by Hugo Huesca
He spat on the ground by his side of the bed and sat groggily on the straw mattress.
Why was he awake?
Next to him, Marya turned in her sleep. He studied her while trying to gather his bearings. Certainly, age hadn’t been kind to his wife. What she had done for him easily when they married, now, seven kids and many years of backbreaking labor later, barely got a rise out of his prick.
She shifted again, and his mean, old drunkard’s heart softened a little. He caressed her hair, briefly, and willed her back to sleep.
He didn’t need her for his prick; he had a wench at the village for that. Marya was the mother of his children, and she worked the farm as hard as he did, and that was all they needed.
Nicolai was about to lie next to his wife when the noise returned again. A dull thud, clear as the stars in the sky, came from outside the house by the chicken shed.
His mind cleared, and the numbing mist of the tzuika was replaced by seething rage.
The fucking chickens!
So that damned fox was back at it again? Back to finish the work, to kill the few remaining poultry?
He got out of bed, cursing silently to himself careful not to wake Marya or the children who slept huddled next to each other, at the feet of their bed, covered in piles of thick, woolen sheets.
If Nicolai had been a bit more awake, if he had been the kind of man who kept his composure even when angered, he would have noticed there were only seven sleeping shapes.
But he wasn’t, and in his anger, he barely managed not to step on any of his kids while he hurried outside, anxious to catch the fox. He was itching to break the animal’s neck with his bare hands.
Nicolai grabbed his woolen coat and put on his boots. Other than that, he rushed out of his home naked.
I’m going to fucking make a hat out of your hide, he thought with grim pleasure. At least it would help him keep his head warm while his family hungered during winter.
The wind was unruly, and freezing cold, so much so that a normal man may have risked his life going outside. But Nicolai was a farmer, as had been his father, and all his scant experience points had gone into endurance-related talents. His skin was as thick as a bull’s, and he was protected by a layer of fat, thanks to all the tzuika.
He reached the chicken shed, careful not to make too much noise. It was as he had feared. There was no sight of the remaining chicken, even though they always rushed out to meet Nicolai when he approached, no matter the hour, since he was the one who fed them most of the time.
A single, bloody feather was half-engulfed by the mud in front of him.
Nicolai could feel the blood rushing to his face, his throat already bulging out with a barely contained scream of rage.
Pigfucker! Dung-eater! Alita’s fucking mercy, what use are the gods if they can’t protect an honest man’s livelihood?
He knew what he would find when he looked inside the shed. A bunch of feathers, broken bones cleaned to the core, and lines of meat, blood, and chicken shit streaked across the walls.
Another dull thud, this time clearly coming from the shed only a few steps in front of him. The scream of fury died in Nicolai’s throat.
The pigfucker is still there, he realized.
Panting, the farmer dropped to his knees and closed his fingers around a good-sized rock. He didn’t need any other weapon. His father had taught him how to throw, and his accuracy had been refined across the years. He could kill a fox or a wolf with a single strike, and at higher distances than this one.
Thus armed, he approached the shed and kicked it open, forcing the doors inward with the roar of splintering wood.
“I got you now, fucker!” he roared, but his raging scream shifted into terror when he saw the scene that was unfolding in front of him.
The chicken were dead, alright, dead and torn, their bodies mangled in bloody heaps beyond recognition. Entrails and bodily fluids were everywhere, strewn in a rough semi-circle around what Nicolai’s mind could only describe as a dog-sized, black-shelled cockroach with a pink, soft back that looked like a brain, covered in red veins which pulsated softly as the creature fed.
When it heard his scream, the creature reared its head, if it could be called that. It had a pair of eyes to the sides and another in the front of the elongated snout-like skull, and two big holes under those, as a nose. The creature’s front eyes were cat-like. They widened when it saw Nicolai.
The farmer, too stunned and too terrified to react, saw how the front of the creature’s snout opened in four, like the peel of a banana, to reveal two pairs of prehensile mandibles and long, grime-covered teeth at the middle, with a black tongue slithering behind like a worm.
“No,” mouthed Nicolai. “No. What are you?”
This thing had to be a creature of the Dark. What business did it have with a poor farmer’s family in the middle of nowhere? What business did the Dark have in Starevos?
The creature dropped the torn chicken it was carrying in one of its two pairs of arms. It was hunched over, its powerful legs bent. They were almost thicker than the rest of its body, and ended in two paws armed with sharp, knife-like claws.
The creature’s teeth parted, and to Nicolai’s horror, it spoke. With a childlike voice.
“Dad?”
It wasn’t just any childlike voice. Nicolai had seven children, but he could recognize any of them by the sound of their footsteps. A voice was easy. This creature, somehow, had stolen Little Ilena’s voice.
“No!” he whispered. Could this be a nightmare? He tried to place his hands the way the priest had taught him, to make Alita’s symbol like he was supposed to do, but his fat fingers were numb and his hands were shaking, as was his entire body, and the sign came fake and useless. A warm liquid streaked along his legs, raising trails of steam as it hit the soil in front of him. He looked down—he had pissed himself. And he still hadn’t woken up.
