The Midwest Wanderer

by Flint Maxwell

  If Queret couldn’t speak before, he was completely mute now. The two Arachnids just looked up in utter disbelief.

  This is who rules over us. This is who we serve and worship, Palentar thought. Even to his own Arachnid eyes, the Widow was a monster.

  “I feel your fear, my children. Fear not. I’ve made a promise to you; a promise I intend to keep. There has been a great disturbance amongst our kind, but what is the cause of this disturbance? Pray, do tell.”

  Queret kept stammering. Palentar realized that if one of them didn’t speak, they were liable to upset the Widow—and judging by the pile of bones behind them, the Widow had a short temper.

  “Ignatius Mangood,” Palentar finally said. “We have seen him in the village of Dominion, skulking amongst the ruins.” Then he winced.

  Queret looked up at him, a grateful smile on his face.

  “Ignatius Mangood? Here?”

  “Yes, Your Royalty.”

  “You have seen him with your own eight eyes?”

  Now Queret spoke up. His figure was stooped and he was visibly shaking. “Aye, Your Highness, we saw him with our own eyes. He, three others, and a creature I didn’t recognize.”

  A canine, Palentar thought. A dog. He knew it from his studies before the war.

  The Widow began to laugh. Cackle, in fact. Her legs reached the platform with an audible boom, cascading dust and dirt clouds into the thick air.

  The two Arachnids now took a conscious step back. If shit was about to go down, they wanted no part of the Widow’s wrath.

  “Ignatius Mangood,” she cooed. “How dare he step foot into my kingdom. First he has the audacity to slay one of my own Resurrected, and now he comes so close to the lair?” She laughed again, her bulbous middle rising and falling with the motion, her soft abdomen slapping the platform.

  “That is all, Your Grace,” Palentar said. His voice shook, too.

  “We just thought you should know,” Queret chimed in and suddenly Palentar wished Queret would’ve kept his big mouth shut.

  The Widow looked up at them for the first time since descending from the ceiling, and her eyes were filled with hate and malice. They were not the normal eyes of the Arachnids. No; instead of red, they were green, a glowing green. And instead of eight, the Widow was blessed with twelve eyes, wrapping the length of her head.

  “My stars,” Palentar wheezed. He raised his hands in front of his face, a gesture that could only be taken as rude, and tried his best to shield himself from the abnormality of the terrible creature.

  “Your stars, Master Palentar? Your stars? No, they’re my stars, and you are lucky I have not gouged your eyes out and ripped your arms off. You will look me in the face when you speak to me. Now, did Ignatius Mangood have the music box?”

  Palentar lowered his hands. He was unsurprised to see that they shook.

  “The music box? Erm…I mean, the music box, Your Highness?” Palentar said. He had not been this frightened since the Sacking of the Feebro during the second Spider War.

  “Yes, the music box. Certainly you know of the music box.”

  Queret looked at Palentar, his face was a mask of surprise. “You mean…the stories are true?”

  “Yes,” the Widow answered. “All of it…true.”

  Tales had passed through the years of the great music box, the simple wooden cube that could be used to access the world in between. Wars had been waged over it, for the use of its strange magic; oceans of blood had been spilt in its name—but to say it was more than a legend was a one-way ticket to ridicule.

  After a pause, Palentar admitted, “I saw no music box, Your Royalty. I only saw his death stick, and the blue fire that courses from its end.”

  “Yes, he wields the magic,” the Widow said. Her great pincers came together, click-clicking. Dying by those massive, curved spikes would be worse than any hell, Palentar thought. “And you did not dispose of him and his compatriots?”

  “I—uh, we tried, Your Highness,” Queret said. “But he was too strong.”

  Silence hung in the great cavernous lair, except for the constant dripping somewhere deep in the shadows—dripping that undoubtedly came from one of the Widow’s latest victims.

  Suddenly, the ground shook. Palentar lost his footing and fell to the side. He landed face-first into the pile of bones. Femurs and ribs flew out in every direction, landing with a clatter. The breath was knocked out of him.

  The Widow laughed. It was an unsettling sound, terrible enough to drive a man to insanity.

