by Dante King
“The Arachne may be many things,” Isu said, “but fighters they are not. That’s why they use their war-spiders to do their fighting for them.”
“It doesn’t matter whether it’s them or their war-spiders,” Friya said. “Either way, we’re vastly outnumbered.”
“I know we didn’t get the result we were looking for,” I said, “and that some of those fuckers are clearly involved in something dodgy, or evil, even. But let’s not let paranoia get the best of us. Not all of the Arachne are our enemies. I know of at least one who isn’t, and she’s the most powerful Arachne in the city.”
“Are you sure you can trust the Webmaven, Lord Vance?” Rollar asked.
“I’m absolutely sure I can trust her, yes,” I answered, though perhaps I was 90% certain. But confidence among my party counted for something; that much I’d learned as a leader. “It’s true that my army is locked outside the city gates, but there’s an important factor that you’re all overlooking.”
“What’s that, Vance?” Elyse asked.
“We can’t get troops into the city,” I answered, “but I’m the fucking God of Death. I can turn any living thing in this city into a soldier that serves me blindly, as long as we kill it first. I don’t have troops inside the walls of Aith? No problem, I’ll make some fucking troops.”
Rollar grinned and boomed out a thunderous chuckle. “Brilliant, Lord Vance, as always.”
“A true master of the divine,” Anna said as she suddenly pounced on me and planted a kiss on my lips.
Elyse shot Anna a somewhat jealous look. “We can’t just go around killing random Arachne to turn into zombies though. Regardless of what position we’re in, we’re not murderers, and what you’re suggesting, Vance, is murder. I’m sorry, but I cannot take part in the murder of innocent citizens, even if they are not exactly human-human.”
I flashed her a grin. “Who said anything about killing Arache? The fuckers aren’t decent fighters, as Isu just told us. Who’s up for some spider hunting tonight?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Isu told us most of the war-spiders—the biggest and most powerful of the fighting spiders, like the one I’d defeated outside the gates of Aith—were kept in stables below the palace. We had some powerful weapons to get there undetected: my assassin skills, Rami-Xayon’s enjarta techniques, and Isu’s intimate familiarity with Aith’s layout. This was partly why we decided it should be just the three of us going on this mission. Of course, our smaller numbers would make us more stealthy too.
In addition, we needed to maintain the illusion that we were still in our chambers. If any servants came by, or indeed Layna herself, the others could excuse our absence by saying that I’d taken two of my favorite women to a more secluded spot so that, to be blunt, we could fuck. Layna understood that the beautiful women in my party were more than just allies and warriors. This came with the additional advantage that, even as part of a hypothetical story, the idea of a threesome with these two gorgeous ladies had been put out there. And once a good--no, a great idea is let loose on the world, how long does it usually take for it to be put into action?
As for how we planned to kill the spiders without getting ourselves killed or triggering a mass counter attack, well, we had a pretty novel idea on how to get that done, courtesy of Isu and her knowledge of the giant spiders of Aith. It was such a brilliant idea, in fact, that we didn’t even need weapons to achieve our aims. I kept Grave Oath sheathed at my side just in case, of course, and strapped on my wrist crossbow with its Tree Magic darts.
According to Isu, the human bodies hanging in spider cocoons all over the city were spider food, although many of the Arachne themselves enjoyed munching on certain cuts of human flesh too. While the giant spiders had very robust digestive systems, certain substances were extremely toxic to the behemoths. Indeed, if they ingested them, they would quickly die. One of these substances was the fruit certain trees that grew in the oldest district of Aith.
Isu’s plan was simple, but particular aspects of it would be a challenge to pull off. We were going to sneak through the city and to the trees. After that, we would climb a few towers and cut down two or three cocooned corpses. Isu said the sewers were near the trees, so we could go there to complete the rest of our plan. In the sewers, we would retrieve the corpses from their spider silk tombs, smear the corpses with juice from the fruit, then stuff the fruit down their throats and up their asses and other cavities for good measure. And for a laugh, which always helped on tense missions with high stakes. A second bit of fun would be to resurrect the fruit-doused corpses as zombies and send them walking into the spider pens.
