It worked! Itcaught Aquitain off guard and his mind froze for a few seconds.However, concurrently Ansidian screamed in pain and fell to theground writhing in pain.
The Llanlleanonlookers quickly scattered.
Aquitainrecovered and seeing Ansidian on the ground wondered what hadhappened then quickly realised that someone must have donesomething to Ansidian to stop the creature from taking theadvantage.
Ansidianstruggled to its feet and flapped its wings rapidly to fly began tospeak words of power.
Aquitain had noidea what sort of magic attack this creature could or would use andhe didn’t want to drag the Llanlleans into the fight.
There was a wayto stop a magic fight. He concentrated on the creature’s mouth,triggered a small bit of power, and instantly Ansidian’s wordsbecame garbled and the magic effects they were forming faded.
Ansidiancouldn’t believe what had happened. It had never happened before.What had Aquitain done?
Ansidian triedto use another power but the words came out garbled again. He triedto command the Llanlleans to attack Aquitain but they couldn’tunderstand his garble, so he launched himself at Aquitain.
If he couldn’tsilence this little Llanllean magically then he would do itphysically. This is what Aquitain had hoped as he could see thatAnsidian had already thoroughly tested Somanller’s patience.
Aquitainshifted to his Llanllean form and ran towards the Llanllean adultssqueaking as if frightened and he got the reaction he hopedfor.
He forced themto react. Somanller yelled to have Ansidian restrained. The maleadults in Elendari form that had previously captured Garretimmediately changed to Llanllean form and pounced on Ansidiandragging him down to the ground. Some rag was forced into his mouthand his arms and wings pinned.
The femalerushed to Aquitain grabbed him and held him protectively under herbody.
‘Why isAnsidian attacking me?’ broadcast Aquitain using mindspeak.
‘I have donenothing to him?’
‘That isexactly what I want to know?’ shouted Somanller looking at Ansidiansternly.
‘ReleaseAnsidian and let him speak.’
The Llanlleansfreed Ansidian and warily stepped back from him. He removed thecloth from his mouth looked around at them with a hateful look inhis eyes and said
‘Next time...’and the rest of the sentence was lost as he teleported away.
With Ansidiangone, the attention of the Llanlleans turned to Aquitain. They werequite suspicious of him now. He had shown unusual restraint and aperfect control of the fight then had tricked them into helpinghim. That meant he was dangerous.
He was placedon the floor again and one of them cast a powerful dispel magic onhim as if to see whether that would reveal something hidden butnothing changed. They all surrounded him for a closerexamination.
‘You definitelyseem to be one of our species but not from any clan that I know ofand you don’t seem to know our body language. This together withyour control over magic seems to suggest your story has someelement of truth in it. However, I am not yet convinced. Pleasetell us your story again this time with some more detail.’
He repeated hisstory but this time told them about what had happened to Garret andhow that had led him here. He also told them a little more aboutLlanlorian. They asked a lot of questions and regardless of hisreplies remained very suspicious.
EventuallySomanller stated that she and the other adults would like todiscuss the implications of his story. He was free to move aroundif he wished.
He moved overto Garret who was fast asleep and decided to let him sleep ratherthan waking him. This would be a real nightmare if you didn’t knowthese spider people were friendly and even then it would take anexceptional Newman that would make friends with a group ofspiders.
The irony ofthe situation hit him again. Someone was manipulating all of themexpertly. If Aquitain wasn’t like these spider people he would bescared stiff of them like Garret. He certainly wouldn’t becomfortable making friends with them.
The Newman fearof spiders was built in at birth. He was given this body so that hecould overcome the fear, so that he could make friends with themand so they could believe he was a friend.
The two youngLlanlleans about the same size as him couldn’t hold back theircuriosity. They came over and stood about five paces away from himlooking at him. He turned to face them and asked their names. Onewas called Esller and the other Barinll.
Aquitain askedthem if they were males or females. They thought that his questionwas quite hilarious and proceeded to point out the obviousdifferences between males and females, the various appendages, theshape of the abdomen, the differences in coloration and so on. Hefound out that Esller was a young teenage girl and Barinll was heryounger brother.
He couldn’tresist asking all sorts of questions about Llanlleans such as washis bite poisonous. The answer was yes, it could be if he bitsomething in a certain way and they showed him the differencebetween a poisonous and non-poisonous bite. He asked if they couldproduce a web. Of course we can they said and then proceeded toshow him how it was done. They described the different type of netsand ropes that could be made and how to make sticky and non-stickyones. He tried it and managed to get sticky web all over himself tothe great delight of his young tutors.
Finally heasked the question that had been on his mind for a long time. Whatdo they eat? The two youngsters found this question amazing.
‘You mean thatyou’ve never eaten any food since you’ve been a Llanllean?’ saidEsller incredulously.
Aquitain wassomewhat embarrassed and explained that he had eaten but he hadchanged to a gnome to do it as he didn’t know what to eat or howone went about it as it wasn’t a Newman thing to eat livecreatures.
Both theyoungsters then told him gruesome stories of how wonderful it wasto trap an animal or insect then wrap it up in web and bring ithome for the family to dine on. They extolled the virtues of thedifferent consistency and flavors of various types of livefood.
Curiously,rather than feeling like throwing up, Aquitain was intrigued. Hislogic won the day over his stomach.
‘I guess thatwhen you’re a spider, you eat what spiders
