Fate Deals the Cards: Fifty-Two Pickup Part 2: The Hermit

  Chapter 4 Green Eyed Lady

  I was hanging out a few miles from the dwarf camp, working on my voice one afternoon, in a clearing that was far from where I hunted and slept. I wanted no surprises from the short humanoids, so I did my crafting and experimenting far from my normal haunts.

  The process required a little bit of noise making, since I was basically inventing a whole new technology. My latest attempt was made of a long,gracefully curved manzanita branch I’d found and carefully bent by soaking the dried limb in a creek and pulling it carefully into shape with my silk and letting it dry in the sun. I had socketed the ends into a deer femur to create a simple lyre strung with my own silk.

  I may have spent a fair few minutes… maybe an hour or two working out some feelings on my primitive instrument, just to break the oppressive silence I found myself cursed with. A good size flock of songbirds gathered in the bushes, singing and chirping along with my fumbling and slightly pitchy performance for their own reasons, seeming undeterred by my monstrous spideryness.

  Not that I was any threat to them, I’d have to eat dozens of the little critters just to take the edge off my ravenous hunger. I had resigned myself to a steady diet of the nasty tasting hill goats for now, since I could reliably catch those without snares or webbing. I let the birds sing my songs for me, as I relaxed into the first real moment of pleasure I’d experienced since landing on the creepy ‘dungeon world’ I now supposedly ‘ruled’.

  I had a shiny golden window still lingering in the corner of my eye, patiently asking if I wished to ‘accept the lordship of this unnamed dungeon world’. There was no timer or any kind of urgency to the question, so I let it hang there for a while.

  The dwarves remained predictable, they sent prospecting teams into the mountains looking for minerals and metals regularly, hunted mundane game in the forest and otherwise waited for their guide to set them on the track of the elusive ‘A rank monster’ they were looking for.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised when the mantis creature, Skrithi’ee, spoke from a few dozen yards away, concealed among the bushes and low scrub… She had been suspicious of my presence for a while now; I suppose it would have been stupid for her to ignore my snooping.

  “I suspected that you were no ordinary Aracnean male… now I suspect that you are the new dungeon lord of this domain…” She rattled and buzzed her words from her wing cases and legs, startling the birds from the brush all around. She startled a short jet of webbing from me too, which was super embarrassing.

  I jumped in place and whirled around, spotting her in the shadow of a tall stand of alder trees, near the edge of my clearing.

  She waved her huge armored and spiked forelimbs at me in a gesture that came across as ‘I’m not being aggressive, but I’m no chump’ to my eyes. I imitated her gesture with my pedipalps and frontmost set of legs, holding them aloft and swaying from side to side.

  “Interesting…” She buzzed and rattled loudly. She settled back on her six spindly legs and watched me for a few moments, interest and curiosity glinting in her faceted eyes. “If only we shared a language…” She sighed softly, in a gentle rustle of her wing cases and a soft, stridulation of her rearmost legs.

  Unlike her raucous and harsh humanoid speech, this was a soft and subtle language of posture and quiet clicks, rustles and hums. A quiet and understated song of silent dance and a bit of whispery percussion.

  In shock at this discovery, it took me a few seconds to come to grips with the idea… so far, I understood the verbal and non-verbal languages of every sentient I had encountered or spied on. The dwarves were certainly not speaking english, they all sounded like an italian guy chewing on pop rocks and trying to speak with a spanish accent.

  I slowly and carefully reached into my web under a thornbush and pulled out one of my early experiments. A short length of particularly knuckly bamboo had caught my eye as I wandered around, looking for resources to play with. The stalk had a ridge every half inch and it felt light, tough and resonant… The inside I hollowed out very carefully, scraping the tough, fibrous interior away until it was a thin and resonant tube. I stroked a manzanita wood stick down the tube and almost capered with glee at the expression on the mantis’ face.

  Once dried and carefully coated with my super tough epoxy it made a more than passable guiro, one I used to speak the creature’s name; in her language of rattling clicks and whispery rasps.

  “Skrithi’ee…” I clicked and rasped. “Not a spider…”

  They weren’t english sounds, of course… nor any sound a human would recognize as speech, but they were musical. Rhythm and meter, language, music and dance, the interplay of sound movement and time were feeling all the same to me, just as the dance of the spider maidens fell within my scope without thought or effort.

  “Fascinating…” She whispered in her own language. “You can understand me?”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “”Yes…” I stammered, since the subtleties of her language were still beyond the range of my simple instrument.

  “You have been listening in, spying on the dwarves… I found the remains of several of your listening devices.” She said firmly, allowing no room for prevarications.

  “Yes… They seemed… hostile.” I stammered.

  “Intriguing, to think you could also comprehend humanoid speech…” She whispered, as she walked out into my clearing. “I am unable to perceive or replicate the frequencies of sound that the Arachneans use to communicate, just as they are unable to comprehend my speech. Our species exist in near proximity, as etheric travel goes, but we are ever distrustful and wary of each other.”

  She slowly walked in a circle around me, while holding her weapons close against her carapace, indicating simple curiosity on her part. Her language had a lot of subtleties and used gestures and all kinds of non verbal cues, it was not too unlike my dance… Slowly and carefully I tried incorporating more movements and gestures, finding a bit of crossover there, once I relaxed my rigid thinking about what a language could be.

