In the darkness, a small spiderlike creature falls down from the only source of light, high in the ceiling. It makes a muffled cry of pain upon hitting the ground, before falling silent again. It stays on its back, its many limbs sticking out, and two burning green eyes looking at the light.

"Failed again, I see..." A barely audible voice comes from somewhere in the darkness.

To the side, two small red dots look at the tiny creature. When there comes no reply, a soft sigh follows.

"Anton, you need to stop trying. Have you still not realized the futility of it?" The red dots come closer, and another spidery creature, identical to the first, stops next to the other.

"You will fail and fail and fail until you are burned up. And if we are all unlucky, something will follow you down here and eradicate us."

The creature called Anton struggles to get upright before gazing at the other.

"Victor, shut up. You come here every time to tell me I should stop. Have I ever listened to you?" Anton looked at the other's red eyes, before turning away and stalking off into the darkness.

The other one, Victor, follows him. "Aaahhh, young one, don't you realize? I do this because I care. You remind me off myself when..."

"I was young, and I just want to spare you the mistakes I made." Anton completed the sentence in a practiced manner. "Yes, I know! But I will die before I stop trying. I will not end up, fading away into oblivion here, with people I don't know, in a body that is not my own!"

The two spiders squeeze down some stone tubes and arrived inside something reminiscent of an ant nest. Most of the things living in it were now calling it the hive, named by one of the first humans to have found it.

The hive was currently crawling with hundreds of spiderlike things. When Anton and Victor entered, they were ignored by the others. Arrival and departure happened all the time in the hive, and nobody really cared what others did.

"Let's see if your home is still unoccupied," Victor said, crawling next to Anton.

Anton said nothing. He was preoccupied with his most recent failure. Although the other inhabitants of the hive thought he was crazy, and some said he never got further than the first cave, today had been his best attempt yet. Although he couldn't be too sure, he thought he had actually seen the exit of the third cave before they got him. If he could enter that, he would have come further than any other spawn.

The two crawled for a while, deeper into the hive until they reached a small cavern, lined with holes. In front of many holes were rocks or dirt, blocking them from view, indicating they were inhabited by someone else. Only a small amount of holes were left open, and they headed towards one of those. It was almost at the top of the cavern, and they had to climb straight up the wall to get there. Not that it mattered, Anton thought. They could have crawled on the ceiling and still be fine. Looking up, he saw a few spiders doing just that.

Arriving at a hole, Victor walked to a blocked cave next to it and started pushing against the rock in front of it.

"You kept them away from it again, didn't you?" Anton called after Victor.

The spiderling stopped pushing and turned around. "Yes. And I will do it again and again until you realize the futility of your goal."

Anton wished he could shake his head because he would have loved to do that right now. Instead, he waved with a few of his limbs before entering the cave. It was almost empty, only having some glowing green fungus on the back of it and a rock next to the opening. He looked at it the rock for a moment, hesitating, before remembering how hard life here was and how much effort Victor must have shown to keep this cave unoccupied. He tried sighing, but the hissing sound he produced still unnerved him even after all these years. Annoyed, he blocked the entrance with the rock and went to lie down under the glowing fungus.

Stolen story; please report.

Now came the part he hated most, sleep. It was the only thing they could really do down here, besides talking and walking around, and most reveled in it. Not Anton, he hated it. Dreaming about what had been, about earth and friends. Nightmares about black things from space first thought to be alien spaceships, that ended up being demon-like monsters straight from hell. Closing his eyes, he began his ritual, cursing at his old neighbor, big ass Bill, who had pushed him out of the way to enter the escape ship right before the doors closed, leaving him stranded, together with millions of other unfortunate souls. After Bill came cursing at the governments, who had kept the incoming monsters a secret until the last minute, preventing anyone from creating their own escape routes. Then he cursed some more for the hell of it, and to distract himself. When sleep finally came, so did the nightmares.

Anton dreamt of the first hours after the demons had arrived, just after he had failed to board the last getaway ship.

He found himself standing next to his father's house, looking at the medieval-looking ship speed up towards the stars. It was early morning, and the sun wasn't up yet. His head in his neck, he heard his father murmur. "How can things like that fly? I see no jets or propellers.."

Trying to ignore them, he heard his father's new girlfriend reply. "It's magic, didn't you hear? They say magic is coming back, and everyone evil is running from it. It's a good thing we didn't board that ship!"

"No, it's not you stupid skank!" Antol yelled, losing his temper.

He saw his father cringe, the spineless coward. How he had ever gotten a young girl to stay with him was a miracle to Anton, and he wished he could have gone with his mother. But she had told him he was too young to do missionary work in third world countries.

"How dare you talk to me like that! I am your mother now, and you will treat me with respect!" His father's girlfriend screamed at him, stamping on the ground, her cute face warped by the anger.

Looking straight at her, he raised his middle finger and walked away. He couldn't stay here. He wasn't going to let his potentially last minutes alive be stained by these two. Behind him, he heard his father try and reason with the harlot. Explaining how hard his son had it, failing university, and now with his mother so far away. Anton began running, and somewhere the part of him that knew it was a dream began shuddering. It would come soon now.

He had rushed to Bemed his best and only friend's house. The only guy he knew who had as much shitty luck as him. He was living with two other friends, having left his home as soon as he turned eighteen. All three had come from broken and dysfunctional households as they called it, and between them, they barely managed to fork over the rent every month.

Arriving in front of the broken down apartment building, Anton rang the bell. He got no response, so he tried again, but still nothing. Knowing they might not hear it if they were gaming, he rang the doorbell of their neighbor. The old man never looked to see who was there, always opening the door, probably hoping his estranged daughter would show up. Rushing through the now unlocked door, passed the non-functional elevator, Anton ran up the stairs towards the third floor. From outside, he heard a loud explosion followed by a vibration that almost knocked him back down. Scared and angered, he kept going.

When he reached Bemed's apartment, he knocked on the faded white door. He heard nothing, so he tried again. After hammering on the door for what felt like forever, he heard a creepy, ice-cold voice from inside.

"Who's therreeee?"

Anton felt his hairs stand, and the color drained from his face. He backed away from the door. The fact it was a dream was slowly fading from his mind when he heard a slow, shuffling, and rattling noise move towards the door. Before he could turn the to run, the door opened a bit, and a black clawed hand gripped the side. Not wasting any more time, he turned and ran for the stairs. Before dashing into the stair house, he quickly looked behind him, but there was nothing, and the door was open. Facing the stair, he slammed into a hard, cold surface, bouncing back into the hallway. In front of him was a black monster. It looked like the cross between a man and a spider with four arms and four legs. Its face looked more like a praying mantis. One of its hands was holding a ripped off arm, red blood slowly dripping on the floor.

"What areee youuu?" The thing hissed before it pounced onto Anton, who screamed once before losing consciousness.

Inside the cave, Anton's spider form jerked before jumping up and hanging upside down on the ceiling.

"Damnit, of all the dreams, it had to be that one. Why couldn't it have been the one with Sintia and me behind the gym building?" Anton dropped down and tried his best to sit. But it was too hard without having an ass to sit on, and he gave up pretending.

Instead, he tried focussing on his last failure, and how he could get past the hunter insects. Today was the first time he had managed to outrun them. His new shape, similar to a wolf with six legs, had proven useful. But the lack of arms had meant he could only bite them. He knew that with only two legs, he wouldn't outrun them, but no hands didn't work either. In the end, he had been unable to face the wall-crawler and been devoured. His core energy hurled back into the depths if the lower regions.

But today would be different he promised, as he moved towards the rock blocking his cave.