It was my duty to give the speech. As Princess of Equestria, it was expected that I shed a few heartfelt tears to the cameras whenever a pony was kidnapped or hurt or something similarly terrible happened. I owed it to the victim themselves and to the public as a whole to sound upset no matter how many times I had to give a similar speech (for tragedies happened on a disturbingly regular basis, considering I had an entire nation to watch over!) Sun forbid I sound anything but horrified and concerned.
Usually I’d have to fake the emotion that shook my voice, but this time I found it came quite naturally. It wasn’t every day that one of my friends was truly in peril, after all. Most monsters had become no bigger inconvenience to my friends and I than a misplaced book, but this was no ordinary creature and Celestia damn me to Tartaurus if I wasn’t going to rally the spirits of the dead themselves to get Applejack back.
“I’m sure you’ve all heard by now that Applejack,the Element of Honesty, Beloved of Ponyville and the furthest reaches of Equestria alike, has been kidnapped.” Deep breaths, Twilight. It would be undignified to lose my composure in front of the press. “I’m certain you’ve also heard rumors that it was none other than the notorious Spider who’d taken her, far beyond where the light of day or night can touch. I’m here to officially declare that these rumors-” I didn’t have to fake the sob that threatened to choke back my voice. “The rumors are true.”
Hysteria gripped all but the most jaded of reporters as I took a deep breath to steady myself. It wouldn’t do for me to completely lose my composure in front of them, but I needed the news to reach as many ponies as would listen. There must be one, there had to be one who would find her before it was too late.
“Her fortress lies deep within the Ghastly Gorge. There’s a crack, deep within the center of the quarry eels’ nests. That’s all I- that we’ve been able to confirm from the few ponies who have made the trip and come back to us willing to speak about what they faced.” The thin shreds of a vague recollection flickered at the back of my mind, bringing with it the taste of ash and dust. I swallowed as best as I could and watched a few of the reporters get a hold of themselves.
“Princess!” Shouted a mare with a quill tucked behind her ear, a few extra glowing in her magic, notepads at the ready. “Most of the victims have been found, but a few notable ponies still haven’t been recovered. Has there been any news of the first pony the Spider has taken?”
I closed my eyes. They must not see me cry. “No. Rarity still hasn’t been found.” I shut out the pitying looks from a few of the older paparazzi, but a few mournful sighs still escaped the youngest. “At this point, it’s been so long... I’m not sure she will be. This… this isn’t about her, though. It hasn’t been for a long time. This is about Applejack, somepony we still have hope to rescue. If anypony can save her, then please, find my friend.”
One smartly-dressed stallion raised a wing until I looked over at him: all the permission he’d needed to open his mouth. “I hate to be the one to ask it, but can anypony expect any additional… incentive, shall we say, for bringing her safely back?” I wished, then, that my glare was as intimidating as Luna’s was, but I must’ve come somewhat close, for he took a reflexive step back from my gaze. “N-not that we need one, to ensure the fair Applejack is safe, but the Ghastly Gorge is a dangerous place! Anything could happen to a pony out there!”
I pressed my lips together, choosing my words carefully. Few things survived the shrewdest editor’s marks with the same intention that I spoke with, but it didn’t stop me from trying. “Things are already happening to Applejack. If the pony that saves her gets injured, I will be more than happy to cover the costs of recovery.”
“Full recovery?” Piped up a short mare from the back of the conference. She must’ve just barely gotten the job, and judging from the looks a few of the others were giving her, she’d be lucky to keep it if she didn’t learn when not to voice what they were unwilling to ask.
I twitched a wingtip to one of my guards. Like a well-oiled machine, they methodically began opening the back doors of the throne room and taking up strategic positions along my exit; the gentlest I could suggest that I wasn’t taking any more questions. “Nopony comes out of the Spider’s Domain unchanged,” I said softly. “However, sometimes a pony is worth everything you can give, even when all you have left is yourself. Ask yourself, is Applejack, one of the Elements of Harmony and family to all who believe in an honest day’s work worth the risk? If not her, then who is?”
With a curt nod at the most experienced of the lot, I turned to head back to my quarters. The reporters who’d kept their jobs the longest began the process of shooing the others out of the throne room. It was only when the heavy doors of the hallway closed behind me that I let the first tears fall.
