A Day in the Life of a Deepwoods Denizen.

The sunlight feels overly bright as I cautiously crawled out of my hidey hole to survey the damage caused by last night’s storm. Fallen branches full of lush green leaves partially blocking my path. I raised a pedipalp to shield my multiple eyes from the light so they could slowly adjust to the brightness. As I crawled over the debris, the scene before me came into focus.

Gone. My web was gone.

It had been completely destroyed.

Only the hidey hole was left intact because it was tightly contained within a pile of boulders.

My web was built sturdy so the wind and rain would have only done minor damage to it. However, the tree that fell through it was more than it could withstand.

With a heavy sigh I started to clear away some of the loose rubble while trying to decide if I wanted to rebuild the same way or if I wanted to make any changes to the design. I decided to incorporate the fallen tree into the new design to save on work and maybe even provide some more protection to me and my hidey hole.

It took a couple of hours of jumping and swinging back and forth between the ancient trees and the boulder formation to make my new home. My spinneret was working overtime to produce enough webbing to finish the project. I could already see a few spots that would need more work, but it would have to wait, I needed some food and some rest. I retreated into my hidey hole to have a bite to eat, then dozed.

I was awoken by some frantic vibrations thrumming along the strands of my web. As well as some annoying high-pitched noises of terror and disgust.

I peeked out of my hidey hole, and there they were. Ugh… humans. I hated humans. Pests, the whole works of them. I beseeched the gods for answers, “What have I done to deserve being plagued by these creatures?”

I have to kill them. If I do not, then they just come back. Whole packs of them, ready to destroy my webs with fire or trying to poke me with their little thorns of metal thinking they could kill me that easily.

Have I said yet how much I hated them?

There were two of them. One with long golden hair and brightly coloured clothing who was caught and tangled in my sticky webs. This was the one making all the shrill noises disturbing my peace. The other one wore clothing of various shades of brown and green. If they were not working to free the loud one from the web, I might not have seen it.

Oh great. Not only was it a human, but one that is known as a Ranger.

Rangers spend most of their time in the woodlands and know how to survive in the wilds. They also know how to hurt things like me. It was a group of these rangers that surprised and killed my mate a few years ago, causing me to move deeper into the forest in search of a peaceful life.

Being plagued by humans was bad enough, but Rangers? Now I had to kill them before they could get back to whatever hive these pests lived in and gather hunting party. Not again.

Silently I emerged from my hole and moved around behind them and formed a blob of webbing. The blob, once it was thrown, would spread out into a wide area of sticky web, incapacitating them both even if I missed them.

The loud one was almost free, only a couple of strands left to cut, so I wound up my pitch. Suddenly the hairs on my body all stood up on end as I sensed magic in the air.

“We are not your enemy great spider of the Deepwoods. The danger is approaching quickly and will be here in minutes.” The Ranger had turned and raised its hands in peace.

I hesitated out of surprise. A human that could speak my words and use them with such respect was unheard of. If I was capable of blinking, I would have.

“I can only speak to you for a brief time before the magic runs out. We did not intend to disturb you. The lady here has no experience in the wilds and ran ahead of me, right into your beautiful web. My apologies for any damage caused.”

The lady emitted a shrill squeal that sounded both commanding and condescending at the same time cutting off the Ranger’s attempt at communication.

Turning to face her, the Ranger spoke to the loud one. “I am trying to get us out of here. If you don’t stop your screaming, then the Black Dragon will find us even quicker.”

That shut her up. It was also quite interesting. The Black Dragon, there was only one black dragon. He normally kept to himself in his lair deep below the Monarch mountains.

What did the infamous Black Dragon want with these annoying humans?

As if hearing my thoughts, the Ranger answered. “The Black Dragon wants the princess here to sacrifice her to the evil gods. He wants to use the dark magic to change the world.”

I lowered the glob of webbing, almost convinced by his words. Dark magics and evil gods are things I did not want to be involved with. I just wanted to live out my days here quietly in the Deepwoods, building my webs peacefully in solitude.

The Ranger went back to cutting the Princess free.

“We have to save the Princess, so he doesn’t destroy all of human…” The rest of the Rangers sentence lost to squeaks and chirps as the translation magic ran out.

Luckily, I heard enough. Destroy all of human. I too wanted to destroy all of the humans. The happiest I have been all day, I lobbed the ball of gooey web and struck them dead centre. The web spreading out all over and around them. Trapped, they were not going anywhere.

I went to work rebuilding my web, spinning the strands into ancient runes, creating a message for the Black Dragon when he arrived.

A message that said ‘My gift to you for ending the humans’