“Your feathered soulmate begged your fate. A bargain made in desperate faith. But protection we have offered. So the price he will now pay,” another talking corpse added in rhythmic chant. This one was less adorned but more decomposed. His mask was smaller and revealed the lower half of the emaciated face. Only one eye peered out from the skull’s shriveled sockets, and a sneering grin split below.
“I told you, the bargain is made, dead thing,” the raven grumbled.
“What bargain?” Beaumont demanded as he stood defensively. “What did you do to me?”
“A bargain you should be bound to as well after what I sacrificed for you, human,” the raven croaked. “You would have been dragged to the other side had I not acted. But it cannot be fixed. Now we must deal with these two.” His tone hinted at his annoyance towards such a task.
“Few have earned a gift from the Raven King without paying a price,” the first corpse commented towards Beaumont suggestively.
“Special is the raven’s guest,” the other chanted as he gently tapped a skin-stretched drum with his bony fingers. “Such pairing you now make.”
“Let me introduce you to our misguided hosts,” the raven declared perhaps more as an interruption. “You stand in the camp of the Mad Witchdoctors. The Spirit Weaver.” He nodded toward the first corpse with the elaborate mask. “And Death’s Drummer.” The second nod was to the obvious choice as the corpse pummeled his drum and laughed. “They both conceived and wove the land of death and the veil that contains it.”
“Secrets, loud bird,” the Spirit Weaver cautioned with a hiss. “Secrets like that should not be spoken, even hidden as we are.”
“Unwanted guests stalk your path. Such secrets they must not learn. Your presence risks the fates of all. Your visit we must spurn.” the drummer chanted.
“We had no choice but to seek you out,” the raven argued. “If the veil is to be returned to its rightful ruler, then I need your help.”
“It was never intended for you, raven,” the weaver replied.
“Would you prefer it to heed another? If you deny us assistance, I assure you, it won’t be long before it does.”
“Is this part of our bargain?” the weaver demanded threateningly.
“A hefty price to keep your crown. If bargain be remade,” the drummer chanted.
“For my price to be paid, I at least have to survive what is coming.”
“Not necessarily,” the drummer cackled.
“Consider that a stipulation along with the Ravenfell,” the raven insisted.
“We cannot protect you from the Guardians. It takes much just to conceal ourselves,” the weaver replied.
“Death is fated. Its hunger unsated. We cannot stand in their way,” the drummer added.
“But you know how to hide from them. With my connection to the veil, the Guardians sense me everywhere and nowhere. But the warlock is not as fortunate. Even with the bond…” the raven explained.
“Layers of death conceal us, though our hunters lurk so near.” The weaver’s voice was picking up the building tempo.
“Death within death, we hide from death,” the drummer rambled to the beat.
“But the great queen’s lair only protects us here.”
“To journey beyond means certain death.”
“A clever guise to cloak your soul.”
“A final breath. Your mask of death.”
“How would I obtain such a guise?” Beaumont inquired. He was confused about much of what was being discussed and a bit disconcerted by the strange undead duo. There were too many mysteries to uncover already, however. This quest had one central goal, and he intended to achieve it before he attempted to unravel the bargains between the raven and the clearly disturbed corpses.
“Help you make one, perhaps.”
“Your mask of death. Death masks. Your death.” They both laughed gleefully.
“But first an audience with the queen,” the Spirit Weaver insisted.
“Meet the queen. More meat for queen.”
“A gift you must ask of her to receive your mask.”
“The queen is very giving, yes.” The drummer cackled uproariously. Though the Spirit Weaver’s face was hidden behind his mask, Beaumont could sense his amused sneer.
“So, if I bring back this gift from the queen, you will make me a mask?” Beaumont translated.
“Do not trust them,” the raven warned. “They only ever work for themselves.”
“The raven calling the crow black. You are certainly an amusing bird,” the Spirit Weaver countered.
“The bird who tricked the world undone,” the drummer chanted.
“I do not even trust you, raven,” Beaumont informed the bird. “But this isn’t about trust. This is about hiding me from the Guardians long enough to stop them. And these things know how to do that. The Guardians have found me twice already. How many more times must we trust in luck?”
“Luck, he says.” The two laughed. “Luck of the raven, perhaps.”
“Stop with the word games,” Beaumont snapped. “Tell me what I must do.”
“Meet the queen. Meet the queen. Meet the queen,” they chanted together. The gem of the weaver’s staff began to glow red as the beat of the drum grew fierce. Reality shifted to the rhythm.
Chapter 8:
The Lair of Araxxis
The camp faded away as the veil of the witchdoctors’ world unraveled from the jungle beneath it. Though the smell of their twisted concoctions vanished, the stench of death remained.
“Long ago, there lived a spider,” the voices chanted from somewhere beyond.
“Dorga’s blessing she received.”
“Bite of doom and size unrivaled.”
“Ascended as the spider queen.”
“Where she reigns, death descends.”
“Disguising those with clever ends.”
“I imagine it’s going to be a rather large spider,” Beaumont sighed to the raven as the bird settled on his shoulder. The massive sheets of spider silk all around hinted at terrifying proportions. He didn’t have any particular fear of spiders. He would never have survived growing up with a mad witch like Hildey if he had. But he certainly knew enough about venoms and infections from her tutelage to give arachnids the proper respect they were due.
