by Jaime Castle
“Be still,” she said. “Your friends will be with you soon. All you pathetic mortals will be.”
She pressed her lips against his, the paste covering his mouth melting away at her touch. He felt her tongue against his teeth, tasted blood.
When she pulled away, he found himself growing sleepy and numb, like he’d imbibed an entire bar’s worth of ale.
“We haven’t even gone on our first date yet,” he slurred.
The next thing he tried to say was a garbled mess. Bliss smiled down at him as her web stretched over his face and everything went dark.
XXXIV
The Knight
“IT’S BEEN TOO LONG,” Sora said. “I’m going in.”
She stood, but Torsten grabbed her arm. “Relax, nothing can kill that boy,” he said. He almost felt bad when he added, “He’s like a cockroach.”
Her face betrayed her guilt.
“He’s going to be fine,” Torsten assured.
“We sent him in there alone,” she said. “What if Uriah is wrong? What if Bliss is in there waiting for him?”
“There are many things Uriah Davies is, but I have fought at his side many times. There is no finer commander.”
Sora glanced over at him and Torsten did the same. He was pacing back and forth in front of the cave, murmuring to his dire wolf under his breath. Torsten had to admit, he was far from the Wearer he’d once admired and served beneath. Far from a man worthy of being King Liam’s right hand.
“I just don’t trust him,” she said.
“If I remember, you supported inviting him along.”
“Still…” She put a hand through her hair. “It’s been too long and those guys give me the creeps.” She nodded toward a masked cultist. He sat alone a few strides behind them, legs folded and hands resting on them. Silent.
“As far as I can see, you both serve the same fallen gods.”
“I don’t serve anybody,” she spat.
“Well, we can safely say that none of us trusts one another.”
“That’s for sure,” Sora muttered.
“Two weeks ago, I stood beside the throne. King Liam was sick, but alive. Now, I’m out here with a thief, a blood mage and a cult-leading ghost who’s seemingly lost half his mind. I don’t have to like it, but this is all we have. Iam wouldn—”
“Why do you say it like that?” she interrupted.
“What?”
“Blood mage. Like just saying it makes you want to throw up.”
“Because I have fought them, girl. I’ve seen how the Drav Cra seers and Panping mystics can twist minds; how worshippers to the fallen gods can destroy lives. Iam created Elsewhere as a realm between here and the heavens. A place to banish those of his brethren who sought power over peace, to send the abominations and demons they crafted to fight in the god feud.”
“I know what Elsewhere is,” Sora said, a harsh edge to her tone.
“Then you know why I can never abide by anyone who would draw on the power of that place to alter our world. Conjuring fire, or demons; it is all a perversion of the gifts Iam gave us.”
“Easy to say from up there in glass spires. All Yarrington ever was for me was a blur on the horizon.” She raised her bandaged hand. “This is all I have. All the man who raised me left for me.”
“And did he teach you what happens when a demon possesses you? Or when you decide summoning flames isn’t enough?”
“We aren’t all bad, you know.”
“Power is a dangerous thing,” he said. “I’ve seen the Panping mystics mutilate men for their experiments. ‘Learning how to heal the body through the sacrifice of others,’ they claimed.”
Sora tried to speak, but he didn’t let her.
“And I’ve seen how whatever magics Redstar used corrupted the mind of a little boy until he chose to jump from a window rather than hear the whispers. I’ve felt the curse’s remnants myself. It is the unholy power you draw on that is the very reason we are here. So no, blood mage, I don’t trust you, and I never will.”
“You two should try to keep it down,” Uriah said as he walked over.
“That’s fine. We’re done talking.” Sora stood, arms crossed, and walked a few steps away.
“You should open your mind a little, old friend,” Uriah said, laying a hand on Torsten’s shoulder.
“So, I can be like you?” he said. “Hiding in caves with depraved cultists? Crucifying people in the name of fallen gods?”
“Nothing seems more wicked than that which we do not understand.”
