Stronger. She needed to be stronger. STRONGER.

Rita’s stomach gurgled hungrily.

Dammit! It wasn’t working!

Rita sighed and stared idly at the people walking past. Along with Bob, she was sitting by the side of the road in front of the Delver’s Guild, waiting for the others to finish with the paperwork and whatever else they had to do. She would have gone in with them except… well… the actual Guild building in Grailmane was little more than an administrative office. It was tiny. And on the second floor. The only way to reach it was up a narrow flight of stairs squeezed between a clothes store and a place that served some kind of meat kebabs. Even Gora had to turn somewhat sideways to fit, much to her apparent irritation.

Rita was hardly fat, but eight legs had to go somewhere.

In the end, she elected to wait outside while everyone else finished their business. It reminded her far too much of the little passage she and Alice had passed through inside the Tree. She was not keen to repeat that extremely uncomfortable experience.

She cracked her neck wiggled her abdomen into a more comfortable position, before turning her focus back to the problem at hand.

It was the second time that she’d done something weird. Something she couldn’t quite explain as a quirk of her own weird biology or as originating from something else. The first time had been after Alice had piloted her body for the first time and she’d come to to find herself chewing on a Masked corpse.

The strange sixth sense she’d suddenly developed that allowed her to find Gora’s group again, had at the time not even been the weirdest thing that had happened to her in the previous five minutes, much less that day, and she hadn’t questioned it at the time. Nothing else had made sense up to that point, so she’d just written it off as more… weirdness.

And then she somehow hulked out and dipped into some sort of anger-powered strength that allowed her to haul Gora’s bulk over the edge of a cliff. Clearly something was going on here.

It was either some kind of innate ability, something she could do just because she was a fucked up spider monster like all the other monsters had their own gimmick, or she’d accidentally cast some kind of magic. Or possibly some combination of the two. It hadn’t triggered back when she’d felt the Tree-inspired rage, so it clearly wasn’t as simple as getting angry. It must require being activated somehow, but she just couldn’t figure out how!

She’d questioned Zaxier and Ava a little about magic in their time travelling together, and to her surprise, many people indeed utilized magic of some kind subconsciously in their day-to-day lives.

Like a baker that could reach into his oven without getting burned or a hunter that had unnaturally keen senses, the one thing they all had in common was that they were either passive effects or were instinctively activated, with no need to understand how it worked or even that they were using magic at all!

If that was what she’d done, somehow, replicating the feat should have been easy! It should have come naturally as breathing!

Rita rubbed her eyes and returned to people-watching.

The citizens of Grailmane wore clothes that ranged from leather and linen of various qualities and cuts, to more esoteric materials like bone or chitin. There was even a woman that seemed to be wearing nothing but a cape and what appeared to be a skintight outfit composed entirely of flowing, black ink.

It was kind of creepy, actually, the way it undulated and wobbled. It looked like it should have run down her legs and pooled around her black, leather boots, but instead it just stayed in place, covering what needed to be covered as ripples and currents slowly played across its surface.

Rita was pondering the idea of just dumping what she knew about her strange ‘magic-episodes’ at Zaxier’s feet and have him figure out what had happened, when Bob broke the silence.

“Miss Rita, may I ask you a question?”

“Sure, Bob, what do you want to know?” Rita replied, forcing a smile onto her face.

Truthfully, she rather liked Bob. He was refreshingly straightforward, didn’t seem to care particularly much about the number of her legs and just generally seemed like a genuinely nice person.

“Is Miss Ava going to be okay?” he asked worriedly.

Rita sucked her breath between her teeth. Oooh, awkward question.

“Bob, I know it seems to you that we were very mean to Ava, but she did a very bad thing. I know it’s a little hard to understand for you, but it’s probably best if you don’t worry about her.”

And yet she’d thought they were friends, right up until Ava had stabbed her in the back. No, she was not a nice person. She was just a person.

Bob shook his head. “No, Miss Rita, I understand. I know I’m not very smart, my Ma always said I was two bricks short of a kiln, but I know it was her that caused our wagon to be attacked. But I still hope she’s okay, you know?”

