Chapter 17 - Skill Weaving

"Where were you?" Asked Ashe, slightly startled. Even though the question had a judgmental tone He was just curious about what a demon even does in their day-to-day life.

"I was collecting data. It's my favorite pass time." Said Sap, with an off-putting smile.

"But what you're probably curious about is Beruthiell's power, and how to use it."

Sap walked closer to Ashe and lowered its body. Now face to face it spoke again. Ashe stayed silent, ready to absorb knowledge and be a good student

"Your lack of additional questions makes me believe I was right. Shame, I started to enjoy them."

"Firstly, whenever you use demon energy and explicitly make another entity feel one of the emotions under Beruthiell's command, you will get a thread of that emotion."

Following that introduction, Sap took out one of its many limbs from deep within the endless darkness hiding behind its feathery coat. The claw grabbed onto Ashe's head and ruffled his hair.

When Sap lifted the claw of his head it was holding 3 pieces of pure white string. They were about 10 cm long and were slightly thicker on one end than on the other, they had a similar shape to a blade of grass.

"These are the threads you made. Now for the second part…" Before Sap finished, it placed the threads in Ashe's hand.

"Inspect the threads. They are sort of like memories, on the thinner end you will feel exactly what the other person was feeling. While the thicker the thread gets the more diluted and obscure the fear gets."

Sap was right. Whenever Ashe looked intently at a thread he could feel what the person felt. At the thinnest end of one of the threads was the fear of a hooded figure seeing through your disguise and chasing after you. As Ashe looked down the thread the fear got more generalized but also stronger.

The fear became a fear of being stalked. Then it became a fear of feeling helpless. Just a couple centimeters down the thread the fear turned into the fear of death and lastly a pure irrational fear.

Ashe looked up at Sap, who even after bending down was a full meter taller than him. The look in Ashe's eyes revealed the fact that he understood what Sap was talking about.

"Now that you have felt the threads we can move on to the third step. Weaving. every emotion has a different ability but since you only got fear threads we'll focus on them."

"Fear threads are used to create combat abilities. But the general skill of weaving translates well into other threads."

Sap stopped talking and took out a piece of parchment. With one of its claws, it drew a symbol.

It was a very simple symbol. It started with a straight line going vertically and four lines, two branching out off the first on each side.

"This is a very simplified version of a simple weaving formula. First, you'll need a base thread. You don't have much to choose from since two of your three threads are very similar."

Ashe took a closer look at the other two threads and they were indeed very similar. They were from when he ambushed the two men in an alleyway, and they depicted a fear of falling into a trap. He couldn't decide which type to use.

'A trap or a stalking ability?'

But before Ashe could decide Sap continued talking.

"Then after picking and preparing your base thread you will modify it by weaving in other threads. The process is more intuitive than it sounds."

'Modify with my other threads? In that case… I'll go with the trap. I can always stalk someone anyway so not much will be lost.'

Ashe grabbed one of the two threads that felt like a trap and put it in the middle of the parchment.

"Now you have to trim your base thread. Just remove as much obscurity as you can. You should end up with a very simple feeling."

At first, Ashe was confused but with a couple of small gestures from Sap he figured it out. He made a small blade from demon energy and began cutting off the detailed end of the thread.

The claustrophobic alleyway… cut!

The mysterious figure that trapped them… cut!

After a couple more minor cuts, just the feeling of being trapped remained.

"That will do. Before you start weaving you have to have an end goal. So look hard at what you have and think about what you want to make."

Ashe took a close look at the two remaining threads. One was of the shorter man's fear of being stalked and the other was of the bigger man's fear of falling into a trap.

'A hooded figure… maybe I could shape it into a just a human figure. A decoy of sorts. And then I could make it stalk the target. But how do I weave that into a trap? Did I screw up already?'

"I have a general idea… I want to make a human decoy that can chase after someone. Is that possible?"

Sap seemed to ponder for a moment.

"It can be done, but we'll have to use a different formula. Firstly you should mold the base thread."

Sap lifted its claw and from it came out a small amount of liquified demon energy. It quickly took shape into a single dot with a ring around it. Then a single line started to connect the dot and its ring. After that, another line linked then another and another.

In the end, the energy took a shape similar to an old carriage wheel. The control of demon energy in it of itself was intimidatingly impressive. the entire process took just a couple of seconds and the liquid energy was floating perfectly still, not even a single ripple or bubble could be seen.