Gryff started barking at the sky. Uriah clapped his hands and hissed to silence him. “That girl has a part to play in all of this. I know not what it will be, but there is both light and darkness in all the affairs of gods and men.”
Again, Gryff started barking. Uriah was about to reprimand the beast when Sora shrieked.
“Ick, what was that!”
Torsten turned to see Sora shaking her leg. A small spider flew off. Well, small in a relative sense. He was hoping to avoid a giant, and this one was the size of his hulking hand, which still made them the largest spider he’d ever seen. He leaped into action and crushed it beneath his heel.
“I thought they weren’t home?” Sora said.
“They are now,” Uriah said.
Torsten turned back to him and saw Uriah was staring up. Before he could do the same, another hand-sized spider landed on his shoulder. He flung it off, then followed Uriah’s eyes. Beyond the display of human eyeballs, hundreds—maybe thousands—of the creatures crawled down strings of webbing hanging from the canopy. It was as if the trees themselves had come alive.
“Bliss returns to protect her nest,” Torsten said. He dug in, clenching his sword.
“Whitney is still in there!” Sora shouted above the din of hundreds of thousands of legs scurrying.
“Then we must keep them out!”
The creeping spiders were small, but Torsten saw the others. In the trees surrounding them, a new wave appeared through the darkness. Bulbous, black eyes, countless in number, belonging to spiders the size of hounds peered down.
“He was bait, wasn’t he?” Sora questioned. “Just a means for you to get us to help you!”
“Please, Torsten, talk some sense into your companion. Why would I want to face a goddess when we aren’t at our fullest strength?”
“The longer we argue, the more danger he’ll be in,” Torsten said.
“Like you care,” Sora said.
“I may not like the kid, but he’s an ally and a soldier never leaves his allies behind.”
The massive spiders poured through the trees as if they were a tidal wave. Thousands of them, the color of midnight. More continued dropping from above, blotching out what little moonlight there was to be seen. They fell on the cultist, scurrying under his clothes and grasping at his mask. He screamed and slit his hand. A spark of fire ignited, but never grew as one of the larger spiders sunk its fangs into the back of his neck.
“Brother!” Uriah shouted.
“We’re surrounded!” Sora sliced her palm and raised her arm. A stream of flames burst forth, searing dozens of the descending arachnids, but not before they’d already dragged the cultist away into oppressive blackness.
“Ignore the babies!” Torsten grabbed Sora’s arm and aimed it forward. The larger spiders on the ground backed away from the heat.
“You’re okay with magic now?” she spat.
“Form up!” Torsten said, ignoring her.
He fell back beside Uriah at the mouth of the cave, both their swords raised. Gryff was beside them, hair raised along his back as he growled. Sora ended her spell and joined them, panting, sweat pouring down her forehead and blood dripping from her hand. The spreading flames kept the creatures at bay, but a few trickled through. One seized the leg out from under Sora, but Torsten and Uriah were there to meet them with cold steel before she was pulled away. Torsten ducked as one leaped at him, slicing it open thorax to abdomen from below. He cau
ght another by the leg and flung it into the fire.
They were large, but he was bigger. He spun, coming face-to-face with a pair of glistening fangs. He didn’t want to imagine what their venom might be capable of. Gryff slammed into its side before it struck.
Sora turned another into a charred husk, stopping it from attacking Torsten from behind. He glanced back and saw her hands on her knees. The cost of blood was draining her. A spider rushed, flanking her. Torsten leaped over a fresh corpse and swung down, cleaving her attacker in two.
He grabbed her arm. “We have to go through the lair! There’s no other way. If we beat Bliss to Whitney, we can all find a way out.” He slashed left, slicing off a bundle of legs. “They can’t swarm us in tunnels.”
“I’m afraid you’re already too late,” said a woman’s voice, deep and matronly. It was both comforting and chilling, and as soon as she spoke all the spiders froze where they were and watched, twitching.
Torsten, Sora and Uriah turned to see Bliss mounting the rocky walls outside her lair. Half-spider, half-human, she was an abomination Torsten could barely fathom. And the fact that her woman half was as stunningly beautiful as Oleander somehow made it worse.
