Fearful of that scummy water and knowing the chair still represents too much of a jump to make safely, you run into the dusty bottles, books, and parchments lined up at the back of the desk. You duck under cobwebs and slide between the bottles and books, terrified of meeting another spider or who knows what else, and you wait in frightened silence for your pursuer to find you…
Surprisingly, it seems to lose track of you. You hear some soft pattering steps for a bit, but after a while you think you hear them retreat back over the edge of the desk, and silence ensues.
After at least fifteen minutes, you dare to show yourself again. There is no sign of the spider on the desk… it appears that it gave up on you, and decided to return to the meal it had already caught… Onyx.
You feel a pang of guilt at having abandoned the sorceress to her fate, particularly after she rescued you from the jungle (though granted, you had done most of the work)… but by now you expect it’s too late already. If the spider’s venom didn’t stop her lungs from working, killing her through suffocation, then by now it has already dragged her out of sight and her internal organs are being turned to liquid. There was nothing you could have done to save her… her own overconfidence versus the dangers at this new size is what killed her, really…
Able to think a bit, you realize that the first thing you have to do is get down from this desk. You don’t want to jump into the pail of water --- who knows what it was used for, or what could be swimming under its filmy surface --- and jumping to the chair is too much of a drop. There must be a safer way down…
Standing at the edge of the desk, you see that the withered potted plant actually has yellow, vine-like tendrils that reach almost all the way to the ground beside that pail of water. Climbing down those might be a possibility, if you trust that plant… though for some reason, after your trip through the jungle a week ago, plants don’t inspire much confidence in you anymore. It really does look rather dead, though…
You also see that the wall at the back of the desk is very close. There are all kinds of seams and ledges you can see at your new size; you realize climbing down would probably not be all that difficult. In fact, it looks almost ladder-like in some places… and at the base of the wall the rubbish seems to consist of moldy fabrics, so even if you fall you should be all right.
