They waited for him beside a tall white cactus, with spine-covered arms held outstretched like a man in a dance. A field of foliaged desert behind.

“Don’t you ever get tired of being so nice?” Jason said.

“Just don’t trip, or you might land on my sword,” Rook said.

“That’s all right, you can go first.”

Aletheia took Rook’s hand. “It’s ok. We’re killing them, right? And maybe there’s only one?”

“Unlikely,” Astera said. “I don’t know sandspiders, but the snowstriders of Chionos often prey in packs of six or seven, and I suspect many more—”

“Okay!” Rook interrupted. “Have you found the damned entrance?”

Jason nodded. He led them a few steps past the cactus, toward a boulder. Between it and another, buried partially under layers of sand, was a recessed entrance—like the doors of a stony cellar formed by two large slabs of rock.

Strange hieroglyphics were etched across their surface. Astera knelt down to read them. “Aletheia,” she said. “Can you use the Wisdom of the Sages?”

“Will it work? On pictures?”

Astera nodded, so Aletheia stepped forward. To Rook the preparation of casting this spell—which he saw Eris use once—looked like nothing in particular. A moment’s pause, then the sound of her voice reading whatever it was her magic revealed.

“The pictures say…this is a shrine, or a tomb, or both. For a priest. Built for a god called—it’s this symbol here,” she motioned toward a depiction of a man with a goat’s head, two dimensional, clutching a ram by the horns at his side, “his name is Zur-Bas.”

“You know that from looking at a picture?” Jason asked.

“The Wisdom of the Sages reveals the intention of the author,” Astera said. “Not merely the meaning of the depictions.”

“Great,” Jason said. “Fascinating. How do we get it open?”

Aletheia reached for a small indentation in the door and tugged. It gave an inch. She looked over her shoulder for help.

Rook stepped backward. He decided then he would be spiteful today. He wasn’t often; he wanted to see what it was like. They wanted to explore this tomb? So be it. They could do the heavy lifting without him.

So they did. One two separate occasions he stepped down to help, before remembering he wasn’t supposed to. Being spiteful wasn't easy. It took a lot of practice.

When the doors were finally pulled ajar the sun showed itself for the first time in days. Its heat almost felt good at first—but that wouldn’t last long. Down into the earth were revealed a dozen steps descending into darkness, into a structure built of sandstone. This all felt familiar.

“Think thoughts of bugbears,” Astera said.

“He did say sandspiders were the size of bears,” Aletheia said. “And they’re like bugs.”

“Bugbears?” Jason said.

Rook felt the invisible forcefield of wavering morale before him. Vines reached out to apprehend his legs at the top of the stairs. His body would let him come this far, but not farther. His imagination ran wild. Creeping, skittering, disgusting, hairy...

“Forget it,” Astera said.

She raised a palm to her lips. A moment later light appeared within: she blew into it, and a bubble of fire ballooned into the air, taking its place beside her head. She did this three more times. Soon each had his or her own light.

“…you sure that’s safe?” Jason said.

“Would you prefer to carry a torch?”

“You know,” he said, “I read once that spider web is flammable. Why don’t you take the lead?”

Astera glanced at Rook. “Very well,” she said. “Stay close. They may try to ambush us.” With that she drew her sword and proceeded downward.

It was Aletheia who remained behind to shepherd Rook. She grabbed him by the arm and dragged him forward. He followed, almost limp, like a soulless thing. He wasn’t cowardly enough to route, but he wasn’t brave enough to press forward.

“Come on,” she said. She guided him until they reached level ground.

The walls were narrow. Soon they collided with the back of Jason. He stood at an intersection: the hallway terminated at a fork, paths to the left and right, and directly ahead, a shut door. The leftward hall led toward nothing but a cave-in, a pile of rubble and sand blocking the path, but to the right Rook saw an open area, and another turn into darkness.

Astera reached for the door. She scouted about its surface, looking for traps, but found nothing.

“Which way?” she said.

“What do you think’s on the other side?” Jason said.

“I doubt spiders open and close the door.”

“Fair. Let’s push it open.”

So they did, slowly. It pushed inward. Creaking loudly, scraping against the ground. When it was opened all the way Astera sent her light ahead, revealing a room lined with burnt-out sconces. It was high-ceilinged and rectangular in shape, and against the far wall rested a sarcophagus.

There were no spiders.

They pushed the door one more inch forward—

Something twanged. A shadow shot out from just above the sarcophagus, flying toward them—a spear armed in a trap.

Astera stepped out of the way. Aletheia ducked, but Rook stood precisely in its line of travel; its point hit him in the breast, staggering him, knocking him to the ground.

“Rook!” Aletheia cried. The rest of the party followed her to his side, and there they saw what he saw, looking down—that the mail sewn beneath his jacket, which he still wore, had absorbed the impact. The revealed links on his breast were broken and useless, but he was only bruised.

