There was no dawn as I woke up from another undefined amount of sleep.

This is my life now. Ugh. Well, time to face the darkness of the new day, I guess. That’s going to require a lot of getting used to. You know what else?

Eating spiders.

Bleh.

I am so not looking forward to eating spiders again.

My stomach rumbled, nay, roared. It felt like I had a hole in my belly, with little gremlins picking at my insides.

Hunger gremlins. Now that’d be a properly horrifying disease. Also, spiders don’t sound too bad when compared to the IMMENSE PAIN currently twisting inside my chest. Gah!

It felt worse than the wound on my right arm. I tried moving it a bit.

Hey, it’s not stiff anymo – n-nope, hnnngh. Ow, more pain.

Painlessly bending my elbow wasn’t going to work out for maybe another day or so, but I could flex my hand no problem. I had a slightly larger range of motion to work with before the pain in my elbow became unbearable.

Might be able to carry some things with it at least. Light things. Things made of feathers, preferably.

I was lucky my arm wasn’t poisoned. Or, well, severely poisoned. Would’ve been quite the unwelcome surprise to wake up and not be able to feel it at all. Or wake up and realize that I as dead. Yeah, I really needed some better light to check it out with.

Still, besides the pain, the night brought me exactly what I needed: A decent rest. Sure, I now had a whole slew of other aches, because sleeping on your arm in an awkward position was not something metal armor was intended to protect you from, but the rest of my body felt somewhat ok. Restored, even.

And not just my body, my mind as well. I was in a far better headspace today as I inhaled the wet air.

Ah, the smell of stone slick with the perspiration of the air. Of mud gathering in the corners. The slightest of breezes howling through a distant hole in the wall. What a shi – I mean – nice place.

I grumbled, stretching my body this way and that. There was too much popping and grinding noise for my taste.

At least it’s safe. I know I couldn’t have slept outside as peacefully as I had in here. Then again, If I had, I’d probably be inside the belly of some fresh hell spawn or another.

I stifled a yawn.

Ugh, I hate waking up early.

I strolled over to where Harris was – rather, where I thought he was roughly supposed to be at. I had slept some distance away, for his and my privacy’s sake.

Also, he’s a demon too since he trades in souls. I don’t trust demons, even if I probably am one myself. But I’ll be better than the others! A virtuous demon!

I found his haphazardly arranged collection of pillows and returned the one he had lent me.

Someone was certainly playing at being king of the pillow fort again.

There was no response. He was sleeping, most likely somewhere under the towering pile of cushions.

Oh well, time to go hunting for yummy, tasty, crunchy spiders.

Oh gods, I’m actually looking forward to it now. Where’d he say it was again? Out and left? Yes, out and left, along the ridge.

I went through the main room past glom the impassive, sitting in his offering bowl.

He looked at me.

I looked at him.

“Worm.” He said. Stupid Glom.

Just because you're maybe probably most likely the judge of my soul doesn’t mean you have to be such a bitch about it. Well, I for one know my failings and I’m going out to do my part in bettering the world by ridding it of all spiders while you just ferment in your own juices all day.

Glom huffed.

I stuck my tongue out at him and went up the stairs towards the outside.

Over the small bridge I went, ignoring the feeling of a piercing gaze at the back of my neck as I did, turning left and walking past the bell. There, I walked along the ridge’s end until I met a wall of dirt and grass. On the side of the endless abyss below, there was a path, thin and beaten into the earth by semi-frequent use. It led me around and up a bit, past a pillar and through a stone arch.

Passing the arch, the air grew ever moister, and the ground squished beneath my feet and between my toes. The air smelled foul. Nothing could be heard except the infrequent scraping of dead tree branches against my armor. I readied my sword, finding it somewhat easier to hoist on to my shoulder.

Doesn’t mean it’ll be easy to wield at all. I need something shorter and lighter. Roughly twice the length of my lower arm, plus hand. Actually, maybe a bit more. A sharp point for stabbing, but also a wider blade towards the end that would add some heft to slashes. I know there’s a name for that, it’s on the tip of my tongue…

Wait. Pay attention to where you’re going.

I was well past the arch now, moving into what was a forest of sorts. The path had given way from a somewhat recognizable line to more of a halfhearted suggestion. Sure, there were a few odd, cobbled stones that looked like someone had put them there intentionally some time in the distant past. But it could just as well have been due to the whims of nature.

Remember. What did Harris say about the woods?

