Tallah [Book 3 Complete]

Luna felt lost in the vast space of the Cauldron. It was a strange, new feeling to experience. It had never truly been lost before.

The tethers connecting it to friends Vergil and Sil had snapped off. That didn't mean they were dead, just that they'd gone somewhere far away. The same had happened to Luna's connections to the Kin when following the human friends into the portal.

It chose to believe this was again the case, rather than accept its friends might have perished in the fighting. They had, after all, survived the false mother and her hunters. They could survive anything else.

But that left Luna with an issue all the same: it was stranded among many unfriends, with no way of finding its friends, and no way to return to the Kin.

This required careful consideration and planning. It required resources.

Thankfully, the strange unfriend Luna had consumed had proven quite filling. The sustenance was slow to digest and offered much energy for Luna. So much so, in fact, that it was having trouble standing still.

Even as Luna knew that being found by unfriends could mean death, it was having trouble not fidgeting in its newfound small hiding place.

Everything itched and ached. Its back, like never before, itched all over, as if preparing for moulting. But it wasn't yet time for Luna's moulting. A library spider only moulted once in its life, and that was when approaching adulthood, where they would've taken a place within the library's silk spinners.

Luna shouldn't have been even halfway to that moment. Still, its back itched, the hard shell creaking and splitting apart at the seams. Every moment of sitting idle was a new kind of agony that Luna didn't know how to deal with. It tried scratching, but that only lead to its shell cracking more. Some foul clear liquid oozed from the fresh cracks and tears.

It fought the urge to scratch. All its attention was bent on cataloguing the options and the paths ahead.

Escaping the tunnels had taken no small amount of effort and cunning. The journey towards the forest had been no less arduous but had been aided by circumstances. For a time, the tide of unfriends had all headed in the same direction as Luna, but a plume of fire in the distant forest, followed by an earth-rending explosion had quelled that migration.

That was when Luna's tethers had severed, and it was left alone among a wasteland infested by terrible creatures. After the distant explosion, it had remained immobile for a long time, half-submerged in a puddle of blood mud, too shocked to move.

Luna was at a loss for what to do next. It had crept among the corpses of the Cauldron, through ditches and puddles, until it had found an abandoned dwelling near to the nest the humans called the Rock. Rather, the shell of what had once been a dwelling, now reduced to little more than a few walls barely still holding together. Luna had entered, climbed to the highest point it could find—a crawl space beneath the half-burnt roof—melted into the shadows, and was now thinking.

The human nest was aflame, still burning since the assault, just now starting to cool. Thick plumes of black smoke hung above the walls, unmoved by any wind. Unfriends were howling inside. While it couldn't understand the various tongues of the creatures—and there were quite many of them—it wasn't hard to understand the frustration and fear in those cries.

Now that the nest was taken, a different kind of culling had begun inside. Luna recognised the terrible cries of hunted and consumed creatures. It seemed like the false-mother look-alike, Mol'Ach, had begun a new kind of work.

So, it was pointless to try and reenter that place. It could follow the last direction it had felt for friends Sil and Vergil, but that was unwise. If they'd stepped through a portal, they would be a long, long way away.

Continuing the mission for Mother would be difficult. Knowing gained was good but wasted if Luna couldn't return to the Kin to share it. And Luna had no idea where the Kin were now since friend Tallah had complained that they'd been taken far, far away by the portal.

Would approaching the false mother look-alike lead to anything good? It doubted that. Even if that one understood Luna, as it seemed to sing the song of the Kin, what little Luna had seen of Mol'Ach did not inspire a feeling of possible-friend.

It tried scratching again at a join, breaking the shell on its third right leg. The itch and pressure eased as the fluid inside oozed out. Then the itching resumed.

And there was that issue. Luna was growing much too fast. And something else was happening with its shape aside from rapid expansion. It could feel things inside the shell poking out, as if it were growing horns.

Maybe eating the unfriend hadn't been wise.

But if it hadn't, it never would've had the energy to escape the tunnels.

"Surviving needs strange decisions with unclear rewards," it said, thinking aloud now that it was confident no unfriends were nearby. "This is worth knowing."

The itch became worse. Luna splayed out its legs, extending them as much as it could just to keep itself from trying to dig its claws into the joints. It knew from the Kin that moulting had to be allowed to run its course, if that was what was happening, and not be interfered with for risk of injury.

But the itch was impossible to ignore. Luna searched the Knowing and found no other mention of a feeling like this, of almost pain but also burning but also not pain and not burning. It was known as a concept, observed in the food from the forest, but never felt by any of the Kin.

It painstakingly recorded all the nuances of this feeling in the pool of Knowing. It took its mind off it for a short, short time.

Then it all resumed.

"What can this one do?" it asked itself.

A shadow darkened the sky outside, then was passed. Luna peered up through a gap in the roof of the dwelling but could not understand the shape of what had passed. Another shadow followed. Then another. The voices on the air weren't the voices of the unfriends, but Mol'Ach's strange song, growing louder with each shadow adding to the chorus.

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Waiting was not going to solve its indecision issues, Luna decided.

It was also beginning to fear the hunger again. If the need to feed arose again, it was no longer certain eating another unfriend would be healthy for it, or wise in the long run. Regret had already set in for its first meal, especially due to the itching.

Luna recognized its worldview was drawing in on itself, compacting to a single aggravating sensation. It couldn't go on like this or else it may lose some faculties.

Survival. Luna decided to focus on survival first. Escaping the Cauldron, finding its friends, returning to the Kin were all actions with limited success possibility. Until a better option presented itself, Luna would have to deal with its immediate concerns: food, water, shelter, safety, information.

