The Widow raised a massive leg. “I’ve seen enough.”
The tree snapped the picture off and stood there as if nothing had happened.
Jinxton’s skin crawled, and he shivered. The Widow looked to him, each one of her eyes boring into his very soul.
“She is more powerful than I thought,” she said.
Jinxton replied with silence. If he agreed with her, it could mean forfeiting his life.
“And it seems our Orc friends were not lying.” She chuckled, but Jinxton sensed no humor in it. “Oh well, the world will not miss a couple of Orcs—or a whole battalion, for that matter.”
“Shall I ready an army?” Jinxton asked after a long moment. It seemed like the only sensible choice. “I could lead them to the city, and we could snuff out the witch and her allies.”
More silence, this time heavier than before. It seemed the weight of the world rested upon Jinxton’s shoulders. He again wanted nothing more than to flee the lair. He was more comfortable in the cover of the dark trees; beneath the canopy their leaves offered him. He missed the smell of the fresh air and the sounds of the malicious creatures all around him.
I should’ve run when I had the chance.
Cringing at the thought, he eyed the Widow warily. She could sometimes hear thoughts, and if she picked that one up, he was surely as good as dead.
But if she had listened, she did not show it.
Her own thoughts were on what she could do next.
Show me, she willed the Blood Tree. Show me my next move.
Nothing happened.
The tree was spent. It had shown her more than it ever had. Perhaps Orc blood was rich in nutrients, or perhaps the Blood Tree just had a penchant for their sickening taste. She didn’t know, but she did know she was out of Orcs and out of options.
She turned to Jinxton and saw the fear written on his face. Compassion came over her. It was an alien emotion that she hadn’t experienced since long before being changed by her meddling with the world in between, and her sacrifices to an ancient, dark magic.
“Go,” she said to him. “Go and leave me in peace while I think on our next move.”
Jinxton didn’t protest. He bowed slightly and crossed the legs protruding out of his upper torso in the sign of the Arachnids, then turned and left.
When he had gone, and the Widow was left to the great, empty silence of her lair—the only company being the piles of bones and corpses in the corner, and the Blood Tree in front of her—another emotion gripped the back of her mind. Sadness.
“My King,” she said quietly to the Blood Tree. If there was any way for Arazon, the Great King of the Arachnids, to hear her on this mortal plane, it was through the Blood Tree. “My King, what do I do? The music box is no longer in sight, and the Earthling bitch grows stronger as my army and I grow weaker. I fear I will never again see you in the flesh. I fear that—”
The tree opened up in front of her, the trunk splitting down the middle. Inside, she saw a beating heart, lungs expanding and contracting, veins, and nerves.
“What is this?”
The tree closed again, and from it came the deep, thrumming voice of her long-lost king.
“The answer is simple, my Queen.”
“Arazon?”
She inched forward, sliding her massive body closer and closer to the opening in the wall that contained the Blood Tree.
“It is I,” Arazon replied, his voice coming from nowhere and everywhere at the same time.
“Where are you?”
“You know where I am,” Arazon’s voice said.
Slowly, the Widow brought her arm up to her breast where her massive heart beat wildly.
“Yes, in there, my Queen, but I am also in here.”
“The world in between.”
“Yes. And there is a way you can get me out.”
“I’ve been trying for many years, my King. I have. And I dream of you every night. I long to be in your arms again.”
“You will be, my Queen. You will be, but time is short.”
“How so?”
“A great enemy rises here. He has only spared my life because of what I promised him.”
“Spared your life, Arazon? How so? One cannot die in the world in between.”
“No, they cannot, but they can suffer. This dark enemy knows power beyond what our minds can comprehend. I do not doubt that it possesses the ability to cast me out and kill me in the mortal plane, and I have no doubt that the dark fiend will send me wherever it so pleases when the afterlife dawns on me.”
“No,” the Widow said, breathless.
“ ‘No’ is right. I do not want that any more than you do.”
“Tell me what to do. Tell me where I need to go.”
She could already feel the connection between her and her lost love slipping away. The sacrifice given to the Blood Tree would only last so long; soon it would need more blood to carry on. She was prepared to give it her own. Though her blood was tainted and might be rejected by the great Blood Tree. It might even be taken as an insult, and the tree would never impart its wisdom and power to her ever again. She couldn’t have that.
Instead of telling the Widow what to do, her lost king showed her.
The air shimmered once more as the tree disappeared and gave way to a completely different environment. In the image, which was nothing but a lightning flash of information that seemed to last an eternity, the sun beat down upon a clearing. Mountains rose in the background, mountains the Widow remembered from her days above the surface. Surrounding the clearing were abnormal trees, tall, brooding, ominous.
The Dark Forest. Ashes, it has been too long since I’ve looked upon my own domain.
Something caught her eye. It was a strong figure in a dirty, gray robe. On his back, the great sword that had slain her
