The wooden doors to the mining camp remained closed for over a full day, all quotas waved while crystal spiders raged. All crystal stored in the depot had been emergency evacuated to the surface, lest the spiders hone in on it and attack the camp itself.
And then in the middle of the lock down, the spiders began killing themselves. Less than an hour later, not a single living spider could be detected within the range of the network of wired sensors strung throughout the complex of tunnels.
The camp doors swung open and the miners were forced out of the camp. While many avoided the areas where the spiders had been, the braver amongst them had a free for all as they raced to collect spider ore.
Spider ore was basically the creatures’ bodies. Any mineral a crystal spider ate was digested and became part of them. Their skins and internal organs were transformed metal. Crystal like protrusions covered their bodies.
But most important, changes occurred in the basic structure of anything spiders digested. Changes that defied both mundane and mystic science. It most often simply increased efficiencies by a great degree, such as increasing things like a metal’s ductile strength or conductivity beyond any materials that occurred naturally. However, a significant portion of the processed substances were altered randomly and completely. Dense metal might increase its density but float in water like a piece of cork. Crystals, once shattered into shards, might link across galactic distances with their shards for instant communication or travel via portal construction. The possibilities were endless.
Of course, the very real possibility of becoming crystallized zombies destined for consumption was a significant deterrent to mining them, a deterrent that not even embedded compulsions could overcome. But greed could, so any ore processed by the spiders was worth triple quota and never counted against a quota increase. It was by far the most valued find by the miners.
Moriah woke to silence and an aching body. She half sat, half lay against a wall in a rather awkward position, but the aching of her body turned into intense pain from her shoulder when she thought to move to a more comfortable position. Still, she forced herself up to a proper sitting position as pain-sweat broke out across her whole body. Finally she leaned her head on the stone wall behind her and took shaky breathes to regain her composure.
Once she could focus again, she surveyed what she could see. The cavern was surprisingly visible, lit up by dimly glowing crystal formation spread across wall and ceiling. Well, it was not bright enough to even be called dim, but her eyes had already become accustomed to the darkness due to being unconscious so long.
Pretty, the girl thought. The crystals glowed in many different colors, reds, greens, amber, purple and so many others. The strange lighting carpeted the floor with a unique appearance that seemed to ripple gently.
The girl stared at a rippling ground and smiled with pleasure at the sight. A chaos of jagged, crystal-like silhouettes jutted out of the floor everywhere she could see, all with the same rippling phenomenon. They did not glow like the crystals on the walls and ceiling and gave off a slightly sinister vibe to the area. Only the tinkle of dripping water and Moriah’s breathing disturbed the deep silence in the cavern.
As she gazed on the scene, she remembered the strange dream. Unlike most dreams, this one remained more vivid than any waking moment. It blazed in her mind with infinite power and authority. She could not, she in fact did not want to deny the truth it revealed. Her family wanted her to continue living, just like she would have wanted them to live if she had been the one to die. Her success would be their honor. Even if it had been a dream, the truth of it struck a permanent chord in her mind. It gave her back the purpose and hope she had once abandoned.
After some time passed, the girl tried to move again. Pain lanced out from her shoulder, once again numbing her body, engulfing her arm. But she no longer wished to die, so she gritted her teeth and forced herself while whimpering like a kicked puppy. Gaining her knees, she struggled to stand while cradling her arm. Taking a moment to ensure her balance, she stepped carefully to where she remembered her light being, praying with her whole might that it had just turned off because she hadn’t been wearing it, which was how it had been designed.
Bending to pick it up, her head spun and she bruised her knees dropping to the stony ground. Pain shot through her arm and into her chest as the impact jarred her shoulder. She bit her lip trying to stop herself from crying. She whimpered and tears leaked past anyway.
Several minutes later, she fumbled with the lamp. Two of the head lamps were broken, but the third blinded her in its brightness. “Ach!” she squealed, squeezing her eyes shut. Turning the light away from her face and waiting for several long moments, Moriah squinted her eyes open.
