Dangerous Potions

A thick, damp darkness drenched the forgotten cavern walls. Drips of warm moisture occasionally dropped from the various stalactites onto the barren rock floor, causing a reverberating sound to echo across the cave. Tiny creatures of the dark darted here and there, attempting to avoid one another and survive in the pitch black of the rocky world. All was calm and dark.

The sound of swords clanging in the distance disrupted the rhythmic dripping sounds. They then morphed into roaring battle cries and screams of agony. The alien sounds cause many of the tiny cave creatures to momentarily cease their actions, listening on to the sounds of battle coming from closer to the entrance of the cave. Soon, the banging of weapons and bellows of battle died down, ending abruptly with a final smashing sound of two heavy metal objects colliding.

Soon the echoes of the climatic end of the battle died, leaving only the sound of the cave water dripping to break the silence. From the direction of the cave’s exit, a growing glow of torchlight began to fill the blackened space. The tiny cave dwellers, at first fixated with the sounds of the battle, quick escaped the encroaching light. The light grew and grew until finally, the torch and its bearer entered the cavern proper.

Breathing heavily, Aubrey stumbled into the cavern room, allowing the torch to slide from her left hand onto the grey cave floor. Taking a few more steps, she leaned herself against a stalagmite close to the torch. Her axe, covered in goblin blood, clattered to the ground at her side. Brushing aside her sweat-mapped auburn hair, she allowed herself a few moments to catch her breathe.

Aubrey couldn’t remember the last time she had faced off against goblins so tenacious. Of course, the people in the town of Burnside below had warned her that they would put up quite a fight, and for good reason. If the stories were true, the cave was actually an ancient, derelict gem mine, so filled with gems that the miners could pluck them off the walls like berries. If it hadn’t been for some nasty creatures further down and, more recently, the goblins, the townsfolk below would be living like royalty.

With her wind restored, Aubrey unhooked one of her satchels and fished out a healing elixir. The drink went down smooth, and the taste reminded her of cherries and strawberries. After a few quick gulps, Aubrey felt ten times better. What’s more, she noticed that the red gashes visible through her brown leather armor quickly resealed themselves.

"If only that apothecary had an armor-repair potion," Aubrey thought with a smirk as she stuck a finger in one of the new holes in her armor.

In all honesty, she definitely needed to thank the old man. He was definitely the most helpful person in that no-horse town below. She had told him she planned to exterminate all the creeps in the cave, and he provided her with plenty of details of the deadly creatures and damned goblins. Not only that, he also provided her with some healing elixirs, strength potions, and even some sort of antivenom. All that and he didn’t ask her for anything except a few gems from inside; not a bad deal!

In a swift, single motion, Aubrey buckled up her satchel and threw it back over her shoulder. Using her axe as leverage, she then got back on her feet, stretching out. The healing elixir was definitely fast-acting, something she noted for later on. Confident once more in her strength to carry on, she walked over to her torch to continue her journey.

Unfortunately, Aubrey’s stint in the light had garnered the attention of one of the cave’s notorious denizens. As Aubrey had languished in the light, a giant, monstrous spider had lurked out of the black abyss. While the spider had subsisted on goblins for some time, they were like rotten meat compared to a fine, fresh human. Silently stalking Aubrey, it had positioned itself directly above her torch she had carelessly left unguarded, and now its chance to strike had come.

The monstrous spider, however, made a careless blunder just before its attack when it knocked a rock loose from the ceiling. It tumbled down close to Aubrey, and caused her to raise her guard once more. With a quick glance up, she saw the spider pouncing down on her just in time. Quickly dodging out of the way, she narrowly avoided being crushed underneath the massive arachnid.

The failed attack did nothing but further motivate the spider. Quickly turning to meet its prey, it lunged toward her with its pedipalps and front legs, stabbing, swiping, and grasping at Aubrey. Dodging the rapid blows, Aubrey quickly found herself giving ground to the great beast. If she wasn’t careful, the spider would trap her in a corner then finished her off.

Catching one of the strikes early, Aubrey counterattacked and, with a mighty heave, slammed her axe into the spider’s limb. The axe cut through the exoskeleton and flesh inside, severing half the limb off. Unfortunately, the spider was unfazed by the brutal blow and nailed Aubrey square in the chest with another limb, causing her to tumble back.

Aubrey barely managed to keep hold of her axe, but she thankfully managed to right herself quickly. The spider was already charging at her once more, this time with its fangs gleaming in the orange torchlight. Aubrey dodged to her left, escaping the spider’s bite. With an open opportunity, Aubrey brought her axe down hard against the beast’s side.

