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They moved a few hours later, leaving the titan were it lay, to be consumed by the scavengers of the expanse.
Alice moved silently, in her arms was the huge, cold, grey core, weighing heavily on her shoulders and mind.
She walked right behind what was basically a small silken stretcher, carefully dragged over the ground by four of the surviving Spear Spiders, their movements slow and deliberate as not to strain their wounded sibling.
Skitter was still severely injured, he had already lost six of his eight legs and was now barely moving as they progressed into the tunnels, led by a silent Ricee while Chillushrith took care of rearguard duty.
She kept him alive, using most of the slowly regenerating energy of her light core to enhance the mitosis process of his lungs and flesh and to drain the fluids produced by the burns. It was a slow process, but he was improving.
The rest of the swarm was busy dragging dozens of silken cocoons full of paralyzed prey, normally a huge success for the Nest.
Not this time. Not with the price they had paid for it.
The young woman turned around to stare at the curled up form of Eisor, carefully dragged on yet another stretcher. She looked so small now.
Alice bit her lip, thinking about her decision, knowing that the Overseer was dead because she had picked Skitter over her.
It was my choice. I’ll have to live with it.
The girl kept walking, squashing down her guilt by focusing on the large mass of glimmers that was still coating her limbs and torso, most of her slowly-regenerating reservoir of energy immediately used to keep them alive during the trip.
She was still thinking of a way to store them outside of her stomach. She had a couple of ideas but they would take quite a bit of effort to come to fruition and she would still only be able to stockpile a small amount of glimmers.
It could still work. she thought as she played with a small glowing tendril, feeling her energy being eaten by the glimmers to maintain the unusual shape. And I already have to improve on the rest of my body. I could go all in with the modifications after all.
With a sigh, she let the tentacle fade into the rest of the mucilage and observed the ‘colony’ in its entirety.
The time spent using the shining particles to dig through the flesh of the millipede had worked wonderfully on their numbers, doubling them time and time again as the internal organs of the monster slowly disappeared in the ever-hungry globules. She was sure they would be helpful during the healing process.
She looked again at the dead Thinker.
Maath. I will have to tell her. I don’t know how she will react.
She lightly slapped her cheeks with her hands, pushing away the thought.
It doesn’t matter. I can’t back out of it now. I just need to ensure it goes all right until then, I need to make sure it was worth it.
She kept on walking.
Maath laid in the darkness of her burrow. Silent. Unmoving.
She had not eaten for days after Qhevi had informed her of their decision to ignore her orders.
They went and risked their lives for mine.
She didn’t deserve their sacrifice, the time they had spent keeping her alive over the molts—the years, she corrected herself, using the word for time she had learnt from the human—could have been better spent on the further expansion in the system.
Instead, her Daughters had kept feeding her useless carcass as it slowly decayed from within, wasting innumerable resources to heal her or, as their ideas for a cure were slowly exhausted, just to keep her stable.
She had watched her species, once a burgeoning power of the caves, slowly turn into a shadow of its past as they stopped their progress for her sake.
What a failure.
She hadn’t been able to stop the Anathema in time and this was her curse.
I wonder what he would say. She mused as she adjusted her position, paying no heed to the pain coming from her wounds opening up once again, ignoring the smell of rotten blood all around her and still denying the compulsion to eat she had been fighting off for days on end.
The molt was close, she already felt the new, soft chitin pushing underneath the old one, like it had always done throughout her existence.
A lot of the important events of her life had occurred during a molt.
It was definitely interesting.
She delved back into her memories, thinking of a past long gone.
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The spider was stuck. Completely and undeniably stuck.
She had squeezed herself into a hollow in the stone to molt in safety, trusting the narrow entrance to keep away the bigger and more dangerous predators while her exoskeleton was still soft. It might have been a mistake.
After molting, she had proceeded to eat the crunchy and delicious remains of her carapace, full of the necessary nutrients for a newly-grown arachnid such as her.
After a short resting cycle, she had decided to finally venture out of the hole and discovered she was suddenly too big to actually pass through it. The stone that had once protected her had now become her doom.
She had then spent a long time uselessly trying break off enough material to widen the crevice, soon realizing that it would be an impossible task for her weak limbs and subsequently panicking, attempting to force her body out of the narrow entrance, hoping that her softer shell would bend just enough to push through.
She had been sorely mistaken.
Now, the unlucky spider was stuck halfway through; her thorax and three of her four sets of legs were out in the tunnel while the last pair and her abdomen were soundly embedded in the stone, making horrible creaking sounds every time she tried to push herself out.
Over the groaning and grating of her dark, chitinous exoskeleton, the spider’s extremely accurate touch receptors had started feeling soft and regular vibrations coming from the ground; something larger than her was slowly moving in her direction through the tunnel she was in.
Immediately realizing that she would be an easy prey for whatever monster the newcomer was, the young spider stopped trying to move out and instead started using her legs to push herself back into the hole, hoping that the creature wouldn’t notice her hideout and electing to reschedule her escape attempts for when the danger had passed.
