I walked into the dark hole at the top of the ziggurat. The area was clearer of weeds and overgrowth which made me uneasy. It was clearly a dilapidated ruin that wasn’t being maintained but it was less clear if it was unoccupied. My antenna tapped at the air and my focus was going down quickly as I maintained my camouflage. I descended a set of stairs that had been cleared of debris.

  I entered into a large central chamber and found my first signs of more recent activity. The ashes of a fire were set in a circle of stones with piles of leaves and blankets around the fire. There were packs beside the bedding and objects that had been clearly crafted by humanoids. I pocked at one of the packs and felt the soft silk material they were made of.

  The pack contained wrapped, provisions? I wasn’t sure what they were. Bottles which were very interesting to me, nets, and weapons made of carapace and shaped somehow into swords, spears and bows. The bedrolls, silk packs all clued me into what sort of humanoids these were, spiders of some sort. Now the question was, should I wait to meet them?

  No. Instinctively I felt these were not allies, I was a wasp, and they were spiders and we weren’t on good terms. They had no incentive to help me and could have countless ones I didn’t know about to wish me harm if for no other reason than XP and biomass. I knelt down and began to gather some of the stuff. I tapped my antenna across the weird food wrappings but it didn’t seem appealing so tossed them out prioritizing the bottles and jars. I wrapped them in the silk cloth to keep them from breaking filling a pack full of them.

  I hurried out but I wasn’t as lucky on my way out. Before I even got to the opening I heard voices and could smell the approach from up the tunnel. I flew up the roof and clung to some roots growing through the brickwork. A group of humanoids walked in under me talking and laughing amongst themselves.

  Irrational, seething hatred filled me as I looked on the spider humanoids. There was some sort of deep seated rivalry between me and them that went down to my DNA. I briefly considered just dropping down and killing them but I restrained myself and analyzed them carefully making sure to mask myself with Infiltrator Pheromones.

  Holy, fucking shit, no. That was not something I wanted to fight. There wasn’t a spider there under level forty, these weren’t dumb ants either, they all carried weapons, they had something like my stinger on both wrists that looked like fangs and they all had multiple sets of limbs, not all had eight but each had at least six their limbs varying as did there weapons.

  “Which one of you chuckle fucks messed with my shit?” one of the warriors fumed.

  “Come on Marcius,” one of the other said taking off a helmet.

  They didn’t have carapace of their own from what I could see, it might not be an available biomorph based on the fact that I didn’t see a single one with it.

  “Hey I got stuff missing too!” another warrior complained. “My bottles of qymyz are all missing.”

  The widow warriors began opening their bags seeing all the items I’d taken were missing from their packs. There ire and irritation grew but their leader stopped their bickering.

  “Someone else has been here!” he snapped. “No one among us has had the opportunity to do all this, one thing going missing, but this is too much for one of us to have nicked while the others weren’t looking.”

  “I don’t smell anything,” Marcius, the one warrior whose name I knew said.

  “Too many footprints to tell whose tracks are whose,” another warrior grumbled.

  “Spread out, we weren’t gone long they can’t have gone far,” the leader said.

  “Do you think it could have been the Mud Daubers?” another asked.

  “We’re too far north, and this is just an infrequent hunting camp,” Maricus objected.

  “Enough!” the Leader snapped. “We’ll learn more when we find them, now spread out and hunt this thief down.”

  The Widows spread out going down the tunnels most importantly the exit tunnel. I thought through my actions, I could just wait, try to sneak out, or fight my way out. They were spread out now but… No, I told myself pushing down the aggressive murderous instinct from my wasp nature to kill these spiders. I needed to try and sneak out, maybe I could kill them another day but they were to a high level for me to get now.

  I began to creep along the ceiling gripping the roots out of the brickwork as I approached the exit to the ziggurat. My luck failed me, and a root came loose, and I dropped, the spiders at the entrance rushed forward almost to fast for the eye to follow but I was fast too. Dust fell around me outlining my position and keeping my camouflage from working correctly. My stinger rose up and I blasted off several shots of venom, one hit and the Widow jerked to the side and began ripping off his chest piece as my venom began to melt through it.

  The other Widow moved forwards, it had to large arms that came out at its shoulders and a tertiary set of smaller arms below it carrying daggers like my secondary limbs did. Chitin swords slashed at me and I ducked under them, its other set of arms punched before the natural weapons on it snapping out like my stinger. The fangs bit into my carapace but couldn’t get through but that didn’t stop them from spewing a good deal of venom out onto my carapace.

  Just as I had done to so many insects before venom started to burn through my carapace and unlike the Widow warrior, I couldn’t just pull it off. My health started to tick down, I wanted to stay and fight to prove that a wasp was always better than a spider, but pride couldn’t make my decisions here. I flew backwards and rolled as something flew overhead. It hit my wings, and I was worried I was going to lose them again but it wasn’t venom, luckily they couldn’t shoot that like I could, instead a sticky net of webbing covered one wing weighing it down. That would throw off my flying and it they hit me with another of those I might not be able to fly or worse be trapped in one spot and at their mercy.

