Spidersilk and Bandages
Chapter 1
As night fell and what light could make it through the thick leaves above her started to fade, it occurred to Helena that she was about to die. Her companions were dead, and her connection to her patron was fading, leaving her alone to fend for herself in the Crowned Forest overnight, which would be an issue even without the massive hole in her gut.
The wound continued to bleed, painting her silver armor an alarmingly bright red. Somewhere in the back of her mind, a part of herself still stuck on day-to-day issues worried about how the rust would affect her breastplate.
With the last of her strength, she stumbled away from the clearing where everything had gone wrong and, finding a suitably sturdy tree, leaned against it, letting her back slide down the trunk until she was sitting at its roots. Not having to focus on moving made the pain easier to deal with as it crashed over her, and idly she wondered how she could feel so tired while her body was in so much pain.
Increasingly numb fingers closed around the bell that hung from her neck, and finding comfort in the symbol of her home, Helena finally lost consciousness.
~~~
Ursula’s breath caught in her throat as she dashed towards the hulking form before her.
A human.
A wounded human, in the middle of the woods, but still.
Silently cursing her unshakeable moral code, Ursula slid to a stop near the human’s side, taking in the deep gash. It ran fully from the front of the human’s abdomen, just above the hip, around to the same spot on its back, carving a half circle into its side. All in all it was maybe a foot long, and around half as deep.
This made it about twice as tall as Ursula herself.
As she reached the cut, she began examining the edges with her foremost arms. Blood was still pouring out from the wound, soaking into the soil where the human lay. Ursula’s mind reached out along the familiar pathways, casting a spell to close the arteries, staunching the bleeding for at least a little while.
In that while, she began weaving. Quick, practiced movements brought together a tightly wound sheet of silk, which grew big enough to cover the wound over the course of half an hour. The human was propped against the trunk of a tree, which warped the wound, pushing it open wider than it would have been otherwise, so the job was touch and go, but it would have to do, Ursula thought.
Given the scales at play, Ursula could hardly reposition the human herself, so it seemed that the next step would have to be waking them, which came with its own problem. Namely, access to the human’s head.
Ursula considered for a very long moment whether she really wanted to do this. She was well within her rights to say she had done all she could, and leave the human where it lay. Eventually, she found that her own curiosity outweighed her fear of the massive being.
So, reluctantly, hand over hand over hand over hand, Ursula began scaling the human’s armor. It was a smooth climb, as the cloth draped overtop of the heavy mail made for plenty of handholds, and the human’s breathing was actually disturbingly shallow. As she reached the center of the human’s chest, she came across the human’s massive right hand, closed around something unseen, held over their heart. Ursula found she could use the fist as a place to stand, and looked up to survey the face of her patient.
The human’s head was slumped forward, chin-to-collarbone, and from her new vantage point, Ursula could just about reach their nose. She hadn’t seen many human noses, but she could tell that this one was broken. A scar ran across its bridge, leaving a large indentation where it intersected with the cartilage. Looking around, Ursula could see a sturdy, square jaw, a brow still furrowed with pain, and close-cropped light hair. All in all, they looked like a person who had seen conflict, and survived through sheer persistence.
Now that she was so close, Ursula found herself frantically going over all that she had gleaned about human propriety and what the best way to make a proper greeting would be. This person seemed very down-to-earth at a glance, but when you’re waking a giant, it’s always best to be sure the impression you’re making is a good one.
After a particularly long moment of steeling herself, Ursula reached upwards and touched the human’s nose, reciting an old spell for wakefulness her mother had once taught her.
The human’s eyes shot open.
~~~
Helena blinked awake, in the sort of way that made it hard to tell whether or not she had actually been unconscious.
It took her a moment to clock that there was an unknown and alive something very close to her face, and when she did, she nearly jumped out of her armor. This, in turn, caused the something to stumble and fall backwards, landing with a sort of ‘eep’ sound on Helena’s lap. She then moved to sweep the thing farther away, but a stab of fresh pain from her wound arose when she tried to lift her left arm. Letting out a hiss and clenching her teeth, she froze for an instant.
