by Jez Cajiao
“You think… wait, she fucking bit me?” I snarled and Horkesh backed up slightly before shaking herself and moving closer.
“It is difficult to understand your references to time. We have a sand glass in our nest. I think it is accurate, but I am unsure how long your daystar takes. It changes. It is very strange in your land above the sweet darkness.”
“The darkness?” I asked. The fact that the ‘queen’ Ashrag had fucking bitten me was still going round and round in my head. Her goddamn mouth had to be nearly my fucking size, how the hell...
“The darkness,” Horkesh repeated, gesturing with her front legs all around us.
“The darkness is our home, safe and secure. Light brings danger, but darkness is safe.”
“Darkness, tunnels, and underground; okay, got it. Now, why the hell did she fucking bite me?!” I snarled, my voice getting louder as my frustration and disgust rose.
“To protect you.” Ashrag spoke from somewhere ahead. I felt the spider beneath me tremble in fear again, before darting forward.
“You bit me, knocking me out, to fucking protect me?!” I snarled back at her, and she huffed in amusement.
“Typical! Yes, Lordling, I bit you to protect you, the injury to your body from taking the Oaths on, even as weak as they were. Despite how few Oathsworn as there must be within reach, it was still more than your wounded body could take. So, I bit you, slowing your body down, and putting you into a restful, dreamless sleep while your servants used their potions on you.”
I laid there in silence for a long time, considering her words. What details I could remember about the conversation with Amon and Ashrag slowly came back to me, and it lined up with Amon’s assertion that taking the Oaths on had been dangerous.
“I’m sorry, Ashrag… Queen Ashrag,” I said finally. “I have broken memories of the past, and I’m from a realm far from here. I don’t understand a lot of what has happened, and I tend to react… badly… to surprises. My friend, Oracle, my companion… was captured by the Drow. In chasing her, I nearly lost another friend to your children. Today has been a fucking terrible day so far.”
Silence reigned for a long count of ten, before Ashrag’s voice rumbled back to me.
“Admitting you were wrong was rare even when the Empire was strong; in the years since its fall, it is even rarer. Many have come to us, for we are among the eldest of the races; most have tried to kill us. Some come to steal our young, others for our bodies or our treasures… perhaps you come to us for a better reason. We will talk soon; rest now.” I could hear the sound of her bulk moving away.
I shrugged as much as I could, restrained as I was, and forced myself to look around. Wherever I was, it was deep; the way I sagged against the webbing let me know that I’d probably have fallen off long since, if I was free.
“Where is the nest?” I asked Horkesh, and the spider rushed back across to stare at me before answering.
“It is ahead. Deep, deep in the earth, far from the light, and any who could try to steal from us.”
With that enigmatic and entirely unhelpful answer, she disappeared again, racing over the side of the spider I rode.
I tried my best to get comfortable, giving up after a few minutes, as every movement caused the spider under me to panic and either rush forward, or freeze, neither of which felt good when climbing down a cliff.
I closed my eyes and did what I should have done when I had first woken up. I called out to Bane. I thought I’d heard his voice before, when I first woke, but I needed to be sure.
“Bane?” I called, and there was a second in which my heart froze, before I heard a response.
“I’m here, Jax. I’m weak, but I’m here.”
“What happened?” I asked, sagging back with relief.
“I sensed the great spider… Ashrag… and I focused on her like a child on his first hunt. I ignored the signs around me until it was too late, and I was taken. Dozens of spiders were everywhere I turned; my jaws webbed down before I could even shout a warning. I failed you,” he said bitterly. “I will admit my fault, Lord; I will stand down as your bodyguard. You deserve better.”
“Quit that shit.” I snapped at him, my relief turning to annoyance. “So, you made a mistake, you got caught by a nest of frigging enormous spiders; well, so did we, and am I gonna be safer with you as a bodyguard…or without?” There was a long pause, before a grudging sound of agreement floated down to me.
