by Hugo Huesca
Every now and again, he heard screams, or watched spider warriors crawling through burning wreckage, never close enough to him to start a fight. They were hunting, too. Looking for the mindbrood, just as he was.
So he followed them, from a distance, through thick smoke and clouds of dust, deeper and deeper into Burrova, until he reached the market. Ed snuck his way through to a broken stall and used it as a hiding place before any spider could see him and from there, he took a good look at the situation.
He found people.
They were covered in web, at least two dozen of them, with more being hauled in by whatever spider warriors remained in Amphiris’ entire cluster. Not many. Ed suspected the Queen was betting it all, her entire family, on this brutal attack.
The Queen herself was there, directing her cluster personally. When Ed saw her, he ducked under his stall, just in case her vision was better than her daughters’.
He had to concede it to her, it was a sound strategy. Attack early, with overwhelming force, while her enemy was young and weak, instead of waiting around while it grew in strength.
If only she had chosen a battlefield other than Burrova.
He had little doubt what destiny would befall the captured villagers. Few of them moved, and whatever skin was visible beneath the web was yellowish and sick from the venom. Ed managed to recognize the governor’s figure—he was the fattest—and the wide shoulders of Heorghe, the blacksmith.
The others were farmers and merchants, and trade workers, mostly unfamiliar faces, but all innocent. They would get eaten alive by the spiders so Amphiris could replenish her cluster’s numbers.
There’s no way I can fight them head on, Ed thought. He lacked strength. He lacked enough power. It was almost ironic. He had traveled all this way from Earth because he desired the power to make a difference, he had sold his heart for it, and now he was here and could do nothing but watch…
No, screw that, he thought. It was true that he couldn’t go around throwing fireballs at will, but he had power. It was time he started using it.
He dropped his sword next to him and knelt while grabbing handfuls of dirt. The ground was hard, compacted by years of constant walking above it. But his drones could eat rock without issue. Under that kind of bite, the soft ground of the village would part like hot butter.
He turned on his Evil Eye. The ley lines converged over the burning wreckage of the governor’s house. The fire would be no issue. Underground cared nothing for that fire.
He summoned five drones to his side, careful not to expose them to the spiders’ line-of-sight. The purple-and-pink robes looked out of place in the rain of ash, but the drone’s expressions matched his. They were grim and determined.
“I want to build a dungeon,” he told them, pointing at the burning house. “With a dungeon Seat right under there. So start digging.”
Amphiris gazed upon the work of her cluster approvingly. The losses had been terrible, and it would take her years to restore her cluster to its normal size, but the mindbrood had nowhere to go, and thanks to her, it had no food and no victims to lay its eggs into.
It had been a good thing they had found the creature as soon as they did, while it was a newborn. Any longer and it would’ve proven too much for a single cluster to handle, if the legends about the Bane’s rate of growth were to be believed.
As it was now, her daughter, princess Laurel, had sighted the mindbrood at the northwest, being chased by Burrova’s protector, the Sheriff. Laurel had taken half of Amphiris’ remaining warriors and was in hot pursuit of both. Soon, nothing would threaten Amphiris’ cluster again.
Not entirely true, she reminded herself. The Queen’s job was never done. Other clusters would seize upon her children’s weakened state and would force her to lose a lot of territory. Perhaps she would have to relocate her nest, even. It was a cruel state of affairs, since Amphiris was protecting even the other clusters from the Bane, but such was Nature.
The Queen reached the center of the market and clacked her mandibles in approval at her hard-working warriors. About half of Burrova’s population had been captured already, with the other half still running near the north gates, which were as barred as the Southern ones. Amphiris had no idea who had locked the gates, but she was not one to question her good fortune.
Instead, she made eye contact with the fat King of the human cluster. She could feel her mouth water in response to the man’s fear. Rulers always tasted the best. Authority recognized authority, and it was a treat like no other to dine on a defeated King.
She would gain so many experience points after she was done feeding—perhaps she wouldn’t have to worry about losing territory after all.
A noise took the King’s attention away from her, which irritated the Queen. Spider hearing wasn’t as good as the humans, so she had to look the King’s way to see what the fuss was about.
His house had collapsed into itself, disappearing from view and letting only the giant tongues of fire be visible from its hole in the ground.
“You humans like to dig deep,” she told the man. He could not answer, since his mouth was covered by web.
That was a necessary precaution. Some humans could cast magic if they were allowed to speak and although Amphiris’ scouts had found no mages among Burrova’s population—except for the Rangers, who could use magic-like talents—she hadn’t made herself Queen by being careless.
The King mumbled something unintelligible her way, and shook his head vigorously. The Queen had no patience for pleading. At best, listening to her food complain and beg gave her headaches.
“Over there,” she told the King, pointing a sticky leg at the northwest corner, “see those spiderlings? Those are my scouts. They come to tell me that my warriors have found another big group of your cluster and are capturing them as we speak. I know this because of the way the entire group ebbs and flows. They move like this when they’re happy, and they’re happy because they know they’ll be rewarded. I’ll let most of them live, for I must replenish the losses your guards gave the cluster before we killed them.”
