Tangeni hung upside down in the larder, the blood rushing to his head, swaying gently in the stagnant air while the sounds of the dungeon echoed around him like the inside of a living machine.
He wasn't the only one.
To his left, wrapped in identical white cocoons, were other shapes—some small like dogs or large rodents, some disturbingly human-sized—all silent, all waiting for the chefs to return.
The spider that had carried him here had deposited him on a thick strand of silk attached to the ceiling, checked the bindings with a proprietary tap of its front legs, and scuttled off into the deeper dark, presumably to find more inventory.
'Think,' he told himself, forcing his breathing to slow, fighting the panic that wanted to make him thrash and scream. 'Thrashing triggers the vibration. Vibration brings the spiders. Stay still.'
He focused on his surroundings, his eyes adjusting to the gloom illuminated by the patches of glowing fungi that clung to the damp stone walls.
The floor was five meters down, a mess of bones, discarded gear, and dry husks that had already been drained of fluids.
He was trapped in a silk sleeping bag, suspended from the ceiling of a cave filled with monsters, with absolutely no weapons and no way to call for help.
It was impossible.
But impossible was just a word people used when they didn't want to do the work, and Tangeni had spent eighteen years doing work nobody else wanted to do.
He wiggled his fingers, testing the tension of the web around his wrists.
It was tight, but not rigid; the silk had a slight give, a elasticity meant to absorb struggle without breaking.
He needed an edge.
Twisting his neck, straining muscles that screamed in protest, he looked at the cocoon next to him, a smaller bundle that hung slightly lower.
Something hard protruded from the bottom of it, a jagged piece of bone or metal that had poked through the silk.
He began to swing.
It was a slow, nauseating process, shifting his weight rhythmically, building momentum millimeter by millimeter while trying not to alert any guards that might be watching from the shadows.
Back and forth. Back and forth.
The blood pressure in his eyes was becoming painful, his vision blurring at the edges, but he kept moving, throwing his weight until his arc was wide enough.
On the next upswing, he twisted his body, throwing his shoulder into the neighboring cocoon.
He bounced off.
'Harder.'
He swung again, gritting his teeth, slamming into the other bundle with everything he had, hooking his elbow around it for a split second.
His fingers scrabbled against the rough silk, searching, finding the protrusion.
It was a bone shard, part of a femur that had been snapped in half, the edge razor sharp.
He gripped it, pulling it free with a wet tearing sound that seemed deafening in the quiet cave.
Gravity took over, swinging him back to center, but now he was armed.
Working blindly behind his back, he sawed at the bindings around his wrists, the bone slicing through the sticky fibers with surprising ease.
One strand snapped. Then another.
His hands came free, the blood rushing back into his fingers with a painful tingle.
He didn't waste time celebrating; he immediately attacked the silk around his ankles, hacking at the thick cord that held him to the ceiling.
It gave way suddenly.
He fell five meters, twisting in the air like a cat, trying to spot a landing that wouldn't break his legs.
He hit a pile of dry husks, the brittle remains of giant beetles crumbling under his weight, cushioning the impact just enough to keep his bones intact.
He rolled, coming up in a crouch, bone shard in hand, waiting for the swarm.
Nothing happened.
The clicking continued in the distance, the ambient noise of the hive uninterrupted; apparently, falling food didn't register as a threat, just a rearrangement of the pantry.
Tangeni scanned the chamber, spotting a narrow tunnel mouth near the floor, too small for the large spiders but big enough for a skinny teenager if he crawled.
He moved toward it, stepping carefully over the debris, avoiding the strands of trip-web that crisscrossed the floor like laser sensors in a bank vault.
He made it to the tunnel and squeezed inside, the walls pressing in on his shoulders, the smell of ammonia and rot instantly stronger in the confined space.
He crawled for what felt like hours, though it was probably only minutes, his knees scraping against the rough stone, his ears straining for any sound of pursuit.
The tunnel opened up into a larger gallery, a vast cavern crossed by bridges of thick silk that spanned a chasm disappearing into blackness below.
This was the highway.
Hundreds of spiders moved along the bridges, carrying bundles, repairing webs, patrolling their territory with efficient, terrifying purpose.