“Dad!” the monster spoke again in Ilena’s voice. “Dad, I’m sorry! I didn’t want to eat the chicken, but I was so hungry! I couldn’t stop myself, and my head hurt so much, and they smelled so good. I swear I didn’t want to! But I needed them, Daddy, I needed to eat them so I could grow up strong like you and Mommy.”
“What are you?” the farmer asked again. “What, in the Light’s name, are you? What have you done with my daughter?”
The monster stood partially on its hind legs and partially on its second pair of arms, with the first one gesturing desperately at Nicolai to come closer. It took a couple steps in his direction, and the farmer instinctively stepped away, back into the open.
“Help me, Daddy, I don’t know what happened to me! I was hungry, and my head hurt so much, and now I look like this…I’m not in pain anymore, but, oh, I’m so hungry!”
The shift in their position let the farmer better see the heap behind the monster. At first, he didn’t recognize the body, with it being so broken and mangled, but he knew the shape of the tiny limbs, the wooden dress that Marya had knitted for her, the pink lasso tying her hair together, splattered with red blood and fragments of skull.
Ilena’s head was gone, burst open like a melon, and the rest of her body was half-eaten—just one more meal for the creature that spoke with Nicolai daughter’s voice.
“Daddy, don’t leave! I’m so hungry!”
Nicolai screamed his throat hoarse and threw his rock with all his strength. It hit the monster’s snout squarely and left a bloody crack in its chitin right under its left side-eye, which partially fell out of its cavity and hung there, connected to the skull by a meaty thread.
The monster’s roar deafened Nicolai’s scream, drowned it in a howl of pain and confusion.
“Daddy!” the thing howled. “Why did you hurt me? Please, Daddy, don’t hurt me! I need your help!”
But the farmer could see how the sullen hole the rock had left in the exoskeleton filled itself while the monster spoke. The eye snapped back in place.
Nicolai turned and ran for his li
fe, venturing into the darkness, trying to reach the safety of his home, screaming all the while.
Behind him, coming closer and closer, he could hear his daughter screaming after him, begging him to stay with her, begging him to help her, to just come a bit closer, Daddy, I need help—
Something hard smashed against Nicolai’s back, driving all the air out of his lungs, making him lose his balance and throwing him against the wet ground, where he rolled in a heap, trying to punch and pull at an enemy he could not see.
A flash of dark chitin reflected a ray of silver moonlight, and two arms, strong and sinewy, grabbed a hold of Nicolai’s, pinning him in place while another two raked sharp claws against his chest, leaving streaks of fire and pain as they went. The creature was on top of him, using its weight to manhandle him.
“Daddy!”
Nicolai screamed and tried to wrestle out of the monster’s hold, tried to fight back, but the monster was stronger than him, even if it was smaller. Moonlight made the saliva glint like it was liquid silver wetting two pairs of prehensile mandibles.
“Daddy, I’m sorry!”
The mandibles came down, closed against Nicolai’s shoulder, tore a big chunk of meat like his body was made of mud. Nicolai’s screaming died in his throat. He could hear, in the distance, the sound of his other sons yelling at him from inside the house, searching for him in the dark.
No, he thought. Stay away. Don’t open the door. Don’t—
“Daddy, oh gods, I don’t want to eat you! I’m hurting you—I’m sorry!”
Its hind legs were tearing his belly apart, digging their long claws in until they reached his entrails, and then brutally pulled them out, over and over. Nicolai could feel his torn guts being sprawled across the ground, raising piles of steam, filling his nose with the smell of his own intestines.
The mandibles came down again, and part of his arm was gone.
Nicolai had never been in so much pain, never been so scared. But he could feel his body numbing, his brain rejecting the horror that was happening to him, unraveling back into his own mind.
But not fast enough.
“Forgive me!” the monster said, while one of its dark claws came down over Nicolai’s eyes, and then the darkness was total. “I don’t wanna!”
He could still hear it. He could still feel it eating him alive.
Oh, gods, make it stop. Any gods. Light, Dark, I don’t care. Make it stop.
“It’s just that—” the monster went on, tearing more chunks out of him.
“You are—” another bite, another chunk.
“Delicious, Daddy!”
Little Ilena came back to her senses when the first rays of daylight arrived, warming her soft, exposed back.
What had happened?
The day was cold, but she was used to the night, and the sunlight made her groggy with sleep. And her belly was so full it felt like it might burst…
She looked around, her two pairs of eyes giving her an excellent view of the house, which was still covered in shadows.
“Where is everyone?”
Mom? Dad?
Her brothers?
She was lying on her usual blanket, in the spot that normally left her sandwiched between her older sisters, but they weren’t there, and neither was the rest of her family. Only a bunch of broken bones, chunks of hair, and torn clothing. Streaks of blood dirtied the walls and the ceiling, and the wood was raked with long lines left by what must’ve been a pretty sharp set of claws.
“Is this a joke?” asked Ilena. “Because I don’t like it. It’s not funny.”
