Chapter 173: Eight Legs
Slowly, slowly, it awoke.
This was rather concerning to me, considering I was far beneath it tunneling merrily into my planned heart tree, eating away limestone and basalt until dry air heaved at my touch. It was a plummeting kind of space, where beings without wings would feel a lurch in their gut as they stared over the endless drop; even if they were starting on the ground as my tunnel led to, I doubted they would be able to resist the temptation to look down as they climbed, to see the travesty waiting with hungry maws for their fall. Half a missed step, the slip of a hand; gone. A fatal kind of promise.
Oh, I loved this floor, its potential; as soon as Nicau returned with enough plants to fill in the gaps and stuff it full of the danger I needed, it would flourish, blooming much like its namesake into a tangled web of teeth and threats.
But I had been focusing on that, right until a goddess awoke in the forefront of my awareness.
I coiled back, mana smothering my core in protective chains—but the star-burn flitting about my thoughts wasn't attacking, nor particularly aggressive. Just the cold iron that Nenaigch's presence always brought, the thundering slowness of moving tunnels.
And within those tunnels, pulling itself upright, too many limbs by far and eyes black as death, was the arachne.
It—he? they? I had no idea what it would choose—was tall, worryingly so, its back stooped against the cramped corridors of the Jungle Labyrinth. Pale skin, the bristled points of its spine jutting through the canvas, only to disappear beneath a chitinous armour, shadow-black and crawling up its sides. Hair so white it seemed the colour had been stolen from it, hanging ragged over its back and spilling before its face; its face, with eight black eyes arranged like a crown, two largest in the front. A mouth full of mandibles, a collection of fangs already pooling with venom.
And the legs. Hard to miss the legs.
There were eight of them, four on each side, looking all the world like a spider if it wasn't filling the entire godsdamn ten foot width of the tunnels and still needing more room. The same black chitin, armoured over the joints and down to enormous claws on the tips, large and strong enough to puncture through a man's chest.