Queen of the Demonweb Pits

They reached a shop that actually seemed to be open-a shop that proudly hung a wooden board painted with a cake from its eaves. The sign seemed new, clean, and neat. It was perfect. Escalla jiggled until Enid moved in the right direction, and Escalla was almost knocked off Enid's head as the tall girl entered the cramped, dim little store. Out in the street, the monks moved their circle closer to the store. The noise of the city dimmed as the door swung firmly shut.

A large, sticky cake sat on a bench. The cake was covered in honey, fruits, and sugar, and it had been freshly sliced into dainty little pieces. In a town given over to mass producing simple food for refugees, the cake was an utter treasure. Escalla saw the sweet and drooled.

Enid gave a sniff then narrowed her eyes and leaned over the cake, sniffing at it again. Escalla reached out with her feathers, but Enid stepped back out of the way.

'Oh, dear. I believe I've forgotten my purse.'

Escalla shifted on Enid's head, looking carefully from left to right. The hat disappeared with a subtle pop as the faerie turned invisible.

The attack came from the rafters-a massive blast of lightning stabbing from the dark. Enid ducked, and the spell shattered against a shield made of swarming golden bees. The ceiling instantly caught fire from the ricocheting energy.

The globe of bees flickered and swirled around Enid. Escalla hovered in midair, naked, visible, and coldly furious as she readied her lich staff in her hand.

'Nice one, frot-head! I like your poisoned cake.'

Enid hissed like an angry cat, hunched, and bared her teeth. Escalla looked idly at another blank patch of darkness.

The next spell hammered at them in a manic blast of ice. The rear wall of the shop smashed in, the serving counter torn apart under a raging storm of icicles and frost. Safe inside their sphere of bees, Enid and Escalla watched and waited.

The frost storm died, leaving the room ice-white and steaming with mists. Posing with her staff idly crooked across her shoulders, Escalla looked at the damage with a sneer.

'For the uninitiated, this is a lesser sphere of invulnerability. An anti-magic shield. Guess you'll just have to take me out hand-to-hand.' Escalla's shield spell worked both ways-no magic could go in, and no magic could go out. With a sly smile, the faerie laid a hand on Enid and caressed her with a spell. 'But hey! Lookie what I've got here.'

Clothes ripped to rags. Enid warped up and outward into her sphinx form, her hindquarters knocking over the remnants of the rear wall. Clawed and bristling, a full-grown sphinx now crouched beneath the faerie girl. Standing on Enid's head, Escalla looked idly about the shop.

'Are you coming out to play?'

The answer came as a derisive female laugh, a laugh ringing with insanity. The roof fell, and Enid leaped forward, smashing through the wall and out into the street. Escalla sheltered from debris beneath Enid's wings. The shield spell danced and shimmered a golden light across the cobblestones.

Standing in silence, a ring of hooded monks made a cordon around Enid and Escalla. The monks stood in silence, crouched and intense. Their robes hid their hands and faces in impenetrable darkness. Escalla hovered with her staff in hand. The sphinx unsheathed her huge claws and spread her wings. There were easily thirty monks, but it was doubtful that any of them could fly.

The laugh came once again-a horribly familiar laugh tinged with a gay touch of madness. Escalla felt absolute loathing ooze through her soul.

'You.'

Tielle, Escalla's sister, became visible at last.

She was better fleshed than Escalla, with rounder curves at chest and thigh. Dressed in a few tiny specks of adamantine and silver, the faerie hovered gaily in mid air.

'Sweet sister and her pretty kitty!' Tielle looked at Escalla in sick intensity, as though she had long adored and lingered over every inch of Escalla's hide. 'It was very dark in prison. They left me as a blob, you know. A blob in a big, dark hole. Because it was your joke. Because dear beautiful Escalla thought it was funny.' Tielle stared, her eyes wide and intense. 'Oh, Escalla. My wonderful Escalla.' Tielle cradled a drinking horn and a crystal ball tight against herself, hugging them as though their love spoke to her soul. 'I have so looked forward to feeling you die.'

Running madly through the streets, Polk squinted at ankles, legs, and shoes. His badger nose smelled drow. Drow! People scattered, soldiers shouted. A woman screamed as he sped straight beneath her skirt. Polk wheezed as he ran, his fat fur rippling like an onrushing wave. Humans threw themselves out of his way, shouting in panic as they fought to escape the badger.

Polk ran, dodging as a soldier stabbed at him with a spear. The big badger finally found the city wall and raced growling along its base. He bowled over a pile of baskets, ripped clean through a row of tents, and scattered pots and pans in his wake. He bellowed, 'Jus! Where are you son?' He got no answer, and so the badger lumbered on.

Three soldiers tried to wall him in with shields. Polk took them at a run, ploughing through a gap between their shields. He sped onward, scrabbling awkwardly up a set of stone stairs as he climbed to the city battlements. Overhead, the storm clouds shut away the sun.

'Son! Son, where are you? Where are you, son?'

'Polk! What in Cuthbert's name are you doing?' The Justicar sat at the head of the stairs with his sword across his knees, Cinders on his back, and Henry squatting beside him. Three town guards and a captain were with them, all gathered around a map. 'Polk!'

The badger gave a savage roar. Polk leaped the last three steps, bowling Henry over as he landed on Henry's chest. Polk hurtled forward in a snarling charge beneath the magistrate and crashed into a vast spider that hauled itself over the battlements.

The giant spider was bigger than a horse. Polk shot under its jaws and attacked. Badger teeth ripped through chitin. Blood flew, and Polk wrenched the leg off the spider. Flailing its feet, the spider loomed over Polk, twin fangs bared and ready to stab down into the badgers heart. An instant later, the spider was smashed aside, Jus's blade smacking into the monster's face.

The blade hit hard, fast, and in savage silence. The monster staggered. The Justicar's sword hacked off one front leg, then another, then clove down in a massive blow that split the spider's head in two. He kicked the giant spider aside. The white blade of his sword shining, the Justicar looked across the city walls, and turned to roar back at the city guards.

'Get your men to the battlements! Move! Move!'

The captain stood, then lost his upper torso as a ballista bolt ripped above the battlements. Blood sprayed over the city walls. A second bolt whirred as it flew, and the Justicar raged forward, his big sword ringing as it caught the massive iron shaft and knocked it up into the air. Jus shouldered soldiers aside, then hacked his blade down into another spider's leg that came prancing over the wall.

Jus killed the spider with a vicious twisting thrust of his sword over the battlements. He cut away the web the creature had been laying as a ladder up the city walls. Soldiers stared, then grabbed crossbows, javelins, and bows, running faster and faster to their posts as the war cries and screams of an immense army sounded from the fields below. Signalers blew their battle horns as the whole world suddenly went mad.

The Justicar gave Polk a sharp nod, then helped him scrabble up onto the battlements. Polk and Henry looked out over the stone walls, off into the flooded countryside below, and both stared in ashen surprise.

'That wasn't there a moment ago!' Henry said.

Curtains of illusion faded and fell, revealing a vast army rampaging toward Keggle Bend. The flooded, muddy fields were jet black, boiling with a vile carpet of screaming flesh. For miles around, the countryside was covered with a baying, ravening multitude. Monstrous black shapes raged toward the city walls. There were spiders as big as dinner plates, as big dogs, and some as big as mares. There were creatures with swords and monsters with spears. Here and there, titanic spiders stood above the boiling mass, their backs crowned with ballistae and howling warriors. Black widows the size of horses led the incoming waves, the creatures splashing through muddy fields to clamber up the walls. Other spiders had already reached the battlements, webs stringing