Tangeni froze in the shadows of the tunnel mouth, watching the traffic, realizing the scale of the problem.
He wasn't just in a cave; he was in a city.
A city designed to kill him.
He watched a patrol group move past, three wolf-sized hunters moving in formation, their legs tapping the silk in a complex rhythm that probably communicated data he couldn't begin to understand.
They didn't see him, but they didn't have to; they had vibration sense, thermal, maybe even chemical receptors that could taste his fear on the air.
He needed to mask his scent.
He looked down at himself, covered in dungeon slime and dirt, but clearly still smelling like a human, like fresh meat.
Near the edge of the bridge, a pile of spider waste sat steaming in the humid air, a slurry of digested organics that smelled so bad it made his eyes water.
He didn't hesitate.
Scooping up a handful of the vile muck, he smeared it over his clothes, his arms, his neck, gagging as the smell hit the back of his throat but forcing himself to continue until he was covered in the scent of the hive.
'Disgusting is better than dead,' he thought, wiping his hands on his pants.
He stepped out onto the ledge, hugging the wall, moving slowly.
A spider passed within three meters of him, pausing for a second, its palps twitching as it tasted the air.
Tangeni stopped breathing, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird, gripping his bone shard.
The spider clicked once, lost interest, and moved on.
It worked.
He moved deeper into the complex, looking for an upward slope, a draft of fresh air, anything that might indicate an exit.
The geography of the dungeon was maddening, a non-Euclidean mess of tunnels that looped back on themselves or ended in drop-offs, the logic of the place alien and hostile.
He learned quickly.
He learned that the glowing blue moss was slippery, sending him skidding toward a drop-off that would have been fatal if he hadn't caught himself on a rock spur.
He learned that the smaller spiders—the ones the size of dinner plates—were alarm systems, screeching when disturbed to summon the big ones.
He learned that silence wasn't enough; you had to be part of the stone, part of the silence itself.
After an hour of evasion, he found a crack in the wall, a geological fault line that had split the rock, creating a fissure barely wide enough to squeeze into.
He wedged himself inside, shimmying back until he was deep enough that nothing could reach him without digging through solid stone.
Safe. For now.
He slumped against the cold rock, the adrenaline crash hitting him, his hands shaking uncontrollably as the reality of his situation set in.
He was alone in a Rank 10 dungeon, Rank 0, with a bone for a weapon and spider shit for camouflage.
Most people would have broken then.
Most people would have curled up and cried, waiting for the end, overwhelmed by the hopelessness of it all.
Tangeni sat there in the dark, listening to the monsters hunting for him, and felt something strange uncoil in his chest.
It wasn't fear.
He checked for it, probing his own emotions like a tongue probing a loose tooth, but the paralyzing terror he expected wasn't there.
Instead, he felt... comfortable.
He thought about the academy, about standing in the center of the training ring while Nakale threw crystal shards at his head.
He thought about the lunchroom, scanning the crowd for threats, knowing exactly which table to sit at to be invisible, knowing exactly how to hold his body so he looked like part of the furniture.
He thought about the streets of Windhoek, learning to sleep with one eye open, learning to read the intent of strangers by the way they walked, learning to disappear when the predators came out.
This wasn't new.
The monsters were bigger, sure. They had more legs and they ate you instead of just beating you up.
But the dynamic was exactly the same.
He was the target. They were the bullies. And the game was to survive until the bell rang.
"Home," he whispered, the word tasting strange in his mouth.
This nightmare, this dark, wet hell full of things that wanted to kill him... it was just a high-stakes version of his daily life.
He knew how to play this game.
He checked his pocket, finding the fifty dollars still there, crumpled and damp but safe.
"Chicken," he murmured, a promise to himself.
He wasn't going to die here.
He was going to get out, he was going to get his room, and he was going to eat that chicken.
But first, he needed better gear.
He looked at the bone shard in his hand, then at the tunnel outside his hiding spot where the patrols were passing.
The skeleton he'd seen falling from the larder... it had been wearing boots.
Boots meant a previous adventurer.
Previous adventurer meant loot.
Tangeni shifted in his crevice, his eyes adjusting to the dark until the bioluminescence looked almost like streetlights.
The prey was done hiding.
It was time to scavenge.