  “Not so strong now, are you, Master Palentar!”

  “We tried, Your Royalty!” Queret was screaming. “We tried, but he was just too—”

  “You did not try hard enough!” The Widow stood on her back legs. How she was able to lift such a massive middle up, no one would ever know; it defied the basic laws of physics, put the sciences to shame. From her abdomen, a stinger protruded. It was longer than a full-grown Centaur, harder than any metal, sharper than any blade—even the one the witch had carried when the Arachnids met Ignatius in the ruins of Dominion. Venom dripped from the end of the stinger,. Just the sight of that noxious liquid was enough to make Palentar feel woozy.

  Palentar scrambled up now. No matter where he was in all of Oriceran, it would be much too close to the Widow’s stinger.

  She moved forward, her legs taking the platform’s steps five at a time.

  “Run!” she shrieked. “Run before I change my mind and kill you where you stand.”

  The two Arachnids wasted no time in listening to the Widow. Faster than they’d run since the days of their youth, Queret and Palentar sprinted through the dark corridors and stairwells, out of the lair, and sprawled out on the forest floor in front of the guards, who did not wear shocked expressions on their faces. No, it must be a regular occurrence to the visitors of the Widow’s lair.

  Palentar looked at Queret. He noticed the Arachnid’s chitin had lost some of its shine. He was pale, ashy looking, his red eyes no longer glowed with fervor. He assumed he must look the same way…or worse.

  “Don’t suppose you two will be back,” the familiar guard said.

  They didn’t answer. They just scrambled up off of the forest floor and ran into the depths of the Dark Forest. Where they were going, they had no clue; just as long as it was far away from the Widow’s lair.

  ***

  Not long after Queret and Palentar fled, the familiar guard, whose name was Jinxton, was summoned into the lair. He gripped the hilt of his sword a little tighter and, at that moment, wished for a death stick so he could conjure up some sort of protection spell. He had never been able to grasp the concept of the magic some Arachnids were able to use, but that wouldn’t have stopped him from trying.

  His descent into the lair was as unpleasant as it always was—he had thought of it as a descent into madness on more than one occasion. When he entered the lair, crossing the same threshold of shadow into the sickly green light, he noticed the piles of bones were scattered amongst the stone floor, and that the Widow was not up high in her web, where she mostly stayed these days.

  That was not a good sign.

  “Ah, Jinxton,” the Widow sang in her sweet voice that was as sickly as the light permeating around the cavern. “I’ve been informed of some rather unfortunate news. It seems an enemy of our race has been spotted nearby. Much too close.”

  “Yes, Your Worship, I have heard.” He regretted the words as soon as they’d left his tongue. No doubt the Widow would hear this and think he was withholding information from her. She had been known to get…volatile once or twice before with those who opposed and conspired against her.

  “Dreadful news. Can my children not do anything right?”

  Jinxton fell to one knee and bowed his head to the giant spider in front of him. “I am sorry, My Queen.”

  “ ‘Sorry’ does not protect us, nor does it retrieve the music box. My beloved is waiting in the world in between.”

  “What will you have me
do, My Queen?” Jinxton asked. “I will do anything.”

  Silence.

  Jinxton closed his eyes and winced, trying to brace himself for the oncoming death. He had lived this long; in his time serving as a guard to the Queen, he had seen eight other guards ripped apart in this very room. He figured it was only a matter of time before the same befell him. And now that time had come, it seemed.

  But when he opened his eyes, the Widow was still on the platform. She hadn’t moved.

  Very quietly, she spoke. “Call the Orcs.”

  Surprise took him. The only thing that could have been more surprising at that moment would’ve been getting out of there alive.

  “The Orcs, My Queen?”

  “You heard what I said. Call them.”

  “But…our treaty, My Queen.”

  “The treaty means nothing to me now. All that matters is that Ignatius Mangood dies a painful death, and the music box is in my possession, where it rightfully belongs.”

  “Who should I call? The King? Or shall I go directly to the General?”