Isu had explained that the spiders were like attack dogs trained to kill humans. The sight of a human walking casually into their enclosure would set them off right away. They would, of course, attack the “humans,” but every spider that managed to bite one of my poisoned zombies would soon be on its back, twitching in its death throes. Hopefully, enough of them would be killed this way for me to resurrect a substantial force.
Moving through the city unnoticed was easy enough. The layout had barely changed since Isu had lived here, and as it was freezing cold in the mountains at night, most of the Arachne stayed indoors after dark. A few guards were patrolling the streets, but Rami-Xayon and I were able to use our stealth experience to slip by them unnoticed, even with Isu trailing along behind us.
After about half an hour of sneaking through alleys, climbing through half-ruined buildings, and jumping from rooftop to rooftop, we finally reached the park with the trees that bore poisonous fruit They were strange, twisted things, strings of root hanging down to the ground like beards.
“If these trees are so poisonous to spiders,” I said pensively, “why didn’t the Arachne just cut ‘em all down?”
“These are spider-root trees,” Isu explained, “and there are few drinks the Arachne love more than spider-root tea.”
“Ah, so Layna wasn’t trying to poison us.”
“What?”
“She offered to bring us all some spider-root tea earlier.”
“A common courtesy offered to guests of the Arachne. You should have accepted. The effects are quite… pleasing.”
The way Isu said that, and the glint that entered her eye, made me think that this spider-root tea did more than merely put a smile on your face. I made a mental note to try a mug when all of this was over.
I climbed up into the tree and soon found a few fruits. They were bright pink, and they looked kind of like spiky peaches. I was about to pluck one with my bare hands when I paused, my fingers hovering inches from the fruit.
“So, Isu, these things are deadly poison to spiders,” I said, “but uh, are they also poisonous to us?” Sure, the Arachne made tea from the fruit, but there could have been some process that removed the poison from it beforehand.
Isu chuckled. “No, they’re quite delicious, another reason the Arachne never cut these trees down.”
Sure that it was safe, I plucked a few fruits from the tree and tossed them down to Rami-Xayon and Isu, who caught them and stuffed them into the little cloth bags we’d brought along. There was still plenty of bad blood between Rami-Xayon and Isu, and on more than one occasion while we were sneaking through the city, I caught them firing glares at one another, but for the moment, they rose above this rivalry.
“That’s enough now,” Isu said after a while. “Now the easy part’s completed. Are you ready to go pluck some larger, fleshier fruit?”
I smiled at her not-so-bad attempt at a joke. “I sure am.”
We reached the base of one of the towers with cocoons easily enough.
“All right,” I muttered, staring up at the sheer walls of the cylindrical tower. “It’s been a while since I’ve done a climb like this, but it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Choose the three smallest corpses,” Rami-Xayon said. “Easier to carry.”
“We won’t have to carry them very far,” I said. “Once I raise them a
s zombies, they can do their own walking.”
I breathed deeply and stared up. The corpses hung off the top of the tower, a hundred yards from the ground. That was a long way to fall, and even though I was a god, flight wasn’t one of my magical powers. If I hit the ground from that height, I’d burst like a rotten pumpkin.
I thought about simply flying Talon up there to get some corpses down, but seeing as my harpy was outside the city walls, I would have to fly it into Aith, and the guards on the city walls would notice. Nope, this one was going to have to be all me.
“Just don’t look down,” I muttered as I prepared to climb.
I took Grave Oath out and gripped the blade between my teeth for easy access. Then I dug my fingertips into the grooves between the stones—which, thankfully, were large and deep, and made for good handholds and footholds—and began my ascent.