Somepony would try to find her. They had to. I’d done what I could, what was within my power and within the rules. I just hoped the news would reach the right ears.
The dark clawed at my soul as I struggled against the thick strands binding my wings to my sides. It resisted every prod and spark of my magic, siphoning away whatever energy I threw at it. I couldn’t even tell if it was completely solid, but whatever sunforsaken material she’d bound me in, it was a dull graphite hue, oily, and with every passing second it felt as though it was sinking into my fur and feathers.
For the first few hours I’d hyperventilated, an embarrassingly natural reaction to being trapped in a cold cell laced with veins of amber stone that pulsed against the walls. I hadn’t even been able to stay on my hooves for very long before I’d fallen again, the goop spun around me making my head spin with a faint nausea.
I’d come as soon as I heard the news. Nopony had told me the rules, back then, and I probably wouldn’t have heeded them if they had. Rarity had been missing for over a week before somepony had thought to tell me that she’d missed her spa appointment. Our Friendship Council meeting was still a few weeks away and I’d been busy, but I cursed to myself all the way to the Ghastly Gorge and beyond for not somehow realizing that something was wrong.
It was, in retrospect, foolish of me to come alone. I’d have never been captured if I’d told most anypony where I was going. Of course, I wouldn’t have found the seam in the canyon’s twisting paths if I’d attempted to storm it with the guard. The Spider’s lair prevented all but the most determined and solitary ponies from getting this far.
Still, I couldn’t have known that, and it was only after using up what my still-panicking brain told me must’ve been a third of the air in the cell that I realized I’d have done it all over again the same way if it meant I’d find Rarity again.
The Spider herself came to visit me a few eternities after I’d worn myself out into a dreamlike lull of exhaustion. It was the subtle clicking that I first picked up on, almost like a mare’s horseshoes, but near changeling-like in rhythm. Next, a quiet melody, something that never quite settled on a cadence, that jarred against any attempts to establish a consistent tempo.
And then I saw her. Two eyes, pale and milky as the moon through foggy glass, no pupils to be seen. A cascade of inky mane that tangled around a sharp spear of a horn, the grooves dirtied and notched from disrepair. A pair of downy wings against her back, furred like a moth’s. A few patches of it were bare of the ashen dust that coated them, and I could see a few twitches of the same gel-like strings that bound me underneath. They were woven together like muscles, and it took me a few seconds before I could tear my eyes from them.
Her coat underneath her wings was a similar earthy grey. She slowly walked around me as I stared, face vacant and expressionless. There was no cutie mark I could see, but starting from her flanks and braided into her tail were still more thick gooey fibers of the liquid, until I couldn’t tell where her tail ended and they began. A thin opalescent thread of blackness trailed behind her as she walked, sticking to the ground and spreading into whatever hairline cracks it could find.
As she completed her slow circle around me, I tried to look anywhere but her eyes, and realized to my horror that the threads of whatever foul fluid she’d tied me in had spread into a delicate spiderweb-like shape across the floor. Her hooves stepped fearlessly on the thin lines, and the harsh rhythmless click of them muted somewhat. It was only then that I could bear it no longer, and looked back into those clouded eyes.
She could’ve been a pony, once.
She was a monster.
And I found myself truly out of my element for the first time in a very long while.
“Come in,” I said to the knock at my door, hastily stuffing a bookmark into the centerfold of the novel before shoving it underneath my pillow. The maid staff had always complained about finding books in the most peculiar spots, or worse, after they’d been run through the laundry, but my oldest habits were hard to break, and the childhood thrill of reading after dark had never fully faded, much to my family’s amusement when they’d eventually found out.
“Hello, Twilight,” chirped Cadance, breezing into my room as though she hadn’t been seconds from seeing my latest fictional fascination. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything?”
“You could never!” I responded, already rising to give her a fierce hug. It gave me just enough time to snap out of whatever literature-induced daydream I’d forced myself into and a few seconds beyond that to plaster a fairly convincing smile on my muzzle.
Unfortunately, Cadance knew both me and the stress of the crown far better than she had any right to in that moment. “I heard the news,” she said, softer this time. “And I thought I’d come here as fast as I could.”
