Spider facts!

  Category: Anatomy/Physiology

  Subcategory: Metabolism

  The length of time a spider can go between feeds varies tremendously between species. Some, like the brown recluse or certain tarantula species, can easily last for several seasons. Others can last only a few weeks. The time is also greatly dependent on other factors, such as access to water and relative humidity, and of course the spider's activity level.

  Jon felt a slight, cool breeze as the doors opened. He peered into the doorway: the corridor was much lighter than the dark room, and he could barely make anything out. A single blue lamp hung from the ceiling.

  It was hard to be sure of the chamber’s scale with so little lighting, but the lone torch looked like it was doing the work of many, the room at least as large as a small amphitheater.

  “This feels like a fucking boss chamber,” Jon thought to himself, nervous.

  He was exhausted, both physically and mentally. He had, at best, one good psionic attack left in him. Jon felt a prod from Oregano’s side of the link, and he looked down. The rat was holding up the two rabbit eyes like a tiny cocktail server.

  Only instead of olives or cheese, there were raw eyeballs. And instead of a tray, there was a severed rabbit ear. This world sucked.

  Jon took one eye, but pressed the ear closed over the other eye.

  “You should have it,” he told the rat.

  Oregano looked up, giving him an inquiring glance.

  “I would be dead without you. Multiple times now. Thanks buddy.”

  The rat gave no further protest, gleefully gulping down the eye and beginning to tear into the ear.

  Jon really wished he had eyelids. Some things weren’t meant to be seen.

  He stared at the alpha’s remaining eyeball. Jon had eaten a couple of these now, but it didn’t require thought when the hunger had a hold of him.

  He focused on home, then tossed back the eye, sucking it down before he could think about it any more.

  His body was flooded with energy, which helped him forget about the disgusting source. That eyeball had nearly as much energy in it as an entire small bunny.

  The energy circulated through his system, renewing his body and his resources.

  Jon had accumulated a number of injuries. He had ignored them in the heat of the escape, but his carapace had scattered cracks from his leap of faith, though thankfully none of them had completely penetrated his encasement. The fight with the bunny worsened these cracks when it landed on him, but otherwise he had received only minor scratches from its quills that battle.

  The defects in his shell began to mend as the energy rushed through him, but it seemed like the majority of the energy sank into his psionic pulse generator, passing through the filter and leaving behind the strange energy he drew on to make his attacks and distractions. With this restoration, Jon felt he could make two or maybe three more attacks before he was down. Not optimal, but a lot better than the one he would have managed without devouring the eyeball.

  Beyond any benefits to his energy, Jon also felt much better rested. It was like the dead sprint had never happened.

  Oregano had polished off the ear, and was looking about perkily.

  “Ready?” Jon sent to Oregano.

  The rat answered with an affirmative, and they stepped together into the room. As they stepped in, the doors predictably swung shut behind them. Then a bright light burst from Jon’s chest. It shown brighter, and the card Herman gave him lifted away from his body and hovered in the air.

  The card shown brightly for several moments, then darkened before giving off three bright pulses. With the last one, the card burst into verdant flames. All around the room, torches ignited with the same emerald flame, and the room was now lit in a spectral green light. The fires reminded Jon of the science experiments he saw as a kid where they burned copper salts.

  There was a noise of shifting stone, and three holes began opening in the center of the room.

  Each was around a meter across, and they were swiftly filled as pedestals rose from the ground, spinning upwards counter-clockwise. The pillars continued to rise until the one on the left paused at Jon’s eye level.

  This ended up being pretty unimpressive, as Jon was now only around a meter tall, but he appreciated the convenience. The second central pillar continued to rise to around half again this height, while the third rightward pillar stopped between the two.

  As the pillars paused their ascent, all the torches in the room guttered out, even the original blue one. Jon and Oregano sat in the darkness a moment. Then three spotlights shown down on the pedestals without a visible source. After a couple more seconds, the torches around the room sprang back up, now the same blue as those in the stairway, but with more muted lighting that allowed the spotlights to emphasize the prizes.

  Jon had been braced for a fight this whole time, and was relieved when nothing else happened. He had half expected boss music to begin blaring or some impossible puzzle challenge to be initiated as they walked into the room, but it seemed it really was a quest reward space of some kind. Feeling more assured he was not about to get ambushed, Jon moved to examine the pillars.

  On each pillar sat an item. The left pillar held a monocle in a glass case, the lens resting on a red velvet pillow with a gold chain placed next to it. The case was like a pie cover from a 50’s style diner.

  The right pillar held a black cane topped with a crystal the size of a man’s fist. The cane was laying in an open jade box with two clasps of gold holding it in place. Jon was not sure what to make of the cane. It didn’t look like a practical weapon, and he felt like it would be out of place in almost any social situation unless the owner was a pimp.

  The final pillar held a black top hat with a green silk ribbon tied across the base. The hat had no decoration. No case. No frills. Jon looked at it carefully, noting the dust on the pillar was disturbed in a rectangle around it, like something had been recently removed.

