Otherworld Ink

Estith hesitated in front of the broad stable doors, staring up at the looming building. It looked like an upside-down basket several stories tall, woven from vines as thick as a man’s leg. It also seemed more intimidating than usual. After years of training, he’d finally qualified for a mount of his own—not a training mount shared by all the apprentice scouts, but one that was actually his—and today he was going to meet it.

He shifted his feet, still breaking in his thrashergator-leather riding boots. Metal snaps lined their inner sides, spaced precisely for clipping into a saddle. He wasn’t sure he’d need them today, but it felt right to wear them. A scout of Blackswamp should always be prepared, after all.

Prepared, yet still unable to reach for the doors.

Although he’d gotten along well with the training mounts, they were chosen for their easygoing natures. The one the Stablemaster gave him wouldn’t be so docile. What if he couldn’t bond with it? What if he couldn’t get it to listen?

Well, as he’d learned in training, the only true antidote to nerves was action.

Estith reached for the doors only for them to open outward, almost hitting him. The stablehand gave him an odd look on his way out, and Estith realized he’d probably seen him standing there like a bump on a log for who-knows-how-many minutes. Cheeks and ears burning, he hurried through the open doors.

In fact, there were two sets of doors with a small room between to prevent anything from slipping out on accident. Estith diligently observed proper protocol—looking at the walls, the floor, and the ceiling—before opening the second set of doors. It was hatching season, after all, and those little guys had a tendency to get into places they shouldn’t.

Inside the stable, the gaps in the woven walls were large enough to let in air and light but small enough to prevent curious mounts from escaping. Enough natural light shone through to clearly illuminate the pale, silken nests and webs in which the riding spiders rested, as well as the walkways of vines and spider silk that twisted and branched throughout the structure. A network of pulleys raised and lowered food and feces and cleaning supplies between levels.

The giant riding spiders themselves were everywhere—resting calmly in their nests, scuttling idly along the walls, or being groomed and saddled on the ground floor. All of the most common species were represented. Huge, brown Wolf Spiders darted about on walls or the undersides of walkways. White, fine-limbed Ghost Steps busied themselves with elaborate orb webs, while the shiny, black-and-red Red Stars crafted tangled cobwebs to hide in. Occasionally, a fuzzy, grey Jumper would rocket across the room, startling anyone who happened to be in their landing zone.

A few of the spiders looked especially familiar—being either training mounts or the mounts of Estith’s instructors—and he was thinking of saying ‘hi’ to a few when someone called him.

“Hey! Newbie!”

Estith’s spine straightened as he forced his attention away from the spiders and toward the Stablemaster. She was a tall, lanky woman with short-cropped hair and bags like bruises under her eyes. From what he’d seen, they were a permanent feature.

“That’s me! I’m here!”

Estith cringed internally. Of course she knew who he was! He’d been here almost every day for training.

Mercifully, the Stablemaster didn’t seem to care about his fumbling answer and breezed by him without slowing down, obviously expecting him to follow.

“Here to meet your spider, right?”

“That’s right!” Estith fell in step behind her. “What kind is it? A Ghost Step? A Wolf Spider?”

“Hah! A Wolf Spider?

Estith rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.

“Just a possibility.”

Wolf Spiders were the largest and most aggressive of the domesticated riding spiders. While prized for their strength and fearlessness in battle, they could be hard to manage. They were almost never given as first-time mounts, but Estith’s spider-handling abilities had been the best in his class. In spite of his nerves, he still took pride in that.

“A ‘possibility’?” the Stablemaster echoed, then turned to a nearby stablehand. “Stott! What do you get when you put new riders on Wolves?”

“Fat spiders, ma’am,” the man replied without hesitating or looking up from his work, which seemed to involve carrying a large, woven nursery basket on his back and—disconcertingly—looking frantically around for something.

Well, that was hatching season for you.

“Fat spiders!” the Stablemaster repeated emphatically.

Estith wasn’t sure what to say to that. Fortunately, the Stablemaster kept talking.

“You had good handling scores, so I don’t mind putting you on something with a bit of bite, but until I’ve seen you with a spider of your own, I’m not giving you anything that aggressive.”

