Promise

The green drop of glowing water splashed on the small fruiting body Alice had extracted from the remains of one of the previous experiments and then placed in a small metallic tray created for the occasion.

The Lumen particles, which had been floating in the small amount of fluid, now clung to the surface of the elongated sample, their luminescence instantly flaring up as they came in contact with the infectious growth.

To the biomancer’s joy, each glimmer quickly set out to consume the substance, bravely attacking the mold that was responsible for the disease.

Well. Mold or Fungi… the concentrated researcher thought as she observed the microscopic fight from a safe distance, her arm always ready to relay the order to seal the two substances behind a thick layer of metal in case of an unexpected reaction.

To Alice’s dismay, the confrontation between the two organisms didn’t last long, the last of the Lumen globules soon blinking out, snuffed while trying to consume the resilient substance which seemed to have barely been touched.

Frowning, the young woman moved closer, her hand pressing the protective scarf on her mouth and nose as her eyes scanned the remains.

The first result wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t good either. She dropped the mask and gently placed a curved lid on the small tray before going back to her ‘writing board’ on the ground, clutching the stylus and starting to painstakingly inscribe her findings.

Seventh Experiment #7

Effect of Lumen particles on a sample of infected tissue.

The small amount of Lumen was not enough to destroy the substance.

While the glimmers started dissolving the infection, the particles didn’t duplicate and eventually died out. It seems that the mold/fungi is more resistant than normal.

She dropped the thin implement and started pacing around the glade, muttering to herself and sometimes stealing a glance at the Spider Queen silently watching her from her resting spot outside of the burrow.

“Let’s think about the way the Lumen work.” she told herself, casually playing with the scarf in her hand.

“They always eat biological scraps and even simple organisms like the glowing blue mold while they ignore complex beings and non-biological matter. If they didn’t I’d have been dead on the first day after all.” she commented, thinking back of the day she had found herself waist deep into the fresh water of the glowing pool.

“On top of that, the Lumen would multiply every time they consumed something, probably using the nutrients they had acquired.” she went on.

“Then why the heck are they having problems with this disease? Why are they so much weaker and why don’t they grow? Is the blight somehow magical? Is it more alive than mold but less than a creature? Fudge me if I know.” She finally said in exasperation while her hand tried to strangle the scarf.

In an attempt to bring a sense to her thoughts, Alice repeated the experiment a few more times, gradually increasing the amount of particles she added to the rotting sample.

In the end, after coating it with more than a handful of concentrated glimmers, the entirety of the mold was consumed down to its last cell, leaving only a specks of light on the now clean tray.

It’s something at least. She sullenly thought, dropping the contaminated tools in the Lumen bowl as she moved towards the Queen.

Before starting the next set of experiments, however, she would need a few answers.

“Hello Alice, Did you manage to destroy the illness with your liquid light?” the Queen asked as the girl sat down on her futon.

“I did. There are some issues, but I’m trying to solve them. There is something more important that I need to talk to you about.” the girl replied, watching the giant spider click interestedly.

“A few days ago, I asked what would happen if I didn’t manage to heal you. Now, I need to ask you the opposite. What will happen if you are healed? Not to me, I know you promised me safety, but what will the colony do? Will you keep growing and expanding?” she finally asked, already knowing what the response would be.

“Yes.” The spider readily answered, her arm still caressing the wire as she kept talking “My daughters, my son, the rest of the colony and their future hatchlings deserve to live and ◻︎❒︎□︎⬧︎◻︎♏︎❒︎. They deserve to advance and become more than they are now. To achieve that, we will expand, whether I survive or whether I don’t.”

The titanic spider lowered her spike, the discussion apparently enough for her. Alice sighed, really not looking forward to the next part of their conversation.

“I understand. I have a request then. I hope you’ll at least hear me out.”

“I am listening, Alice. You may ask.”

She prayed her impression of the Spider Queen was right and, after a deep breath, she talked once more.

“If you ever meet people like me—humans— could you not attack them unless attacked first? I don’t want to heal you only for your kind to hunt mine for food. Promise me you’ll at least attempt peace if you ever find something that is able to think like you and me.”

Maath stood silent for a few long minutes and Alice’s fear of the answer grew more and more as time went on, until, after an ear-ringing clash of her metallic pedipalps, the spider matriarch spoke once more.

“In the caves, life is a war.” she said.

“All that is different will be hunted and eaten in order to hunt and eat for another day. This is the truth for every creature that slithers, crawls or flies in this world and, as it is for them, so it is for me and my kindred.”

