Trip Lines

The night took thirteen points again, just like the night before. I woke at seventy-six percent with my stomach quiet and my head clear, and I lay on my ledge for a minute making a plan, because "something harder" isn't a plan. It's a mood.

Hunger Clock: 76%

Most of what I'd killed so far had been one of two kinds. Things that ran, like the fish and the rat, and things that had armor, like the crab. I'd learned to be faster than the first kind and smarter than the second. What I hadn't fought yet was something that hunted the way I did. Something that waited.

I'd seen one. Yesterday, upstream where the bank climbed into a slope of packed dirt and roots, I'd noticed little round lids in the ground, each one the size of a coin, with silk threads running out from under them like spokes on a wheel. I hadn't understood them then. I understood them now. The threads were trip lines. Something sat under each lid and waited for a foot to touch a line.

I went upstream. The slope was cool and shaded, and the dirt smelled like old leaves and iron. I found the first lid in a few minutes, then a second, then a third, spread out along the bank about my body length apart. Most of the threads were thin and gray, but the lines around the biggest lid were thick and fresh, and the lid itself was wider than my head. I stopped well outside the reach of the longest thread and let my Sense do the rest.

[Sense]
Target: Trapdoor Spider ~ Lv.4
Threat: High

A level above me, and the System had never told me "High" before. I felt something in my chest tighten, and then I noticed it wasn't fear. It was more like the feeling of opening a hard test and seeing a question I actually wanted to answer.

"Okay," I thought. "Let's see who's more patient."

The trouble was obvious. The spider wasn't going to come out for me. It would come out for a touch on a line, and it would come out fast, right at whatever did the touching. If I stepped on a thread, I'd be the thing it hit. So I needed to be somewhere else when the line moved.

I looked around and found a dead leaf, stiff and curled, about the size of my old palm. I hooked it with my left scythe, the way I'd practiced on the falling leaves, and carried it up the slope above the lid. Then I settled in. I set my legs, folded my right scythe, kept the leaf hooked in my left, and pressed my body low against the roots. I let Stillness take me.

[Stillness] active

From up there I could see the whole wheel of threads under me. I picked the longest one, the one that ran farthest from the lid, and reached out slowly, slowly, until the tip of the leaf hung just above it. Then I let the leaf drag across the silk.

Nothing happened.

I did it again, softer this time, a little twitch, the way a beetle's foot might catch. Still nothing. Either the spider was asleep, or it was smarter than a fish and had learned that dead leaves blow around.

So I made the leaf act alive. Two quick taps, a pause, a drag, another tap, like something small and stupid trying to get its footing.

The lid flew open.

It was so fast that if I'd been the one on the thread, it would have had me. A dark brown body, thick and hairy, burst out of the hole and ran straight down the silk line to the leaf, front legs up, fangs out. It struck, got a mouthful of dead leaf, and stopped. For one heartbeat it just stood there in the open, a long way from its hole, trying to figure out what had gone wrong.

That heartbeat was mine.

I came down off the roots and hit it from above and behind, both scythes at once. My right hook caught it just behind the head and my left one caught a back leg, and I pinned it flat against the dirt.

It was strong, much stronger than the crab had felt for its size. It twisted under me and threw its whole body sideways, and one of my hooks slipped. The fangs came around and slammed into the shell on the side of my head. I heard it more than felt it, a hard double knock, like someone rapping on a door.

Shell: -3

The fangs didn't get through. I'd put those points in Shell yesterday for exactly this, and right then I was very glad I had. A drop of something clear and bitter ran down my face plate where the fangs had scraped, and the shell there tingled and went a little numb, but that was all.

I didn't let it try again. I dragged my left scythe up the leg to the body, found the joint where the leg met the shell, and pulled until the spider couldn't push off that side. Then I used my new Might the way I'd wanted to, and held it. It strained and kicked and couldn't get loose. I bent my head down to the soft place behind its eyes, where the plates came together, and bit.

[Kill] Trapdoor Spider ~ Lv.4
XP gained.

I stayed on top of it until the legs stopped moving completely, then a little longer, just to be sure. Then I sat back on the slope and clicked out loud, three quick clicks, and didn't care who heard.

It hadn't been strength that won, or speed, or even the soft places, though I'd used all three. It had been waiting better. The spider had spent its whole life under that lid, trusting that anything touching a line was food. I'd spent one morning learning how to lie to it.

I liked that I could do that. I liked it a lot.

The spider was rich and a little bitter, and I ate it slowly, sitting in the cool shade with the stream going by below me.

Hunger Clock: 88%

I took the long way home, along the top of the slope where the trees were older and the ground was clear. That was where I found the tree.

It was a big one, its trunk wider than my ledge was long. About ten of my body lengths up, higher than I'd ever climbed, the bark had been torn away in long strips, five grooves side by side, deep enough that I could see pale wood underneath. Sap was still running down from them, slow and shiny. It was fresh. Maybe last night, maybe this morning.

I looked at those grooves for a long time. I tried to imagine what made them and couldn't make the picture big enough. Then I noticed something else. The birds had gone quiet. The insects too. The whole stretch of forest around that tree was silent, the way a room used to go quiet in my old life when someone important walked in, only this was much bigger.

I didn't run. Running is what prey does, and running makes noise. I folded my scythes and walked away along the roots, slow and low, until I could hear the birds again.

Back on my ledge, I watched the dark come in and thought about trip lines. About how the spider had believed its hole made it the hunter.

"Something harder," I thought. Something in this forest was a lot harder than me. I'd have to make sure I never touched its line.