“Have you heard-” I cut myself off before I could get too worked up. Once the tears started flowing around Cadance, I wouldn’t be able to stop for far longer than my dignity could afford.
She shook her head, sitting down a few mere inches away from my stowed book. “I’m afraid I haven’t.” The bubble of hope I’d been harboring burst before it could grow too large to contain, and her eyes flicked towards mine before she held out a wing.
I nestled into it, feeling it wrap around me, sheltering me a decent bit less than it had when I was a filly. We were almost the same height - when had that happened? “I’m sorry, I was just hoping she’d be back already.”
Cadance pursed her lips together, muzzle scrunching in an expression I’d seen Shining Armor try to mimic behind her back a few times. “If it’s any consolation, I’ve no doubt that she’ll be found and returned within a few days at the very most. She’s a very well-loved pony and... to be honest, Twilight, that’s what I wanted to ask you about.”
I perked up a little bit. “Do you really think so?” I mean, I thought that I’d been very well-loved, but… no. No, it had been the second time the Spider had taken someone that’d made the headlines, and nopony had known what to do or how to connect the dots. I’m sure they had been searching for me. So sure, that I wasn’t going to ask. There still lived a tiny part of my mind that thought the other way, and I wasn’t going to give it the satisfaction of my uncertainty.
She smiled in that motherly way that still made a part of me feel safer. “Of course, Twilight. If anything, I’m just shocked that she would dare to take Applejack.”
Biting my lip, I buried myself in her feathers. “Well, she took Rarity, and she took me, so another Bearer isn’t entirely unusual, even though most of the ponies are the ordinary sort…” They were, in fact, only remarkable in the fact that they all were fairly unknown, at least before they’d been taken. After that, there’d almost always been some ponies who’d found the courage to face the Spider and bring their loved one home.
“I suppose, but do you think the timing of this can be explained away so easily? I remember your letter about what happened to Sweet Apple Acres.”
I didn’t want to see if Cadance was looking at me or not. “I mean, she said she was fine that Big Mac got the farm, being the eldest and all, but it felt like she was pulling back from the rest of us after Granny Smith passed. I get that grief does that to a pony, but it’s just not like her to keep herself from her friends. Or, it wasn’t, before-” I stopped, not sure of what else to say.
Cadance seemed to get what I was saying, thankfully. “I’m sure losing somepony so close to her changed her, and I’m glad she has friends like you to support her and look out for her, but it’s the withdrawing after the will was read that I’m more worried about at the moment. You said that even Rainbow Dash wasn’t able to snap her out of it?”
Crap. I was pretty sure I knew where this was going. “Yeah, she tried a bunch of things but none of them seemed to affect Applejack. She just politely sidestepped all the attempts to talk and face whatever was going on in her head.”
Her voice was tender, like a parent leading a child to draw a certain conclusion. “And you mentioned that - let me see if I remember how you phrased it - it would take something far more drastic to make her realize how much everypony cares about her, and how they’d miss her if she were gone, yes?”
I blinked and untucked myself from her wing. “What are you implying?”
Her eyes betrayed no judgement, only the rational understanding of somepony who’d juggled being a mother with ruling a kingdom. “All the other ponies taken have almost nothing in common, you know. It took me a long time to track down anything about them, especially the ones who were- weren’t recovered, and after a great deal of cross-referencing that would make you proud, I’ve figured out two threads of similarity between the Spider’s victims.”
I didn’t dare look away as she continued. “One of the most notable, yet somehow kept from the public’s eye, is that either the pony came from a town you’d visited relatively recently on a friendship mission or royal duty, or somepony close to them had attended the Twilight Court. Either way, the implications lead to a very obvious conclusion.”
“I don’t think they do,” I said, perhaps more curtly than I needed to, but I dreaded what I knew she’d ask next.
She sighed with such a lack of frustration that it made me feel even more agitated. “Twilight, are you the Spider?”
“It isn’t often that I find myself in the company of a Princess,” the Spider rattled, her voice a million different whispers at once. She swept into a low bow, her muzzle just barely above the thin strands of web-like goop, and I couldn’t tell if it was a genuine gesture.
I decided to assume it was. I knew how to respond to that better, and I’d take any mentality that kept my tone of voice civil. “You know who I am, then.”