She reveled in the man’s despair, but a part of her didn’t share the mirth. The two Rangers could’ve swayed the course of the invasion, the Queen knew it. She had seen the devastation those explosive arrows could bring to a warrior.
Granted, the female had been consumed by the poison yesterday and was probably dead. But where was the other one?
She wasn’t one to question good luck, but it was indeed suspicious. She decided she would set her spiderlings on lookout duty, make sure there was no one hiding among the wreckage of the marketplace. Caution made for an old ruler. It was a lesson that this human King should have learned, before this happened.
Perhaps they wouldn’t have allowed the Bane to penetrate their midst.
In the distance, a part of the northern palisade was finally engulfed by the flames when the wind shifted. Instead of burning in place like a good wall, it immediately collapsed, causing such a ruckus that even the spiders heard it. Many stopped working to see the structure collapse. The Queen could feel the ground under her feet tremble, which was unexpected given the distance, but who really understood how those fickle human structures worked? Not her.
Meanwhile, her cluster was admiring the flames as they consumed the wall. They may have been hard workers, and loyal, but they could be so short sighted…
“Don’t just stand there!” Amphiris exclaimed, using the natural spider-language instead of the humans’ Common. “Warriors, go guard that exit before any infected villager has a chance to leave!”
The ground trembled again. To be exact, it was trembling constantly, a series of tremors whose vibrations made her mandibles click in concern, her ancestral instinct recalling earthquakes that previous Queens had faced. But these tremors were small, of little concern, and she assumed they were related to the palisade, which was falling by itself now, as if the northern side had triggered a chain reaction.
Good, she
judged. Good riddance. The palisade had been built out of a lot of trees the humans had taken from her territory. Those trees had made for good cover, and excellent hunting spots.
Her warriors were well trained. Instead of letting the tremors slow them, they hurried to drop their new prisoners at the pile, then rushed to meet with their already running brethren. Amphiris was left with only five warriors and most of the spiderlings, which was good enough to protect her from whatever remained of Burrova’s defenders. And her favored daughter, Laurel, would return soon enough with more warriors.
Amphiris was left with little to do but watch her progeny set to their assigned tasks. The Queen was more used to this than to fighting, and all this activity had made her very, very hungry.
It’s no big deal if I have dinner early, she thought. Just half a snack, before my victory feast.
Perhaps she could keep the King alive if she ate carefully, so he could see how her cluster devoured his, later tonight. In her experience, humans could survive having part of their extremities eaten for a reasonably long time.
Another tremor, this time stronger, and this one sounded like a rockfall. She stopped dead in her tracks, and for a second thought it was indeed an earthquake. But it passed, just like the others had. Just another wall that had collapsed.
Yes, all this activity had made her very hungry indeed.
Her mouth watered, and she clicked her mandibles in satisfaction.
“We are going to have so much fun together, you and I,” she told the King without looking at him.
But when she started to turn in the King’s direction, she discovered that the man wasn’t where she had left him. In fact, few of the humans were. There was only a hole in the ground, almost big enough to fit her whole. It had appeared out of nowhere, and if she had been just a few hundred feet closer to the entrance, it would’ve opened under her.
As she watched, her many eyes detected a small contingent of tiny creatures in purple-and-pink robes, coming in and out of the hole, carrying the webbed humans with them into the underground right in front of Amphiris’ stunned progeny. There were already less than a dozen humans left, and the few among them who were conscious were looking at the imps with a mixture of terror and hope.
It was that look which transformed the Queen’s surprise into unadulterated hatred.
They were messing with her food!
“Who?!” Amphiris roared, fury surging through her veins. “Who dares?!”
Silence was her answer, silence and an obscene gesture from one of the imps.
But Amphiris’ ancient instincts recognized this magic. She remembered the metal spires and siege towers breaking through soil and bedrock, entire castles coming to life in a matter of seconds, tunnels appearing in the middle of a nest and spitting out hordes of monstrous regiments, carrying with them slavery and devastation for her kind.
This was how the old Dungeon Lords fought, bringing war and death to their enemies instead of sitting placidly in their lairs, waiting for bands of adventurers to come kill them.
Amphiris recalled the young man with the Mantle’s smell, how he had run away from her and her daughters. Was he the one behind this?
“What are you looking at?” she asked her warriors. “Kill the humans, capture that tunnel!”
Her voice pushed her spiders back into action. The five warriors hissed and roared and charged at the imps with horns ready to impale and mandibles ready to bite and tear.
The imps saw this and started moving faster, trying desperately to outrun the charging spiders. They would be too slow…
Two of the warriors disappeared from view when holes burst open in front of their path, craters just big enough to engulf them whole and no more. A third warrior managed to jump over another hole, stopped, looked over her shoulder, then charged again. The ground all around her simply collapsed this time, like the soil underneath it had disappeared all of a sudden. The spider plummeted, screaming in terror, and had half her legs trapped in rocks and upturned ground. Three of her legs were broken, and dirt covered her eyes and mandibles.