“Besides, who’s going to keep me from going fucking mental, if not you? I doubt any of the others want the job, do they? Barrett, Lydia?” I called out, getting a series of snorts and strained chuckles in response.
“No chance.”
“Not going to happen!”
“Hell, no; that fucker’s crazy!” I heard Arrin call out, clear laughter in his voice, and I let loose a low chuckle as I realized the crazy bastard was having no end of fun. I shifted enough to look up at him and he waved to me, having somehow managed to get himself webbed in place upright, when the rest of us were horizontal.
“Look, Jax! No hands!” He called and waved again.
I couldn’t help it, and the low chuckle began to build, with others joining in.
The laughter was strained at first, but it soon spread, and I felt a little of the blackness that had consumed me since Oracle’s kidnapping, fall away.
I still had friends. I still had people that had my back. I wasn’t alone, and I was going to get Oracle back, find Tommy, and seriously fuck up Barabarattas’ Tuesday.
Even if it was Wednesday, or whatever.
“What day is it?” I asked aloud, and Miren replied.
“It’s the third of Distan.” I waited for her to go on, and when she didn’t, I shrugged as best I could.
“Doesn’t matter what day it is; got it.”
I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself, as I reached out to Oracle and got no response, so I pulled up my notifications instead, trying desperately to distract myself...
Congratulations! You have killed the following:
11x Cave Spider Soldiers for a total of 2,500xp
10x Cave Spider Hunters for a total of 12,500xp
27x Immature Spider Drones for a total of 405xp
1x Cave Wyrm larvae for a total of 3,000xp
A party under your command killed the following:
7x Cave Spider Soldiers for a total of 3,500xp
2x Cave Spider Hunters for a total of 5,000xp
86x Immature Spider Drones for a total of 2,580xp
Total experience earned: 11,080xp
As party leader you gain 10% of all experience earned.
Progress to level 15 stands at 22,543/140,000
I’d also managed to raise my Mana Manipulation skill to two out of one hundred, so at least I had that going for me… even though my last notification let me know I still desperately need to heal myself up properly…
Beware!
You are suffering from mana manipulation fatigue: you currently have a negative ten (-10) modifier to all stats. This will continue until you have been healed fully.
Current HP 327/520
Current Mana 198/240
I tried reaching out to Oracle again and again, but all I could sense, besides the facts that she was alive, and that she was growing weaker, was that she was stationary, slightly above and to my right. She was closer than she was before, but no matter how much I called to her in the silence of my mind, she wouldn’t, or couldn’t, answer. The more I tried, the blacker my mood became, and when we finally stopped, and my spider mount lowered itself to the ground and froze in place, I was coldly furious again.
Ashrag might be a spider queen, and an old servant of the Empire, but right now, she’d gotten between me and saving my friend.
A pair of spiders scuttled up onto my mount, their bodies covered in blue and black patterns, and they spat something on the webs that held me.
The webbing hissed and spat, dissolving in seconds and freeing me.
I
growled in pain, jerking upright and yanking my hands away from the corrosive spit, feeling it burning my skin, but it died out in seconds, and I jumped to my feet, stripping the remaining webs from my skin. I could feel the weakness that plagued my body from the wounds, from the taking of the Oaths, and from using the Ability again.
I quickly cast ‘Battlefield Triage’ on myself, the burst of light that emanated from it illuminating the ledge I was standing on. More accurately, it illuminated the ledge the spider beneath my feet stood on, and I realized it was still shaking in fear, with my right foot crushing its face into the stone floor, my left being firmly stuck to a patch of webbing that covered some of the ledge.
I grimaced, but stepped off the spider, my asshole clenching up reflexively as it scuttled away.
Nothing the size of a small horse should have that many legs or be that fugly.
I looked around the darkness, still channeling the spell, until my health was fully restored, and I felt the debuffs vanish. I let the spell go and watched as the others came down the walls, being freed and climbing onto the small ledge beside me.
