Like her legs melding into one, her arms seemed to fold back into the body. It was here that the dress that she had been wearing properly began to tear as her arms moved in ways that the dress was not made to accommodate. The movements were not smooth, they were jerky and as the limbs jerked around, I could hear the bones breaking and, I assumed, reshaping themselves.

Her scream was changing now. It was not just a scream, it was a shriek. I could hear the pain in that noise, but also rage and fear that ran down into the depths of my stomach. I wanted to flee, vomit and do more than a little bit of screaming myself. Whisperer held me fast though and I could not move.

Her lower jaw seemed to shrink. Her teeth and tongue had disappeared and I assumed that they had been absorbed into the, well, the flesh ball that she had become. The head also started to be surrounded by the growing and expanding flesh.

And she was starting to grow. Or rather, bloat might have been a more accurate description. Her mass was resting on the ground now, with no legs or arms to keep her upright. She was two balls of flesh. One, much larger, was what her legs had turned into. The other, slightly smaller but not by much. It was less round and more elongated. Where her chest used to be. What had once been Ariadne’s head with a face that I loved, was just a bump now at the front of the smaller section.

The two balls were joined by a link and I could start to see the shape of a spider beginning to emerge as I realized what Ariadne was turning into. That might make me seem stupid in the heat of the moment but… heartbreak, stress, and so on.

I think I moaned.

She was still growing, the last tatters of her dress fell away as it ripped, only to be trapped underneath her growing form. Underneath the tatters of clothing was displayed a grotesque surface made of skin, viscera, and protruding bone. I have seen newborn babies as part of my travels, and it reminded me of that. The dark red, purple goo covered her as her skin as it stretched, tore, and was broken by new bone structure.

Her rear end just grew and grew until I thought it was not going to stop.

Her front section seemed to stop growing for a moment, just a moment. It was long enough that, even though I knew that the ending had not been reached, I began to hope that it was over.

It was not over, of course, it wasn’t over.

Her eight spider’s legs exploded in all directions from her fore-body. They were huge, far larger, and longer than I had been expecting them to be. The explosion tore through another layer of skin and showered the room in blood, torn skin, and associated slime. Whisperer hauled me backward as I was rooted to the spot, thus avoiding the spray of what can only be described as “fluids”.

Later, I would see that some of this sprayed the Elder.

The six rearmost legs were long, powerfully muscled, and chitinous while the front legs seemed to be smaller and more precise looking. The pads of the two front legs seemed to have three, finger-like extensions while the others seemed to end in small points.

I don’t know what happened next or what was going on, but it looked as though the legs were having an argument with themselves as they figured out what they were doing and how they wanted to work with each other. They drummed on the floor in the same way that an impatient man might drum his fingers before they got their act together and pushed on the ground, all at the same time as the spider stood up.

But she was still not finished. One last explosion as the bump that had been her head extended and then exploded forth again. It was definitely female, it was bony and muscled in the same way that the Bruxa that I had seen was. It was joined to the rest of the spider’s body at around where the navel would be on a human and at the end of that, very, female torso body was the head of a spider. Eight eyes rested on the top that seemed to me to be moving this way and that. And a gaping maw underneath that was covered with two furry… I don’t know what to call them. Fangs, or mandibles would both be among the right answers.

And there she stood. She was visibly trembling as she stood there, the pink flesh of a newborn, the pure, yellow-white of newly exposed bone, tatters of a black dress around her feet, and the blood and gore of rebirth still dripping from her form.

It might sound, or read, as though this took a long time. It did not. I didn’t have an hourglass with me, let alone a minute measuring glass. But it was certainly less than a minute for her to finish changing. It was ertainly over in less time than it took for you to read all of this. It seemed longer than that though. Far longer. I ached for her.

She turned her head to look at me, her fangs and mandibles working. Then her legs moved until she was looking at the Elder.

If they spoke, I could not hear her, but I could guess. My first guess was that she was saying “There, are you satisfied?” But I was wrong. Later, I decided that what she was saying was “Is this enough?”

It wasn’t.

“Is that how you would dress for battle?” The Elder asked her before the musical voice became harsh. “You are trying to look pitiable, you are trying to look vulnerable in this new state. You look as though a quick breath could knock you over. I told you to show him how it would look if you went to war. That is not how you would march to battle.

Ariadne shook herself. The head seemed to grow straight out of the almost human-looking torso and for a moment, it looked as though she was trying to shake her head. Then her legs intervened and the entire spider moved from side to side in a negative motion.

“SHOW HIM YOUR WAR FORM.” The Elder bellowed, again followed by sounds of Regis hacking in the corner.

Ariadne turned back to me.

There were no human lips, no tongue or throat to cause a scream, she just chittered at me. Her eyes seemed to blink and flutter shut.

Her outset skin began to darken first, turning from a light pink to a darker, more purple color. Then I could see the outsides turning into a hardened shell. Dark, purple, almost blue in nature. The shell broke a couple of times which caused her to shriek in what sounded like pain as the shell broke before reforming into individual pieces to allow for better movements. In the same way that a Knight has several pieces of armor, Ariadne had separate pieces of the shell for the same reason. The plates were interlocked and interacted with each other. There was more goo now as the shells broke.

The legs changed as well, becoming darker, the rear legs became sharper. There were blades on them now and you could see the ends of those same feet had become pointed. It was all too easy to suspect what would happen if one of those legs thrust into the armored body of a Knight. I don’t know, and I wouldn’t want to test it, but I imagine that even the best-made armor of the dwarven, gnomic forges would struggle to stand up to a strike in anger from Ariadne.

And she was getting angry. There was no mistaking the tone of her shrieks any longer. She was getting angry and agitated. Her legs were drumming as they moved her backward and forwards. Looking at me, looking at the Elder, looking back at me, and then looking back at the Elder.

And then she was finished. Her huge rear section was now a solid shell, other than the very back which seemed to finish in some kind of stinger. Her legs, where they were not blades and dagger points, were covered in an armoured shell, as was the central torso with numerous extra plated to protect the leg joints. The shell segments continued up the torso protrusion in a way that made me a little uncomfortable to be honest. It certainly accentuated the abnormal female proportions.

I’m going to leave that there.

And then there was her head. Which looked like it was wearing a skull helmet, so close to the bone as it was.

“There you are, little human.” The Elder hissed. “That is what the thing you love really looks like.”

This was too much for Ariadne and she made a noise of rage that split my ears enough to drive me to my knees and make me see spots. I was hauled even further backward by Whisperer who had obviously been ready for just this happenstance as Ariadne hurled herself at the seated form of the Elder.

It all happened so fast. I had to train myself to get to the point where I could recognize what Kerrass was doing, to see through the speed and the training. So I can process movement, much better than I have been able to do.

So here’s what I think happened.

Ariadne leaped at the Elder, legs extended, pointed at him. She tried to wrap herself around him so that he would not be able to move so that she could then slash at him with her upper limbs and cause damage.

The Elder, almost leisurely and casually, backhanded her so that she went flying backwards across the room.

Whisperer had me held and restrained in the entrance to that cavern as Ariadne and the Elder fought.

It did not take long.

Ariadne righted herself on the ground, getting her feet underneath herself before going to launch herself at the Elder again.

This time he was there to meet her, so she hadn’t launched herself at him properly when he caught her, both by the joint between forward and back sections and by the neck. He then turned her, as easily as I might wrestle a child, and slammed her into the ground.

Once,

Twice,

Three times, the impacts shook the ground and caused a white goo to explode from Ariadne’s mouth and rear end.

Then he held her on the ground and looked up at me.

“This, Little Human. This is the thing that you were going to marry. This is the thing that you claim to love. This. She has lied to you. She has manipulated you. She has made you love her and then when her experiment was over, she was going to leave you, broken and lost as she left to start her next experiment. So I ask you again. Do you still love her?”

He was still holding her. Her legs thrashed around, more than once making contact with the Elder’s form. He ignored it.

I looked at the thing that had been Ariadne for a long time, time enough that it felt like an eternity. Long enough time to wonder if I was going mad.

“Why?” I coughed and sobbed at the same time. “Why do you insist on asking me the same question over and over again when you already know the answer. My answer has not changed.”

“You still love her?” He demanded.

“I cannot deny that I have some thinking to do.” I tried for my normal, scholarly bravado. It didn’t work. It was getting to the point where it was all too much. I was having my heart broken, needed to rethink everything that had happened between myself and the woman that I loved, I had seen how she could really change, for real rather than in some kind of strange abstract manner and yet the creature that she had become, was lying on the ground. She was held there by something far more powerful than even she was, in the same way, that someone might hold down an unruly hunting hound. I desperately wanted a quiet, dark, and cool room to absorb everything that had happened and I could feel my mind on the very edge of breaking.

I forced myself to tear my eyes away from the struggling spider creature on the ground. She was still fighting. I ripped my gaze from her and looked the Elder in his shadowed eye-sockets that seemed to glow, reflecting the torchlight.

“But yes,” I said. “I still love her.”

“Prove it.” He ordered.

My first urge was the stupid one. My first urge was to ask how he expected me to prove an emotion. It was a stupid urge, the urge to fight back at an authority figure. I knew it was foolish to be so glib and somewhere in the back of my mind, a little voice was telling me that more than just my life was at stake here.

I needed to think. I needed to think rationally, even if just for a moment, and in telling myself that I needed to think rationally, I started to do so. The answer was obvious.