“Of course.” With an unnatural grace, she swung herself upright before continuing her maddening circles around me, each hoof stepping on the delicate pattern on the floor. “I’m certain you can appreciate that I do my research, Twilight Sparkle.”
“Then you know why I’m here.” I watched as the Spider blinked slowly, catlike, and I took her silence to mean she wanted me to elaborate. “I’m looking for Rarity. My friend.”
“Ah. The poor dear, she waited for somepony to find her. She was far more patient than I’d expected, in fact.” The monster’s shoulders shrugged with a perfunctory click.
A brief surge of adrenaline gave me the strength to struggle almost to my hooves before collapsing again. “What did you do to her? I’ll have you know that ponies are looking for both of us and if you harmed a single hair on her head, I swear I’ll banish you to the surface of the Sun until-”
The spider tsked at me mournfully. “Do you truly think me that horrible of a creature? If I’d wanted to kill ponies, why would I have kept you alive, or, indeed, let word spread at all? I wouldn’t dare risk the wrath of the Princesses, past or present, for petty revenge or my supper.”
“Oh, you’ve got the wrath of a Princess right here, you-”
“I’m not stupid, Twilight Sparkle, and you cannot do anything until the webbing is removed, so you might as well hear me out. Your alternative is to struggle until you wear yourself out further, and you’ll have to listen either way. Save your strength; you’ll most likely want it later.”
I panted on the ground, my hooves trembling. She had a point, but that didn’t mean I would forgive her for it.
She didn’t seem the sort to waste a second’s thought towards my forgiveness, though. “Put your mind at ease, Twilight Sparkle. I did nothing to your friend that she did not ultimately consent to.”
I scowled. “That’s not how consent works, and that implies you did something before she-”
“I gave her what she wanted,” she continued, ignoring my interruption completely. “Of course, she did require a bit of convincing, but her supposed friends’ lack of action cemented her resolve.”
“We- I only heard about the fact that she hadn’t shown up for a few things yesterday! I spent most of the day trying to work out where she’d last been seen! Everypony’s been looking most of the usual places, and so few travellers pass by here it was a wonder that anypony had seen a figure that looked vaguely like her at all!”
The Spider paused for a second and fixed me with her milky gaze. “And yet you’re the only one who thought to look outside of her habitual haunts?”
“I- no. No! Sweetie Belle was gearing up to go into Everfree! Crap, she’s probably still looking in there. But a few of us thought that maybe she went to visit her other boutiques for an emergency, and it takes a while for them to send word back sometimes, so we sent a messenger to each but we’d only heard back from one by the time I heard about the Gorge as a potential location...” I’d forgotten to take a breath in my haste, and my lungs ached with the strain.
“I see.” Unphased, the Spider moved on, slowly spiralling closer to me. “And you think that ponies will find you, will go looking for you, now that they know you are here?”
“Of course.” I glared into those starlight-colored eyes. They stared back with a steadiness of a thousand years of experience. Well, that experience hadn’t met my friends. “They’ll be here soon, and when they come, we’re going to send you so deep into Tartarus, not even Cerberus will be able to-”
With the tiniest flicker of a smile, the Spider gracefully spun towards the door. “I wager differently, Twilight Sparkle. Let us see if you can be as patient as your dear friend Rarity was.”
I swallowed back the confusing tangle of emotions my memories brought as I scowled up at Cadance. “No. I’m not.”
The smile never left the other alicorn as she studied my face for a moment, but I could see a tinge of sadness creep its way into her expression, and a hint of something else, some certain comprehension that told me I’d confirmed a suspicion she’d never voiced. “Very well, I’ll believe that, though the little I’ve been able to find about the legend of the Spider says otherwise.”
My expression of shock must’ve been outrageous, for Cadance managed a lighthearted laugh. “I know you’ve probably looked at everything in the vast Canterlot Archives, but it’s a strange tale from a stranger time in equine history, one that I doubt most ponies would have bothered to record.”
I wrestled my face into a neutral mask. “Just because she has wings and a horn doesn’t mean that only an Alicorn could be her.”
“Of course,” Cadance conceded. “But even if you are not her, you are most certainly involved.”
Groaning, I sprawled back on my bed, near my hidden book still tucked away. “I’m not going to be able to convince you otherwise, am I?”
