“Go get us some more hands to work with,” an arachne told a salamander woman. “We’ll get everything that’s salvageable ready to be taken out.”
The salamander nodded and took off with a hasty trot while Sheal remained by Squeak’s side, the ant girl watching with a nervous frown as the speedy reptile left in search of more threatening monsters to join them. She was then pulled along by Sheal as the rest of the group made their way down the incline towards the storehouse while flaming branches began to fall from the tree above. Upon reaching the building they saw three elven women keeping close to the open barn door while nervously looking inside, along with a goblin and mite who appeared to be just as hesitant with entering.
“What are you idiots doing?” the arachne demanded. “We need to pack up everything in there that’s useful and get the hell out of this forest. Why are you all just standing there?”
“We know!” an elf barked out at her. “That’s why we were dragged here against our will. But your friend in there isn’t stopping!”
“Stopping? Stopping with what?”
“Butchering anyone she gets a hold of!” another elf cried out as she pointed to the doorway. “We’re not going in there as long as she’s in there! No fucking way!”
“Um… me either,” the goblin spoke up shaking her head. “She scary. Very scary.”
“She’s lost it,” the mite droned while skittering about. “She won’t stop. She won’t listen to us.”
“Stop what? What are you talking about?” the arachne asked. She skittered forward while Sheal pulled a reluctant Squeak along with her, the three entering the storehouse and looking around before jumping in shock at what they saw.
The elven archery billet was normally a wonderful, almost magical, workshop, at least when everything wasn’t going to hell around it. These prized establishments were the birthplace to the renowned elven bows made by their expert creators, with their quality and piercing power far surpassing what other monsters and even humans were able to produce. On the left side of the workshop the bows themselves were cut and carved into their elegant and sturdy frames from the trees of Green Haven, with piles of lumber stored near several benches that had all the proper cutting tools to sculpt their famous weapons on.
Beside that the next step on the assembly line was tying the wire, which was kept in large spools hanging from the ceiling where the near-unbreakable cord glistened in the light as they dangled below. Of course, elven bows weren’t like any others in Eden, as they were known to be tied with three times the strength as normal bows were, with their strings being incredibly tight and under great stress. The middle of the workshop was where the elves performed the tying of the string in a unique way, where a suspended half-log with a rounded top and flat bottom was set horizontally with large chains holding it up from the rafters above by way of two steel hooks connected to each of the ends. The bows would be placed over and held in their proper curved form atop the log by using heavy lifts and pulleys holding iron weights on either wall next to the assembly beam, their chains going from the sides of the assembly beam where they were shackled onto the bows’ ends down into the ground where they came back up near the walls where large gears and weights were used with the process, each of them appearing to weigh a great deal as the dark iron masses dangled in their chains while secured towards the ends of some of the bows that somehow managed to hold strong even with the incredible amount of extra weight on them. Cans of oil shimmered on a rack near the assembly line, the same emollient that was seen on a few of the bows that were currently fastened to the log while curved around its top, all of them seeming to hold strong while bent like that despite the pressure applied with their heavy weights pulling on both ends. A line of twelve longbows could be assembled at once here, with exactly that many still on the log while only seven of them had strings tied to them at the moment, before they would be slid down along the beam to where the hooks on the end could be undone to allow the bows to be removed.
The right side of the workshop had dozens of the finished products hanging along a wall while others were on tables, each of them awaiting final inspection to ensure both quality and safety before being given to any elf for use. On a normal production day the archery billet would be staffed with dozens of elves, all working diligently to craft their prized bows, while oddly enough the process of making arrows was so ridiculously easy that only a smaller workshop located a few yards away was enough to produce plenty of arrows for every elven archer to use.
Today however it was not in the best of condition. Not from the forest being lit on fire and threatening to crumble into the ground to be swallowed up by the fiery hunger of Eden, but rather from a certain individual having turned the workshop into a hall of horrors for her own enjoyment.
“What the hell?” Sheal hoarsely asked.
The benches that were normally used to carve the bows from lumber now had bodies of elves lying on them instead, the women having had their limbs chopped into pieces while their chests were torn open and their faces looked like they were ripped off.
“Well this is a mess,” the arachne stated with a raised eyebrow.
Where the elven bows were hanging up on the walls so too were elven women, with some of the poor monsters missing their arms and legs while their frozen faces were contorted in agony.
Squeak gulped and tried her best not to throw up. She and her group slowly looked around at the grisly sight and seeing a few more elves, or at least parts of them, strewn about on the floor, before spotting the culprit of the bloodbath toying with her next victim on the other side of the suspended assembly beam.
“Please,” an elf whimpered, blood coming from her mouth as she was on her knees atop the bloodied floor. Her arms were lying nearby with cuts all over them, the mutilated elf barely staying conscious as her chest had multiple punctures in it while her face was covered in blood and tears. She wearily witnessed a large black pincer gently brushing aside her bloodied golden hair, shivering nervously as it then opened and placed her neck between the sharpened claws.
“Please… no more…” the elf begged before squealing in fear.
