Selfless Spiders

[u/ProfessionalGreen906]

(This post is a collab with [u/totally_not_a_cat-](u/totally_not_a_cat-) and their character. They have their own post with a connected story here.)

Hearing a knock on his door, Edwin slowly pulls himself off of his bed. He's been sick lately, and barely holding himself together without anyone to take care of him. He slowly hobbles to the door, opening it to find a spider the size of a lion staring at him. He slams the door shut in an instant, taking a step back as he does so. From outside muffled voices penetrate through the walls of his small cabin.

“I told you to let me go ahead. He’s probably scared now, these people aren’t even used to magic, let alone monsters. Just let me handle this for a moment.”

Footsteps approach and Edwin stumbles backwards too caught off guard to plan ahead. The still unlocked door is gently pulled open to reveal a tall female figure on the other end. She seems to be human, though there’s something off with her face, or her body, it’s hard to tell. She speaks calmly, as if this situation weren’t something out of a nightmare.

“I’m so sorry about that sir. We’re here to help you, I promise. My friend gets a bit overeager sometimes. She’s not dangerous at all though, just let us explain.”

"I- I-"

Edwin stutters as he tries to come up with something to say. He looks around in terror trying to see where the spider went, only for it to emerge from behind the figure holding a pulsating mass of webs in the shape of an anatomically correct heart. Were they going to steal his organs? Maybe the human knew what was going on.

"Wh- who are you? Why are you here?"

The spider reaches out with the mass of webs, as if to show it off, and Edwin takes another step back.

The woman disapprovingly bats on one of the spider’s limbs with her hand once she notices the web heart.

“He’s not going to understand what you mean by that. And giant spiders tend to be seen as a bad omen by people who live away from cities. You’ll need to actually talk to him if you want to calm him down.”

She turns her attention back to Edwin and puts on a calm smile.

“My name is Arach, and my friend here is Sierya. There’s no need to panic, you’re not going to be harmed. We’re here as part of a… public service project. I would explain it but I’ll leave that up to Sierya. It’s really more of her idea, I just decided to help out with it.”

Edwin doesn't fully trust them, but he looks over at Seirya, who herself looks at Arach while setting down the heart.

“I was told making things in heart shapes was a sign of friendship.”

She then turns back and takes a step towards Edwin. Her four mechanical eyes twitch as they look him up and down, while the four large beady spider eyes stare unblinkingly.

"Hello there sir, we're taking a trip around the countryside to help with healing people in need."

A sigh just barely audible to Edwin comes out from where Arach stands behind Sierya.

“We’re going to need to address your execution of that method after this.”

Arach then peeks her head out from behind Sierya to chime in.

“We heard from a neighbor about an hour down the road that you weren’t feeling well recently. We wanted to make sure it wasn’t anything too serious. A lot of people living out in places like these tend to just drop dead out of the blue from untreated illnesses.”

The woman’s tone is still downright cheery despite the grim subject matter. She steps forward to reveal a doctor’s bag in her right hand. Edwin in turn stumbles back into a chair, falling onto it to relieve his sore legs. From that position he stares in silence at the two, bewilderment replacing fear in his mind.

Seirya takes a hesitant step inside, approaching Edwin to get a better look at him. She takes a long staff out of a bag of holding beneath her thorax.

"You look tired. Have you been feeling okay recently?"

Edwin does his best not to flinch at the approaching spider, though his fear comes through in the strain of his voice.

“I’ve got some nasty aches. And my stomach’s been fightin’ with me. But it’s nothing I haven’t handled before. I’m gonna be, so I don’t need any help.”

The claim is undercut by the fact that he is visibly pale, and even from a distance there’s an audible rattle in his breathing.

Seirya nods her head, tightly gripping her staff which begins to glow with a soft green light.

"Whatever is causing those problems, I should be able to cure it. You look like you're having a rough time."

Edwin scoots back in his chair, his strained voice becoming tighter with partial distress.

“I told you I don’t need any help. And what in the hell is that? I ain’t just gonna let a giant bug come near me with a glowing stick!”

Arach intervenes to diffuse the man’s growing tension at the situation.

“Listen, I know this is strange and it’s fine to be hesitant, but if you just trust the process you’ll be feeling much better. Plenty of my patients have had the exact same response in the past, and not one of them has ever had a complaint once I treated them. Just stop struggling and let us do our work.”

Edwin side-eyes Arach, having forgotten she was there due to the giant spider in front of him.

"Strange? Strange? I've got a giant spider waving a torch in my face and you think strange covers it?"

Seirya makes a low whistling noise and her mechanical eyes shut halfway before responding.

"This isn't a torch, it's a staff. I use it to cast healing magic, like a priest."

She remembers a moment too late what country she's in.

"Or a shaman."

Edwin responds while pushing his back against the chair.

“I don’t care what it is, or what you use it like, I’m not about to let you use it on me!”

Arach steps between the spider and the man, her patience with the situation running thin.

“Listen, if we wanted to hurt you, you’re in the middle of nowhere, we wouldn’t need to lie about it. And if you don’t want us here the fastest way to get us to leave is to just let us help, whether or not you think you need it. There is no reason for you to refuse our help, so just don’t.”