This instant proved just long enough for the thing in her lap to scramble to its feet, and announce, surprisingly loudly: “Hello! My name is Ursula, First Panacea, pleased to make your acquaintance!”
Helena froze for a moment, then squinted, and took a closer look at her lap. The thing – Ursula, she supposed – was more of a person, though not a human one. They stood on two legs, certainly, and everything from the shoulder down looked very human, if you ignored the fact that there were four arms, but the extra pair of fuzzy, spider-leg-like appendages sticking up from the upper back was a dead giveaway. She wore a utilitarian brown jumpsuit, with a collar that covered up to their nose and more pockets than she could count, each one sewn on with near invisibly tiny stitches. A shock of messy, brown-and-black covered down to their forehead, so that the only visible part of their face was the eyes.
Not particularly interested in greetings or conversations, Helena kept her own words curtailed to a quick “get off of me.” This was followed, after a moment’s consideration, by a “please.”
The creature named Ursula quickly waved the lower four of their –its? her? Helena settled on their for the time being—hands in an assuaging gesture, and started speaking much less formally, and at a remarkable clip of words per minute.
“Oh, yes, sorry, I was just about to, it’s just, I was hoping you could get up and lay down on your side? You’ve got a nasty wound there, which I could maybe help with, but you’re sitting up and-“
Helena grimaced at the cascade of words, struggling to parse their meaning as her mind caught up with what was happening. She was wounded. She had been in a fight? Yes, with the bramble beast. Helena had been protecting Maia while she prepared a spell, but then…
Ah, right.
Maia, Andrea, Oliver, they were all dead. The monster had been clever, pinning Helena down with a spike, and ripping through the weaker party members before they had time to do anything. She had got herself free, but it hadn’t been enough to make a difference. Well, at least, she thought it hadn’t. She was alive now, so something must have happened. Was it something to do with Ursula? No, wait, scratch that.
If she had survived, was it possible that the others had as well?
As Helena’s train of thought settled on a natural point of action, she came back to herself. She was still on the ground, and the creature Ursula was still on her lap, talking incredibly quickly.
“-but I’m not very knowledgeable about your physiology, come to think of it, I’m not sure I know anything about your culture, I’m sorry if I’ve offended you somehow, I swear only want to help and eep-“
The last sound came out at an honestly surprising volume for the little creature as Helena, not having the words to speak, but also not wanting to harm a being of unknown intelligence and intent, had picked Ursula up and placed them on the ground beside her, as gently as she could manage.
After that, Ursula was very quiet indeed, though Helena couldn’t tell if it was shock from being moved, or indignation at being ignored. Regardless of the answer, Helena doubted she could do anything to help. Comforting people was a nigh-insurmountable feat even under the best of circumstances. Besides, she needed to check on her friends.
Rolling forwards and to the side, Helena made it just about to one foot and one knee before she passed out again.
~~~
Just about as she was coming to terms with having been picked up by an actual human holy SHIT, Ursula was shocked again by said human’s massive form crashing to the ground, creating a small earthquake on impact. Apparently they were injured to the point that they couldn’t stand on their own, but picking up and moving her entire body was still nothing more than a casual effort. Okay, that was fine, not at all terrifying. At least the giant had had the decency to land on their back, having fallen to the side of their knee and rolled over.
Taking a few steps back, Ursula did a few stretches to calm herself down and reassess.
Aside from the danger to herself, there was the question of whether or not she should even be here. The human was unconscious again, but while they were awake, they had given no indication that they really wanted any assistance. Would it be best if she left them as-is?
No, Ursula thought to herself. You knew what this job would be like when you took it, and this person will die if you don’t help them.
After spending a painful few minutes turning the human’s head to the side to avoid choking, Ursula scurried back around to the wound and sighed. The movement had, unsurprisingly, ripped apart her ramshackle bandage, and the wound was now bleeding profusely once again. With a sigh, she repeated the spell to close the arteries, and began more seriously assessing the area around the injury.