I took a deep breath and looked back at the monster that Ariadne had become. I looked at the huge, bulbous body, pulsating with her rage and her pain. I looked at her hindquarters that were leaking web-fluid and venom in equal measures. I looked at the razor-sharp limbs and the chitinous joints to the rest of the body. I needed something. I needed a toe hold. I needed something in there that reminded me on an instinctual level, of the woman that I still loved.

I found myself looking at the female torso that came out of the armored middle section.

(Freddie’s note: I know, I know that there’s a scientific term for what goes on in the middle of a spider’s anatomy and if I was in a position to go and ask an expert or find a reference book, then I would do those things. But alas, those things are beyond my reach at the moment.)

I looked and I saw the upper part of a woman. It might seem petty, it might seem misogynistic or lust-filled, or cosmetic. But I saw that shape. I saw the join where the midriff came out of the body of the spider. I saw the lumps in the place of breasts. I saw the shape and suddenly, it was easy to imagine that shape as being Ariadne’s shape, wearing a suit of armor.

It suddenly seemed easy to imagine that that shape was Ariadne, that she had been absorbed by this thing that she had become and at that moment, I could no longer see the legs or the body or the bristly, unpleasant hair. I saw the woman. I looked into her eyes and I saw the woman that I loved. I imagined the pain that she must be feeling. Even if she was only as interested in me as a man who studies moths might be interested in the specimen that is pinned to the piece of card, I could feel pity for the woman that was being put through all of that. I could feel that compassion.

I resolved to show this Elder thing that humanity was more than that and if I could help myself, and the woman, get some small measure of revenge on the thing that had forced all of this. Then I would do so.

I looked Ariadne in the eyes. You see anthropomorphized pictures of Spiders that have two eyes larger than the others in order to somehow humanize the spider. This was not the case. So I just aimed for the middle and I tried to smile.

It must have been hideous, but I smiled anyway. I smiled and I took a step forward.

Ariadne froze as I did so, her legs and struggles stopped. I had never heard a Spider whimper, and I don’t know for sure that that’s what she was doing, but that’s what I decided it was that I could hear.

I took another step forward, the third step was easier and followed on from the second in a much smoother manner.

Some more white liquid emerged from Ariadne’s mouths, between the fangs, mandibles, or whatever the proper term is. She gave that noise again, the one that I had decided was a whimper.

“Let her go,” I told the Elder. I wasn’t looking at him and from this distance, I am astonished that he did as I asked. I blinked and he was back on his throne, but now he was watching Ariadne and me rather than some point in the air that only he could see.

She pushed herself to her feet. It obviously took effort and no small amount of pain. She backed away from me and used one of her forelegs in a waving, negative kind of gesture of denial. I ignored it and took a step further forwards. She backed up again and her hind legs started to reach a back wall. For a moment I began to think that I had her cornered. Just before what little part of my brain that was still working rationally, reminded me that spiders can climb walls and that was if she didn’t jump over me and run down one of the nearby tunnels.

I stopped and took a deep breath and cleared my throat.

“It occurs to me.” I began carefully. “That I don’t know your name. I have heard a couple of different options this evening and I like none of them, so for now and until you tell me otherwise. I am going to keep calling you Ariadne.”

Both forearms were trying to fend me off. Not really, but they were trying to keep me away. If she were human, I would have thought that one arm was fending me off, while another was trying to cover her face so that she couldn’t look at me or see me.

When that didn’t work and I took another step forward, she physically turned herself around so that she couldn’t see me.

“Ariadne look at me. Please?” I made it a question.

She turned back and seemed to shrink from me a bit. Spiders can make themselves very small in order to squeeze through holes after all.

“Love is many things to me,” I said. “You are right in saying that trust, respect, and all the rest of that are part of it. This…” I waved in the direction of the Elder, “thing wants me to prove that I still love you. I can think of no better way than to show that I trust you.”

I took another step forwards and the spider form shrank back even further, protecting herself with her armoured legs. She was not turning back. I don’t know why she didn’t but… it didn’t seem important. I could only see the woman now anyway.

“I don’t care what you told me,” I said as I took another step. “I don’t care if all I am to you is some sample to be examined under a microscope to be disposed of when you are done with me. My heart breaks at the thought. I don’t care if your nature makes you feel superior to me. I don’t care if I am nothing more than a snack, or a bottle of wine.”

I took another step forward. She still shrank from me, the huge spider form was visibly trembling. But she didn’t retreat up the walls which I took to be a victory.

“If my heart breaks in the morning when I stop to think about everything that I have heard and seen tonight, then I will deal with that. I will go and get drunk with Kerrass. I will get him to take me to the Belles and I will…”

I shook my head to shake loose the lump that was growing in my throat.

“But that is for tomorrow.” I declared in as strong a voice as I could manage. “For tonight, I still love you, even as my heart breaks. Now you can tear me apart now. I am under no illusion. In loving you I have laid my heart bare. You can do with it as you will. It seems that you want to break it. But for now, I am going to show that I trust you.”

I took another step forward. She could not make herself smaller. So slowly, in the same way, that I would reach out to an unhappy horse, I reached out and put my hand out.

“I am going to step inside the reach of your legs, arms, whatever they are.” I found myself chuckling. “You can kill me, or push me away or otherwise damage me. But I trust that you will not. I am going to stoep within reach of this body that you have never shown me and I am going to kiss you.”

I felt another attack of hysteria wash over me as I took another step forward.

“I can’t promise that I won’t wipe my mouth afterward.” I chuckled. “And I hope you will forgive me if I keep it relatively chaste and leave out the tongue.”

I chose to interpret the chittering noises that she made as a kind of bitter laughter.

I took another step forwards and placed my hand on one of the legs that were shielding her face. It was surprisingly warm and there was a soft-furred feeling to it.

“I love you,” I told her again. “I trust you. Let me show you, let me show him.”

The leg under my hand moved gently and I pulled my hand back. The edge was razor sharp after all and I didn’t want to lose my hand accidentally. I could see her face and as I looked into her eyes. I swear I saw sadness. There are no eyelids, no muscles on the corners of a spider’s eyes to convey emotion like a dog or human does it. There were just the black, glistening eyes.

I took another step forward and I could see the mandibles where her mouth would have been. The larger, outer ones were furred while the inner ones were still more flesh-colored and covered with… goo. So I chose one of the outer ones.

I took a step forward.

She seemed to shake her head but I was too far in now.

I took another step forward and leaned the rest of the way.

I will admit that I closed my eyes to kiss her. It was a pursed lips thing, but I had been reassured by the feel of her leg that it would not be too unpleasant.

It was, as the leg had been. Warm and furry. It was like kissing the head of a newborn baby, or the paws of a cat. I held it as long as I could, which was not long. The surface I was kissing seemed to ripple under my lips and I pulled back.

“I love you,” I said again.

She screamed again and I fell back, moving quicker than I wanted to.

The spider creature went into a frenzy of movement, drumming her legs on the ground, it hurled itself into the wall three times, rolled onto its back before righting itself again, spinning around in a circle before screeching again.

And then it fled down one of the side tunnels, moving impossibly fast.

I shuddered and wiped my mouth on the back of my sleeve. It was an unconscious gesture and I was disappointed when I realized what I had done.

The firelight from the torches flickered and as I looked down the tunnel that Ariadne had fled. I saw the light reflecting off something that was glittering. It was only a few steps away so I indulged myself and bent down. It had fallen into the water and I wiped the circular shape clean. Not that it was dirty, but I felt the necessity. I knew what it was but I held it up to the light anyway.

It was Ariadne’s engagement ring.

What I want to write here is that I looked at that small circle of gold with its embedded gems. It was and still is, a minor work of art in the jeweler’s craft and although I cannot claim to be unbiased in the matter, I would hold it up against many other examples, including some that are contained in some royal vaults that I have visited. The jewels are smaller to be sure but that was a deliberate choice on my part.

The purpose of royal rings and the like is to display wealth and power. It’s there so that Kings and Queens can say, “Look, here is what I am capable of. I am rich enough and powerful enough to display these things on my fingers and around my neck as though they are cheap baubles.”

There is also some use in having these things there in order to interfere with the normal use of fingers. It displays laziness and a lack of a need to lift the finger. I know that this is there and if you are interested in these small kinds of power plays, there are books on the subject.

For me though, I wanted a smaller ring, a more delicate approach. I wanted yellow gold because that was traditional and I thought that in a marriage as untraditional as ours was going to be, we needed some tradition to be there. After that, the main stone was a red one. I wanted a deep, burnished red that symbolized both of us. For me, it was the red of the eternal fire and for her, it was the color of blood.

That might be a bit on the nose, but at the time, I was a young fool that was making a giant leap of faith, I hope I can be forgiven.

On either side of the main stone, there are two smaller diamonds. I wanted round-cut diamonds because I just preferred the look.

I want to write that I took that ring and I held it up to the light. That I cradled it in my hands and shed a tear at the sight, for all that had been and all that I might be losing. I want to say that I weighed it in my palm as though I was weighing the significance of Ariadne leaving it behind. I want to tell you that I wondered as to whether or not she had left it behind deliberately and wondered what all of that might mean.

I would even prefer writing that I hurled it away in disgust at all that I had heard that day. It would be more dramatic and if this were a work of the bard I might have done that, before scrabbling after it in tears when I changed my mind before squeezing it in my hand so that I wouldn’t let it go, sobbing in heartbreak.