  There was a small note next to it, and Jon moved a little closer to get a better look at it. The penmanship was atrocious, similarly bad to the I.O.U. note Herman had given him earlier. The note simply said:

  “Put me on.”

  Jon wondered if the note might have been written by the terrapene as well: Herman told him about this place. Had he placed the note and the hat here with Jon in mind?

  Jon was still a little worried. It felt like when he took one of the items off the pillar he was going to get hit with some Indiana Jones bullshit. Maybe a dropping ceiling or a rolling boulder. A wall collapsing or the floor dropping and the start of a boss battle. It would line up with every video game he had ever played. However, Oregano kept prodding him to take one of the treasures.

  “Couldn’t they be trapped?” Jon asked.

  Stolen story; please report.

  The rat seemed a bit exasperated as he answered. Oregano sent him an image of a rat checking the area outside its hole and glancing around before it left. The emotions around this image indicated approval. The next few images showed that rat growing thinner, refusing to leave its hole until a skeleton remained in the corner. The emotions with this set of images were pity mixed with contempt.

  Oregano knew of the system. He tried to send an image repeatedly, but for some reason it wouldn’t generate appropriately in Jon’s mind. He gave up up and sent an image of the pillars in front of them with the subtext indicating something tasty. Then Oregano sent an image of the bunnies and cherubs. A trial. He sent the images in an alternating sequence, and then sent Jon an image of a spider, sitting in the same hole as the rat, glancing out and side to side. This image was again accompanied by approval. Oregano then sent a question.

  Jon sighed over the mind link. “No, I won’t sit here till we both starve. I just don’t like it, ok?”

  Oregano sent the equivalent of a shrug. Then the rat sent an impression of Jon using the cane and monocle to smite the bunnies outside. In the rat’s mind, Jon used the cane as a club and the monocle as a flail.

  Jon would probably have laughed aloud at the image, but again, not capable of that anymore. The rat clearly had no idea what the tools were for.

  Jon finally assented, bracing himself as he laid one pedipalp on the monocle’s case. Nothing happened. Slightly reassured, Jon tried to pick up the case.

  His palps had shorter paired claws that closed like salad tongs, and after a few attempts he managed to close them on the glass case’s handle. He slowly lifted the case. Jon waited for the trap to spring, or perhaps a harsh scream to cry out. Still nothing. He gingerly lifted the monocle up by the chain and examined it.

  The monocle spun slowly before his large central eyes, and he received a system prompt labeling it:

  “Magic monocle of the prismatic path: improves affinity for light-based magic and mana for the wearer. May be improved with the aid of a jeweler.”

  It sounded like a good find, though Jon had no idea what light magic was or how to use it. If it was anything like the psionics, it would be extremely useful. The monocle didn’t come with any instructions, and so Jon tried to hold it up to his eye, feeling a little stupid. He didn’t have either the facial structures or muscles necessary to hold this thing.

  As it turned out, that didn’t matter at all.

  As he lifted the monocle with the intent to wear it, the chain swung up and hung itself on the left side of Jon’s body. It snapped into place against his chitin like a fridge magnet. The lens moved up past his eye, then fell down below it, before finally bobbing back up and settling right in front of it.

  The monocle had chosen the large middle eye in the front row on the left. This was one of his principle eyes, the ones that gave him his extraordinary vision. Jon was a little nervous having it there: he might have eight eyes now, but that one was important damn it!

  However, nothing happened, either to the eye or the monocle. His vision did not seem to change in the slightest. Jon had expected some further prompt, maybe a visual tutorial on use or another haptic buzz. There was nothing. He decided to move on to the next item, and figure it out later.

  As he approached the hat, Jon felt a sense of trepidation. It almost felt like the hat was waiting for him to touch it.

  He was reminded of a scene from the movie IT. In the scene, a boy reached into a sewer grate and got his arm bitten off by a clown monster. The camera had played up the sharp teeth on the clown as the boy reached forward, and the hat gave Jon a similar feeling of predatory anticipation. Oregano let out a low hiss. Jon sent a mental inquiry to the rat:

  “You felt that too?”

  Oregano did not respond for a moment, but then sent back an affirmative. The rat still felt the hat was likely safe, it couldn’t understand its own reaction. It felt like the rat was doubting its own senses, like it had seen rain falling up rather than down.

  “Let’s just leave it for now,” Jon said.

  He moved on to the right pillar holding the cane. Something about that hat really freaked him out, and if they were going to have to flee, he wanted to get all the safe loot first.

  Jon regarded the cane cautiously. It gave him none of the heeby-jeebies that the hat did. Jon reached out and picked up the cane with the claw of his right foreleg, gingerly snapping it out of its gold clasps. As he held it in front of him, Jon felt the cane wriggle slightly as it resized, ending about the length of his foreleg. The crystal on top shrank proportionately, becoming closer to the size of a small apple.

  “Lesser Staff of the Magister: enhances telekinetic abilities’”

  Jon was a little more excited about this one. There was still no prompt on how to use it, but if Jon could use telekinesis his life was going to become a lot simpler.