  “The King, Jinxton. I would hate to start another war in the process of this. We are too weak for that—but not for long. Once the music box is mine, I will free the enslaved, trapped in the world in between, and I will rule this world the way I was meant to…with my king by my side.”

  Jinxton bowed his head. “As you wish, My Queen. I will send word at once.”

  “Their best trackers,” the Widow said. “As many as they can spare. I will pay their weight in gold.”

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  With that, Jinxton left. As soon as he crossed the threshold back into the shadows, he breathed a sigh of relief. The air was musty and dank, but it had never tasted sweeter. When he had escaped the lair altogether, Cap, the other guard, looked at him with wide eyes, surprised that Jinxton had survived. Jinxton let out a laugh like that of an Arachnid tainted by the Stone and fell to his knees. Tears in his eyes, he bent over and kissed the forest floor over and over again.

  Not long after that, he sent a raven to the Orc King in the Terran Mountains, and a new plan was put into motion.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  When they arrived on the other side of the portal, Maria stuck the landing. A little wobbly, yeah, but better than landing face-first in the grass. Sherlock wasted no time in bounding across the wide open field. He galloped, moving faster than he had since the fight with Malakai, barking his head off, and shouting, Here we come, you Gnome bastards!

  “Geez, he really doesn’t like Gnomes for some reason,” Maria told her grandfather, who was standing in front of her with his hands on his hips and gazing at the night sky, which was now breaking into dawn—or whatever they called dawn on Oriceran. “Any reason why?”

  “No, none that I’m aware of,” Gramps said. He turned to look at her over his shoulder. There was a slight smile on his face. “Don’t worry, Sherlock will soon learn humility.”

  “As if that’s possible for a telepathic dog.”

  “Now is he telepathic or are you?” Gramps asked.

  “Ah, the questions that really matter; I’d assume me, because I can hear his thoughts and he can’t hear mine…or can he?” Maria took a step toward her grandfather and watched Sherlock with him. By the orange light on the horizon, she could see him jumping and snapping at various insect-like creatures that had taken flight at his arrival.

  “Ah, smart girl,” Gramps said.

  Then, out of nowhere, Sherlock shuddered to a stop. It was as if he’d hit an invisible wall. His voice filled Maria’s head.

  OWWWW, WHAT THE HELL!?

  “Sherlock? Are you okay?”

  Do I look okay?

  The answer was a definite no. Sherlock looked like a tangled up Slinky toy, his ass over his head.

  Was it a fucking Gnome? Is there a Gnome hiding somewhere? I’ll kill him, I’ll rip—

  “Not a Gnome,” Maria answered. She was just a few steps away from him now. “Do you see any Gnomes?”

  That’s why I specified…invisible Gnomes. They could be anywhere, Maria.

  She helped him up.

  “Invisibility is a myth. Not real, Sherlock.”

  But then again, magic wasn’t supposed to be real; giant spiders, either—in fact, none of this was supposed to be real.

  Gramps addressed the thoughts coming to her mind. “Oh, my dear, don’t be too sure of that. It seems Sherlock has hit not an invisible Gnome, but an invisible fence. For we are here." He looked up at seemingly nothing. "At the Light Elves' invisible castle.

  "Invisible? You can't be serious…are you?" Maria asked. This is way too fucking cool.

  He walked between them and raised a hand toward the sky.

  Maria’s mouth hung open.

  Above them, a door opened, and standing in the opening was a tall, slender but slightly muscular man…except for the long silken hair and the pointed ears. His face was a mask of unfriendliness. He was not the type of person Maria would’ve asked for directions from, had she stumbled across him while she was lost. Then she noticed that once the “door” had been opened, she was no longer looking at the vast field that had only been there seconds ago, but was looking at the inside of a monumental castle.

  What is going on here? It just gets more and more weird, doesn’t it? Maria thought to herself.

  Sherlock was equally baffled. He didn’t even bark at the tall man standing in front of them. She thought he would’ve at least stuck his snout into the door and sniffed for Gnomes. Luckily, that wasn’t the case.

  The man’s face broke out into a smile. It was a kind smile, and it changed his demeanor almost instantly. Maria noticed for the first, but not the last time that this particular man was quite handsome.