The spider’s blade paused for an instant on the wire, the Queen’s five remaining eyes fixated on Alice’s two.

“Or it was,” she went on, “until a being so different from us came not with harm, but with a small bite of hope. Hope for me and for my ravaged body, but also for the advancements of my kind. Alice, you have come with knowledge and means that we couldn’t even begin to imagine, let alone invent. I have come to learn that there is worth in cooperation. Your request is granted. Such is my Will.”

The sweet feeling of relief filled the young woman’s chest and flowed to her stomach, untying the almost painful knots of anxiety, dread and expectation contained within. She finally smiled.

“Thank you. You really are nice. I’m sorry for not trusting you before.” she told her with an apologetic grin before it turned into a thoughtful frown, “To survive in this place means having to think and act differently from where I come from. Life in here is hard, you are right.” She said, her mind bringing back all the things she had had to do and sacrifice during those months. She had to repress a small sob to keep talking.

“Before arriving here… I had never killed anything, or fought, or had to hide and pray not to get eaten myself. It’s horrible… beautiful sometimes, but so, so horrible.” She finally said, blowing her runny nose in the silken scarf.

The Queen clicked in surprise at the last confession, the sound mixing with a short tittering sound from Skitter and what was an evident scoff from a feasting Chillushrith. They both ignored them.

“That is… unusual. You didn’t hunt? Were you perhaps still a grub, fed by your hive? Where is it? If you wish to return, we may bring you to them. We would meet them and offer things in exchange for others as you have described in your tales.” another titter from Skitter mixed with the last words, and the girl turned to throw him a piece of rock, watching him easily evade it before turning to Maath once again.

Alice scowled at the inquiring ruler before replying “I’m not a grub thank-you-very-much. Things were simply different where I live. And I thank you for the offer but I don’t think you would be able to help me… I don’t even know if I’ll ever see them again.” she sniffled once more, her hand trying to wipe off the few tears on her cheeks.

“Why do you shed water, Alice?” Maath curiously asked, eliciting a teary chuckle from the biomancer.

“It’s called crying and you do it when you are sad, or really happy, now I’m sad. I miss them, you know? I miss my parents and my friends and my life back there.” She finally said, another sob shaking her body.

The ruler clicked in understanding, moving on her pillow with a small groan.

“Ah, it’s a produce of grief. I understand. But what made you leave your place in the colony? Did you lose your way?”

“Maath… things are a bit more difficult than that.” she started to reply, “I… oh well, there really isn’t a good reason not to tell you about it now.”

“I found myself here, in this place, without knowing how I arrived or how to get back. It was as if I had suddenly moved from my home to these damned caves. I think I came here from another world and I don’t know how to go back.”

She jumped as a distorted noise of warped metal came from the wire beside her, she had just the time to look upwards and see the Queen’s limb suddenly warp, the previously smooth leg becoming a long, irregular scythe. The matriarch didn’t seem to realize the change as she tried to talk once more, running it down the silken line.

“A̴n̴o̶t̴h̴e̵r̶ W̴̱̥̳̭̆ǫ̴̳̏̎r̷͖͚̪̾͌͋ḷ̴̨̂̏̋̆d̶̢̗̏̒̔̊?̸̫̱͋ A̷̢̺̙͍̖̅̂̿̍̓̕͜n̴̺̓͒a̵̬̖͆͐̐͗͊͘t̶̪͓̟̫̜͊ḩ̴͉̻̎e̸͔͚̥̖̤͈̾̉̊̓̌͠m̴͖͙͇̈́̈̉a̷̬̮̅̈́̇̈͂?̶̪̻̍͋̇̉͋͒” came the question, each word more distorted until, in an instant, the wire snapped.

Alice didn’t really have time to react as the limb warped and twitched, the new edge digging into the silken thread. She numbingly watched it fray and rip as if in slow motion, the metallic twang of the snap becoming a prolonged shriek that hurt her ears

A moment before, Alice was trying to calm down the agitated spider matriarch, the next one, a finger-wide metal cable whipped only a couple of centimeters short of her head before loudly crashing into her tent-home, the sound of broken and crushed metal echoing throughout the cave as the rubble was thrown into the crystalline forest.

The Queen seemed to regain her sanity at the noise, her limbs returning to their shape and her hind legs already spinning a new thread of silk from her spinnerets. The damage, however, had already been done.

A series of crashes, clicks and hisses came from behind the forest, a tremor shaking the ground under her feet.