“You’ll find sticky spiders there. Lots of them. Heard they were plentiful up to the drowned chapel and in the swampier parts, but there were other things too. Other things that I… forgot. Oh well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. When you go past a toppled pillar, an arch, then another arch, that’s when you know you’re at the right place. You be careful out there, alright?”

His voice had almost sounded too carefree and were it not for that last bit I would have thought that he was just that.

Anyhow, follow the path between here and the chapel. Find spiders, kill spiders, eat spider meat and spider souls. I can work with that.

You can do this Rye.

You are not afraid. You are armed and armored, ready as can be. You’re a knight. You can deal with some stupid spiders, bristly or sticky. Give ‘em the ol’ “rustling sword trap” and show them what you’re made of.

A glob of something sticky fell on my face.

It wriggled a bit and I screamed.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

There’s a spider on my face, a sticky, sticky spider on my face.

“AAAAAAH-”

I bashed my head against a tree trunk, repeatedly.

Splat-splat-splat.

The spider-thing crunched and squished over my mouth and into my nose.

Gah! Why!?

It didn’t feel nice at all having a gooey mess interspersed by pointy shards of carapace squished up against my face. It felt a lot worse knowing that the sticky spider was still alive. I only stopped when it had stopped moving for a solid twelve seconds.

My heart was racing as I leaned against a tree, peeling the rest of its body off my face and desperately trying to extract the gunk from my orifices.

Great. Apparently, I’m made of half bad luck, half unwarranted confidence. Also, spider gunk. Decidedly too much spider gunk.

I tried rubbing my eyes with gunky gloves. Not my brightest moment.

Great! Now I have it all in my eyes. I can’t believe it took me this long to start developing a dislike for spiders. Spiders suck! At least, big ones do. This one didn’t get to bite me. Good. I’m ok.

It took some time for me to gather my bearings again. I looked at the trees around me with wary eyes.

It dropped from above and I didn’t notice it at all. I’ll have to watch out and be careful with every step. If I just had enough light, I could see them from further away.

But nooo, I can’t see anything past about nine and a half feet in any direction and even within that radius I barely have enough dim light to make out whether or not I’m about to walk into a tree or off a cliff.

I need more souls. Which sounds a lot more evil than what plans were making out to be.

Do spiders even have souls?

I pondered, wiping the last of carapace and goo off my face and gloves.

The question had merit because while I didn’t feel comfortable just eating the souls of dead people at all, even if I had killed them in self-defense, I was warming up to the idea of taking them off of beasts in general and spiders specifically.

Well, all life comes from the sun, so they had to have souls, no? Good. Spider souls probably don’t go to the sun after their deaths anyways.

There’s no contribution to life in being a spider. Sad, but hey, I don’t write the rules. Eternal damnation for you it is.

I picked up the squished main portion of the spiders’ body.

Looks like you’ll feed me in more ways than one. Wow, I’m already thinking like a demon, aren’t I?

The sticky spider, somehow, tasted even worse than the bristly ones I had eaten the day before. There was a lot of goop that seemed to just cover the outer layers of carapace, like a layer of sticky fat or something. I had to remove it because honestly, while I was hungry to the point of being ravenous, the absolutely rancid smell and acrid taste that just wouldn’t go away made that part of the spider at least something entirely inedible to me.

That didn’t leave much “meat” on the spider, but after that unfortunate run-in, I was feeling more than ready to start culling the population a bit.

I wonder if I could make a fire.

I idly thought, slurping out the meat in the last leg of my first meal.

Maybe they taste like crab when cooked. Wait, how does crab taste like? I have the vague recollection of eating crawfish once before. No sign that I remembered the taste of it though.

I bet spider roast probably tasted heavenly compared to this sorry shlop.

Still, I had to keep moving and I did once I was done with my meal. My sword really wasn’t of much help in that fight, again. I kept an eye open, looking for something I could use and, well, I was in a forest.

Maybe a nice club carved from wood. Or a heavy branch.

Everything I found was either rotted and falling apart or still attached to a tree. After hewing at one a few times with my sword, I decided that I didn’t have the strength and that my sword was decidedly too blunt for cutting off any of the thicker ones I could have used as a bludgeoning tool.

Dammit. Ah well, the blunt and heavy sword will have to do. One way or another. It’ll work out. I also can’t really carry more than one weapon either, so that’s the end of that.

I continued on my hunt through the woods. Now that I was in a peak I-don’t-want-to-get-jumped-by-spiders-again mindset, I noticed quite a few of them before they had the chance to notice me. The creaking and rustling sound of my armor didn’t seem to alert them, at least.