  Light Elf, Sherlock said. Almost just as bad as a Gnome. He growled low.

  “Ah,” Maria said under her breath. It made sense to her now.

  “Ignatius Mangood,” the Light Elf shouted in a high, sweet melodic voice. "Come, come, join us, old friend. Your companions, too."

  "Hold on," Gramps whispered.

  Mangood, Maria thought. After all of this, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to my grandfather’s true last name. Mangood, that sounds like something out of an epic fantasy novel. He’s always been Ignatius Apple to me, just as I’ve always been Maria Apple. Does this mean my real name is…Maria Mangood? I don’t know if I like the sound of that. "Wait…hold on?"

  Suddenly, the three of them were lifted in the air, soaring up to meet the Elf hanging from an invisible doorway in an invisible castle. Maria's fear overtook her. If they didn't slow down or stop soon, they would soon meet the distant mountains.

  Alas, they did stop, just as Maria closed her eyes.

  When she opened them, she was standing in a large shimmering room.

  Holy shit, she thought. This is crazy.

  “Where in the two moons have you been, old friend?” the Light Elf asked.

  “Earth,” Gramps answered. “I’ve been on Earth, where I would’ve stayed had certain circumstances not forced my hand.”

  “Oh, that does not sound good.”

  “It’s much worse than it sounds, actually,” Gramps said.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Truly I am. But know you are always welcome here in our castle.” The Light Elf made a sweeping gesture to the now-nothingness behind him. Maria blinked a few times slowly.

  “What the heck?” she said. “I just saw the inside of the castle and now it’s gone. What kind of magic is this?”

  “There’s plenty of magic you don’t quite know yet, Maria,” Gramps said, smiling at her. “Even magic I don’t understand. That’s the beauty of Oriceran. We are surrounded by mystery, by beauty, by magic.” He looked out at the distant mountains on the horizon. Maria had never seen him look at anything like that.

  “Ah, Ignatius, you speak so poetically,” the Light Elf said. “Our sweet home.”

  As Gramps shook his head, the hazy look in his eyes vanished. It was as
if he wasn’t there at all before, and was just now coming back.

  “Thank you, E’olin. Speaking of the castle, what's with the fence? That wasn't here the last time I visited, was it?”

  “We were forced to up our security after a break-in and a murder. A very important necklace was stolen.”

  Gramps raised his eyebrows.

  “No, don’t worry. A wonderful half Light Elf named Leira has helped us. Still, we’ve learned our lesson here. Better safe than sorry,” E’olin said.

  “Sorry to hear that, E’olin,” Gramps said.

  “Yes, sorry, E’olin,” Maria said softly. E’olin? More and more her life was turning into something out of The Lord of the Rings or The Wheel of Time.

  Sherlock sniffed the air deeply. Gnomes, he said. I smell them.

  “Leave the Gnomes alone, Sherlock,” Maria said.

  “Ah, yes, your friend must have a strong nose,” E’olin said. “I admire that.”

  Sherlock ignored him.

  “What do you say, Sherlock?”

  He looked up at her with his blood-rimmed eyes. There was a slight anger in them.

  “Sherlock?” Maria repeated.

  Sherlock barked a thank you.

  “What a lovely creature!” E’olin said.

  Yeah, yeah, your mother, pal, Sherlock replied.

  Maria gave him a death glare, which he promptly ignored.

  “So, Ignatius, what brings you here to our lovely home?” E’olin asked.

  Gramps shifted. “Well, about that…our friend Sherlock here speaks true. We are here to visit the Gnomes. There is certain information we need extracted.”

  “Ah, the library. A wonderful place it is. We’ve heard of beings traveling the world to visit our stacks, but never someone from another world. Earth; it’s been so long since I’ve been there. How is it these days? Do folks still travel by horseback and wield six-shooters? Oh, how I loved playing cowboy!”

  “No, you’re a couple hundred years off,” Maria said, then, “Geez, how old are you?”

  The Light Elf smirked. “It’s not polite on any world to ask one their proper age.”