But I did none of those things.

Instead, I slipped it into my pocket, patting it to make sure that I knew that it was still there and secure before I stood and stared down the tunnel that Ariadne had fled down.

“What do you think of my little display?” Came the Elder’s voice. There was an attitude to it that suggested that he was repeating the question.

I asked him to repeat it again anyway.

I took a deep breath as I considered my answer.

“I charge you, to be honest.” The Elder said. “I have promised to be honest with you, and I will, but before I answer your questions. You will be honest with me. What do you think of what you have seen and heard? What do you think of what I have shown you?”

“Honestly?” I asked.

“Of course. That is what I said.

I took a deep breath.

“I thought that that was unnecessarily cruel,” I told him.

“It was necessary.” He said. “Trust and respect are what you require for love. A nice pair of breasts completes the picture for a species as primitive as your own. A nice pair of breasts and a well-turned pair of ankles. If you were going to marry her, you should know the truth. That the breasts were fake and made that way simply to trigger your very basic and primitive lusts. You should know that the basis of the marriage is false. That she doesn’t love you. To her, you are no more interesting than any other primitive that might crawl around in the dirt. You are a herd animal to her. In the same way that you use cows for their milk, we use humans for their blood. That is all you are to her, a passing fancy.

“Is it cruel to make these things clear to you? Is it cruel to show you the truth? It is often said that the truest form of friendship is telling someone an uncomfortable truth that they do not want to hear. Well, that is truth. She does not love you. She looks like that because she is using your primitive belief in physical beauty and to manipulate your naivete and loneliness. She acts like she does to keep you from fleeing from her, to keep you beneath her microscope. Is it cruel to tell you that truth before you tie yourself to her, body and soul?”

I snapped, laughter finally bubbling up my throat and out into the open.

“I didn’t say that you were being cruel to me,” I told him.

He stared at me in shok for a moment as the implications of what I had said sunk in.

There was a blur and then I couldn’t breathe.

It took me for a moment before I realized that I was being lifted off the ground by my throat. I could feel sharp, bony claws digging into my neck. I could feel the ends of talons digging around my spine as the Elder’s hand wrapped around my neck and he lifted me off the floor.

I did what I could. I kicked out but the length of the Elder’s arm meant that I was too far away to be able to reach him with my feet. I used my hands to try and reach his face. Whatever part of me that was still thinking logically, as well as yelling at me for being snarky to the Unseen Elder himself, reminded me of some fighting advice which was that a person can’t strangle you if you put your thumb in their eye. But again, the length of the arm made this impossible. So again, I was reduced to fighting for breath. I got my hands on his wrist and tried to dig into veins and tendons in the wrist as well as pulling myself up in a vain attempt to reduce the pressure on my throat.

The thought of prying the Elder’s fingers apart was laughable.

He wasn’t trying to kill me though. He was just showing me that he could. So I could know that I was going to die before he actually killed me.

“You dare,” he hissed, still through Regis’ mouth. “You dare question me? I am all that stands between these people and doom. I am the Elder, I am the ruler. I am king and priest and father and god. All that they do here is serve me. I cannot be cruel to them. They belong to me and if I choose to take some amusement during my long watch… then so be it.”

He was not trying to kill me, but I was being strangled. My own weight, wresting on his thin, hard, bony hands ensured it. The edges of my vision were already going red and dark.

“Now you die.” He said, “for every insult and insolence that you have displayed.”

Regis’ voice came back.

“But we promised that…”

“Silence.” The Elder snapped as he back-handed Regis across the face. I found the sight funny. As the air left me, the sight and sound of a man arguing with himself seemed almost hysterical.

Regis staggered backward. Blood flowed from the gash down his face as he straightened.

For reasons best known to myself, I waited until the Elder turned back to me. He had turned his head onto one side as he watched me die. It was the same gesture that Ariadne uses when she considers something. The same one her mother also uses. Now the Elder used that gesture as he looked at me to watch me as I died.

“I have a message for you.” I croaked.

“What?” The Elder pulled me closer so that he could peer into my eyes.

I didn’t say anything, I was too busy struggling to stay conscious. The Elder’s face moved. If it was a human, I thought it might be a grimace.

The grip around my neck slackened and I could breathe a little easier. I sucked a lungful of air down.

“A mutual friend says hello.” I croaked.

He dropped me. My limbs didn’t seem to want to work and I collapsed to the floor.

“Impossible,” He hissed, showing that, thousands of years old he might be, but there are some cliches that even he must bow to. “I have no friends.” He said. “What kind of friend could we possibly share? I am the Unseen Elder of the Vampiric race. I am…” He stopped speaking as, despite the fact that he was unknowable ancient and barely even humanoid, he grimaced as a thought had clearly just entered his mind. “I am…”

“Afraid,” I told him and I smiled, as horribly as I could manage. “Old Red Eyes says ‘Hello’.”

I made the “hello” almost singsong-like.

The Elder’s mouth opened slowly and a hiss emanated from it. Along with the black liquid that seemed to come from Regis’ mouth and the mouth of the other translater before him. It was the first sound that had actually come from him in a long while as he stared into my eyes.

Then he stood and looked about himself. He didn’t look humanoid anymore. He reminded me more of a cat or a dog that was looking for enemies. Then he stopped, before turning back to stare down a particular tunnel. It wasn’t the tunnel that Ariadne had fled down. There was nothing that could distinguish that tunnel from any others but the way that the Elder stared into that darkness was…

I had been right. He was afraid. A part of my mind wanted to wonder what could make a being like the Elder afraid. Another part did not want to know.

Regis shook his head. It was the shake of a man waking up from a dream, or shaking off a hallucination or trying to clear their heads after drinking too much.

Regis, my good friend that I disliked intensely, was back in the room.

“Who is Old Red Eyes?” He asked, all innocence before he followed the same path as the last translator. The Elder just moved. Going from statue-like stillness to brief and horrifying action without any kind of intervening space in between. Where the previous translator had been a theatrical tearing apart, this one was much faster, angrier, and more brutal. The last one had taken a fixed amount of time. I had been given space to realize what was happening and to really see a person being torn apart. Regis was just torn into bits so fast that I only have a vision of individual flashes. Believe me, though, those bits are seared into my mind.

Including his look of utter shock and bafflement. There didn’t seem to be any pain on his face.

Bits of Regis rained around me and Whisperer who was falling back from the Elder and myself. I couldn’t see Whisperer’s face, but I could somehow tell that he was looking from me to the Elder and trying to make sense of what was going on.

He clearly knew better than to ask the Elder too many questions.

Then the Elder spun and was back to staring down that tunnel. He peered at it, turning his head from side to side as he tried to see deeper and deeper into the darkness. I finally found my feet and moved so that I could look down the darkness myself to see what he was looking at.

I could feel my gaze being drawn into that shadow. Even as I gasped for breath and worked on banishing the rippling darkness at the end of my own vision while forcing myself to take in air. I looked with the Elder, standing well back from him. The flickering light of the cavern that we were in made the outcroppings of stone seem to flicker, move and loom in the shadows.

It was an untravelled tunnel. I could tell that much anyway. The pathway that we had used to bring us to this throneroom or whatever it was, had been smooth and well worked for ease of movement. There were other passages away. Ariadne had used one of them but the attendants had all entered from the same entrance that I had used. This tunnel was smaller, it was…

Creepier.

I looked and as I looked, I looked past the pools of darkness. The little shadows that were cast by the torchlight. I looked past them and the surfaces that glittered and the other bits that occasionally saw light with the shifting of shadows and flickering of flames.

I looked past all of those things to try and see what it was that the Elder was looking for.

Past them all was a gaping hole, it made me want to think of a wound. A wound in the Earth, a gash that bled darkness and shadow out into the rest of the world. It made me think that the rest of creation was an intruder and that the darkness was the real owner of existence. I looked, my gaze being drawn deeper and deeper. Was there something there?

I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t see. The torchlight had blinded me and robbed me of my vision. Was there something there?

Slowly, a suspicion began to crawl over my skin. It trickled down my spine and I shivered. To enter that wound, that gash of darkness, was to die horribly. To go there was to have your life torn from you in the most horrible of ways. There was nothing there other than pain, other than agony and suffering. And then there would be death.

There was something there. There was. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it. There was something there and it wanted me to go to it. It wanted me to step into the shadows. If I didn’t go, it would follow me and it would be waiting. It wanted me to go. “Better to confront it now, to get it over with” it seemed to say.

There was something there and it was looking at me. I could feel it. I was sure. There was something there. Just in the deepest parts of the shadow. Something with red eyes.

Something that was smiling.

“What did he say?” The Elder demanded of me. His voice was oddly disappointing. High pitched and raspy but there was a power there that made you want to cover your ears with your hands. Like Fingernails on a chalkboard.

I shook my head and shuddered. The darkness had hypnotized me and I was suddenly back. The tunnel was just a tunnel and the Elder looked ridiculous as he danced from one foot to the other, peering this way and that way like a cat examining the mouse that has just roared at it.

“He took my hand and called me friend,” I said.

“Such things as that don’t have friends.” He said.

“I did him a service,” I told him. “A favor. He gave me wine from his wife’s orchard. He told me to give you that message. He said to say that Old Red Eyes says ‘hello’.”

The Elder turned to look at me.

