The Spider

Author's note: This is filler because I was gone for a day. I left it up if you want to read it (and I am proud of how this turned out) but you can just skip this if you want to get back to the story.

Doevm, at age four, came face to face with his first opponent. His hands wrapped around his rag, his knuckles turning white. His teeth grinded against each other as his eyes narrowed. Looking at him were eight tiny eyes scattered over the front of one of the most dangerous spiders in the kingdom. Its eight legs moved its main body around, crawling over the room. Doevm walked around the spider, cursing at his luck. While it was only the size of his thumb, one bite would kill him.

Looking around the library, he saw its lair, a web in the top-right corner, hanging just above some books. 'How could I have let this happen?' he thought. 'If Reginald finds out I let this monster in, he'll punish me. I cannot fail.' He inched closer to the spider, suppressing his breathing. 'Of all of the worst things for books, spider guts are one of them.'

The spider seemed to notice his intentions because it crawled behind the books he had just cleaned. 'Well played spider,' he thought. If he reached his hand back there, he would no doubt get bit, and all his work in this life would be for nothing. He carefully picked out the books with his rag wrapped around his hand. Half of the dozen books were taken out, but the spider was still nowhere to be seen. His breathing quickened and his heart raced. Sweat formed around his shaking hands as he continued removing the books. 'One bite and I'm dead,' he thought.

There was one book left. Doevm swallowed his saliva and reached for it. The world slowed down as he pulled it back, pushing his mind to its limits. 'Come on out little one,' he thought. 'Get your filthy legs off my books. Do you have any idea how much these are worth?' His fingers wrapped around the leather. He pulled his arm back, pulling the book away. With his rag ready to smash the spider into a red paste, his eyes went wide. 'It's…gone?' He jumped away, standing on Reginald's desk. Since it was still early, the lord hadn't come into the room yet.

He scanned around the room and inspected himself. 'I don't see anything.' He turned around, taking his time to examine everything in sight. 'It's gone.' He stepped down, having to lean against the desk since he was hyperventilating so much. He ran around, checking every nick and cranny. 'Oh, maybe it disappeared.' Before he could inspect the entire library, he heard footsteps. He shoved the books back on their shelf and acted like he was cleaning.

The door opened and Reginald walked through. Doevm bowed, but the noble walked past him, straight to his desk. After pulling out a map, his eyes glued to it, refusing to acknowledge Doevm. 'This is bad,' Doevm thought. 'He's in one of his rare moods. If I mess up, I'll get yelled at. I can't reveal to him that I let a deadly spider into the room.' He stole glances around, hoping the spider would vanish from existence. 'And the even greater disappointment is that I let this happen! I don't have the control to smash the spider without getting its guts on the books. My magic still isn't great enough to teleport it away or air blast it through the window.'

Taking a breath, he activated his mana sense. 'Just remember you're a mage,' he thought. 'Just a second of unsealing my mana won't alert the household's mages too mu-' he stood straight up as the spider's signature was revealed. It was clinging to his bare ankle, staring at him as if taunting. Doevm resealed his mana before he could be detected, swallowed his saliva again, and internally pleaded. 'Mister spider, I admit defeat. If you leave now, I won't do anything. I'll let you live, that is a promise. However, if you do anything to me or my books, I'll pluck your legs one by one and then squash them between my fingers!'

The spider's legs moved as if it were a tree's branches in the wind, going further up his leg. 'I'm serious,' Doevm slowly lowered his rag towards the spider. 'I'll do it. If you bite me, I'll kill you. Oh, I feel your legs plucking at my hairs! Gross.'

"Doevm," Reginald looked up from his map. "What's wrong? Get back to work."

Doevm bowed: "Yes sir," As he pretended to clean the books, the noble looked back down to his map. 'I can't see it anymore, but I can feel it.' He cleaned off another set of books, thinking of a battle plan. The prickly feeling went to his back, sending shivers down his spine. He grabbed another set of books and nearly dropped them. 'I swear when I get stronger, you're going to pay for this.' He flinched as the spider got to his neck. He picked up books and wiped them down, but they were already clean. He commanded his feet to move but they stayed still.

The spider crawled up into his hair, disguising itself inside the mass. Doevm looked down at his rag. 'Just one swipe and it'll be dead. It surely can't detect me inside my mess of hair. No, this was its plan from the beginning. It plotted against me. Spiders are smarter than I gave them credit for. The second I pulled the books out and tried to squash it, it recognized me as an enemy. Well played. I accept defeat with open arms.' He raised his rag above his head. 'But that doesn't mean I'll accept death gracefully.'

As he resigned himself to his fate, the spider hopped off, onto a bookshelf. In two of its eight legs was its prize: a bug. It wiggled around before the spider's fangs entered it. As the spider made its way back to its web, it glanced at Doevm, as if asking what he was going to do now. Doevm dropped his rag, tears coming to his eyes. 'I was wrong,' he thought. He scratched his head and several more bugs fell out, all dead. He analyzed them, discovering that they were the type of insects that go after clothes and…eat books. "Thank you, spider," he whispered. "If it wasn't for you, these books would have been eaten by the bugs in my hair. I see now that you were just defending this place." He scooped it up with his rag and placed it next to its web. "Stay safe little one."

As he turned back to clean his books, Reginald stood up and stretched himself. Doevm bowed, expecting the lord to leave, however he walked to the window and looked at the guards. Doevm simply shrugged and went back to his work, nearly whistling as he worked. His mind went blank as he devoted his body to the task at hand. That was, until, he heard a loud smack. He blinked, then looked over at Reginald, who had a rolled-up map. The web was dispersed, the remaining pieces floating to the floor. At one part of the map was a small red stain with several legs twitching around.