“You will not. Sorry,” she added, part of her cheery facade finally falling. “I know you mean well by it, I really do, and I understand that you think you’re doing the right thing, but-”
“I’m not doing anything,” I said quietly. Most ponies would take that as a warning, but I doubted Cadance would be intimidated by me, Sovereign of Equestria or not. “The Spider’s the one kidnapping the victims-”
“-but you’re the one who’s chosen them, Twilight. Ever since you were taken, you’ve been different.” I scoffed, and Cadance rested a hoof against my barrel tenderly. “It’s been pretty subtle, and most of the changes have been good, overall. You’ve been taking certain things a lot more seriously, and have grown more attentive to your friends’ emotional states. I’m proud of you, I sincerely am.”
I pawed at the edge of a decorative quilt idly, flipping it back and forth between my hooves. “What do you expect me to say to that?”
“I don’t expect a response. Heart knows if somepony accused me of such a thing, I wouldn’t know how to react, especially if it were true. You have an empathetic soul, Twilight, but if there’s one negative trait that being the Princess of Friendship has given you, it’s the notion that you can fix everything if you just try hard enough.”
Wincing, I pushed myself back up to a seated position. “I don’t have a savior complex, Cadance. I know I’m not some hero that can magically make every single friendship problem better. It’s why I have friends, and friends who have friends, and-”
“Not everything,” she said slowly, measuring out each syllable. “Requires your intervention, even if it’s horrible and even if you think it’s something you know how to solve. You can’t solve ponies, Twilight. Some carry more baggage than you know.”
Why did I feel so restless all of a sudden? I got up and began pacing. “No, I know that. It isn’t all my doing, and like you said, it’s done a bunch of good.” I wished I could say how much good, but there was only one creature who knew the full span of the web she’d spun, and there were some things I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask her.
The look Cadance was giving me made me wish I had better answers. “I’m the Princess of Love, Twilight. If anypony understands what it’s like trying to convince ponies how much they are valued and cherished, it’s me. I’ve been driven to the brink of madness and back, but sometimes…” She looked more uncomfortable than I’d ever seen her. “Sometimes it isn’t your duty, or even your place to convince them.”
“It’s not like that,” I sputtered as I walked back and forth, my hooves finding the worn spots in the plush palace carpets. “I know I’m not a psychologist, and there are ponies who are trained to help those on the brink of suicide. It isn’t them that the Spider takes an interest in; she specifically leaves them to the professionals.”
“No, not quite,” she agreed with a finality that reminded me uncomfortably of a court sentence. “She’s only taken the ponies who want to disappear from the lives they’ve chosen, to begin again elsewhere. Those who aren’t sure if they ever want to be found.”
I’d lasted two days before I started to doubt.
For her part, the Spider had been a far more gracious host than most of the creatures that had tried to kidnap me. She’d given me some sort of dried leaves for food, and though they were bitter they filled me far more than they had any right to, and the water she’d provided seemed clean enough. By the end of the first day, I’d stopped bothering to check if it’d been poisoned; if she wanted me dead or dying, she’d have done so already.
And yet, she didn’t say a single word since her challenge began. The filaments of the thick liquid webbing had started to harden into a resin, and it no longer muffled her steps when she walked over it, but that was the limit of our conversation.
It was the morning of the third when I decided I could bear the quiet no more.
“They’re not coming,” I said softly as she bent to pick up the bottle in front of my muzzle, still half-full of clear water.
She regarded me, completely limp on the floor, unable to stand and unwilling to try. A Princess, the Princess, broken. “They might,” she replied after a strained pause. “You are their ruler. I’m certain they’ve at least attempted a fly-over of the Ghastly Gorge.”
“Then why didn’t then find me already?” I grit my teeth, then decided that took too much energy and relaxed my jaw again.
The Spider ran her hoof against one of the hardened web lines, making a strange rubbery sound. “The rules of ages past keep it so that my lair’s unfindable to group searches. Additionally, the one seeking it must have some sort of selfless interest in finding the one they seek. Be it concern, empathy-” She looked up at me, eyes blank but expression knowing. “-or love.”
We were silent for a few minutes. There wasn’t any use in denying it, after all, and I didn’t have the strength to make a show of it. I did, however, summon whatever nerve I had left to ask the question that’d been echoing in my mind alongside the dwindling hope of rescue. “What happened to Rarity?”