“Stop talking,” Whisperer ordered in tones that I recognized as being the Elder’s voice.

The Elder lifted the hand that had held me by the throat and sniffed it. He didn’t look like a cat anymore. He looked like a dog.

He didn’t like what he smelled.

Then he was next to me. I am sure that he moved through the intervening space. It was just that he moved so quickly that I didn’t see him. He moved quickly enough that the wind of his passage ruffled the cloak that Whisperer wore.

I tried to reel backward. As invasions of personal space go, this was something, but I had my back to stone and had nowhere to go. He sniffed me, audibly sniffing me.

He smelled of dust and the blood from the remains of Regis’ body that still dripped from the ends of his claws. If he breathed at all, in the way that we would expect a living person to breathe, it didn’t smell of anything.

Another faint disappointment.

Then he moved again. There was a sound of cloth tearing as well as the wet sound of tearing flesh which was a noise I was becoming upsettingly used to hearing. It took me a moment to see what happened. The Elder had plucked the strange grey, paddle, wand, or whatever it was out of Whisperer’s robes and had taken it back to where I was still pressed against the wall of the cavern.

The Elder had not been gentle, a gaping hole had appeared in Whisperer’s robe and from that hole, blood flowed. Whisperer fell to their knees for a long moment as he put his hands over the wound and seemed to press, much as a human might press on an injury, before rising back to his feet a little shakily.

The Elder was passing the wand over me again. He moved quickly, slower than he could move but quickly. He focused on specific areas, especially around my eyes, my chest, and my neck. Then the wand throbbed a deep, reddish-brown. It throbbed once and then it broke, literally shattering in his grasp.

The Elder looked horrified. His eyes widened as he stared at the remains of the crystal in his hands. Then, like all powerful people that realize that there is something going on that they cannot control, he got angry.

He turned on Whisperer.

“We didn’t know what it meant.” Whisperer pleaded, and I heard his voice for the first time. It was surprisingly deep. “It flickered that color but we didn’t know what it meant. We know about the magic and then…”

The Elder pulled his head off and crushed it in his hand. Whisperer screamed for just a moment as I heard the vertebrae break.

Then the Elder turned towards the entrance through which a figure stepped that I guessed to be Belligerent. It was propelled into the room, as though someone had grabbed them by the scruff of the neck and had hauled them into place.

“As we had been ordered.” Belligerent tried. “We used the wand on both this one and the female. There were some hanging enchantments that we recognized and it was obvious that she had recently cast magic. Then we checked him and we saw that strange light. We had no idea what it was. The…” The cowl flickered towards me for a moment before going back to the Elder “... device has never used that color before. We assumed that it was some kind of errant eddy of the chaos. The human had no idea of what it was and was unaware of anything that might have been hanging over him. He was as confused as we were.”

There was a pause as the Elder got right in his face.

“The female was as confused as we were.” Belligerent went on, his voice rising in panic. “She suggested the eddy of chaos theory. The device had never been used on a human before and we assumed that it was just…”

He had time to scream as the Elder’s claws cut him in half in a downward, diagonal cut, starting at the shoulder and coming out around the opposite waist.

It was not clean-cut and there were more sounds of tearing.

I could no longer control my stomach and I vomited. Why you may ask. I have seen horrible deaths. I have seen battlefield injuries that were that bad, and worse.

But even though it was only attached to a bit of a torso and a single-arm, with internal organs spilling out, bones hanging limp and all manner of other pieces of unspeakable things happening. Even though that was the case, the head was still screaming. It screamed for quite a long time as it’s one remaining arm worked to pull itself towards the rest of its body.

The Elder picked the head up before slamming it back into the floor so that it splattered and the sound was cut off.

“Say nothing.” The Elder told me in his strange high-pitched voice.

I did as I was told while more, presumably, vampires came into the room and started the laborious clean-up procedure. Regis was cleaned up, along with the two other men that had escorted me here. Again, I was given the uncomfortable feeling that, despite the horrors inflicted on their bodies, these people were still alive.

They were kept separate and when the cleaners came in, they made sure that the different bits were placed into large, leather bags before they were dragged back out. The attendants even came over and mopped up my vomit before another one came over and offered me a flask of something that turned out to be some clean water that tasted remarkably sweet given everything that had happened.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Then the Elder was cleaned up of the various bits of detritus and someone gave the room one last mop and inspection before they left. It all felt, remarkably routine. I began to wonder if the reason that the Elder needs so many attendants was that he kept tearing them apart.

“What else did he say?” The Elder asked as he climbed back up to this throne. For an ancient and unknowable being, he looked tired and very very old.

“He said that I and all of the people connected with me were under his protection. That you would fulfill your promises to me and then you would let me, and all that came with me, go. He told me to say that if you break your word then he will remember that the war is not over.”

The Elder nodded. I got the feeling that I was now seeing the real Elder. That up until this point a lot of what I had seen was a pretense, something that he showed to others. To me, maybe even to his closest attendants. The theories of Ariadne’s mother, that it was all weighing down on the Elder’s head, began to seem more and more likely.

He seemed… human.

“Then I shall reiterate my promise.” He told me after a long while. “You can ask your questions and I will answer them. When you are done, you may go along with your little pussy cat and the spider that you claim to love so fervently. I will not interfere with you, your family or the others mentioned and you have nothing to fear from me or any other Elder Vampire. The Lesser of our race are beneath my concern, however.”

I nodded.

“What of Regis?”

“Regis was not associated with you before this night.”

“He is associated, with an associate,” I argued, echoing the Elder’s tone. He was beaten and we both knew it.

“He will need time to recover.” The Elder sighed. “Ask your questions. This has already diverted me from my task for too long.

“I’m going to need paper, ink, quills, and something to sit at and write upon,” I told him.

-

We talked for a long time and I may say, he hated every moment of it.

Good.

Every so often, I could see him becoming visibly angry, and then something would catch his attention and he would look towards the other tunnel that he had spent so much time gazing down. Then he would subside and continue speaking.

We spoke for a long time. Long enough that by the time I eventually emerged, blinking and bleary, it was to find that the sun was well risen in the east and was a good way through its climb towards midday.

What did we talk about?

I’m afraid that I’m not going to tell you for two reasons. The first is that if I annotated that conversation, it would take a long time to publish and read. The second, less lazy answer, is that if I were to publish what he told me in this publication, I would be in breach of publishing contract and the angry little dwarf that runs the book publishing company would remove my spleen with an axe. He wouldn’t do it personally, he would hire someone else to do it for him so that he could watch and pass comments on the axe-wielding technique. In short… You are going to have to buy the book or borrow it from the local library.

No sooner had I made it back to Corvo Bianco and recounted the evening, Lady Yennefer stole my notes and spent nearly as many leaves of paper making her own notes on what the Elder told me. She summoned Margarite Laux Antille the Rectoress of Aretuza to Corvo Bianco who, in turn, summoned another Sorceress that I didn’t know. Then they all got very excited about the implications of what the Elder told me.

I could claim to understand about a quarter of what those three, astonishing women, talked about. Geralt and Kerrass didn’t even wait that long and went out training in the meantime.

It was shortly arranged that Lady Yennefer’s and my next book would be on the Unseen Elder. Where he comes from and what his history was. Similar to our work on Jack, I would write the history of the thing while Yennefer would write about the magical implications of what he had told us. There will then be a follow-up book about the nature of the universe according to the Elder with references to our published work as written by the new Sorceress. She wants to remain anonymous until things are a bit further along. Lady Margarita laughed and claimed that the lady in question does not work well under pressure and scrutiny, but is one of the finest magically adept academic minds on the continent.

Regis was fine. A couple of days after I escaped from the catacombs beneath Tesham Mutna, he walked into Corvo Bianco as though nothing had happened. He greeted me with a smile and a hug and all he would say on the matter was the “Grandma took certain steps.” Then he went and hassled Barnabus Basil about the proper fermenting mixture used in Corvo Bianco’s wine processes.

I still don’t like Regis, but he is a good friend to have. And there is nothing quite as funny as unleashing Regis on an unsuspecting bystander. Barnabus Basil and he seemed to have something of a history though so it wasn’t too cruel on my part.

As for Ariadne and I?

-

As I say, it was morning by the time that I got out of the caverns. I was tired, heartsick, satisfied beyond immediate comprehension regarding the evening’s work and I was lugging a small satchel that one of the Vampires had found for me to carry all the paper that I had filled with my shorthand notes on what the Elder had told me.

I was escorted through the party cavern which was now completely empty and returned to its former dirty and decrepit state. Dirt enough that I was left wondering if some Vampire had a bag of cobwebs and dust that they could scatter over the ground in order to let everyone know that the place really was that deserted. Then I remembered the stated affinity for bats, spiders, and whatever else, so that image was possibly not that far from the truth.

The route to the surface managed to miss all of the places with the cells for the keeping of humanity and whatever else. As well as those chambers where the blood was harvested from the people that had once lived in the cells.

I wonder how that happened.

The climb to the surface was also much shorter. Again, not really surprising.

I was pushed out into the sunlight with a gentle, polite but above all firm little smile and a bow to find Kerrass snoozing in the courtyard of Tesham Mutna. He had our horses with him as well as my weapons and he opened one lazy eye to see what was going on before he slowly started to rise.

