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.
“Did anyone come looking for us while we were gone?” I asked Elyse after she’d been reassured the mission had been a success.
“The Webmaven asked after you,” she said. “I told her that you were… entertaining those two.” She jerked her head in Rami-Xayon and Isu’s direction. “She mentioned something about how it was a pity that you didn’t drink some of her spider-root tea before you entertained your women, whatever she meant by that.”
Hmm. That was interesting. Now, I was definitely going to ask Layna for some—if the council didn’t try to ambush and kill us during the night, of course.
And if they did, I was ready. Those assholes would get one very nasty surprise if they thought they could fuck with us. I was eager to see what my undead war-spiders could do in battle.
“Vance,” Rami-Xayon said suddenly, “something evil is happening in this city. I just felt a wave of it, the most powerful one yet.”
Strangely enough, the moment
