My name is, well..., was, Desini. Great name, I know. From what I was told, my “parents” dropped me off at the orphanage in a luxurious “Destiny Awaits” pre-built computer box. Why they could afford an expensive, $2000 dollar game-station but not keep their child, couldn't tell you. What I can tell you is that without any form of identification or any contact information, I received the great name of Desini, which never got me weird stares. Nope.
Needless to say, I learned to fend for myself as one of the very few girls at the orphanage. But it wasn’t that bad, I grew up in Northwestern Washington, surrounded by thick forest and thicker rain. Going to school wasn’t half bad, although the super special individuals who think the world revolves around them were as plentiful as cockroaches in a condemned motel.
As I grew up, I learned that I had a creative soul, I loved to draw, paint, sculpt and create.
I could spend hours in front of a canvas, creating silhouettes, otherworldly patterns, landscapes, and anything else that was waiting just beyond the limits of my imagination. Using the school studio was bliss, the one place I felt comfortable on Earth.
The other thing I learned is that people can be incredibly cruel.
Let me give you an example of latter.
When I was seventeen I worked at a sawmill in order to get enough money to move to Seattle and become an artist for a living. While there I met a charming gentleman by the name of Randy. *Gag*
He was the owner’s only son, and his pride and joy. I always felt uneasy around him, but I only had the job for a couple of months until I saved enough to move, so ignoring him until then was bearable enough.
However, near the end of my shift one day when everyone was headed home, I got stuck with locking up the office and securing the equipment. Out of the corner of my eye while doing so, I spotted Randy staggering across the yard. He looked hammered, which was pretty much the norm for him.
“You okay?” I questioned, eyeing him carefully in case he did anything stupid.
My question seemed to wake him up from his stupor, and he looked around until his eyes caught me standing on a raised platform near the controls for one of the saws. He slowly started moving towards me trying to make small talk.
“Oh yeaah, I’m finee.” He slurred, “e’en beetter with you ‘round.”
I gave him a cold stare, remembering the stories of the other female workers that quit due to claims of sexual harassment. Of course, those claims disappeared rather quickly due to some greased palms. But if Randy tried something with me, I was going to sober him up rather quickly with an ancient technique: a five finger salute.
My stare seemed to do the trick, as he confusedly ogled me, bewildered at the situation of a girl refusing him! Revolutionary. But he turned around and walked away, so that was the end of that, I mistakenly assumed.
I turned my back to shut down the saw, the last log having been cut in half, when I heard loud clanging coming from the stairs behind me. Randy had covered the distance between us when my back was turned and charged at me.
I yelped and raised my hands to defend myself, but Randy grabbed them and shouted at me, “Who do you think you are?” The alcohol’s effect wearing off at his rage, “I’ll show you who’s in charge here!”
He jerked my hands above my head and held them up with one hand. With the other, he reached down and cupped my chin, leaning forward to mash his lips on mine.
I kneed him right between the legs. Hard.
Randy jumped back, howling and crouching a little, protecting his face with one hand and crossing his arm over his stomach in pain.
“You little slut!” He writhed.
“Piss off Randy, before your precious member there gets mutilated beyond repair.” I snarled
At that, Randy pulled himself to his feet and grabbed one of the elongated hooks used for moving the massive logs around. With fire in his eyes he swung it at my face too quickly for me to dodge. Pain coursed through my face as I felt warmth spread diagonally across my face from my forehead down to my upper lip. The vision in my right eye was gone, replaced with a murky red world. I didn’t have much time to react though, as I felt a kick to my side, pushing me off the platform into the moving saw. I spun in the air in what felt like slow-motion as I frantically tried to grab onto something.
With a sickening crunch, I landed in an impossible position on my side, with my right hand bent backwards over my wrist so it lay flat against my arm. My legs were splayed out behind me and my chest was on fire, I probably had multiple broken ribs. The vision in my left eye was blacking out around the edges due to the pain I was in, but I realized that I was slowly being pulled to the saw, which would cut me in half if I remained in the position I was in. I tried to roll over onto my stomach and pull myself off the saw with my left hand, but after moving only a few inches, I felt the disturbed air from the saw on my left leg. I screamed as I felt it nick my pants just below my hip and I thought I heard a voice other than Randy’s above me.
