Eye

For a long time, Alice couldn’t stop the shivers running down her spine, even after the shadowy thing had disappeared down the hallway, bringing with it most of the Jumping Spiders like an eldritch Pied Piper.

Finally, she forced herself to move again, walking up to the web and checking its anchors for signs of deterioration, her ears wide open for any sign of another attack.

With her enhanced senses, she could still hear the noise of the invading arachnids outside of her base; even if reduced in numbers, they were still present.

What the heck was that thing? It felt wrong, the silence it produced. I wonder if it’s really gone…

She shook herself, trying to steer her thoughts away from the possibility, instead focusing on the now.

Can I escape? Would I be able to make a run for it now that there are less monsters?

She stood still, straining her ears as she tried to count the number of spiders walking around. Some of them were easier to discern: the larger ones were slower and walked more deliberately, their clawed feet scratching the calcite of the ground; the medium-sized, were instead far quicker and agitated, they skittered all over the hallway while clicking their fangs, as if impatient of the wait; Alice had gotten to know them particularly well in the previous hours, their hisses and screeches as they tried to push forward into the thin crevice.

Finally, there were the hatchlings, the smaller spiders that seemed to prefer the walls and ceiling; they were slower than the grown ones on account of their shorter legs but definitely more numerous, representing the bulk of the invading forces.

She was sure there were still tens of spiders in that damned passage alone and who knew how many in total had invaded the Spears’ territory?

Fudge.

How many did I kill? At least twenty, not counting the ones I’ve wounded and maimed.

Could I do the same? And more? How long until I die of starvation despite the skills?

She looked at her only reliable source of water.

The hide wineskin was still on the ground where she had left it but already a soft green radiance could be seen shining through the salamander’s skin.

First things first. If I need to do this thing I need to be prepared.

The girl moved quickly and silently, avoiding the puddles of blood on the ground and collecting the water vessel in her hands and approaching Band-Aid who was eating through the last remains of the Jumping spiderling.

Turning back up her own light, Alice slowly proffered the wineskin to the smaller Spear spider, intermittently pointing at it and at the spinnerets on its abdomen, sometimes showing her own silken bandages.

A few moments later the spiders seemed to understand, carefully picking up the container and immediately starting to envelop it in a layer of silk before leaving it on the ground in front of her.

Upon inspection, the glow was once more hidden, and the silk seemed thick enough to contain the water for a bit. She smiled.

Good. Now it should hold a bit longer.

Next, she prodded both spiders until they were both in front of the web, once again pointing and signing until they seemed to understand her request and got to work.

Slowly, the two hatchlings chewed through the lower part of the barrier, consuming the sodden silk as they went, until a large enough hole had been formed.

Holding her breath and with her body back to its non-shiny form, Alice got on her knees on the wet ground and, ever so slowly, put her head out into the tight passage connecting their cave to the occupied hallway.

The crevice was caked by a thick layer of humors and broken pieces of carapace, reeking horridly of bitter blood and decomposing organs.

Forcing herself to swallow down the bile, the girl carefully scoured through the place, bringing back into the cave everything that could be useful on the long run.

In less than fifteen minutes she had managed to collect another heap of severed limbs that would be able to feed Band-Aid and the other one, allowing them to keep producing the ever-important silk.

Next, she grasped a couple of fangs that the monsters had lost in the chaos of the battle and also put them aside, they could be useful if she ever found herself short of a weapon.

Finally, when everything else was done, she slowly moved back, allowing the barrier to be resealed.

Once back to relative safety, the girl went straight back to planning her future war efforts.

Food for them is okay. If it comes to the worst I’ll try to eat it too and hope for the best, but I’ll put that as the final option.

I want to look into the hallway, but I cannot see in the dark and if I shed a light they would see me in an instant…

I guess it’s finally time to really explore the body modification route.

Once again, Alice moved towards Band-Aid who had seemingly gone to rest in its den and sat beside him on the soft silk.

Ignoring its startled clicking, she placed a hand on its head, pushing back the wave of disgust to the back of her mind.

Closing her eyes, the fledgling Biomancer felt her own body, how it worked and flowed, still repairing the grievous wounds she had suffered hours before.

From the magical well in her mind, she moved through the nerves of her brain, traveling together with the electrical impulses produced by her body and its interaction with the world surrounding it.

Almost instantaneously, she reached her left arm, then her hand and finally the skin of her fingers that kept sending to her brain the cold and smooth sensations of the spider’s carapace.

The young woman focused on the sensation itself, trying to feel the connection between her and the other being.

Only after the longest instant of her life did she feel the limitations of her own power give way, letting her finally experience that new and alien system from within.

Alice moved through the layered chitin of the arthropod and into its insides, feeling the coppery blood of the spider move along the length of its body, flowing in a long cavity connected to the rest of its organs.

She felt the large digestive tract churning and gurgling as it digested the fluids the spider had so eagerly consumed just a few minutes before.

She heard the strange lungs of the creature pumping oxygen to keep it breathing, and its brain sending and receiving uncountable thousands of signals at the same time.

The girl moved through the body, taking in the spectacle of another living being, exploring the unknown as she tried to focus on everything at the same time, a futile effort to actually understand the scope of what she was witnessing.

She shook herself; time was of the essence and she couldn’t stop and gawk at everything.

Moving faster, she flowed from organ to organ until she finally found her objective, the large and round eyes of the spider, its unblinking windows to the world.

She moved in.

Inside, Alice could feel the large lens of the cornea refract and increase the light passing through it, directing the photons towards yet another lens, deeper inside, which further increased the light before it finally impacted the layered retina at the back, effectively allowing the spider to see.

That, however, despite the different shape and few other characteristics, was not much different from her own eyes, leaving her unpleasantly surprised.

