Teysa struggles with her new form

She wasn’t sure how long she lay there on the cavern floor. Her pain had vanished and she could feel the strength in her new limbs, but standing up still seemed like an impossible task. Her visions from earlier were already fading. There had been... a house? A face, a woman’s face, familiar and yet somehow strange. And a man, a man with a great golden mane of hair and a face full of sadness. It was hard to separate the visions from reality. She looked down at herself and shuddered. That bulbous black abdomen wasn’t a vision, as much as she might wish it so. She had become a monster. Whenever her chitinous body appeared in her peripheral vision, she had a moment of panic, as though some massive monster had snuck up on her and was preparing to devour her. What a joke. I'm devoured already.

She wasn’t alone in the cave. Sensory information bombarded her: she could hear each drip of water from the hanging stalactites, see into every crevice in the rock with total clarity. More than that: she could feel the heartbeat, a flutter that traveled up through her legs and along her spine. Three caves away, a spiderling scuttled. In the corridor outside a drider (kel’tya her name is kel’tya) scuttled past carrying a cave-worm carcass. She smelled worried. Teysa’s head spun. She clapped her hands to her ears to **** off the cacophony. That helped a little, but she still felt off-balance; her mind had not adjusted to the torrent of information pouring in from her new senses, and it threatened to drown her.

A few feet away, a woman inhaled sharply. Teysa’s head snapped up. The cave was dimly lit by patches of phosphorescent fungus, and barely any light penetrated the thick forest of stalagmites, but she could see into them as clear as day. Aliara huddled in the stone forest with a fearful expression on her face. More than fearful: terror poured off her. Her sweat stank of it. Her heart clanged in her chest like a bell.

“Li...” Teysa began, and stopped. Her voice sounded wrong even to herself. It had a much stronger effect on Aliara: the half-elf recoiled as though she had been slapped. Her mouth moved silently. Before she could think about what she was doing, Teysa reached out a hand. “Li?” she asked, and took a step forward. Aliara took a step backwards, her mouth forming a horrified O. Teysa looked at her own hand, the claw-tips that had replaced her fingers, and her heart sank. She saw herself through Aliara’s eyes, just for a moment: a monster, a grey-skinned demon, wearing the face of Aliara’s lover. Anguish welled up inside her like black water. She felt as though she was drifting on an endless cold sea beneath a sunless sky. Why? she thought. Why did I live? Once again, she saw the farmhouse in her mind’s eye: she could not place it, except that just thinking of it filled her soul with a deep grief.

Aliara fled in a stumbling run. Teysa barely noticed her go. She slumped to the floor with her eight legs splayed out around her. To call them legs seemed like a mockery; they were spindly things, covered in short black bristles. She tried not to look at her arachnid body, but it was impossible. It drew her attention like a lodestone. She ran her hands across it in the manner of one probing a rotten tooth to see when the pain will come. The sensation was bizarre: the abdomen was undeniably alien, but undeniably hers. She could feel her fingertips tracing along furrows in the chitin. She grabbed a leg, and then another. Her arms couldn’t reach all the way behind her, but she could feel parts back there, parts she had no name for. Spinnerets? Did she have an ovipositor, too, a squishy slimy tube of muscular flesh? The very thought of it made the gorge rise in her throat. She felt like a prisoner in her own body.

Slowly, bit by bit, her horror choked itself off. Her thoughts felt numb. She had heard of this sort of thing. Some paladins who faced dreadful horrors in their travels would return hardened. They would close themselves off from the world that had hurt them. It was one of the duties of the novices to care for these unfortunate souls. Was that Teysa's future? Was she broken? Was she ruined?

No. Her memories of her time in the cocoon had faded, but she remembered the battle clearly enough. She remembered her wounds, the pain of them, the sense of loss. She had known she was dying. And yet, now, she lived. She had to believe it was for some purpose. She had survived, and would continue to survive, and where there was life, hope lived also. Perhaps, in time, she could make her peace with her new form. Perhaps even Aliara could--

No. I cannot think of that now.

She raised herself up off the floor and took a few tottering, experimental steps forward. What surprised her the most was how unsurprising the movements felt. It was as though her body knew what it was doing. It smoothly took over from her brain and guided her across the floor. When she looked down at her scuttling legs she felt vaguely seasick, but when she looked ahead, she felt perfectly at ease. She moved in a rolling gait that propelled her with deceptive speed across the ground. Figuring out what to do with her arms while she walking was harder, but she eventually just held them at her sides. She was naked, she realized, and hugged her chest self-consciously. Most of the driders eschewed clothes, but El'keth always dressed herself. There was no reason Teysa couldn't do the same. She hesitated, stooped, and picked up one of the largest shreds of silk from the shattered cocoon. She wrapped it around her breasts to form a crude strophium and tied it behind her back. It was a simple thing, but as she straightened, she began to feel better. Clothes were a human thing. She had to hold onto that.

The ocean of sound that had poured into her ears seemed to be slackening off. Perhaps she was merely adjusting to the increased sensitivity of her senses. If she concentrated, she could hear hissing and scuttling echoing off the walls, could even pinpoints how far away it was. She strained until she heard a distant, familiar sobbing. Her heart grew cold and she willed her ears to close. The sound faded into silence and left only the background noise of the warren. She took a moment to center herself, and headed out of the cave.

There was another drider in the corridor outside. She was hard at work on one wall, scooping and shaping the stone with her fingers. Teysa stared at her, and the drider turned. Her eyes widened in recognition and her jaw dropped. Teysa's did, too. She had always thought of the driders' faces as being blank and unexpressive, but this one was alive with micro-expressions. The set of her jaw, the angle of her eyelid, the flare of her nostrils-- these tiny details told a story, one Teysa had never noticed before. The drider before her was Yi'resh. Teysa had met her once, in passing, but had found nothing notable about her. Now she saw how wrong she had been. Yi'resh was young, nervous, but eager to prove herself. She was endlessly creative and saw her construction duties as a path to self-expression. She fretted that the older driders considered her frivolous and feared being reassigned to some more menial task. Teysa wasn't reading her thoughts, exactly; it was in the cant of Yi'resh's face, the way she held herself, the scent of her. What is she seeing in me? Teysa wondered.

<Teysa! You live!> Yi'resh exclaimed. The word sounded odd to Teysa's ears, and she realized that Yi'resh had spoken in the language of the driders. Somehow, she understood it.

"Where is the Matron?" Teysa asked. She listened carefully to her own voice. She was definitely speaking Common, though there was a trace of an accent there that she had not had before.

<She is inspecting the new construction in the south wing. Teysa, you have been Blessed! Joyous day!> Yi'resh kowtowed to her with her arms crossed before her. Teysa grimaced, but she managed not to say anything.

"Thank you," she managed, and headed off in the direction Yi'resh had indicated. Behind her, the drider waved. <Welcome to the family, sister! Lolth smiles upon you!>