  He had eight legs and the two shorter palps in front of his pincers. Each leg had a retractable claw, and his palps had the two shorter claws that acted like tongs. He had poor fine motor control with them, though his limbs could handle silk very well with hook-like sections running along each appendage. The telekinetics might let him perform finer manipulations, depending on how they worked. It might give him ‘hands’ back.

  The cane was a great addition, but it did leave him with a problem. How was Jon supposed to store this cane when he wasn’t using it? He began to think of how the could secure it to his back using silk, and had started reaching out to Oregano for help, but the staff resolved the issue for him.

  The crystal top shrank until it was narrower than the cane, then vanished into an opening that appeared at the top. The cane then snapped back along his right foreleg like a switch blade folding down. It nestled along the inside of his leg, and even seemed to break into segments to fold along the joints. He could feel it laying along his four distal segments, but it did not seem to hamper his range of motion in any way. When he considered how to get it back out, he lifted the right foreleg again, and Jon was happy to see the staff snapped back out immediately.

  Jon stopped and looked around the chamber anxiously, his brief period of happiness already fading. He still felt like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. That expression suddenly seemed much more ominous as as a spider.

  Looking at the hat again, Jon came to a decision. He had had enough. He was happy with the loot so far. There was no need to tempt fate and fuck around with something that was giving him a bad feeling. For all he knew, the psionic abilities had come along with a sixth sense. Or like a ninth sense at this point? Some sort of additional extra sense outside the conventional numerical system which he did not previously have. That rolled right off the tongue.

  In any case, Jon decided to grab Oregano and leave the chamber. He motioned to the rat and said,

  “Let’s go buddy. No need to touch that thing.”

  Oregano seemed a little miffed at not spying any small and or easily swallowed treasures, but otherwise was in full agreement. If anything, the rat seemed more disturbed by the hat on the central pillar than Jon.

  Jon still had no clue how they were going to get out of the mess they left behind, but maybe they could wait out the bunnies, or find another exit that was not guarded. Jon wasn’t sure how long he could go without food, but he was pretty sure spiders could go a very long time between meals.

  Zach’s voice chimed in helpfully, but Jon waved it away after a few seconds. Jon gathered that it was anyone’s guess, but he might have a few weeks if he was like other spiders. Oregano would need something sooner, but hopefully he could at least outlast the bunnies’ attention.

  Jon turned around and began to walk out of the chamber. He walked up to the doors, which remained shut. There were no handles. Jon pushed against them, and nothing happened. The I.O.U. card was gone.

  “Fuck,” Jon thought.

  As though in response, the torches in the room went out, and the temperature dropped precipitously. Looking back, Jon saw only one spotlight remained, shining down on the hat.

  He spent several minutes coming to terms with his options, just staring. Oregano hopped down from his carrier during this time, moving along the base of the doors, searching for a space he could fit through.

  Jon remained lost in his thoughts. The room was dark, but he could still walk around it looking for other exits. Maybe there would be something hidden on one of the walls, or another path would open when he moved to the other side of the chamber.

  But he knew, somehow he just knew, that it would never happen. He felt a sudden certainty that the “gift” he was given by Herman was not entirely benevolent. Jon had been lead here. He had naively listened to the directions given to him by his captors, and he had walked each step of the way here like a pig to slaughter.

  There wasn’t another way out. There wasn’t some special secret passage avoiding the warren. If he didn’t go and take this hat, something new would just keep happening until he did.

  He walked slowly back to the center of the chamber, hearing the soft clacks of his claws moving steadily across the stone. Jon stopped in front of the pillar, looking at the top hat.

  Jon felt a simmering, impotent rage as he stared at it He had not been given a choice in any of this, running from crisis to crisis. Jon felt Oregano come up behind him, and realized he was wrong.

  There had been at least one choice he had made entirely of his own volition, and it had paid out dividends many times over. Jon took a deep breath, feeling his heart thrum steadily away in his abdomen. Face towards the flame. Another breath. Some suffering is inevitable.

  He reached for the hat.

  ---------------

  Oregano watched silently as Jon reached out towards the hat. The spider’s claw hesitated just over the hat; for a happy moment, Oregano felt like Jon was going to pull back.

  Then the claw dropped.

  As the spider touched the hat, it fell writhing and twitching to the ground.

  "It has been said, never bring a knife to a gunfight, but what happens when you bring a gun to a sword fight?"

  Ozzy Irman had always considered himself something of an explorer. Never in all of his wildest dreams however did he think he'd end up in another world. Hell, he still hadn't made it to Yellowstone.

  But when the unthinkable happens, and he finds himself face down cheeks up in a swamp full of monsters he knows something has gone terribly wrong with life. Armed with nothing save his rapidly fraying wits and *cough* an arsenal of magical firearms *cough* he must eke out a place for himself in a world full of magic, corruption, and Gods.

  ?? Great for readers who enjoyed He Who Fights With Monsters, Vigil's Wrath, The Ten Realms Series, and other isekai/flintlock fantasy stories.