Blinking, she cleared her vision and let out a small curse, blushing at the word. “Sorry Mom,” she muttered. Still, since the rippling phenomenon was actual a carpet of fenguar growth, she felt somewhat justified for the curse.
Apparently, the spore she had kicked into the cavern had expanded and covered almost two thirds of the lower quarter of the bubble. She shuddered and muttered under her breath, “Now what do I do?”
She could not climb up to the hole she had fallen from, not even if her shoulder was not injured. She did not know where her lesion knife was. Crystal spiders were probably going to show up anytime now, or maybe something worse even. The fenguar was going to want to eat her all too soon. That stupid gnome was going to be mean to her too, she was certain. The girl felt tears trickling down her cheeks as her situation began to overwhelm her.
Moriah raised her good hand to lift her filter mask so she could wipe her eyes clear, but touched her cheek instead. She disparately ran her hand over her face and head, searching for the missing mask. There were things even worse than fenguar spore down in the mines it protected from. Her stomach dropped and she turned to look back where she had lain. There, laying on a stone as if on formal display lay the mask. The faceplate was shattered and broken, only jagged shards around the edges remaining.
She stood alone in the cavernous bubble, feeling smaller by the second, finally bursting into wailing tears of fear and frustration. Stumbling to the broken filter, she tried again and again to get the shattered mask to reseat on her face but could not do it with only one hand. Hugging it to herself, she continued to sob for several long minutes.
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Eventually, the mask fell to the ground from her limp hands, raising a puff of spore. Struggling to walk, Moriah avoided the fenguar as best she could and hunted for her lesion knife. Spider corpses lay all over the cavernous bubble, the crystal ore jutting from their bodies glowing grave markers.
Gurgle. Moriah stopped and looked this way and that and then down at her stomach, horrified and feeling betrayed. How could her stomach make such an awful sound? Her eyes widened as yet another facet of her situation hit her. She was lost in the caves without food or water. She glanced around , her little hands trembling with redoubled fear. After several moments of fighting the panic, she verbalized her terror, “Am I just going to starve to death now?”
In response to the verbalized question, embedded knowledge kicked into gear, information flooding her mind with essential, lifesaving knowledge. Right there in the bubble lay a wealth of nutritious food. Certain parts of crystal spiders were supposed to be delicacies in many parts of the galaxy, as was the fenguar plant. But she needed her lesion knife to take advantage of either. She would have to stun the fenguar so she could harvest it, or it would harvest her. She would have to cut the spiders open in order to access the edible parts, and their carapace like skins were composed of some of the sturdiest materials known.
With this new flood of knowledge, Moriah lost her desire to find her knife. She was hungry, but she was not that hungry. Fenguar spore? Spider guts? Gross! Not that the guts were edible, but she thought it would be better if they were because the edible parts were worse.
She meandered around the room, looking with little intent to find, which is probably why she found it so quickly. She was torn between delight and horror that it appeared to be damaged. On the one hand, she needed the knife to survive the moment, let alone make it back to the camp. Thus, broke equaled “bad thing.” On the other hand, she did not have to eat fenguar or spider ... stuff. Thus, beyond any reasonable doubt, broke equaled “good thing.”
Inspecting the damaged knife, Moriah jerked and spun around. Several trembling moments of peaceful silence passed. And then the soft scraping noise she had heard before repeated itself. The child’s mouth turned to cotton and she made a strangled sound of terror. Switching her light onto its highest setting, she strained to find the source. It came again. Moriah dropped to her knees, peeing her pants. The queen’s corpse had twitched. More moments ticked past.
Moriah swallowed and forced herself to stand again. “I’m a warrior-knight. I am a warrior knight,” the girl chanted under her breath even as she forcefully ignored the cold dampness dribbling down her legs. She gulped and held the broken knife out in front of her, advancing toward the currently motionless queen.
A few steps still separated her from her nemesis when the queen jerked. Moriah froze, unable to move forward. Unable to flee. Not even able to fall to her knees again. Surely it had not come back to life, had it? Her thoughts raced around in circles, going nowhere. She did not believe in ghouls. She would not believe in ghouls!
Moriah whimpered.