While friends Tallah, Sil, and Vergil were now unreachable, that didn't mean that Luna would need to become idle. Luna had survived alone while scouting the city with the false mother's hunters on the loose. It could survive in this barren place and its shadows.

Food and water were an easy-enough to solve issue now that it had its priorities set. All it had to do was head back inside the human nest. What it had earlier discounted as a pointless waste of its energy now took on a different importance. The nest had food in it. Luna knew where the humans had stocked supplies. Gaining access to those would limit other risks it would have to take, and afford it precious time to think and maybe survive whatever change it was undergoing.

The human nest, broken as it was, also provided plenty of hiding places it could squeeze into and from which it could observe the comings and goings of the unfriends. It was closer to Grefe than the open plains outside. It could be a safe haven.

But it would still be stuck.

So it would need to learn. It was good at learning.

What it knew so far was little. Friend Tallah had talked about the unfriends constantly trying to escape the Cauldron and go into the wider world. Now that the humans were all gone, would that goal resume? Luna would have to wait until—

Something crashed on the ground level below, the sound of splintering wood filling the already dwelling.

The spider drew into a tight ball and was hit by a fresh surge of itching and cracking and creaking. It poured all its energy into camouflage.

Heavy footsteps thudded beneath. Cloven feet disturbed the detritus that lay strewn about on the lowest level of the home. Luna had sifted through it earlier and found nothing of use. The only grain stored there was wet and mouldy, reduced to a grey sludge that it hadn't trusted to consume.

A low braying. Then a growl. Luna recognized the noise as made by one of the strange animal-headed unfriends. The ones friend Vergil had fought on the walls.

Luna lacked information.

The unfriends could have information.

But the unfriends did not speak in a way that Luna could understand. Only the one called Mol'Ach had shown the song of the Kin, distorted but recognisable.

Could this beastly unfriend be given the Knowing? Taught the song?

Was the chance of that worth the risk of emerging from the shadow?

Yes, the folds of Knowing replied. Gaining Knowing was always worth the risk. Without the Knowing, the Kin were nothing.

It would incapacitate the creature with a venom bite, use silk to bind it, then inject the Knowing. If the unfriend gained speech, it would ask it questions. If the unfriend did not gain speech, or did not cooperate, Luna would kill it with more venom.

The risk of violence was there, yes. But Luna had ambushed an unfriend before. They weren't bright creatures, just strong.

Luna slowly uncurled and extended its legs. Carapace cracked and creaked, shattered and dropped softly to the floor in flakes still hanging on to its legs by thick mucus. Whatever sound Luna made was not equal to the racket the unfriend was making as it upturned whatever ruins were left of the human furnishings.

Luna's legs were longer. Thicker. Thorny, wet hairs covered the freshly exposed segments. Luna did not focus on that, not yet.

Instead it began climbing the roof's underside to position itself at a better vantage point to see what was happening beneath.

There was just one unfriend there, snuffling about and digging through the refuse. It had found the rotten grain and was gorging itself on it. Luna got an uncomfortable reminder of the last unfriend it had found feeding and the endless itch that moment had lead to.

It wouldn't eat this one.

Another goat-headed unfriend lumbered into view and brayed at the one feeding. A scuffle broke out shockingly fast and brutal. The two locked horns, clawed and kicked at one another. The fight began and ended in a moments, the first creature throwing out its aggressor.

Luna squirmed back, retreating into the shadows until its hind legs found no more room to crawl into. The brutality of the fight had shrivelled Luna's courage, but did not utterly dismiss it.

The braying outside was echoed by others. For a moment, it seemed a whole herd of the unfriends would try and enter the broken dwelling. Luna tensed, readying to escape outside through a burnt hole in the roof.

Then the noise went away, the screaming voices dimming with distance. Only the one still digging through the rotten bags of grain remained. Its mouth foamed as it ate, all its attention focused there.

Luna waited and counted moments. No other unfriends wandered in. There were no more voices. The only changes were the slurping, gurgling noises from the creature beneath, and the shadows passing over the shattered roof.

It crept forward. It ignored the itching tearing at its focus. More of its shell cracked and oozed.

The goatman suddenly straigthened. The dark hair on the back of its head bristled and stood out as the creature sniffed around. It reached for a weapon it had discarded among the pile of refuse, a long shard of rusted metal that barely resembled a sword.

Luna froze mid-step and tightened its camouflage. This unfriend was much larger, much more muscled, and much more dangerous-looking than the one Luna had ambushed in the tunnel.

Fear.

Luna's own mixed with the strong pheromone stench now wafting off the goatman. It prowled the small room, head on a swivel, nostrils flared.

Had it sensed Luna's ambush? Or was it simple instinct for danger?

The goatman wandered out of view of the broken ceiling and Luna descended further, still intent on its plan. It would test the Knowing on the goatman, and kill if the creature proved of no use. It was good to have a plan.

It wondered distantly at the callous thought, then set it aside for examination sometime later. Now was the time to act and its mind was set. More rumination would only allow the goatman escape.

Step by careful step, it lowered itself into the room. The goatman was arched for a fight, stooped low, hands both gripping the chunk of rusted steel. It was growling. Thick drool coated its muzzle as square-irised eyes roamed the dark room.

Luna tensed. Drew its legs beneath it. Stored energy. The goatman hadn't seen it, its eyes passing over Luna's hidden shape without stopping.

Luna pounced.

The wall cracked with the force of that leap.

The goatman's sword flashed through the air, quick as lightning, and Luna felt pain.