Wordcount: 1,405
Rating/Warnings: PG
Summary: Our heroine gets kidnapped, but it’s on purpose so it’s really more boring than it sounds…

NOTE: This is a very rough draft with no editing at all (per National Novel Wiriting Month rules) and is presented for amusement value only. Think of it as a periscope into my writing process rather than a coherent story!

There will most likely be spelling and grammatical errors afoot as well as flat out bad writing, info dumps, plot holes, contradictions/retcons, uneven characterization and pacing. These snippits are also posted out of order, so please refer to the story page to figure out where it’s supposed to fit.

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Town 3 – Kidnapping

She is kidnapped when walking by herself in towards the marketplace, although she is doing it on purpose so they don’t really surprise her. The spider sense them coming, but she is still working out communications differences so she is a little startled, but pretends well. They stick a bag over her head, effectively trapping the spider inside. The bag is soaked in ether and she is knocked out almost immediately. The spider is very alarmed but pretends to be incapacitated more than it is. This is the plan.

She wakes up in a wagon, covered in hay. Head is still covered but most of the ether has worn off so she is more dizzy than anything else. The spider is fully awake but has been quiet since they don’t want to alarm them. She can’t really sense anything, since she is dizzy and it’s hard to concentrate. She is rather annoyed at the folks because they have given her a headache.

After a while the wagon comes to a halt and they unload her into another room. She still can’t see anything, which is annoying, but the little sister, who is more of a middle sister lets her feel some of the twinges in the worldweb, so she isn’t completely blind.

The hideaway is a two room shack type thing, built in against a cliff wall, so the back two walls of her storage shed thing is stone. There is a pail of water and if she is thirsty enough she could drink through the burlap, although it wouldn’t be easy.

They are left in a locked room and no one makes a move to remove the blindfold bag thingy on her head. So she is in the dark and because its damp it smells a bit like wet horse and wet hay. Which is odd because there aren’t that many horses in use in most area, especially in town. Which makes her think that they carried her out of town and then put her in the cart. So this would be a farmer’s from outside the town and that means the conspiracy has spread farther than they thought it had.

What she can’t feel is another spider or weavers, which means she hasn’t been taken to the same place the teacher was. So she tries to listen to the folks who have captured her. They really aren’t talking much and she is still pretty sleepy from the drugs so she goes back to sleep, letting the spider know when she needs to be woken up.

She wakes up again to the spider’s urging and hears the folks talking in the other room. She has indeed been taken to another location, and apparently there is some concern among the kidnappers that they shouldn’t be grabbing people this often since it means they are in all of the locations at the same time. They don’t seem to be inclined to hurt either her or the spider for the time being, since they are waiting on an official word from someone else.

“Can’t we just kill it now?”

“We’re supposed to wait. He said he’s got a new technique that might save the host. No need in throwing good lives after bad.”

“But he’s working on the other one, it’ll be days before he gets back here.”

“Then I’ll ride out and let him know what we’ve caught. She’s young enough that it might work on her. Not like the other ones.”

“But that’ll leave me alone with it.”

“So? Just leave her locked up, there’s nothing they can do from a locked room, no matter how powerful that spider is. She’ll be fine until I get back, you’ve gone a day or two without food before.”

“Yeah, but–”

“It’ll be fine, don’t worry about it.”

“Just hurry back.”

There is one person who is going to ride over and get the verdict from the person so the weavers decides the easiest thing to do would be to wait until that person leaves and then trail them to the new location. She waits until the other folks have settled into bed to try and communicate this to the spider. Which doesn’t talk, but seems to get a hang of things anyway. The old spiders seem to understand humans much more than the younger ones.

She waits until the next day when the one person has headed out. Once she is sure he is on his way and they are alone with the one other person (who is a little concerned about being in a house with the weaver by himself, but they’ve agreed to leave the door locked because she should be fine for a day or so with no food or water). Then she breaks free, with help from the spider, and sneaks out of the hideaway. Since the man was going to leave her alone anyways, she should have at least a day or two before he notices she is gone.

Since the other man was only going to be gone for a day she knows the other location must be someplace close. She tracks him through the snow, relying on the path and on the spider’s intuition to figure out where he went.

They follow the tracks to the other site. It’s about a half days ride which is a full day of tromping through the snow. They get to the other site at night and just as they get there they feel the other spider die. The weaver won’t die just then, but she will die very soon since she was older and is very reliant on the venom. So they have about a day before she’s gone, only she’d apparently venomed up in hopes of escape and she’s going into shock without the detox.

The weaver can’t do anything to save her, but she waits until they have moved away from the storage room and then finds a way in. She gets in, the other weaver gives her a message for her friends, and then weaver and teacher leave. There is some sadness leaving her behind, but they know she is going to die and she can at least distract them. The idea is that the weaver will attack the other folks if they come back in the room since they have untied her.

They flee out of the house and back towards the town.

The other weaver is towards the end of the weaver lifespan and the spider was working to keep her alive, which is why it was so easy for them to capture her. The teenager that was with her was hurt but left behind. So she wasn’t expecting to get out of this alive.

There have been about a handful of weavers captured since the spiders gave their ultimate. They have been found later dead, but the spiders can feel the release of tension on the wroldweb as the spider and the weaver fall out of it.

The web sort of sings to the spiders, and they can tell what is going on by the way it sounds. The older the spider the better they can hear. They lose their hold on the reality and fall into the worldweb as they age and it is easier for them to feel or hear the vibrations.

The snow is starting to melt when they are in the town and it’s into summer by the time the teacher comes. Or it’s turning to spring when they are heading into the mountains and it takes them until the beginning of winter to reach the monasteries.

So they start out towards the end of winter, end up in the third town by the beginning of summer and then end up in the mountains in the beginning of winter.

There is a bit of silence, a break from the constant mooing and it’s rather odd. There is nothing to so strange as being used to company. She walks along the road and there are more and more people as she goes, but nothing too bad. She gets to the outskirts of the town and then heads for the temple.

The kingdom is the only kingdom, it stretches from the mountains down to the sea. There are other kingdoms out there, but they have never run into them because on the other side of the mountains is the desert which buffers them somewhat.