Book One – Chapter 16

This silken construction spoke of arachnids. The Shaira worked with weavers. Bred them. Taught them. Harvested silk and venom, and studied both. Barbarthara had helped — had touched the silk, drawn out the venom, had been forced to feed on their bodies and intrude on their instincts.

That knowledge now tethered her to reason.

Barbarthara’s roots reached out — to touch, her only true sense. These threads were thick and strong, of something much bigger than the common weaver. Something grand had settled here.

Barbarthara had to move. Now. Quickly, before whatever spun this came to inspect its catch.

But first — assessment.

She probed her roots. The cold had sunk deep into her form. Extremities withered, stiffened. They ached — which meant they were not yet beyond recovery. Her liquids had greatly thickened but had not hardened to the point of shattering. Judging by the depth of chill, she could not have been unconscious more than an hour. Two at most. A short fall into long darkness.

Taking so much from the ork before the fall had bought her time, enough sustenance to last for another half hour, she reckoned.

Orientation came next.

The threads stretched out in every direction. No pattern. No gravity-defined geometry.

She extended her roots — parting, thinning, elongating. Fine fibres unfurled and reached into the web, weaving through strands, anchoring, reading.

The silk reminded her of flesh — tendons and fascia, the fibrous nets that laced muscle and viscera. She had worked through such matter before. Had eased herself into veins and nerves like fungus threading into rot, drawing maps from within a host’s body.

This was no different. Through the net, she could orient herself. Every contact brought more information. The web spoke. At first, it was too much. A mass of signals. But Barbarthara filtered — one thread, then another, then another — until the chaos resolved into structure. Not a spiral. Not a crude surface-cave construct. Not a trap spun by a common weaver. This was vast. Balanced. Precise. Stable, with tension distributed evenly from all directions. Anchored to many points with no central tension, meaning Barbarthara hung somewhere near the core. Some of the threads pulsed faintly with movement — her own. Nothing else. No other weight. No other motion. She was alone. For now.