Just as quickly as they appeared all of the spiders disappeared down the hole. The giant one was the last to depart leaving Gabe and the others alone in the tunnel.
“Well that almost was a disaster,” said Simon. “That was good timing for your Insight, Master. I was certain we were about to be spider food.”
All the confidence and strength that Professor Alrik had been projecting while dealing with the spider queen left him as his shoulders slumped and looked at the ground.
“Yes, it was quite fortuitous. While I do wish I could access them more reliably, I am grateful that this one arose when it did.”
“How does that work?” asked Gabe. “You just suddenly know something you didn’t previously? That sounds like it could be quite jarring.”
The professor chuckled weakly and looked into Gabe’s eyes.
“More than you realize. Fortunately, I can feel the mana surge through my soul so I am at least partially forewarned. I have also had many decades to grow accustomed to the sensation. The process is very much as you described. As my body and soul fill with illumination mana, information enters my mind. Sometimes images, sometimes words, and a few times even impressions of how someone else was feeling. Today I was granted knowledge of the Deep Hallow Agreement, a pact between the Vlatiryx, the group we know as the Dwellers and whom the spider queen referred to as the Starfallen, and the creatures who live under the Iochant Mountains. It appears that when they settled here, they sought an accord with as many sapient species as possible to minimize conflict and bloodshed.”
“Speaking of ‘Starfallen’,” Simon interjected. “Do you have insights, magically derived or not, about just what she was talking about? I’m usually a fan of riddles, but I can’t make heads or tails of half the things she said.”
Gabe was glad that he wasn’t the only one who was confused by what the spider queen had said. From some of her comments and the way she knew what types of mana they could access, he got the impression she could see their souls. What other information was she able to glean from them? Her comment about his time running short ran through his mind. His ruminations were interrupted when Profesor Alrik began speaking.
“I have a few guesses, some more speculation than anything else,” answered Professor Alrik. “To get the answers we seek, we will need to…” He trailed off and looked at the hole in the ground.
“As much as I’d love to get some questions answered, are we certain going down there is our best option?” replied Simon. “We could go back to our original plan and head towards the main tunnels. The stone back there is way tougher than this stuff here, I bet even the big one would have trouble digging through it. We could head back to the main chamber, try one of the other paths, and forget all about these damned spiders”
There was a hint of desperation in Simon’s voice. Gabe had been so caught up in his own worries and fears, he didn’t even realize how much this encounter had shaken his friend. His face was pale, his dirty-blonde hair plastered to his head with sweat and grime. Gabe noticed that Simon’s fingers were twitching slightly, almost like he was keeping himself ready in case he needed to cast spells quickly. Small splotches of dried blood dotted his shirt and there was a ragged cut along his left leg, but fortunately, all of his wounds had been healed by his Restorative Shield.
Simon’s expression fell as Professor Alrik began to shake his head.
“‘Meat to eat, metal to weave, blood to seep’,” he recited, repeating the spider queen’s words. “In the campsite, we found, the only things that remained were those derived from plants. All metal and other organic material was missing. Add to that the fact that much of the remains had been shredded to pieces and I fear that our predecessors fell victim to the spider hoard.”
Gabe shuffled a few steps closer to him and bumped his shoulder against Simon’s. He didn’t know what to say to make the situation better, he just wanted Simon to know that he wasn’t alone. He gave Gabe a half-hearted smile and turned back to his master.
“Well, I guess that’s that. Downward we go.”
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The walls of the hole weren’t perfectly smooth, the rotating mandibles of the larger spider forming thin grooves that swirled down the sides. They might have been able to climb down using just those, but the process was made a lot smoother with Simon’s magic. He caused a series of steps to jut out from the walls and the four of them descended into the depths. The hole continued straight down for a few dozen feet before leveling out.
Gabe nearly jumped out of his skin when one of the smaller spiders dropped down from the ceiling, chittering and waving its front legs. Next to him, Drevock surged forward, axes raised and ready to tear through the creature. Gabe was shocked to see the spider actually hop backward before scuring up the side of the wall, its eyeless head ‘looking’ at them. It chittered some more and took a few cautious steps toward the group before retreating again.
“I think it wants us to follow it,” Gabe said a bit incredulously. He took a small step forward and the spider responded by turning around and rushing down the tunnel. It stopped after a few yards and turned back to face the group.
“Yeap, definitely supposed to follow it.”
The necessity of a guide became clear once they came upon the first intersection. Another tunnel the same size as the one they had been walking down cut across their path at an oblique angle, coming up from the ground and extending into the ceiling. Gabe supposed that since the spiders weren’t restricted to just walking along the floor their pathways could go in any direction. Their guide was able to leap across the gap, but once again Simon came in handy as he formed a bridge. They continued like this for some time, sometimes crossing past new tunnels, other times heading up or down them along steps conjured by Simon before transitioning to another mostly horizontal tunnel.
