Now he turned to Queret, scowling, his fangs protruding. They stood at the edge of the Dark Forest. Somewhere, something that sounded like a crow, but wasn’t, cawed. Creatures moved unseen except for their glowing eyes; sticks and bramble snapped beneath their feet, and low growling rumbled in the darkness.
Ah, home. Palentar could never leave here. It would be like a fish leaving water, a bird leaving the sky.
“What?” Queret bellowed in response to Palentar’s scowl, his eight eyes crossing.
“This is your fault, you know,” Palentar replied. “You should’ve killed the girl.”
“We were outnumbered! And you saw with your eight eyes the same man I saw! Ignatius Mangood…” quietly, he added, “slayer of daemons.”
“Fool. We are not to be frightened by men or wizards. We are superior in every respect.” Palentar held up all six of his arms and motioned to his legs, emphasizing how Arachnids were better equipped than man, who had only four limbs.
“I know we are. I’m sorry. His light magic frightened me.”
The truth was, the light magic had frightened Palentar, too—but he was smart enough not to admit it.
He looked into Queret’s eyes with burning intensity. “You are to tell the Widow of your folly. I will say nothing.”
Queret raised his arms to the dark sky and screamed. It was loud enough to rattle the trees above. Black leaves fell like broken-winged birds.
Palentar swept his robe as he plunged forward into the forest, leading the way to the Widow’s lair.
Palentar and Queret arrived at the Widow’s lair over two hours later.
Two Arachnid guards descended from the nearby trees, their silky webs lowering them gracefully.
“State your business,” one of the guards said. His eyes lit up as Palentar stepped forward. “Pal, wouldn’t expect you out here. Not since…” he trailed off.
A low growl built up in the pit of Palentar’s stomach. He knew what the guard was about to bring up. You mustn’t let him get to you, Palentar scolded himself. After all, this creature—whose name he could not remember, though he recalled the hooked scar across his face, and who probably served underneath Palentar’s battalion in the Great Spider War—was nothing but a lowly guard.
“Our business is our own,” Palentar said.
“Sorry, Pal, it is not. Not when visiting the Widow.”
Palentar glared, and the two Arachnids practically had a staring contest. About a minute passed before Queret stepped forward, his voice shaky.
“Man,” he explained. “We saw man in the village nearby.”
“Man?” the guard prodded, and the other guard righted himself from his strand of web, obviously taking an interest.
“Not just any man,” Queret whispered. He brought a claw up to his mouth to cover his whisper—no one really knew what things were listening in the Dark Forest. Everything was evil; everything was an enemy. Even the trees had been known to take the lives of unlucky wanderers.
“Who?” the guard wanted to know.
“Ignatius Mangood.”
The guards took a step back, their claws clanking on the hard rocky ground. They exchanged a look, then looked back at Queret and Palentar.
“I mean it,” Queret said, but it was too late—the guards had burst out laughing. Their laughter was so loud, in fact, something fled from a nearby tree, rustling the leaves and chittering as it went.
“Ignatius Mangood is long gone,” the other guard said. “Lost in the fires of the war for Dominion.”
“No, he’s not. I saw him with my own eight eyes,” Queret said.
“This true, Palentar?”
Palentar nodded solemnly.
The familiar guard narrowed his eyes. He’s not going to believe us, Palentar realized. The only way the guards would believe them was if Ignatius Mangood emerged from the shadows, right then and there, wielding his death stick and spouting blue fire.
Palentar turned, flourishing his robes as he did so. They made a snapping sound, like an umbrella blown outward by a strong gust of wind.
“Queret, let us go.”
“But—” Queret protested.
“Come!” When Palentar raised his voice, not many were known to disobey him; Queret least of all. Arachnids such as he were dependent on others at all times. “If these guards wish not to believe us, let them. It is their flesh that shall be feasted upon when the Widow learns of the news too late,” he claimed, loud enough for them to hear.
They turned their backs to the guards and took about five steps away from the Widow’s lair before the familiar guard spoke up in a quavering voice.
“Palentar, wait just a moment.”
A smile spread across Palentar’s face. He turned back around, and Queret followed suit.
“Do you swear it? Do you swear by the Black Stars of Onaugran that Ignatius Mangood is back on Oriceran and nearby?”
Palentar said, “I do.”
Queret echoed him.
The guards exchanged another look between them. This time there was no humor in it. Fear, Palentar figured, and rightfully so. Men were vile beings. More often than not, they were easily disposed of; Ignatius Mangood was the last of a dying breed. He was no ordinary man. He, like many others of the village of Dominion, before they were killed, practiced magic that was long forgotten in the ages of time.
Ignatius Mangood had survived the onslaught against Dominion with the help of that vile queen, Zimmy Ba, and now—Palentar had seen it in his eyes back in the village—Ignatius Mangood was out for revenge.