Ashe looked on with a confused stare.

'How am I meant to make that from a thread?'

But his questions didn't stay unanswered for long thanks to Sap.

"If you melt the thread in your energy it will become malleable, but be very careful as you can easily damage the thread. For now just melt down your base thread into a small, thick disk."

Ashe produced a small amount of liquid energy and made it swallow the base thread. He could feel the intricacies of the emotions inside melted together, luckily there weren't many details in his base thread so, in the end, it stayed around the same.

After all of the thread was melted he could control it just like the demon energy. It took a while but he managed to make a smooth small pebble.

"Let it cool for now." Sap said after Ashe finished his disk.

"Now comes the difficult part. By cutting and connecting parts of the other thread, you must make a flowing image of the effect you desire."

With that Sap backed away from Ashe and observed from a distance. It was curious if the boy had any talent for weaving.

'A flowing memory? This shouldn't be too hard.'

A small blade appeared in his hand. It didn't take long for Ashe to finish all the cuts he needed.

He separated the stalking part of the first thread and then cut the second thread into two smaller parts. The fear of being trapped and the blurry figure.

Now all he had to do was connect the parts. First came the trapped feeling followed up by the mysterious human figure and lastly the fear of being stalked. With a small demon flame, he was able to weld the together without damaging the memories within.

Upon welding the different parts together, the threads seemed to change their shape slightly to fit together snugly. Thanks to this, the image of the thread's effect became smoother and closer to Ashe's original vision.

He lifted his gaze to look at Sap but to his surprise, the demon was already inspecting his work from up close.

"Excellent work. The last part will be easy. All you have to do is use the leftover thread to strengthen the effect thread and put the threads together. It's simple so I'll do it for you. Just pay attention."

The demon took all the leftover scraps from the cut-up threads and cut them up with its deceptively sharp feathers. After it was done it separated them into two piles.

After a closer look, Ashe immediately recognized how they were grouped. The bigger pile was made up of all the details, no matter how small. And the smaller pile was made up of pure irrational fear.

After noticing the fact that Ashe grasped the difference between the piles, Sap moved on to the next step.

It grabbed the bigger pile and melted it together vigorously. After a couple of minutes, it slowly moved the melting thread over to Ashe.

There wasn't anything there, not even fear was left inside those threads. Ashe gasped after seeing the lack of details. With what could only be considered an attempt at a chuckle the demon started explaining again.

"This is what you want to avoid while making your threads. A blank thread. However, it's incredibly useful for enhancing other threads because when it starts cooling down it will mimic the formation of any thread it can find."

Then Sap poured most of the solution onto the thread that Ashe made and kept a small amount on the side. While it was still warm Sap started to thin out the memory thread equally, forming one long and equally thick line.

"We're going to make this thread a bit longer so it will fit the formula. And since it's already malleable, the enhancing process is usually when you can shape the thread as well."

In the end, Ashe's thread was more than double its original length and thickness. Not only that but upon further inspection, he noticed that the memory flowed smother somehow. Was it the effects of the blank thread or just Sap's craftsmanship?

He couldn't ponder for too long as Sap was already explaining the last step.

"The shape I showed you is a standard trap sigil. With the center being the base and the ring around it being the effect. For the last part, we'll have to connect the small disk and your thread."

Sap grabbed the smaller pile of leftover thread scraps, the pure fear, and melted it. This time the fear was kept intact with less heat.

While Sap was preparing the last pile Ashe was putting his thread together into a ring. The ends of the thread were delicately pressed together and then with that small amount of leftover blank thread he glued them together.

"Pass me the parts." Sap said after Ashe finished making the ring.

Obediently Ashe put the ring on the parchment and the small disk inside of it. A second later the melted fear was gracefully floating into the ring making a single line going from one side of the ring to the other, splitting the ring into two half circles, while simultaneously piercing through the base thread disk in the middle.

It was done.

"Weren't there going to be more lines? Did we do something wrong?!"

"No. The ring has one line for each type of emotion used and we only used one. Usually, it's not uncommon to mix emotions. Especially for the more complicated pieces."

"What do the other emotions do? What even are they?"

"Still eager for more? After that hefty lesson, I thought you would lose spirit, very well. I'll look for some books while you test out your new power."

before Ashe could say anything the demon had already flown away.

'But... I can't read.'