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ALL FLUPPIT COULD HEAR was dripping—a slow, thick dripping that had two notes to it then a rapid dripping of fluid and a slower more viscous plop once every so often in counterpoint to the first. There was a massive weight on her chest. Everything smelled odd. The pervading smell was thick, complicated and everywhere. It was a mix of musky, sweet and sour, like the odd vegetable mix that sometimes got served in Gantrytown, and an edge of vinegar. The weight was squashing her, she could only faintly smell the soapy smell that Sari had accompanying her, and she had absolutely no memory of what happened to her in the last span. She’d been asleep? Unconscious? She couldn’t recall what had happened before that, just that she’d been on a trip with Sari. Where was Sari? She could smell her, but her Air-sense was full of something else. Her whiskers were squashed against her face and some of the weight that she could feel on herself was spread out there. And everywhere else. What was going on? Get a grip Fluppit. Grip. Wait a click. Both her hands grasped something smooth that was different from whatever it was that was weighing her down. She couldn’t move much, but one of the few places on her front that felt different was her right hand. It was clenched around the round smooth thing, and pushed against her side. Her other hand was squished by the weight, like everything else, and where her hand contacted the thing with it was squishy, and wet.
Slowly, as her senses clarified she resolved the squishy wetness as connected to one of the drips. Whatever was making the more frequent drip was coming from the weight above her and running across her knuckles and dripping into a puddle. Beneath her was stone and her bottom felt numb. She’d obviously been in this position for a while. Now she remembered a little more. They were in a side pipe. She was there with Sari. What were they doing? A recipe. They were collecting plants for a recipe. The recipe to make One Love better. Who’d been poisoned. Poison. Why was that relevant?
Then she started to panic. Oh Gods. The spider. Where? Oh— Wait. The weight. Gods, had it taken her? Was she in its web? No, nothing felt sticky or buzzy as if she’d been poisoned, and the thing was still considering. Her whiskers could pick up a little warmth from it, but she had to strain to do so. Any embers of that were right in the thing’s core. So dead then? The thing was dead? How? And where was Sari. She took a chance. If the thing was dead, she was probably safe to call out.
“Sari? Mistress Sari? Are you okay?” Fluppit’s voice echoed off the walls. “Sari?”
She took a deep breath. There must be enough shattered pieces of this puzzle to figure out what was going on. Hands. Where were her hands? Clasped firmly round the wooden shaft. As she prised one hand away, she remembered what the shaft was—a sword-spear. It was the sword-spear they’d brought with them from up top. And thank the gods they had. Fluppit had no memory of stabbing the spider, but it was dead. She’d set the spear butt against the wheel of the cart, maybe? No wonder she’d clung on as though her life depended on it.
“Sari?” Still nothing. She could smell her faintly, but with what was left of this big hulking brute lying all over her it was difficult to Air-sense or smell anything. She tried to move her legs—pinned. Hips—pinned. At least as far as this thing had slid down the sword-spear was now acting as a kind of prop where it was stuck in. Was it wedged against a bone? Did spiders have bones? Fluppit shuddered. She unplastered her whiskers and shook them hard. And again. The shape of the nearest things to her hove into her Air-sense, the bulk of the corpse was too massive to feel too much else. A massive face, mouth open in a hiss and two monstrous fangs pointing down. How had she not been stabbed? Now she wasn’t clinging on to the sword-spear, she reflexively checked her upper body—no ominous puncture wounds, though she supposed if there’d been any, she’d have been dead. And she’d discovered the last slow dripping noise. The sabre-like fangs before her still dropped a viscous fluid into a pool by the side of her.
Oh gods, Sari. It had bitten Sari. She remembered in a burst—the fangs sinking into Sari’s leg, her fighting to get it off her, stabbing it.
“Sari! Sari!” she shouted as loud as she could in the direction she could best guess her scent was pooling in. Her smell was becoming less strong in her head. She sniffed hard, the vinegary scent of the spider was getting stronger, overwhelming everything, but no, it was still there, faint, but in the mix. Not gone, but not strong. “Sari! Sa-rr-ii!” Her shout echoed once off the walls of the pipe and then was absorbed by the massive bulk of the spider’s furry body.
Then a tiny noise, so faint, but definitely from the same direction of Sari’s scent. Then another. A weak groan.
“Sari? Sari! Are you okay? Sari?’
Then another groan, a little longer, then silence. Somehow, she needed to get out of there and if Sari had been bitten, she needed to get her help, somehow. Though she could move her upper body, from her midriff down she was still pinned. Could she find something to use to lever the thing off her? She couldn’t use the spear, it was too firmly wedged. Besides, she daren’t move it, if it was the one thing preventing her from being completely squashed. She lay her head back against the floor. She regretted it immediately, there was an alarming warm pool, soaking into the fur on the back of her head. Not hers, but she shuddered anyway.
The last shudder must have dislodged something from her ear canal on the right-hand side. She’d not even noticed her hearing was duller on one side than the other. She twitched her ear and then cleaned it with a freed paw. Then she heard it. From the main corridor, round the bend from where she was. A new noise—a rattling, chacking noise.
Gods, what now?