Rita grimaced. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about Ava. Hurt and betrayed for sure. But Ava claimed to have changed her mind after their little heart-to-heart back in the Outpost. That matched what the fat professor had said; that she’d not informed them when Rita and the others had left like she was supposed to.

Okay, sure, so she’d effectively betrayed her own professor in a way. But at the same time, the only reason that had even been an option was because she’d betrayed Rita in the first place!

And yet Rita remembered how she’d thrown herself over Samual to keep him safe in the fight with the Inquisitor. The Inquisitor that Rita had ended up murdering.

Arrrgh! This was so complicated! Rita just couldn’t get a handle on Ava! Was she a noble soul that had made a mistake in a moment of weakness? Or a toxic, broken person like so many others that Rita had had to cut out of her life?

Rita closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and like most other complicated feelings in her life, shoved it all into a dark corner of her mind and shut it away. It didn’t matter. Ava was gone.

“I know, Bob, I know,” she finally replied.

Between Alice taking up residence and the fact that she’d literally murdered someone, the dark corners of her mind were starting to get mighty cramped.

“Excuse me,” a man’s voice interrupted her thoughts, “but are you the spider-being that was involved in the altercation outside the city a short time ago?”

The man was tall and lanky, with his beard and head both completely clean-shaven. He wore dark red and blue robes, the colours divided sharply across the diagonal. He was staring down at her with a wide grin splitting his face.

Rita’s mind whirled as she scrambled to her feet. Who was this? Was this the magic version of the local law enforcement? Had she done something wrong? Was it better to tell the truth or to say that no, it was some other horrible spider-monster that had picked a fight with a Mitlan Inquisitor right on the city’s doorstep?

“Hello, may I ask who is asking?” she tried to buy time.

“My name is Eldric?” the man introduced himself, his eerie smile never wavering. “I am an apprentice to Lord Henry who is himself an apprentice to Magelord Krii?”

He spoke every sentence in a questioning tone, even when it was clear that he was stating a fact. It took Rita a few moments of confused silence just to figure out what he was saying.

Something about him didn’t sit right with her. “My name is Rita, but I’m not sure I know exactly what it is that you’re referring to…” she tried, but the mage gently cut her off.

“The Magelord himself is quite interested in the events that transpired? And he doesn’t like being refused?” he said-asked. Right. He hadn’t actually been wondering whether she was the correct half-spider-thing, after all how many of them were there even? He’d just been trying to pretend to be polite.

Rita glanced over at Bob, but he just stared, slack-jawed. He certainly wasn’t going to be any help.

Luckily, right at that moment the door to the Guild opened and Samual strode out. When he saw the mage standing in front of Rita, he froze.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“My name is Eldric? I am an apprentice…” he began to repeat his greeting.

“Don’t care, get lost,” Samual interrupted him, walking over to stand beside Rita.

“The Magelord…”

Samual drew his mace from the loop on his belt. “Get. Lost.”

For a few tense moments the two of them stared at each other in silence. Then Eldric stepped back, head bobbing in apparent apology.

“I am sorry? I will let the Magelord know that you decline his invitation at this time?” he said-asked before turning and hurrying away without looking back.

They watched him go until he disappeared around the next corner of the street.

Only then did Rita finally breathe a sigh of relief. “Thanks for bailing me out, Samual.”

Samual grunted wordlessly in acknowledgement, but spent most of his attention glaring at Bob who had not moved a single muscle to help.

“I left her in your care,” he stated simply. “You were supposed to come get me the moment anything happened.”

“I’m sorry Mister Samual,” Bob mumbled, staring at his feet in shame. “I forgot.”

Rita sighed. “Please don’t, it all turned out okay in the end.”

“Despite the fool’s best efforts…” Samual muttered, but seemed to drop the subject as they heard Gora coming down the stairs.

“… I don’t care, I’m not signing something if I don’t know what its for,” Gora argued with the cat as they stepped out the door.

“It is not a contract! It is just to attest that what is written is the truth, as far as you are aware! It does not require you to do anything!” the cat replied, but Gora just shook her head.

“Still not happening,” she said, shaking her head. Then she turned to the others. “Hi guys, everything okay?”

“A mage accosted Rita. I sent him packing,” Samual said.

