Inside the musty wooden cabin, Rivel gazed at the dirty floor as various stenches assaulted him - from waste to rot, spilled boiled milk left unclean, and enough humidity to make him feel like drowning.

It had been about a week since the bug-like creature had locked him up here, and he was starting to think fondly of the backstabbing spiders. The only thing that kept him calm was doing math as time passed, as he was physically unable to sleep. "One plus one is two, times two is four, seven plus seven is fifteen... Can't trust a bug," he thought, as different images crossed his mind - images of him ripping the creatures to pieces and bathing in their blood-like insect juice.

In hindsight, how could he ever trust a being that lacked blood? Theorists have speculated that blood is where the soul resides, so a bloodless being was a soulless being. Simple math. But then, what was it that he had fed upon last time? Wasn't it its soul? It was better not to think of food now, even as he was surrounded by dissected leaf plates with some blueish goop on them.

The guards, who periodically rotated to keep tabs on him 24/7, had tried to pass that thing off as food, but even if he were able to eat it, he'd rather starve. There were fates worse than death, and eating blue goop of unknown origins was one of them.

When his mind was sharper, he had counted between three to four rotations. While it wasn't possible to say how many guards were outside, based on the footsteps, he estimated that sometimes it was just one guard and sometimes there were two.

This meant there were about six dedicated personnel to keep tabs on him for an extended period. On the other hand, while he was being kept by the spiders, it had been a shorter period, and he had been guarded by a single individual. The prison itself was just a hole in the ground, not a proper structure.

Looking around, he saw that there were enough shackles and iron balls to keep about twelve prisoners, although the space was a bit tight, so it was probably meant for fewer. This meant two things: first, these people had a habit of keeping prisoners, or at least had done so at some point, which likely meant there was a torture chamber somewhere. That's where he guessed he'd be going next; the elder seemed very determined to extract his information.

The second thing was that they had better numbers and organization than the Silkborne, unless he had missed some key information, like underground tunnels filled with population or cultural reluctance to guard duty. At his estimate, they were about four times more numerous.

They were also well-fed - they even had spare food for the prisoner, as disgusting as it might be - and disgustingly disciplined. Their leader, the elder, presumably, had instructed the guards not to speak, and seven days or more had passed without a word from which to extract any information. The elder was playing the long game, perfectly calm, waiting for Rivel's distraught to simmer.

The door creaked, and finally, after an eternity, the elder showed his repulsive face. He grabbed a chair and sat in front of the kneeling, chained Rivel. He didn't utter a word, and Rivel didn't look up. Five whole minutes passed in this little game before the elder spoke.

"I see you don't fancy the local cuisine, do you? Bipeds usually aren't very appreciative of Saltierre. We have other dishes you could try if you feel more chatty..." Seeing that Rivel remained silent, he scratched his chin and changed tactics. "Honestly, I don't know where this whole attitude is coming from. You think I can't just change my mind and still kill you?"

Rivel scoffed. He knew the elder wouldn't kill him because he had piqued his interest on a fundamental level. He didn't know why, but he could tell when someone's thirst for knowledge would push them to great extents, for he had suffered it himself. The elder, knowing his bluff hadn't worked, laughed back.

"I admit that when you almost ruined an entire strategy of tactical territory seizure to starve the Silkborne into submission, I was very decided to terminate your existence. But now, I think I should even thank you."

For the first time, Rivel looked up. The hunger in his purple eyes, like those of an otherworldly predator, flared an instinctual fear in the elder.

"Such scary eyes. I didn't know you were so close to them, since your timely disappearance after the initial miracle, coupled with the rumor that the royalty had forcefully taken you for their own greedy purposes - that is, fear that you'd remove them from power - has created severe social strife that accelerated my plans.

They're a very stubborn folk, the Silkborne. They wouldn't have given up until there were no more left to cannibalize aside from the Queen and her close allies. I would have waited; I'm a patient man, but now I have you, and I no longer need to spend so many resources besieging stubborn enemies. We can both profit from this. What do you say?"

