Settling

A week had passed since the first word had been shared between those two very different species of sapient creatures that were humans and spiders, and, in that time, a lot had changed in the underground lair nestled deep into the bowels of an unknown world.

For one, Alice had obtained a house.

Well, more than a house it was a nice tent. It had been courtesy of a somewhat small and speedy spider that had suddenly appeared in the clearing on the second day of her stay.

The creature had continuously moved around her for a long time, an incessant chittering streaming out of her mouth as she placed a length of pearlescent silk, stretched between her frontal limbs, along her limbs and torso to measure them.

After some very hectic and confused five minutes, the strange spider had clicked a few times to herself before starting to extrude an almost physics-defying amount of silk from the spinnerets on her small abdomen, delicately draping the resilient material over one of the thickest and most solid-looking metal arches at the edge of the glade.

Over the course of a few hours, a progressively more enraptured Alice had watched as the Thinker built a strange structure that was a combination between an open-air veranda, a bouncing castle and the reduced version of the Queen’s burrow.

The spider had barely spared a glance to the Queen, and generally ignored Alice, aside from taking her measures, before disappearing into the crystal forest as if she had never been there.

A single word, coming from the Queen’s wire, had served as a late presentation.

“Ozren” Maath had said, before a small wave had rippled her metallic exoskeleton, something Alice had started interpreting as the monster’s version of a chuckle.

Aside from the tailor-architect spider, the young Biomancer had worked hard to actually remember the names of all the other daughters she met in the following days.

Obviously, there was Chillushrith, previously known to her as Eleanor, who seemed to be the short-tempered leader of some kind of soldier caste and, according to Maath, the daughter she had specifically sent to retrieve her.

The other two female— the Queen had confirmed— arachnids she had encountered on the first day were instead called Eisor, the more elegant, calmer one; and Ricee, the tall one that apparently liked to poke things and seemed to have a thing for Skitter. They were respectively an overseer, and some kind of breeder —she wasn’t sure and honestly didn’t really want to know.

Names, she had discovered, seemed to be particularly important for that strange underground society.

For instance, they were only given out by the Matriarch to the female spiders that had come to maturity and found their position in the organized structure of the Nest.

The names they obtained seemed to work like a title or a mark of merit; at least that was as far as she had understood from the smattering of words she had just started to learn.

Thusly, it shouldn’t have been much a surprise when both Eleanor and Skitter, after having discovered from the Queen of their impromptu nicknames, came to loudly hiss in indignant protest at the astonished girl who hadn’t thought it would become such a big deal.

Aside from that small diplomatic incident, solved by a few loud clicks from the Queen, followed by a single twack of her thick, hard limb on Chillushrith’s back; everything had progressed somewhat smoothly.

After inspecting and trying out her comfy new home, Alice had started working to obtain all those little comforts she had started getting used to in the glowing cave.

The first thing she did, to Skitter’s vocal displeasure, was asking the Queen to use her metal-controlling powers to form a large, raised bowl of around a meter in diameter that she promptly filled with the water from the nearest spring the spiders knew of, which was a good ten-minute walk away from the main nest.

As a matter of fact, it had been quite a surprise for her to discover that the colony didn’t really have much of a need for water, each of the creatures drinking maybe only once a week or so and obtaining the rest of their required fluids from the preys they consumed.

Bringing the water all the way back to the main nest and into the bowl did take quite a few trips, even with the arachnids’ help, but in the end, she was left standing in front of an almost overflowing basin.

With a contented sigh, Alice finally briefly removed her prosthesis and dropped the somewhat diminished Lumen glimmers she had carried all the way there from the shining pool, finally letting wane her control on the tiny globules as they spread in the water, consuming those few bacteria and particles contained within.

After water, food was the third concern she easily managed to resolve. While she knew that her Improved Metabolism skill would allow her to survive for a lot longer than before without nutrients, that didn’t mean she wouldn’t still be needing food on a regular basis.