Beaumont could not put away his intense curiosity. The thought of a spider enhanced with the type of magic ancient Dorga was said to wield intrigued him. He had studied monsters and demons of numerous families and across dozens of hellscapes. This one felt special and warranted caution.
“I have only heard legends of this spider queen though nothing of her size,” the raven explained. “They call her Araxxis. The potency of her venom taints even the ground where her prey falls. Her lair is said to be so corrupted with death that the veil barely divides the two worlds there.”
“A land of death hiding within a land of death,” Beaumont recited the witchdoctors. “They hide the blight of their presence beneath the stain of the queen’s realm. Clever.”
“Clever and dangerous,” the raven cautioned. “They are powerful and rarely do anything that doesn’t benefit them. But they are also quite mad, so the benefit could be nothing more than temporary amusement.”
“Which is why they forced you into a bargain. To save me?”
“I saved you. Not them. They merely hid us while you recovered. And took a price to do so.”
“What is it you owe them?” Beaumont asked. It felt strange to feel this much concern over what the raven gave up. It had been barely a day since discovering the bird he called Gleam could speak.
Until recently, the Raven King was nothing more than a silent companion who showed minimal interest in Beaumont. Yet now the raven was making bargains for his protection and saving his life from Guardian spirits. He still couldn’t shake the suspicion that those sacrifices weren’t entirely selfless. The raven needed something from him. That was certain.
“I pledged to never allow the veil
to take them,” the raven answered resistantly. “They wish to be forbidden from entry to the Netherworld as strongly as the Ravenfell Curse. And I must hide them in return should the need ever arise.”
“That doesn’t sound entirely unreasonable.”
“Anything that binds you to those mad fiends is corrupted by their tricks. But it had to be done.”
“For me.”
“For my plan to have any chance,” the raven corrected.
“You have a plan?”
“Not exactly. I rarely do, honestly,” the raven explained. “I have a goal, though. I must overthrow these Guardians and retake my place as the Raven King. Considering how badly they want you, you are either something they need or something they fear. Either way, they cannot be allowed to find you.”
“I am something they should fear,” Beaumont replied coldly. “Even before I learned that I was the cause of it, I swore to break the Ravenfell Curse. It’s why I have devoted so much time mastering my powers.”
“You have Hildey’s defiance in you,” the raven croaked. “I imagine you would spit in Dorga’s eye too.”
“Let’s face this queen first.”
“You do realize a queen implies that she has subjects,” the raven offered uncomfortably.
“I hadn’t until now. Thank you for that.” Beaumont instinctively reached inward to draw from his Well of Corruption. But it was still empty. The magic had addictive qualities, and he felt a deep longing to sip the fount of power from a demon. It also left him feeling extremely vulnerable. He rarely left himself unable to call upon his mastered gifts. And the Common Arts took too much time and materials for such short notice.
He would have given anything just for the simple feat of calling Hellfire to burn back the encroaching sheets of spider silk. Wisps of the sticky webbing hung from his robes, where he failed to navigate the clinging tendrils. If he couldn’t evade or destroy those, he wondered how he would ever manage their maker.
A murky haze hovered across the ground, cloaking the creatures scurrying below. The sound of their movements rustled all around and created eddies in the mist.
“You still hungry, raven?” Beaumont asked suggestively.
“I fear these may upset my digestion,” the raven croaked.
“I don’t remember your stomach ever being particularly temperamental.”
“The spiders from earlier were created of spirit. They were quite tender morsels for a being like me. But this Araxxis is something different. The air holds the familiar taste of your ancestor Dorga. He did more than just command death. He corrupted it. That corruption hangs all around. It is a foulness I had hoped to never taste again.”
“Intriguing. I sense something demonic. Blended with death. Was the spider the demon? Or was my ancestor?”
“I wouldn’t be altogether surprised if it was both,” the raven mused. “Dorga became something else before we brought him down. And he undoubtedly shredded the barriers between more than just the realms of life and death. His reign let a lot of bad things out into the world, and some of them were demons. It’s part of the reason for the backlash against magic today.”
Beaumont opened his mind to their surroundings. Though his Well of Corruption was empty, he still had heightened senses for the energy he craved. He could taste the corruption in the air, permeating everything with the taint of her presence. The queen was near.
“Do you think you can draw from the corruption here? Regain your abilities?” the raven inquired.
“It is not so simple. It takes preparation to overcome the corruption of a new demon and master it. I have no idea what this beast is. I have no idea what sort of corruption I would have to overcome. If I failed, it would consume my soul. I would become something else.”
“Do you have any other tricks then? Cause I doubt your dagger is going to be effective if things go poorly.”
Beaumont considered the fragment of darkness within him and the power it allowed him to wield. It had faded into the back of his mind since the battle, but now that he thought about it, he could feel its chilling depths within. But those dark embracing depths were clouded over. It was as if a fog cloaked it. Strangely that fog seemed to intermingle with his own spiritual essence. He probed it with his mind.
