Spider facts!

  Category: Silk

  Subcategory: Locomotion

  When traveling, many spider species will leave a thin line of silk behind them continuously, known as a drag line. If a spider falls, it can catch itself along this line. It also provides a means for male spiders to follow a female to seek a mate, as pheromones are often left along the dragline. In the case of jumping spiders, the dragline also acts as an easy means to attach a stronger anchor prior to jumping. This provides the spider a means to break or change direction mid-jump.

  The crystal patch’s positioning was fortunate. It was just to the left of the cave entrance if you were facing it. Sitting there, Jon was hidden from the approach to the cave in either direction down the main tunnel. However, he would be easily seen by anyone exiting the cave. Jon had no intention of ever allowing that to become relevant.

  The disadvantage to this location was that he could not view his opponents as they approached, and there was no easy means to flee. Jon was depending on his tremor sense and his newly improved mind-sense to help him ambush his opponents before they could sense him.

  Jon sat in place, listening as the screams and screeches coming down the tunnel grew louder. He doubted they were hunting him specifically, but it did not matter much, they were approaching from both directions. Even if he had attempted to flee he would have been trapped. Jon estimated the distance had dropped to a quarter of what it had been when the screams began. The noises were much louder now, and he was starting to get faint feelings from his tremor sense.

  Following an instinct activated when he upgraded his psionics, Jon reached out with a mental probe. His new companion shown brightly where he was clutched against Jon’s chest. Jon also noticed there was a string of mental energy trailing down from his backside to his webs. He reached out to this trail, and he felt a tremor pass through the web as he did so.

  He grew curious as he forgot the urgency of his situation. As Jon reached out, he flicked the web with his psionic power. It required far less energy than the mental assault against the cherub or bunnies. It was even less energy than his stunning attack against the rat earlier.

  Jon felt something shift into place in his mind, and he knew he could make a sort of echo from the web. The ability felt like two children making an old-school telephone with cups and a string held taut.

  Jon strummed the web, thinking of the rabbit screams from his prior fight. Then he heard the scream from his mind ring out from the back of the web. The approaching rabbits quieted, and silence reigned. A few seconds later he heard the rabbits call out again.

  This time the call sounded questioning. Another pause.

  Jon began to feel steps through the hairs on his feet. The bunnies were stalking forward. There were several distinct patterns and frequencies of feet approaching; it felt like three lighter sets of steps and one heavier set. Then another call came, only a few meters away.

  Jon decided on taking a risk, and sounded another call further down his web, nearly at the back. He thought of being trapped, suspended on a web as a predator stalked towards him, a helpless bunny. He had not heard any distress calls during his earlier fight: there was no whimpering, no cries of fear. However, he felt like what he was doing wasn’t really imitating a sound as much as evoking a feeling.

  Jon heard a mewling noise from the back of the web, deep in the tunnel.

  The footsteps had been measured and cautious, but now the bunnies rushed forward, two of them flying into the web unthinkingly. The first bunny tripped, then got stuck on one of the tethering threads. The second bunny flew over it, out of his field of view and into the cave. Jon felt the second bunny nimbly bouncing between the threads down to the end of the tunnel from his vibration sense. There was a tremor along the web. Jon assumed it started tearing at the web with its teeth when it could advance no further.

  A smaller third rabbit appeared next to the first one, which was trapped just outside the cave. It began gnawing at the thread the first rabbit was stuck to.

  Jon was just missing one bunny to optimize his position to ambush. As he had the thought, he felt the heaviest footsteps stalk a little closer, and a huge set of ears appeared below. Jon located the minds with his newly improved sense, and prepared his attack. He could feel his rat friend tense against his leg plates, and he realized he had no way to keep the little guy safe.

  He silently communicated an image of the rat stuck to the ceiling with webbing. He needed to make the rat safe before his attack.

  The rat sent back a furious rejoinder, utterly refusing to be left out of this fight. Jon pondered how to resolve this quickly, but was interrupted when the second rabbit came back down the tunnel and out the cave entrance. As it did so, Jon saw it look up directly at him.

  Jon took two actions simultaneously. He sounded a new call from the strands of the web behind the largest rabbit, using the noise of the bare branch’s angriest roar. At the same time, Jon launched himself at the bunny staring up at him.

  The rabbit barely flinched before Jon had a claw sticking through its chest. Jon sent out two psionic pulses: one at the largest bunny behind him, and the other at the smaller bunny trying to assist the bunny who was still stuck on the web.

  These new pulses were different than his prior waves. The old ones were an indiscriminate sphere he projected, whereas these only hit the targets he focused on; it was much more efficient.

  As the waves made contact, Jon received multiple forms of feedback from the rabbits. With his improved control, he was able to ignore the emotional content and the scattered memories. This let him focus on the useful information: next movements, planned attacks, and the rabbits intuition about their companions’ intentions.

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  The smallest rabbit fell to the ground and began twitching, its quills rattling against the ground. Jon was momentarily distracted by the noise, and the little rat at his side wriggled out of his grasp. It darted for the largest bunny.

  Unfortunately, the mental attack had less effect on the big bunny. Jon had felt tremendous resistance as the wave approached, and the bunny’s movements barely paused as it began to charge him.

  Jon’s back was to the larger rabbit when he landed, and so he skittered forward into the cave, shaking the bunny he had impaled off his claw as he did so. He needed room to turn before it caught him, and he hoped the webbing would slow it enough to do so safely.

  To his puzzlement, Jon felt the bunnies charge slow and then stop. He managed the turn uneventfully; then he froze, realizing why he had felt the large bunny’s steps stop.