“Such… suffering,” a woman’s voice purred in delight. “Oh, I’ve waited for this for so long. This is truly a splendid day. That look of misery you have, your tears, your screams, the crying and begging you’ve done. Ah, I’ve relished the time we’ve spent together like this. I needed this so much.”
The elf started breathing sharply as her eyes widened, the girl then beginning to shriek in terror before a large stinger sharply struck her through the eye, the woman jerking with a splatter of blood while falling silent before the stinger jabbed her again and again, destroying her face and skull with loud crunches.
“Oh goddammit,” the arachne groaned, herself and the others watching as the dead elf was lifted up by her neck with the pincer that belonged to one of The Sisterhood’s more passionate killers. Squeak stared with wide eyes as she saw the fallen elf dangling by her neck that was slowly being crushed by the pincer, the monstrous limb being attached to a scorpia with messy brown hair, golden eyes, and a stoic expression that the ant girl swore for a moment revealed a very frightening leer before quickly vanishing.
“Rio!” the arachne shouted in frustration. She quickly skittered around the central log and fumed with anger behind the scorpia while Rio was tilting her head slightly to one side then the other as she watched the neck of the elf slowly cave between her crushing claws. She paid the arachne no mind, instead only seeming fixated on the elf she had butchered like so many others moments ago while staring at the corpse with a blank expression on her face.
“What do you think you are doing?” the arachne demanded. “What is the matter with you? How many times must we tell you, you can’t just kill so many of our slaves like this! Look at this mess!”
“I couldn’t help it,” Rio distantly replied. “They were screaming. I just had to play with them. It was… so seductive.”
“Kno
ck it off!” the arachne yelled, giving the scorpia a swift whack to the back of her head. Rio paused for a moment, snapped her pincer shut and sliced the head of the elf clean off her shoulders, let the body and severed head drop to the ground, and then slowly turned to face the spider with a dull expression on her face while tilting her head slightly.
“Don’t do that again.”
“This is unacceptable,” the arachne hissed. “We need these stupid elves and their bows to help us overthrow the humans in this land, and we can’t do that when they’re hacked into fucking pieces! We’ve told you this multiple times now. For crying out loud, why is this so hard for you to understand?”
“Counting eleven dead elves in here,” another arachne said as she and her sister were slowly skittering around the workshop. “Um… I think. Hard to tell with the scraps left on the floor.”
“Eleven elves,” the one before Rio growled with a face palm. “And I distinctly remember you doing this to at least six more the other day.”
“Those elves tried to run away,” Rio reasoned. “I disciplined them as were my orders.”
“We didn’t want them dead! You just had to smack them around a bit, that was all. Maybe a take an ear or toe, something to get them to behave. But no, you slaughtered them worse than a butcher does to a cow!”
“It was a fun afternoon,” Rio agreed with a nod.
“Are all scorpias dimwitted, or just you? We need these elves to fight with us, and they can’t do that if they’re dead! You just tore apart eleven elves-”
“Fourteen, actually.”
“Fourteen?” the arachne questioned with a jump. She quickly looked around the bloodied workshop then back to Rio in bewilderment. “Wait, where are their bodies?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Rio plainly replied.
“For fuck’s sake!” the arachne shouted in frustration. “Stop killing everyone you see! Why is that so hard for you? All you have to do is watch over these filthy tree rats and make sure they do as they’re told, not chop them into pieces whenever the mood strikes you!”
In the blink of an eye Rio whipped her stinger over her shoulder, stopping it right in front of the surprised arachne’s face while the scorpia casually lifted a claw and brushed her hair aside.
“I’ve. Been. Bored,” Rio calmly stated. “I was promised a thrilling time with murdering as many humans as I wished when you invade Rockhelm. Men to rape, that’s a nice bonus, but I’m here to kill first and foremost. That is what gets me wet the most. However that event has yet to be delivered upon, and the appetite my loins feel is quite short of that which my claws yearn for. I’ve waited, and waited, and waited so long for my fun, and yet you all keep asking me to wait some more. I’m tired of waiting. I’m tired of wanting. I’m tired of not having my fun.”
Squeak stared at her in disbelief from her words, the ant girl then slowly looking around the room to seeing the other monsters merely watching the standoff while not showing any surprise themselves.
“You can’t blame me,” Rio factually continued. “When these elves started screaming from the sudden commotion, when they cowered in fear and cried like weaklings, when they showed how fragile and ripe they were for my claws, I could contain myself no longer. I needed to quench my thirst for bloodshed, to hear their shrieks that overshadowed the chaos outside. I simply had to wring out what agony and suffering I could from their measly lives when they tempted me as they did. I had to do it.”
“And you will have to answer to the gemini for what you’ve done after this is over with!” the arachne shouted in her face, with Rio not showing any reaction from her words. Squeak however was rendered squeakless in shock from hearing that, her eyes having quickly locked onto the arachne while questioning if she heard correctly just now.
“I’m sick of dealing with the trouble you cause!” the arachne yelled. “If you want to kill those who are enemies to The Sisterhood, that’s fine, do whatever you want to them. But murdering our own slaves and tools just because you’re bored isn’t acceptable. Our leaders will not be pleased about yet another loss of our resources because of your inability to control yourself.”