On closer inspection, there was actually a surprising amount of loose skin hanging off the wound, which would come in handy for sewing the wound shut, though first something needed to be done to clean out the gash. Moving upwards, closer to the human’s sprawled arm, Ursula reached into one of her pockets and pulled out a sponge, a bar of soap, a waterskin, and a knife. After cutting through the soft fabric between armor plates at the human’s elbow, she cleaned off a section of skin, and took a small (even by her standards) blood sample, storing it in a glass vial she produced from yet another pocket.
With the sample in hand, she sat down, calling a simple analysis spell to mind, and replaced her cleaning supplies with a pen and journal. It would take a while to get an accurate impression of the giant’s innards, but as long as they were no longer losing blood, she should have some time. Flipping past the pages of documentation, a product of her trade, Ursula came to a blank sheet and began a new entry, scrawling the word Human across the top of the page.
~~~
This time, when Helena woke up, she knew exactly where she was. Still on the ground, still lost in the woods, and still, somehow, alive. She had no idea how long she had been out, but staring at the canopy above her, she could see what might be morning light through the leaves.
She got about halfway into a deep sigh before the hole in her midsection turned the motion into a cough and a spike of pain.
“Try not to breathe too deep, I’m barely keeping your blood in as it is.” The voice was quiet but firm and sharp, coming from somewhere near Helena’s ear. She turned her head to see the tiny person from before, sitting cross-legged and staring intently at an array of papers spread out on the ground before her, periodically scribbling down short lines. They were working by the light of a small fire, and seemed to have one arm devoted to constantly adding more fuel to it.
The entire setup was scaled perfectly to the creature, and could fit fully in one of Helena’s gauntleted hands.
Keeping her breathing as shallow as possible, Helena responded in a whisper. “You’re… Ursa?”
Their eyes never left their work. “It’s Ursula, First Panacea.”
Helena grimaced at the slip, and the two lapsed into a long moment of silence. Eventually, she spoke up once again. “You seem… a lot less talkative than before.”
Ursula glanced up, briefly meeting Helena’s eyes, before returning to her writing. “That was me trying to make a polite introduction. I’m working right now.”
Helena tried to read anything from the miniscule papers, with predictably dismal results. “Working on what?”
Ursula grimaced, turning a page over and beginning a new line on the blank side. “Mostly, keeping your blood in you long enough to figure out your microbiome.”
Helena blinked several times as her mind processed those words. “You’re keeping my blood in?”
“Yes, a localized shock and dehydration spell. It’ll keep your veins clammed up until I can sew the wound shut.”
There were a few things to unpack there, but only one item stuck out to Helena.
“Sew the wound shut? Why?”
At that, Ursula looked up fully, meeting Helena’s question with an expression of equal parts concern and confusion.
“Well, I mean, you’ll die if I don’t.”
Helena returned the confusion, trying to process for a moment. That was almost certainly true, but the reality of it hadn’t fully occurred to her. She was injured to the point that she could barely move, and alone in the woods without her party, and-
Oh, right.
Helena took in another breath, testing the edge of what she could do without disturbing her wound. “My party, they were in another clearing, not too far from here, they were injured as well, you should check on them first.”
Ursula’s face – or what Helena could see of it, given the ridiculously high collar – turned from confusion to pity.
“I’m sorry, I did see them, just before I came on you. I didn’t… you were the only survivor. I’m sorry.”
A stretch of silence even longer that the first passed between them. In the end, Ursula spoke again, her voice much softer than it was before. “What’s your name?”
Helena turned her head back upwards to stare at the leaves. More and more beams of daylight were poking through.
“Helena of Blackwell.”
Ursula stood, walking the foot or so to Helena’s head, and placing a hand on her temple.
“Well, Helena, it’ll be about a day before I can get the wound cleaned up, and a couple weeks of recovery after that, but I’m confident I can get you up again in time. For now, you should focus on resting. I’ll be here if there’s anything you need.”
As dawn broke and Helena tried her best not to cry, all words abandoned her. Several hours later, she would whisper a “thank you,” and Ursula would smile and nod, but at that moment, there was nothing but the rising sun, the forest, and the grief.