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Hence, when Alice saw the first of the daily caravans of wrapped up cocoons heading to the Queen, she quickly got her attention and— with the same, patented shit-eating grin that had awarded her younger self so many ice-creams from her father, she simply asked for a share.

A few minutes later, the young woman was standing near the first of the cocoons while Qhevi, the leader of the convoy, planted her silvery fangs deep in the first cocoon, sedating its living content before unraveling it.

As she worked, Alice stared at the latest addition to the names she would have to remember.

Qhevi was a particularly compact spider, closely resembling an Earth’s tarantula, she was only a bit taller than her with her squat thorax from which sprouted her eight, thick metallic legs. Her ‘face’ was flatter than the others she had seen and presented a fearsome and quite pronounced set of metallic, dagger-like teeth that she evidently knew pretty well how to use.

After glaring in her direction for a few seconds, the disgruntled spider finally opened up the bundle, presenting the first course to the two would-be gourmands.

Apparently, the day’s entrée was a large, brown slug, still slightly squirming despite the paralytic venom. Its thick and slimy body glistened under the green and blue lights as a small trickle of its internal fluids flowed out of the few wounds caused by the fangs of the spiders keeping it sedated.

Alice immediately took an eager step back while vehemently shaking her head, “No thank you, all yours” she said to Maath.

The titanic spider clicked a few times before the metal on her leg quickly extended, forming a thin pole that speared through the creature as a toothpick did to a party olive, bringing it to her expecting maw which made short work of the revolting snack.

Alice averted her eyes from the spectacle, deciding to instead focus on the next cocoon to be opened.

As the Queen’s meal went on, the girl checked every single bundle until, after some kind of yellow centipede and a very bloated ant-like monster, she finally found something that didn’t look absolutely disgusting.

The second-to-last bundle was smaller than the others and seemed to be squirming quite a bit more. Upon opening, a number of fist-sized crabs shot out of the silk, immediately trying to scurry away on their short and stubby legs.

Alice scrambled to catch the wanna-be Steve McQueens and, after a good bit of cursing and missing the surprisingly agile critters, she managed to catch a bit less than half of them, the rest disappearing in the dense crystal thicket.

Pointedly ignoring the quaking laughter coming from the Queen, she started inspecting one of the few surviving specimen she had acquired.

The little creature was definitely a crab, with a hard, dark carapace that was mottled with greens and dark greys to resemble the basalt of the caves, and ten legs if you counted the pincers.

As she stared at it, while holding it from its back, the feisty crustacean menacingly snapped its thick chelae in her direction, causing a loud noise, like that of a rock hitting another, to erupt every time the two pointy ends met.

At the same time, the creature also differed from the aquatic arthropods she was used to; for one, this species seemed to be completely land-based, as confirmed by the lack of gills that emerged from a quick, magical inspection on its body structure.

On top of that, the Rock Crab, as she had decided to name the new species, lacked eyes, and instead sported two long and black antennae where its organs of sight should have been.

Unluckily for the hapless critter, Alice was currently less focused biology and more on cooking class and, after avoiding one more tentative snap from the desperate crustacean, she quickly planted the sharp, metallic tip of her prosthesis through the crab’s brain.

To her chagrin, she was back to her raw diet, the electric larvae having been left in the small cave on the upper level, mainly due to the difficulties of transportation.

Alice pried open the hard shell of the crab and inspected the insides, a bit nauseated by the gelatinous consistency of its meat; despite that, she quickly removed all the parts that seemed inedible and quickly slurped the small mouthful of warm slurry.

The taste was atrocious, definitely worse than even the screechling’s meat, with an oily and bitter aftertaste that coated her tongue and palate. Despite the flavor, she quickly cracked open and ate through the rest of the creatures— this time with her taste turned off— before delving into her own body and immediately tripling the amount of white blood cells in her intestinal tract.

