Anticipating the need to dodge did not give Lilijoy enough speed to avoid the web strands hissing out of the spider’s body. She had just enough time to tense her muscles and begin to initiate a sideways twisting move as the luminescent white strand splatted against her body. By then it was too late to stop the movement, so she ended up winding the web around her body like a spindle as she half leapt, half fell to the cave floor. The spider followed through the air on the heels of her sticky missile; Lilijoy felt six legs land on her, absorbing the impact from the spider’s body.

With her two front legs, the spider immobilized Lilijoy’s thrashing head and sank long fangs into Lilijoy’s neck.

“Stop it!” Lilijoy yelled at her system. She felt no need whatsoever to know the correct terminology for the implements of agony injecting venom into her neck.

As if it was responding to her, the spider quickly retreated from Lilijoy’s thrashing form and scurried back up the wall.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” she said. Or attempted to say. A numb tingling was rapidly spreading from the site of the bite to her face and jaw, so it came out as “Ararara rarar oo”

“Oh, I’m afraid it’s too late for that anyway,” came a girl’s voice. Nearly a girl’s voice anyway; it was overlaid with a raspy aspirated resonance. “It’s been a long time since talking prey wandered into my home.”

“Oa ararara” said Lilijoy.

“Yes, well, I’m afraid that you won’t be talking or moving again. We all need to eat, you know,” said the spider. “I’ll just stay up here and wait for the paralysis to kick in.”

Lilijoy tried to look up at her with burning eyes. Unfortunately, her eyes were currently directed along the cave floor, so she had to content herself with glaring at a squirrel mummy that had been dislodged in the brief action. She could feel the numbing tingle spread down her body, reaching her fingers and toes.

“It gets lonely down here, you know. Even the stupid males haven’t come by for ages. I don’t mind too much. They really don’t taste great anyway. But now I have a conversation partner!” Her voice brightened. “I won’t need to feed for some time, so we can hang out for a few days.”

“Uh oo,” said Lilijoy, uncharacteristically.

“I understand you are probably a little upset with me now. Just wait a few more minutes and you’ll probably be even less happy. That’s when the digestive enzymes begin to kick in. Can’t chew with these things, you know,” she said, clacking her fangs together.

This was the final straw for Lilijoy’s patience with her system. She pulled herself down into her mind space and yelled, “Jiannu! Get out here now!”

Jiannu’s voice came to her, sounding apologetic. “I’m sorry my dear. I’m sure you are feeling somewhat stressed by your circumstances and I hate for anything to add to that.”

“Then make it stop naming things at stupid times!”

“I thought I had,” Jiannu said, clearly feeling defensive. “Sometimes my control over the system isn’t perfect. After all, I’m ultimately just a reflection of you.”

“Is there any way you can help me out of this situation?”

There was a moment of silence. “I don’t think I should help you. The trials are meant to be experienced completely. They are the Inside’s way of finding out about you, your strengths and weaknesses, pains and pleasures. Anything I do will distort that and lessen the final results.”

“What final results?”

Exasperation filled her. Was there ever going to be a time she actually knew what the hell was going on? Inside and Outside, she was constantly buffeted by the winds of her own ignorance.

“When the trials are complete, you will receive your character…that’s some terminology left over from when the Inside was a game. The character will be based on who you are on the Outside, but many facets of the character will come from the Trials too. For example, if you face suffering with great fortitude in the Trials, you will have much greater resistance to damage when you join the Inside proper. Many Trial participants turn off their pain right away, and their characters come out fragile.”

“So, you are saying that the more I endure, the stronger I will be.”

“Yes, that’s certainly part of it. There are many other aspects, but I’ve told you too much already. Now get back to your little spider playmate.”

Before Lilijoy could express her feelings about that characterization, she found herself back in her body. Her Inside body. God, this was confusing!

She had only been away for a minute, but she could already feel a warm sensation replacing the numb tingle. Warm turned to hot, and hot turned to burning agony consuming her entire being. She tried to scream, but it seemed that even her vocal chords were paralyzed, and she could only release air from her lungs in a hiss between her teeth.

“I think it gets better with time,” came the girlish voice of the spider. “Once the nerves have died off and all.”

Lilijoy remembered when a bee sting had felt painful. This was as if every bee in the world was stinging her at once, inside and outside. She wanted to writhe in pain, to release some of the dreadful sensation through movement, but even that was denied to her.

Just as her mind was breaking from the pain, she felt a new sensation. A balming cool on her lips and tongue, then her forehead. Her right hand then began to experience the sensation as well. The pain in the rest of her far surpassed this small amount of relief, but it was an alternate sensation she could focus on to retain her sanity. But what on earth was it? Maybe her nerves had started dying first in those areas, she thought. Then she realized; could it be the honey?

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All the parts of her experiencing the new sensation were where the honey had been: hand, forehead, mouth. Now her insides were feeling a bit less molten too, and she felt certain. The cooling balm seemed to be fighting a battle against the spider venom, slowly spreading from its original points. As it reached her face and forearm, its progress slowed. A new tingling sensation began from where the cooling started, as her nerves came back to life again. She could now move her lips and twitch her fingers, though she was careful not to let the spider see her tiny testing moves.

Great, she thought. I can now poke the spider if it gets really close.

“How’s it going down there?” The spider asked, as if summoned by Lilijoy’s thoughts. “Feeling all warm and melty inside?”