Rivel was a bit confused by the influx of information. Last time he checked, Nyxoria had fooled her followers into believing he had to take an early leave for some urgent mission, and while the excuse was less than elaborate, it was royal mandate. Insects weren't the critical thinking type, at least not those of low caste. Then it clicked.

The figure who saw him kill the escort, Neith, must have spread the word that he wasn't leaving of his own volition! He almost wanted to kiss her again. Then he remembered how it felt and almost gagged.

"I see you like the offer, Fateweaver," the elder said. "You might call me Elder Gufar. I would walk you through my city, but unfortunately, although your assistance will come in handy, I'll need to do some public relations work on your behalf."

Rivel was getting tired of the elder's comings and goings, but being chained and balled to the ground left him with little option other than compliance. As the elder walked out, he flashed a twisted smirk that Rivel took for a smile of sorts.

Before Rivel could voice a complaint about still being restricted, he saw a row of Silkborne war prisoners walked into the cabin. He didn't recognize any of them, but they seemed to recognize him, greeting him warmly with surprise.

"Great Mage Rivel! How odd to see you here. Were you captured by these bastards too?"

One of them looked with bright eyes and whispered after the escort guards left the prison cabin.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

"Maybe you can bust us out of here with your magic? Set them on fire or blast the door away?"

"Shh!" another hushed him. "You think that if he could, he wouldn't have done it before, you dimwit? Clearly, he has command over the forces of life and food!"

"Hey Rivel, conjure me a dinner, will you? Haha, sorry, I couldn't resist. We'll get you out of here; you're much needed back in the city. The artists are getting antsy now that the food supplies are gone again."

Rivel felt like he should be mad at the bad jokes and crude language, but he didn't feel anything. Just hunger. The prisoners spoke for a while longer, but Rivel couldn't hear them. Then, the darkness overcame him.

...

By the time he came to his senses, all around him lay the dried husks of the Silkborne, who moments before had seen him as their last hope. Rivel couldn't help but feel a bit bad about these arachnids, whom he, by the forces of fate, had helped in their direst moment, thinking that the death toll wouldn't stop with those three.

Shaking off this unknown feeling, he knocked on the cabin's door, unable to stand the stench of that place for one more second. The creature, whom he would later come to know as one of the Thorvant, opened the door and stepped aside, unsurprised, as apparently Guffar had already foreseen this ending.

Stepping outside, Rivel closed his eyes to enjoy his newly regained freedom, swearing to himself that he'd rather die than be imprisoned for a third time. The strange luminance, unexpected in a deep cave, and much more potent than the dim, warm light provided by the firefly-based lighting system he had seen before, made him open his eyes.

In front of him, a perfectly measured path of packed dirt led to a great city of unknown size; giant mushroom caps grew on either side of the path, shedding their blueish, sickening bioluminescence all through the streets.

The guard walked by him as he descended along the path into the city, stunned by the almost-human-made buildings, slightly malformed to better adapt to their insectoid residents. The structures were made of a grayish, yet slightly glowy concrete/metal mixture that made him feel like he would go crazy if he stayed there too long, surrounded by the awful faces of the residents, the bioluminescent fungus, and the swirling patterns on the walls. Having been there barely an hour, he already felt dizzy, and the innumerable passersby – counting more armed soldiers than regular citizens – made him realize:

"They never stood a chance, did they?"

Guffar emerged from the doorway of a building Rivel hadn't noticed before, but which now stood out as larger and slightly more refined than the others. Rivel wondered for a moment how he had missed it, but the patterns shifting around the walls, almost alive, reminded him why. Guffar cackled, scoffing at their less advanced enemies:

"Of course not. The Silkborne had their fate sealed the moment their queen decided to turn her back on the hidden royalty of this mountain." He said mysteriously. Rivel felt like asking, but looking around, he knew better.

"Do your scryers have any intel on the mutiny Neith is carrying?"

