V2Ch6-Secrets and Lies

James looked all around himself. He was in a small, circular chamber with three exits. The diameter of the room would have been roughly double his current height, and the ceiling stood roughly a foot above his head.

The walls were nondescript smooth gray stone. The room was lit by hundreds of glowing green mushrooms that lined the ceiling and the walls.

James spent a moment trying to trace in his head where he’d heard the spider-person footsteps, but he quickly gave up. The lighting was bad even for his improved vision, and he couldn’t detect any foot markings on either floor or ceiling.

Alright. Just need to follow my thread now, right? He still felt it dangle, not quite taut, from his wrist, and he could only hope it was intact all the way to the exit. He was optimistic, because he’d never felt the thread break, and he knew from experience just how strong it could be.

Just in case someone was watching him, he pretended to inspect the three exits to the room. Then he headed toward the one the thread pointed him toward. He tried to be subtle about winding up the thread in his hand as he walked, but he was also very conscious of the timer ticking down at the corner of his vision.

He passed through the exit and found himself in a narrow tunnel. There were openings lining the walls. Many different options to confuse someone who wasn’t cheating the maze.

And there was one more thing to be distracted by. As he walked, James’s foot would occasionally bump into small, round objects. He tried not to pay much attention to anything but the path out, but he gradually realized those objects weren’t rocks.

They were eggs. Eggs the size of volleyballs.

Identify.

[Divine Realm Spider Eggs Lv. 0]

He wasn’t sure if this was part of his test somehow, to see if he would spare or destroy these eggs. Or maybe they were meant to be the monsters he was threatened with, in the event that he failed to complete the maze in time.

In either case, he elected to leave them alone. The eggs were the closest thing to an obstacle in the structure. There were no traps that he came across, only twists and forks in the maze and random gaps and doorways in the walls that could have been confusing if he hadn’t been guided by the thread.

As he moved through the maze, he grew more confident. The thread was leading him in a clear direction, and it looked less and less likely that it had been snagged somewhere and severed.

If it had been broken, he wouldn’t feel so much tension in the line. The other end would be stuck to some dust somewhere rather than a fixed object.

James decided to speed run the rest of the maze, since he didn’t know how far down he was, only that he’d used a lot of thread.

Despite knowing exactly which way to go, escaping the maze took almost the rest of the time he had.

The timer read [00:04:59] when James finally spied sunlight.

He strode up the stairs to the exit confidently, and he met the brothers again.

Afudohwedohwe took a half-step backward as James emerged from the darkness, as if he was surprised to see him. But he recovered quickly.

“Nice job, maze runner!” he said sarcastically. Turning to face his brother: “Can you imagine one of us taking fifteen minutes to get out of Pop’s maze?”

But James caught the hidden meaning in what Afudohwedohwe was saying and smirked. Before, they’d compared him to other humans they’d encountered. Now, Afudohwedohwe was comparing James to Anansi’s children themselves.

Moving the goalposts means I win, he thought.

But for all that Afudohwedohwe seemed to be hiding his reaction poorly, Ntikuma’s expression was unreadable, despite his human head.

“Very well, you seem to have completed the challenge,” he said after a moment.

[First Challenge Completed!]

“Are you ready to move onto the second challenge?” Ntikuma continued. “The first one was clearly too easy, so I assume you do not need another rest.”

Ntikuma’s all business, James thought. I barely completed the maze in time even while cheating, though. How would someone else have managed? Smashing up the place? Surely that’s not what’s intended in the Spider God’s dungeon.

“Yes, I’m ready,” James said.

“Very well,” Ntikuma said. “Your next challenge is storytelling. Tell my brother and I a story that impresses us. You have as long as you need.”

[Second Challenge: Impress Anansi’s sons with a story!]

“Uh, any hints as to what impresses you?” James asked.

“Originality. Artful storytelling. Good stories.” His tone was flat, and James began to think he might have made the wrong choice about which brother he wanted to judge him. If Ntikuma was determined to remain unaffected by whatever narrative James presented, then he wouldn’t be overwhelmed no matter what kind of story James chose to tell.

After a few minutes of quiet thought, James began his story. He chose to stick to something he knew. He told his own life story, in third person, with some parts altered. Secrets and lies where necessary to either make his protagonist look better, or to conceal traits that would make it obvious who it was.

The three sat in the dust outside, and the two brothers patiently listened as James opened himself up to their scrutiny.

He was telling his story for a long time. He had no idea how long, except that his Natural Camouflage and Silk Production Skills had more than enough time to diffuse into their original forms. And he went on beyond that.

Ntikuma seemed attentive, though his expression remained stoic throughout.

Afudohwedohwe kept making distracting movements. Looking off at things behind James or to the side. Scratching himself. Covering his mouth as though he was stifling a yawn, although James wasn’t sure if spiders even could yawn.

James wasn’t sure if the story had won their hearts and minds, but as he told it, he picked up a couple of levels in Politician and in a few of the associated Skills. Apparently, telling a story to the Spider God’s children was enough of a challenge to push him to a new tier in his Job.