There is perhaps nothing more dangerous than a man who possesses the power of magic looking for revenge. It was then that he realized Ignatius had left them alive on purpose, to spread word among the Arachnids that he smelled blood—their blood.
“Then go in, Palentar, and give your news to the Widow. Just know your safety is not guaranteed,” the familiar guard said as he and his companion both stepped aside.
Through a circular doorway draped with webbing, the two Arachnids entered the Widow’s lair. The first thing Palentar noticed was the stench. Even to an Arachnid, it was a smell worse than death, worse than the stink of man.
The darkness was so complete that Palentar could not, for a moment, see where he was going. Then his eight eyes adjusted, and he saw they were in a vast hallway, which led downward.
To the Gates of Hell, he thought.
“What if she kills us?” Queret asked, his voice was still shaky. “What if she kills us and sends us to the Great Relief? I’m not ready for that, Pal. I have a long life ahead of me. I wanted to see the mountains. I wanted to stand atop them and shout out my fealty to the Widow.” He raised his voice slightly at the last part—probably hoping the Widow would hear him. Little did he know that the Widow heard and saw most everything; though since Malakai’s death at the hands of the young witch, she had not done much of anything besides mourn—not for the death of Malakai, but for the death of her chances to obtain the music box.
Suddenly, a high voice sang into their ears. “Oh, my children, I won’t kill you.”
The two Arachnids froze.
“Come, come forward, my children. Let me look upon you with my own eyes.”
It was the Widow.
The darkness ebbed, replaced with a cold, greenish light. Palentar nudged Queret forward.
There had only been one other time Palentar had come close to seeing the Widow. Many moons ago, after the victory over the village of Dominion, the generals were to be honored in a ceremony and decorated with the Chains of Insanity by the Widow herself. Palentar’s part in the battle had proven to be so instrumental that he’d been invited to the ceremony as well—but as poor luck would have it, his plans to overtake the generals were exposed, and he was demoted to watch duty—which, at the time, Palentar thought was worse than being banished to the Great Relief.
“You come with news, my children, do you not?”
Neither of them answered until Palentar nudged Queret again
, this time, harder.
“Uh…y-yes, Worship,” Queret answered.
“Come forward,” the Widow said. Palentar got the impression that she was speaking with a grin on her face. “No harm will come to you. That, I promise.”
Reluctantly, Queret stepped froward, and Palentar followed. They crossed the threshold of dark shadow and eerie green light into the Widow’s chambers. The little breath they held in their lungs was forced out of them upon gazing at the Widow’s lair.
It was as vast as the empty sky. Have we traveled so far underneath the ground? Palentar thought not, but the towering walls said otherwise. They were made of ancient rock, worn and weathered by the ages. All over the walls were webs, some old, some fresh and shining. The wrapped bodies of the Widow’s victims were stuck to these webs. From the shapes, they could tell they were creatures of the Dark Forest. No men, no Arachnids—at least they hoped.
Beneath the webs were piles of bones; some were covered in soft green moss, others were shiny with fresh blood, and some were so old, they looked as if they’d crumble into dust at the slightest touch. This struck the two as odd; Arachnids were not eaters of meat. They, like the spiders of Earth, spun their webs around their victims to drain them of their blood later.
Is the Widow beyond that? He had, of course, heard the rumors—she was from another planet, not of Earth, not of Oriceran, but of some Great Beyond. She had come into power by feasting on the flesh of man, Orc, Goblins, and anything else she could get her legs on. But those are just rumors…right?
The floor was of the same stone as the walls, except it was stained with the dark red and black of blood. Splashes here, splashes there. At the end of the great room were steps leading up to a platform.
Palentar tried to imagine himself atop that platform, surrounded by this horrible smell and the corpses of dead creatures, and couldn’t do it. Perhaps that strange thing called destiny was behind it. Perhaps he wasn’t meant to stand on those steps; perhaps he was meant to hang from the webs instead.
The thought caused him to shudder.
The fear was back; the emotion that wasn’t supposed to be there at all.
“Now, speak, my child Queret,” the Widow said.
How does she know my name? Queret thought. Words would not escape his mouth. His tongue felt frozen.
“I know all the names of those in my kingdom. Now, speak.”
Palentar thought there was a certain viciousness present in her voice this time. He took a step backward.
“Well, your highness, your worshipfulness…uh, well, see—a”
Scrabbling came from above them. Palentar looked up and wished he hadn’t.
The Widow was descending from the darkness. She was huge—bigger than any Woolenite from trunk to tail. How her web supported her massive body, Palentar had no idea. Her shadow dwarfed over them.
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 liq
uid 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.”
Midwest Magic Chronicles Box Set Page 26