Looking pensive, Guffar pointed Rivel inside, and they walked in silence for a few moments. Other Thorvant, of different sizes and colors, performed menial tasks; some secreted bile held a crucial role as a mixture of glue and filler.

Although Rivel couldn't exactly compare the strange devices they crafted, he suspected it wasn't art. Finally, they stopped in a rather dark room where the only light came from the dim luminance of the shifting veins within the concrete, casting everything else in shadows. In the middle of the room, a long-dead figure sat unmoving. Guffar closed the door behind them and motioned Rivel, saying:

"Ask him yourself."

Rivel thought the old coot had lost it, but then, in the corner of his eye, dust detached and fell from the sides of the corpse as it shifted slightly in place. Without thinking, he asked:

"Oracle, I seek your wisdom. What's the state of the Silkborne uprising?"

The dead thing didn't move further, but a voice that seemed to come from beyond whispered:

"I see a forest of hanging spiders, their threads coming from their eyes.

I see them flailing, and falling, and I see a twisted being calmly watching.

I see shades of gray; I see the horror twisting its sharp-tipped limbs into impossible angles, guiding the corpses into an ever-hungry mass grave."

"Oracle, may you speak clearly?"

Guffar laughed a bit at the unknowing mage but didn't indulge his ignorance. Opening the doors once again, he grabbed Rivel and dragged him out of the room, but not before he could hear the corpse speak again:

"I peer into your eyes and see a world of death reflected, stranger..."

Slightly perturbed but mostly annoyed, Rivel gestured to Guffar that whatever nonsensical information his scryer provided, it wasn't actionable intel. Guffar dismissed that thought and answered:

"The scryer speaks only truth; you simply haven't learned to read it. The mutiny is going well for the most part, but you need to step in if we want them to prevail against Nyxoria. I should warn you, as a long-time adversary of hers, that she's quite stubborn, and there's nothing more dangerous than a cornered enemy."

Rivel sat and considered his possibilities. First, the Elder clearly showed him all this to make it clear that he worked for him, not the other way around, so trying to pressure him into handing over more troops as a reward would be pointless.

What he could do, though, was ask for some advanced payment and have him deploy some troops now to assist him in destroying the queen's army, but this had dangers of its own, as the sudden appearance of a long-time racial enemy might backfire and postpone Nyxoria's overthrow.

"What is it that your crafters are doing?"

"Explosives, for the most part."

"Do you think the Silkborne would recognize them as Thorvant explosives?"

"Hmm... Unlikely. We haven't deployed them against them yet. It's possible, still, as you know it's not necessary to physically see something to know it exists."

This opened possibilities. All civilian revolutions had historically lacked weaponry; although, as far as he remembered, all Silkborne seemed to have a distinct lack of it, mostly relying on what nature had given them. He knew how far a few tactically placed explosives could go.

While there was a chance they would recognize them, it was a risk he was willing to take.

"I should have you know that there's no way I'm giving these to you, nor will I lend them for you to replicate. Novel war tech isn't something freely given, as you probably know."

Rivel felt his mood sour. 'Cheap old man,' he thought, 'what's he thinking? That I will steal his second-grade spit-driven explosives?'

"Would you prefer me borrowing a tenscore of your troops, perhaps?"

"Impossible," Guffar laughed.

Rivel was starting to get impatient. He wasn't a man of strategy; he was a man of thought – a man of thought reduced to crawling through the mud, waging war against spiders and locusts. He'd laugh if the situation wasn't so dire.

"What can you, then, give me? Should I remind you that my victory means victory for us both?"

Guffar closed in, his eyes glittering in contrast to the deep-night color of the beads, with a feeling Rivel couldn't tell if it was hunger or anger.

"I will have you recall your situation a few weeks ago, Mister Rivel. I took risks by allowing you, a curse-caster, to live and walk around my city. Don't tempt your luck, and do as you're told. Rest today, and march tomorrow to assist the Silkborne revolution. What is there to lose?" Closing in further, he pressed against Rivel. "You're a dead man walking."