Then the saw dug into my leg and the world disappeared.
---
The next thing I remember was waking up in a hospital, surrounded by monitors and IV bags. My face was on fire, aching from horribly acute shocks of pain that made the world spin. I almost blacked out again, but I gritted my teeth and cleared my head.
That was when out of my left eye I saw the two stumps that used to be my legs.
That was when I blacked out.
---
It turned out, Randy had panicked and gotten another of the workers that was about to leave to come and help. Luckily for me, the man was a former soldier who had worked with the field medics to treat injuries caused by bombs and shrapnel, so he managed to cauterize my legs and face, deeming it the only way to keep me alive long enough for the paramedics to arrive. It worked, but the doctors repeatedly commented on how lucky I was to have survived.
Oh boy, did I feel like I was bathing in four leaf clovers.
The owner’s son even managed to get off scot free, claiming it was a terrible accident and that while he was moving logs, I startled him and he “accidentally” blinded me in one eye and crippled me for life. Nobody really believed him, but when the only other witness is a virtually penniless orphan in a 2-week coma, lining pockets to make problems disappear is pitifully easy.
I was seething with rage, at Randy, his father, the people that just brushed off my life like it was nothing because they got a quick buck or two. I was angry at everyone really.
Long story short, I was eventually released into the public with a rusty wheelchair, a demented right hand, and no savings—due to all of the money I had saved for my entire life going towards medical bills, with thousands of dollars still owed.
Lucky me.
The first thing I did was gather my art supplies, go to a park, and try to paint. My hand in its mangled state refused to cooperate however, and I felt the last emotional support beam I had crumble into dust. I broke down in tears in the middle of the park, clenching my teeth to muffle my sobs.
I noticed the figures around me glancing over at my crying figure and in every single one I saw a quick shudder of revulsion before they averted their gaze and lengthened the distance between us.
Some oaf was shouting something about war and a return to the old ways where competition and necessity drove invention and progress and how the world would be better if everyone was fighting, some sort of drug-induced drivel.
I ignored him and did my best to ignore the others, focusing on the good things in my life, like how I still had one good hand and one good eye. Also, I was alive, which is generally a good thing. And that was when I was blown up.
---
The pain from my severed legs, mangled hand, and scarred face disappeared. I was floating in a sort of… nothing…ness. It was hard to think, it was hard to focus. I could see something of a faint outline surrounding my body, like I was drawn on a page in glowing light-blue paint. The outline didn’t extend past the stumps of where my legs used to be though, they curved down right below the hip just like my severed legs did. I watched as the outline began to fade and I slowly began to lose consciousness, dying and now disappearing forever. I tried to reflect on my life but found that my memories were quickly shriveling up like paper under intense heat.
Suddenly, I felt something like a swarm of hooks latch into my back and across my arms, it wasn’t exactly painful, but it wasn’t comfortable and it felt… wrong.
The spikes lurched me back, my spirit body-thing twitching at the abuse. I was assaulted again, but with each pull the hooks only embedded themselves deeper, pulling me away from… dissolving I guess?
I turned my head and out of the corner of my eye I saw a terrifying black vortex, swirling parallel to me, the hooks connected to it by dark, slightly glowing chains. I was getting pulled into THAT?
Aww come on, I was so close to being dead.
---
Sidren was practically dancing around a large egg-shaped structure at the center of his study, excited for the final stage of his arduous experimentation. It had taken him a long time to hunt down not just one, but two living spidren and get them to mate. He only succeeded because the remanents of the race were barely intelligent at all, but intelligent enough. They had been hunted and selectively killed to do so. In a weird way, only the animalistic and stupid would survive, like a backwards form of survival of the fittest.