“I hope you’ll prove more formidable than your friend,” Bliss said. Her voice carried across the woods, making the very leaves tremble.
“Whitney!” Sora screamed. “I swear if you hurt him.” She drew a deep cut over her forearm and fire wrapped her whole arm.
“It seems our battle with the beast will come sooner than expected,” Uriah said.
“Beast? You of all people should be careful throwing around names.” She shimmied down to the ground.
He stroked the back of his snarling wolf, sword at the ready, a mad grin plastered across his face. “Take her! Take her now!”
Gryff sprung at her, fast as lightning. His fangs sunk into her shoulder and his claws tore at her. Sora launched a ball of flame at her chest that exploded into sparks as bright as Clora. It blinded Torsten before he could aim a blow. Uriah rushed forward and slashed at Bliss’s chest.
Torsten’s vision finally settled and he went to join them, but one of Bliss’s arms caught his leg and threw him backward. With two others she flicked Uriah and Sora away like rag dolls.
Her children grasped at Torsten as he tried to recover. His armor held their fangs at bay, grateful they hadn’t bitten his hands or face. He roared and whipped his claymore in a full circle, driving them back, all the while watching as Bliss clutched Gryff with all four of her front legs and lifted him off her. The dire wolf had to weigh at least a ton and if she struggled at all, Torsten couldn’t tell.
The wolf bit and snarled, but she leaned close in front of him and blew a puff of something acrid and yellow into his mouth.
“Release him!” Uriah yelled. A spider crashed into his back and sent him staggering. He ripped off one of its legs, but he was too slow.
Gryff’s veins grew thick and black under his shaggy coat. His eyes went the color of pitch, down to the whites, and she dropped him. He landed in a heap of tangled legs at Uriah’s feet, body shriveled like a grape left out in the sun.
Bliss released a laugh that commanded silence, carrying across the woods and making the very leaves tremble. Torsten felt it resonating in his chest, like a vice squeezing away all hope—like Iam himself abandoned this foul and horrid place.
“You puny, mortal fools really think you can defeat me?” Bliss said, still amused. “I’m glad I saved my appetite.”
XXXV
The Thief
WHITNEY DIDN’T remember having a drink, but when he woke up, it felt as if he’d cleared the Twilight Manor of their whole stock. He groaned and struggled to open bleary eyes. They wouldn’t even budge. He tried to throw his legs over the side of his bed, but they wouldn’t move either.
Shog, he thought, his memory beginning to return.
Eyes still closed, he wriggled the fingers on his right hand because that was all it seemed he could move. They brushed a silky, sticky substance. A cold, feverish feeling stole over him. He struggled, his face growing hot until he could separate one of his eyelids a hair. A semi-transparent film blocked his vision, but he could make out the shapes of columns and slivers of waning light from the top of Bliss’s lair.
He thrashed left and right like a grounded fish desperate for water. His neck craned, simultaneously trying to find Bliss and hoping not to find her. His daggers were gone, his arms secured by the webbing.
He felt panic overwhelm his senses. Breath wouldn’t come to him. He felt as if he could die of suffocation. Letting out air and slowly drawing it back in, he calmed himself and let his head fall back. The stone floor hurt but he didn’t care. He was going to die soon anyway. What a fitting end to his legend. Why shouldn’t the world’s greatest thief die in some daring attempt to steal from a goddess?
At least, that was what he told himself to keep from hyperventilating.
He flopped his body over onto his side and heard something jingle. He stretched for the sound with the fingers of the hand pinned to his chest, and his index tapped the amulet he’d stolen from Darkings hanging from his neck. It wasn’t a dagger, but if he could manage to break the gem free of its casing, it might just be solid and sharp enough to cut through the webbing.
He continued rolling until he was face down. Then he stretched his fingers as far as he could. His elbow stung from being bent the wrong way, but he used the ground to push it until he was able to get two fingers around the amulet.