Some hid on the ground pretending to be rocks, scuttling around the trees and, in one case that almost went entirely tits up, under yet another randomly placed archway.

I only got out of that because it slipped off my armor. I swear, these things were everywhere.

I was getting a bit tired from all of this careful sneaking, mostly well-placed hacks with my sword and muddy terrain. The ground wasn’t too swampy, yet, but it really liked to pull at my feet just enough to remind me of the toll it was taking on my limited stamina.

Also, the muck was getting under my leg armor. That didn’t feel nice.

What I think was an hour or two passed and I was starting to notice a few differences compared to before.

First off, I was already nearing my physical limit. Exhaustion had started setting in after roughly the halfway point of wandering around.

I’m hella out of shape. I’m a walking metal mummy, a corpse in a can, of course I am!

The heavy armor, terrain and unwieldiness of my sword all exacerbated my already anemic endurance. I had almost gotten my fill of spiders and now only needed to find a few and bring them back to Harris, as per our deal.

I really hope there’s a way to fix my body. Like, really really. Beyond divine intervention or running around in circles for weeks on end.

Running was one thing I could do without right now.

Secondly, I didn’t know where I was. I had lost the partially cobbled trail some time ago and I was getting worried about finding my way back.

But at least there are less sticky spiders here. The ones that are still around are quite a bit plumper. Not that I’m complaining. (Spider)meat’s on the menu today!

I came across a few pieces of stone structures every now and then, chewing on some leftover spider leg bits, but none of it felt familiar. The leg bits were my favorite, which was to say they tasted the least horrible.

I can’t keep on walking forever. I’ll have to rest at some point. But I sure as hell am not sleeping in this forest.

Lastly, I noticed something positive for a change. A bit more reach to my sight, half a foot, maybe, so I was at around ten.

More light. So, spiders do have souls.

My armor rattled with glee.

Vindication! What a pleasant-sounding word for revenge. Revenge!

The thought of gaining light from the deaths of all kinds of wicked creatures and beasts like these put a smile on my face.

Which almost made me overlook a particularly rotund spider. It didn’t even pretend to be anything else as it entered the edge of my vision, taking quick steps, then pausing as it seemed to have finally taken notice of me.

Holy shit, if it were standing next to me, it’d go up all the way to my knee! Which ungodly place did you come out of? It looks hungry.

I stood perfectly still. It was rather spindly looking, its outlines a blurry nest of twigs.

That’s… a bristle spider.

I could see two elongated digits move around, searching the air for… something.

Shove off, you’re fat enough already! Don’t bother me and I’ll… let you live. For now. Deal?

The spider started towards me with an unsettling and quick scuttle.

Ah-f-fuuu-!

I could hear it through my helmet, brushing past a tree. The feet made a scritch-scratch sound whenever they moved over rock.

S-stay calm, stay calm.

I quickly raised my sword onto my shoulder, trying to adjust my grip just that little bit more, as if I knew what I was doing. It was on me like a wolf, as it suddenly switched from its skittery charge to a leap at my face.

I did not stay calm. I couldn’t, as its splayed-out form took up my entire vision.

Then, for a moment, it felt like time stood still. Like a moment in time encased in a glass marble, I could almost see each long hair branching off its body.

It came closer.

Its body was made up of two segments, I could see that clearly now. I could also see the stubby mandibles at the front attached to two short, fleshy limbs.

Even closer.

A glint at what I thought was its back segment made my heart lurch a bit. A long and sharp shape protruded from its butt.

Stinger.

I felt my right arm stiffen up again.

Closer.

Then, the moment was over.

A scream.

A wrenching motion.

Resistance.

The sound of my sword piercing wet mud.

“Shit” was my first thought.

“But I got it” the second.

I was leaning on my sword, a pearl of sweat running into my eye, panting heavily from just that one swing. And the fear.

H-holy crap.

The screaming continued.

I looked to my left, the form of the spider on the floor before me. It was the size of a dog but the way it threw its body left and right, curling and uncurling its long, hooked limbs left no doubt as to its true nature. It was missing all but one of its legs on its left side and it was screeching more and more.

I tugged my sword from the muck and heaved it on my shoulder. I swung it down, hopefully with better aim than the last strike. Its body squelched, and it screeched, but still moved.

Die already!

I cut its body again, then tried to finish it with a stab to roughly where I thought the head might be. The crunching feeling of my sword going through it as I put my entire bodyweight behind the thrust was unusual.

More carapace at the head?

Like a thin helmet.

That means it’s protecting something important!

With that, it finally stopped moving.