She led him to the wooden pillar in the center of the stable. Aside from propping up the roof, it served as a central point for calling spiders down from their webs high up on the walls. A single silk thread ran from each web to the base of the pillar. There were scores of them, all seemingly identical. Estith couldn’t imagine how the Stablemaster kept track of them all.

She twanged one of the threads. Estith tried to follow the vibration, but his eyes got lost among the walkways. However, he soon spotted the summoned spider, shiny black and scuttling along the underside of a walkway before descending toward them on a string of silk.

“What I’ve got for you is a nice male Red Star. He’s got a solid temperament—not too shy, but not aggressive either. He’ll take you where you need to go and not make too much fuss about it. Go on and introduce yourself.”

Moment of truth.

Estith held out his hand the way he always had for the training spiders and let the Red Star poke and prod his fingers with the short, arm-like pedipalps on either side of its mouth.

“He seems a bit… small,” Estith ventured. The little guy’s body barely came up to his waist. Even if Estith wasn’t the heaviest rider, he still worried he’d overburden such a small mount.

“He’s still got another molt before he’s big enough to ride,” the Stablemaster explained. “We’ll feed him up over the next couple weeks, and once he pops out of his skin he’ll be ready to go. He’s already broke to saddle, and we’ve been training him to carry weights on a lead-line. By the time you start your patrols next month, he’ll be ready for you.”

The Red Star mouthed Estith’s hand with its chelicerae, those curious sideways jaws toying with his fingers and the cuff of his sleeve, probably looking for treats. Estith laughed. With the fangs retracted, the mouth parts only tickled his wrist.

Still, he was privately glad he’d finished all his visits to the Master Invenomator. Red Star venom was a powerful neurotoxin. One bite could make every muscle in the body seize up, including the ones responsible for breathing. Anyone planning to work around riding spiders had to undergo a series of decidedly unpleasant procedures to develop immunity. Not that Estith was too worried given this spider’s friendly disposition, but as they say, better safe than suffocated.

“Once you’ve named him, just let me know,” the Stablemaster said, voice a bit kinder now. “We’ll put it on a plate next to his-”

She froze mid-sentence.

Estith felt the back of his neck prickle at her change of expression, but before he could ask what was wrong, something else made his neck prickle. He glanced slowly to the side where a mess of thin white legs was clambering up over his shoulder.

They’d found Stott’s missing spiderling.

He glanced warily at his Red Star. Adult spiders generally saw each other as too dangerous to make a tempting meal, especially when they were well-fed, but this little Ghost Step was an easy snack, especially for an active, growing spider of a different species.

Sure enough, the Red Star spotted Estith’s little “passenger” and started climbing up his body to reach for the spiderling. Its hooked feet caught on Estith’s belt and spider-silk shirt, and he braced himself against the extra weight, catching a leg that threatened to knock the spiderling forward into the Red Star’s mouth.

“Whoa there!”

With his free hand, he slipped his thumb and fingers beneath the spider’s jaws to press against the sensitive gaps between the base of its pedipalps and the hard underside of its mouth—a tricky move now that the Red Star’s fangs had come out to feed. His fingers weren’t strong enough to hurt it, but the firm pressure against a vulnerable part of its body forced the spider instinctively back.

The Stablemaster whipped around behind him, far faster than her perpetually sleep-deprived looks would suggest, and neatly unhooked the vulnerable spiderling’s eight feet from his clothes. With a shout to get Stott’s attention, she tossed the spiderling in a high, gentle arc that landed it safely in his waiting hands.

The spiderling disappeared into the nursery basket with its siblings, and Estith gave his disappointed Red Star some scritches near the base of its legs in apology.

The Stablemaster let out a breath.

“Not bad, newbie.”

She passed him a web-wrapped hunk of rat meat from a pouch at her hip, and Estith handed it off to his Red Star, gratified to watch its pedipalps press the treat eagerly to its mouth to inject its digestive fluids. With a snack in hand, it forgot all about the escaped spiderling. Estith petted the leg closest to him—keeping his hands sensibly away from the feeding spider’s mouth parts—and the leg tapped him back companionably.

Not bad at all.