Sidren chuckled, no! He was getting distracted, and there was no room for distraction at a moment like this! Once the female had laid the egg sack, the temporary home to five or six spidren larvae, he had painstakingly drawn the runes for a complete one-way binding, with a few personal modifications, on the hardened shell of the sack.
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Normally, a complete binding that tied the soul of an intelligent creature to a human and created a servant was virtually impossible, or caused massive complications. They were even more unstable if the creature wasn't willing (a common occurence). However, with a few modifications and the right circumstances, Sidren was confident he could finally develop a breakthrough that would create the first true one-way binding between intelligent creatures. He would show the Kaidian order! Sending him off here to do an impossible task, well he had done it hadn't he?
Whoops! Distracted again. Today was the day that the egg sack would burst and he would be faced with the results of his experimentation. If all went according to plan, he would have not only one permanent servant, but four, five, or even six minions to do his will! The fools at the academy would have a hard time shunting him off to the wilderness when he marched right back and flaunted his achievement in their faces! They had failed for hundreds of years and he had accomplished it in less than a decade!
There! Motion again! He couldn’t contain his grin as the shell began to crack, the squirming of the strongest spidren sibling disrupting its protection. A sharpened black leg shot out of the sack’s side, small pieces of shell flying out. The leg was shiny and covered in the ooze used to keep the infants alive, but Sidren was surprised at its size. If that was the leg of just one of those creatures, then the sack would be much too small to fit four or five of them.
Sure enough, as the creature struggled and kicked out against the encasing more and more, he realized that there were not multiple, but only one spidren! Infuriating!
Sidren scowled and turned to his desk where a book on spidren anatomy and life was open. Skimming it, he found the passage about multiple offspring from one egg sack and frowned as he re-read it. Undoubtedly, it said four to five!
Sidren started muttering to himself and deciding what exactly he was going to do now. While only one spidren infant was unfortunate, he could still make it work.
He turned around to face the spidren, and realized it was staring directly at him. While it was only an infant, it still came up to a little above his waist. The human half looked like a 6 year old girl, with light purple hair, like lilac. Her arms were covered in a dark chitin that started at her elbows and encased all the way up to her hands which ended with five finger-like appendages which tapered to a sharp point. Her lower, spider half resembled that of a normal spider, with eight large segmented legs the color of obsidian surrounding her body. She had a faint outline of something resembling an eye on her abdomen, only slightly lighter than the surrounding chitin.
But the most unsettling part was she was staring directly at him with all eight red, horizontal slits she had for eyes.
Sidren felt a chill go down his spine, the gaze of this creature was… disturbing to say the least. She was staring up at him like a human toddler would look at a parent. But the intent behind the gaze was worlds apart. He remembered a detail from his book that stated spidren infants wouldn’t be able to see clearly for about two months, but this one was piercing him with that gaze of hers.
He shuffled back, keeping his eyes on her and trying not to make any sudden movements, then slowly turned around to get his book. He realized she hadn’t moved yet, and, what was he worried about, her soul was bound to his anyway! Smiling upon recalling the best safety measure there was, Sidren flipped through the (apparently) inaccurate book to find the mistaken passage.
---
Desini awoke in what felt like a prison. She remembered little, but an image of a creature striking her with a hook and pushing her towards a giant saw permeated her mind, along with another image of hooks dragging her into a black abyss. She began to struggle, feeling too constricted in the small shell-like container. Rotating and twisting around, she managed to get a good angle for one of her legs to kick through the wall.
It went through easily, like shredding paper, but she stopped and stared at her leg. She had a leg. But it was black, hard, and segmented. A spider leg.
She tried to scream, but the ooze inside the… egg? Stopped her from doing so. She couldn't breathe or speak, the goo filled her throat! Frantic now, she writhed and kicked with each of her… eight, legs and struck out with her two arms, which were also covered in dark chitin.