The Spider blinked. “She disappeared.”
“Dead?” I tried, bracing myself for the worst.
“No,” my captor replied, and I felt my heart warm with sheer relief.
“Can I find her?” Mentally, I’d begun to plot out possible routes away from this lair, and where she could’ve gone. Of course, I wasn’t sure if there was a back exit, and where it’d be if there was, but I could gauge a frighteningly large radius of where she could’ve reached if she’d left on hoof.
“You could try,” said the Spider noncommittally. “But she spent her week deep in thought, and came to the conclusion that she didn’t want anypony to find her. I helped ensure that she wouldn’t be, so while you can try, Twilight Sparkle, you will not have any luck.”
“You could be lying.” My voice didn’t have as much accusation as it should have, but I’d spent the last three days thinking, too.
The creature responded as I expected she would. “Why would I? I’ve nothing to gain by telling you anything but the truth. If I’d wanted to kill, hurt, or consume her, your distress would be the only change in our relationship, and I’m quite glad we’ve moved beyond that.”
“Or,” I said, my mind spinning with dread as a thought occurred to me. “You could be trying to give me hope. Do you feed on it like a changeling? Is that what you’re after, kidnapping ponies who are beloved in the eyes of so many others?”
The Spider laughed, softly, her many voices not quite in sync with each other. “An interesting guess, but no. If I wanted your hope, I’d have told you that I still held your friend captive, and if I’d wanted to watch it die, I’d have invented a far worse tale than the truth.”
“You don’t owe me the truth, though,” I countered. “I’m your prisoner.”
“And yet you continue to ask, in the hopes that I’ll let slip something you’d much rather believe.” The Spider smiled, a few needlelike fangs glinting in the amber light for a moment. “The truth is relative to the pony that hears it, and what that pony wishes to believe. Few things are absolute, and any narrative can be spun as easily as a web.”
“I have a friend that’d disagree, but I guess that makes a sort of sense.” I slowly nodded, trying to gather my thoughts. I’d have to take her word until I could prove otherwise. If I could ever prove otherwise. A part of me desperately hoped I could, but the rest of me was afraid of what other explanation there could be.
I didn’t have an answer for Cadance. Not one that either of us would be satisfied with, anyway, and after a few minutes of watching me pace, she picked herself up off the bed, thankfully ignoring the book, and held out a hoof to pull me into a firm hug.
“Again, I know you mean well,” she said at last. “But I’m not convinced what you’re doing is the best for the ponies you’re trying to help.”
It was the sort of hug I couldn’t pull away from, but I was grateful that I didn’t have to face her right then. “I understand your feelings on this, and I’ll think about what you said.” That was all I could promise, and when Cadance pulled away she looked tired, with an exhaustion I’d only seen right after Flurry had been born.
After a second she gave me a halfhearted smile. “I suppose that’s the best I can ask for. I’ll tell Shining and Flurry you said hello, and, please, if you ever need to talk, Twilight, I’m always here to listen. Trust me, I understand wanting to fix everything, but some ponies’ needs aren’t yours to fix.”
I bit back a retort and forced myself to give her a smile. “I’ll keep that in mind, thank you.”
She looked slightly relieved as she gave me a wave and made her exit, closing the door behind her.
I didn’t reach for my book until I was certain she’d left the castle.
The Spider crept towards me on arrhythmic hoofclicks and sat over my collapsed form. A tiny part of my mind screamed that this was the part where she’d show her true colors and kill me, but I pushed that out of my mind. That sort of fear no longer made logical sense, and besides, I doubted my struggling would suddenly produce results.
“Do you know, I am not the first of my kind? I very well will not be the last, either. There’s always been a Spider, spinning its web and lurking in the quiet shadows. Each one listens for different things, you know.”
The tiny bit of curiosity I was sure had withered with my hope perked its metaphorical ears, and I felt my expression mirror it. “You aren’t? How many are there?”
She stared at me for a few uncomfortable moments before one of her wings twitched. “Just one. Just me, right now. Only one is needed.”
I couldn’t resist. “Needed for what?”