  I ran down the tunnel with more of the Widows in hot pursuit as they shouted to alert each other. Another of the warriors rushed me and went into a flying kick and shot another web net out of his ass. Ok, it wasn’t exactly his ass but it was around that area too close to it for my comfort. The web clipped my left arm and stuck me to the wall. I snarled in frustration and slashed at the web with my stinger slicing through it and freeing myself but not before I was stabbed by another fang and more venom began chewing through my carapace. The warrior was to cocky though and I blasted him point blank in the face with my stinger, the Widow screamed, clawing at his face and eyes and I ended him with a slash across his throat.

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  All that excess XP went to waste given our level differences, but every extra level helped. I knelt down there was no question about trying to eat these things it was time to analyze and run.

  I didn’t answer right now, it was time to move not go unconscious while I went through a mutation. I pushed off and started running again taking the ruined stairs two at a time as the Widow warriors moved up behind me in hot pursuit. The stairs had twists and branches and in my panic I took a wrong turn, I realized it was wrong when I hit a dead end. Taking a moment to plan I jumped up pushing against the walls with my arms and legs; I activated camouflage expending Focus to blend into the blackened ceiling and darkness above.

  The Widows spread out again as they began searching the upper tunnels. A warrior scanned the tunnel with its eight eyes before turning around to head back up the tunnel. I dropped down on the Widow driving my sword through its back my sneak attack instantly killing it.

  Reaching down I touched the corpse of the Widow and analyzed it paying the XP cost.

  That made me pause, what was a Sex-Pheromone? I shook my head and kept moving, I would find that out later if I survived. I moved down the tunnel trying to find another way out. I crept along and came across two more Widows guarding the stairwell. I looked at them then steeled myself then jumped. My feet collided with the chest of the first Widow kicking them into the well and they disappeared from sight. Simultaneously with my kick I drove my stinger through the other Widow warrior.

  It didn’t die right away but the combined damage of the sudden attack and poison quickly dropped it. The Widow I’d kicked down the stair well must not have died since I didn’t get any XP from it. I reached down and analyzed my most recent kill.

  I dismissed the notification without selecting either option. I started running up stairs as the sounds of pursuit sounded behind me. Webbing shot around me and I dodged the snares as I took the stairs three at a time.

  I turned and fired over my shoulder as I rounded a turn in the stairs. Another web netting hit me catching my left leg this time. Two warriors rushed me, and I had to block and parry several attacks to my torso with my crude fang daggers. I was able to survive the exchange of blows but there quickly became a difference in Level not just in the number above their head but in their Skills and skill, I fought dumb bugs, but these were humanoids with intelligence who had trained and studied with the weapons they were using. My stinger lashed out cutting off one of the warrior’s arms with a lucky strike, he would be able to regrow that if he survived. I shot wildly at close quarters. I was so close that I almost couldn’t miss but I panicked so did still manage to miss about a quarter of my shots. I got another hit against my torso with a carapace sword, but the Widows screamed as multiple shots of venom hit then in unarmored sections and ticked down their health as they also caught fire.

  My stinger cut and stabbed, and two more warriors went down as my stinger which was much longer than their fangs was able to cut through the carapace armor they wore.

  I hacked at the webbing around my leg and reached down to analyze the two widows.

  I dismissed it again without selecting yes or no.

  I dismissed it and ran breaking out into sunlight and shooting up into the air. My health was ticking down and I was about to become like the Widows I’d just killed. While they didn’t have as much health as something like a pill-bug, likely having something to do with size and the humanoid vs monster dynamic; I was poisoned, and my health was going down faster. I spied a flower and dove into it. I prayed that I was lucky as my antenna twitched and I used my Food Sensor adaptation to search for what I needed.

  Finding the nectar I slurped it down, immediately my health shot back up. It began to tick down again but I wasn’t nearing the single digits for awhile again at least. I hunted around the base of the tulip finding another drop of nectar as big as my head.

  I only just had Toughness thirty and it made me wonder what other unknown skills might be locked behind Stat requirements. I opened the skill to look it over keeping a side eye on my health bar.

  The time on the poison in my blood expired and I drank another drop of Nectar restoring myself to full health again. That brief encounter with the Widows had been the closest I’d been to death in a while, they didn’t have as much health as nearly any of the creatures I’d fought but I guessed what they lacked in hit points they likely made up for in Level and probably Skill level as well.

  I sagged down in the flower. That had been touch and go but…I’d shot up in level and gained several biomorph paths. I’d also found a new group of enemies to keep an eye on and use to gain more level from.