Chapter 2.2 – Dwarves Are Heavy
There were dozens of giant talking spiders calling me Grandmother. To quote the Americans, this was seriously trippy. I was quite certain I hadn't been laying any eggs, let alone fertilizing them. There was no possible way – 'No, it' can't be...' But now I couldn't get it out of my head. It was only ever a few hours at a time, a day at most, but technically I was a time traveler. Who was to say that in the future I didn't take a jaunt further back through time.
'Nope, not happening. 100% not going back in time to birth a race of giant spiders.' I felt faint as I imagined dozens of baby baseball-sized spiders crawling around a crib. 'I'm too young to be a grandmother! This has got to be a case of mistaken identity.' That said, did I really want them to figure out that I was someone else? They seemed cute enough now, but who knew what they might be like if they got angry. Heart beating wildly I followed them through the darkness around the webs until I reached an obstacle. The last of the giant spiders had left the ground, traveling up the massive trees.
'How do they even do that?' Maybe there was a trick to it. If all the trees were covered in webbing then maybe they were sticky enough to walk right up. 'Or not,' I decided after testing my hand against the bark. Striking the tree with one of my forelegs in frustration, it was only my extra three pairs of legs kept me from stumbling when my foreleg stuck to the tree. Tugging harder I managed to pull my leg away from the tree, but something came away along with it. Extending from the end of my foreleg was claw of purest black, an absolute darkness even against the midnight black of the woods.
I lifted the leg up towards me for a better look but it retracted as if it was never there. Concentrating on the feeling I'd had of it retracting, I flexed muscles I hadn't known I had and the claw shot back out along with another on each of my other seven legs. 'Have I had these this whole time?' They looked dangerous. Sort of sexy too.
Inwardly I face-faulted. 'Sexy? Am I really that sort of girl?' An attraction to dangerous men and weapons, I was definitely starting to starting to fall into a cliché. If I woke up one morning with tattoos and a fetish for guns I'd know I'd gone too far.
Putting myself back into the moment, I tested my claws against the tree. It was a little tricky to judge how far to embed the claws for a proper grip without making it hard to pull them out but I soon got the hang of it. Climbing higher I was pleased to note that the fear of heights I'd suffered when learning to fly a broom no longer afflicted me. Another bonus, the burn in my core from holding up my upper body against gravity suggested all this climbing would be great for my abs.
"Eat, eat!" the spiders chorused as I reached the appointed elephant-wide branch. They rolled thirteen silk cocoons to me before plunging their stingers in to deliver some sort of venom. I could hear a faint bubble and hiss as the venom dissolved whatever was inside the cocoons. "Fresh caught, good meat within."
A grimace twisted my face. Was I really going to go through with this? Sure, they might attack me if they realized I wasn't their Grandmother, but the thought of eating dissolved wild prey was seriously icky. Not to mention that the venom currently hissing and bubbling could very likely eat away at me from the inside out if I drank it. After all, I was only half spider. 'And half witch.' If my partial arachnid transformation wasn't enough to completely protect me then the natural resistance of witches to physical harm could do the trick. Besides, I was awfully hungry. 'Just a little bite then.'
The cocoon was heavier than its size would suggest. It was lucky I was a lot stronger than I was when fully human, but I still had to use both hands to lift up the nearly 100 kilo package. Cautiously I dug my fangs into the spider-silk until a burst of flavor hit my tongue. 'Oh... that's not half bad.' Thanks to some chemical reaction with the venom the contents of the cocoon had roughly the taste and temperature of a hearty beef stew. I still preferred a nice extra-rare steak that I could sink my teeth into, but this wasn't a half-bad substitute. Oh, I was being discourteous wasn't I.
"Eat, my children. I only need this one." Children? It was possible I was getting a little too deep into character. I couldn't help but feel a certain joy in seeing them so eagerly attack their food. It was like throwing dog treats out to a pack of eager puppies. Talking puppies that hunted in a pack rather than individually and seemed to have some sort of societal structure... just how intelligent were they, anyways? Learning magic and the constant drama with Harry and Voldemort had blinded me to a very important fact: Humans were not the only intelligent species. On Earth, various species like goblins and centaurs were kept marginalized and disenfranchised by wizards and witches, but on Arda the giant spiders could be free to create their own civilization. Agriculture was probably out if they had the same opinion of vegetables as I did, but teaching them about raising livestock could kick-start a cultural and technological evolution. I was already heady with the possibilities.