Just in case… Dysentery wouldn’t be particularly nice in this setting. she thought.

After her meal, she quickly found out how the ‘waste disposal’ worked and then completed her settling process, placing all the instruments she had crafted, obtained and carried throughout her journey. Once everything was in place, she briskly walked to her futon and sat down in the middle of the clearing, the eight eyes of Maath already set on her form.

“💧︎◻︎♏︎❒︎□︎ ♍︎♒︎♏︎ the food ⬧︎♓︎♋︎ ⬧︎⧫︎♋︎⧫︎□︎ ♎︎♓︎ ⧫︎◆︎□︎ ♑︎❒︎♋︎♎︎♓︎❍︎♏︎■︎⧫︎□︎ Alice.” said Maath after a short silence, her arm already caressing the wire as her hind leg pointed at the few remains of her meal, now piled in a heap near the water-filled bowl, ready to be used as glimmer food.

“Yes! Well no, actually! But thank you for sharing your food.” She hurriedly said, making a show of pushing away something imaginary as she answered.

Alice was now quite used to their method. She would use the few words she recognized in the phrase to understand its entirety and would wait for the queen to do the same, sometime also signing back her answer.

The two quickly relapsed into their conversation, using a mix of their two languages as they slowly started learning from each other.

It was a somewhat slow process, the language talked by the Queen was full of convoluted phrases and flourishes that took her a long time to translate but she was generally quite forthcoming in her explanations, sometimes even using Skitter to weave an image of what she meant.

The topics of their talks were actually less important than the act in itself, Alice had decided on the first day to only disclose information about her once she was sure of the Spider Matriarch personality and truthfulness, talking instead about some of the things she had done while in the caves and carefully glossing over the source of her powers.

Their conversation went on for a good number of hours, sometimes interrupted by more convoys of food which the titanic spider quickly consumed, sometimes even extending one of her hind legs to keep caressing the wire with the frontal one to keep the conversation going, showing a surprising amount of coordination with her limbs as she did so.

It was only when Alice’s eyes had started closing on their own accord, and she was starting to search for a good way to end the talking, that the Queen finally touched a more pressing subject.

“💣︎♓︎ ♍︎♒︎♓︎♏︎♎︎♏︎❖︎□︎, Alice, ❑︎◆︎♋︎■︎♎︎□︎ ♋︎❖︎♏︎⬧︎⬧︎♓︎ ♓︎■︎⧫︎♏︎■︎⌘︎♓︎□︎■︎♏︎ ♎︎♓︎ ♐︎♋︎❒︎♏︎ ◆︎⬧︎□︎ □︎♐︎ ⍓︎□︎◆︎❒︎ ◻︎□︎⬥︎♏︎❒︎⬧︎ ◻︎♏︎❒︎ cure my wounds. ☹︎♋︎ ■︎◆︎□︎❖︎♋︎ molt ⬧︎♓︎ ♋︎❖︎❖︎♓︎♍︎♓︎■︎♋︎ ♏︎ ⬧︎◻︎♏︎❒︎♋︎❖︎□︎ ♎︎♓︎ ❖︎♏︎♎︎♏︎❒︎♏︎ ♎︎♏︎●︎ progress ◻︎❒︎♓︎❍︎♋︎ ♍︎♒︎♏︎ ♋︎♍︎♍︎♋︎♎︎♋︎📬︎” Maath said matter of factly, the smattering of understandable words allowing Alice to basically understand the question.

Any drowsiness in the girl’s body quickly faded, instantly transmuted in careful calculations as she carefully chose her words.

“I was hoping to first understand more of the injury honestly. But it seems to be time for me to pay back the hospitality. I’ll inspect you tomorrow Maath.” She said, standing up and heading to her new home.

“I just hope I’m doing the right thing” she muttered as she laid down on the soft silk of her ‘bed’.

I really hope I’m not damning myself.

*****

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