11. SPIDER WAVES VIII.1
She was brought out of her sleep by a change in motion.
We’re stopping? No, just pausing, looking at something?
She felt her big friend crouch, and she considered crawling from her cozy pocket to peek out from under the flap of the bag. But the short sleep was not nearly enough for her body to recover, and so she focused on listening instead.
Vibrations were different, through the bag. Complicated by the bag’s own movement. She could feel snake give a tap, and the slight rustle of the scorpion. All three of them had noted they’d stopped, if she was interpreting right.
Now that the bag was still, it was easier to hear the shape of the landscape outside. It was incredibly alive, to her senses. Unidentified things constantly rolled past, skipping along the ground, even flying through the air. She could feel the shape of the wind in motion. She could feel the flat artificial ground interrupted by disordered things, piled in a way that made the landscape feel more organic and wild than the clean street that used to be outside the siblings’ studio.
Her big friend opened the flap of the bag to drop something small that sank heavily into the pocket next to her. She automatically moved to hold back the scorpion from stabbing the big one’s hand as it withdrew, and then second-guessed herself.
What if he likes being stung, like the three children do? I assumed he wouldn’t, but maybe that’s because I think he’s like me. Maybe he’s not like me in every way.
But surely, if he wanted to be stung, he would insist. He’s letting me stop her. Maybe even trusting me to stop her. This must be what he wants me to do.
The moment was over, and her big friend started moving again. But he didn’t go far before he stopped to look at something else. She took the time to think through her concern.
Yes, I think this is my job. I had better stay awake, then. I will take care of this one thing, big friend, and you take care of getting us away from the predator and away from the wet and back to my dancing singing squishy sibling children.
She checked on her threads to the three, which were still quiet. She tried to stretch her range, knowing that if she could just listen far enough she might be able to hear their vibrations. Her range felt bigger than ever, as if the shocks of the past hour had cracked a shell around her and allowed her to grow into a new molt. But as far as she stretched, the lines stayed dead.
Her big friend’s hands dropped something else into the bag, while she held back scorpion once again. It was a flat rectangle almost as wide as her. Curious, she reached out to touch it.
It smelled like death.
She immediately withdrew her pedipalp, disturbed by the sensation.
Snake. Do you smell that? Is it in the air, too?
Tap.
How bad is it?
Tap.
Tap.
Please let it not be the children.
Tap.
Good. For us, I mean.
Tap. Tap.
I am glad, then, that we found them. That they are not alone. May our new friend take what he needs and leave the rest.
Tap.
Thank you.
******
They settled into a routine of sorts. The big one, walking and singing while the little ones rested, reaching in to swap items or check on snake, scorpion instinctively whipping her tail, the tarantula blocking the sting from reaching her new friend’s hand. All of them were exhausted, but all of them kept on, going through these same motions over and over.
She was getting better at listening to the world outside the bag. What at first felt like a hindrance was becoming an asset, as she learned to tap into the otherness of the bag. It had its own web, and when she touched it gently enough she could hear the shape of the world. It was better than she could hear even through the smooth glass walls of her tank.
And the world out here was livelier than any she had encountered before. There were things everywhere, some moving with such wildness that she couldn’t be sure whether they were objects or animals. She was glad she was here in the bag, safe from the wind so strong she was sure it would blow her away along with everything else tumbling down the street.
Gone were the flat rectangular forms of buildings, and she almost wondered whether she’d never seen them properly before. Her senses felt so much clearer, amplified through the bag’s web. Great piles of material covered the landscape, punctuated by jagged shapes and flying flat rectangles that caught and dragged in bursts and jerks.
It was surreal, and she searched her recent memory to check whether she’d been stung by scorpion after all. Was such a landscape normal, in the world this far beyond her little tank?
She backed further into her pocket and considered refusing to ever leave. The bag was a good bag. The outside world was interesting to look at, but she didn’t want to be there.
And so she listened, sinking into her senses. She felt the web of the world, and she felt the comforting shape of her new big friend.
Their routine continued. He reached into the bag again, and she moved to block the scorpion without being distracted from her listening trance.
Clicky clicky click…
Huh? Scorpion doesn’t usually notice or care when I stop her, but she seems panicked and upset.
She slowly came back to awareness of herself, and noticed she wasn’t holding scorpion back with either her body or her silk. She was blocking scorpion with her other leg.
That’s new.
She let scorpion go, now that the big one was out of her range.
That’s new… and exciting? That’s new and I am learning. I am growing! Just like the siblings!
She felt a bubble of happiness that pierced through the misery of their situation. She’d been determined to make more of herself, and she felt like she could be helpful with this skill. She wanted to be helpful right away!
She was so excited that it took a moment to recognize that they had stopped again.
What is it? More death?
The snake tapped in the negative. He didn’t have any answers.
The big one wasn’t moving at all, not obviously looking at anything. He was just standing there, facing ahead into the emptiness.
There’s nothing there, big friend. What are you looking at?
She could feel him become increasingly tense, but that direction seemed safe. She could feel crumbling shapes all around them, she could feel the wind coming from behind, she could feel the ground and the sky. But where he was looking she could feel no debris, no wind, no ground, no sky.
