by Shawn Kass
Just as he was at the point where whispering his final prayers seemed like his best option, he noticed that the spiders in the front row surrounding him stopped. They were close enough to lunge in and start tearing him to shreds, but rather than treat him and the unconscious Anna at his side like a free buffet, they halted and began making weird clicking noises with their mandibles.
Seeing that they were communicating with each other, Sam decided to try using game logic rather than common sense and held up his empty hands before them, saying, “I’m sorry we entered your territory. We mean you no harm. As you can see, we fell through from the surface, and we would just like to get back home.”
In response, the largest spider, which had been the first to enter the lit area, reared back on four of its eight thick legs and hissed at him.
Having no idea what that meant, Sam said, “Okay, so there is a communication barrier. I get that, but I promise if you just let us go, we won’t harm you, and we can all live in peace.”
The clicking noises around him grew in intensity, and as much as he hoped that it was just their way of discussing the best route for him to leave by, he figured that he knew they were only seconds away from their attack. That’s when the clicking and movement all around him suddenly stopped, and the spiders began to part ways to make a path. It was strange that they moved so quickly and that some even crawled over their neighbor to get out of the way, but for just a moment, Sam thought they somehow understood him and were going to honor his request to leave. That was right up until the point when he noticed that something larger and scarier than anything he had ever seen was coming out of the darkest shadows.
Weighing in at probably a thousand pounds or more and roughly the size of a car back home, this spider was clearly the alpha of the pack, and all of the others gave it a wide berth as it strode forward. The creature stood at least two or three feet taller than Sam on its long legs, and bits of webbing clung to the thickly bristled hairs over its body like a poorly made and tattered silk garment. On its dark black face, there were several old white scars which looked as if they could have been made by a weapon of some sort, but Sam had no idea what kind.
Shaking his head, Sam knew that in typical JRPGs if he had entered the mining cave from the entrance, he would have had the opportunity to level up and probably acquire some better gear along the way which would have helped him. Instead, he had fallen through from a safe zone to this pit of doom and was now face to face with what had to be the boss creature for this area. He couldn’t see the thing’s back, but he guessed that this thing was somewhere around level fifteen or twenty, way too high for him at this point.
When the newcomer finally stopped, the other spiders adjusted their positions to fill in the path which they had made just moments ago, and then they waited for their orders. Sam used this opportunity to raise his hands and try to talk his way out of trouble once again, this time saying, “Please, I would just like to take my friend back to town.”
In response, the alpha spider clicked its mandibles twice and gave his order to those around him. Having no idea what this meant, Sam was surprised to find that four of the dog sized spiders closest to him curved their abdominal sections up underneath themselves and began to spray him with a jet of sticky white fluid. Waving his hands in front of himself instinctively, Sam tried to avoid the webbing, but it only seemed to spread it around all the more, adhering to itself as well as Sam’s clothes before it began to harden and crystalize like silly string mixed with quick drying cement.
Less than a minute later, Sam found his arms stuck across his chest and his legs unable to move, and when the four spiders stopped, Sam lost his balance and fell. Thanks to his new cocoon body suit, he barely felt the impact with the ground, but he knew that only meant his getting free was going to be that much more difficult.
Not wasting any time, the four spiders turned and began spraying down the unconscious Anna, but since she wasn’t moving or fighting back, they only doused her in about half the fluid they had Sam. When they finished, they attached another thick strand of webbing to each of them, and then after several clicks from their leader, they began to drag the two of them deeper into the shadowy cave.
Sam quickly lost sight of the opening which they had fallen through, but as they were dragged deeper into the underground passage, he found that somehow he wasn’t in complete darkness. No candles flickered and no lightbulbs were present to illuminate the area, but he could make out at least some of his surroundings. The only thing he could think of was that the game programming might have some sort of minimum light setting, but either way, there was at least a low level of light reaching his eyes.
As they continued, Sam was able to tell that he and Anna were being towed together through a downward sloping tunnel which, while not perfectly round, had to be about eight or nine feet across and close to that in height. As they continued their descent, several more spiders scurried past them until they finally made it to a large empty cavern, covered floor to ceiling in thick, white webbing. Focusing on the ceiling because that was how his cocooned body was facing, Sam noticed several more thick white drops hanging from above. At first he thought they were giant squirming maggots, but a second later he realized from the odd hoof or antler pointing out that they were the bodies of animals which had also been cocooned like the two of them.
Cursing at their dire situation, Sam pulled his eyes away from the helpless creatures and resumed searching for a way out. As he did, he noticed half a dozen spiders climbing the walls and then crawling inverted to converge above their position. Each one of them tucked themselves into a ball for a second, and then almost in unison, they let go and dropped towards him.