“The Spider is to be helpful, in the best way it knows how. That definition has changed over time as society has changed. Some stole away the unwanted. Others claimed those who’d wished for a second chance, a redo. The Spider before me was more like the second example, in fact. He… hm.” She looked distant for a moment, furred wings fluttering restlessly. “How best to put this... He sought out those who’d felt they’d missed their greatest opportunity.”
“Was that you?” I gulped. “Am I going to be a Spider now?”
She shook her head, all traces of mirth gone. “Do not take this the wrong way, Twilight Sparkle, but you aren’t what I’m looking for. You simply arrived just a little too late to convince Rarity not to disappear, but still faster than I’d prepared for.”
“You didn’t think I would come for her?” I let my eyes drift shut as one train of logic led to another. “You knew nopony would come for me, either. Not in the way your strange rules allowed.”
“The rules change with the Spider,” she said, and I felt a cool slickness against my shoulder, followed by a slight weight against my neck. Her breath fluttered underneath my chin as she rested her head near mine. “I will secure my home better in the future, after the ponies I help have made their choice.”
“And if somepony had found Rarity?” I didn’t dare open my eyes. Any sort of comforting gesture withered when it came from her. “If I’d come in time to convince her that I didn’t want her to disappear from my life? That I-” It was harder, saying it out loud, but this monster was the last creature I’d expect to alert the presses. “-loved her, and love her still?”
The Spider was silent for a moment before I felt one of her hooves, the bottom coated in the same cool resin that the web-like material was drying into, brush against a few exposed feathers from my wing. “It won’t change what happened, regretting it. You couldn’t have known. But… had you arrived, I do not know if her decision would have been the same. Perhaps she would still wish to disappear, and choose to start anew, but she’d do so knowing you support her.”
“And if I didn’t support her?” I snapped, the words blurting out before I could stop them.
The Spider’s head lifted from my neck for a moment as she studied me, and this time I opened my eyes to look into hers. We stared at each other for a moment, each trying to read what was going through the other’s head. Then, deliberately, she lowered her head back down next to mine.
“You would, because you love her still.” Faster than I could track, her hoof raised and smacked into the hardened shell coating my wings. It rang like a spoon against a crystal goblet, the tolling noise so loud my ears flattened against my skull, before it crumbled, falling off my side like sand. With a second tap, I felt the mana return to my horn.
With a shudder, I stretched out one of my wings, feeling the tingling return of sensation creep up its length. Cautiously, I rolled over, unfolding the other. Already, I was feeling a bit stronger, a bit more capable of standing, of flying, of fighting my way out if I had to.
The Spider unevenly sauntered over to the entrance to my cell. “Follow the amber out,” she said. “It lines the walls towards the exit.”
I tried to get to my hooves, but my head spun from lying on my side for so long. “Wait, you’ll do this again, won’t you?”
She looked back at me, with an inscrutable expression on her face. “The entrance and exit will shift after you leave. You have a few minutes still before your horn recovers enough to cast a spell, and by then I’ll be far out of your reach.”
My second attempt to get to my hooves went better, at least until I overbalanced and toppled into a wall with a heavy thud. “But you’ll still kidnap ponies, ponies who feel like they want to be gone, like they want to get lost and don’t want even the ponies they love to find them.”
“Ah, you are concerned.” Her wings fluttered, and a flurry of dust and the powdered resin surrounded her in an ashy halo. “I do not allow them to come to harm. I simply give them the chance to realize if that desire is genuine, or if it is something else they are seeking. Sometimes, what they find is that there are things holding them back that they wouldn’t like to start again without.”
She folded her wings back again. “I do not allow them to harm themselves, either, Twilight. Their choice is either to return to the life they had or start anew. If they opt for the first, they will most often have a pony they know would risk everything for them, be it from friendship, empathy, or other sorts of love. If they choose the second, I have my ways of making them vanish, and they shall find themselves in a far enough place where they shall not be recognized, with the grounding knowledge of what they’d want to do right this time. Either way, they’ve faced something they never would have otherwise.”
I staggered to a more stable position, and her eyes followed me, white as diamonds. “I know. I’m not saying that I agree with everything you’re doing, but… I think they’d get far more support if more ponies heard about it. News reached me far too late, and I think it’d work out better if the right pony had the chance to hear about it sooner.”
She smiled, each pearly fang on full display. “What would you have in mind?”