Her eyes widened as the first gleaming spider erupted from the thicket, barreling through one of the arches and heading straight towards her, its frontal limbs already warped into long blades.

Alice barely had time to flinch when the hulking form of Chillushrith suddenly rammed the rushing spider, sending it tumbling through the clearing in a mess of broken legs.

The massive Thinker turned and tackled four more of the frenzied creatures, sending their hissing forms through more of the crystals, alive but out of the fight.

Despite her best efforts, however, the lone Daughter was not enough to stymie the rush of the hive, each arachnid ready to defend their ruler to the death against the perceived threat of anything that didn’t belong. Which, Alice realized, meant herself.

The paralyzed girl didn’t really have time to tell her legs to react as more spiders skirted away from the engaged Chillushrith and tried to close the distance between them, their spikes already primed to spear through her body. Her kidneys were trying to flood her system with adrenaline but her legs were still not responding to her panic-addled mind, Alice closed her eyes as the first spider thrust its spear forwards to skewer her.

Then the walls rose.

A huge, gleaming wave of metal rose from the ground barely an inch away from her nose, the liquid alloy solidifying into a huge wall that surrounded the inner part of the glade, cutting her off from the crazed swarm which, unable to stop, impacted the barrier in a cacophony of broken metal and chitin.

Alice jumped in fright as, behind her, the huge pedipalps of the Queen crashed against each other. Once, twice, many times the ear-ringing sound propagated through the cave, the noise behind the barrier slowly quieting down as if overwhelmed by the new soundwave.

Maath finally talked, her clicking and hissing language echoing everywhere in the Nest, the words unknown to a trembling Alice, still reeling from the traumatic experience.

As they had risen, the walls started to drop once again, the metal flowing back into the floor and reforming the lake-like glade that was the hall of the Spider Queen.

Alice moved further and further back as the swarm reappeared in front of her eyes, a stumbling Chillushrith limping out of a literal heap of hissing spiders busy righting themselves. Some of them had broken limbs or large bleeding gashes and the large Thinker sported a few section of dull and detached chitin.

The girl’s eyes widened as she saw the aftermath of the mad rush of the cluster.

Behind the silent glade, the crystal forest was no more.

A huge section of the grove had been turned into little more than powder and reflective shards by the swarm flooding through it. In their frenzy, the spiders had trampled and carried away everything on their path.

Behind the forest, Alice could now see the wide silken sails of the entrance and, further behind them, the first steps of the black stairway were perfectly visible to her enhanced sight.

The young woman turned to the titanic spider still busy talking to her agitated offspring.

“What the fuck, Maath.” She said, before finally dropping on the ground, completely spent.

The swarm slowly ambled out of the clearing a few minutes later, some of them slumping and limping more than others as they moved through the gash that had been left into the thicket.

Alice was now leaning on the bowl of the Lumen glimmers which, to her surprise, had survived unscathed from the assault.

She had also been extremely worried for the infected containers, but after a very thorough check she had found nothing more than a few dents in the vessels.

She stole a glance at the Queen, still busy talking to some of the more important Thinkers, which had congregated in front of her pillowy lair. She didn’t seem happy.

In an effort to steer away her mind from the event, Alice started walking towards Chillushrith, which, after using her few whole limbs to thwack and bonk a number of the culprits, had once again reclined on the ground, her large body strangely shivering every few seconds. A weak cracking sound echoed from her shell, the surface bulging outwards.

She watched, with no small amount of disgust, as the large Thinker started to molt, her carapace cracking open to reveal the strangely misshapen body of the large spider which slowly crawled outside, revealing a beautifully shining but soft exoskeleton.

Under Alice’s horrified eyes, Chillushrith approached her shed skin and slowly started consuming it, the metal somehow turning liquid and literally flowing from her mouth and into her body.

Alice stopped. Her mind suddenly paralyzed at the realization.

Maath has been eating her own molt every time. She is literally poisoning herself.

“Fuck” she said, turning on her heels and determinedly walking towards the Spider Queen.

“We need to talk. And I need answers Maath. Now we understand each other so it’s time for me to know what has happened with the illness.”

Maath placed her limb on the newly formed wire from which Alice now stood well away.

“Yes, I believe it is time. Silence has done enough damage already. We will now talk.”

“You can say that again”

[…]

“Why would I do that?”

Another groan echoed in the silent cave. It was going to be a long conversation.

*****

This chapter is officially sponsored by Harmless Hecate! Thank you for the support!