Out of spite, I turned and looked for the entrance to the catacombs of Tesham Mutna. I knew that it was there and I knew where it was, but could I find it? I pushed on every stone that seemed to protrude to see if it was some kind of secret button or lever or something and I went all the way up and down the wall. I even put my weight on several other surfaces to see if it was a weighted lever or something.

“It’s not there,” Kerrass said, coming up behind me, yawning. “I looked for quite a long time, medallion out and everything. I don’t know if it’s some trick, or some illusion or what. It’s not magic, it’s not an illusion or one of those magically hidden things that you need some kind of lantern to see.”

He shrugged.

“Just another mystery,” I said, sighing and rubbing my head. “I fucking hate mysteries.”

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.” He told me, passing me by daggers. “You love mysteries. You are already looking for the next one.”

“Unfortunately true.” I straightened from putting my boot knife back.

“Did you get what you came for?” He wondered, passing the spear harness over.

“All of that and more,” I told him, finally looking at my friend.

Have you ever heard the term, “shagged out”. That was what he looked like. It was a bright day and the late winter, early spring sunshine was burning off the rain of the previous day. So Kerrass had his shirt and tunic open. I could see scratches on his chest. His hair was unkempt, his eyes were a little bleary and his clothes weren’t on properly. And now that I was more aware of things, he smelled of sex.

“Did you have a good night?” I wondered.

“Goddess yes.” He grinned. “I have had nights of debauchery before. I have known things and seen things. I have spent nights with Succubi and I have literally loved a Goddess. But I have never known what it was like to love a Vampire.”

He laughed and I laughed with him. It was good to see him happy.

“I tell you Freddie if I had known that that was what it was going to be like, I would have made a play for Ariadne myself.”

My face must have fallen or something because he looked at me sharply.

“I take it that there was a reason that her horse was gone when I got out this morning.” He said carefully.

I nodded sadly.

Kerrass sighed. “Come on, let’s get back to Beauclair at least. You can tell me all about what happened and then we can get you to bed, or get you to the brothel, depending on what is appropriate.”

“The brothel won’t open till later,” I argued, allowing myself to be pulled away from Tesham Mutna.

“Then we have time to drop off your notes, pick up Geralt, Guillaume, Gregoire…. Have you ever noticed how many people we know have names beginning with the letter ‘G’? But also, Damien isn’t married yet so he can come, that D’Alambourd person seems personable enough and cheerfully debauched. Fuck Freddie, even Yennefer might want to come as well. Then we can get you drunk first before we take you to the brothel. Also fed, I’m starving enough that I feel as though I could eat a whole boar by myself.”

I allowed Kerrass to tug me along and climbed into my saddle.

We rode slowly. Spring comes early in Toussaint. The sun was out and the birds were singing. I could feel the horrors of the night beginning to recede in my memory. Leaving aside Kerrass’ planned debauchery. I told Kerrass everything that had happened and a shortened version of what the Elder had told me. He didn’t say anything about the cave and what the Elder did, even though he clearly wanted to. He did have some interesting things to say about what the Elder had told me, but again, that will make a chapter of the book.

We passed a Knight of Francesca on his business, leading a squire and a couple of guards on their way… somewhere. We stood aside for them and accepted their salutes. We stopped to help a farmer who was fighting a wagon that was carrying a load of grain. One of the horses had panicked at something and had pulled the cart into the ditch. Kerrass stopped to look at a signpost in one of the nearby villages which gave us an opportunity to have some breakfast. It wasn’t the route that we had taken to get to Tesham Mutna, but the roadways and byways of Toussaint don’t hold any mystery for us anymore.

The road carries on towards Beauclair and off to one side, the Ducal palace gardens are visible as a bank of green, carefully manicured hedges and the first spots of springtime color as the Winter blooms began to fade. The road gets quite close to the gardens and it was at this point, still some distance before the gates to the city, where I realized that I had brought my horse to a halt. I was looking over at the gardens.

Kerrass, in his still blissed-out state, had ridden on ahead before he realized that I was no longer following him. He turned and came back to me and watched me for a moment.

I nodded to myself and dismounted.

“What are you going to do?” Kerrass asked quietly.

“I have no idea,” I told him. It was a lie, but I didn’t realize that it was a lie until the words had left my mouth. I grimaced and handed him my horse’s reins. “No that’s not true,” I said, slinging my spear over my shoulder and trying to decide what the truth was.

“I do not what I’m going to do,” I told him. “I just… need to figure out how I’m going to do it.”

Kerrass nodded and gazed at me.

“Be gentle with her Freddie.”

I had no answer to that. So instead, I handed him my satchel of notes. “Take those to Corvo Bianco.” I told him. “Yennefer will be really cross with me if she doesn’t get first look at them.”

“She can read that spidery bullshit that you call handwriting?”

“Kerrass, it’s not an uncommon technique.” I told him. “And for all I know, she invented it. It’s not the sort of thing I would put past her.”

He laughed. “I will see you at Corvo Bianco.” He said. “Sundown at the latest.”

There was a warning there. He was telling me that if I hadn’t appeared by sundown, then he was going to come looking for me. And when he found me, he was going to smack the crap out of me.

“Sundown at the latest.” I agreed before turning and walking towards the rose garden.

“Freddie.” Kerrass rode up behind me after a moment. I turned to find my best friend gazing at me steadily. “I hope this doesn’t come across as weird or too condescending.”

“Not a good start,” I told him.

He glared.

“But you should know.” He went on. “I am really proud of you. You are a long way from the child that I met on the doorstep of that inn that time.”

We looked at each other for what felt like a long time.

“That was a little condescending.” I told him.

“Fuck off.” He replied, laughing.

“I will see you before Sundown,” I told him.

He waved and turned our horses back towards the gate.

For me, I turned towards the Rose Garden.

My path travelled over some rocky grassland before it started to dip towards a stream that borders the gardens. It’s only a little stream and it’s one of the things that has been harnessed to make the gardens that much more green and verdant. It’s this stream that feeds the fountains and other water features which means that this low down, the depth of the valley seems a little exaggerated compared with the flow of the water.

I walked along the banks, enjoying a feeling of place. It was a strange feeling of knowing that I was by myself, a long way from home and that if I turned and just walked into the trees, then no-one would know where I had gone or what I was doing when I got there. I mean sure, people would come after me, but there was that feeling that I could just go off. Go off and be someone else.

It was an intoxicating thought.

I found a place where it was easier to jump across the water without getting too muddy from last night’s rains and walked along the hedgerows until I found a place where I could vault over the bushes and force my way through what was left.

Then I was in the garden itself.

Words cannot express how beautiful that place is. There is debate as to who is responsible for that place. Whether it was put that way by the Elves and it is them that made sure that so beautiful a place of tamed nature could exist. Or whether the palace gardeners themselves were able to make it so. The truth, like so much else, is probably a mixture of the two. But the people of Toussaint, being the people of Toussaint, enjoy the debate and the argument.

I knew these gardens well now. I have attended banquets and parties. I have been to picnics and other small parties out here and even better than that, I knew where I was going.

When we had first come to this place, Ariadne and I, we had been fleeing before a wave of gossip and curiosity. Trying to get ahead of the tide so that we could sort everything out before everything started to converge. We had left the palace and the presence of the Empress without any kind of direction in mind, not anywhere that we were trying to go. We just wanted to find somewhere that was suitably private to have, what we both expected, would be an intense conversation.

We had not been wrong.

It was a little way in to the garden from the palace, around one of the gazebos and behind one of the green houses. There we had found a pathway that ran alongside a small stream with hedges of flowers protecting us on either side. Other paths were some distance away and although the privacy had been far from perfect, it had suited our needs.

It was here that I had proposed marriage to Ariadne.

It was slightly different now. The bench that Ariadne had hid behind when I offered her the ring was still there and as far as I know, it was the same bench. The main difference was that the hedges had been made somewhat higher, to around six feet. I imagined that there was some magic at play there as hedges take some effort to grow so tall.

The public reason for this hedge growth is to offer some privacy. I am told that since Ariadne and I reached our little agreement, it has become a fashion for well-to-do people to come to these gardens and for one partner to propose to the other at this place. It is now so notorious that people have passed out on the way to the place due to the pressure that they place themselves under.

But that isn’t the real reason for the higher hedges. Open displays of that kind of thing are applauded in Toussaint. No, it was more that locals had also taken to quick, furious, and frantic lovemaking on the same spot. The hedges were there so that other users of the gardens didn’t have to watch as people had loud and awkward sex on, essentially, a wooden and metal bench.

I don’t know how I knew that she was going to be there. There was no message and we had deliberately made the link between the two of us so that we could only talk, we couldn’t force thoughts or implant ideas. But I knew, and sure enough, when I slowly and cautiously came round the corner of the hedge, there she was.

I stood there for a moment or two, just watching her. She looked small and fragile. My heart went out to her and I had a nearly overwhelming desire to rush over there and hug her. Followed by an overwhelming urge to turn and run in the opposite direction.

I didn’t want to do this. I wanted to wait. I wanted to delay and if at all possible, I didn’t want to have to face her ever again. But that wouldn’t be fair. Not for me, apart from anything else.

She was dressed simply, a dark woolen shift, tied together at the waist by a simple leather belt. It was basically uncolored with no dye so I could still see the off-color of the sheep in the weave. She was sitting in the middle of the bench, knees together, head down, hunched over with her elbows resting on her knees as she looked at the patch of ground in front of her. She looked to be the very measure of misery. And I hated myself for wondering if it was all an act.

