Day 6

Today dawned cold and blustery, with spitting rain and thunder echoing outside. The great hall shakes every now and again, dislodging puffs of dust and crushed rock; but is otherwise stable.

Due to the lack of light, he has to activate his Glowing Eyes ability in order to see, and even more heavily depends upon his Presence Sensor to find his way around.

He has a very specific task in mind for this today.

But he doesn't neglect to check up on his pens, finding a few more Glow-Worms that have become cocoons, and moves them to the other pen after killing the bugs that tried to intrude and fixing up the damage. In fact, he goes so far as to use his thickest, stickiest webbing on the outside of the pen to reduce the damage. He was running out of junk material to reinforce the pens.

After that, he goes spider hunting.

It takes him quite a while to find a spiderling. Its a lonesome, almost wilted creature; but it attacks him on sight, and he has to beat it down; but he doesn't kill it. Instead, he jumps onto its back and presses his hands against the back of its head; easily hearing its panted breath.

He could almost feel its hunger. If left alone, it would die shortly.

“Absolute Command!” He chitters, and a flash of black, almost purple light spreads across the monsters head like a halo. In his mind, he can feel the monsters resistance, but its too weak to last long, and soon enough it breaks and he's gained something much like a familiar. Its his own pet monster!

But its still too weak to move much, and is hurt from the attack. So he leaves it to go grab a couple of worms, and brings it back. The spiderling servant eats up everything, but even then its still not full, so he rushes off to bring even more, including one of the cocooned ones he'd found in the back of the pen that he must have missed earlier.

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The spiderling makes short work of the meal, and seems grateful, going so far as to rub up against him.

The Imp can only grin and laugh, petting its head, careful not to touch its eyes.

“Good. Come with me.” He chitters at the monster, and starts back to his camp.

Once there, he has to stop the spiderling from going after the eggs he'd managed to save, but after that he checks the monster for serious injuries and nods in satisfaction once he finds only a few cracks in its carapace.

He uses his web to create impromptu bandages, with a sticky layer on the inside and a hardened layer on the outside, and slaps them on. Its the best he can do.

After that, he starts ordering the monster around, doing this and that and making it use its web for specific tasks.

So long as he spells out his commands precisely, the monster faithfully carries them out. It still seems to retain some free will, but doesn't seem to be able to deviate from his orders. It was a good ability. Next he takes it to the worm farm, and forbids it from eating them all, and instead commands it to repair the webbing on the pens whenever its damaged, and that it may eat ten worms a day so long as it takes care of the pens.

It was a nice, steady diet for a monster who'd usually have to share its kills with the rest of the nest.

He'd have to be careful not to turn the monster into a glutton.

The spiderling doesn't like the cold rain that is pouring inside from the hole in the ceiling though, so soon enough it returns and shakes oddly like a dog to disperse the water.

After that, its time to eat and then go to bed. With the spiderling on guard duty at the farm, he rests easily and flops into his bed. He's asleep within moments.

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