This time the blow seemed to stagger the spider. It let out a yelp as its right side buckled under the force of Aubrey’s strike. Putting her foot against its side, Aubrey retrieved the axe with a grunt, causing purple fluid to begin to leak from the spider’s side. The spider lashed out against its stubborn prey, attempting to swat Aubrey away with its furthest back leg. Aubrey saw the strike coming a mile away, and easily moved aside from the blind strike.

Aubrey was now on the offensive. She quickly rushed at the spider’s abdomen, axe held high over her head and screaming like a banshee. She let down a furious first blow, burying her axe deep into the spider’s side. Again the spider staggered under the weight of such an attack, but this time it didn’t even get the chance to push Aubrey off before another came. And another. And another. Before long, the spider’s abdomen was a mess of deep wounds and purple blood.

By this time, Aubrey was running out of steam. Feeling confident the spider wasn’t putting up much of a fight anymore, Aubrey reached for her satchel of potions.

This proved a grave mistake, as the spider took advantage of the lull of her attacks. With nearly the last of its energy, the spider whipped its body around, smashing into Aubrey, knocking her down, and sending her satchel of potions flying. Aubrey caught a brief glimpse of them in the dim torchlight before they shattered on the ground. Her potions seeped onto the floor in miserable puddles of pink and yellow before fading into the ground.

The demonic spider was weak, but more determined than ever to get its prey. With Aubrey distracted with watching her potions sail away, it leaped on her and sunk its fangs into her left side. She let out a wail of pain as she felt the deadly venom enter her veins.

“If I’m going down, you’re coming with me!” Aubrey growled. With its head in striking distance, Aubrey drew her short sword and with a final rallying cry plunged the blade deep into the spider’s face. Even with its alien, lifeless quality, Aubrey could swear she saw surprise in the spider’s eyes as the sword sapped the last bits of its life. The spider slumped over dead on Aubrey’s left side, its fangs releasing their grip.

Aubrey wished she could savor her victory, but a searing pain took away any pride she felt. Crawling over to her satchel, she desperately searched for anything that could save her. All her strength potions were gone, and the last healing elixir had seeped into the earth. Just when it seemed all hope was lost, she found one bottle unopened and unbroken: the antivenom.

Her hands shaking in desperation and pain, she uncorked the bottle and quickly began chugging the entire bottle. If she had a clearer head, she would have remembered that the antivenom had come with instructions as well as a grave yet vague warning should she not follow them. But in her panicked mind, Aubrey’s desire to end the venom’s pain overwrote any rational thought.

Aubrey was close to finishing the bottle when the taste of the potion finally hit her. Aubrey was no stranger to strange drinks, and she had spent plenty of time in backwoods bars trying foul tasting drinks. But the antivenom was more akin to drinking raw sewage than drinking some poorly made ale. Gagging, choking, and finally coughing a bit of it up, Aubrey let the nearly empty bottle fall from her hands.

Thankfully, the antivenom was fast acting much like the healing elixir. The burning pain Aubrey felt in her veins quickly dimensioned and was replaced by a rather pleasant cooling sensation across her body. Aubrey let out a sigh of relief. And she thought the goblins were bad.

Given a moment to gather herself, Aubrey wandered back over to her torch (after a quick glance around to make sure the spider didn’t have any friends). She took a moment to check herself over, but found no real notable injuries. Her leather armor had certain taken a beating from the spider’s strikes, but the only new hole in it came from the spider’s bite.

Aubrey bend beside the torch and tried to get a better look at punctures the fangs left. Unfortunately, her somewhat bulky armor didn’t reveal much of her side. While she certainly didn’t feel safe to take off her armor, she needed to properly inspect her wounds, especially with all her healing potions gone. She loosened the straps on her back and peeled the armor off, revealing her sweat-soaked tunic underneath. Removing the garment, Aubrey got her first glimpse at the infection site.

The sight immediately sent a wave of confusion and terror into her heart. The skin directly around the two puncture wounds had turned black, and the surrounding pinkish-pale skin had turned veiny and grotesque. She could also see that the blackened skin was slowly growing, encompassing more and more of her flesh with every passing second.

As Aubrey’s breathing began to grow ragged, she noticed that the nice cooling sensation had turned into more of a warming sensation, like when she first entered a warm bath. The warmth permeated her entire body, leaving her feeling woozy, but somewhat relaxed at the same time. She felt the strength ebb away from her legs, and she finally toppled over, landing on her backside.

