Andy Remic - Soul Stealers

Jage awoke face down, staring at rock. An incredible thirst still raged through him, and he had distant memories of motion but everything was blurred and his face felt sticky and he realised his skin was covered, covered with a sheen of silk honey web.

So they want to eat me, he thought, miserably. They've brought me back to their cave, so that they can eat me one piece at a time. I am a prisoner. I am food. He struggled to move, but could not. However, there was no pain, and Jage frowned. Then he spied a flood of spiders undulating across the rocky floor towards him, each the size of his hand, many with chelicerae clicking. Some carried sacks of eggs, encased in silk, some held them in jaws but others carried their precious cargo on their backs. Jage watched, fascinated for a few moments, until he realised they had come to feed; had come to feed their young. He shuddered, and fresh tears fell, and the surging carpet of spiders stopped and several clambered over him, delicate footfalls teasing his flesh with a terrible, mocking agony. He felt the bite, directly over his broken spine, and he screamed then and would have thrashed if he could have moved… another bite came, and another, and Jage was sobbing uncontrollably as the spiders clicked and injected him with venom, and he waited for the pain to smash through him.

Instead, only euphoria eased into his veins, and thankfully he slipped into a welcome unconsciousness.

Jage awoke, propped against rock, seated in the dark, in the cold. A breeze blew, which soothed his feverish skin. He licked dry lips, and his throat throbbed raw from excessive screaming. He turned his head, surveyed the narrow tunnels which led to this small, cramped space. On a rock near his foot, to the right, there was fruit; small berries, some strawberries, several mushrooms and a potato. Jage felt an incredible hunger rush through him, and he reached out, lifting the fruit and eating it, and berry juice ran down his face staining his chin red and he laughed, and his feeding increased in frenzy until the fruit and raw vegetables were gone. He felt stiff, and sore, and only then did realisation dawn. He could move! He could move again.

The young boy twisted, and his back felt strange, tight and odd and not quite part of him. He frowned, and reached behind himself, his hand groping for his spine. What he found there made him freeze, for there was some kind of thick cord on the outside of his skin, stretching from the base of his spine all the way up to the base of his skull. His fingers traced the strange, smooth, hard substance, and as he moved, and explored, he realised the thick cord was moving with him, flexing with him. It seemed to be integral to his flesh. What have they done to me? Jage thought, dreamlike, drifting, and he saw the spiders moving slowly into his cramped cave, only this time there was something else, another spider, much bigger this time but with exactly the same markings and appearance as the tiny Hexels. Jage fixed on this large arachnid, and its graceful movement of all eight legs in choreographed coordination; it was the same size as Jage, and he realised, at least, that answered the question of how he had been moved to the cave. What was this? A queen? A king? How did it work with spiders?

The spider eased forward, ducking a little, each leg movement a forced hydraulic step, and it stopped before Jage and he looked into the four black orbs – its eyes – and the spider was watching him and he had absolutely no idea what it wanted. Was it going to eat him? Was it going to poison him? Did it want to be friends? "Hello," said Jage, head tilting. His spine gave a tiny, tiny crackle. "Thank you, for saving me, from the wolves." The gathering of worker spiders did not move. They were a carpet of black, all eyes on him. The large one (which he later discovered was the queen) stepped even closer, and Jage's nostrils twitched, for he could smell acid and hemolymph. He kept his face perfectly straight as chelicerae the size of daggers moved to his face and the spider seemed to be… sniffing him? It moved yet closer, all eight legs surrounding him, encompassing him in a strange spider-limb cocoon, and then against all odds the spider started to sing, a song without words, a high-pitched croon, a lullaby, and Jage sat there, ensnared, and she sang to him and he felt strangely at ease, a part of this family hiding under the ground and inside the rock, feared and reviled and his face formed into a strange grimace which should have had no place on a human mask and he found acceptance for he had been abandoned and left to die but here, here and now, with the spider queen's song soothing through his skull and veins he realised he was a part of this new family; they would look after him, and protect him, and love him, and make him strong again.

Deep in the caves, there was a river. The water was black, but Jage drank from it often and never suffered ill effects. He moved around the tunnels freely for a while, exploring winding tunnels and caves and caverns, many littered with bones and long, ancient drifts of web. Most of the Hexel Spiders did their hunting outside, and fed mainly on other insects, although sometimes the three larger queens who inhabited the central caves would head out into the night and return, often with rabbits or snakes, once a weasel spitting and snarling in its sack of silk; and once, even, a wolf. Jage watched as the three queens brought the cocooned wolf into the hub of caves and tunnels; it no longer struggled, and Jage reasoned it had been given a moderate bite to sedate it. The massive shaggy beast was wrapped heavily in thick cords of restraining silk, and Jage crawled forward, curious, head tilting to one side as he realised with a start the creature was the wolf that had threatened him all those months earlier, as he lay paralysed and abandoned beside the Hentack River. On hands and knees Jage crawled until his face was only inches from the wolf, and he stared into those old, baleful yellow eyes and the wolf seemed to grin at him, panting in short bursts, and Jage felt some kind of victory and he wondered if this was sheer coincidence, or if his new family had hunted down the wolf and brought it to him.

Jage turned, and at that moment the wolf lunged, jaws snapping, slicing through his shoulder and making the young boy scream. The wolf locked jaws, and shook him, and Jage flopped to the rock and the spiders rushed over the wolf and the queen was there, small black eyes emotionless as chelicerae swept down and there came a terrible cracking; she snapped the wolf's muzzle in two, then a leg punched out, entering the old creature's skull with pile-driver force and skewering the brain within.

Jage fell back, weeping, pain flooding him. Gently, the queen gathered him up and a honey liquid oozed from her fangs and into his mouth and the pain eased away, closely followed by wakefulness.

Jage awoke. His shoulder felt good. It felt more than good. It felt strong. He looked down, and from the midpoint of his chest across his shoulder and down to his elbow, there were panels of black chitin, glossy like spider armour, and woven deep into his flesh, indeed, deep into his very muscle and bone.

The queen entered, and settled down before him. Then a foreleg reached out and touched Jage's face, and he closed his eyes and he could… he could flow with her thoughts and feel her desperation for she was a Soulkeeper of Species and they were at war and hunted and reviled and the battle had raged for thousands of years with the Trallisk, who came with fire and poison to burn them and sting them, and battles had been fought, huge underground wars in tunnel and cave systems ranging for thousands of leagues to destroy the Sacred, and the Soulkeepers had finally been defeated in a huge bloody scourge, and since that day they moved from cave system to cave system, always running, always hiding, taking the Sacred with them, but one day they would conquer for it was their way, they were a warrior species descended from a warrior species and Jage, Jage was a human exception, a conundrum for he had shown them kindness and a form of understanding and she knew he was different and unique and they needed something unique to beat the Trallisk in war and this, this meant acceptance, for he was young and in him they could find an ally and they would strengthen him and had built him a spine from cuticle containing proteins and chitin built up in layers and fed with long protein strands into his own flesh and own spine and nerves and his body had accepted it as his own. And now. Now, after the incident with the wolf, the Soulkeepers had repaired his shoulder in a similar fashion, building him a new shoulder blade, for the wolf's fangs had torn muscle and powdered bone and they were part of him now, all a part of him, and he was part of them, and they were happy to accept Jage into their family for they knew there was no evil in his body, mind or soul and he could help them, help them protect the Sacred for its purpose was important to the world, and he, Jage, was important to the world… and one day, he would understand why they gave him the Sacred to protect.