“Don’t play with that,” the raven croaked. “We can’t risk the Guardians finding you again. Especially not here. Consider that option closed for now.”
“What did you do to me?” Beaumont insisted. “How did you cut me off?” He felt somewhat violated by the raven’s presence within him. That dark fragment was a remnant of his birth. What right did this bird have to sever him from such power?
“I control the veil still. If barely. I cloaked the part of the Netherworld within you with the same veil that contains the rest. For now, it will feel no different than any other part of the barrier to our hunters. Unless you go poking around and drawing attention.”
“But how did you do it, raven? How were you able to violate my spirit?”
“According to legends, I am a rather talented spirit creature. Let’s leave it at that. At least until we have dealt with her.” The raven’s voice trembled.
Araxxis, the spider queen, descended from the trees like nightfall, slow and unrelenting. She hissed at the intruders with cold lethal malice, but there was an excitement behind it. She hungered.
Having questioned the beast’s size earlier, Beaumont was not disappointed in the least to discover the truth. Her body and head combined were the size of a large bear, but her overwhelming stature was only increased by the expansive clutch of her arachnid legs. The queen sprawled across several tree trunks populated by hundreds of pulsing egg sacs. She hung suspended above the clutches on an impressive rope of spider silk unwinding from her spindle.
There was no longer any doubt about the spider’s demonic origins. The corruption emanated from her body in a noxious green glow and dripped in ichorish phosphorescent beads from her gnashing fangs.
Beaumont found it equally revolting and enticing. Her venomous essence threatened to taint everything around her, including the warlock and the raven. But the desire to feed his Well of Corruption overrode the natural warnings of self-preservation.
“Halt, beast,” Beaumont demanded. In his time as a warlock, he had learned to speak with the sort of command that could give a demon pause even without the use of magic.
“I doubt she is the obedient type,” the raven offered nervously.
Araxxis emitted a threatening series of clicks using her fangs and mandibles, increasing the deadly emissions dripping from their tips. Then she gave a harsh coughing sound and propelled a thick, murky substance in their direction.
The raven took flight as Beaumont dove to the side, dodging the assault by mere finger lengths.
The projectile goo threaded as it passed through the air, weaving into expanding tendrils of sticky silk. They struck the tree behind where Beaumont stood a moment before and stuck with incredible adhesive force. With a flick of a front appendage, the spider detached the connecting strand and glued it taut against the ground.
The suspected queen’s subjects were smaller copies of their mother, and they skittered all throughout the mists. As Beaumont struck the ground, he discovered their green rat-sized forms beneath the haze. They had him surrounded, and they were closing in.
He swept them back with the Ravenwood staff, but they were too numerous. Three of the swarm latched onto the weapon and scurried up the haft. He dislodged two with the dagger just short of contact, but the third leaped with incredible adeptness, and its fangs found purchase on his hand.
The initial stabbing pain was drowned out by what followed. The venom flooded into his veins in a raging fury, withering flesh and corrupting spirit with encroaching haste. The skin of his hand turned grey and desiccated in moments as life gave way to corruption and death. The dagger dropped uselessly to the ground.
There was nothing he could do, Beaumont realized. He was cut off from the dark frag
ment, and his Well of Corruption was dry. Perhaps if he had known what he would face, he could have brought a few pieces of the Common Arts for purging befoulments, but he doubted that even those would be effective against this.
As the venom invaded his body, it also leached into his soul. Fortunately, that was a front which a warlock like Beaumont was trained to defend. He instinctively resorted to the familiar techniques of demon mastery.
Beaumont hardened his spirit against the intrusion, pushing back against the corruptive force. The sensation wasn’t all that different from an infusion of demon blood. It fought in a similar fashion to taint and consume his existence.
Compared to the rage of the Mawgrithe, the spider’s essence wasn’t too overpowering, though it was potent considering its size. He bound and neutralized it adeptly and felt an unexpected trickle infuse his Well of Corruption as he did. He was right. It was demonic.
Even such a small taste of magic brought a groan of sated desire from Beaumont’s lips. Despite his near addiction to the power, survival fueled his need for it now. Though he had won the conquest of his soul against the venom, another battle waged within his body with a very different outcome.
With every heartbeat, the toxic effects of the bite were slipping deeper into tissues and spreading further through his bloodstream. Thankfully, there was a foul demonic creature Beaumont mastered several years back, whose essence resisted poison and venom, and he now held enough corruption to draw on that mastery.
The venom receded, and color returned to Beaumont’s skin. Although, his complexion held a venomous green tinge from the warlock’s new infusion of spider essence.
Strength returned, and he climbed to his feet defensively. Another spider leaped, and he allowed it to strike. This time, he was prepared for the pain and the assault of corruption. He craved it.
Beaumont neutralized the venom as it flowed into his veins, simultaneously sipping from the spider’s corruption to fuel his resources. Confidence returned as his well of magic awoke with fury.
The spider’s job was done. He flicked it from his arm with the tip of his staff, then ignited a defensive ring of Hellfire to clear the other attackers and burn away the webs and layers of mist beneath his feet.
Ravenfell Chronicles: Origins Page 19