To her surprise, her backside seemed quick a bit bigger than she remembered. Turning her head around, she saw that it had begun to balloon out. Yet at the same time, it didn’t feel like it was her buttcheeks that were expanding together, but her lower torso growing and expanding independent of her chest. It was growing harder and harder to remain on her backside, so she switched positions to her hands and knees.

The rips and tears in her leather pants made them put up little resistance to Aubrey’s new growth. The seat of the pants quickly gave way, exposing Aubrey’s changing skin to the moist cave air. She let out an audible groan as she felt her insides shifting, almost like a falling sensation but with the momentum toward her growing lower torso. Looking back, she could see that her lower torso was getting much larger and rounded, almost like a…

It hit her all at once. The spider’s venom. The antivenom. The apothecary’s warning. She drank too much of the antivenom, and now it was changing her into a giant spider!

Another wave of warmth flowed through Aubrey’s body, this time focusing on her arms and legs. Staring at her hands, she saw her five fingers twist and contort into three claws on both hands. Then Aubrey heard and felt a series of cracks along her arms as new segmented joints were formed. She could also see the distinct black exoskeleton slowly overtake her pale skin, complete with the strange new hairs of a spider. Look back at her legs, she saw the remnants of her pants had fallen off. Her legs too had been changed into a slightly larger pair of spider legs. All the while, Aubrey’s abdomen and now her chest were expanding, growing heavier and heavier by the second. Her new appendages were too weak to keep Aubrey’s expanding body off the ground, and she fell with a thud.

As Aubrey stared back at her massive body, she also saw that she was growing new limbs to assist her movement. They started off as little nubs, more like warts growing in her fuzzy spider hide. But slowly they grew in length and width, adding new digits as they extended. Slowly, new nerve endings entered into the limbs, as well as connections into Aubrey’s brain. By the time they reached the floor, Aubrey instinctively positioned all of her limbs to properly lift her body. With little effort, she stood up for the first time as a spider.

Such immediate, intimate knowledge of how a spider’s body worked frightened Aubrey to her core. At first she tried to move each leg individually, but her brain hadn’t quite figured out how to make her eight legs work for her.

But the transformative antivenom was already hard at work rewriting Aubrey’s instincts and mindset, changing her perception to be more in line with her monstrous body. Aubrey felt her mind getting cloudy, confused. She distinctly remembered moving around on two legs, but did she only have two? She could have sworn she had more. She had… eight legs, right? What were her other six doing as she walked around on two? As her mind attempted to backtrack how her former bipedal body worked, her eight legs began to automatically make their first tentative steps. First one, then the next, then another, and soon she found herself moving with ease around the cavern.

"Strange," spidery Aubrey thought, "this feels so natural. Why did I think I only used two?" Already the antivenom was beginning to alter Aubrey’s mind. Its invasive transformation was slowly convincing Aubrey that her human memories were misremembered, and that she was truly a spider all along.

Now free to move about, Aubrey then noticed her old, torn pair of pants. Intrigued, she moved over to them. Perhaps they had a clue as to how she moved around with only two legs. It appeared as though they could fit her front two legs. But tried as she may, her front legs couldn’t seem to put them on. As she continued to frustratingly try on the pants, her memories brought up how she once had hands to help her put clothes on.

The antivenom stepped up its transformations once again as another set of limbs grew out of her former shoulders. Segment by segment they grew, growing three similar claws as her legs, but with the added benefit of the third claw working as an opposable thumb. As they grew, the antivenom once again muddled Aubrey’s thoughts and memories of hands, replacing her five-digit, skinned ones with the new, exoskeleton ones. Once Aubrey’s new pedipalps came into view, she quickly adapted to them and reached out, grasping onto the trousers and trying them on.

The antivenom continued to seep into Aubrey’s brain, attacking memories of wearing such clothes. The pants themselves didn’t help Aubrey see the truth either, as her new front legs had grown far too big to get the pants even halfway up her legs. Grunting in effort, she accidently ripped the pants in two. The antivenom finally setting in, Aubrey shrugged it off.

"Must have been someone else’s. Can’t remember the last time I wore something like that," Transitioning Aubrey thought concludingly.

Moving on from the pants, she felt a crick in her neck from having to keep her head up all the time. The altering antivenom began to rectify this oversight, and soon Aubrey’s neck sunk into her body. At first, Aubrey was forced to look at the ground, but then her body began to overtake her head as well. Slowly, the back of Aubrey’s skull began to fuse with her new, black exoskeleton-covered body. Her auburn hair moved up into a position more like a small mane than a head of hair, the former shoulder-length hair still long enough to drape over both sides of her human face.