Rio merely stared at her in silence, not offering any reaction or rebuttal. The arachne threw her arms up in exhaustion while Squeak started to feel even more fear for Daniel’s safety growing now, the ant girl quickly glancing around the workshop for how she could escape to find him as soon as possible. The arachne ruffled her hair with a frustrated grunt before waving her hand around in the air as she looked over the assembly beam in the middle of the room.
“Whatever, let’s just grab what we can and go. Get every last bow that you can and pack them up, we need to leave right now.”
“She needs to leave right now!” an elf cried out pointing to Rio.
“Get in here and get to work!” the arachne yelled with trembling fists. The elves were pushed forward by the goblin and mite while Sheal and Squeak stepped aside, the frightened women nervously looking around from Rio to the other monsters in the room while the arachne pointed to the scorpia accusingly. “And you! Since you slaughtered all our little helpers, you can make yourself useful for once and help them get these bows gathered up! We lost plenty of elves today, let’s at least salvage these weapons for other elves to use for us, ones that haven’t been hacked to bits by simpleminded scorpias!”
Rio merely stared at the arachne without saying a word, the three spiders then quickly skittering over to the side of the workshop and gathering the bows from the wall while throwing off corpses that were in their way.
“Hurry up,” Sheal ordered with a wave to the central beam. “Get those things off there, quick.”
“Wait, what?” an elf questioned with a jump. “Hold on, all the bows that are ready to use are over there, the ones on the assembly bench aren’t ready yet. We can’t take those with us.”
“Every. Last. One,” an arachne stressed at her. “Your reputable bows are not as replaceable as you yourselves are. We’re not leaving behind a single one.”
“They’re not ready yet,” the elf argued back. “It takes days to properly prepare these for use. This batch needs considerably more time to finish. Not to mention we can’t even remove these bows from the bench yet, it’s not safe.”
“Not safe?” Sheal questioned. “What’s so dangerous about them?”
“Do you have any idea the strength those wires are fastened with?” the other elf snapped. “Any elf can make her own bow, it’s not exactly the hardest thing to do, but Green Haven’s are the best there is in Eden because we don’t fuck around with building them! These bows here are coated with a special salve made from amordyl ferns, that’s what makes them able to hold the extra tight wire without snapping like fucking twigs. Those bows need to set in that position with the proper weight for balance and constant care with that balm to fortify their frames otherwise they’ll break from the stress, and if that happens that fucking wire will slice you in half!”
“We can’t touch those,” the first elf insisted. “Take the others if you want, and any personal ones our sisters may have, but there’s no way to safely remove these ones right now.”
“What about this one?” the goblin asked, standing at the end of the assembly bench and closely examining the last bow in the line. “It looks good. Looks like any other bow. Doesn’t look dangerous.”
“Oh yeah?” the elf sneered. “Go ahead. I dare you to try to remove it. Go on.”
The goblin scoffed at the woman then started tugging on the bow to slide it down towards the hooks on the end. She grunted and failed to budge it before grabbing onto the end and struggling to move it around. The chains below held strong and taut, the goblin growling in frustration as she wasn’t able to dislodge the bow at all. She started kicking the steel clamp on the end that was attached to the chains, everyone watching in silence as the monster hit it again and again while being unable to remove it.
“I don’t think it’s coming off,” the mite droned as s
he slowly buzzed around the beam to the other side, watching as the bow wasn’t moving in the slightest despite the goblin’s efforts. She landed on the log over the bow’s end and tapped it a few times while shakily tilting her head now and again, seeing that the weapon was really secured as warned about.
With a big jump the stubborn goblin struck her foot down and kicked the clamp hard, a snap being made from the bow as the end was bent at an angle just below the steel holder where the wire was tightly fastened. The goblin stared at it for a moment as it remained in place then smiled weakly and shrugged at the arachne nearby.
“Um… I think it broken. Heh heh.”
The bent end of the bow crumpled before it snapped off and was whipped right under the beam with a sharp shrill, the wire being snapped like a whip as it tore through the air in an upward arc beside the log and right through the mite who was instantly sliced in two. Everyone except Rio stared in surprise as the little monster was cleaved by the wire with a spray of blood before dropping to the ground and twitching a few times.
“Uh… oh,” the goblin slowly said.
“Told you,” an elf smirked.
“You mistreat your weapon, and your weapon will fuck you up,” the other elf stated with a nod.
“Wow,” an arachne said. “I see what you mean.”
“Let’s just pack up the ones that are ready,” another suggested as she carefully inspected the bow in her hands. “Um, these bows are ready to be held, right?”
“Those over there are fine,” an elf answered. “The ones here on the assembly beam aren’t going anywhere. Unless you want to end up like your little friend there and test your luck.”
“I don’t,” the goblin replied, shaking her head as she watched the two halves of the mite finally stop moving.
“Fine, let’s just grab these and get the hell out of here,” an arachne said as she was plucking bows off the wall in a hurry. “All of you, get over here and get to work, now!”
Chronicles of Eden - Act XII Page 12