February 2nd, 2025
As I stepped onto the webbing of Mistakonic Spiderversity, I knew this would be a mistake. I’d heard the stories. The universities devotion to the occult was one of the university’s most poorly kept secrets.
But it was too late to turn back. I continued in toward the archeology department, pulling the strange rope of dark silk out and making it ready…
The moment I set Tarsus across the threshold, a young student in a lab coat scurried over to me.
“Where’d you get that?! There’s no way the stories are real!”
She reached out and grabbed the strand without asking.
“I’ve only ever seen it described in textbooks. It really is real. It’s so smooth, and brittle.”
I described my situation to her. Her expression lifted in excitement.
“Let me show you something cool!”
She grabbed my hand and pulled me over to her desk, pulling open a little silk pouch in one of her drawers.
“Take a look at this.”
She carefully pulled a fragile little piece out of it with her gentle forelegs, placing it in front of me.
It was an ancient web carving; something foreign and deep, calling out to me from some distant and primitive culture. On it was depicted something eerily similar to the drawing my cousin bequeathed to me along with some words in an ancient and unknowable script. Well, I say unknowable.
“It’s so weird what you said, because I’ve been trying to decide the best translation of the words on this piece. You see this here? My best guess has always been that it means something like what you said your brother kept singing. I think this means something like small spider, and this second half just seemed like it had some reference to climbing, but I think that poem might track
“The person who brought this back was the only one who survived the exploratory group we sent out a decade ago. He went insane.”
I must. I must know the truth of what happened.
Bryan Appley 