It was then that Aubrey felt a bizarre feeling in her teeth. Opening them up and inspecting them with one of her new pedipalps, she could feel her top two canine teeth growing in length, size, and sharpness. Along with them was a feeling of burgeoning flesh inside her mouth as new venom sacks developed alongside her new fangs. The teeth grow out of Aubrey’s mouth, but luckily pushed enough away to not disturb the rest of her mouth. Soon Aubrey’s new spider fangs were fully grown, the extra flesh of the venom sacks and the fangs themselves stretching out of Aubrey’s mouth.

“Ouch, that hurt!” Aubrey exclaimed after accidentally pricking herself on one of the developing fangs. Her speech wasn’t unintelligible, but the extra pounds of flesh in her mouth didn’t help her annunciation. The antivenom was getting good at overwriting Aubrey’s memories, and the new fangs didn’t even phase Aubrey now even though she had felt it happen. She mistook her new instincts as old ones about how her venom was poisonous enough to kill anything in seconds. She didn’t even bat an eye about how strange it felt that her fangs seemed so out of place in her human mouth. The elixir was slowly but surely changing the young warrior into an arachnid.

As this occurred, the antivenom was working to give Aubrey another boon of the spiders. At the end of her now giant abdomen, new organs began to grow. Three specialized new glands appeared at the tip of her abdomen. And with a few quick instincts tacked into Aubrey’s mind, she was suddenly overcome with a new urge to utilize her new spinnerets.

Quickly scurrying up the cavern wall, Aubrey began to utilized both her new spinnerets and legs to produce her silk. Her legs worked overtime as they continued to pull and weave her first bits of webbing. She spent the next few minutes in a trace, weaving a tapestry of webs across the cavern room. Finally satisfied, Aubrey positioned herself in a dark corner of the room’s ceiling, using the stalactites as cover.

With her transformation coming to a close, Aubrey’s mind was racing in a confusing maelstrom of conflicting memories and instincts. The antivenom continued to work to try to make her believe she had always had these limbs, those instinct, this body, but deep down she still clung to her believe that she wasn’t always a spider. But it all seemed so convincing. How she moved, what her body looked and felt like, recent memories of dwelling in this cave; it all clashed with vague recollections of being something else.

Aubrey was given a brief reprieve from her mental anguish when she felt some vibrations on one of her strings. Turning her gaze deeper in the cave, she could see the dim light of torches coming her way. Aubrey remained hidden behind the stalactites, waiting to see what was coming.

Soon she heard the unmistakable sound of goblins coming up from the darkness. They were busily chattering with one another, unaware of the danger that lurked above them. Aubrey, meanwhile, began to feel conflicted again. The transformation had taken a lot of her energy, and her new spider stomach growled. Her instincts screamed that they were suitable prey, but something about eating them seemed so revolting.

"Well, it’s not like I’m going to find a deer in here," Aubrey silently concluded. "And I did just spin all those webs…" A predatory smile creeped over Aubrey’s face as she prepared to hunt down the goblins.

The goblins didn’t put up much of a fight. Three of them got caught in her inescapable webs before the fight even began, and the other two lacked the strength or weapons to pierce Aubrey’s new exoskeleton. Between Aubrey’s poison, strength, and size, the two fighters didn’t stand a chance, and neither did their helpless companions caught in her webs.

Aubrey’s ravenous hunger cause her to quickly consume all five. They were definitely not a pleasant meal, but it was good enough. Aubrey hunger, however, was still not satiated. She was about to explore a little further in the cave for something else to eat when she spotted a ruby had fallen out of one of the goblin’s pockets.

The shiny gemstone helped to clear Aubrey from the haze of new instincts and falsified memories. She was on a mission for a person down below in the town of Burnside. She was supposed to clear the cave of those weak goblins and other damned beasts, and return to him with some gems from within the cave. More memories began coming back as well. Distinct yet distant memories of not being some spider, but a strong human warrior. Of exploring the countryside and finding adventure and riches. Of being with friends and family having fun and reveling in the victories of the day and past.

Nostalgia hit her like an arrow to the heart. She desperately wanted to return to her human form that she had somehow lost. But how it had been lost was forgotten in a cloud of spider instincts and false memories crowding her brain. Picking up the ruby, she could see a faint reflection of her still somewhat human face within, her human eyes still full of life.

Determination pounding in her arachnid heart, Aubrey the Spider sallied forth to reclaim the cave and her humanity.