“Jax?” A weak voice called out from behind me, and others rose to join it.
“Lord Jax?”
“You crazy bastard! Whoot!”
The last I recognized as Arrin’s voice; the trainee mage was clearly loving life at the minute, I realized, as I managed to twist my head to get a look up at them. The rest of my party were all strung out above me, webbed onto the backs of spiders that climbed the sheer face of an underground cliff.
“They are safe,” came a tiny, rough voice and I twisted my head around. The smaller spider that hunched on my chest stared at me; its voice interrupted by a nervous clicking of fangs. “The queen commanded you are not to be harmed. We are travelling to the central nest, where she will summon the others.”
“What others… tiny spider?” I asked, hesitating over the name.
“I am Horkesh,” the spider said proudly. “I am the Queen-in-Waiting of our colony; my sisters travel with your servants.” I coughed and tried to shift again, the spider under me freezing, and I felt it start to shake in fear.
“What…*Cough*… What happened… Horkesh?” I asked weakly, and the spider shifted on my chest, scuttling to one side to say something in a language I didn’t understand, before dashing back to stand on my chest, its fangs flashing inches from my eyes as she spoke.
“Your mount fears it has given offense. Do you wish to eat it?” Horkesh asked, and I had to fight down bile.
“No. No, I really don’t fucking want to eat it. I want to get where we’re going and get the fuck down.” I replied, swallowing hard.
“We are less than a turning of your sand glasses from the nest. Be patient, please, Lord.”
With that she darted away again to carry out a hurried discussion with the spider acting as my mount, and it resumed the trip, this time notably faster and more bumpily. “I have ordered your mount to hurry,” she said, and I drew in a deep breath, unsure if I was really in a rush to get wherever I was going after all. I was webbed to the back of a giant fucking spider, I reflected.
I checked my mana and health, and saw they were both steadily rising, but far slower than I’d have liked.
“How long was I unconscious?” I asked, and Horkesh considered for a long while. I was about to ask again when she spoke up at last.
“You were unconscious for, I think, a full arc of the daystar. The Queen allowed your servants to administer the red and blue waters to you, and then she bit you, to ensure you would sleep deep and dreamlessly.”
“You think… wait, she fucking bit me?” I snarled and Horkesh backed up slightly before shaking herself and moving closer.
“It is difficult to understand your references to time. We have a sand glass in our nest. I think it is accurate, but I am unsure how long your daystar takes. It changes. It is very strange in your land above the sweet darkness.”
“The darkness?” I asked. The fact that the ‘queen’ Ashrag had fucking bitten me was still going round and round in my head. Her goddamn mouth had to be nearly my fucking size, how the hell...
“The darkness,” Horkesh repeated, gesturing with her front legs all around us.
“The darkness is our home, safe and secure. Light brings danger, but darkness is safe.”
“Darkness, tunnels, and underground; okay, got it. Now, why the hell did she fucking bite me?!” I snarled, my voice getting louder as my frustration and disgust rose.
“To protect you.” Ashrag spoke from somewhere ahead. I felt the spider beneath me tremble in fear again, before darting forward.
“You bit me, knocking me out, to fucking protect me?!” I snarled back at her, and she huffed in amusement.
“Typical! Yes, Lordling, I bit you to protect you, the injury to your body from taking the Oaths on, even as weak as they were. Despite how few Oathsworn as there must be within reach, it was still more than your wounded body could take. So, I bit you, slowing your body down, and putting you into a restful, dreamless sleep while your servants used their potions on you.”
I laid there in silence for a long time, considering her words. What details I could remember about the conversation with Amon and Ashrag slowly came back to me, and it lined up with Amon’s assertion that taking the Oaths on had been dangerous.
“I’m sorry, Ashrag… Queen Ashrag,” I said finally. “I have broken memories of the past, and I’m from a realm far from here. I don’t understand a lot of what has happened, and I tend to react… badly… to surprises. My friend, Oracle, my companion… was captured by the Drow. In chasing her, I nearly lost another friend to your children. Today has been a fucking terrible day so far.”
Silence reigned for a long count of ten, before Ashrag’s voice rumbled back to me.
“Admitting you were wrong was rare even when the Empire was strong; in the years since its fall, it is even rarer. Many have come to us, for we are among the eldest of the races; most have tried to kill us. Some come to steal our young, others for our bodies or our treasures… perhaps you come to us for a better reason. We will talk soon; rest now.” I could hear the sound of her bulk moving away.
I shrugged as much as I could, restrained as I was, and forced myself to look around. Wherever I was, it was deep; the way I sagged against the webbing let me know that I’d probably have fallen off long since, if I was free.
“Where is the nest?” I asked Horkesh, and the spider rushed back across to stare at me before answering.
“It is ahead. Deep, deep in the earth, far from the light, and any who could try to steal from us.”
With that enigmatic and entirely unhelpful
