Prologue: Out of the Web

Searching for her prey, the Komaci Spider looked everywhere. The world of a spider is a truly vast place filled with countless hiding places and almost limitless directions. What is however very limited, is its memory. After a short time, it forgot what it was looking for, only that it did.

Sometime later, vibrations on the ground attracted her attention. Below her, a million army ants were breaking apart and carrying the remains of an unfortunate jumping spider that had seemingly met it's end in a brutal fight.

[i]Running into a legion of ants was bad news. The Nephila Komaci needed to use its natural advantages to cope with the consequences of its newfound hunger.

She would climb to a branch -not so high this time, and would attach herself to it, and would once again slide down, unto the dead spider's corpse that was carried by ants. Of course, she would choose in advance a spot where she thought the spiders would go.

Her plan was that of a weaver. Complex, yet easy. Once she'd be onto the dead spider's body, she would roll silk onto the spider head, or leg, whatever would stick out and would be eady to fasten to. Then she would suddenly run away, uninterested by the swarm if ants, and would climb back onto a branch, with a second strand of silk still attaching her to the corpse. Once on the branch she would pull as strong as she could, and would attach thst strand to the tree.

So at that point, the dead spider would be attached from two strands: the first one vertically and the second more obliquely. Nephila Komaci would reach for the vertical strand and pull the spider up a bit, lifting her more from the ground. She would then slide down again, tie another strand of silk to the corpse from the branch, and pull a bit. Slowly she would work a web around the hanging corpse, with sticky web and all, preventing to the best of her skill that others would eat the prey without themselves getting caught in the web.

She worked relentlessly, with a furious pace, and aggressive manner. Hunger spoke through her actions.[/b]

It never crossed her limited mind, but mere hours ago, she would have been completely incapable of such a plan. It required anticipation of movements, a skill that most spiders never display or need. It also required the most basic of engineering understanding as well, something she just now began to unravel. Luckily, such basic concepts are almost second nature to creatures that use webbing in almost everything they do. So it was, that the spider developed intellect and forethought. By far, her deadliest weapon.

The ants never saw it coming. They were droning on, accomplishing they jobs, dismantling and carrying a creature several times their size. The webbing attached to a part of a leg that was still tied to about half of the main body. One ant was lifted off the ground with it and tried hard to cut the webs to free its prize. It only succeeded in getting glued. It was, however, still alive and very much in fighting shape. It was also stuck at the very heart of the web.

Below, other army ants were alerted to the trapped one's predicament and were trying to locate it. A single one wasn't much of a threat, however. So, the spider would need to decide if finishing the web and gaining her prey was worth the risk of giving the rest time to fight back.

Both adversaries were desperate. Both trying to kill before they were killed. The Komaci tried hard not to leave any of its appendages close to the ant's reach while it attacked but failed. One of its upper body limbs were still too close.

Which would have been very bad, except for the fact that the ant was busy being pierced right through its thorax by the spider's chelicerae (the fangs) at the time of its victorious blow. This had the fortunate side effect of taking the fight right out of it and its bite simply slid across the spider's exoskeleton harmlessly. For good measure, the spider moved it's body in a way as to rip apart the ant in two halves.

The rest of ants were still on the move, however, so the spider returned to spin her web immediately. Her enemies were moving quickly but still didn't quite know how to reach their friend. Never had she woven so fast, she made several strands go from the jumping spider to the low branches above form the basis of the web. A real web would have had several others strands intersecting these lines to reinforce and help navigation. These intersections also be the parts of the web with "glue" on it, where the ants would remain stuck. But there was simply no time for this. The lines remained mostly bare. She did, however have time to make intersections near the heart enough to cover her body size and ensure she would have the best mobility and stability. Otherwise, there were two intersections between her and the sides of the web that would slow down progress.

As it turned out, the ants weren't very adept at rope walking, their leg spans were meant to be spread out, not focused on a strand. Most of the ants simply fell to the ground. Those that managed with extreme clumsiness to hang on were stopped at the intersections. None of the ants reached her or her snack. In time, the ants gave up.

This time, she felt it. She couldn't explain it, she couldn't say what had happened exactly, but something was off. She had made the web's central area in order to have enough space to turn and defend herself. But now that she was done eating, it was no longer large enough to turn confortably. That was odd.

The spider was amused.

A significant amount of time had passed since her story had began in the morning. She felt more alive than ever, and also, much, much more exhausted. She tried to enter into a hole in a tree, but found it harder to do than she used to. She managed to find one large enough to fit in and established herself comfortable. There, she rested until she felt ready to move again.

Some time later, as she was almost rested enough, vibrations alerted her. Something large was looking about on ground level, just about one meter below her.

The Spider took a gander below. A large bird was using it's beak to look for sustenance under the earth and roots. It was several times the size of the spider, high on legs and had a mean, mean beak. One that could likely pierce the Komaci through and through with a single blow.

The bird looked about for a time and ate a few earthworms. It did not look up, it had no reason to and the spider didn't do anything to attract its attention. It simply continued on its way.

When she woke up again, the only vibrations she could sense was the wind in the leaves. The air was cooler and the condensation was turning into morning dew. The spider, somehow filled with amazement at the world's beauty saw a million little droplets form before her in a random succession. The soft light sneaking through the canopy landing just perfectly on the world. Illuminating all of its wonders just right.

She began her hunt, looking for spiders in their webs. They were, indeed, easy to find. They were, also, amazingly easy to kill. Her new found size and ingeniousness served her so well that by noon she had eaten no less than 8 web spinners. They were much smaller and never had a chance. Now, however, light was brighter, less perfect, and water no longer made webs so easy to spot. Things were slowing to a crawl.

When she started this, her leg span was nearly 6 inches wide. Now prowling slowly on a branch she reached a respectable 8.3 inches wide leg span. Far bigger than any orb web spinner in the entire world. None of them could stand up to her now. But first, she needed to find them. The rest of the day delivered 2 more spinners to her belly.

She hadn't found anything for several hours when night began to fall again and something attracted her attention. On the ground, quick vibrations indicated that something about half her size had just moved very quickly. When she looked, she saw nothing. Yet, vibrations still indicated movement there.

The vibrations were no longer quick and intense, reminiscent of a struggle. Now, it was slow paced and inconstant. There was still nothing visible on that spot.

Now that she was thinking of the problem in such an angle (and with great intellectual effort) the idea of something large being just there, under the surface of the ground, made complete sense. It perfectly explained what her senses were telling her.

Wisely, the Komaci left. She found no more spiders that evening. Prowling from branch to branch relentlessly, what she did find was another unbidden and alien emotion sneaking its way into her mind. Loneliness. Impossibly, she felt she was completely lost in the eternal expanse of a world that was infinitely bigger and stranger than she ever could have imagined from the safety of her web.