She wasn’t going to clean up her brothers’ mess. She guessed that, at any time now, they would burst through the door, laughing at her.
She hoped they did so, soon. She was sad, and lonely.
She wanted to weep, to cry until she passed out. She wanted her mother to comfort her.
And she wanted to lick her paws, which still had torn, thin lines of sinew lodged between her claws.
There was a noise by the chicken shed.
Mom?
Dad?
She skittered across the wall, and headed to the door which had a small window, and fidgeted against the wooden panel with her claws—ill-fitted for the task—until she opened it.
The shed was empty, and there was only a pile of bones at the spot where she had last seen her father.
But something moved in the distance, far from the shed, across the line of the trees.
Was her hearing really that good, to hear something so far away? That was new. She could barely hear anything at all before she had hatched.
Growing up was interesting. She could feel her bones itch with the effort of increasing their size, the painful—but not in a bad way—sensation of her skin as it was being constantly pulled taut while her body shifted. Perhaps her family would come back once she was fully grown.
But first, she’d have to deal with the dark shapes hiding inside the bushes and the trunks of the trees. They didn’t move from their place, but Ilena’s instincts were as powerful as those of a veteran Ranger’s. She knew they were sizing her scent up. Looking for her.
Those were hunters.
She sniffed at the air and was surprised when the current brought the scent of horned spiders.
I can smell them from here?
She would have to worry about that later. Spiders! Her body trembled with rage and fear.
Her parents had told her all about spiders. Very, very rarely, a cluster of them would venture out of Hoia, generally during a drought. During those times, they attacked farms and isolated groups of men and women, including travelers. They had even eaten children!
Disgusting creatures, Ilena thought, snapping her mandibles at them.
Something about their smell brought old grudges about them, grudges she didn’t even know she had. Grudges from before she had been born.
Her ancestors had eaten horned spiders, she realized, after thinking about it for a moment. And the horned spiders had attacked her ancestors, killed their own clusters in their effort to make her ancestors starve.
And now the spiders were trying to do the same to her.
Disgusting, nasty creatures.
She could feel her body growing stronger. But she knew her growth was not yet enough for her to defend herself. Had they waited just a bit longer, just a week more…and she would be hunting them.
As she was now, though, she had to hide. The prospect didn’t faze her. Hiding and lurking and waiting for her chance to strike at her food was ingrained in her, deep within a part of her mind that was old and wise—and oh, so hungry.
She knew what she had to do. The spiders were at their best in the forest, and they had the wind as their advantage. If the breeze had carried with it the scent of a swamp—home, thought that old part of her—she would have gone there. But there was no swamp here.
There was the smell of a human settlement, though, staining the air. Unmistakable. She knew what it meant.
Burrova.
The old part of her brain approved of Ilena’s plan. She could hide in the village—there were plenty of places where no one would look, and the spiders would spend themselves fighting against the humans.
Ilena’s own people would defend her, and she would have plenty of food to sate her hunger. To grow strong. Until she was ready to start her own family.
Mom and Dad would be so proud of her.
21
Chapter Twenty-One
Parley
When Ed came out of the cave, he discovered he had slept almost past morning, and that the daylight was mixing warm drafts of air with the normal chilliness of Starevos.
He was wearing a jacket made of transmuted wool, with trousers of the same material. He suspected the fabric would fall apart before the day was over, considering the usual duration of all the non-dungeon related transmutations he had tried, but in the meantime, he was warm.
The young Dungeon Lord made his way with difficulty down the slo
pe of the rocky hill and found the smoldering remains of the campsite below. Someone had made breakfast, probably Kes, and they had left a little for him. It was cold pottage, made with the remains of last night’s rabbits, cooked and stored in a clay pot, which had probably been transmuted too.
The sight made his sore body ache with hunger. He wasn’t sure which part of his body didn’t hurt and ache, so he considered it a small miracle he managed to get out of bed at all. As it turned out, he wasn’t used to running around fighting giant spiders like an action hero, and he was paying the consequences of overextending himself.
At least I can rest for a couple days, he thought, to give himself hope. I can use drones to do all labor around here.
Ed looked around while he devoured the pottage like it was the water of life itself. His companions weren’t in sight, and he spotted only a couple batblins sitting around lazily in the damp grass, patting their insect-full bellies.
I’ll have to find something for them to do, Ed thought, watching the pair doze off into deeper and deeper sleep. I suspect that having bored batblins around is more dangerous than using horned spiders as back-scratchers.
But first, where was everyone? Not even Klek or Drusb were around, much less Lavy or Alder.
He ate the last drops of soup and considered going back to grab a wooden spear. Then, the foliage shook and Kes emerged from it, frowning with a hard expression on her face.
Alder, Lavy and Klek followed after her, frowning too. They seemed to be angry at the mercenary, and Lavy had her knife drawn and hanging from her arm.
“What’s going on?” Ed asked, jumping to his feet, which instantly made him wince in pain. He reached for his own knife, but didn’t draw it.
“This traitor,” Lavy growled, pointing at Kes, “just tried to betray us all.”
“What?” Ed asked, eyes wide.