The Hidden World

Chapter 10: Growing Pains

Two rather large spiders were transporting the unconscious body of Sarah Howard trough the winding hallways of the Grand city of Web. All the while hundreds and hundreds of smaller spiders were scurrying about her body, mending her to the best of their ability. For a good reason, too, as she was covered in stabbing wounds. Every now and then the spiders even entered her mouth in order to deal with internal damage. Simply put, Sarah would have been very dead were it not for the creatures crawling on her. Soon the larger spiders entered the room Sarah had originally woken up in, laid her on the table and left the room. Around ten minutes later Sarah finally woke up, coughing up the spiders that hadn't managed to leave her body. She then sat up and rubbed her eyes, before gazing at her exposed abdomen. "Modern medicine has nothing on a little spider-care," she grimly thought to herself. Indeed, there was no sign of any violence anywhere on her body. It's as if she hadn't been in a fight at all. The unfortunate reality of the situation was, however, that just a little earlier she had been mortally wounded for the third time in the measly week she had spent in the other world.

"I see you've recovered?" Sarah turned toward the voice. A woman had just entered the room. She had a short, black hair and was wearing armour made from web. This, alongside her strong build, made her look rather fearsome. As Sarah had learned, the person in front of her, Dvoynik, was essentially a body double-come-vice commander for Helena. Her body was exactly like Edmund's in that she could freely transform how she looked. In addition, the real Helena could control this double, as she had done when Sarah originally woke up. When the real Helena was on Earth, Dvoynik also took up the control of the Grand City of Web and its denizens. Now, however, she had been assigned to be Sarah's trainer. "All good. I'm ready to continue," Sarah replied with faked enthusiasm. In truth, she was tired and didn't really want to continue her 'training', but the tone Dvoynik had used suggested that 'no' was not an acceptable answer. "Good. We have spotted yet another raiding party. Let's go," Dvoynik replied with her usual deadpan tone. Quite unlike Edmund, she never showed any emotions. In fact, Sarah was fairly certain that her expression never changed.

The two women left the room and started to make their way toward the exit. Sarah idly looked as the innumerable residents of the city skittered on the walls and floor of the hallway. Apparently only spiders and spider-like creatures lived in the city, and it showed in its design. Most hallways were so small that no human could ever enter them. In addition, rooms, such as the one Sarah had just left, were a rarity. It was evident that this was more of a hive than a traditional city. After some walking they reached a wall. Dvoynik pressed a spot on the wall, and it opened. An extremely strong wind greeted Sarah. As there were no trees, there was nothing to stop the wind. This wasn't the worst part, though. The flow of mana was incredibly chaotic when compared to her own world. This meant that walking outside would be very hazardous for anyone that couldn't conjure up mana-armour. However, Sarah had also learned that this served to make the denizens of the other world sturdier. Every now and then a human would wander through some natural distortion and end up here. Most of the time this would lead to them either being devoured by the local fauna or torn apart by the violent mana flow. Sometimes they would emerge stronger, however, eventually learning to thrive. This wouldn't always go well with the locals, which often led to violence. Oftentimes the humans who would survive managed to defeat the outsiders due to their newfound strength and natural intellect. Such was the case with the humans Sarah was tasked to hunt down for her training.

After a bit of walking on the purple sand Sarah turned around to look at the city. It was a bizarre sight. If she were to compare it to something it would've been the building in London known as 'the Gherkin', though about twice as large and completely made out of web. "It probably houses fair few more residents than even the whole of London, though," Sarah thought to herself as she turned to continue. As it had turned out, her training consisted of hunting down humans that operated as slave traders and raiders. This had come as a surprise, but as she had been quickly taken to patrol, she had had no chance to vocalize her misgivings. The mission she had been entrusted with turned out to be a lot harder than she expected. Usually the raiding parties consisted of around five men. This was an issue for Sarah, as she could only influence one person at one time. Originally, she tried to only incapacitate them. Unfortunately, the raiders were hardened beyond any normal human, and always found her before she could incapacitate more than two of them. Furthermore, Dvoynik always made it a point to kill the remaining raiders as painfully as possible. Sarah had made her mind: she wasn't in a situation she could survive by being as non-violent as possible. She had to kill, if only to show the men mercy.