That was what the Elder had done. He had introduced doubt into my mind. And upset as I was at Ariadne, I didn’t hate her. But I loathed the Elder then. I saw the damage that he had done and I resolved that I would need to hire someone to read my work and make sure that I was not writing biased accounts. I would need to work really fucking hard to keep my loathing off the page when I talked about him.

This issue that you hold in your hand. I got Regis to read it as he was there and he seemed quite happy that I recounted the facts as I saw them. I was too overwhelmed at the time to be able to do anything else really.

Her hair was in a plait and she had pulled it around her shoulder so that it hung in front of her. I always liked that style because I like to see her neck. It was one of those things that is unexplainable to me. I can admit to enjoying all of the parts of a female anatomy. Certainly the legs and breasts, bottoms have their place too, but there is a special place in my heart for the necks of women. I don’t know why.

Someone would probably come up with some analytical speech that says something about the exposure of the neck being some kind of display of vulnerability that appeals to the male psyche. I don’t know if that’s true. I only know that I have always enjoyed the neck and shoulders of the women that I love.

Well, I was there. I spent a bit of time, wondering how to open up the conversation. I was trying to think of a joke really, something to open up proceedings. To put a shield up so that I wouldn’t be hurt any more. Something for me to hide behind so that I wouldn’t have to show everyone how much pain I was in.

So she saw me, of course, she saw me. I don’t even know why I was particularly surprised.

“You know,” she began, not looking up. “I never expected to be happy.”

I sighed and walked into the open. There was nowhere else for me to sit or lean against given that the one thing that all Rose bushes have in common is that they have thorns. So I sat on the ground. I didn’t want to be standing for this conversation and to be fair, my clothes were covered in bits of Detlaff and other Vampires anyway so…

I said nothing. She looked up at me for a moment before looking off to one side.

“I am nine hundred years old.” She said eventually. “But the truth is that I am much older than that. I stopped counting when I reached nine hundred as a conscious choice because, I didn’t want to be aware of it when I crossed the thousand year mark. Reaching five hundred was bad enough but I rather thought that getting to a Thousand would be too much.

“Nine hundred years old and I have never been happier, or more surprised than when I was sitting here and you produced that engagement ring. It was astonishing. The same being that had surprised me before and I was being utterly taken to school by him. Twice. Within the period of the same year.”

She shook her head.

I have never been happier than I was at that moment. I come back here, when Fringilla is available then I will tell her I’m coming through the gate, but every so often, when I’ve been away from you for a while, or this or that has happened, I come back here and I remember that moment. The moment where I was so surprised and so happy with it, that I fled from the shock. It was terrifying that I might have been so utterly wrong. That I might have completely, utterly failed and that I was so overjoyed that I had. Pleased to be wrong. For that alone I was astonished and I watched myself, the same way I watch everything, watching as I yelped in astonishment.

I come back and I try to relive that happiness.”

She stopped talking for a long moment.

“It seemed only fitting that I come back here for the saddest.” She said.

There was another pause while she stared into space. Then she nodded and looked up into my eyes. Her eyes were black and I recognized them. They were the spider’s eyes.

There were only two of them, same as any human. But they were black.

“I am ready.” She said. “I have taken some steps to ensure that we will not be disturbed. You may yell, ask questions and throw recriminations all you like and then you will never have to see me again. I will leave you to enjoy your happiness. I will take some steps to ensure that you are as happy as I can make you. I will suggest to the Empress that you are free from obligation although she might have to work to put your broken heart together.”

I had looked away from her eyes when she started the speech, but now I took care to look back into her eyes.

“If the Empress has other ideas,” she went on, “then I can mention your name to Margarita, your mutual love of learning would be well suited to each other. Maleficent is looking for someone to love at the moment and you could do worse than her. A little flighty maybe but... “ She shrugged. “You might do well to ground her.”

I couldn’t help but smile.

“Are you trying to set me up with your friends?”

She said nothing. She looked away from my gaze which was, if I’m honest, a little more telling. But it might have been a pretense. Even now, she might be manipulating me and I hated that that thought kept coming up in my mind, that suspicion.

“I’m not going to shout.” I began, “or at least, I’m going to try not to. There might be shouting later, as well as some tears and some recriminations to throw around.”

She nodded as she listened.

“There are definitely going to be some questions though.” I told her.

She smoothed her skirts and straightened, placing her hands in her lap. “Then ask them.”

“Which one was a lie?” I asked but kept talking before she could answer. “Let me tell you what I think. I think that there was not a single moment of what happened last night that wasn’t according to the Elder’s design. I think he told you what to wear in order to remind me about the Spider Queen side of you. I think he ordered you to take me through the prison chambers and I think he emphasised his orders when you told him about how that might affect Kerrass. I think that every line of that conversation with him was rehearsed. I think that that interpreter that he destroyed at the beginning had done something to warrant a punishment. I think that Regis’ pain was his real punishment and I think that he made you tell me those things.”

“Close.” She admitted. “He didn’t expect you to sing a song at the party, or for it to have so profound an effect on our people. That was brilliant by the way.” She grinned, and for a moment, I saw the old Ariadne.

“Nor did he expect you to kiss me. Neither did I.” She hung her head. “I heard about what you said to him afterwards. Risky for you, and it nearly ended your life. If I have any pull with you, I would like to know how you did that.”

“How I did what?”

“How you survived.”

“Is he not telling?” I wondered.

“Anyone who asks is being eviscerated which leaves a day or two to recover. You quickly learn not to ask in our society.”

“What a stupid rule,” I commented. “So in my mind, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that the Elder ordered you to stand there and break my heart. He was obviously trying to drive a wedge between us. So which was a lie? I knew that you were allowed to live as part of human society was as part of an experiment. I knew that I was part of the way that you would join human society and I have deduced that you were watching our relationship, almost from outside yourself, like a scientist. I have had the feeling of you rushing off to make notes about our interactions on more than one occasion. What I didn’t know was that the steps towards that relationship were so cold.”

She listened carefully. My voice had nearly cracked at the end and she watched and waited as I regained control of myself.

“Both accounts are true.” She said. “It is true, I chose you because you were vulnerable. I chose you because you are naive and although you are very intelligent, sometimes you can be really stupid.”

“My sister often says the same,” I commented.

“I know.”

There was another, almost, shared smile. The language of love doesn’t leave after a heart is broken.

“I chose you because I saw your body react to my presence. I saw you fight it so hard because you were also aware of the fact that I was a horrific creature of horror and torment. But you could not help but be taken in by the image of the young and beautiful girl on your arm. All the political reasons, all of it was true. I manipulate you. I did. And yes, it was because once chosen, I didn’t want to lose my subject of study. I worked so hard to keep you close to me and yes, all the manipulations that I stated in that cave are true.

“It is also true that I chose this shape. I started off with the illusion of beauty that you described in your diaries. I started with that and then I worked to bring my physical form up to that standard. And yes, it was based on those people that I mentioned, and yes, that includes your sister. She makes the face a little softer, a little kinder.”

She stroked her chin, running the palm of her hand up her cheek and through the hair at her temples.

“I liked this face.” She said.

“I liked it too.” I admitted. “Although I will also admit that it’s a little creepy knowing that it is, in part, made up of my sister.”

She smiled at my discomfort and again, for a moment, my Ariadne was back.

I had to look away as the tears pricked my eyes and the lump grew in my throat.

This was really hard.

“I wouldn’t worry about it too much.” She told me. “You would be astonished as to how many male perspectives of beauty are based on their mothers, aunts, or elder siblings.”

“I don’t really like my mother,” I argued.

“All the more reason to fixate on your sister.” She retorted. “And Freddie, your mother might have given birth to you, but in every other useful way, you were raised by your Elder siblings. As far as I can tell, Mark was your Father and Emma was your Mother in all manner except for the biological one.”

I considered this. “Now that’s a thought that’s going to fester.”

A wave of sadness washed over me. I was about to lose one of those parents.

“So everything that I said in the room of the Elder was true. I took steps to drive away other women that encroached upon your life, including an Empress and many other noblewomen, some of whom might have been better suited to you. I did manipulate your emotions and take advantage of your grief over your Father to work my way into your heart. I did portray myself as your ideal woman, not just physically so that you would not be inspired to look elsewhere for your affection and your…”

She stopped and shook her head.

“So yes.” She went on, “I have played with you and I have studied you. I have watched you and I have studied the world through your eyes.” She admitted, making sure she kept eye contact. “It has been a scientific experience for me. I watch myself as I go through these things with you and I take notes. My interest is scientific and it was that that triggered my interest in you.

“But saying that all of that is true doesn’t deny everything else that I have ever said. You surprised me here but you also surprised me when you stood up to me when we escaped the tower and you freed me. No one has ever stood up to me in that way before. Your argument was well reasoned, it was based on knowledge, it was obviously fuelled by an intense terror of me. But you made it nonetheless. I was astonished and I wondered what else you might do to astonish me.

“I chose you for that reason. That was not a lie. I chose you because you are intelligent and it is not an insult to say that you are intelligent for your species. There are many really stupid Vampires and you met some of them tonight. You are charming in your own way and you fight, constantly, against your own fears and prejudices. You always seek to learn. As a subject of study, you are unparalleled in the interest that you spark in me.”

