---Meeting---

---Haorken’s perspective---

“Haorken!” barks my sister from the head of the column, her tone that of someone not about to be told that she is breaching decorum by asking a porter to consult.

I make my way up the line of women, each bearing part of the kill we butchered earlier.

I’ve managed to mostly get used to walking on only seven feet so I don’t stumble as I walk to her side.

My injuries may have plummeted me down the hierarchy but… clearly, Khr’kowan does not care about that right now.

I can’t say I blame her.

“Sister.” I say as I reach her.

She points a finger down the pass and asks “What in the Weaver’s name are those things!?” indicating the small crowd of strange beings.

“I cannot tell you, Sister… Though, I can say that they are certainly no Vermin… They look to be people… but not of any kind I’m familiar with.”

“People?!” she sneers, incredulously.

“Yes, Sister… Look at their garb… Look at their weaponry… Look at the way they do not flee from us… Those are people.” I answer.

One of the alien creatures raises a too many fingered palm and waves it through the air shouting something incomprehensible.

“Do they think to challenge us!” snarls Khr’kowan, enraged.

“The gesture doesn’t seem challenging, Sister. I think they’re inviting us closer… Perhaps they wish to converse…?”

My sister emits a guttural growl as she sizes up the newcomers.

“We could turn back and head to the pass we came by last night?” I suggest.

Toothplates bared, she turns on me and snarls “I will not have it said that Khr’kowan’s Huntresses showed their spinnerets to a few little, verminoid freaks blocking a pass! We move forward!… Be on guard, everyone! We don’t know what these things are, what they want or what they’re capable of!”

With that order, she strides forward.

The rest of the party fall into a defensive grouping around her.

I recede back to my place among the porters…

---Emiko’s perspective---

“Nononononononono!” jabbers Samus, uncomfortably, as we look down the V-shaped valley that Tymancha found for us at the cavalry detachment that’s just appeared “Why spiders?! The fuck did they have to ride fucking spiders!?”

“Samus… shut up.” I say, not looking at her and keeping my tone level and sweet.

She does a double take at the bluntness of my words and the juxtaposition with my tone but, mercifully, shuts up.

“We’re over here!… Come this way!” I invite, smiling toothlessly at the nearly two dozen mounted aliens.

Arachnophobia is not a reason to sully this moment that will be once in these people’s entire history!

The humanoid figures, sat astride their eight legged mounts, are recognisably the same as the one depicted in that statue we found on the desert peninsula.

I can’t imagine that their styles of headdress/helmet would so exactly match those worn by people 2,000km and 10,000 years removed from them, so those black horns and red tusks must be part of their anatomy.

I see a few colours and styles of sleek integument atop their heads between their horns.

The flesh of their faces is a strikingly iridescent, dark blue colour!

Their thick bodies are dressed in fine looking, silky garments in various colours, overtop of glossy, blueish-black plate armour that perfectly matches that that their mounts are clad in.

Here and there, metallic looking red spikes jut from their armour. A good match to their tusks.

Their weapons all looked to be tipped with blades of the same stuff.

Their legs hang down, in front of where their steeds’ faces must be.

Weirdly, the footwear they have seems to be completely impractical for riding!

There’s no articulation south of their knee, their lower legs each looking like one, solid, knee high, stiletto sabaton!

They look impossible to walk in!

That’s not the only strange thing going on in that general vicinity either…

I can’t see a single one of their mounts’ faces… All of the riders look almost like they’re sitting on top of the poor things’ heads with their loin coverings draping down between their legs and covering their steeds’ eyes and mouths.

Stolen novel; please report.

Actually, no… it’s more like the mounts must have each rider’s pelvis clamped between their mandibles!

The spiders must have immense faith in their riders if they’re willing to allow themselves to be blinded like that… Or maybe they’re naturally blind… so it doesn’t make much difference to them?

The First Contactees begin galloping down the valley toward us.

I’m unable to see any system of reins or stirrups by which the animals are being directed… Very curious to learn the trick!

They draw closer and closer.

It isn’t until they’re around 30m away that realisation dawns on me.

What I perceived as a detachment of cavalry… is not…

Now that they’re closer, I can see that these people are not humanoids sat astride arachnoid mounts…

They are… in fact… arachnoids themselves!

These people are half tonne Jorōgumo with an orthograde torso, head and arms, pronograde abdomen and eight powerful legs!

Their armour is clearly not a fashion choice but an integral part of their bodies!

What I took for stiletto armoured feet are clearly gross-manipular pedipalps!

Now that they’re closer, I can see that each of them have two main eyes, in more or less the same placement and proportion to their heads as a Human’s but, above each, are three smaller eyes in a little crescent with the concave side pointing down.

Each eye matches the colour of its pair but no pair of eyes matches the colour of any other pair on the same face… Likewise, there’s a great variety of combinations of colours across all of them.

The tallest, bulkiest one who appears to be the leader is nearly 3 metres tall as they approach but (since that wasn’t bad enough) they straighten their legs to gain another metre+!

They pull back the scaly, iridescent flesh of their lips, revealing metallic red toothplates.

As if nature delighted in going overboard when designing this species, the toothplates part to reveal rows of sharp, triangular, Spelvuklike teeth in the same blood red.

