"Jorōgumo Kikaikumo" She says to herself, wondering about the name. "I have never heard this before…"
"This is your name now." another standing next to her remarks.
The story of this one starts with a simple life: nothing more than common living of a poor human child. Surrounded by demons for her entire life, this child lives in fear of the world.
"Mother, I want to see the rest of the world." she would always say. To no avail, she is denied repeatedly and given no heed. Playing Kagome-Kagome all day long with the others, running aimlessly for years and years of life, and nobody noticed her. A broken soul that reaches for the boundless sky and twirls madly, reaching for the sun again; reaching for the moon again.
At the age of 14, coming closer to the next year, this girl decides to wander past the boundaries of her village, off the roads, into the fields and forests, foolishly against the will of her others. Friends and family aside, all curiosity overtakes her and lets her mind wander through the endless lands of ethereal depiction.
Into the forest in the west she enters, without even knowing the dangers it holds. She follows the empty and unfamiliar road in it, looking frantically but not hesitantly going forward, she follows it through the darkness that this place holds. All creatures watch her carefully, picking their moment, prying at her and thinking ruthless thoughts.
"Come to me, child…" a sudden voice beckons from a frontwards mist. It seemingly came out of nowhere, but offered a haven.
She took the ghastly hand that came from the mist, from no body. From something in her being, she took the hand of this unknown being.
"I will take your body, and your soul will be free to see this land in its fullest…" the thing offers. "Give your flesh to those who need it."
And so foolishly, she did. The girl was engulfed in claws that ripped her bare skin to shreds and pried it open. They attacked her legs, these unseen creatures of darkness. They crippled and severed them from her, strait through the bone with their claws and teeth.
They sucked the very color of peach from her skin in their ruthless hunger and left the pale body torn to shreds lying on the ground, wrought in the middle of the dank, shaded woods. The demons raped – violated – and destroyed the poor girl and sliced her hair down to near the scalp.
The act was made in a flash, not even 5 minutes had passed before all else was silent on that road. Lying dying and broken on the ground, she quietly mutters, "Ma…ma…h-help…me…"
Not long after, a girl comes across the near corpse. A girl with bright green hair and wearing a white and blue haori and hakama comes and looks down at the sight, taking silent pity on her. She shakes her head and picks the child up, and then carries her the original way she was heading. Somehow, the child survives the torturous slaughter and stays awake through the carrying.
They eventually arrive at a hill with a staircase leading up it and to a quaint shine the pathway is decorated with giant Onbashira sticking out of the ground. After seeing that, the child rests her eyes and sighs in relief, falling into a deep sleep. The maiden that carries her travels up the steps to the building and calls out something; something incomprehensible.
Out from the side of the small shrine comes a small figure in teal cloth and of blue hair. Along with her come other small people in odd attire.
"Take her, do what you must." The maiden tells one of them. They all gather around and take the slumbering near corpse, carrying her away to a somewhere.
The odd little people bring her to the edge of a lake not much farther away and set her down on a large, stone, table-like slab. Out they bring more odd things: metal tools and scrap, sheets of steel and other different parts. They bring also a giant contraption made completely of metal, a frame fit for one to sit on or perhaps in. The appearance of it is a huge steel spider, even as far as including the face of one. The odd people gather around the child and begin to do things to her body: they first shove wires and other mechanical things that the humans know nothing about into her wounds, and then seal the wounds with bandages and fire. They secondly bring the giant mount of steel close to her and begin to attach its mechanisms to her while chanting, "Jorōgumo, Jorōgumo, Jorōgumo, Jorōgumo…"
Where did they get such a monstrous suit of metal? None know. After finishing nearly with the attachment, they close in on her face, missing its left eye. They clean and empty the ocular wound and begin to install another foreign machine into it. All while this happens, the maiden stands above the unconscious girl and spreads out a cleansing light over her, keeping her alive through the surgery with some unknown mystical power.
The strange little people gathered around finish with installing the fake eye; it doesn't even look like an eye. It looks more like a flat camera lens fused with some sort of armor piece that wraps around the head.
All dry and dead, her body is still and pale now. The oil and blood splashed as one onto her give the stench and pigment of death. It begins to cloud and sprinkle, water washes off the awful odor and gives the atmosphere a sense of empty dread. Finally, a hand twitches. The broken girl wakes as they spew flames and sparks across the boundary between her and the mount. Her skin begins to melt over top of it and fuse her and the machine together. She does not scream, only watch the mesmerizing light above her.
They complete the transformation. The light above disappears and all but one leave her without another word.
"Jorōgumo Kikaikumo." The last attendant says.
"Jorōgumo Kikaikumo" the girl says to herself, wondering about the name. "I have never heard this before…"
"This is your name now." The last attendant tells her.
The girl, Jorōgumo, rises up on her new body, rolling over on the stone table; she falls.
She cannot rise again, and she pleas, "I can't move. What did you do to me?"
The last attendant ignores her and asks, "Are you a waste like the others?"
"No…" Jorōgumo mutters and attempts to stand again. She fails and lies helplessly on the stone.
The others come back again and reach for her, picking her up with all of their might. They carry her near the ground, past the shrine, past the pond behind it, over to the edge of the hill overlooking a clouded lake and a waterfall, a little strip of forest in between.
"If you can walk, walk. If you can live, live." One creature says to Jorōgumo.
They throw her down the hill and let her tumble into the forest strip below. She crashes with each roll and eventually lands on flat ground.
"What…did I do?" She asks nobody. She slumps onto the ground and cries out into the nothing, her tears hidden by the rain above.
She lies there now, alone unknowing. She has forgotten her days and all others who she loved. Nothing is there now, she has nothing to exist for, and so proceeds to the lake to sink.