Suddenly the queen’s tough, crystalline skin split open. Moriah’s first scream rick-rocketed off the wall of the bubble, followed by no less than ten others.
Silence descended like an axe. Moriah stared at the tiniest ferret like creature she had ever seen sitting in the midst of the blossomed body. The embedded knowledge in her brain once more filled in the gaps and she said, “Oh, you must be the new queen!” Relief washed over her like a cool breeze for a moment as the possibility of a ghoul queen passed.
But then the new reality facing her shot another shot of adrenaline through her - just because the REALLY bad thing of the old queen becoming a ghoul did not occur, this did not of necessity mean the alternative - a new queen - constituted a good thing. Forgetting that her lesion knife was broken, she activated it.
Lesion knives generate their energy fields by the use of three sculpted crystals. A purple crystal stored massive amounts of energy from which a clear and a pink could draw for their more specialized functions. The pink crystal generated a pure field of force, much like a traditional force field. The clear crystal created vibrational energy fields. The two affects, when combined, could cut almost any material known to exist, both natural and manufactured.
Patterns of power inscribed inside the handle core controlled these entwined effects. These glyphs provided direction and focus to the energy so it formed into consistent, useful manifestations. The glyphs also regulated both the types and quantity of energy released at any given moment.
The electronic controls built into the handle provided an interface between the glyphs and the user. They included the on/off switch, basic blade patterns for novice operators, and generic power level controls which were defaulted to the lowest settings to conserve energy.
The damage to Moriah’s lesion knife lay in its electronic controls, the interface between the user and glyphs. However, fortunately, or unfortunately depending on one’s point of view, the on/off switch had not been damaged. Since the interface had been damaged, the glyphs attempted to draw their ‘instructions’ directly from the operator. When Moriah activated the knife, she wanted to strike out at the queen. The knife responded in accordance with that singular focus and the blade shot outwards, covering the yards to the target and bending to strike true. Because Moriah did not possess knowledge on how any of that worked, she did not try to draw power from the power source. The glyphs embedded in the lesion knife used the child’s own essence to manipulate and control it.
The little queen died.
Moriah stared at the dead queens and then at the knife. And then back at the queens.
And then back at the knife.
And then her world turned black as she collapsed unconscious, all of her energy sucked dry.
When Moriah woke, it took several long moments for her to remember what had happened and even longer before she could stand, and even then she wobbled. Hunger now drove her. She did not think she should use the knife again until she had time to think over what had happened, so she could not harvest the fenguar plant. That meant she had to eat from the spider.
Unfortunately, the emergence of the baby queen had opened up that particular food source and Moriah no longer needed the knife. Trying not to disturb the fenguar as much as possible, the girl looked into the abdomen of the large queen. Most of its innards were metalized, but she easily identified the edible portions, mostly juices and pulp, from her embedded knowledge provided by those who trainer her to mine.
“Ugh, so gross!” she declared aloud and with great emotion. She was absolutely starving, her muscled twinging pain as her body consumed them, but was she seriously hungry enough to eat this vile looking concoction? It glowed a swirling mix of yellow and purple, orange and dark crimson. She was fair certain there were swirling highlights of black and gold in some of the pulp, and orange and lime green in the juices.
She shut her eyes tight and wrinkled her nose. Scooping some of the pulp, she licked it ready to hurl it across the room. “Oh. OH.” Her eyes snapped open and she began to grin, “It actually tastes good?”
She leaned against the queen’s body as relieved tension sapped her small strength. She began eating with more confidence, even trying the juices. It all tasted way better than it had any right to taste. Still, she ate either with her eyes shut or averted. No matter how it tasted, viewing this particular food gave her a strong gage reflex.
Tick, tick, tack, crack. Moriah’s snapped her eyes open despite the appearance of the food. That noise was disturbingly familiar and ever so close. She found herself staring at three more tiny ferret-like spiders, each about the size of her index finger. They were sitting within three tiny, broken eggs sequestered deep within the abdomen of the dead queen. Vaguely she realized that a larger pair of egg-halves in the same area without an occupant.
She stared at them. They stared at her. No one and nothing moved.