"Son of a bitch," he whispered, tapping a knuckle against it. It thrummed back. A low, subsonic hum that settled in his molars.
He took the bowl.
He drank.
One dropped down in front of him. She— and it was a she, unmistakably so —landed with the soft, deliberate grace of a cat that had just decided gravity was optional. Her face was a mask of chitinous plating, but her eyes were large, liquid, and golden . A spider-girl, but not the crude chimeras of folklore. Her lower body was a thorax of polished obsidian, eight legs folded neatly beneath her, each tipped with a finger-fine manipulator. Her human torso was lean and scarred, covered in a loose, tattered shift that had once been a Bureau-issue caving suit.
The spider-girl smiled. It was not a human smile. It was a recognition of the concept. "You will. Everyone does, down here. She's the first. The digestive first. She melted herself into the root-veins and now she dreams the geometry of the place." The golden eyes flicked to his seismic reader. "That won't work here. The hole isn't a hole. It's a fold. A pocket in the skin of the real where hunger and loneliness got tangled up and grew mouths." Into The Monster Girl Hole -v0.1.6- -Calabi-Yo-...
Leo looked down at the bowl. The liquid had turned the color of his own eyes.
By one hundred twenty feet, the walls were no longer rock. They were chitin . Glossy, ridged, and warm to the touch. "Son of a bitch," he whispered, tapping a knuckle against it
And the hole drank back.