They jab a spear that’s head seems to be made of one of their own kind’s feet towards Xon and demand “Dukh Wikhar… Iskh toghwhakh ess?! Khis thugh ess!? Kham hekh thugh viha ki Khawekhhor Wakhhor kort’aan!?!?!?” in a bassy, gravelly, guttural voice.

It takes me a moment to realise that they… she… I think they’re a ‘she’… She probably recognises durasteel from the probe… Meaning she must have seen the probe…

Not as if I can explain it to her… at least for the moment.

I step forward and her attention whips to me.

“My name is Emiko ‘Smiles’ Miyazaki…” I declare, smiling toothlessly and touching my fingertips to my chest “…I am a woman not of your world… We have come from beyond the stars to invite you to become a part of a great stellar community known as the Galactic Union… It is a privilege and a delight to be the one to say; Welco…”

At that moment something thigh height and green streaks out of the undergrowth to my left.

It clears the distance to the leader in a fraction of a second, covering the last few metres with a 2m vertical jump to impact her midriff.

I have just enough time to process it as a 90cm or so, tailed humanoid as it scrambles up her front.

It makes it to her shoulders and flips acrobatically over her head, dangling from her pink braid, pulling her hair back to reveal a patch of soft maroon flesh visible beneath her chin.

The green clothed, hooded, masked figure deftly draws a blood red, metallic dagger from her hip and screams “Pod looooooooy!” before stabbing it into the chink in the enormous woman’s armour.

Neon blue blood gushes from her throat as she chokes and splutters.

The tiny assailant dismounts her target with a double backflip, spitting “Lrot, bak Mwit!”

All around us, hundreds of the little humanoids pour from the bushes, screaming a battlecry as the gigantic spiderwoman collapses to the ground…

---Khr’kowan’s perspective---

My legs give out as my lungs fill with blood.

Dully, I look around myself at the hundreds of Vermin attacking my hunting party.

Since when were Vermin capable of organising something like this?!

I feel one of them climb on my back.

In a surge of strength, I reach behind myself and snatch one of its limbs.

I bring it over my head and dash it against the ground.

A male… wielding a stolen thanatite arrow like a spear… he’ll soon be dead from what I just did to his ribcage…

My consciousness fades in and out of focus.

Why are my people plagued by this dirty little race of thieves?!

What vicious deity did we so offend with our existence that saw fit to unleash this punishment on us…?!

I’m snapped back to reality by the sound of thunder cutting through the din of battle!

One of the Foreigners has the weird object they carry turned skyward.

It blasts a second discharge before the golden haired Foreigner levels it forward in clear threat.

The sound of hundreds of Vermin scampering away to the bushes is audible behind me.

It seems the Foreigners are not in league with the Vermin, at least…

Though, it occurs to me as several of them draw metal blades which incomprehensibly start to glow and roar as they wave them back and forth aggressively, that doesn’t necessarily make them friends!

I feel hands on my shoulders.

I turn and make out Haorken’s face.

“We have to get out of here, Sister!” says the woman whose stolen foot was used by that cursed Vermin girl to murder me, frantically.

Her voice is distant… like I’m hearing it from several rooms away and the cloth between us is dampening it…

“You have to get up! We have to leave!” she says, her attention flicking between me and the advancing Foreigners.

I grasp the shaft of my spear and push it against her chest.

“*kkkh*…Go…!” I gurgle.

Her expression is distraught as she looks from me to the burning weapons and back.

Eventually, she accepts that with this wound, I’m already dead.

She takes my spear, turns and flees.

Good…

Surveying the battlescene, it looks as if I’m the only casualty… The only nonVermin casualty at least…

A good 22-33 Vermin lay dead or dying…

A pity it wasn’t more of the impertinent little fiends!

“Fakkin shitshoh!” cries one of the Foreigners, sheathing his blade at his hip and gesturing past me.

“Siims laik thers tu sappiunt spiisiiz onthis planut!” adds the golden haired one, holding the thunder box.

“Алар да сугышта…” mutters the short, fat, orange haired one in shoulder to toe metal clothes so smooth I can see myself reflected in them.

“Chúng ta cần thiết lập ưu tiên điều trị!” shouts one of the two in blindingly white clothes with rich red accents, pointing at me “Cô ấy trông tệ nhất!… Niyol, bắt đầu làm phần còn lại trong khi tôi chữa trị cho cô ấy!”

The other one in white and red runs past me.

The one who spoke is approaching me.

Holding out two palms to me, they say “Thư giãn điiiii… Hãy bình tĩnh…”

I draw my lips back over my toothplates and try to hiss.

A sickening gurgle is all that escapes my mouth.

The Foreigner does not stop his approach.

I slash the two fingerclaws of my left hand at him.

The much larger, copper headed Foreigner who was approaching behind yanks the white and red clad one out of the way before my claws can rake across his chest.

“Luwks laik yuh gottuh nunkowopra’iv pey shunt ver, Dok(!)… Mait bi uh gud aidia tulet er pahs aut bifor yuh tri’er!… Sei fer vat wei!”

The pair of them make no further move to approach me, just standing there, out of reach, looking at me while my world grows… steadily… darker…

Oh, Weaver… Take me home… Take me to the Warm Land…