She was not fast enough. With no second to pause, Barbarthara thrust herself forward and reached downward mid-flight —
She flattened herself, pressed her core against the rock, pulled vulnerable nodes inward and aside, curled her being out of reach. She sought the stone – to vanish into it, to burrow and be gone – but the surface was unbroken. Flat. Unyielding. Seamless. Then — salvation. A crack. Barely wide enough. She slithered into it, pushed forth her core. Almost —
A leg found her. Barbed. Splintered. Curved like a thorned hook. It ripped her free, dragged her back into open ground. The mandibles drove down. They slammed into the rock, struck stone, struck into her, tore through root and rind. Barbarthara was ripped apart, segments crushed and trampled.
Desperation contorted her into unnatural shapes. If she could not sink below, she had to rise. Get off the ground. Barbarthara coiled around one of its legs, sought purchase, sought entry. But the limbs were dead — timber-thick, bloodless, fleshless. No softness. No soil.
Still, she climbed. She scraped along the underbelly, searching for softness, weakness, for something that gave way. At last — the abdomen. Swollen. Pulsing. She formed a thorn, hardened a root, narrowed it to a point, and drove it in. Met resistance. Dense chitin. She pushed harder. The tip pierced the shell. She forced venom into the breach — her own toxin, sharpened over years of learning from witches and weavers.
The beast thrashed wildly; no sign of affect, of weakness. Perhaps her poison had not reached flesh — if there was flesh. Most likely it had not struck anything vital. Surely, the creature could not be harmed by what little she had left to give.
No time to think. No time to try again. The arachnid twisted and flailed; Barbarthara could barely hold on. The mandibles struck again and again —
They got her. Closed around her. She felt the bite — a crushing, slicing pressure. She twisted, tried to pull her core aside. Too slow. One edge scraped into her core. The mandible drove through the dense node — that thick, fibrous knot of root and nerve from which she functioned. But it did not cleave her cleanly. She was not shattered. Not torn apart. She was pierced.
And then — something else. Not just pain. Not just trauma. Poison. Acidic and burning.
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