Becoming a god had given me a natural boost in strength, energy, and endurance, and all of these helped what would otherwise be a tricky climb. That didn’t mean it was easy, though, not by any means, and it took some time and a lot of effort to get to the top. I kept my eyes on the zenith, always. It wasn’t that I was afraid of heights. I wasn’t, and never had been. It was the pull of vertigo, the treacherous suck the ground seemed to exert with ever greater force the farther away you were from it.
Finally, after what seemed like a repetitive eternity, I found myself among the cocooned corpses. That was when I finally looked down for the signal from Isu and Rami-Xayon that the coast was clear. The two of them looked like insects.
The pull of the ground sucked at my body with a sudden roar, as if invisible hands were pawing at my body, trying to rip me off the wall and smack me against the unyielding, distant ground. I had to dig my fingertips deep into the groove to fight against this unseen force, and I focused on keeping my breath steady to maintain a cool head.
Rami-Xayon and Isu were each watching a different street. Thankfully, they each gave me the signal that we were all set. Rami-Xayon had said that I should look for the three smallest bodies, but at this point, I just wanted to get this over with, so I went for the three closest cocoons.
Each one was suspended from the top of the tower by a thick thread of spider silk. The sticky substance was immensely strong, and even with Grave Oath’s sharp blade, it took quite a bit of effort to cut through the threads.
When I’d severed the first one, I watched the cocooned body plummet earthward. It seemed to fall forever, tumbling over and over through the air, until finally, it slammed into the cobbled street below with a heavy thud. Thanks to its tight wrapper, the body remained intact; I had no doubt that any body dropped from this height without a protective cocoon would splatter like a rotten tomato on impact with the ground.
I heaved a sigh of relief when the final corpse thumped to the ground before I made a hasty climb back down to Isu and Rami, who had already dragged the cocooned corpses into a thick pool of shadow in a nearby alley.
“You looked like a spider yourself.” Rami-Xayon stared at me with a sudden hunger in her dark phoenix eyes. “It was a sight.”
“You truly showed you were a god up there,” a suddenly jealous-looking Isu purred. “A powerful, dominant god.”
As enjoyable as it was to have these two women trying to outdo the other’s desire for me, we didn’t have time for this now. Though this did bring to mind a way our alibi might become reality. Wouldn’t it be the perfect way to get these two to get over their grudge? If I let them compete like this for a while longer, without time constraints, they might just get so aroused that before long, they wouldn’t care about the other’s presence anymore.
We’d see later. Right now, there was a mission to complete.
“This spider silk is a bitch to cut through,” I said, changing the subject. “It’s not going to be easy to get these corpses out of the cocoons. How far are the sewers?”
“This way,” she said.
I picked up the biggest corpse and slung it over my shoulder, Rami-Xayon took the medium-sized one, and Isu the smallest. The necromancer brought us to a large tunnel nearby that led to Aith’s sewer system. It was pitch black in the sewers, but Isu, knowing we’d be coming here, had brought a torch and a small fire kindling kit. She lit the torch and led us into the sewers.
Safely outside the scope of any guards, I cut the corpses out of their cocoons with a lot of cursing and vigorous sawing. The biggest one was a barbarian warrior. The second one was a chubby merchant, and the smallest one a scrawny rogue. All had a green undertone to their skin. Isu explained that the discoloration was caused by preservatives in the spider cocoons. We crushed the spider-root fruit and rubbed the juice all over the corpses before shoving the fruit pulp into every orifice we could find. It definitely wasn’t my highest moment, but I was always willing to do whatever it took to get the job done.
Once the corpses were sufficiently stuffed, I closed my eyes and raised the trio as zombies.
“We can get to the spider pens via the sewer network,” Isu finally said. “Follow me.”
We walked briskly through the sewers, the zombies striding silently behind us. The sewer system was as advanced as any I’d ever seen. I wondered what would have happened if Aith had remained at the forefront of infrastructure and engineering, had they been able to develop even more advanced technologies.