Gora’s eyebrows rose. “A mage?”

“He said he was here on behalf of some Magelord or something,” Rita explained. “I think he wanted me to go with him.”

Truthfully, she hadn’t really been listening. She’d mostly been panicking and trying to figure out how she was going to bluff her way out.

“Did he say which Magelord?” Gora asked, her voice rising. “Was it Magelord Krii?”

“Er… yeah, I think so. He mentioned a Lord Henry as well, I think?” Rita replied.

Gora swore. “Yeah, that’s him. He’s the guy in charge of this district. That is his tower,” she said, pointing at the massive, nearby, stone spire looming over them.

“He lives there?” Rita asked, surprised. “I thought those things were solid!”

The tower as a whole was the size of a castle, if you took the entire castle and just sorta rolled it together into a sausage shape and stuck it on its end. And it wasn’t even the tallest spire in Grailmane.

Apparently, there was a hell of a lot more than a little magic involved in their construction.

“Yes. Him and his small army of apprentices,” Gora replied. “Who knows what the hell they do there.”

“Isn’t that the one that blasted the Inquisitor also?” Rita asked.

Gora grimaced as she nodded. “Yeah. And that’s the problem. If he realizes we were involved with that, he might decide that we owe him for the save.”

Rita sheepishly rubbed the back of her head. “I think it might be too late for that… The mage basically told me that that was where they knew me from.”

Gora sighed deeply, swearing under her breath.

“Come on! It’s not so bad, is it?” Rita said, trying to cheer her up. “The mage left, didn’t he?”

“Magelords are trouble,” Zaxier remarked, still lying atop Gora’s upturned forearm. “They often have difficulty with the concept of private property. Specifically, the part where it can belong to people that isn’t them. That being said, be glad that it’s Krii. He’s generally reasonable, and was not conducting research relating to Nightmare Spawn last I heard. Though that might change if a unique specimen such as yourself appears on his doorstep.”

Rita suppressed a shudder. Research? Images of high school frog dissection tables jumped into her mind. Except, instead of a frog, it was a little spider being cut open…

“Unfortunately, while I wish you all the best of luck, it appears that our business has reached its conclusion,” Zaxier went on. “Bob and I must be on our way.”

“You’re leaving?” Rita asked, surprised. “But you’re the one that knows stuff!”

“Indeed. Since Gora is unwilling to consider my proposal, Bob and I have our own business to attend to,” he confirmed. “I think we both look forward to some respite and a return to our own abode.”

“What about the Magelord? You’re not going to help?”

“I am afraid not. Between the Academy of the Forbidden Arts and the Mitlan Inquisition, we have very much reached our limit for making powerful enemies on behalf of casual acquintances,” the cat said simply. “Do look us up if you are ever in the Gralgor District and not actively being pursued. Your scritches are quite adequate. Bob, up.”

He’d hardly finished speaking before Bob was on his feet. The cat wasted no time in leaping over to his familiar and settling himself on his shoulder with the ease of long practice.

After a few short goodbyes and a rather sudden hug from Rita that made Bob blush beetroot red and nearly toppled Zaxier off of his shoulder, they headed off.

“Never took you for a hugger,” Gora remarked as the cat and his familiar disappeared into the crowds.

“Sometimes, a little physical contact goes a long way,” Rita smiled. Then she turned to face Gora. “So what now?”

“Now I go home,” the cambion woman replied. Then she took out a small, clinking, leather pouch and stuck it in Rita’s hand. “Here. This was Ava’s deposit for the gear and her share from the essence we collected in the Nightmare. The others agreed that it was only fair that you got it after what she did.”

“Th… thank you!” Rita stammered, quickly opening the pouch and glancing within. A bunch of dark-brown, metal coins lay within.

“It’s not much, but between the mess with the Tree and the Inquisitor, we didn’t end up bring home a lot of essence,” Gora apologized, but Rita waved her off.

“No, really, thank you very much. This was way more than I expected! You guys have done so much for me already!”

“I’ll get in touch with some contacts, see if I can organize you something safe with a demon to get… er… Alice was it?” Gora asked.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Rita replied. “Alice.”