Finally, she broke free, the last of the shell peeling off her head. Coughing the goo out of her lungs and slipping around on the floor for a while, she eventually found a foothold and stood up. As she brought her upper body to its full height she realized that she had been laying back against her, woah, abdomen. Her eyes darted around the room she was in, trying to get a grip on her surroundings, but her vision was swimming every time she moved her head, and that only confused her more. She appeared to be in some sort of circular tower made of stone and lit by candles. The wooden ceiling reached far above her head, and the floor was simple stone as well. She noticed a creature with its back turned to her, but it was almost twice her height.
It turned around and she stared at the being, trying to remember anything about the creature in front of her. She realized she had a past life, but couldn’t remember hardly anything at all from it. The one thing she recalled in crystal quality was the adolescent creature attacking her and destroying one of her eyes and sawing off her legs.
Hatred, her old companion, returned and she gave the coldest stare she could to the human (she recalled the name). She remembered the cruelty of the species. He seemed unnerved, and she realized she could sense his unease through her… claws? Surprised, She discovered a set of claws right around her waist that hinged and tucked down under her abdomen, but she could distinctly sense fear from the human in front of her through them.
He shuffled back and she continued to stare at him, waiting for him to do something cruel.
But nothing came.
Instead the man turned around and started flipping through a book on his desk. But Desini knew it was only a matter of time until he struck out. She narrowed her eyes and scoured the room for a potential escape should she need one. The slits of windows were too small for her to escape through, and the heavy wooden door was just to the right of the man. She was unsure if she could rush past him quickly enough, so she bided her time.
Trying to get a grip on her surroundings and clear her thoughts to formulate a plan, she closed her eyes. But the world wasn’t replaced with darkness. Desini could still see. With a start, she realized that her forehead had three more sets of eyes, replacing her eyebrows and taking up most of the space above them. With a conscious effort, she realized she could control them individually, closing and opening them individually. However, she seemed to have no pupil, and she couldn’t move her eyes to focus on a particular object, instead, everything within the same range was clear to her, she merely had to focus her mind on it.
This would take some getting used to.
---
Sidren concluded that the book was garbage. What kind of scholarly book would have a title like The Truth About Our Terrifying Neighbors anyway?
Confronted with the real thing, most of the descriptions and explanations in the book paled in comparison, and he could discern how faulty they were. It was nothing more than a children’s book to scare children into submission!
Fuming at the waste of effort and time, he began to reassess his plans. One minion would do he supposed… Oh! But that’s if the soul binding was absolute.
Sidren turned around and grinned, the spidren started at his rapid expression change and took a hesitant step back. Oh, it was afraid of him, well that only made sense of course, he was twice her height, although they probably weighed about the same. Toning back his excitement, he softened his grin into a warming smile and spoke to the creature.
“It’s alright, calm down, I’m not going to hurt you. You and I are going to be a team, and together we will be able to do great things!” He soothed.
While she couldn’t understand his words, Sidren saw her relax a bit at his gentle tone. He tentatively reached out with his soul presence to feel the strength of the link between them. But his eyes widened as he realized it was nonexistent.
Sidren gasped at the revelation, his complete soul binding had done nothing! Aghast at the result and devastated at the waste, he spun around and reviewed the runes he had painstakingly inscribed on the egg sack.
The rune for himself, Sidren, was prominent in the middle along with the proper runes for soul, binding, power, and life. It should have bound the life, soul, and power of the creature entombed within to him, Sidren. But he couldn’t feel any sort of link between him and the creature!
His scowl deepened as he contemplated what could have gone wrong. Runic inscription was both precise and chaotic. The runes would always perform their function and once a configuration was discovered, they reproduced the same result without fail. However, experimenting with new combinations of runes often resulted in unexpected results. Sidren ground his teeth together, ‘as in this case.’
His eyes widened as he realized what might have happened. The runes must have interpreted his name as the source of the power they would draw on to bind a soul to a forming body, creating life. Oh, he knew it was too complicated!
‘But that would mean…’ Sidren paled as he realized there was an unbound spidren right behind him.
…
Cold sweat broke out down his back as he slowly turned to face the creature.