Lilijoy could forgive an animal for acting in its nature. She would never choose to be devoured in a horrible way, but that was the way of the world. Animals ate each other. But animals that supplied a narrative to their meal were a step too far, in her opinion. As she gained back control of her head and more of her right arm, she decided to wait and see just how much more the miracle honey would help her. Progress was agonizingly slow, but she lost nothing from waiting it out.

“You are very boring,” the spider announced. “Usually their eyes are leaking while they make those funny whistling noses from their mouth. You are just lying there. Are you dead already? You aren’t supposed to die yet you know.”

She began to climb down to the floor in a leisurely manner.

Guess waiting isn’t an option anymore, Lilijoy thought to herself. Remaining still, she bellowed, “Stop, Spider!”

Startled, the spider retreated up the wall.

“My word!” she exclaimed “You certainly aren’t dead! How did you do that?”

Lilijoy wasn’t quite sure where to take this from here. She started in the biggest voice she could muster, “I am the voice of…”

Voice of who? She said the first thing that came to mind.

“…voice of GANDALF!”

The spider pulled all her legs into her body in surprise. “That doesn’t even make sense,” she whined. “What is someone’s voice doing hanging around in my meal?”

“I HAVE TAKEN POSSESSION OF THIS BODY!”

“But why? It’s mine now. I caught it.”

Flailing for some response, Lilijoy could only come up with the last passage she had read before mentally throwing her book across the room.

“I AM A SERVANT OF THE SECRET FIRE, WIELDER OF THE FLAME OF ANOR. YOU CANNOT PASS!”

The spider quivered for a moment. “I don’t like fire,” she said. “Do you think you could find a different body to yell from?”

“NO. I LIKE THIS ONE.”

Lilijoy winced inwardly at her lack of inspiration. Where was she going with this anyway? At least it was allowing the honey more time to effect its cure. Well, if stalling was all she could do, she might as well try to get the spider talking.

“WHAT IS YOUR NAME FOOLISH SPIDER?”

The spider was silent for a long time. Then, “My name? I don’t really have a name. Never needed one. Are you going to leave any time soon?”

“NO! I SHALL NAME YOU.” She paused for dramatic effect. And to run the clock a bit more.

“YOUR NAME SHALL BE...” She paused again, drawing it out as long as possible.

After a minute, the spider buckled, “Are you still in there? Tell me what it is!”

“YOUR NAME SHALL BE STARCOIL!”

The spider thought for a moment. “It’s a little on point, don’t you think?”

“NO. IT IS A MAJESTIC NAME FULL OF DRAMA AND POWER.”

“Okay… I’ll think about it. Can I eat you now?”

Lilijoy’s voice was very hoarse from maintaining ‘Gandalf’s’ stentorian tone by this point. She needed something to drink desperately and was fighting the urge to cough. She could feel most of her upper body reviving, though her legs were still inert. She decided it was time to change things up.

“Ahem. NO, YOU SHALL NOT EAT...ahem...ME!”

She thrust against the ground with her arms, quickly moving herself upright and then turned her head in what she hoped was a dramatic and creepy fashion.

Fixing the spider with her stare, she said, “I WILL EAT YOU!”

The sudden movement, impossible to conceive for the spider, coupled with the threat of consumption, sent the newly christened Starcoil fleeing through a gap in the ceiling as fast as her legs would carry her. Dirt and a few small rocks dropped from the hole and scattered across the room in her wake. Lilijoy began to drag herself across the cavern with her arms. She would have gone out the way she came in, but the slope of the floor and the memory of the hill just beyond the exit conspired to move her toward a small crevice at the back of the room.

Lilijoy had no problem with enclosed spaces, so she half dragged, half rolled into a horizontal crack at the base of the cave wall. She could hear the sound of running water echoing up through the narrow passage, and still feeling quite thirsty, she pulled herself through with all her might.

I never realized how helpful legs are for pushing me along, she thought, scrabbling with both hands as she wriggled her body through a particularly narrow point.

Eventually she popped through into the space beyond, and with a yelp, began rolling and tumbling down a steep scree slope. The clattering of the scree and the jarring violence of her tumble made it a temporary relief when she soared silently into the air. It was only when she slammed into ice cold water that she realized she had just fallen.

She tumbled through water pitch black even to her eyes, not knowing up from down, the muted tumult of the water moving across her ears. Lilijoy had never been in water like this. Once, when Night’s Safety had flooded during the rains, she had waded into the foul pool, but that water had smelled, and was oddly warm. This water carried daggers of cold, and was, as far as she could tell from the vast amounts penetrating her nose, quite pure.

She choked and gagged and was carried along in the utter black, occasionally slamming into some rocky surface or another, before finally, somehow, being tossed up on a dark shore. She coughed out gouts of phlegmy water from her nose and mouth. Not so pure now, eh, she thought as she emptied the contents of her stomach, also mostly water, into the sound of lapping waves.

Resting on the rocky shore and listening to the running water and the dripping sounds above her, she felt the remaining effects of the spider venom ebb and began to feel much better, though still bruised and vaguely nauseous. A message appeared in her vision, startling against the utterly black background she had been enjoying.

Message from Tao System Mode: Internal Message Content: Text Title: Body Maintenance

Message Body:

You have been in sensory immersion for over eight hours. Please log out for necessary body functions. It is recommended that you sleep for a minimum of six hours between sessions and maintain replacement caloric intake.

You will be automatically logged out in two hours.

Contact | Delete | Blacklist | Quarantine | Menu

With a feeling close to relief, Lilijoy logged out.