Just as Sam was ready to let out a terrified scream, the spiders’ fall slowed, and he saw that they were each dangling or rappelling from thick gossamer threads. He watched as they began to swing themselves back and forth, and then when they were roughly halfway to the ground, they began to spin. The webbing they had been letting out as they descended twisted and turned with them until there were two sets of three spiders working together to weave their silky lines together into a thick rope. The sight itself was awesome, and if he had been some sort of biologist or insectologist, or whatever they were called, Sam knew this would be something to seriously study, but in his current situation, he realized that they were just preparing their dinner, which unfortunately was the two of them.
When the spiders reached the cavern floor, they quickly attached their lines to the foot area of his and Anna’s cocoons and then began hoisting them into the air upside down. It took a minute or two before the two of them stopped rising, and as the blood rushed to Sam’s face, he judged that they were somewhere between fifteen and twenty feet above the ground. Once in place, the large spiders scurried into the darkness and left just a few of the smaller fist-sized spiders behind to watch the two of them hang.
“Wh…what’s going on?” came a groggy voice next to him.
“Anna, are you all right?”
“Sam? Is that you?”
“Yeah, we fell into an underground cave system and got captured by some spiders.”
“Clearly I’m still asleep, because it sounded like you said we were captured by spiders.”
“Nope, sorry, you’re not asleep.”
Looking around, Anna tried to get a better look at her situation, but due to the lack of movement the webbing was allowing, she ultimately gave up and simply took a moment to study the other cocoons which hung nearby. As she did this, Sam tried to do the same, but his view was pretty much limited to Anna and the cavern wall which was a few feet away.
Startling him, Anna yelled, “Peter! Sam, it’s Peter!”
“Where?”
“There, hanging to my left, just in front of me.”
Wiggling in the little bit of room that he had within his cocoon, Sam managed to get himself swinging a bit and caught sight of the little boy. As soon as he did, however, he regretted it because the sw
inging upside down was beginning to make him feel sick. Finding a fixed point on the wall, Sam took a moment to focus and push away the queasiness before he opened his mouth and confirmed, “I see him, but it doesn’t look like he’s conscious.”
“No, he’s not. What kind of spiders could do this to us?”
“Giant spiders?” offered Sam. “Maybe Dire Spiders? Is that a thing?”
“No, I’ve never heard of them. As a matter of fact, I’ve never heard of any creatures capable of doing something like this outside of the Tower.”
“Well, maybe that’s the answer,” suggested Sam. “Maybe they’re from the Tower.”
“I don’t see how,” rejected Anna. “Surely someone in town would have mentioned giant spiders escaping into the countryside.”
“Yeah, well, maybe they didn’t come through the town. Maybe this cave connects to it somehow?”
Thinking about it for a second, Anna’s eyes grew wide, and she said, “Oh my God. That’s it. When we fell through, we were only a hundred feet or so from the mouth of the mine. That means this cave must have been part of it. When the Tower pushed its way up, it not only caused the collapse in the mine, but it must have somehow let these things out.”
“Okay, so now we know where they came from,” began Sam. “The question is, how are we going to get out of here?”
“I don’t know, Sam. This webbing is pretty hard. I feel like I’ve been encased in rock.”
Considering their options and what they had on them, Sam suggested, “What about the oil? You should still have it on you. If you can reach it, maybe you can grease yourself up and squeeze out.”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like I can reach it in here. Do you have anything on you that can help?”
“No, I’m sorry. I dropped my sticks up top when we fell.”
“What about your lizard? Did they capture him?” asked Anna.
“No, I think he’s still on the surface.”
“Well, if he’s a familiar like Madame Esmerelda said, then you should be able to call to him and get him to help.”
“Really? That’s awesome, but what’s he going to be able to do? This webbing looks too thick for him to be able to chew through.”
“I don’t know, I just thought he might be able to help somehow. You have a point, though. I don’t think lizards can chew through things.”
“Wait, you said I can call him. How does that work?”
“I’m not sure,” answered Anna. “I’ve never had a familiar. From what I’ve heard from people in the pub who have had one, I think you can do it either telepathically or verbally.”
Slowly putting together the pieces of a plan in his head, Sam said, “Great, so if he can hear me telepathically, then he should be able to follow my instructions.”
“Maybe, but I think that kind of cooperation takes time to develop. The few Tempters who I’ve heard from said that they could get their familiars to do things like pick up the stuff monsters dropped in battle or occasionally help with alerting them to danger. I don’t think any of them could get their familiars to attack a creature for them or do anything quite as dexterous as chew through a binding.”
“That’s all right,” began Sam. “I’ve got something else in mind which I know he can do.” Then closing his eyes, he pictured his familiar in his head and recited the name he had seen on the skin paper the psychic had pulled from his palm.
He did this for several long minutes before Anna broke through his concentration by whispering, “Sam! Sam, I think I see him.”
Opening his eyes, Sam looked down to the cavern floor and then spotted the little lizard staring back at him from the wall near the entrance they had come through. Knowing that they probably didn’t have long, he focused on Tezukayoshi and thought about the scene he had witnessed earlier. A moment later, the little lizard cocked his head to the side as if he was trying to understand something before righting it and nodding.