I knew Ashrag was there. I could feel her presence, watching us, even if for some reason, I couldn’t see far, despite my DarkVision ability. I ignored her, checking my people over and making sure they were all okay.
Bane was the last to be set down on the ledge, and he staggered. I grabbed him and looked him over; his health was full, but his Stamina was still low.
Then I did what he least expected, and I pulled him into a hug, clapping him on the back and grinning at the shock on everyone’s faces. He froze for a second, then awkwardly patted my back in return.
“Look, you fuckers,” I said, releasing him and looking the group over, “I don’t care what anyone thinks of propriety. You’re my friends, as well as my people.” I looked to Bane directly and put one hand on his shoulder, feeling the dry, calloused skin under my grip. “And that includes you, you daft sod; I thought I’d lost you.” I summoned a spring of fresh water for him, and once I was sure he was resting and breathing the water deeply, I turned back to the darkness beyond our little ledge and raised my voice.
“Now I can’t see shit, Ashrag, and that means either my abilities failed, which seems unlikely, considering I can see these muppets behind me, or you’re playing silly buggers…”
My voice echoed strangely for several seconds before the magical darkness abruptly vanished, magelights around the cavern springing to life and illuminating a huge cave that vanished back into the side of the underground cliff.
Ashrag sat in the middle of the cave, a huge web supporting her bulk as other spiders moved here and there, running along strands that vanished into the distance. Dozens of smaller spiderlings clambered and shook on the webs everywhere I looked, and possibly hundreds of cocoons hung from the ceiling. I frowned as something glittered under Ashrag, and I focused in, realizing what I’d missed in my first glance.
The cave wasn’t empty.
Besides the multitude of spiders, it also housed buildings, dozens of them. They were coated in webs that hid much of the shape, but the occasional glittering reflection of the magelights made it clear that the doors at least were metal and hadn’t rusted. Judging from Ashrag’s age, and how deep in the earth we were, I could only guess that meant they were bronze…or gold.
“Welcome, Jax, Lord of Dravith and Scion of the Empire; welcome to the forgotten outpost of Isthic’Mirtin.” I could feel the stunned silence behind me as we viewed the outpost. A narrow path ran from the ledge down into the cavern, and I slowly walked along it, ignoring the sounds of spiders moving all around me. I caught peripheral flashes of a black and red body close by, but I faced forward, determined to show some strength.
“I honored the Oaths, little Lord…” rumbled Ashrag’s great voice, the web trembling with it as I moved closer, constantly having to yank my feet free of the webs that sought to trap me. “Now explain why you did what you did.”
“Which part?” I quipped, and Ashrag growled, the sound like a tiger in a subway.
“The Oath! Tell me why…why would you bind yourself to Oaths you had no part in creating? Why would you renew them? Are you stupid, or simply too arrogant to know better!” I felt the air stirring in response to her irritation, and I could see the spiders that surrounded us slowly moving closer.
“I…well, I did it on a hunch, to tell you the truth.” I said, having reached the cavern floor proper, and I gestured to a mound of stone that was coated in webbing. “Mind if I burn that off? I think this is going to take a while, and I’d rather sit while I tell you the tale.”
There was silence for a long minute, before Ashrag shifted, looking to a spider to one side. It moved quickly, darting into one of the web-encrusted buildings, and a handful of heartbeats later, it returned, a stone chair clutched between its mandibles.
“Thanks,” I said, taking the seat. I glanced over at my companions, but got a few headshakes from them, and I realized they were still too freaked out to sit yet, and I don’t think any of them, bar Arrin, wanted anything to do with Ashrag and her kin..
“Well, Ashrag, it’s like this…” I started with my story, who I was, and where I was from, then I moved on to my mental passenger, and my ancestral line. “…So now you know how I got there, but…”
“I know where you came from and why. I know nothing about the Oaths! Don’t seek to hide things under webs of words; tell me straight!” she snapped, and I growled back at her.
