She knew the pattern and placement. She recognised it through touch alone, through memory. If this beast, from all Barbarthara felt, was indeed a grand variant of the rockshade weavers, then this would be the flexible mid-section that gave the creature control of its body, the leg cluster, the fulcrum of balance and motion.

There.

She broke in. Pierced and pushed past the outer armour. Slid her slick mass through the softened sinew. Pressed inward.

And still, they pursued. Behind her, the smallest of weavers still followed, mandibles snapping, pulling at her trailing mass, and stripping strands from her back, and tearing sap-wet tissue of her edges.

But Barbarthara pressed deeper. Compressed herself into denser form. Let go of mass she could no longer protect. Let it slough off behind her like a husk. The opening tore wider. She forced her way through it. The membrane split. The tissue parted. And she slipped in, wholly, messily, into the body of the thing that had nearly ended her.

It would now shield her.

    Or swallow her.

                    Were they still following?

           Would they reach her through the flesh?

                                Barbarthara did not know.

                     She could not distinguish the masses that pressed down onto her.

She wormed forward. Dragged herself through pulped internals, through collapsed organs, past slimy sacks and blistered tracts and chambers thick with digestion. Fluids sloshed around her, coated her, saturated what was left of her form and drowned her senses.

But still, she moved. Not with the certainty of survival, not even towards it – that was long past reason; decaying hope – but with the refusal to die. Motion was the only thing that kept her from the lasting stillness. In stillness, the darkness clung. With her body gone, this will was the only thing that remained; the core conviction that drove her forward. And so, she pressed inward. Parted tissue. Shoved viscera aside. Behind her, the path clogged — slack organs, thick fluids, her own secretions sealing the gap.

She was inside now.

The great beast held her.

 Sealed her.

           Became a sheltering cocoon.

   Or her tomb.  
   

                                      Barbarthara collapsed.

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