Is the Widow beyond that? He had, of course, heard the rumors—she was from another planet, not of Earth, not of Oriceran, but of some Great Beyond. She had come into power by feasting on the flesh of man, Orc, Goblins, and anything else she could get her legs on. But those are just rumors…right?
The floor was of the same stone as the walls, except it was stained with the dark red and black of blood. Splashes here, splashes there. At the end of the great room were steps leading up to a platform.
Palentar tried to imagine himself atop that platform, surrounded by this horrible smell and the corpses of dead creatures, and couldn’t do it. Perhaps that strange thing called destiny was behind it. Perhaps he wasn’t meant to stand on those steps; perhaps he was meant to hang from the webs instead.
The thought caused him to shudder.
The fear was back; the emotion that wasn’t supposed to be there at all.
“Now, speak, my child Queret,” the Widow said.
How does she know my name? Queret thought. Words would not escape his mouth. His tongue felt frozen.
“I know all the names of those in my kingdom. Now, speak.”
Palentar thought there was a certain viciousness present in her voice this time. He took a step backward.
“Well, your highness, your worshipfulness…uh, well, see—a”
Scrabbling came from above them. Palentar looked up and wished he hadn’t.
The Widow was descending from the darkness. She was huge—bigger than any Woolenite from trunk to tail. How her web supported her massive body, Palentar had no idea. Her shadow dwarfed over them.
If Queret couldn’t speak before, he was completely mute now. The two Arachnids just looked up in utter disbelief.
This is who rules over us. This is who we serve and worship, Palentar thought. Even to his own Arachnid eyes, the Widow was a monster.
“I feel your fear, my children. Fear not. I’ve made a promise to you; a promise I intend to keep. There has been a great disturbance amongst our kind, but what is the cause of this disturbance? Pray, do tell.”
Queret kept stammering. Palentar realized that if one of them didn’t speak, they were liable to upset the Widow—and judging by the pile of bones behind them, the Widow had a short temper.
“Ignatius Mangood,” Palentar finally said. “We have seen him in the village of Dominion, skulking amongst the ruins.” Then he winced.
Queret looked up at him, a grateful smile on his face.
“Ignatius Mangood? Here?”
“Yes, Your Royalty.”
“You have seen him with your own eight eyes?”
Now Queret spoke up. His figure was stooped and he was visibly shaking. “Aye, Your Highness, we saw him with our own eyes. He, three others, and a creature I didn’t recognize.”
A canine, Palentar thought. A dog. He knew it from his studies before the war.
The Widow began to laugh. Cackle, in fact. Her legs reached the platform with an audible boom, cascading dust and dirt clouds into the thick air.
The two Arachnids now took a conscious step back. If shit was about to go down, they wanted no part of the Widow’s wrath.
“Ignatius Mangood,” she cooed. “How dare he step foot into my kingdom. First he has the audacity to slay one of my own Resurrected, and now he comes so close to the lair?” She laughed again, her bulbous middle rising and falling with the motion, her soft abdomen slapping the platform.
“That is all, Your Grace,” Palentar said. His voice shook, too.
“We just thought you should know,” Queret chimed in and suddenly Palentar wished Queret would’ve kept his big mouth shut.
The Widow looked up at them for the first time since descending from the ceiling, and her eyes were filled with hate and malice. They were not the normal eyes of the Arachnids. No; instead of red, they were green, a glowing green. And instead of eight, the Widow was blessed with twelve eyes, wrapping the length of her head.
“My stars,” Palentar wheezed. He raised his hands in front of his face, a gesture that could only be taken as rude, and tried his best to shield himself from the abnormality of the terrible creature.
“Your stars, Master Palentar? Your stars? No, they’re my stars, and you are lucky I have not gouged your eyes out and ripped your arms off. You will look me in the face when you speak to me. Now, did Ignatius Mangood have the music box?”
Palentar lowered his hands. He was unsurprised to see that they shook.
“The music box? Erm…I mean, the music box, Your Highness?” Palentar said. He had not been this frightened since the Sacking of the Feebro during the second Spider War.
“Yes, the music box. Certainly you know of the music box.”
Queret looked at Palentar, his face was a mask of surprise. “You mean…the stories are true?”
“Yes,” the Widow answered. “All of it…true.”
Tales had passed through the years of the great music box, the simple wooden cube that could be used to access the world in between. Wars had been waged over it, for the use of its strange magic; oceans of blood had been spilt in its name—but to say it was more than a legend was a one-way ticket to ridicule.
After a pause, Palentar admitted, “I saw no music box, Your Royalty. I only saw his death stick, and the blue fire that courses from its end.”
“Yes, he wields the magic,” the Widow said. Her great pincers came together, click-clicking. Dying by those massive, curved spikes would be worse than any hell, Palentar thought. “And you did not dispose of him and his compatriots?”
“I—uh, we tried, Your Highness,” Queret said. “But he was too strong.”
Silence hung in the great cavernous lair, except for the
