Suddenly, the ground shook. Palentar lost his footing and fell to the side. He landed face-first into the pile of bones. Femurs and ribs flew out in every direction, landing with a clatter. The breath was knocked out of him.
The Widow laughed. It was an unsettling sound, terrible enough to drive a man to insanity.
“Not so strong now, are you, Master Palentar!”
“We tried, Your Royalty!” Queret was screaming. “We tried, but he was just too—”
“You did not try hard enough!” The Widow stood on her back legs. How she was able to lift such a massive middle up, no one would ever know; it defied the basic laws of physics, put the sciences to shame. From her abdomen, a stinger protruded. It was longer than a full-grown Centaur, harder than any metal, sharper than any blade—even the one the witch had carried when the Arachnids met Ignatius in the ruins of Dominion. Venom dripped from the end of the stinger,. Just the sight of that noxious liquid was enough to make Palentar feel woozy.
Palentar scrambled up now. No matter where he was in all of Oriceran, it would be much too close to the Widow’s stinger.
She moved forward, her legs taking the platform’s steps five at a time.
“Run!” she shrieked. “Run before I change my mind and kill you where you stand.”
The two Arachnids wasted no time in listening to the Widow. Faster than they’d run since the days of their youth, Queret and Palentar sprinted through the dark corridors and stairwells, out of the lair, and sprawled out on the forest floor in front of the guards, who did not wear shocked expressions on their faces. No, it must be a regular occurrence to the visitors of the Widow’s lair.
Palentar looked at Queret. He noticed the Arachnid’s chitin had lost some of its shine. He was pale, ashy looking, his red eyes no longer glowed with fervor. He assumed he must look the same way…or worse.
“Don’t suppose you two will be back,” the familiar guard said.
They didn’t answer. They just scrambled up off of the forest floor and ran into the depths of the Dark Forest. Where they were going, they had no clue; just as long as it was far away from the Widow’s lair.
Not long after Queret and Palentar fled, the familiar guard, whose name was Jinxton, was summoned into the lair. He gripped the hilt of his sword a little tighter and, at that moment, wished for a death stick so he could conjure up some sort of protection spell. He had never been able to grasp the concept of the magic some Arachnids were able to use, but that wouldn’t have stopped him from trying.
His descent into the lair was as unpleasant as it always was—he had thought of it as a descent into madness on more than one occasion. When he entered the lair, crossing the same threshold of shadow into the sickly green light, he noticed the piles of bones were scattered amongst the stone floor, and that the Widow was not up high in her web, where she mostly stayed these days.
That was not a good sign.
“Ah, Jinxton,” the Widow sang in her sweet voice that was as sickly as the light permeating around the cavern. “I’ve been informed of some rather unfortunate news. It seems an enemy of our race has been spotted nearby. Much too close.”
“Yes, Your Worship, I have heard.” He regretted the words as soon as they’d left his tongue. No doubt the Widow would hear this and think he was withholding information from her. She had been known to get…volatile once or twice before with those who opposed and conspired against her.
“Dreadful news. Can my children not do anything right?”
Jinxton fell to one knee and bowed his head to the giant spider in front of him. “I am sorry, My Queen.”
“ ‘Sorry’ does not protect us, nor does it retrieve the music box. My beloved is waiting in the world in between.”
“What will you have me do, My Queen?” Jinxton asked. “I will do anything.”
Silence.
Jinxton closed his eyes and winced, trying to brace himself for the oncoming death. He had lived this long; in his time serving as a guard to the Queen, he had seen eight other guards ripped apart in this very room. He figured it was only a matter of time before the same befell him. And now that time had come, it seemed.
But when he opened his eyes, the Widow was still on the platform. She hadn’t moved.
Very quietly, she spoke. “Call the Orcs.”
Surprise took him. The only thing that could have been more surprising at that moment would’ve been getting out of there alive.
“The Orcs, My Queen?”
“You heard what I said. Call them.”
“But…our treaty, My Queen.”
“The treaty means nothing to me now. All that matters is that Ignatius Mangood dies a painful death, and the music box is in my possession, where it rightfully belongs.”
“Who should I call? The King? Or shall I go directly to the General?”
“The King, Jinxton. I would hate to start another war in the process of this. We are too weak for that—but not for long. Once the music box is mine, I will free the enslaved, trapped in the world in between, and I will rule this world the way I was meant to…with my king by my side.”
Jinxton bowed his head. “As you wish, My Queen. I will send word at once.”
“Their best trackers,” the Widow said. “As many as they can spare. I will pay their weight in gold.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
With that, Jinxton left. As soon as he crossed the threshold back into the shadows, he breathed a sigh of relief. The air was musty and dank, but it had never tasted sweeter. When he had escaped the lair altogether, Cap, the other guard, looked at him with wide eyes, surprised that Jinxton had survived. Jinxton
