Spider facts!

  Category: Anatomy/Physiology

  Subcategory: Sensory Organs

  The spider has many different sensory organs, some of which have clear analogs in mammals. Examples include the eyes or the hairs covering their body. These are generally intuitive to understand. However, they also have more alien sensory apparatuses. One example is the slit sensillae, also known as the lyriform organs when arranged in close proximity to one another. These tiny defects in the exoskeleton of the spider form minuscule slits, often a millionth of a meter or less across, with a bell shaped depression growing broader at the base. The base is heavily innervated, and when the top is deformed, even by slight movements relative to gravity or vibrations through the air or ground, the spider is able to sense this deformity. While the sensory hairs such as the trichobothria also contribute to spider ‘hearing,’ this is one of the main mechanisms by which spiders interpret the world.

  As they set out, two things stood out to Jon. One was how little his injured leg hurt, and the other was how much his hunger was invading his other thoughts.

  It had only been a few minutes from the initial injury. When it first occurred, the pain hurt as much as anything Jon could recall.

  Jon had broken both bones in his forearm as a middle-school wrestler. He had fallen backwards while defending against a single-leg, and had stupidly extended his arm to break his fall. The bones had snapped like twigs. Not extending your arms during a fall was one of the first things you were taught in the sport, and most injuries in wrestling were to the clavicle or shoulder as a result. Jon remembered looking in disbelief at the arm which had suddenly sported three joints, bent backward halfway down the wrist.

  The pain from his partially amputated limb had hurt like that, but it had never once disrupted his focus. Jon would not have described himself as particularly tough or possessed of a high pain tolerance. He had met farmers who had continued working for days after breaking ribs, and although he was no wimp, he was not built like that.

  The pain from this body seemed extraneous, filed away as something of minor importance. It made it much easier to ignore.

  When Jon walked, he did so without using the injured limb at all. He would have had trouble diagramming his movements for an outsider, but it was easy to do instinctively. Jon still maintained the general pattern of two limbs moving at the same time as one limb on the opposite side, though he sometimes dropped the front left leg from the pattern for stability. The injured limb remained curled towards his center, and he had used a bit of webbing to stabilize it against his carapace before they set out. He had wanted to prevent jolts or problems with noise.

  They soon realized Jon was much faster than Oregano, and so the rat began to ride on Jon’s back.

  As they continued to walk, Jon fought against the impulses from the hunger. He wanted to immediately stop and devour his kills. To a lesser extent, he was also preoccupied with not eating Oregano.

  Jon could break free from the thoughts for a few minutes at a time, but whenever his mind was unoccupied it would drift back to the food. The thoughts of eating Oregano were a little less invasive than when they had first met, but he feared that would change when his food supply disappeared.

  The feeling was a constant, hollow, and gnawing from his abdomen. It had been barely any time since his last meal; Jon absently wondered if he could pitch my 600 pound life to someone in the production suite of this place in exchange for passage home.

  They continued to travel as he thought. They ran into minimal signs of other living creatures even after moving for some time. The caverns remained dimly lit with fungi and crystals, and they traveled in near total silence.

  Jon triggered a spiderfact about his injured limb, and was surprised to learn that spiders could completely regenerate appendages during molts. He also learned that Zach would just keep rolling from one spiderfact to the next if Jon didn’t manually stop him. He smiled to himself, thinking it was a lot like living with the guy again. It was nice to hear a person’s voice, so he let Zach drone on.

  They paused frequently to assess for any approaching threats. If they heard any noises, they moved to the ceiling.

  However, these all turned out to be false alarms, and they steadily moved up a gentle slope following the light from the I.O.U.. Jon hoped that meant they were returning to the greater cavern.

  During one of the breaks for yet another false alarm, they came to a wider opening in the tunnel. It was fifty meters across, and well lit by the lichen covering the ceiling. They decided to rest.

  Jon took the opportunity to get some testing done on his mental sense.

  Jon had Oregano walk away until he couldn’t sense him anymore with his mind. If Jon made no special effort, he stopped sensing Oregano around twenty meters away. If he specifically focused on detecting the rat, he could extend it another ten meters or so, but it became increasingly strenuous. This active mental sense caused a drain in his mental energy. The drain grew intense as Oregano got further away. He could not sustain it for very long.

  While he was playing around, trying to find his range, Jon noticed an oddity. When Oregano went ahead of him or to the sides, he lost track of him sooner than he did when he went behind. Even now, with Oregano right next to him, he felt like he could cast the sense further back the way they came than he could forward.

  At first, Jon thought it might be some sort of adaption to help him detect threats outside his visual field, but when he had Oregano walk forward and he turned around, his range did not improve.

  Jon was looking back the way they came, puzzled, when he felt something twitch on the back of his abdomen. It was spider silk, impossibly thin and almost invisible.

  His mind lit-up as he recalled one of the spiderfacts he had just heard: a lot of spiders, even wandering spiders like jumpers, left a continuous trail thread of spider silk called a drag-line. Zach had mentioned it was a map, a safety line, and a way for spiders to find mates.