I took a pause to breathe in when I noticed something in the air. I looked left and right, but the feeling wasn’t coming from anywhere in specific. It was as if it was permeating the space all around me.

It smelled slightly of burnt pepper.

I looked at the spider corpse.

Then, I bent down, closed my eyes, and took in a deep breath.

It was a nice bit change in the odors I had to smell all the time like the rancid sticky spider skin-fat or my own putrid smell of rotted clothes and general unpleasantness. But just as I was indulging in the smell of burnt pepper, it vanished as suddenly as it had come.

I opened my eyes again, blinking away the saltiness of my sweat.

I looked around.

And once more, I could see a bit further.

I-is that what eating a soul feels like? No one told me you do it through the nose!

I hadn’t noticed anything like it before and even now the scent was incredibly diffuse.

Why didn’t I smell anything from the other spiders then? Were their souls simply not good enough? Or big enough? Or, or…

I wasn’t an expert on what qualities a soul should or shouldn’t have. If they did have a smell then, well, that was an odd thing. Not entirely unpleasant, just… odd.

Although, I don’t think I’ll learn to love the smell of burnt pepper for anything besides the contrast it gives to all the other horrible smells. Really does a number on your eyes, too.

Whoo boy.

I blinked a few times, before noticing an all too familiar outline at the edge of my vision again.

Another big bristly spider.

Like the one before, it had wandered in roughly my direction before stumbling about a foot into my vision range, coming to a sudden halt. I felt the edge of my mouth twitch and I forced it to even out again and calm my breath. With the way this fight had gone, I was feeling confident.

I can take another one.

My breathing was evening out as I got into an upright position, raising my sword. It felt heavy, but I could still swing it a few more times. I let it come to rest on my shoulder and bent my knees until they hurt.

Square the fuck up, bristle boy.

Before I could take a first step forward, I was tackled by another one from the side.

Whu-!?

I was thrown to my right, falling over as a big, hairy spider clung to my other side. It felt unexpectedly heavy as I slipped and planted my face in the mud. I could hear and feel scurrying and brushing sounds all over me, hooked legs looking for purchase between my armor plates as hard mandibles and stingers clack-clack-clacked against them.

N-

AH!

F-f-f-n-n-no!

Fear spread throughout my body, muscles tensing in anticipation of being stung or bit or cut.

I wanted to panic, forget every bit of sense, and leave it all to that primal fear that so convincingly tells you that it knows what to do to get you out of harm’s way. I wanted to; I really did. But a piece of me knew that that was a lie, that it was going to get me killed.

I rolled over, putting my entire body weight behind the action.

The spiders, while large and heavy for a spider, were a lot lighter than me. Between the constant pulling and tugging at my clothes and padding – a lot of which I could hear and feel tearing – it couldn’t find a place to pierce my armor quick enough.

I was now on top of it, its legs wiggling in surprise and confusion. I got up to one knee, preparing my sword for a thrust right where I’d finished the last one.

Now!

Something tugged at my back foot, clamping around it and making the attack miss its mark.

I looked back and heard a chittering sound I could only interpret as a laugh.

Shit, shitshitshit!

The other spider was gnawing at the thin layer of gambeson at my calves, and with my feet being completely uncovered, I had that unwelcome feeling of being about to step on something sharp.

I kicked it twice out of reflex before it let go.

Ow. F- damn bristles!

Kicking didn’t turn out to be such a great idea, but it bought me a moment of time.

I felt the stinger of the one I was lying on get uncomfortably close to some of my squishy parts. I tried to pull my sword from the muck, but the other spider was already on my again, this time having fully jumped on my back.

Mandibles clacked on metal and as a patch of bristly something scratched over the right side of my helmet, I tensed up from the sound and feeling it being right outside my ear.

N-no! A-fuck, I hate-hate-hate spiders!

I bucked and tried hitting its legs and mandibles, but that only gave the one below me more wiggle room to get its stinger closer to my squishy bits.

It laughed in its weird chittering way again, leaving me with the impression that these spiders might not be as stupid as they seem. I had to do something, but I couldn’t finish off the one under me without ignoring the one currently clinging to my back and head.

So, I did.

It was a gamble, that I could finish off one spider before the other one found and plunged its stinger into my armpit or through my neck.

Pleasedon’tkillmepleasedon’tkillme.

I dragged my sword from the mud and stabbed at the one below me. The first one missed a leg.

I yanked it back again, leaning to the right as the other spider shifted its bodyweight.

I stabbed again, this time cutting clean through the side of the spider’s body.

Screeching filled the air, and the laughter was gone. But I wasn’t done.