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Occasionally they would come across other spiders. Each time Gabe’s heart would race as he anticipated an attack, but it never came. The other spiders ignored them and went about their own business. Along the way, their guide would stop by patches of the lichen. Evidently, it wasn’t just supposed to take them to the spiders’ home. Gabe harvested the lichen as he did before, casting Aura of Vitality and slowly removing it as a single piece. Once there had been a particularly large patch and he tried to separate it into two pieces to make it easier to remove. Even with his aura active as soon as he split the lichen in half both sides crumbled into dust. Their guide chittered angrily and Gabe feared that he had just ruined their chances of getting out of there alive. Much to his relief, it simply led them to another patch of lichen, and this time Gabe took extra caution to remove it correctly. It was taxing having Aura of Vitality going constantly, but fortunately, there was enough time between patches that he could cycle his mana and recuperate some of it. Eventually, the tunnel they were walking along opened up to a massive cavern.
“Oh wow.”
That was all Gabe could say as he looked up at the spider’s lair. The cavern had clearly once belonged to a Dweller, or rather a Vlatiryx settlement, as there were multiple piles of stone and debris stacked at various heights, though most seemed to rise more than fifty feet in the air. These stacks were held together with more of that metallic thread the spider queen could create and formed pillars that dotted the ground of the cavern. Gabe could just barely see the other edge of the cavern and estimated the place to be roughly the size of Aranthia. He couldn’t see the roof of the cavern, though that had less to do with the distance and more to do with the dense web that extended between the dozens of pillars and the walls of the cavern.
Even through the magic of Professor Alrik’s Nightvision spell the network of webbing glistened like ethereal strands of liquid silver. Patterns of impossible intricacy were weaved throughout the web. These geometric forms extended and repeated continuously in ever smaller proportions to such an extent that it must have taken hundreds of years to create them all. Here and there huge swaths of thread are woven together to form a platform. From their position, they can see that the underside of the platforms is decorated with patterns woven with luminous copper threads.
While the sight of the web is impressive enough, what caught Gabe’s attention immediately was the sheer number of spiders that moved about the cavern. Tens of thousands of the creatures scurried about along the webbed pathways and across the walls. Seeing them like this, Gabe knew with absolute certainty that the only way they were leaving here alive was with the queen’s blessing. There was just no way they would ever be able to run from a hoard of this size.
Off to one side, he could see hundreds of the smaller spiders, which he’d begun to think of as soldier spiders, scurrying out of a tunnel opening that was halfway up the side of the wall. Resting on their backs was the corpse of an enormous snake. Its scales were the color of bone, white with a tinge of yellow, and the fangs that extended from its mouth were easily longer than Professor Alrik was tall. Holes oozing dark black blood covered the corpse, evidence that not even a creature as mighty as it could last long against the relentless onslaught of the spiders.
Gabe’s attention returns to their guide when the small spider begins chittering loudly and waving its front legs in the air. Somehow knowing that the party is no longer distracted by the nest, it turns around and starts navigating across the cavern floor. For a moment Gabe worries that they are going to have to follow the spider up into the webbing when the spider jumps up onto a low hanging thread. Fortunately for them, however, it seems the spider simply prefers moving along the web to the ground and stays low enough that Gabe and the others can follow it. They take a meandering path through the cavern, walking around pillars and sometimes even doubling back for a time.
Eventually, they reach their destination. Six of the stone pillars stand twenty feet apart from one another and are arranged in a hexagonal pattern. Strung between five of them were incredible tapestries woven from different metallic threads forming a semi-enclosed area. Each of the tapestries depicted a different scene, the contrast between different shades of gold, silver, and copper allowing for an impressive amount of detail.
Most of them Gabe assumed to be representations of ancient battles. The left-most one showed the spider hoard facing off against what had to be a phoenix. The avian creature was woven from threads of copper and rose gold, the sheen from the threads allowing its wings to flicker and wave-like firelight. The one next to it showed spiders doing battle against one another, dull grey versus black onyx the only difference between the hoards.
The only image that wasn’t of a battle stood at the very center. Seven figures stood arranged in a circle. Some were humanoid, others more monstrous. A salamander-like creature encased in blazing flames stood next to something small that floated in the air on thin wings. Gabe could only assume that this was a representation of the signing of the Deep Hallow Agreement. Studying the image, he wondered which of the figures represented the Vlatiryx.
His thoughts were interrupted when the spider queen dropped down from somewhere above them, landing with a loud thud in the center of the space.
“Few ever get to see my nest. If you did not bring Life’s gift, my nest will be the last you see, yes, yes,” came her melodic voice through their minds. As they had decided earlier, Professor Alrik stepped forward to speak with the queen.
“We have honored our portion of the pact and harvested twenty sections of lichen.”
At his signal, Simon set down the pack and he and Gabe began pulling out all the lichen they’d harvested. Well, not all the lichen. Gabe had actually been able to harvest twenty-three portions of the magical plant from the areas their spider guide had led them. If everything went smoothly, they’d be able to sell the stuff when they got back to the surface. And if things got dicey, having a few extra pieces of something the queen found valuable would certainly come in handy.
Evidently, the queen had had enough time to prepare because as soon as Gabe and Simon started pulling out the lichen, spiders draped in the same woven pattern the queen created back in the tunnels scurried down the pillars and assembled in front of them. One by one they placed a bundle of the lichen on one of the spider's back. Once the metal began glowing with a green light, the spider would retreat back up into the nest and the next one would take its place. In a matter of minutes, all twenty pieces had been distributed.
The spider queen chittered excitedly as she shuffled around the area.
“A pact was made, agreements honored, yes, yes. Life for life, safe passage through my domain. You may leave and be on your way. But if answers you seek, what are you willing to pay?”