He took a moment to catch his breath, then stuck his fingernail between the gem and the frame. He used the momentum from rolling his body to tweak the amulet. He felt like his fingers were bleeding, sharp metal digging beneath his nails, but he ignored the pain. Again, he rolled and this time the framing bent slightly. One more time and the gem broke free of the set.
He squirmed along the ground, pawing with his two longest fingers until he found the arrow-shaped gem safely nestled within the web. He fidgeted until he got the right leverage, then sawed into the webbing with the point.
It caught at first, and he dropped it several times before finally starting to progress. The process was slow, but he eventually opened up a gap that allowed him to move his right arm.
Immediately, he freed his face, thankful to no longer feel like he’d been smothered by a very thin blanket. The webbing constricted the rest of his body like a woman’s skirt pulled too tight. He couldn’t lean forward any further without first releasing his hips and waist. He focused his attention on his belt line and made quick work of it. After that, it wasn’t long before he released his upper body and was completely free.
Whitney gasped for air as he crawled out, even though his face had been free for some time now. But somehow it had felt like he was drowning. He sprawled across the floor, staring up at the web-adorned ceiling. He knew he should get up and run, but he couldn’t stop himself from laughing.
“’I still can’t believe you nearly got us killed for that ugly thing,’” he said, mocking Sora’s voice. He raised the gem to his face and gave it a kiss. “Oh, I love you, I love you, I love you.”
“Whitney!” a distant scream echoed through the cavern, full of panic.
He rolled over. “Sora?”
He jumped to his feet, but his legs were wobbly. He rested his palm against a column, steadying himself. Now that he was free, he could better remember what brought him to the position he was in. He remembered running. He remembered Bliss spinning him round and round. He remembered… the kiss. He wasn’t sure how long it had knocked him out, but it still had his body feeling funky.
He staggered forward to another column and looked around. Dozens of other creatures stuck in Bliss’s web surrounded him. Some strung up from the ceilings, others wrapped against the cavern walls. Somehow his web-sack had been left on the ground as if someone interrupted her lunch.
He’d considered trying to cut some of them loose, but other than a couple of unmoving ones, no
ne were within reach.
Suddenly, his mind cleared for a moment. “Sora!”
If they’d all come looking for him when he didn’t return, that would mean Bliss...
He cursed.
It was impossible to know which of the many tunnels would lead him to his friends, which ones would bring him to certain death, or which would do both. One thing he knew: the one he’d entered through would send him to an impossible climb.
He heard some more distant shouts and closed his eyes to try block out everything else and pick a direction. When he had his best guess, he bolted... or rather, tried to. His legs felt like reeds of cattails sticking up out of the river he’d grown up playing with Sora in. It took a moment for the blood to return to them after being wrapped up so tightly but after a few clumsy steps, he was surefooted as ever.
Clearing the tremendous lair took some time. He stopped for a breather when he nearly stepped on one of the daggers he lost battling Bliss. As he bent over to reclaim it, he realized he was standing near the poor sap in shiny armor who’d lost his skin and flesh to Queen Bliss.
The corpse clutched a raggedy, old, doll against his chest with a sterling gauntlet that looked exactly like Torsten’s before Whitney ruined them. He wasn’t sure what Pi’s magical doll was supposed to look like, but it was a strange enough thing to be in a spider goddess’s lair.
“Sorry buddy,” Whitney said as he bent over and pried the doll lose. What little was left of the corpse’s brittle bones crumbled and the gauntlet securing it clanged onto the floor. Whitney took a moment to study the doll. It looked like something a beggar might make his son because he has nothing else—vaguely human in shape, but barely identifiable, with bits of yarn for hair.
“All of this for a piece of trash?” He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but surely one of those exquisite, mannequin dolls rich girls loved. At least something that didn’t look like a shrunken scarecrow.
He sighed. It wouldn’t be easy to embellish the prize he stole from a goddess’s lair, but the story of how he got it was grand enough. He stuffed the doll in his waistband, took measure of the armor, and decided to slide the gauntlets over his forearms. He figured he owed Torsten that much after ruining his pair back in the ruins.