Now This is Something Worth My Interest...

Aranea, even with her horrible eyesight, could see this massive, towering structure, and it made her lips twitch upward in a ghost of a smile. Now THIS was an interesting find. She tilted her head to the side, a hint of amusement in her gaze as little silken threads (invisible to most, of course) draped themselves over the area, extending even toward the castle. Curious, very curious indeed... This place, it seemed to house another who would perhaps understand her a bit better... One who might share her affection for her little eight-legged friends... Perhaps they might even get along...

Perhaps...

---

She continued to observe for quite awhile, sending out little spiders to explore the massive castle infront of her. Aranea had time... And patience... Maybe someone might even come out to greet her. Ooh, that would be fun... But didn't she have to tread lightly? Especially because she didn't know about the Witch who lived there yet... How powerful she was... In fact, Aranea didn't know how much power she herself possessed... All of her snacks and playthings hadn't really put up much of a fight once they were ensnared.

Better to watch and wait...

In correspondence to Aranea's spiders, Arachne's spiders just so happened to be crawling about the general area of Arachnophobia... Personal eyes and legs, one could say. They sensed another presence... One far larger than the spiders that it was producing... and naturally, Arachne's interest was piqued.

Before long, the spiders started to create a large, intricate web near Aranea, as to use this as a medium to project Arachne's image, which came up on the web like a screen.

"... Who are you...?"

Aranea's dead eyes turned toward the screen, the image there quite fuzzy. She could only make out it was human... -ish. Well, at least in form. And the voice sounded female. Judging from the webs and spiders, this must've been the one that caught Aranea's interest... The Witch of the Castle.

Her dark lips parted, as she spoke her name as a whisper.

"Aranea..."

Arachne's elegant, web-woven irises started to gleam with an illustrious sort of shine, though her eyes remained half-opened, as usual. A small smile came across her gorgeous, dark, crimson lips.

"Aranea...? Reminiscent of my own name... Arachne. You are also a witch of Spider Magics...?"

Aranea nodded slowly, taking in what she could see of the woman without much emotion. Her calm, curious stare studied the other Witch, as she casually checked along her webs. She had felt something break... Ah, there. A generic soldier of Arachne's forces had walked right into a 'thread'. She couldn't help the slow smile that formed on her lips, reaching out across the distance to begin ensnaring her prey... Until she remembered where she was.

Sighing softly, she broke her tie to what would have been a tasty morsel and let the soldier walk on, completely oblivious to the danger he had been in. She turned her attention back to Arachne,

"What's going on here...?"

She already partially knew, from what she had heard and that glimpse into the soldier's mind, but she wanted to test how truthful this other Witch felt like being... Or, maybe, she had been lying to her troops... Always a fickle thing, the truth...

Arachne smiled, very much enjoying her already present abilities. Arachne could see and feel everything for quite a long ways... Because of her current condition. She could see the fluctuation in Aranea's very much similar wavelength the moment something was caught in her web. Not only did she share the same spider-like magic that Arachne possessed... But the mental ability, as well? Hm... Joyous.

"... We are about to take possession of things called 'Demon Tools...' being a witch, I'm sure you have heard of them? Mmmm... I am spreading my control... hopefully to become the Mother of Everything..."

Arachne closed her eyes, shuddering a bit lustfully at the thought.

".. And with you?"

Aranea was silent for awhile, though she looked thoughtful. So that's what this Witch was after... The Demon Tools. If Aranea remembered correctly, her body had been killed by one of these Tools. But then something happened... The one who did kill her didn't take her soul. Why was that? Wasn't that the aim of these Tools...? To get stronger by devouring the souls of the evil...? Aranea had done her share of evil deeds when she was alive... Gone to extreme lengths... Killing and torturing and killing some more... Oh, how fun, to see them squirm...

Instead, her soul was shoved into this corpse... It wasn't even her own. Her eyes closed, her lips pressed into a tight line,

"I'm searching for the one... Who brought me back... To kill him..."

Again, she looked thoughtful.

"He... Possessed a Demon Tool... If I remember... Correctly..."

Arachne immediately thought it must have been... Eibon. But in the end, it couldn't have been... He had sided with the witches for quite a while after leaving Shinigami, and he made Demon Tools only for use for himself... It must have been someone else. Arachne did not even know when this happened... For it could have been at any time between now and 800 years ago...

"... Mmm. I see... Well. If you know of someone who is in possession of a Demon Tool... By all means, come inside..."

The doors to the gigantic spider castle that harbored Arachnophobia would open slowly, allowing access. Arachne smiled and started to laugh to herself, the web-screen disappearing instantaneously.

Aranea's sight wasn't the greatest, but she could see as the fuzzy outlines parted for her. A few more spiders appeared at her feet, fanning out. They would be her eyes. Her tattered dress rustled as her feet shuffled forward, her dead limbs barely managed a constant pace. She was intrigued by this structure, and wanted to explore.

Now, she had no idea which way to go, so for now she wandered aimlessly... Where ever her spiders took her, she followed.

After a few moments of Aranea's corpse-like shuffling, the symbol of a web created itself below her feet. The glowing strands were coarsing with magic straight from Arachne. The web would engulf Aranea and begin to compact around her, then, via the power of magic and her own soul wavelength, Arachne forcefully transported Aranea to Arachne's room... the room of the Spider Queen...