  Dropping this thin line of silk was such second nature to his new form he had not even noticed it. Jon did a test jump, and realized the anchors he placed with each jump utilized the passive line to find purchase on the ground. It hurt like hell to hop with his injured leg, but it was worth it for science.

  Seeing the tiny thread, Jon hoped he never had to use it as an emergency tether. It looked too small to hold his weight. Maybe it would hold a spider back on earth, but he imagined they had substantially different limitations with their relative size and the absence of magic.

  He began experimenting with the trail, trying to get a feel for its uses. He did have some faint vibratory sense along it, though it was very faint unless he strummed it or something hit it. Jon threw a couple rocks, and was disappointed that the webbing didn’t seem to improve his vibration sensitivity much unless he hit it directly.

  However, his magical sense did have more range on this line of spider silk, which explained the discrepancy from earlier. After some more testing with Oregano, he estimated he could sense minds about twice as far along the trail.

  Jon felt a bit of dissatisfaction not having exact measurements, but the true distances ultimately didn’t matter much. It was like his estimate of his speed earlier. It was great that he now had superhuman speed and sensitivity, but it was meaningless when running from magic bunnies that could run even faster.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Jon had never seen the alpha bunny run full out, but he suspected it was significantly faster than the regular ones, who already outclassed him.

  In any case, without expending energy, Jon’s new psychic abilities could assist him in a roughly twenty meter sphere. This was a similar distance to what Jon could feel from vibrations in the earth, though this was more dependent on the strength of the stimulus than the mental sense was.

  Behind him along the silk trail, the field of detection for his mental sense was about twice as long, with the field shaped like a cone with the point away from him. Jon could only make the illusions in the spaces he could sense. Moving any further away became cost prohibitive.

  While they were messing around in the cavern, Jon also noticed he was slowly regenerating the mental energy, even when still awake. He felt at his reserves, estimating he could send out at least two or three more pulses before he ran out of energy.

  Considering he had already used three attacks, and two had almost knocked him out last time, this was a significant improvement. He was very pleased with his upgrade choice, especially since the illusions were even more energy efficient. He estimated the energy use at maybe a quarter of the output from a large pulse.

  Oregano grew restless and impatient with Jon as he continued to fiddle with his new abilities. The rat did not like the wide cavern, and had repeatedly told Jon they were too exposed. Jon respected the opinion of a native, and they left the cavern.

  They traveled a little further, but Jon noted the pain in his leg was becoming more bothersome.

  He communicated with Oregano, who agreed to start looking for a safe place to rest. Oregano had not noticed the extent of Jon’s wound through his own exhaustion. Now that he knew about it, he seemed fairly concerned. Oregano expressed his hope that Jon could heal it at least partially if he ate something, but Jon felt the rat’s doubt through the link.

  They found a partially hidden cave entrance in the ceiling. It was behind a patch of crystals, and went straight up before curving to the side, making a shelf-like extension which ended blindly in the rock. The shelf was just large enough for the two of them, and Jon wove a net of webbing back and forth across the edge, making a makeshift railing for if Oregano rolled over in his sleep.

  Jon did not need to worry about falling in his sleep. When he planted the hairs on his feet flush against the wall they easily held his weight even on the ceiling. He thought that without the specialized muscles he had to release them from the surface, he would barely be able to lift them off at all. Using these specialized muscles was a big part of why he was so much slower up on the ceiling and walls.

  Jon descended back to the tunnel by himself. He was opting for a different approach for this rest. With the entrance to their hideout in the ceiling, he felt the security by obscurity approach was more viable. Jon opted to leave only the thin trail he placed while walking instead of a full web. The thread was nearly invisible, and Jon left it only on the walls and ceiling. He hoped that this would prevent passing creatures from noticing it at all, and using the webbing he could enhance his mental sense enough to spy on the tunnel while remaining hidden up on their shelf.

  They decided to split the watch. Since Oregano couldn’t watch the tunnel with a mental sense, Jon had created a little ladder to travel up and down. The bottom rung was a little wider, allowing the rat to sit comfortably and monitor the tunnel below. Oregano would tug on the thread if he suspected anything was approaching.

  After Jon completed these precautions, Oregano insisted on taking the first watch. Oregano wanted Jon to feed again and get himself back to top shape. Oregano had sustained some minor crush injuries from his constriction, but nothing requiring actual repair. He was tired, but he had gotten plenty of rest since Jon carried him during most of their journey.

  Jon took him up on the offer. He felt the underlying logic of maintaining themselves in peak condition was sound. Fights could happen at any moment, and there were no do-overs for a bum leg. Jon took the smallest bunny from his make-shift pack, and began consuming it.

  The process was smoother than his first meal, and Jon produced minimal waste. He felt the strange energy flood him again, and felt the insight return the same as last time. Jon still had the three easy modifications available: he could improve his silk, his jump, or his psionics. For the psionics, he could only increase the power of the pulses and the depth of his reserves: any further modification of the mental sense’s accuracy or other changes would be exponentially more complicated.

  None of the three modifications could be completed with the energy from the smallest rabbit alone, though Jon was surprised to see the smallest bunny contained more energy than the rabbits from his first fight.