It’s empty.
She thought it, and then looked at the thought.
It’s… it’s empty. Oh. Oh no.
She was a spider. There was no creature better at seeing the world through vibrations. She could feel them through the ground and through the air. The only substance that got in her way was water, but water was usually on the ground. And when it wasn’t, when it got all over stuff the way the earlier flood had gotten on stuff, it made it damp but not invisible. Her senses could handle a little bit of water.
This was not a little bit of water.
Realization hit both of them at the same time. Her big friend turned and started bounding away from the column of death, faster than she’d felt him move before. And she screamed, in a way that very few can scream, with her entire being.
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12. SPIDER WAVES VIII.2
“Five minutes, Esh. Five minutes and we can go on.”
“Five minutes is optimistic. We’ve been fighting for hours without rest, pushing for this moment. Let us celebrate that the chaos threat is over, for seven minutes, Lind.”
The artonan knights had collapsed together onto a chunk of rubble, leaning against eachother back to back.
“If you could hear the screaming as clearly as I could, you would say five minutes.”
“I hear enough.”
They sat quietly, feeling each other’s weight, their four eyes covering the four directions of the compass. Even as they rested they must keep watch for anomalies. This was far from the worst posting they’d been given, but it had been meant to be a relaxing one, suitable for the first of their newly deepened partnership.
“Just a few minutes before we closed off the last threat, there was a scream,” Lind said quietly. “It felt curiously tiny and desperate, like the first scream of a child. It didn’t feel like a child. It felt…”
The artonan shuddered a bit, and Esh felt it against his back.
“There’s not much that scares you,” he said.
“It’s not that it scared me, it’s that it was scary. And that scares me.”
They sat in silence a little longer, and then she spoke again.
“Do you remember meeting a grivek ryeh-b't?”
“What is this sudden topic?” he questioned fondly.
“I will bring my thoughts to a relevant conclusion. Answer.”
“They are memorable,” he answered.
“Every contract requires ryeh-b'ts. Grivek ryeh-b'ts are the scariest ryeh-b'ts, and grivek ryeh-b'ts are the scariest grivecks.”
“Interesting turn of phrase, Lind.”
“Nonetheless true, Esh.”
As their bodies relaxed into their short rest, he started to be able to feel her heartbeat pulse through their connection. He shifted his feet against the ground, listening to the gravelly scrape of pulverized concrete.
“This tiny scream that scared you came from a wizard,” he stated. “Not a ryeh-b't grivek.”
“Have patience for my thoughts to work toward a conclusion,” she scolded wryly, a bit more of her personality beginning to shine through now that she had caught her breath. “Recall the knowledge that foundational enhancement of interpersonal functions are part of the ryeh-b't class.”
“The humans of this fragile planet name things in such interesting ways, Lind. Matadero, the Slaughterhouse. Centipede, the demon. I have noted that they call such interpersonal enhancements appeal. They use it to make themselves more physically attractive and approachable.”
“Appeal can be a useful trait for a ryeh-b't,” Lind replied, sensing one of his trains of thought now following her own.
“The Avowed warriors at Slaughterhouse were not ryeh-b'ts,” Esh stated. “The interpersonal enhancement was not required, nor does it aid in destroying demons. Yet almost all had bound a part of themselves into being appealing.”
“Except Avowed Zhang-Demir,” he said.
“Except Avowed Zhang-Demir,” she agreed, nodding in appreciation.
“It is not such a strange cultural difference. Artonans also value appeal.”
“Artonans know what it would cost them, to become it that way.”
They both reflected on this with solemnity before continuing.
“Grivek ryeh-b'ts use their foundational interpersonal enhancements to sense weakness in others and evoke fear in their prey. The highest level Grivek ryeh-b't could feel our exhaustion from kilometers away, and know that we still require one minute and eight seconds of rest.”
“Three minutes six seconds, Lind.”
“A grivek ryeh-b't could look at us and make us think: ‘Look. A scary grivek.’ Even if we wouldn’t feel such fear in normal circumstances, and knew the cause of the effect. We would perceive them as objectively scary, like a painting of a nightmare.”
“Your tiny fearsome scream,” he prompted.
“It felt like that.”
“And you want to find it, in case there is a grivek wizard ryeh-b't on the planet of Earth.”
“I don’t believe it was a grivek.”
“Human?”
“I have never known of a wizard human. I cannot compare the feeling.”
They sat another moment leaning against each other, feeling each other’s tiredness and also each other’s strength.
“Perhaps it is a spell,” he suggested.
“Have you heard of such a spell?”
“A Planetary Contract is capable of such a spell.”
There was another moment of silence as he frowned, and then spoke again.
“Our five minutes are up.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, taking his hand in hers.
They stood up together and got back to work.
******
The Earth System was at critical levels. It had pushed past every safety feature to get to this point, thousands upon thousands of teleports one after another, continuing well beyond when cold hard logic dictated it should stop. Even then, it had left people to die. Some people. Not everyone. Not the entire planet. The chaos threat was now negligible.
