Hindsight is a son of a bitch. No, not the racehorse, an actual son of a bitch. Looking back there were so many other choices I could have made. I don’t know what or who I pissed off in a past life but they were sure as hell taking their pound of flesh from my ass right now. Seriously, stick your head in here and look at this concave thing. How the hell am I supposed to wear a pair of jeans now?

I Shadow Rushed from my spot atop the building and landed in the shadow of a squat tree dusted with silken web. I looked into the gloom of the spider-made tunnel, half expecting a glowing neon sign to appear reading ‘Red’s Traveling Market’. No such sign appeared, unfortunately.

What was my first mistake you ask? Well, it came in the form of yanking Nigel off my shoulder and shoving him into a hole in the squat tree's trunk.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he snarled, righting himself and shaking a fist at me.

“Wait for me here. I don’t want you offending Red and getting us both kicked out or worse, eaten.”

“What, I’m not good enough for your fucking creepy, fly-munching, butt thread weaving, clicky mouth-having, friend?”

“No,” I said emphatically. “You are not.”

The little gnome swore and screamed and blasted tiny fireballs at me but none of that mattered. It would be so much easier to traverse Red’s silken maze without him yammering in my ear. I shrugged my stiff shoulders, drew a blade just in case, and started walking into the warren. And that, dear readers, was mistake number two.

The silken threads covering the ground stuck to my boots as I walked deeper into the gloom. I knew it was silly but my heart still thundered in my chest. I guess Gabby had managed to get in my head with her doom speech.

The passage bent and the gloom became all-consuming as the bright sunlight was snuffed out like a candle. Not for the first time, I wished I had a torch with me. I shuddered at the thought once my brain had turned it over for a minute; Fire plus spider web equals inferno. This is not the kind of tunnel I wanted to get hot and breathless in.

I felt my way ahead. My gloves stuck to the web just like my boots did.

“Red,” I bellowed. “Get your ass out here already.”

Crickets. That’s the only sound that met my ears. That was not exactly what I was after. Also, a little weird when you’re in the middle of a spider web. Shouldn’t the eight-legged monster have eaten the crickets by now?

The scampering of many feet soothed me as I made a few more difficult steps into the depths of the web. I guess he did hear my shout. It was mighty rude of him not to answer me though. I stumbled forward, twisting and bending as the webs tangled further around me. I yanked them free of the walls and ground, sure Red was going to lose his shit when he saw how much damage I’d done to his new home.

A pair of hands clamped around my shoulder and lifted me off my feet. I smiled at the pair of glowing eyes.

“About time, don’t you want to make a nice sale?” I said.

“And why, dear meal of mine, do you think I would to purchase your ill-gotten goods?”

I froze stiff, staring at the eyes that were not Red’s. The voice was deep and sultry, with a musical lilt that would have served the monster well on the silver screen.

“You’re not Red,” I almost whimpered, in a very manly way of course.

“No, I am not Red. I did not expect ever to hear that philanderer's name bellowed in my halls. Not since the night I kicked his sorry ass out. No, you can call me, Ruby. At least, you can until I bind this noisy little mouth of yours.”

A sharp fingernail grazed over my lips making me shudder. I tried to struggle free but she was strong. I couldn’t even maneuver my blade to slice at the monster as she’d managed to clamp it against my side, the tip of it resting just above my ankle, when she picked me up.

Sticky threads of silk bound me as I screamed my terror. With a speed that would have been impressive if it wasn’t so deadly she wrapped me in a cocoon, leaving only my head exposed. Then, with an unceremonious throw that had me feeling like a sack of potatoes, she tossed me over her shoulder, head pointed toward the ground, and darted away, deeper into her den.

Gabby had been right. I would never live this down. At least I wouldn’t have to suffer in the shame of it for long.

I tried to barter for my life. I offered everything I had. All the gold, all the equipment. Absolutely everything. All she did was laugh at my foolishness and inform me that it was all hers anyway.

“Oh but don’t worry little flightless fly, when I see Red I’ll sell your goods just as you hoped to.”

Then, I made my third mistake.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

I focused on the blanket of shadows around me and tried to merge with them. They sang to me with their siren call and I answered, begging them to wrap me in their soothing embrace. They did just that, but also more. Ruby was holding me and because she was, she morphed into the shadows with me.

My head screamed in agony as my magicka bar dropped like a ton of bricks. Ruby was enormous and brimming with magical energy. Bringing her with me into the realm of the shadows when my magicka was at such a low level was foolish. I would need the magicka reserves of a god-tier mage to hold her in the shadow realm for an extended time.

And that’s how I ended up a useless lump of flesh and pain. I dangled in my cocoon, bouncing off the spider's rigid back while my head swam and was periodically stabbed by a vindictive imaginary demon. My health and stamina remained high but without even a shred of magicka, I’d lost any chance I had at escaping. Why couldn’t I just have waited until she put me down somewhere?

