At the mention of beasts devouring men, Layna’s attention was immediately piqued.
“Ooh, tell me, monk, what manner of beasts are these that catch and eat men?” she asked. “They aren’t giant spiders, are they? I miss my war spiders dearly.”
“Oh no, they’re not spiders or insects,” Ji-Ko answered. “They’re huge cats, panthers with saber teeth. They hunt in packs of five or six, usually around dusk or dawn. It is at these times that we must be most cautious.”
I had other ideas, though; I felt like a part of me was missing without any undead creatures around me. I understood what Layna was saying about missing her war spiders. I had a few zombie versions of my own, after all. I hoped that we did come across some of these saber-toothed panthers, so that I could hunt them and down raise them as undead attack cats.
After a while, we started to encounter stone ruins along the side of the road. The piles of rubble and half-collapsed buildings grew larger, until we were walking through what must have been an ancient city. All the ruined structures were made of a volcanic black stone, most likely obsidian.
When I asked Ji-Ko, he told me a tragedy had befallen the city that stood here thousands of years ago. All its people had simply disappeared, and soon the city had fallen into ruin, most of it having been swallowed up by the jungle. This reminded me of Kroth, where the Demogorgon wiped out the entire population in literal seconds. The Blood God was one of the most ancient deities in the world, so who knew what had happened here …
Layna started talking to me again, interrupting these dark thoughts.
“All that talk of saber-toothed panthers eating people has got me feeling peckish,” she remarked.
“You get pretty excited every time the topic of eating people comes up,” I chortled. “I remember all the human bodies hanging in spider silk cocoons in Aith. Did you ever eat any people?”
She chuckled darkly and flashed me a mischievous grin.
“I’m an Arachne, Vance, and not just any Arachne, but the Webmaven. It would be most strange if I didn’t eat people! I do miss the taste of human flesh, sautéed in a good red wine, or barbecued over an open fire,” she said with a sigh.
“These people you used to eat,” Ji-Ko said with a disapproving glance, “I hope they were not innocent victims.”
“No, no, convicted criminals, all of them,” Layna said. “Murderers, rapists, those sorts, sent to Aith for their death sentences by nearby human settlements. While some Arachne were, well, a little unscrupulous about where they sourced their human flesh, we royal Arachne only ever ate humans who deserved death, like the convicts sent to us for execution.”
“What does it taste like, human meat?” I asked, not feeling the need to hide the kind of morbid curiosity I felt about this practice.
A dark gleam sparkled in Layna’s eyes. “The best meat you’ll ever taste, bar none. That’s why it’s such a taboo in human society, I believe. If you humans started eating each other, you’d develop such a ravenous appetite for it that the human race would be extinct in weeks, if not days. It’s succulent and juicy, with just the right salty edge. Like good bacon, or pork sausage, if you want to compare it to something you know.”
I was quite fascinated, but Ji-Ko wrinkled his nose and frowned deeply with disgust.
“We Blind Monks are vegetarians,” he said. “And I don’t have the stomach to discuss this topic any further. Please, excuse me.” He slowed his pace a little so that he was behind us, walking among Anna-Lucielle and the other monks.
“You did a good job of scaring off the monk.” I grinned at Layna.
“All this talk of meat has made me rather hungry. Perhaps I could satiate myself with some other kind of meat?”
“You can have all the sausage you can handle, when you and I have some privacy.”
“I look forward to that, Vance. A Webmaven sometimes spends her whole life looking for a worthy mate. I, luckily, have found the perfect mate in my youth.”
“I haven’t really talked with you about your people or your youth. I was told the Webmaven of Aith is one of the deadliest, if not the deadliest Arachne of all. Is that true?”
Layna’s dark smile intensified, and an eerie light sparkled in her eyes. “That wouldn’t be too far from the truth. Once every decade, the Webmaven Games are held in the Great Arena of Aith. This is how the Webmavens are chosen. As you may have heard, Aith has never had a male ruler. Arachne men form the Council, yes, but that is because Arachne men prefer to think rather than fight. In Aith, it is we women who are the deadliest and most vicious fighters, and the greatest female warriors of Aith are pitted against each other in a fight to the death in the Webmaven Games. There is only one survivor of the games, and she becomes Webmaven for five years. I was that survivor; I was the one who killed every other Webmaven hopeful.”
“And when are the next Webmaven Games? I wouldn’t mind sitting in the stands and watching you kick your rivals’ asses.”
“Not for another two years; you’ll have to wait a while for the pleasure of witnessing me kill and devour my rivals,” Layna said.
“Whoa, hold on a minute, you eat the losers?” I asked. Isu had explained some of this when I’d first come to Aith, but this part was new to me.
“Oh yes! While Arachne meat doesn’t taste as exquisite as human meat, it is a close second. The victor of the Arachne Games eats the hearts of her defeated opponents, because we believe it gives us strength and courage as warriors.”
“It’s a custom I’d associate more with the Northern Barbarian tribes,” I said, “but I’m glad to hear that Arachne society has a more visceral, brutal side to it, and you’re not