I felt anger rise in my chest at that and squashed it. I told myself to listen to the intent behind the words, not what she was actually saying. She has often complained that our language is limited, well, let her intent speak.

“I was interested in you when you left Angral.” She said. “I watched you develop through your time with Letho and was astonished about how honest you were regarding your recounting of our time together. It was then that I decided that I would take steps to prevent you from leaving my grasp…

“I am laying this out like I am already writing up an experiment.

“I was so scared for you when you went missing in the North. So scared and I watched my own terror with more than a little bit of fear myself. I felt like I was losing myself and that I was drowning. I saw you with Marion in the South and I remembered feeling jealous and again, Jealousy? Of a mortal? Outrageous.

“Everything that I said in the hall was true. Every word. But also, every word that I have said since we first met.”

I accepted that. I would need to go through some of my records to see if there was any outright conflict.

“The method of study is accurate.” She said. “As a part of the scientific study, you are supposed to immerse yourself in that life. Feel what you feel and live how you would live if you were part of that life. You have done the same. You were not satisfied with reading about Witchers and studying them from afar. You went out into the world. You experienced what they experience. You killed some monsters. You suffered the prejudices that they suffer. You even went through a small taste of what their creation is like. You became Kerrass’ friend, even as you continued to honestly report his faults and failures.”

“I didn’t make him love me.” I burst out. I was trying not to get angry, but it escaped. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I deserve it.”

“I didn’t make him love me,” I repeated. “I was always honest with Kerrass. I didn’t pretend to be other than what and who I was. When he showed disdain for me, I deserved it. But it was honest. Yes, I lived his life. I experienced everything that you said, the danger, the hardships, the oddly boring nature of the work, and the mind-numbing tedium of moving from place to place. We have shared everything with each other apart from women because that was one intimacy too far. We have never spoken of it, but it is true all the same. I didn’t make him love me.”

She wouldn’t meet my gaze.

“What do you want Ariadne?” I wondered. “Fuck, should I even call you that? Or should I call you Madame Eight-Legs or whateverthefuck?”

“No,” she said with a shudder, please don’t call me that.”

“So what do you want?” I asked. “What do you really want?”

“What I really want?” She asked, raising her eyes to the heavens. “I want tonight to have never happened. I want to go back to how things were between us.”

“With me believing the lie?”

“IT WASN’T A LIE.” She wailed. “It wasn’t.”

She hung her head for a long moment. I expected something else to come after that but when she was silent for a bit longer, I decided that it was time for a prompt.

“You know that we can’t go back to that right?”

She nodded.

I realized that I had stood up at some point. I looked down at her, looking small and vulnerable, and asked myself if I still loved her.

“Do you love me?” I said. “Do you love me? Have you ever loved me?”

“I don’t know.” She sobbed. “I don’t know. How do you know? I don’t. Does someone turn up and tell you ‘Yes, you love that person? I don’t know. I have never felt like this before and I am scientist enough to be fascinated by it. I want to study it, to take it in and savor it. I want to watch it from afar and see where it goes.”

She spoke frantically and quickly and I found that I knew the answer. But I wanted to hear her say it. That might make me selfish but I wanted to hear her say it.

“He told me to say that I didn’t love you. He did tell me that. But the truth is that I don’t know. I don’t know what that feels like. I have never felt it before. Poetry on the subject seems ludicrous to me. Paintings about lovers seem contrived and false. Statues and plays are staged. I went to see the play that was the greatest love story ever told when it was staged in Vizima and I couldn’t sit through it. I wanted to yell at the characters for being stupid.

“I don’t know. It is true that you were the subject of my experiment, but I could have found others. It had to be you, it had to be, there could have been no others. It had to be you and I don’t know why. I could not allow anyone else to have you, it had to be you. The only reason I didn’t kill Marion that night in Dorne was that I knew that would drive you even further away. I arranged marriage because it would tie you to me. I told myself that I did these things to keep my subject and that it had to be you. That statement is true as well, but that doesn’t explain the desperation I felt that I had to keep you safe and keep you with me.

“I am over nine hundred years old. I have time to be patient, I could find someone else, but it had to be you, it had to be you. I didn’t need all of those manipulations. I could have made myself blonde-haired and blue-eyed and loved any number of passing people, there would even be a scientific argument for doing that in that a breadth of data would give a more accurate result.

“But I only wanted it to be you. I wanted to study you, to love you and no other. I wanted to see how you made me feel and I wanted to see if I could make you feel the same.

“I know that I am excited to speak to you. I know that I look forward to your presence in the morning and dread the moment when you retire to your rooms at night. I know that when you smile, I smile with you. When you weep, my heart weeps with you, and when you are hurt, not only do I bleed with you, I have never known rage like it. I know that even things that I have seen before in my long life, look new when I see them with you. Food, drink, all of it tastes different with you.

“I have never known anger like it than when I thought that cult in the North had killed you. I nearly regressed then. I nearly terrorized that place to wipe them out. Turning into my war form and summoning the swarms from the depths of the earth like a black and chittering hide that would destroy the people that dared to take you away from me. I nearly did that anyway. I have never known fear like it when I thought you had been taken away from me. Yes, that was partly because I would need to start over, but also because you would have been taken away from me.

“And then again, the pain that you caused me when you came to my home and tried to break off our engagement and then again, the relief when I realized that you were sick and mad. That was the only way you could reconcile what was happening.

“I want you to be happy. I want to keep you warm and safe. I want to show you such pleasure and I am overwhelmed at my fortune that your pleasure is partially associated with giving me pleasure. I want to hold you, kiss you and… I couldn’t wait for our wedding night, I have dreams and plans and fantasies about all of the things that we would do with each other, to each other, and for each other. I want to see your face at the moment of release and feel the satisfaction that comes with knowing that I did that do to you. That I gave you that amount of wonder.

“You know that I’ve had test runs at this. There is a moment that comes, just before the height of pleasure occurs where the eyes open and there is a look of fear there. Fear and wonder before the feeling becomes too overwhelming to ignore and I couldn’t wait to see that in your face.”

She was openly sobbing.

“Is this love Freddie? Is it? I don’t know. I don’t know. I hate it because it’s tearing me apart. Emotions are overwhelming for our people. I have felt passion before but not like this, not like this. It never hurt as this does. I am older than some hills and mountains that have formed in certain parts of the world, older than some towering oaks that people describe as having been there since the continent was born. I have seen all of that and I know more of that and I have forgotten even more in the years since and I see nothing, no beauty or wonder than that which I found when I looked into your eyes and you smiled when you saw me. It happens every morning and every time we are away from each other. I feel this strange sensation whenever that happens and I don’t know what it means. I take it out and look at it and wonder if I can suppress it. Then I find that I don’t want to. I want to revel in that situation, that feeling, and that sensation.”

She stared into space.

“I remember thinking when someone told me about what Detlaff had done for love. I remember thinking that Regis had done the right thing. I remember thinking that Detlaff was foolish and that nothing could drive me to such a depth of…”

She shook her head as the tears spilled out of her spider’s eyes.

“What do you think now?” I prompted.

“Poor Detlaff.” She said and hung her head.

I had my answer.

Now, the only question was how to bring this round to what I wanted to do. But Ariadne had not stopped talking.

“I meant what I said though.” She carried on, not looking at me. “I will tell Emma about the wedding and I will liquidate what investments I have made in Angral to pay for any losses that she might have incurred in the preparation of the matter. I will also let the Empress know what has happened and then you will never have to hear from me again.

“I will mention your name to a few women that I know are looking for partners that might be suitable for you and who I think could make you happy. I feel that I owe you that much, and I encourage you to tell everyone that this was my fault and…”

She wasn’t going to stop. She was going to keep going. I had seen it in her now, she was babbling.

“Ok, stop,” I said, holding my hand up. She kept going for a while though, her mouth moving automatically as her tear-filled eyes looked up at me.

Spider’s eyes.

Spider’s eyes, they might be but they still shone with unshed tears the same as they had ever done. I found that strangely endearing.

“What happened in those caves hurt me,” I told her. “I cannot lie and pretend that they did not. Nor can I pretend that they will have had no effect on me. My trust was hard-won and easily shattered.”

“I know,” she wailed, “I am so sorry. You reached out and allowed yourself to…”

“Look, please,” I said, forcing a slight smile to my face. I had tears in my own eyes now. When I had proposed marriage, I remember a moment when the words were stuck in the back of my throat and I couldn’t force them out.

“I meant what I said,” I told her. “I still love you. I have desperately been holding myself back from just taking you into my arms and telling you that it will all be ok.”

She hung her head. “I know, but it will get better, you will find love again elsewhere and…”

“Ariadne.” I put a bit of asperity and amused frustration into my voice. “You are not listening to me. I know that you are more intelligent than me, more experienced, older, and all the rest, but what is true for me is also true for you. For a clever woman, you are sometimes really stupid.”

She looked up at me. There was that head tilt again.

“I still love you,” I told her. “I can’t deny that I am hurt, and that will take some work to overcome, even as I know that that hurt is the result of manipulation by the Elder, but I am still hurt. And if you really cannot see the two of us moving forward into life, marriage, and love together, then we can part.”

It was not feigned on my part, where my voice broke at the thought.

“But I don’t want that to happen. I love you. What you describe as how you feel, sounds enough like love for me to be comfortable with that. Even if you came to it through a scientific curiosity, then that is love enough for me. And does it really matter how we come to our feelings? Love is love.”

