whole, the silk was intentional, and largely pure, but not perfectly pure. There were tiny impurities, tiny inclusions within the silk, or even tiny bits of dust that had landed atop the silk. He reached out to the silk, then, feeling its intent as a whole. The silk trembled slightly, opposing his intervention, but that only brought its intent to the foremost even faster. It wanted to be strong, to be sticky, to trap things and hold them for Sid. Rhys drew its awareness to the impurities within it, and the dust upon it. The impurities made it weaker. The dust left it less sticky. Is that what it wanted? Were those desirable?

The silk trembled harder. No! Vehemently, it rejected the impurities and dust. What the silk had before not even realized was within it, suddenly became trash to it. And in that moment, Rhys had won.

He lifted his hand, calling the impurities and dust all throughout the silk to him; not to his hand, but to his feet, sinking them into the silk that trapped his boots. Dust coated the silk's surface, and the shining white silk grew dingy with impurities as all the impurities caught within the entire net condensed within the one strand Rhys stood on.

The silk beneath his feet weakened, and its stickiness evaporated. Rhys kicked off the strand and executed a neat backflip, landing on the edge of the ice cave exit to the web chamber. He smiled at Sid, who'd been watching the whole thing with big, empty eyes. For a few seconds, Sid kept staring at the newly impurified section of web, then looked up. He smiled back and strode forward. As he passed the filthy section, something darted out from the long train of his robes and swiftly severed the segment, letting it fall into the abyss below his web. The whole motion took place so quickly that Rhys couldn't make out what, precisely, had severed the web, even with his Tier 4 eyesight. "How curious. I've never seen such a technique before."

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"I'm honored to have shown something new to a Remnant Weapon," Rhys said, bowing just a little.

Sid's killing intent spiked. He rapidly closed in on Rhys, though his bland smile never changed. "Hmm. I'd like to see what such a technique could do in battle."

"I'm sure you'll get a chance sooner or later," Rhys promised, darting backwards with equal speed to Sid's rush forward. He had to move as fast as he could, but he managed to preserve some distance between them.

Sid halted abruptly. He tilted his head, and slowly, his smile turned less bland. "Right, right. I let you lead me to Lord Ravin first. That little ant is hiding from me. Was hiding from me. Hee-hee."

It wasn't a laugh. He simply said it, as if he knew he ought to, but didn't know what the sound meant.

"Yep! Yep. Great plan, I love it." Rhys continued to back away, terrified to show Sid his back right now. He'd made the right decision by making himself 'not prey,' but he wasn't sure exactly what his escape had done to Sid's razor-thin margin of not committing extreme violence.

"He was one of my more troublesome creations," Daran remarked from beside Rhys, in a conversational tone that indicated he knew exactly how much not-danger his incorporeal form was in right now.

"You don't say," Rhys muttered.

"No one is more shocked than I that he managed to procreate. The Strawman, at least, had a latent nurturing streak that I never quite understood… probably due to being crafted from straw, which yearns to grow and reproduce. The physical logistics would be a bit complicated, I suppose, but at high enough realms such things can be overcome. But the Beast… Sid… there was never anything in his vision but carnage and bloodshed. That the woman survived the encounter long enough to produce a child is beyond my ken."

Rhys coughed, thinking of Sable's bony limbs. I'm not sure she did. Or that she survived their initial meeting. Or that she was alive when they met. Or… yeah. I'm not sure of a lot of things. Magic is wonderful and great and definitely doesn't open up any terrifyingly squicky options for reproduction! Yay!

Sid slowed. He glanced at Rhys. "Talking to yourself? I do that, too. It gets lonely, sometimes, in the dark."

"Yeah. Just talking to myself," Rhys agreed, glad they'd changed the subject from battle. He hesitated, then finally turned, gesturing for Sid to follow him. "Come on. My friends are waiting just over here."

"You're not going to jump out and kill me, are you? That would put quite the hamper on our relationship, and I like you. My daughter likes you."

Rhys looked back, startled. Sid followed him sedately, no particular expression on his face. He shook his head. "No. I need you to get information from Lord Ravin. Why would I do that?"

"Hmm. Some people get funny ideas about conquering a Remnant Weapon. Most of the time, the people who come looking for me are trying to do just that."

"Oh. No, I'm really being truthful with you."

"It is strange that you'd risk life and limb for a small piece of information."

"Look, Lord Ravin didn't exactly open with, 'Would you like to go badger a Remnant Weapon into coming to help me?' He just told me you were his retainer. I had no idea who I was going to find."

"His retainer." Sid chuckled under his breath, and it was more a dark sound than an amused sound.

"Go ahead and pick those bones with him, okay? I don't care. Not my monkey, not my circus. Just let me get my answer first."

"Mmm-hmm."

Rhys glanced back again. For all that Sid teetered on the razor's edge of ultra-violence at all times, he also had a simple side. A kind of childish complacency that made him easy to steer. It had probably been deliberately built into him by Daran, or at least deliberately not removed, but he could see how someone could make the mistake of seeing Sid as their underling, as long as they kept him happy and generally pointed him at violence. He personally preferred Sable, who, though reclusive and of few words, would respond to provocation in a way he could comprehend, but he did kind of get where Lord Ravin might have misunderstood Sid's childishness for deference.

He didn't re-tread their entire path through the ice caves, but merely exited at the first one with a door. The door was overlarge for both of them, since Sid, even with his mysterious trail of fluttering probably-not-fabric, was still Rhys-sized and not northerner-sized, and Rhys had to take care to close it quietly behind them rather than let it fall flat. He headed back to the meetup place to find Grave already there, hands tucked behind him and shoulders square as always. At the sight of Sid, Grave bowed deeply.

"I thought I sensed a great malevolence shifting. So, it was you, Obsidian."

Sid pulled himself up to his full height, dusting off his robes and preening a little. "You know of me?"

"Of course. It is my duty to know of all great threats in the region, in case my liege has the honor of encountering one."

"As you should." Sid nodded approvingly.

Rhys, who'd been reading between the lines the entire conversation, nodded to himself. It made sense. Grave was a servant; if his master encountered some hidden grandmaster Grave couldn't identify, they could find themselves in deep trouble quickly. Better for him to know, or at least be aware of, the most serious threats to his liege. As for knowing about the Alliance's Remnant Weapons, well, that was just a matter of being prepared for the inevitable.

Grave nodded at Rhys. "Since you've concluded your search, I think it's best you depart. I can wait here for Mirai."

"Oh—oh. Yes, of course," Rhys said. Now that Grave had brought it up, he had a good point: he didn't know what Mirai might do or say around Sid, and Sid was so easily provoked that it was far too dangerous to let the two interact freely. He nodded at Sid. "I've notified my friends. We can set off now."

"Hmm? Are you trying to hide something from me?" Sid asked, looming over Rhys. The sky seemed to darken, and his eyes sparked with violence.

"No? If you want to stay here and wait for my other friend to return, we can. I thought you wouldn't be interested in it, but if you are, then sure. She's a nice person. She'd probably like you."

Mirai wasn't the problem, after all. Sid was the problem.

Sid thought for a moment, then shook his head. "No, I'm not interested. Let's go."

Rhys nodded. "Then let's—"

"Rhyyyyyyyys! Hi! Hi, new friend!"

Internally, Rhys grimaced. So much for that.

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