The Red Thread – Eris – cosplay.iNthastyle

The sun seared the Serengeti horizon, bleeding crimson into the endless sky as winds swept over the golden savannah. The air shimmered like molten glass, quivering under a cruel afternoon heat. Eris adjusted her headdress—a scarlet wrap embroidered with black and white geometric patterns. The colors matched her cropped tunic, frayed at the edges, and the woven sash belted around her slender waist. She stood tall, her skin bronze and dusted with sweat, her fiery red hair tumbling in coiled waves as though echoing the searing embers of the waning day. Her eyes, green as lush foliage after rainfall, were locked ahead, scanning the horizon for anything out of place—a shiver in the grass, the glint of metal, the silhouette of an enemy. War had taught her such vigilance long ago. Here, in ancient Africa’s shadowed cradle of power struggles, it was survival.

In her hands, she clutched the source of her inner conflict—a Spider amulet, small but impossibly intricate, its webbed design cast in silver and inlaid with ruby shards. Madness, some had said, that a girl of her tribe would carry an object so cursed. But Eris was no ordinary girl, nor bound to the ordinary ways. The Spider had chosen her, threading its web to entangle her destiny forever. For months, she had tried to deny the pull of its whispers—visions of gleaming cities swallowed by time, of narrow streets carried on music and voices in a tongue both alien and intimate, where she saw herself in future echoes wearing outlandish clothes: a white crop top blazoned with red and black insignia, holding a soft doll resembling the Spider’s image.

Weeks earlier, the amulet had saved her. The warriors of the opposing tribe had speared her comrades, their cries lost to the wailing wind. Trapped in the humid, rust-smelling swamps, Eris had expected no escape when their stalking spears closed in on her. Then the Spider’s voice had reached her, urging her fingers to dip into the red soil, to inscribe runes whose meanings eluded her tongue but sprung instinctively from her fingertips. The ground convulsed, roots burst forth—binding legs, snapping spears. The attackers didn’t last. Eris survived, her tribe didn’t question the outcome, but they grew wary of her. Quiet avoidance poisoned the nights at their campfires. “A sorceress,” they murmured in tongues they thought she didn’t understand.

Now, she journeyed on her own, beyond the lands of mortar clay huts and baobab trees stretching heavenward like old gods. Herds of zebra speckled the distance, their stripes shimmering like waves in the furnace glow. The run-down tower she sought loomed ahead, carved from reddish stone. Its crest glimmered faintly, a beacon cut from polished obsidian. It had no place in the Serengeti, no place in the world as it was.

Skilled hands gripped a spear pointed straight at her chest before she even reached the tower’s shadow. The man holding it stepped into the sun, flame-bright tattoos carved across his blackened skin. His armor mirrored Eris’s colors: stained crimson, spider-black linings curling unnervingly around his limbs, hair coiled like venomous snakes.

“The Spider’s false prophet.” His voice was gravel, low and menacing. “They warned me you’d come.”

See also A Dance in Shadows

Eris didn’t flinch. Instead, a smirk tugged at her lips. “The Spider weaves its own story. You see betrayal—I see destiny.”

He lunged, and combat overtook the arid stillness. Sand erupted with their footsteps, the clash of bone and spear ringing over the plain. Eris ducked under his heavy swing. His strength eclipsed hers; his moves barreled like a war drum in raw force. But she was faster—slipping, twisting, her strikes measured, calculating. The Spider whispered, and her body answered, as if her feet held threads tying her to the earth itself. One misstep from her opponent and she whipped her sash free, spinning and entangling his wrist. She used his momentum against him, pulling him forward and staggering him into the scalding sand. Before he could recover, she pressed the amulet to his chest. A shallow gasp escaped him.

His eyes widened. “No…you meddle in what you don’t understand.”

“Neither do you,” she replied softly. Immediately, his body convulsed as if his bloodstream had caught fire. Silent memories, visions, and futures drenched her mind as she held him—a city wrapped in neon skies; strangers calling her name; webs catching stars; guns and warships splitting the heavens and cracking the ground. The serpent of time tangled hopelessly, snarling into knots she could barely comprehend.

By the time his chest stilled and the warrior grew lifeless as an abandoned husk, the cursed tower awaited her undeterred. Her breath steadied while the Spider’s whispers became deafening.

The true thread lies within.

Eris tied the sash tight, glanced once more toward the endless savannah behind her, and stepped through the tower’s looming threshold, ready to test her fate against the improbable promises of the Spider’s web. Somewhere, hidden deep within this journey, lay a cosmic tapestry—one that bound Eris not just to her homeland but to futures untold.