Her plan immediately failed when, after pushing very hard with her free limbs, she discovered that moving backwards had become just as impossible as moving forward, the jutting out borders of the stone preventing her from sliding back in. She was completely stuck.
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She would be eaten, but she would give as much of a fight as she could possibly do. There was a chance she could get lucky.
The steps grew closer until the predator finally turned around the last bend in the tunnel, suddenly appearing in front of her eight eyes.
She hissed loudly, raising her anterior legs to appear even larger than she was in an effort to keep it at bay.
The creature stopped on its tracks, raising with blinding speed a gleaming fang half as long as her but remaining a couple of steps away from her trapped form.
There was silence for an instant and then she heard its strange, halting cry.
“Hi there, it seems you got stuck, huh?” somehow, the tone didn’t seem intimidatory or violent. Had she scared it? She tried to make herself look even larger, ignoring the creaks coming from her abdomen.
It took a step forward and she hissed again, clear venom spilling out of her exposed fangs and pattering on the ground, she wouldn’t be easy prey.
It stopped once more and she heard another strange and repetitive noise before more sounds similar to the previous cries escaped the being’s flat maw, “Definitely a scary one. Do you mind if I help you out? I don’t think you stand a chance otherwise.”
She was confused. Why didn’t it attack? It wasn’t scared, of that she was now sure.
Suddenly, the being rushed forward, too fast for her to react in time. In an instant it was by her side, safely away from her fangs and limbs’ reach.
She could still see it as it hid the reflective fang into a darker object and then pulled off a part of its body, opening it like a bundle of her silk and extracting two unknown objects from within, some kind of sharp spike and a smooth and cylindrical rock with a protrusion in its middle.
The monster placed the spike on the edge of the crevice and started slamming the other object against it with a thunderous noise of cracked stone and stricken metal that reverberated on the walls of the passage. So loud!
Fearful, she was forced to withstand the blows coming so close to her body, flinching every time she heard the painful sounds and felt their vibrations on the limestone.
Over time, however, she felt the pressure on her own abdomen disappear, rubble and dust landing over her exoskeleton and falling to the ground.
“Aand done!” suddenly shouted the monster as the last chunk blocking her finally crumbled away.
She skittered out, rushing away from the creature but stopping after a few steps, turning around to stare at the strange being, waiting for its next move.
It had already placed the two objects in the strange bundle it carried and placed it back on its shoulders. It jumped a couple of times on the stop before emitting even more sounds.
“You’re welcome little one. Just don’t attack me now. It wouldn’t end well for you.”
It said as it took a single step forward, forcing her to take a couple backwards. It was blocking her path!
It went on like this for a few minutes. Every time it took a step in her direction, she would take a few more to keep her distance until, with a strange and sudden upwards movement with his shoulders, the creature finally started quickly walking towards her.
Immediately, she produced a small glob of silk with her spinnerets and connected it to a thin thread with her frontal limbs.
It stopped again, the black dots of his two, strange eyes somehow moving to point at her creation.
“Uh, interesting, what are you doing with that— agh!” the glob flew true and got stuck on its strange flat face, giving her a chance to weave around its lithe body and then away unimpeded, sure that it wouldn’t be able to follow her for at least a little bit.
As she skittered away, her mind tried to understand what had happened. Why didn’t it try to eat her? Was its purpose just to free her?
She didn’t know.
She wanted to.
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They stopped midway through the smooth tunnel they had traversed to reach the expanse, still quite far from the newly constructed bridge over the lake.
Alice immediately took the chance to lower the incredibly heavy core, placing it on the ground and then sitting beside it after using the Lumen to clear the ground of the wet and foul-smelling bacterial growths that had colonized it.
In the meanwhile, Ozren and a couple of the spiders from her team of weavers finished sealing off that portion of the gallery, essentially creating a large, cylindrical chamber where the swarm finally laid to rest.
Despite the woozy feeling in her head, the young woman forced herself to stand up once again and approached the still form of Skitter, inspecting his condition and reinforcing the orders she had given to his cells, guiding their growth during the reconstruction of his lungs and other damaged organs. She was sure that the injured male had enough nutritional resources to get at least a bit better before needing to be fed. It was mainly a matter of time now.
Next, she moved past the rest of the swarm, searching for the more grievous wounds and using the remaining contents of her well to heal them as much as possible, trying to prevent more fruitless deaths until she felt the first sign of a headache rearing its ugly head.
Only then did she finally lower herself on her clean portion of the ground and slept for good.
You have reached Level 20 in the Biomancer of Symbiosis Class.
Your energy never seems to be enough. You have learned the skill Improved Mana Recovery. You will be able to increase the amount of magic you regenerate at the expense of your resources.
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After that day, she made sure to quietly follow the strange monster, always keeping herself hidden and safe but also making sure she would have a clear line of sight to observe its strange actions.
Whatever it was, it seemed to be completely uncaring for the territories it crossed, swiftly finishing off any of the enraged residents that decided to attack it before progressing further into the system of caves, seemingly meandering without a goal.