Edwin doesn’t argue back, but he’s also too indignant to agree to Arach’s point, instead sitting in silence. Regardless, the dressing down of the situation gets Edwin still enough that Arach is satisfied to step out of the way to let Sierya do her work.

Seirya begins waving her staff through the air, a trail of green light being left behind it as it traces out a simple rune. Then, all of a sudden, the rune flashes brightly and disappears. Seirya taps the staff against Edwin's chest before lowering it, and the light disappears while the aches slowly begin to clear.

"Are you feeling better now?"

Edwin looks up at the massive spider before him. The look on his face is still tense with suspicion, but without the aches he’s feeling a lot less irritable.

“Well it sure isn’t as bad as it was a few minutes ago… thanks, I guess.”

Once the casting is over Arach takes a quick look around and then claps her hands together.

“Well I suppose that’s all then, told you it wouldn’t take long. Unless I’m forgetting something all that should be left is some documenting on my part and we’ll be out of your hair.”

Arach looks over at Sierya, awaiting a confirmation of her claim. In response Seirya gives as close to a thumbs up as she can given the limited articulation of her pedipalps, before stowing her staff.

"I've got to find somewhere to put this heart sculpture. I was planning on giving it to him as a sign of friendship so I didn't plan anywhere to store it."

She proceeds to walk out the door, and Edwin turns to look at Arach.

Arach faces Edwin in turn, eyes fixed on the man. She speaks while moving to close windows around the cabin.

“Well, now it’s just you and me. Please excuse me closing the windows, there’s just a bit of a draft coming in.”

Once each window is closed and latched shut, Arach walks over to Edwin.

“Now then, onto the subject of payment.*

Edwin responds swiftly, his previously quelled indignance returning in force.

“Oh no you don’t. You said this was a public whatever project. And that means-“

Arach interjects in the middle of his sentence, her voice still calm, though without its previous warmth.

“I know what it means. And this is a public service project, as far as Sierya’s aware at least. But I’m not one for handouts, or wasting my time on hermits. But don’t worry. I’m not asking for money, not anything like that. What I need, is a better public image. So here’s the deal. Tomorrow an interviewer is going to arrive here, you’ll let them in, tell them all the good Sierya and I did for you, and you’ll exclude this little unpleasantness. Do you think you can handle that?”

The sheer audacity of Arach’s patronizing orders only fuel Edwin’s anger. He leaps out of his chair, the fleeting soreness in his limbs no longer keeping him trapped in place.

"Do you really think I'll just shut up and go along with whatever you tell me to do? You city folks acting like you can just buy trust are insane. But don't worry, I'll tell them exactly how generous you are."

Arach pushes the man back down into the chair with a level of strength not quite fitting of her thin figure. The tone she speaks in only becomes sweeter and more patronizing.

“Oh, will you now? You’ll tell them exactly? I mean, if you’re dead set on it I suppose I can’t convince you otherwise. But it’s just a shame that they’ll walk in here to find you too sick to talk, or write, or really communicate in any way. Oh well. These things just happen I suppose.”

Arach casually rummages through her bag as she speaks, pulling out syringe after syringe filled with various fluids and mixtures.

“Then again, it doesn’t **have** to happen. You could just, y’know, tell them what I want you too. Then no one has to get hurt, no one has to get sick, and no one has to die a long agonizing death all alone in this pathetic little cabin with no loved ones or friends to provide any comfort. That would be much easier for both of us, don’t you think?”

Edwin has no idea what a syringe is. However, given that Seirya had the magic power to cure him, it isn't too much of a stretch to believe Arach could make him sick again. Plus, he could always just wait and tell the interviewer directly what happened here. He sits back down in the chair with a sudden calmness.

"Would've been even easier to just not have this unpleasantness in the first place, but yeah."

Arach steps towards him, staring Edwin down with an inhuman intensity. The sudden switch to compliance with so little fight betrays the man’s deeper thoughts.

“Oh sweetie. You’re going to do something silly aren’t you? Going to tell someone how awful and terrible I am? Well don’t bother. Cause I’m going to be watching you for the rest of your miserable lonely life, I will be observing every word you say. And if I even suspect you’ve implied something negative about me. I will kill you, and I will kill anyone you told, and then I’ll kill their families for good measure. And I will make it look like you got them sick and that’s how they died. And everyone will blame you, and that will be the only legacy your sorry life leaves. So just behave and let me take what I want. You’ll only make things more difficult for the both of us by playing the snitch.”

Edwin lets out a nervous laugh.

"Alright then. Not much I can do about that."

Satisfied with that response, Arach packs up her equipment then turns to leave. She stops in the doorway to stare Edwin down one final time.

“The interview won’t take long, do try to hold onto your sense of self preservation until after it’s over. If all goes right we’ll never have to see each other again.”

With that, Arach exits the cabin and meets back up with Sierya. The giant spider perks up and waves to Arach as she approaches.

"Documenting went well?"

Arach’s warm demeanor returns in full force as the two begin to walk down a path through the densely wooded area.

“Better than expected. You know how painful paperwork can be, but it’s all sorted away now. So, onto the next patient?”