She was looking at me with her face as a rictus of horror and I felt my heart lurch a little bit.

“But…” She began.

“Also,” I carried on. “Also, it occurs to me that the best way we could get our revenge on the Elder is to live happily together. That sounds…. Funny to me.”

“But… I lied to you.”

I took a deep breath. “And that hurts,” I told her. “Please don’t do it again.”

“But… I lied. I told you that I loved you when I didn’t know that I meant it. I told you that this was my real form when I had built it in order to appeal to your most basic needs. Youth and beauty that are copied from elsewhere in order to…”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. “Humans do it all the time. Elves and dwarfs too I understand, although I cannot speak for halflings. We dress up, we get our hair done, and apply cosmetics and dyes in order to appeal to the object of our affections. You have only taken that to the next step. Also, you chose to look like that. Does that make it any the less valid?

“Youth and beauty can come with their own burdens as you have made clear to me. Men talking down to you, elders doing the same. It wasn’t just me that you presented yourself like this too. You chose this appearance as to how to present yourself to the world. That was your choice. Does that make it a lie? Or does that make it a truth that you have chosen? And if it’s the second thing, then who would I be to disrespect that.”

She wailed. “But the lies. I lied to you. You said, up at the palace when you found out about Jack. You told us all that if we ever lied to you again then you were done with us. That you would never talk to us again.”

I nodded. That was true, but in thinking about this particular situation, it simply never occurred to me to think about that. Ariadne kept going again though.

“I thought about that…” She was sobbing and weeping at the same time now, speaking through the sobs. “I have wanted to tell you the truths about me. I wanted to tell you those things. I knew what the Elder was going to do, or at least, I had a good idea. I wanted to tell you but the longer I left it, the more difficult it became. I wanted to tell you but I kept it from you to keep the illusion going just a bit longer. Just a few more days, a few more moments of happiness stolen…”

“It might be hypocritical of me.” I interrupted. “But I just don’t care.”

She shut her mouth with a snap.

“I don’t.” I went on. “It hurts, it does. And with Emma, Mark, and the rest, then that was true. It is with you as well. What hurt there was that I might have saved someone. I could have been helping with Jack or the conspiracy or however you want to talk about it. Here? I don’t know.”

I tried to think about it again.

“But I don’t care. It hurts, it really does and there is going to need to work to rebuild the trust between the two of us. But I don’t care. I just don’t. I love you.”

She sobbed and I thought I could see it in the depths of those Spider’s Eyes. She was beginning to believe.

“But… But....”

“Ariadne, or whatever you want me to call you. I have never met someone who is so determined to talk herself out of happiness.”

She properly dissolved into tears then. Huge sobs shook her body as the tears openly fell between her fingers.

I took a deep breath and climbed up onto the bench next to her, pushing her over a bit to make room. Carefully and slowly, I reached out and put my arm around her shoulders, gently applying pressure as an invitation to lean into me.

It took a moment before she allowed herself to lean and then she let herself fall into me and I could wrap my arms around her properly.

She wept for a long time, the relief I think. Relief and a reduced sense of pressure. It was a long time before she calmed.

“So…” I began when I thought she was calmer. “So how will the scientific write-up of this even go?”

“It is really quite interesting.” She said in a weak voice. “The relief I feel is… overwhelming. Would you object if I keep hold of you for a while longer? I feel the need for reassurance and wish to savor the feeling for future study.”

I chuckled. “I can live with that.”

We sat for a while.

“Although,” I commented. “I do have to admit that I could go a lifetime without seeing your war shape again.”

“The spider shape not doing the job for you?” She wondered and I thought I could hear the first signs of a smile in her voice.”

“Nah,” I said, stroking her hair. “I like a woman to have lips I can kiss and hair that I can stroke.”

“I will take note.” She said. “Fascinating. Now that the scientific bit is a bit out in the open, I may have to perform some experiments on size, shape, and appearance on you.”

“Good to know, less surprises though please.”

“So noted.”

Another pause. “Does my Arachnid nature really bother you?”

“Not gonna lie,” I began. “I did not enjoy the venom stinger or the web goop. Having said that, I could stand to be caught in your webs on the understanding that it was for sexual reasons rather than for you eating me.”

There was definitely a chuckle there.

“I shall remember that.”

“Also…” I went on. “Although I didn’t enjoy the spindly, bristly legs, or the bulbous back section…”

“Or the mandibles and fangs.” She suggested.

“I have to admit that the chitinous armored, female torso bit was quite… distressingly attractive.”

She laughed.

“I mean it.” I went on. “There is something particularly attractive about an armored woman that can kick my ass.”

“Fascinating.” She said. “You really do have a monster fetish.”

“Honestly,” I said. “Now, is that really a surprise to anyone? I know I’ve said it before but…”

We chuckled a bit more before just sitting there.

“So.” I began, gently pushing her away. “Ariadne… Or do you want me to call you Madame Arachnid?”

She laughed. “No, not that.”

“Lady Arachnid?”

“I will keep Ariadne if you don’t mind. I like the name. It seems symbolic and then there is the reality that you gave me that name.”

“Well, Kerrass and I,” I said as I slid to the ground. “Also, are you going to keep that appearance now that the truth is out?”

“I might.” She said. “I am used to it and it might make things awkward if I suddenly appeared differently in other circles. I might age it up until you reach your middle twenties and then stop. I still want to appear beautiful for my man.”

“And the eyes?” I asked.

“Which would you prefer?” She wondered with the head tilt.

“Love,” I began. “I want you to feel comfortable. If you want to have black, shiny eyes instead of the more traditional pupils and irises. Then I will support that. It will be weird, but I will accept it.”

“I will work on it.” She said.

“Also… Emma? As a facial template?”

“I can remove it if you wish,”

“Again, your comfort and…”

She muttered something and her face changed. “This is what it would look like without Emma’s influence.”

I gazed at the face. It was more angular. Sharper somehow. Less beautiful and more desirable. Less human but no less attractive. I felt as though I would cut myself if I kissed her cheek.

“You are still beautiful to my eyes,” I told her. “How about this? How about, you can play about with your appearance if you wish. I would just like to know about it for when you are making changes and when you find a face that you are comfortable with. A face that you feel is you. Then I will be happy with it.”

She smiled knowingly. “So long as it has all the characteristics of female beauty which Kerrass once mentioned.”

I took a deep breath. I was suddenly aware that I was on shaky ground.

“Whatever you are confident and comfortable with,” I said.

“Good answer Freddie.” She said. “I will stick with my old face for now until after we are married and have established ourselves. Then, with my supposed aging, things might move around. I shall reserve drastic changes for the bed-chamber though.”

I laughed at that as I knelt on the floor.

“In which case, Madame La Comtesse. As I asked, what, a little over a year ago.” I held up the engagement ring. “Would you do me the great honor of being my wife?”

She looked into my eyes and I saw tears there again. Tears of a different kind this time though.

“I thought that I had lost it.” She said.

“And I found it,” I said, putting it onto her finger. “Honestly though. One day, one of us is going to try and call off this engagement and the other one will not try and stop it.”

“That’s twice from me,” she said, “And only once from you?”

“I will let you keep that victory,” I told her.

She smiled and looked at the stone, shining in the sun.

“Three times.” She told me after a long moment.

“What?”

“Three times that you have astonished me.”

-

We left that place. I bought her a dress to wear, and myself a new suit so we didn’t have to go up to the palace to change. Then we walked the streets of Beauclair, reconnecting.

We went to Corvo Bianco, well before sundown to be greeted by an unsurprised-looking Kerrass and a Lord Geralt that was already pouring the Wine. Yennefer had already taken my notes off somewhere and was going through them carefully. We laughed and joked. Ariadne and I sat together and held hands.

So now, it is time to talk to you, dear reader. You have been with me for a long time now, several years and it has been an interesting time. I wanted to say thank you for your time spent in my company. It has been hard and easy, heartbreaking and so uplifting. I have fallen in love, become engaged, and found a friend that I did not look for. I have also, I hope, grown as a person far beyond that which I started.

It is my intention that this would be the last of the articles published in this magazine. But I will still be around. I understand that the magazine is working on a deal with my publisher to serialize my books and edit some of the more technical facts out. But that negotiation is still going on. I will be producing books now and as I write this, I am just finishing up my first draft of my part of the book on the Unseen Elder. That can expect to be published in a year or so.

The book on Jack is available from most good bookshops and is available in many libraries.

It is also possible that inspiration will strike while I am waiting for Yennefer to catch up and I will publish a story about Kerrass’ and my life on the road. That journey is now over for the time being and I don’t know when, or even if, it will start again. Conservative estimates suggest that it would be a couple of years after my marriage at least.

So once again. Thank you for sticking with it, thank you for joining me on this journey, and thank you for continuing to support me.

Thank you.

(A/N: This is not the end, but Freddie thinks it is. We are close to the ending now but believe me when I say that I will tell you when it is all over.

The idea for this chapter was given to me by someone from AO3 who wanted to ask me about the sociological implications of Freddie’s work. It was they who suggested that the nature of Freddie’s study of Witchers would be considered strange or unusual. We talked a bit and most of that discussion went over my head, but it did inspire what happened with Freddie and Ariadne here. At the time of writing, I can’t find their name to thank them in person. Any mistakes in the method are mine though. But thanks to you, if you are still there, for driving the story.

And for everyone in general. Thanks for reading.)