Day 11 - Finally, the Meat of the Story!

I've written a little this morning and the total scope of what I'm doing is finally becoming apparent.

The Silver Scarab entered the vast tunnel, guided only by the twin beacon lanterns Glitch installed on the exterior of the ship’s head, as well as flickering green embers on the charred remains of the webbing, the last reminder of Valaric’s spell. Valaric watched in fascination as the Silver Scarab passed the still twitching remains of embryonic spiders the size of elephants, burned and blackened beyond recovery.



Debris floated in the void; fragments of charred exoskeleton, still-burning globs of spider silk, even nodules of the substance the Black Shell was composed of that had melted and resolidified. The green embers lit the tunnel with an unearthly glow. While the tunnel was a mile wide, Valaric couldn’t help but feel a touch of claustrophobia, the Silver Scarab following small vein of free space through untold megatons of solid rock, like an insane spelunker. Luckily, the Black Shell proved to be only five hundred miles thick, the Silver Scarab taking less than an hour to traverse it.


As the Silver Scarab exited the mouth of the immense tunnel, Valaric was in awe of what he saw before him. The Black Shell was perfectly smooth on the outside, a pearl of Stygian blackness. White strands of webbing, woven into great cables miles in circumference, adhered to the outer surface of the Black Shell, forming delicate crystalline mountains. Instead of having peaks like terrestrial mountains, the silken masses of tangled webbing continued upward and outward until they vanished in the distance. Small red specks glowed in the blackness of the void, as did vast clouds of spectral orange dust and gas.