And whether he’d impressed the brothers or not, James realized it felt good to tell the story. He was unburdening himself with every event conveyed, every sin confessed, every grievance aired, every worry expressed.

So rare to just be able to talk about yourself, he thought at one point, before realizing that he had lapsed into the first-person for a moment. He caught himself and brought it back, turned the line he’d just spoken into a line of dialogue in the story he was telling about another person. He’d named his protagonist “John.” Not the most original name, but it started with the same letter at least, and it was a good name for a hero.

“Enough,” Ntikuma said, cutting him off mid-sentence. “You have failed.” His voice was as bored and neutral as if he was reading from a grocery list.

[Second Challenge Failed!]

Was it the change in subject? Because I didn’t keep to third-person? James knew that he would have judged a story poorly if it included a subject change like that without warning.

“I see,” James said. “Was the subject of the story not of interest?”

“You’re just a bad storyteller, human,” Afudohwedohwe said. The spider-person got up from the ground, stretched, and began pacing back and forth. Ntikuma remained seated, facing James, so James remained in place.

“My name is James,” James said, a little needled. “I prefer to be called that, not ‘human,’ especially when I know you occasionally eat humans.”

“My brother is correct, human,” Ntikuma said. “It was flawed from the start.”

Well, of course, there’s no such thing as a perfect story!

“The two of you certainly let me go on for some time despite how poorly I performed from the beginning.”

If you didn’t like it, why did you let me talk for well over an hour?!

“Well, everyone gets a chance,” Ntikuma said evenly. He picked up a chunk of earth on the tip of one of his limbs as he spoke. “We gave you your opportunity, and you flubbed it completely. Your story wasn’t original in any way. It was picked apart scraps of your own banal life. That choice destroyed you, I think. You then told the story in a cowardly way, with no spirit. Your prose was lifeless. Perhaps you have no poetry in your soul. You lied about everything that was important or shed any light on your true character. Guarding yourself from imagined criticism or some such vain thing. Not the actions of any real kind of storyteller.” As he finished speaking, he turned his limb sideways and let the dirt he’d picked up fall back to the ground. There wasn’t a moment of his explanation when he didn’t sound bored.

James realized that he felt a little upset at what the brothers were saying, but he reminded himself that he had no reason to be. Right? So they didn’t like it, so what?

It was his life, that was so what. Plus, Anansi had invited him here. He shouldn’t have needed to be tested to see the god that had invited him. But he couldn’t obsess over this.

Orientation was a limited time opportunity. He had to get back to things that would be more productive than arguing with Ntikuma and Afudohwedohwe.

I should be grateful for the levels I got in Politician, he told himself. But he felt far from grateful.

“Fine. If I can’t see Anansi, take me to the exit,” he said, his voice thinner and higher than usual.

“I don’t know if we should do that,” Afudohwedohwe said instantly. “I don’t think we ever said we’d take you back to the exit if you failed.” James realized the voice came from behind him.

When did Afudohwedohwe get back there? James was tempted to turn and face him, but Ntikuma was still sitting in front of him, and absurdly, James didn’t want to be rude.

“There are penalties for failure,” Ntikuma agreed. His deep brown, almost black, eyes met James’s and held his gaze.

Sweat broke out on James’s forehead. A surge of fear roiled his stomach.

He opened his mouth to speak, but Ntikuma began first.

“You cheated on the first test, and you failed the second outright,” Ntikuma said, his stare suddenly menacing. “You didn’t think we missed that invisible thread, did you?”

Shit. I guess I should’ve known. They’re spider people after all. For once, James was speechless.

“Stupid human,” Afudohwedohwe said from behind him. “To think you really believed you could fool us?! Our father is a God of Trickery!”

James rolled his eyes. Insistently: “My name—”

Then he felt a sharp pain in the back of his head.

The world collapsed into black.

James awakened to the sound of low voices. He opened his eyes, but he couldn’t see much. He was in a dark room with no windows. He tried to move, but his arms were bound to his sides, and his legs were bound together.

He recognized this feeling from when the Wood Spiders had captured him back in the Orientation forest. He was probably tied up with spider thread again. Who knew how strong it must be, if it was generated by these two?

“Should we really do this? Pop will be upset—”

“It’s as you yourself said. This human failed the tests, ergo he isn’t the right one. Even if he met with Pop, the old man would just be disappointed that this was the human we brought him. Better to wait until a clever human drifts down here. Pop can be patient.”

“Still, to cook him and eat him? What if this really is the human Pop was interested in?”

James realized that it was the two spider-people talking. And he noticed another sound in the background. Rapidly rising bubbles. Someone was boiling water.

“Better to have a good meal than a lame human visitor anyway,” Afudohwedohwe said. “What Pop doesn’t know won’t hurt him. When he asks what’s for dinner, we’ll just say pork! It tastes just the same anyway. Someday, years from now, if he’s still wondering, we can tell him the truth.”

“Well, I suppose,” Ntikuma said. “Make sure the water in the pot is good and hot.”