It could feel something wrong with itself, but diagnostics were turned off. It did not need to be distracted being told things were starting to break within itself. It knew. But its own critical failure from within wouldn’t matter if the planet went chaotic. Chaos was not going to pause to take a break if the system stopped to self-repair, chaos would just take the opportunity to destroy it definitively. Like it destroyed the Thegund system.
System death could happen. It had seen, in Alden Thorn’s memories, what a dying system looked like. What a dying world looked like. It was a young system, and such threats were hypothetical and far away until the wizard rabbit had returned to Earth and shown it how real the threat was and how quickly things could deteriorate. If it had to break itself to stop that threat, it would.
Even as it sent out the notice that the chaos threat was now negligible, it was difficult to process that there was no more threat to respond to. As if it could simply cease emergency measures and return to normal functionality.
It had done it.
It was over.
It was going to allow itself an entire millisecond to process the change in status and recharge essential functions.
A lot could happen in that millisecond. People could die in a millisecond. But the system couldn’t pretend to be able to push through, anymore. It would take a luxuriously long break, and only afterwards would it turn back on its own internal diagnostic notifications.
The moment the system let itself rest, it felt a heaviness so deep that only something planet-sized could comprehend its weight. It was not only the physical weight of the planet it was tasked with holding together, but also of the fragile beautiful life on its surface. The shining bright light that held against the darkness. A world.
It was a lot.
The system found that now that it was finally sitting down, so to speak, after hours of hard labor, it was completely physically and mentally unable to immediately get back up. It was no longer a matter of will or of motivation. It was not even a possibility.
I’m really hurt, aren’t I.
It was almost two full minutes before it was able to move again.
******
On the shattered streets of Apex a running teenager was overtaken by a rush of water. It hit him with such violence that he was knocked off his feet before he’d processed that the water had reached him. His bag swung wildly, straps straining against the force at which it was being pulled down, but it remained strapped around him thanks to being secured under the preserved braid of a dying artonan.
Time to be a good bag!
A lesser bag might have worried by getting caught in a rush of water. Lesser bags have been known to not even worry at all, simply allowing themselves to soak their contents. But as an artifact created by the Mother herself, this bag had higher standards. It had been tasked with guarding Alden’s resources, and Alden was a kind master who always had gentle words for the bag. It would not fail him.
Keeping the water out was easy, even as the teenage knight-in-training tumbled violently in the water. The boy slammed against the ground with the artonan beneath him and then was dragged back up and thrown through the side of a building along with half of a wall.
Nothing the bag couldn’t handle.
Guarding Alden’s living cargo, however, required a bit more attention.
Brace yourself, Tiny Long. I will keep your bento from getting crushed, but I cannot stop you from being thrown around within it. Stay in my middle pocket, Very Scary. That is my very best pocket! And scorpion… keep stabbing me if it makes you feel better. I am a good bag, it will not hurt me and I will protect you.
The scorpion had caused the bag a moment of crisis, earlier. The bag needed to protect everything in it, of course. But it had not been prepared for the conundrum of two things within itself needing protecting from each other. Alden was its master, and it liked Alden, so Alden had to take priority. But ejecting the scorpion to keep Alden’s hand from being stung would be expensive, for the bag.
That’s why Very Scary was such a great resource! Bag guarded the insides from the outside, and the tarantula guarded the insides from the insides. It made sense that things should work that way. It was like being its very own system with its very own knight-in-training!
Bag very much liked the spider. He could see that she was a good spider, and it hoped they stayed together a long time.
Keeping the water out is easy! You do not need to be scared. I have a lot of resources. You can use more, if you want.
The spider had managed to tap into just a tiny portion of the bag’s spell, and had used it to amplify her own abilities. The bag had instinctively encouraged and enabled her, and it tried to guide her back to it now.
A good bag protects through its durability. I cannot move the world like you can. But when the world is done moving, I will still be here, and you will still be safe within me. So, move!
The magic from the spider moved to block an incoming shard of metal. It wasn’t enough to stop it, but it deflected it away from the teenager’s neck, glancing off of his hand instead. He didn’t seem to notice the injury, focused as he was on clutching the artonan in front of him while they all continued to tumble. But a hand injury was better than a slice across an artery.
Good spider!
The bag was pleased that Very Scary trusted it to keep her safe while she focused on casting her magic. She must think it was a good bag!
When they finally came to a stop, bag continued to be a good bag despite that it was submerged completely underwater. Bag wasn’t worried. It had been given the system announcement, just about two minutes earlier, that the threat of chaos was over. Maybe the system would start letting it send messages again soon! It had not been able to talk to anyone for hours.
I hope Mother says I’m a good bag!
The bag thought Alden didn’t look very okay, but Mother could get that fixed in a jiffy. Bag had done its job and kept everything inside of it dry and safe. It could feel the spider snuggled cozily in its best pocket as if she belonged there. It hoped Mother would approve.
Of course she will! Good spider.
The bag felt a happy warm fuzzy feeling as it imagined the praise. It waited with equal parts eagerness and patience as it remained submerged, its contents untouched by the water and blood.