The tunnel started to brighten after a good twenty minutes of rushed walking. I tried to turn and see what lay ahead but my abs weren’t nearly strong enough to bend that way around the force of the web wrap.

I heard a cacophony of clicking and hissing but couldn’t see the source. At first, I thought it might be the crickets that I had heard earlier, but no, it wasn’t the same as the chirping that had filtered down the tunnel.

“Now, now, my dears,” Ruby said. “Dinner won’t be far away.”

I swallowed hard as she swung me back over her shoulder and lifted me high, hanging me from a thick wooden hook penetrating the ceiling like a butcher hanging a pig carcass. It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the brightness of the open cavern Ruby had dragged me into. The light, which I had wrongly assumed was just sunlight, was emanating from various stones laid around the walls, each of them letting off a soft yellow glow.

I wished the darkness would descend on me again as I looked about. The floor was littered with hundreds of skeletons from a simple wallaby to the most enormous croc I’d ever seen. Scampering in and around the bones of their previous meals were small monstrous half-spiders, half-humans. I call them monstrous and mean it, because the human half was little more than a mutilated infant, one who should be too young to hold its head up, but the spider body was big enough to put a tarantula to shame.

Their mother cooed and whispered sweet nothings to them as they crowded around her. Bile crept into my mouth, burning my esophagus as it escaped my stomach.

Time for my fourth mistake.

The fear got the better of me. I sucked in a breath and used it to shout as loud as I possibly could for Nigel.

My voice echoed back at me as the small monsters began to shriek and run in every direction. Ruby howled in rage and crawled over to me, striking me so hard across the face that I swung like a pinata with little bright spots clouding my vision.

“How dare you frighten my precious spiderlings like that you foul beast,” she screamed in my face, her long black tresses fanning out like some wiry snake's hood. “This is their home. I will not have you bellowing like a banshee in my den.”

“Set me free,” I managed around my quickly swelling mouth. “And I’ll not bother you or your spiderlings ever again.”

Her burning rage turned to laughter as she reached behind her. “Dream on my little treat. Your hope sweetens your flesh even when it is horribly misguided.”

She swung back around and smacked a clump of web over my mouth. I tried to scream but the web was more effective than a gag.

The mother spider monster moved about the cavern, collecting and soothing her young in a surprisingly tender way. I rocked and twisted and yanked but the webs held me tight. I’d almost given up when Ruby suddenly lifted her head, her body going stiff and her eyes glowing brightly as she looked down one of the many tunnels that led away from the cavern.

I froze too. Waiting for whatever was coming to help save me from my fate. Not that I deserved much saving, not after I’d so brazenly dismissed my teammate's concerns. I needed to stop thinking of myself as a leader and charging head first into every danger. I was a scout and a thief. That’s what I should have been doing when I neared this place. I should have hunkered down and waited until the monster revealed itself. One day, I promise you, I will be an accomplished thief. One that actually understands and utilizes my class strengths properly. One day, hopefully not too far away.

“Wait here my loves,” Ruby whispered to the gathered spiderlings. “It seems we will have a dessert to follow our main course.”

She rose to her full height on her eight thin black legs and skittered away, disappearing up the tunnel at breakneck speed. Poor Nigel. He had no idea what was coming for him.

The spiderlings clustered in the middle of the room, almost directly under me. They swarmed and hissed and clambered until they had built a wonky tower, each new spiderling to climb to the top bringing them ever closer to me.

And that’s when I made my fifth mistake. Yep, there was another one.

My twisting had freed the tip of my sword just enough to poke through the threads by my ankles. The spiderlings reached up, almost grabbing my hair. I twisted violently and the tip of the blade slashed through the thick chord of web hanging around the hook.

I screamed as gravity took over. I curled my body, my back facing the ground as I fell. The spiderlings screamed under me as I crushed them all. The green gunk inside them splattered out in a wide burst as I hit the ground. Some of them still floundered but most were still, their bodies bent in unimaginable ways as their eight legs curled under them.

The hard landing and the tip of my blade made short work of the web cocoon. Finally, free from my bindings, I leaped to my feet, rushing away from the few spiderlings that remained as I yanked the thick glob away from my mouth. I sucked in a sharp breath past my teeth and bent again, scooping up one of the glowing rocks. Thankfully, even though it let off light, it did feel hot to the touch.

Ruby returned right at that moment, a dead wallaby grasped in her hand. I guess I should be grateful it wasn’t Nigel but instead, I was just upset that she was back so soon. Her face turned from happy and flushed with the thrill of the hunt to grey and horrified as she looked at the wreckage of her young.

Her slitted eyes turned on me as her chest heaved. “What have you done!”

I didn’t answer. There was nothing I could say. Instead, I turned on my heel, my blade held out in front of me just in front of my feet as I charged through another tunnel. The blade sliced through the threads which were snapped back by the strong tension of their weave, leaving me a safe and not sticky path to follow. The stone I still held tight in my free hand lit the way.

Ruby’s howl of pure, righteous, motherly rage followed me as her bulk squeezed into the tunnel right behind me.