“…to get Alice sorted out,” Gora confirmed. Then she scratched her head awkwardly. “I would have offered to let you crash at my place for a couple of days, but its pretty cramped as it is and if the local Magelord is interested in you, well…”

Rita waved her off. “Don’t worry, I understand. If I stayed with you I’d just paint a target on your back as well. I’ll figure it out, somehow…”

Samual, who looked like he’d reached some sort of decision, interjected. “She’s staying with me.”

Rita blinked in surprise. Samual had been so quiet, she’d kinda forgotten he was still there.

“Umm, thank you for the offer, but I’m not really sure that I’d be comfortable with that, you know?” she stammered.

“You’re staying with me,” he repeated slowly and firmly, this time staring Rita directly in the eyes.

When he’d first started paying attention to her after they had come out of the Tree, she’d felt rather flattered. But since then, his intense, silent stares and sudden, unexplained bursts of violence had shifted her attitude towards him. First to ‘mildly uncomfortable’ and now rapidly approaching ‘skeeved out’.

Rita glanced over at Gora for help.

She just chuckled and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter how big a shot you think you are, Samual, you can’t fight a Magelord. Hell, I doubt they’d even notice you trying.”

He fixed Gora with his trademark intensity. “I will not have to fight. I live in the Pious District.”

There was a Pious District, too?

Gora’s eyes narrowed. “Impossible. Nobody but senior clergy live in the Pious District.”

“Wait, what’s the ‘Pious District’? And what does that have to do with not fighting?” Rita interrupted, confused.

“The Pious District is Grailmane’s religious district. It’s where all the temples of all the various religions are clustered together,” Gora turned and explained. “And since Grailmane is pretty much the place where every expelled sect, cult and denomination ends up, you can imagine that it’s pretty big.”

That was strange. Rita had never heard of religious buildings being clumped together like that. That presumably meant that the gods got along, at least somewhat?

“But there’s no way Samual is living there,” Gora continued. “The only structures allowed in the Pious District are churches and temples, and the only people allowed to live in those are the most senior clergy: the High Archbishops and Grand Puh’baas and whatever else.”

“Yes, and?” Samual asked coldly.

“Are you telling me that you’re some kind of senior clergy?” Gora asked, incredulous.

“In a manner of speaking,” Samual replied calmly. Then, seemingly done with that discussion, turned back to Rita. “You will come?”

Rita could feel the unsaid ‘or do I have to drag you?’ at the end.

“Samual, I’m sorry, please don’t be offended, but I think I’ve had just about enough of the gods for one lifetime.”

“Not all the gods are like Mitla,” Samual stated. “You have nothing to fear from them as long as you treat them with respect.”

“Eh, Samual’s speaking the truth,” Gora added, rubbing her jaw. “Mitla’s a meddling asshole but the others tend to be pretty uninvolved. If he really is some bigshot over there, that might be your best bet at being left alone. Your god won’t mind you having a guest?”

Samual shook his head. “He doesn’t care.”

Gora shrugged. “Then yeah, it could work, I suppose. What do you say, Rita?”

Rita chewed her lip as she mulled over her options. On the one hand, she could go home with a man who had been uncomfortably overprotective of late, to the point where she’d been getting serious stalker vibes from him. And who also happened to be some kind of church leader. Or possibly a cult leader.

On the other, she could go off on her own with no idea how anything worked, how to find a place to stay, or even what the money was worth.

Sometimes, all your options sucked.

“Fine,” Rita eventually agreed. “But only on one condition. You tell me why… all of this. Why you’ve been acting so protective of me all of a sudden. Why you are so insistent that I stay with you. Deal?”

For a long moment Samual just stared at her. Eventually, just as Rita thought he was stonewalling her, he spoke.

“Agreed. But not here. Back home. In private.”

Rita hesitated. That didn’t sound suspicious at all.

“Second condition, we’re never having sex. Or doing anything sex-adjacent, sex-like or even involving any overly friendly physical contact. Ever. Understood?”

There was a moment of shocked silence. For the first time since she’d met him, a decidedly uncomfortable expression crept onto Samual’s face.

“That… was never an option,” he finally replied stiffly as Gora burst out laughing.