She came the next night, as I knew she would. I’d been reading again, but I recognized the quiet tapping against my windowsill, and didn’t bother to put it away before I let her in.
“You were right, Twilight,” she said as she slunk into the room. “Rainbow Dash took no time at all to seek out Applejack after she’d heard the news, though her family had already begun to comb Everfree by the time reports of Applejack’s location reached Ponyville.”
“Hmm.” I remembered to move the rugs just before her mane and tail could drag web resin over them. “Other than an official announcement, I’m not sure what else I can do. Heading the search myself wouldn’t help, because-”
“-there’s rules to be followed,” she finished, pausing in front of a mirror. “Regardless, her confession of love gave Applejack the purpose she felt she was missing.”
I couldn’t help but let a few tears of relief fall onto my cheeks. “I’m so… I’m so glad she didn’t decide she’d rather start again somewhere else. I’d have missed her, and a lot of other ponies would have, too.”
“Come now, that would’ve been quite unlike her. She didn’t truly never wish to be found, she just felt lost and directionless.” Her horn lit, and she picked up the book in her spindly magic, paging through it. “This one again, really? I told you, I’ve moved beyond that life now.”
“Is it too much to say that I haven’t? That I can’t fully let go of the past like you can?”
She shook her head hesitantly and set the journal down carefully again, her magic only leaving a slight oily tinge to the bedspread. “I don’t blame you, though the amounts of copies you must’ve made so you’re never without one-”
“It’s your story, though, as much as it is the rest of ours. The bits we shared together. I don’t want to forget a single second of it.”
The Spider sighed and busied herself with brushing off her wings. I watched as the lint fell to the floor for a few carefree seconds before silently summoning a dustpan from my closet. It was a peaceful moment, and it gave me enough time to figure out how to best word what was on my mind still.
“Do you think what we’re doing is… too invasive?”
She hummed at the question, letting her wings droop back across her back. “I don’t think so. Not more than any previous Spiders have been. It’s no more or less than most ponies would do, in their own way. What friend would hesitate to help another if they had the power to do so?”
That hadn’t worked; best to reword it. “That’s not quite what I meant. I mean, it helps some ponies, sure, and between the ponies I’ve found and your strange insight, I think we’ve managed to change ponies’ lives for the better, but… should we be doing this at all? Is it our place to force ponies to confront a question they’d rather leave alone?”
The Spider, to her credit, gave it a few moments of thought before she shrugged. “We’ve been right each time, Twilight, and the ponies seem genuinely happier, whichever option they decide upon. Isn’t that all we can ask, that our actions bring about some good?”
“But would it be better if we’d done nothing at all, and let things proceed as they are meant to?” I pressed, taking a seat next to where she stood on the hard tile and gently rested my head against the crook under her wings.
She pressed her hoof over mine. “I’d rather they not live with regret, with the what-if of disappearing lingering forever within the back of their mind. I know you still carry your own what-if with you, even after all these years.”
“Why couldn’t you have waited?” I whispered, as I had countless times before. “Another day, and I would have found you. I would have told you, I swear it.”
Her hoof strayed upwards to cup my chin, lifting it up until I was gazing into her moonlit eyes, bright as gemstones. “That wouldn’t have changed the fact that I hadn’t told you sooner, darling,” she murmured, and in her many voices one familiar one almost spoke above the rest, above the hundreds of Spiders before her. “I would still regret that I hadn’t told you back when we could have made it work, before our life’s ambitions kept us apart.”
A strand of her mane, dripping pearlescent slime, clung to my cheek. I didn’t move to brush it away, nor had I for a while, but it struck me, again, how different she’d become. How her generosity had urged her to give a choice that few would choose for themselves.
She was a pony once, a pony I loved still, despite her choices.
She was a monster, though I had little doubt that whatever ancient rules had changed her into the Spider wouldn’t let her die or disappear without creating another.
And we’d both strayed far from our Elements for as long as I could remember. What was generosity, if one couldn’t choose to refuse the gifts they received? What was friendship, if one had to enforce it?
I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure there was an answer.
But I was pretty certain it wasn’t something I could fix. A part of me wasn’t sure I even wanted it fixed, if it meant losing what I had, the strange relationship I’d found.
I smiled up at the creature my friend had become.
“So, who’s next?”
