As I looked into the spider's gaping maw, I didn't feel fear as much as I felt surprise — and then the opposite of surprise. Ever since discovering this cave — and the webs that covered it — I had speculated about the cave's owner, and I was now confronting it directly. As I had expected, it was a massive spider, with massive legs and claws. Its fangs were considerably less massive — but not something I was eager to grapple with.

Now would be a very convenient time to have noxious breath, I thought to myself. It was unfortunate that my earlier encounter with the ants had left me with 0 SP.

Trapped in the spider's web, I opened my jaws, the one part of my body that I could still move. If it got close enough for me to sink my teeth into it, that might be my one chance.

The spider raised one of its eight legs — tipped with a menacing claw — and reached toward me in a manner that seemed almost tentative and cautious. As the claw got close, I made an effort to lunge toward it and bite it. Unfortunately, my effort to "lunge" accomplished little against the binding of the web that surrounded me, and the spider's leg was out of reach for my snapping jaw. The spider's claw retreated, and the spider took a step, appraising me with several rows of unblinking eyes — the fact that the spider had no eyelids to blink with was even more unsettling than the fact that it had so many eyes. I waited, breathless, waiting for the spider's next strike.

However, the spider didn't strike. Instead, it strafed around the web, making a circle around me, picking at the web. It took a moment for me to realize what was happening — it was separating the part of the web that I was bound up in. Why?

I didn't intend to wait long enough to find out — I began flailing in the web, which seemed to do no good — every movement allowed the sticky web to cover more and more of my body, sticking to more and more of my individual scales. The spider seemed unperturbed by my flailing, and wrapped me up in its web. Once I was bundled up, it held my helpless body up, dangling me from a thick bit of web. I tried to move, but by now, my body was so ensconced in the web that I couldn't even move my limbs or neck. I tried to shake and convulse, but it did nothing to break the thick strand of web by which I hung.

Then, the spider began lowering me, deeper and deeper into what felt like a massive chasm. At this point, I wasn't sure if I even wanted to break the web by which I hung — I couldn't tell how much empty space was below me, and I wasn't sure if death by fall damage was a fate preferable to whatever else the spider had planned.

Finally, I felt the touch of cold ground beneath me, and the spider deposited me on the floor, a tiny flat surface perhaps ten feet wide. It watched me for a moment, hanging from its web, then reached down with one claw, and sliced open the webbing that bound me, and suddenly, I could move my legs again. I looked up at the spider, and tried to jump toward it, jaws first, but it was hanging above, way too far out of reach for me to bite it. That, and the web stuck to my legs certainly didn't help — I wasn't completely bound, but I could still feel the stickiness on my feet as I stood on the webbing that had, for a perilous moment, been a complete prison.

I opened my mouth and tried to let out a roar, but all that came out was a squawk. It must have seemed truly pathetic.

Then, even as it began climbing and ascending upward, the spider opened its mouth. For a moment, I thought it was about to reach down and bite me — even though its mouth was too small for any part of my body to fit in it — but instead, I heard a sound come out. A voice. "Settle down, lizard. I'll be back for meal time soon."

I froze. For the first time in my life as a dragon, I had heard another creature talk.

I opened my mouth, again trying to respond, but all that came out was a squawk, and the spider was already on its way back to where it had come from.

The fact that the spider had spoken to me was so shocking that it wasn't until it was out of sight that I fully comprehended the words it had spoken to me. "Meal time soon." I didn't like the sound of that, but the spider was a predator who had found a creature ensnared in its web; it was only logical that it would try to make a meal out of me. And the spider — big as it was — was barely larger than me. I was probably larger than most of its prey; it might not be intending to eat me all at once.

That thought lingered in my mind for a moment, and then terror struck me. It might not eat me all at once. The spider's mouth, though framed by two large fangs, wasn't large enough to swallow me whole. But it was rare for spiders to swallow their prey like that: they tended to immobilize their prey, and consume them at their leisure, sometimes relying on digestive enzymes to begin breaking down their paralyzed prey before it entered their mouth. Was that a process that I might remain conscious for? Was that why the spider had decided to keep me alive — so that it could enjoy multiple days of fresh meat?

Minutes ago, upon realizing that starvation didn't mean immediate death, I had wept with joy. "I'm going to live." Those had been the words that had brought me joy and comfort. Now, they made me feel the opposite: they were discomforting. I felt my body start to shake with fear. I'm going to live. Would I remain conscious while the spider injected me with some paralyzing venom, staying conscious as it slowly dissected my body and digested my body parts over the course of several days?