After navigating numerous twisting turns and tight tunnels, we were approaching the stables. Since the war-spiders had excellent hearing, we had to be extremely careful from now on. There was a very pungent stink in this part of the sewers. It was the spiders’ shit, Isu explained. Most of it was digested human meat, which turned out to make for some stinky feces.
We climbed slowly up a ladder that led out of the sewer. The higher we climbed, the more clearly we began to hear a strange sound: a hissing, like the wind through pine trees on a particularly blustery night. It wasn’t the wind though, and there were no trees where we were going.
At the end of the ladder, we found ourselves at the top of the gigantic underground stables. They were filled with huge spiders, thousands of them, maybe tens of thousands, of all colors, sizes, and builds. The hissing sound we’d heard was now deafening. It was clear this wasn’t wind blowing through fucking trees. It was the rustling of thousands of giant spiders’ hairy bodies as they jostled.
“Fuck,” I murmured, staring down at the literal sea of spiders below us. If these things caught wind of us, we were beyond dead.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“While some citizens of Aith keep their spiders in their homes and manors, like guard dogs,” Isu whispered, “most of the spiders of Aith are kept here at night.”
“A nightmare come to life,” I muttered.
“What are you waiting for?” Rami-Xayon whispered. “Send in the zombies!”
Even though the zombies were not technically ‘alive,’ and certainly couldn’t feel pain, I still felt kind of bad about serving them up to the spider horde.
“Those big red ones there.” Isu pointed to the biggest of the war-spiders, which were all kept in a pen nearby. “Send the zombies into that pen. We want the strongest spiders.”
I closed my eyes and directed my will into the zombies. I made them climb up past us and creep along the rim of the stables, which was raised about four yards above the ground, until they were above the pen with the blood-red war-spiders.
“Sorry, fellas,” I muttered to the three zombies before I made them stand up and jump into the pen.
An earsplitting shriek ripped through the entire stables as the war-spiders caught sight of the three “humans” in their midst. The ground shook as the hundreds of red war-spiders in that pen all pounced at once, scrambling over each other and fighting in their eagerness to attack the invaders. As for the zombies, the poor suckers were swamped within seconds, disappearing beneath a grotesque mass of scurrying, writhing spider bodies. It didn’t take long for the beasts to rip them apart. Soon, arms, legs, hands, and feet were flying
up into the air.
Unexpectedly soon, the effects of the fruit began to kick in. Scores of the war-spiders started jerking and spasming. They flipped over onto their backs, their legs scrambling madly as the poison worked its way through their bodies. I grinned, feeling death after death flourishing below me. And then I set to work.
While I still had to follow the same steps to resurrect a beast—projecting myself outward, shrunk to a microscopic size but still carrying an ember of my life force, and traveling through the dead creature’s veins into its heart to give it a fresh start—I could go through these steps far more quickly now and with far less effort. Within seconds, the dead spiders, lying on their backs, were getting onto their feet again. Now, their hundreds of eyes shone with an eerie yellow-green glow. They belonged to me.
The final zombie was consumed to the last morsel. After a few minutes, the last of the spiders who had eaten the poisoned flesh died. I resurrected it, then left the spider pens with my new squadron of undead war-spiders in tow.
The sewer network was enormous, so it was a perfect way to get back to the palace undetected with the 50 giant spiders. I controlled the spiders as if they were one, giving them a hive mind of sorts, with one overriding purpose: to protect us at all costs. My mind was linked to this hive mind, and anything I perceived as a threat would immediately be attacked with savage ferocity by the war-spiders, who would keep fighting, regardless of how badly they were damaged, until they were literally torn to shreds. It went a long way to make one feel more at ease in a slumbering city of enemies. It took twice as long to return to the palace because we had to find broader tunnels for the spiders to fit.
I left the squadron of spiders in the sewers just below the palace. If we needed them, they could come charging to our aid in minutes, or sooner, since they could easily scuttle up vertical walls. We then crept into the palace and headed swiftly to our chambers.