Amphiris realized it wasn’t just a collapse, but an improvised ramp, and started running toward her fallen warrior, but she wasn’t as fast as her spiders. A man in leather armor ran out of the opening, an iron sword in hand and flaming green eyes visible through the cloud of dust that surrounded the scene.
Before the Queen could reach them, the man drove his sword straight through the warrior’s mouth, almost to the hilt, with the tip of the weapon coming out of the spider’s head covered in brain matter and blue blood.
The warrior thrashed in agony and almost sent the man flying through the air, but he managed to hang on to the sword’s hilt. Mandibles snapped closed just an inch above his wrists, and as the spider died, she slumped forward, almost burying him under her. The man jumped back, looked over his shoulder at the approaching Amphiris, hurried to set his sword free, and ran back into the tunnel just as the furious spider Queen reached her dead daughter.
“Come back, coward!” she demanded, but the man was gone. She tried to follow the ramp, but it was too small for her. She remembered the man was a Dungeon Lord, and she changed her mind about meeting him on his turf.
“Go get him,” she called, instead, to her two remaining warriors, who had changed course when they had seen their Queen join the fight and were just reuniting with her. “He has little experience points, go and overwhelm him!”
The warriors looked at the ramp, then at their Queen, and hesitated. Amphiris hated to admit it, but they were right in doubting. She wouldn’t enter herself.
She gestured with one long, powerful leg at a contingent of spiderlings, “You, lead the charge! Whoever bites him and lives gets to grow old!”
The spiderlings lacked the warriors’ risk recognition, and they happily ran through clouds of dust until they reached the ramp. Amphiris calculated their numbers to be at least three hundred.
Nothing happened. The ramp made a sharp turn downward, and she could not get a good look.
Minutes went by while the Queen and her two warriors waited. The dust slowly settled back. The imps had disappeared back into their hole, leaving at least six humans behind, including the broad-shouldered blacksmith and his daughters.
“They got him,” Amphiris declared. “Deparia, bring me his corpse. Don’t dare hesitate again, or you will become food for your sisters.”
“As you command, my Queen,” the warrior told her. She gave the other warrior a last look of despair and disappeared under the ramp.
After she was out of sight, the earth rumbled and the entrance collapsed with a muffled growl of displaced rocks.
Amphiris jumped away, by instinct, and saved herself when the collapse grew in intensity and became a deep hole that swallowed whole her last remaining warrior so fast that the creature didn’t have time to scream.
“No!” Amphiris roared. She dared risk a glance down the crater, and discovered that her daughter had been impaled against sharp wooden spears that had been waiting for her at the bottom.
He can build traps!
But how? Where was he getting materials?
Desperate, Amphiris examined the battlefield, while moving in a zig-zag pattern, trying to remain a step ahead of the tremors that shook the earth.
The King’s nest! The house that had collapsed!
If she didn’t stop this now, he would gain control of the entire village. And perhaps of the mindbrood…
The tremors reached close to her, and she changed directions at the last second. The Dungeon Lord had invested a lot of energy in saving all the humans he could. So, she ran at the six that remained, at full speed, her powerful legs easily carrying her over crater and holes that opened her way as she did so, never big enough for her to fall down them.
Her mouth watered at the sight of the trembling blacksmith, who was aware of her approaching shape, but could do nothing about it.
Come out, little Lord, she thought. Come out and joi
n my feast!
Another hole, barely big enough to fit a warrior. But big enough for her front right leg to fall down its length, and for her momentum to carry her forward before she could stop herself.
There was a sickening crunch, and Amphiris roared in pain as her leg broke away from her body in a spray of blood, then her weight came crashing down just a few feet away from the blacksmith.
The Queen screamed in agony and fear and tried to upright herself. She had dirt in her eyes, and one of them had burst when her head had smashed against a jagged rock. Her hearing was off, but she could smell the Mantle approaching her. The Dungeon Lord.
One of her functioning eyes saw his figure standing in front of her, his face a mask of severity marred by sweat and effort.
His sword was covered in blue blood, and he had the tip pointed at her.
Amphiris tried to stand, to impale him with her horn, but the man jumped back, and a shower of tiny imps fell out of nowhere and over her head. She could feel tiny hands grabbing at her eyes. One of them bit her eye—
“Arghhhhh!” She rolled over in a frenzy, sending all the imps flying away and destroying them. Her legs flailed about, and she fought to regain her balance, to recover. Strings of web shot everywhere, trying to hit an enemy she couldn’t see—
The sword flashed in and out of view, and her remaining front leg exploded in pain at her joint and showered her with another spray of blood. The Queen’s roar was cut short when the sword cut another leg, and then another.
He was maiming her. Methodically, extremity by extremity, dancing around her flanks while she could do nothing but wail, hit after hit, never stopping long enough for her to try and fight back.
“Noooo!” she screamed. “Stop! Stop! Mercy, Dungeon Lord, mercy!”
The attacks stopped.
How many legs had she lost already? Half of them? More?
If he didn’t kill her, the other Queens would. A maimed Queen rarely had time for her extremities to grow back. Such was Nature’s world.