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I had to escape. I had to start climbing — and so I started climbing, just as I had climbed my own plateau many times before. Except it was nothing like climbing the plateau: this far down, the walls of this cave were far smoother than the rock I was used to climbing, making it hard for me to find any points of friction or any protrusions which I might cling to for support. Geology wasn't my specialty, but I guessed that this deep chasm had probably been carved deep into the undersurface by some kind of running water, and that water had smoothed the rock surface, rendering it just as smooth as the smooth stones that littered every riverbed. I tried to dig my claws into the cave wall, hoping to penetrate it enough to grasp it, but it seemed futile: it was as hard as granite, or marble, or, well, any kind of rock that couldn't easily be penetrated by a dragon's claws.

The apparent futility of the effort didn't prevent me from continuing to try at the wall, searching for any tiny imperfection or rough spot where I could find purchase, but every time I tried, I didn't make it more than a few feet up before finding no place to grip, sliding back down to the bottom. I turned back to the bits of web that had bound me earlier, wrapping my limbs in them in an attempt to use them as a climbing tool by sticking myself to the wall, but wasn't enough adhesion to support my weight, not for the amount of distance I had to travel. I wasn't even close to climbing my way out.

I thought about ways to ambush the spider, but a thought hit me: if I couldn't climb my way out, then it seemed like I was trapped down here. Even in the unlikely event that I managed to defeat the spider upon its return, the pit of this cave could still be my grave. I had only made it down here because the spider had lowered me down here using its web, and right now I couldn't see any method out apart from the same way I had come: straight vertically, suspended by a thread. And it seemed very unlikely that the spider that had deposited me here for mealtime had any intention of liberating me. I was out of SP (and running low on HP), I was under-rested. I was less than a week old, trapped deep within the spider's catacombs, and unlikely to win a fight with the spider, and equally unlikely to find a means of escape even if I did win. I was completely at the spider's mercy.

Previously, I had lamented my inability to parley with the ants to negotiate a ceasefire. But here…here, I might actually be able to parley with the spider. It had spoken. If it could form a sentence, it presumably had the capacity for reason. Perhaps, if it recognized me as another creature who was capable of reasoning, I could persuade it to let me go free. But…what could I possibly do to persuade the spider? My low 'charisma' stat was the least of my problems; I couldn't even speak. It hadn't recognized my earlier squawks as any kind of attempt at communication.

One problem at a time. My first job wasn't to persuade the spider to free me — it was simply to get the spider to recognize me, to see me as an intelligent creature that could be reasoned and bargained with. A sapient creature confronted with the knowledge that I was also sapient might feel enough empathy to let me live until I found a way to communicate with it more directly. A thought lingered on my mind: the spider, after depositing me on the floor of the cave, had cut me free. It could have left me bundled inside of the web without the ability to move freely, but it had cut me free. Why? If it only saw me as a meal, it would have probably been better off leaving me tied up, but it had cut the web open, perhaps so that I could enjoy my last few hours in greater comfort. The spider, perhaps, shouldn't be assumed to be cruel and without empathy. I wasn't even sure if I was being rational at this point, or just rationalizing, but that hope that the spider could be reasoned with was all I had.

How could I prove my intelligence to a talking spider?

I turned to the floor of the cave. I tried scratching at the floor of the cave with my claw, but it was so hard that my claw didn't even leave a scratch — much like the walls of the cave that were impossible for me to climb. So much for writing a message. The one thing that I seemed to have down here were a few pebbles. After scouring the floor of the cave, I found fifteen of them, as best I could make out in the scant illumination of the cave, which I now realized was benefitting from the illumination of reflected daylight pouring in from the entrance that was far, far above, a reminder that I was operating without a solid night's sleep.

I arranged the pebbles in a line, considering the best way to try and communicate a message. A fifteen pebbles wasn't enough for me to write out a message: even the shortest message I could think of, "S.O.S.," the universal distress call, seemed like a stretch; five pebbles didn't seem like enough to assemble an entire letter, unless I could get creative...

Could I arrange them in a circle, or a square? Would some kind of pattern suffice to communicate my capacity for abstract reasoning? Maybe.

Of course, all of this was contingent on the spider actually being a creature who could be reasoned with. And even if I succeeded at that, finding a way to actually negotiate with the spider for my own life and persuading it to set me free was a different task entirely. (And that was completely setting aside the fact that even if I did escape this cave, there were still hordes of angry fire ants awaiting me on the surface.) But right now, taking a chance on a talking spider's capability for beneficence seemed like the best option — no, the only option — available to me.

My mouth formed a grimace, which then twisted into a pained grin. As helpless as things seemed, this wasn't the first time I'd been caught in a 'life or death' situation. The difference was that this time, the task ahead of me didn't involve combat or feats of strength. And yet…fighting for my life in this manner felt strangely familiar. The stress formed a twisting knot in my stomach that I'd felt many times before. For many seasons of my academic career, most of my energy had been spent trying to prove my 'worthiness' in hopes of winning the favor of some powerful entity whose arbitrary whims governed my fate.

I nudged one of the fifteen pebbles, pondering what to 'write' with it. I'd written grant proposals before. This time, I was arguing for my life.