[centre][h1][color=bc8dbf]The Spider[/color][/h1][/centre]
The spider’s mind swam with confusion as she came to in a place she neither recognised nor understood. Her memories – a disorientating mess of scattered pieces – refused to provide her with any context that might help her make sense of her current situation, or much of else at all for that matter, the disjointed fragments simply refusing to come together into something coherent.

With no clue where she was or what was going on, the one thing the spider knew for sure was that she was afraid. But that alone at least was something. She knew that she was afraid and she understood why this was so; she was a small pitiful thing stuck in a situation she didn’t understand and painfully aware of just how little she had to work with. 

And so, she got to work.

Surrounded by giants that could surely crush her in an instant – whether by misstep or malice – the first thing the spider did was scurry for what shelter she could find. That, as it turned out, was some manner of charred structure, one she felt sure must have been built by humans, though for what purpose she could not imagine since it seemed ill suited for habitation, education, or storage.

While her memories were for the most part incomprehensible to her, one fragment stood out as relatively intact; a single anchor thread from which she might weave herself a path forward.

To start, she extruded her silk into a sheet – not a web in the traditional sense, but a canvas upon which she might do further work. From there she lay more silk atop the canvas, this time in intricately detailed patterns, and atop those she lay yet more patterns. Her work was fast – spurred both by the urgency of the situation and her own fears – but it was not careless or sloppy, and when she was done she stopped to check and triple-check for mistakes or imperfection, meticulously correcting those she discovered.

Only once she felt suitably confident that her creation was foundationally sound and matched the blueprint etched into her memories, did the spider start to hesitate, a new fear creeping up on her. This time it wasn’t the fear of the unknown or even her own potential destruction – perhaps somewhat nebulous but ultimately tangible fears – no, this fear was something far less concrete and rational.

She felt certain that her creation would enable her communication with the humans, in fact, it was likely the only way she’d be able to do so, and even lacking the memories to inform her motivations, the spider felt sure that she’d still want to do so even in the without the pressing need for her to understand and survive the current circumstances.

And yet, at the same time, what if the humans hated and rejected her? What if this was somehow playing her hand too far? What if…

Anxiety ate at the spider as she mulled over her dilemma. At the same time, as much as she tried to ignore it, part of her intuitively recognised that her indecision was not, in fact, indecision, so much as avoidance. She wanted to communicate, but she also didn’t. Objectively, using the spell was probably the right decision; the worst that was likely to happen would be it being dispelled, but then again, what if…

Had the spider been a human, she might have ended up making herself sick, but as it was, she was a spider and fundamentally lacked the physiological ties that characterised human emotions. Instead, she just stood, stock still, for several long moments as she tried and failed to think up an excuse that would hold water in her mind until finally she gave up and relented to her rationality.

Placing her forelimbs upon her creation, the spider pushed the bulk of her meagre mana reserves into the array, which gave no immediate response the spider could see but nonetheless catalysed a flurry of changes in the ambient mana, outside of the spider’s perception.

The changes propagated out from the array, extending out of the spider’s hiding place, whereupon a strange stuff began to form, rapidly contorting itself into facsimiles of blood, flesh, and bone, before finally assembling into the shape of a human woman; a simulacrum all but intangible to anyone and anything, save for light and mana.

To an outside observer, the illusory body would seem to simply stand there, entirely unresponsive for several long moments as the spider continued to procrastinate. Ever so carefully, so as not to damage the delicate functional threads, the spider peeled the tiny ‘web’ from the soot-covered surface she’d created it upon, folding it up into a tight package which she then proceeded to bind to the underside of her cephalothorax. 

Only once she had done so and subsequently failed to think of another excuse procrastinate, did the spider hesitantly deign to peek out from her hiding place and assume control over her simulacrum, the spell intuitively interpreting her intentions to have the body nervously peer around at the humans present in a rough imitation of her true body’s actions.