  If Jon could have called out to the crazy little shit he would have, but he could only watch in horror as the rat ran directly at the huge bunny, which was roughly the size of a god damn tiger. The monstrous rabbit had stopped its charge towards Jon when it spotted the rat approaching, and now sat waiting with its jaws agape. The front teeth were even more pronounced than those of the smaller bunnies. The incisors were about the size of an index finger, and the upper canines ran past the jaw line like curved daggers.

  The rat didn’t flinch or hesitate in the slightest as it took a flying leap at the giant, jumping right into its jaws. Those jaws promptly snapped shut on the rat, and Jon resolved to find a more stable friend next time. He felt like it would be hard to come by those around here.

  However, the predicted spray of blood and swallow never came.

  Instead, the huge bunny’s jaws bounced off the rat’s hide, and he watched with fascination as it began to gag, clearly trying to dislodge the little rat, whose hind legs were still dangling out of the end of its fanged maw.

  The rat’s feet found purchase and it lunged forward again as the huge rabbit began violently shaking its head back and forth, coughing forcefully. Flecks of blood sprayed the ground as it kept coughing repeatedly.

  The bunny kept trying to chomp down on the rat’s body, but it looked a dog trying to chew a rubber ball. The bites made no visible injuries to the rat, even when Jon could swear he saw the upper and lower teeth meeting in the rat’s middle. At this point, only the rat’s tail was sticking out.

  As it heaved back and forth, the larger bunny arched its back, showing off quills about the length of a man’s forearm. They were blood red at the bases and tapered into a dark blue that was almost black at the tips.

  Jon felt something snap on the web. He changed his focus in time to see the first bunny had gotten free. It lunged for him, its jaws agape.

  He casually swatted it into the web next to him, the bony quills doing nothing to his armored legs. As the bunny hit the web and became stuck again, Jon pulled its head close with his front claws before smashing its skull with his shoulder plates. There was a spray of warm blood and brains, then the creature went limp. Jon irritably thought that he should have executed the one by the cave that way. He just had to get cute and try to wring its neck without hands.

  Jon then walked over to the seizing bunny and decapitated it. He turned back to the odd scene playing out with the largest bunny.

  It was clearly suffocating, and its panic loomed large in his mental impression of it. From his friend the rat, he felt only a blind, furious rage which showed no sign of abating. He did feel the light in his friend waning though, as if its tether to consciousness was growing weak. Jon couldn’t imagine it had any more air in there than the bunny, and it was also being compressed from all sides. The larger bunny was still thrashing back and forth, slamming itself into the cave wall.

  Jon sprang forward, striking it from the side, and trying to spear its hide with his claws like he had the others. His blow struck true at the base of its neck, but to his surprise, the claws failed to penetrate the rabbit’s hide. The larger rabbit seemed to focus in its panic, executing a rapid turn before hitting him with a powerful kick from its hind legs. The flip had been so fast that he had barely seen the turn, much less reacted to it before the kick. He slammed into the opposite side of the tunnel with a huge *CRACK*. He felt a flash of pain from his back leg on the left side.

  As he picked himself back up, Jon looked back over at the large bunny. It had returned to trying to shake his friend out of its throat, and then gagged like a cat about to vomit on the carpet. Deciding those kicks were too risky, Jon chose to try another mental attack. He assaulted the mind of the bunny again, putting more energy into this attack than his first.

  As he reached towards the bunny’s mind, Jon felt something strange. When he hit the minds of the smaller bunnies it had felt like hitting bread dough with an aluminum bat. Hitting the cherub was the same, but the ball of dough was as large as his body instead of his fist. The impact just wasn’t as spectacular relative to the size.

  Fighting with this larger bunny was different. The moment before Jon’s mental power hit, it started to feel like he was swinging the bat through water rather than air. The mind barely deformed before resuming function.

  Shaking his head, Jon decided he had to risk another physical attack. The second mental assault had yielded no more than the first. So, with jaws agape, Jon leapt. He felt a searing pain from his hindmost leg as he left the ground, accompanied by a decidedly unpleasant crunching feeling.

  He sailed once more through the air, this time striking the rabbits thigh with his fangs as he landed. The spot he hit was just below where the quills faded back into dark blue fur,

  There was a flash of doubt in his mind as his fangs met slight resistance, but then they sank in easily. He felt the squeezing feeling from behind his jaws on either side as venom pumped into the muscle.

  The whole attack had taken only a fraction of a second, but he still had to hop to the side, narrowly dodging another powerful kick. Having escaped the blow, Jon watched his opponent from a few meters away. He wanted to see if the venom would have any real affect.

  What would he do if it failed?

  He considered risking another jump attack, but he was worried another kick might cripple him. Given the number of predators prowling this place, that would be a death sentence for him and his new friend.

  However, Jon’s internal debate proved irrelevant, as a few moments later the bunny became sluggish. It collapsed between the combined effects of the venom and its asphyxiation.

  He sent another mental pulse into the bunny, and the swing fell unimpeded this time. The huge bunny’s form started twitching uncontrollably. Jon’s relief was interrupted as he fully processed his own injuries. He glanced back and saw he had suffered a partial amputation to the lower three segments of his left hind leg. After the last leap attack, the end was dangling with a crumpled joint only just holding the “ankle” of the limb in place. It would be mostly useless until he healed.

  Ignoring this distraction, Jon rushed forward again as the bunny stilled, slashing at the throat. To his surprise, he easily penetrated its flesh this time, but the blood simply pooled out. There was no pulsatile quality to it. Already dead then.

  Jon felt his friend’s mind fading as well, and he snatched its tail and pulled it from the rabbit’s jaws.