  “I am a human man, not really a spider…” I tried a little funky hand jive at the end, just for funzies. “I kinda died and wound up here a few days ago, like this.”

  “Your gift for languages is startling, even for one of your kind, young isekai! To think I would find both a dungeon lord and a sentient Arachnean male with linguistic abilities…” She let out a short, insectile laugh, expressed through a quick tapdance, shared among her several feet.

  “My paper on this expedition will bring the academic establishment to tears!”

  “Uhh… you’re a researcher?” I asked, finding myself suddenly very wary again.

  “Oh, yes… I specialize in documenting transdimensional oddities and unique life forms, like yourself. I would appreciate a formal interview at some point… once you have settled in and taken up the lordship of this realm, officially.” She sighed happily.

  “So you know I’ve been sitting on the ‘dungeon lord’ thing?” I asked carefully.

  “I am going to approach a little closer, human… Please refrain from attacking me.” She murmured, approaching even closer, until we were facing each other across ten feet of scraggly meadow grass. “Let us say I suspected, and when you began shadowing us so carefully, I began to become certain.”

  “I won’t attack you… it’s cool.” I answered very carefully. “You really can’t read my intent in my body language?”

  “No, you are opaque to me… Isekai are rare enough, but cross species transitions seldom result in…” She shook her head and sighed. “Many beings lose their sanity in the journey, arriving in a state of mental disarray that results in frequent tragedies; hence my abundance of caution.”

  “Really? You keep calling me ‘Isekai’... is world jumping a thing that happens a lot?” I asked, now that she seemed less worried that I was going to pounce on her.

  “Yes, and no. Travel between worlds is not uncommon in the wider universe… among living sentients. An isekai is a deceased soul, somehow managing to find a way into a new realm and spontaneously constructing a new body for itself…” She giggled in insectile excitement again.

  “I have only met two of your kind before this! Though, as rare as beings such as yourself are, that still qualifies me as an expert! The jump from a humanoid to an arachnid form must be stressing your spiritual essence, something awful, young isekai.”

  The rough and buzzing nature of her humanoid speech was so jarring and unpleasant, the contrast with her natural voice couldn’t have been more stark. Just the same way; her cheerful, chatter bug personality made me willing to sit and talk all she wanted, especially since she seemed deeply uninterested in trying to capture me.

  I was feeling confident, so I just asked it straight out. “So, are you going to try and capture me, like the spider ladies?” I slipped it into the conversation really casually, cause I am super smooth like that.

  She almost stumbled over her own feet when my question landed on her. “Whyever would I do that… That seems like a dangerous and stupid idea for everyone involved. You know you are highly venomous, yes?”

  “I made that same argument with the spider expedition, when they tried to capture me… I don’t think I was very convincing.” I tried to emulate her tap-dancing laughter and found a little success. She joined in for the last few steps, tapping along with me in the stubbly grass of my clearing.

  “I will not be doing anything so foolish… nor will my employers. I suggest that you come to the dwarf camp tomorrow night and speak with them. I will bring a friend in to help translate for you.” She murmured calmly. “These dwarves are a highly civilized and social species. They hold a deep respect for the agency and autonomy of other beings.”

  “Maybe… but I think I have something they want and they might not hesitate to try and take it from me… if you understand my meaning.” I answered calmly.

  “You have been listening in… Yes, there has been talk of hunting you, in hopes of obtaining the dungeon lordship. They are operating under the assumption that you are a simple animal.” She shrugged, which for her was a fluttering of her bright green wing covers.

  “It is widely known that Arachnean males are dangerous and fierce predators who are best avoided at all times. Unlike most non sentients, male Arachneans do wander through the void on occasion and cause all kinds of trouble.”

  “Wait… so everyone will just assume I’m a dangerous wandering monster, wherever I go?” I demanded sharply. I was getting pretty sick of all the new and exciting info I kept getting. “I mean, aside from my being freaking terrifying and a giant spider…”

  “Oh, yes! You will be a significant figure of menace in any civilized domain!” She chattered happily, seeming oblivious to my problems.

  “My people spook the squishy, soft skinned races pretty badly, but the Arachenans are on another level! Arachnophobia is a consistent fear, throughout the realms!”

  “And when I stroll up to the dwarves compound… no one will freak out or say… put a crossbow bolt in me?” I asked calmly. I’d seen the dwarf crossbows at work and they looked mighty unpleasant.

  The stumpy guys were deadeye shots and the weapon hit hard enough to drop a black bear within a few steps. I was not interested in getting any feathers or shafts added to my colorful outfit.

  “You make a fair point…” Skrithi’ee muttered, ruffling her wings in embarrassment. “Violence against sentients is deeply taboo among my kind.. At times I forget that some races do practice… war.” She said the word with such loathing, that I wondered if it was an obscenity to her people. If so, I was liking her even more.

  “In any case, you should still meet my translator, Klevin Siltstone. He’s an isekai too, he says most of such beings gain a magical facility with languages in the transition, hence his ability to communicate with almost anyone…” She wandered right back into her excited chatter and swept me along with her.

  “Klevin is also a Dungeon Lord and has a wide circle of acquaintances that are… less judgemental about species and forms.”

  The cheerful bug lady talked my tufts off all night long. Like Mabel, she was just happy to have a sentient that spoke her native language to chat with. Her eager and bubbly personality made the whole experience just a little less dreadful.