“Impossible.” The high chief kept whispering to himself.

While he had never been to The Dreadful Place, where The King of Spiders reigned, he had heard the stories. The stories, however, didn’t match what he was seeing; It was so much worse. There were rows upon rows of vividly blue webs, they were long and tall, at least three times taller than an elf. The delicious fruits the elves learned to love were growing on the vines which were tangled within the webs. The fruits called at his elven fruit-loving soul, tempting him to pluck a piece, but he knew better. It was a trap to ensnare the foolish elf into the wicked web.

The seductive sight of vines and fruits has been further tainted once he has realised who had been tending the web garden. Yes, those were spiders, and they were everywhere, and there were so many. The place was swarmed with spiders of various sizes and shapes. Hundreds of yellow eyes shone from atop the webs, they would blink now and then. It would be like a starry sky if he didn’t know that those were the eyes of twisted monsters.

The spiders waved at the elves and chirped something he could not quite understand. He kept moving in between the webs carefully glancing at his people, making sure that no one got themselves trapped. And it took quite a while to pass, the rows of webs seemed endless and even maze-like. If they were left alone here he was sure they either would get lost or be eaten by the praying monsters.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that it took hours to escape the web maze, but finally they were out into a clearing. Yet again, he felt inadequate: there was something quite odd, a vast field of blue flowers, the kind he had never seen. All elves loved the flowers so this should be a pleasant sighting, but it simply wasn’t. There was something strange about the bell-like flowers, his elven instinct told him not to approach them and for a good reason; in the middle of it stood a strange creature. A menacing monster was guarding the field like a boss of the area. The creature resembled a slug but only faintly, it was many times more disgusting and obscenely large. He and the elves gasped at the sight, in their eyes, it was nothing short of an abomination.

“Johny!” The King of Spiders waived. “Greet our new guests.”

The abomination had an alias, Johny, the High Chief shuddered hearing the pronunciation, he found the sound of it menacing; it fit the abomination well.

“Oh and don’t step near the flowers. You might fall asleep.” The King warned the elves of certain death.

The High Chief was able to read between the lines knowing that this “sleep” was an eternal kind. He spoke a short elven prayer while carefully threading over a narrow path, watching his every step so that he doesn’t come even an inch closer to the flowers.

After the flowers, there were fields of other plants. The plants were bigger than they had any right to be and most surprisingly of all there was an Alraune just casually sitting surrounded by a bunch of lesser dryads, the group made buzzing and crackling sounds to each other speaking in the tongue of plants. The surprise was double because he didn’t expect to see a rare plant monster growing here nor did he expect to see the lesser dryads. The dryads who never ventured away from their forests.

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The tour culminated with the visage of numerous dome-shaped buildings, they were woven out of wooden materials and reinforced with blue rope. If he had to guess he would say that those were the nests of the spiders. While the design was the same the buildings were of various sizes, some big some small, so maybe their purpose was different too. He saw a large group of spiders emerge from one of the buildings, the spiders were unlike the usual ones he had seen so far. While they were little they had arms uncannily familiar to the ones people possessed, in those spindly arms they carried bundles of cloth.

And then the worst happened. The little spiders began to wrap the naked elves in cloth. Did the King led them here to just be captured and slaughtered like cattle? The High Chief panicked.

“My bad. My bad.” For some reason, the King was also panicked. “I should have left you time to finish crafting clothes, and now… Well. I guess this saves time.”

For some reason, the spiders retreated leaving the elves lying on the ground screaming and flailing their arms and legs into the air. At least, he, The High Chief, for some reason was not molested by the spiders.

“What was this about?” He bowed deeply and asked with concern.

“Well, I can’t have elves running around here naked, can I?”

The king had a point, but the way he solved their nudity begged for an improvement.

“Wait, here.” He left for the largest building.

It was just a dome, but it was impressively large and for some reason clad entirely in blue triangles. It even had two large flags, the images on the flags were identical to the one on the King’s tunic; It was a black hexagon with four yellow dots.

“So that is their symbol. I wonder what it means.” The chief rubbed his chin in thought.

For some reason, it resembled a glyph from demonic language, if he still had the ancient elven scrolls he might have been able to translate it.

The King of Spiders had finally emerged, and he was not alone. Next to him was a slithering humanoid creature dressed in an elegant dress, she was smaller than usual so he wouldn’t have been able to tell that this was a Lamia if she didn’t have her face veil raised. For some reason, her skin was snow white which was also unusual for the lamia he knew. The forest Lamia were green and the cave Lamia were light grey or pale blue. He couldn’t just put a finger where this one came from. And for some reason, the lamia was glaring at him as if he had just stolen something from her treasure vault.

The King looked at the lamia trying to judge her foul expression. “As I said, don’t you worry, I’m sure they will cleanse the spring and you guys can return to your place in no time at all. Isn’t that right, High Chief?”

“Yes!” He bowed twice, once for the King and once for the lamia.

The cleansing ritual was a tricky business, but he knew he can pull it off somehow.

“Shall we rest before we head for the Oberon Mountain?”

“Mountain?” The high chief asked unsure. He thought the king would have the corrupted spring right here with the rest of the twisted monsters, somewhere in one of those nest buildings.

“Undermountain to be precise.”

The lamia kept glaring murder at the Chief.

“We can go at once.” He willed to escape her glare.

“Are you sure?”

And for some reason, he had hopes for the mountain. He just didn’t feel safe in between the maze-like web in that sea of yellow eyes. Also, he was afraid of the abomination guarding the deceptively innocent flowers. While he was curious about the Dryads and the Alraune, those there not good reasons to stay here surrounded by the domed nests full of spiders.

“Let’s go now!” The Chief urged.

The mountain, well or under-mountain couldn’t be worse than this.