“Shut the fuck up… and I will!” I retorted, then took a deep breath. “Amon was a lot of things, including a fucking mental bastard, but what he wasn’t was an asshole without cause. He thinks you’re all right, and that you suffered because of what those fucks did to him and everyone else. He thinks you’re honorable. He thinks you deserve better than a life down here, hidden, and now, so do I.”
Silence greeted my words.
“How long have you been down here, Ashrag? How long have you been in the dark, and why the hell were you in that cave back there, if this is your nest?”
“The Drow.” She spat. “The Drow rule the underworld. They war with the dwarves constantly; all other creatures either pick a side or get consumed. I was forced to accept their trespassing, as there are too many of them for my children to kill easily, and they hide in places my soldiers cannot reach. We were given the choice: guard their paths, or be destroyed, yet still they take my children for food and silk. I ordered my brood to spread out, and we pretended that the higher nests were our only ones, keeping this place safe.”
“Have you sworn any oaths to them?” I asked, still unsure as to the power of the Oaths.
“You know so little, for one with so much to lose,” she muttered. “The Oaths I swore mean that I cannot swear to another, not without being released first. The Drow simply ordered my soldiers to guard the cave from all intruders or be destroyed. I moved up so that they would not come looking for this nest.”
“So, they don’t know how many of you there really are? Or that you aren’t a normal spider?”
“Define ‘normal’, little Lord,” she rumbled, and I couldn’t help but grin.
“Okay, well I’ve never known spiders that could talk; put it that way!”
“We can communicate; even my lesser brethren can do this, but my kind…we joined the Empire because we were sick of being hunted and hated for our forms. I was a lesser princess; when my queen tied us to the Empire, we were being hunted by the Vampyres for our silk, our venom. Others wanted us for alchemical uses. When your body is more valuable to others than it is to you, you make deals with the strongest you can."
"We swore to the Empire, agreed to guard it against those that would harm it, and in return, we were given sanctuary, hunting us was punished by death. Entire broods of your people were given to us when they were caught harvesting us. We were fed, given territory, I was permitted to walk the streets of your cities, to talk to your kind under the daystar. I sold my silk and gained swe
et meats I’d never tasted. Life was good, until the Empire fell... Mere days after the ground shook and the heavens fell, we were attacked. Hundreds of my kind were killed or captured. We hid, protecting ourselves. We waited until the Legion appeared, and we sent our fastest runners to them, calling for protection. We were denied!” Her voice climbed as she spoke, until she spat the last with naked anger. “The Legion refused us, said they had more important things to do than to protect the ‘beasts of the underworld’.”
“Fuck,” I muttered, a sudden mental image of soldiers after the cataclysm. Oracle had said that the Legion would have returned to the capitol as fast as they could, to protect the Emperor first and foremost. I was freaked out by Ashrag as it was, but I was trying to get past that. For someone that had just seen the world ending in fire and death, to have a spider come running and tell you it needed help, when your family could be dead, and the Empire you’d sworn your life to was collapsing? Yeah, I could see the Legion telling her to get fucked. “What did they do?”
“They kicked the princess aside, broke her legs, and left her in the gutter to be taken by her ‘fellow citizens’. She was gutted and sold before we could reach her.”
“And what did you do?” I asked, already fearing the worst.
“We killed them all: everyone who had harmed her. The Legion had fled on ships in the port, but the citizens that killed her were easy to find, her musk still coating them. We killed them all, as per the Oath, we could harm other citizens only in self-defense, or in punishing murderers, but others attacked us, so we retaliated… hundreds on both sides died. We retreated as soon as we’d killed those responsible, but the damage was done. We were reduced to less than a third who could fight. Our strongest had died, and all we were left with were the very young, the old, and my fellow princesses.”
“Our Queen, Atalaya, sent us into hiding, declared our Oaths broken, and she faced the ones who came. We saw her slaughtered, her body carried away by cheering citizens we had befriended. I watched a merchant I’d sat with, who I’d spun the finest silk I could for… I watched her laughing as she gutted my mother for her spinnerets.”