She observed it use an incredible number of tools and objects that it would pull out of the rigid bundle on its shoulders; at times, it would even create strange signs on a thin layer of hide or use the same tools it had used to free her to create inscriptions on the stone of the walls.
She couldn’t begin to understand that behavior.
Sometimes, it would take some time cutting into a prey with a smaller version of its fang-like tool, ripping off meat and, in one case, a small, round rock she felt immediately attracted to, but otherwise, it would leave them on the ground to rot, ignoring the delicious feast at its feet.
She definitely didn’t and would quickly scavenge what it left.
Time passed as she kept following the creature until, after countless free feasts of the opponents it had slain on its path, finally came the feeling that another molt was due.
Decided to keep following it, she carefully moved closer than she normally would, found a safe, hidden spot nearby, webbed its entrance and quickly began molting anew, trying to be as quick as possible as not to miss the departure of her path to effortless meals.
She had just moved out of her old shell when a familiar gleaming fang suddenly sawed through the silk, pushing with a bit of effort through the resilient material.
She attempted to move but found the chitin on her legs to be still too soft to walk, she would damage herself if she tried. She was once again stuck and at its mercy.
The twolegs, as she had lately started calling it, bent forward to avoid bumping into the low ceiling and then stepped into the small cave while pushing his bundle in front of himself.
After a bit of tossing and turning it seemed to finally find a comfortable position on the ground not too far away from her and sighed in what she thought was contentment.
“Hello again you little scoundrel. I’ve been waiting for a long time to catch you unprepared. Your little trick with the silk has been extremely unpleasant to get rid of let me tell you.” it said, its tone somehow calm and harsh at the same time. She tried to hiss but only a pitiful sound came out of her airways.
“Oh don’t worry. I’m not here to kill you. I would have already done so otherwise. I’ve seen mooching off my efforts. You’re a clever one aren’t you? Your kindred would have instantly attacked me. It was not in my plans but I think you’ll be very useful during my little adventure. I promise you won’t be mistreated and I’ll probably free you as soon as I’m done. I’m more of a reptile lover myself. No offense.”
The stream of unknown sounds continued as the creature pulled out a huge collection of strange objects from its sack.
Out of the curious silk-like cloth of the bundle came shimmering fluids, bizarre bands and a couple of small and enticing marbles she somehow craved with all her being.
Slowly, as her carapace hardened, the being fused all those objects together and then carefully tied the resulting two bands to her frontal limbs.
Suddenly, she felt a connection establish itself to the being. She didn’t like it at all.
She hissed in annoyance and fear, ineffectually trying to shake off the two bands.
“Interesting. A much wider range of sensations than I expected. You really are a strange one aren’t you? Oh well. Let us work together from now on.” He said, extending one of its upper limbs towards her.
She instinctively bit.
Or tried to.
A feeling of wrongness washed over her, so much so that she even tried to skitter away from it.
“I’m sure it’s strange but no biting me. I still don’t know what that venom does. For the time being you’ll behave nicely and you’ll be rewarded.”
The twolegs simply kept making sounds as her carapace hardened and took its normal shape. When she finally managed to stand up on her spikes, it suddenly decided to crawl out of the cave and, without another word, started moving alone the same passage as before.
She watched it uncomprehendingly until, suddenly, she started thinking—no, feeling, that following the being was a very good idea.
She did so.
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A loud click echoed in the silvery glade in front of the Queen’s burrow, illuminated by the shimmering green pool filled to the brim with waste and carcasses being eagerly consumed by the voracious glimmers.
Maath was suddenly shaken away from her memories and brought back to reality.
She slowly cleaned her pedipalps and then proceeded to push herself out of the cave. It was the first time someone had requested an audience ever since she had retired to her lair. She assumed it would be for something important.
She came out and found herself staring at a squirming Qhevi, her silvery carapace not showing its usual luster as she presented a small collection of silken bundles.
“I do not wish to eat, Child. Give those to the hatchlings.” She commanded with a click.
Too harsh, she immediately thought upon witnessing her daughter flinch slightly at her words, nonetheless, she immediately replied.
“Yes, Mother. However, I’ve come to tell you that the expedition has been spotted in the Colony’s territory.” Qhevi spoke quickly as she connected the bundles between themselves to expedite their transportation.
The Queen of Spear Spiders immediately stiffened, anger and expectation mixing in her head for an instant before she spoke again.
“Did they succeed?”
“I’ve been told that they obtained the core of a titan. The human wants to begin the healing process as soon as possible.” She hastily explained before trying to squirm away from the clearing.
Maath sagged, relief flooding her body. They had triumphed. Her daughters had once again given their all for their useless mother.
“I see. Call her Alice by the way. Names are important. You should keep it in mind.”
“Sorry, Mother”
“Leave the prey. I’ll commence the molting process now. And give the last meal to the glowing waters. Alice will surely be satisfied.”
As Qhevi hurriedly left the clearing, Maath finally started increasing the pressure on her old exoskeleton.
The molt was starting. It was nearly time.
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