I pulled it back once more and pushed it into the spider’s body again. It cut deeper as I leaned into it and with a sharp crack that I could feel in my bones, something gave way.

I didn’t know exactly what did in those frantic moments, but I hoped that the one beneath me was finished. I staggered to my feet, knees almost buckling under the combined weight of exhaustion, my armor and the ever so slight issue of the other giant spider on my back.

The rough shape of a pair of mandibles crept into the top of my vision.

Fuck.

I’m too late.

The pair descended. One slid of the right side of my helmet, finding no purchase. I felt a sting followed by an intense burning feeling as the other clasped around my forehead. One moment, there was nothing. Then, the pressure suddenly increased, and I felt like my head was about to go pop.

Finally, I panicked.

I stumbled backwards until I hit a tree, trying to no avail to peel it off, off my head! My right arm was free, but it hurt still and was too stiff to do anything.

I pulled back my left arm, still somehow holding my sword. It followed my movement with remarkable ease.

I hit the top of my head with a slash, expecting the impact to make me see stars again.

Instead, there was only a stabbing feeling and a screech, as the spider loosened its grip on my shoulders.

I looked at my sword.

“Huh” was all I could think as I inspected the now thoroughly shortened sword missing its tip and a good portion of the rest, too. It was now reduced down to half its size which while not perfect felt a lot more comfortable in my hands. The panicked scratches of a stinger on my back plate reminded me that now was not the time to think about this.

The spider couldn’t get away from under my weight as I leaned into it and pinned it against the tree. I could, however, also not get a deadly blow in. The moment I tried to turn around, it would fall down and either attack me or scurry away.

Oh, OH you are so screwed now!

So, I did what I did best in these situations and used my head. Over a dozen times. By about headbutt number twenty, I was feeling dizzy to the point of wanting to throw up, but the reduction of spidery movement combined with the ever-squishier feeling impacts convinced me that I had made the right choice.

I rolled away from spider.It fell to the ground as I took my broken sword and rammed it up its head. The twitching finally stopped.

I then glanced at the other spider, which at this point had righted itself again and was trying to scuttle away.

The problem was that after a few steps, something important had leaked out – an organ, I think – and it too could do nothing more but twitch and lazily move its legs before I ended it with a well-placed thrust.

Only then did I let myself breathe out, nearly collapsing on to the wet, muddy forest floor. A half fallen over pillar I could lean against spared me from that particular fate.

That – phew – that was horrible. I-I almost died there.

I tried touching my forehead, above my left eye where the spider had bit me. It was bleeding, that’s for sure. But I didn’t feel any signs of being poisoned. Only the burning feeling in my muscles, general fatigue, tiredness, shortness of breath, dizziness, disorientation…

That can all be explained because I just fought three giant bristle spiders in a row, two of them at the same time, after walking through a swampy forest for nearly two hours. Or by being poisoned. Gods, I hope I’m not poisoned.

I pulled a few spiky bristles from my foot.

Ow. Walking’s gonna be a bitch.

I tried to get up, but my body vetoed that with a definite no. While trying to catch my breath, I looked left and right, ready to bolt at the slightest provocation.

Please let that have been all of them. Oh, who am I kidding? This is a damned spider forest! Of course there’s a thousand and two more out there somewhere!

But either through luck or fate being tired of playing around with my sorry self, nothing else seemed to approach me. I kept my eyes peeled for unusually spider-shaped objects and once I felt my breath calm down a bit, I included things that didn’t look like they wanted to kill me or eat me alive into my search. I still had no idea where I was.

Let’s see, there are some fallen over arches, trees, muck, a weirdly shaped rock, some more weird rocks, grass of all things…

Who even builds anything out of stone way out here? Everything’s just wet, wet, mud and water.

I let out a sigh of utter exhaustion. I was decidedly done for the day. I tried following the path I took here in my head, but I couldn’t for the life of me get a coherent picture of it.

Was it past an arch, tree, rock, tree, rock, really weird rock, pillar?

Or was it rock, tree, tree, arch, tree, really weird rock, pillar, tree?

Or was it…

Gah, everything’s wrong!

Why can’t I remember just one significant thing? Everything looks the same no matter how I put it!

I lost that stupid path hours ago. A path that was supposed to lead past a toppled pillar and through two arches. A path that led to the drowned chapel and back to the temple again. A path that…

I turned around and looked over the single pillar of the broken arch I was leaning against.

A building made of lightly colored stone stood within just six feet of me, its facade shining like a physical ray of hope in my eyes.