“Here goes nothing,” said Sam and then he started wiggling again. Doing his best not to hurl, he timed his movements to slowly add momentum to his swing, and within a minute, he looked like the pendulum on a grandfather clock. It was more than enough to capture the attention of almost every spider in the room.
As Sam did this, Tezukayoshi crawled down the wall and quickly sneaked up on one of the smaller spiders who were watching the show above and pounced. His goal this time wasn’t to feed but to hurt and cripple the spider as fast as possible, and he did this by stripping three of its legs from the left side of its body and two more from the right.
By the time it had finished, two of the other spiders turned towards the commotion and began to move in while a third went running off. Leaving the injured one behind, Tezukayoshi flicked his tongue out twice and then leapt for the closest of his oncoming attackers. He managed to take off a few legs from this spider, but by then, the third one climbed up on his back so that he covered him and began attacking, and the three of them turned into a rolling ball of flailing appendages.
Using the distraction to his advantage, Sam continued to put more and more force into his swings until he finally collided with the cavern wall. To his relief, when he did so, he felt the crystalline cocoon he was wrapped in begin to crack. Smiling, he let himself swing through the air on the backswing and then used the little extra room he now had to add an even larger shift to his body weight when he was on the way towards the wall again.
Watching this, Anna couldn’t figure out the plan Sam had come up with, and when she saw him smack into the wall, she winced and looked away, thinking he might have hurt himself. As she did, however, her eyes returned to the brutal fight down below where Sam’s lizard looked to be just barely holding on against the two fist-sized spiders. She had no idea who would come out the victor if the fight continued for much longer, but that’s when she spotted what she thought Sam had been talking about earlier stepping out from the shadows.
As Tezukayoshi reached back and grabbed hold of the injured spider that was on his back and flung it to the side, he heard a loud chittering sound and turned to face his new enemy. Instead of finding something roughly equal in size to those he had already dueled with, he found a spider weighing nearly as much as one of the teenage human children he had seen so many times come through the store he had stayed in before meeting Sam. The thing was massive compared to him, easily a hundred times his size, and he knew he had no way of winning against such a giant foe, but doing his duty, he faced it and hissed.
Not wanting to watch the little lizard die, Anna looked back at Sam and said, “I don’t know what beating yourself against a wall is supposed to do, but he’s about to get killed down there.”
Grimacing, Sam closed his eyes against what was about to come and let his momentum carry him once again into the wall. This time, the cocoon which had been holding him split open upon impact, and released its contents like a piñata at a child’s birthday party. What he hadn’t planned for, however, was that after cracking open his webbed prison, there wouldn’t be anything holding him back from the sudden and inevitable drop to the floor below. Feeling the wind rush up at him from a new direction, Sam screamed a curse word and closed his eyes tight as he plummeted towards the cavern floor.
To his surprise, his landing wasn’t as hard as he imagined. In fact, it felt somewhat squishy, and when he once again opened his clenched eyes, he found that he had landed on the back of one of the German shepherd sized spiders, and his lizard, Tezukayoshi, was staring at him in disbelief. Cracking a smile, Sam started to say, “Perfect,” but was interrupted halfway through the word by his own stomach lurching and expelling whatever he had eaten earlier.
Whether it was the dozen spiders he had eaten earlier, the excitement of the fighting, or just the sight and smell of the human’s regurgitation hitting him, Tezukayoshi found that he had no choice but to vomit as well. The interesting thing was, when he reopened his eyes, he found that what he had retched up was now burning a hole into the strange white web
stuff covering the floor in front of him.
From up above, Anna began to holler down a congratulatory, “Nice work,” for killing the spider and saving his lizard, but she quickly changed it when she saw Sam puke to ask, “Are you okay?”
Wiping his sleeve across his mouth, Sam called back to her, “Yeah, I’m all right.”
“Good, so now that you’re down there, can you do something about getting us down? I doubt we have very much time before another one of those things comes back.”
Again, having not thought this far ahead, Sam’s brain began to think of a dozen crazy scenarios to get her free including throwing a rock at her cocoon to try to crack it open to climbing back up the side of the cave wall to try and reach her. None of these ideas seemed likely to work, however, and Sam bowed his head to think of something else. As he did so, he spotted the steaming fumes emanating from the place where his lizard had thrown up, and Sam said, “I have an idea, but I don’t think you’re going to like it.”
Scowling, Anna said, “If it gets me down from here, then just do it.”
“Okay,” responded Sam before he took a second to try and convey his intentions to his lizard. In response, the lizard cocked his head to the side once again, and then looked up at Anna’s position. When it looked back at Sam, he nodded to it, and said, “Yes, I need you to do it.”
“What’s going on?” asked Anna nervously.