  Perhaps the small bunny was more advanced than they were, and its levels caused different changes than the alpha rabbit’s? The prompt from the system had not given it a different label. Maybe Jon got partial credit if the creature was part-way through a level.

  When he asked Oregano, he got the mental equivalent of a shrug and a dismissal. It didn’t matter to the rat much why his food had more or less energy. Oregano could sense which carrion were the best and which pieces were the most critical. It sent an image of the eyes from the alpha rabbit’s corpse. They were tasty and rich in energy.

  Oregano sent another visual, this one of Jon’s injured leg. It was accompanied by a sense of impatience. Jon needed to stop wasting time and get to work repairing his leg.

  Jon refocused his senses inward, ignoring the options for bodily enhancement this time. He instead focused his attention on the injured leg. In his inner sight, Jon saw the non-psionic energy circulating in his body. He noticed it seemed to have already concentrated near his leg, and the flesh in the area was slowly starting to mend. As he moved his attention towards this space, the energy transmitted a detailed picture of the various damaged structures.

  Jon unbound the webbing which held the dangling extremity to his carapace, and felt a spike of pain as his limb began dangling once more.

  ‘You have to understand the normal to understand the abnormal’ was an old aphorism from medicine. Jon concentrated on the leg opposite to the injured one, trying to understand its function. The energy answered, and as he flexed and extended the normal leg, he began to understand what was wrong with the injured side.

  Oregano had also given him some instruction on this, telling him that the easiest way to heal his injury was to allow the energy to do what it wanted while giving it a sense of his desires. He did his best to picture the joint as it was on his uninjured side, feeling the tendonous insertions along the chitin, the many small muscles which stabilized his movements, the rotational aspects of the joint and the feeling he had when it stabilized him before a jump.

  Jon felt significant relief as the energy began the complex repair. Even with his new insight, he had no idea how many muscles and tendons traversed the joint, much less how to connect them back together again after they were smashed. He continued to do his best to picture everything he could feel. The healing was painless but still uncomfortable. The limb felt restless, like he needed to stretch it or massage it. He resisted the urge, worried it would impact the healing process.

  Just as the feeling of the limb began to return to normal, Jon felt the energy start dwindling, and realized he would need to eat more if he wanted to finish the job. He began devouring a second bunny, eating about half of it gradually as the leg continued to heal. Not eating the second half took an extreme act of will.

  As he considered it, Jon could not even tell himself why he was fighting the urge to consume the remaining bunnies. Right now, they were fresh. Jon knew they would lose that status eventually, and if that happened he was not sure if he would be able to eat them anymore. Oregano told him that most carrion around here came from abandoned game left by hunters. It was much less common for the rat to find something from a creature who succumbed to sickness or starvation.

  Jon shook himself. The strange and constant hunger was something foreign and unwelcome. He had enough outside forces influencing his consciousness as it was. That was reason enough by itself to fight the hunger for now.

  He refocused on healing the injured leg, and just when he thought he would need to eat more, it was finished. He twisted, flexed, and extended the leg, even taking a little hop. The range of motion seemed as good as it had before the injury. There was no pain. As far as Jon could tell, he was healed, and he marveled at the magic of this place, wondering at the limitations. As horrible as it was to be taken here, he was sure many people would kill to access this sort of regeneration.

  He decided to try to rest while he could, unsure how much time had passed. Jon settled into the back of the ledge, allowing his legs to curl slightly towards himself.

  The hunger continued to invade his thoughts. He tried to meditate to clear his mind, something he had often done at home before shifts. He was always reaching for a calm, empty space to work from when he was walking into the chaos that was a busy emergency department. Calm made things smooth, and making things smooth made them faster. You had to be fast, there was always someone else to see, another ekg to be handed to you, another note to finish, another order to place. Jon had kept up with the practice when he switched specialties, and still found it helpful even when his work was much slower. It kept him efficient and calm even on difficult days.

  Jon focused on his breathing. Rather than trying to fight the hunger, or to ignore it, he simply allowed himself to fully feel it, accepting its presence. Some suffering was inevitable. The hunger was an empty void, a hole in his center. It screamed that it could be fixed, that it could end, that all he needed to do was just take another bite. Just one more bunny. He just needed to put it off another moment, just a little bit longer and he would be happy, content. It would not come back.

  He let the lies roll over him. He let the feeling wash over him. He let it go. He focused on restful, even breathing. He let the hunger scream and scream. The world seemed to grow still as an endless, starless night. He slept, only to feel a jolt from the rope below what felt like moments later.

  ? Overpowers: Magical Girl Crossover [Grimlight Progression Urban Fantasy/Genre based Power System] ?

  by Moawar

  He, Life, had a simple job.

  His responsibility as an Overpower was to make sure that fiction stories and the characters in them follow their dictated path. He always did his job well enough, not more or less than was needed.

  His latest assignment, however, would, in retrospect, prove to be his most challenging one of all.

  He would find himself in a unfamiliar world. There he'll have to quickly adapt to guide Nozomi.

  The strongest magical girl with the potential to accidentally destroy those she seeks to protect in her fight against evil.

  What to Expect:

  -If you like the psychological aspects of Madoka Magica and the mixing of different genres a crossover story brings then this story is for you