How the heck are they so similar? They shine in the dark like cats! I know for sure they have some kind of different organ but where the heck is it?

Frustration bubbled into her, all the risks she had taken and not even that small reward? She was just starting to bring back her consciousness when a strange flare from the retina had her stopping on her tracks.

My retina isn’t shiny, of that I’m sure.

Excitement replacing her frustration, Alice moved towards it, finding nothing much different in its composition, if only for the difference in position of conical and rod-like receptors.

She moved further down, trough the many layers of the spider’s retina until the shine appeared once again, this time finally revealing its nature.

It was simple. A thin layer of iridescent cells that reflected back the light passing through the retina, allowing an even larger amount of photons to reach the receptors, as if preventing any wasting of precious radiance.

The cell themselves were nothing more than pigment-containing cells, each producing a slightly different color that when placed in a cluster formed the iridescent floor mirroring the retina.

If she had had a body in that moment, she would have danced.

Over the course of many hours, using her Lesser Biomagical Instincts to the best of her abilities, Alice Desare explored the layer over and over again, feeling how the cells worked and how they reacted to the light, trying to understand them enough to be able to replicate them on her own body.

When she finally got back, Alice was pretty sure she could do something similar on her own eyes.

If she should, well, that was another question.

2 Days In

Alice was still beside the entrance, her right arm raised high with the sharp tip of the prosthetic limb looking down, almost like the bill of a crane ready to spear an unfortunate frog.

In front of her, the silk was pushed taut against the clicking head of the spider trying to break through.

Beside her, also immobile, were the two spiderlings she had been stuck with for the last two days, looking at her as if expecting her move.

She held her breath as the spider hissed once more; the muscles of her arm were trembling from staying still in that awkward position, asking to be released, for the sword to descend on the invader that dared moving against her.

Almost unconsciously, the arm had started its downward motion towards the spider’s nape, exposed beneath the stretched fabric of the web.

The spider retreated with an annoyed hiss, the arm silently stopping before it was alerted. She could breathe again.

Fuck. It’s the third time they almost remember us. Thank god they are idiots.

Once the barrier preventing them to access the main nest had been destroyed, the spiders had apparently forgotten the smaller passage containing them, probably preferring the easier preys of the nest and the larger cavern.

Every now and then, however, a curious enough spiderling or another moved down the crevice and found the barrier, their prehensile feet slipping on the ground slick with decomposing organs and always alerted the entrenched biomancer of the intrusion.

Sometimes, the inquisitive creatures only inspected it for a bit before retreating, other times, however, they were more violent in their investigations and tried to push through by sheer force and stubbornness. This had been one such cases, the damned monster trying to break through for over ten gut-wrenching minutes.

Alice knew that right now stealth was the only thing keeping them alive.

The problems were still those of food and water. She had yet to grow thirsty thanks to her skill, but the spiders had already eaten through half of their supplies, and she knew what would happen once they grew hungry enough.

I’m living on a damned timer.

Obviously, Alice hadn’t been idle in the hours leading to that specific moment. She had spent most of her waking hours in a deep trance, exploring her own eyes while trying to find a way to form her own night vision.

The experiments, however, hadn’t gone well. As it turns out, forming a completely new set of cells in a very specific pattern somewhere they don’t belong to was pretty difficult, let alone when also paying attention to possible ambushes from an enemy. That didn’t stop her from trying obviously, but after dozens of attempts and almost blinding her left eye, she had finally moved away from her Captain Price plans.

Bravo Six is not going dark today.

Instead, the planning had shifted towards a far more direct approach. Skitter would come back sooner or later, possibly bringing back enough reinforcements for them to be saved.

It was now her turn to make it possible by bringing down as many of the Jumping Spiders as possible.

The web had been carefully strengthened by dozens of lengths of silk, each one carefully layered in a very specific pattern.

The bottom and the top of the entrance had been reinforced enough to probably withstand a car crashing on them, while a part of the center had been left completely open, a small window like an old castle’s arrow loop for her to stab through with her weapons and for the spiders to focus on, so that they would instead leave untouched the actual weak points of the structure, its anchors.

Her only hand was shaking as she adjusted the straps of her newly improved chitinous breastplate; the number of things that became possible when you had an almost infinite amount of silk was simply unbelievable. In this particular case, the rough chitin of the exoskeleton she had crafted had now been expertly covered in a soft layer of molded silk that kept the sharp ridges far away from her skin and also possibly provided an extra bit of protection from bludgeoning damage.

All her knives and spikes had also been provided with a secure silk grip and her footwraps were now made of the same sturdy material.

Suddenly, Alice felt like laughing at the absurdity of her situation.

She was stranded in another world, as far as she knew at least; stuck in a cave with two spiders that made her clothes and fighting against even more spiders while waiting for an actually sentient spider to come back with news of its mom. And she had accepted a boon from a probably eldritch being.

She chuckled softly; her fingers now steady as she finally managed to adjust the final strap.

She could already hear the scurrying paces of another hatchling moving down the passage.

The first leg passed through the opening, touching the other side, searching for a hint of what was expecting it inside.

Alice had to place a hand on Band-Aid, preventing him from attacking as another leg passed through.

The invading limbs pushed on the silk, finding the purchase needed for the creature to put its ugly maw inside, his large eyes instantly locking with her own.

The spiders hadn’t even had the time to realize what was happening before the long claw passed through its brain, killing it instantly.

She grasped the body before it slung back to the other side, pulling it through the too narrow opening and resuming her wait as her two companions feasted once more.

Her hand moved to the water container, unlatching it from her bandoleer and finding the small opening through the silk. Cold water slid down her throat through her smirking lips.

“This might actually go well”.