The spear hadn’t been going fast.

Suddenly he felt much more alert. His danger senses active, his mind no longer left to wonder about the horrors of eight-legged monstrosities. He glared at Astera.

“You might check again for traps once the door is opened an inch.” Then, standing, he handed the spear to Jason. “Since you did so well with it last time. Let’s get done with this fucking place.”

He was angrier than he usually let himself get. He peeked his head back over the threshold.

No skittering. No more sign of traps.

They stepped inside.

The sarcophagus was plain and unremarkable, solid stone. The lid was heavy—but not too heavy to pull off. Rook helped this time, he had forgotten his vow to spite already, and they dropped it to the ground.

A skeleton inside. His clothes were disintegrated, but on his head rested a tarnished silver crown, and around his neck hung a key on a silver chain.

Jason grabbed the key. “Guess he won’t be needing that. Good thing we came here first.”

“It could be a religious symbol,” Astera said.

“I doubt it,” Jason said. “Any idea who he was?”

“Likely the priest Aletheia mentioned, this seems to be his tomb—”

“Actually, wait, I don’t care. Hey!” Jason snapped at Aletheia. There, at the head of the sarcophagus, she now held the crown in her hands. It was really only a circlet. Just like the one they’d found her wearing last year, pawned off to pay for her rescue. She brought it up to her chest. “What are you doing?” he said.

She didn’t say anything.

“Does no one get to loot this place but you?” Astera said.

“I’m a neutral custodian of the total take. Sorry if I don’t trust a little magpie to declare her earnings.”

Rook was on high alert. Not participating, checking every shadow, watching every corner for legs and eyes. But he turned to Jason. “Let her have it. Let’s go.”

“Really? That must be worth—”

“She’s earned her share,” Astera said.

Jason sighed. “Fine. Whatever. Lead the way.”

They resumed their single file out into the hall, then took the rightward path. Rook fell in at the rear, paranoid, and he saw Aletheia now wore the tiara.

The hallway bulged before changing direction, heading farther from the entrance and turning deeper into the complex. A knocked over column stood in the center of the bulge; a container for some light source was clear around its sides, but whatever that light source once was, now it was long gone. A trough laid turned over beside it.

There was something else strange about this place. Something strewn over the column and its sundered base. It caught their magical lights like water, reflecting it back up at them, a thin film of some dark gray substance. In fact all the ground, Rook realized, was coated in it, a strange oozing liquid mistaken first for water, but clearly something else altogether, something far more viscous—

“Look out!” Aletheia cried. She pounced at Jason, just in time to knock him out of the way of a torrent of slime that fell from the ceiling. It landed in a sludge where he once stood, before slowly coalescing, like the tide receding, into a single gelatinous ooze, a vicious, disgusting monstrosity, gray and formless, easily the size of the temple’s front doors.

It lashed out at Rook with pseudopods. He jumped backward—

It was very, very slow. One dripping hand reached out toward him, and, drawing his sword, he sliced it off; it fell to the ground, only to crawl its way back toward the whole, recongealing as if nothing had happened. He prepared to strike it with a thrust, when Jason did just that: he raised his new spear and impaled the ooze from the side. The point entered cleanly through, swallowed by slime; then the bronze tip, visible through the translucent body, disintegrated within it, and the wood turned to ash.

Rook pulled his sword back. His sword, his family’s sword, would not suffer that same fate.

Always it inched forward. Its focus was on Rook, single-minded, lurching in his direction, driving him toward the exit; from behind Astera and Aletheia volleyed it with arrows, but to no effect.

Another pseudopod lashed out at him. This time it grabbed his wrist, pulling him in its direction. He tugged away but the length of the appendage scaled with his strength, and no matter how hard he pulled it stayed intact, an elastic arm that gave before it took. He stumbled back toward it on the rebound…

Astera leaped into action. She took a moment to pull a javelin of frost into the air. She threw it right at Rook, severing the connection between him and the ooze; then she jumped almost atop it, positioning herself as near as she could, and she held her hands over it.

Frost gathered around her fingertips. Snow raining down. Slowly, second by second, the tomb grew colder.

Ice formed on the steps.

The gray ooze turned white—

Its pseudopods stilled. Its writhing ceased.

Once it stopped, Astera took her sword, grasped it by the blade, and used its pommel as a mace, battering the ooze in one long downward swipe. The blow cracked then split the frozen monstrosity down the middle. Shards of gray ice erupted outward, pouring across the dusty stone floor like marbles from a ripped sack.

“Fuck!” Jason said. “What was that thing!?”

“Spider,” Aletheia said, panting.

A pseudopod still clung to Rook’s wrist. He tugged it off, threw it to the ground—and just as before it still writhed, flopping like a fish out of water.

It was hot in here. The shards would melt before long and the ooze would recongeal. He went to the collapsed column quickly and grabbed the trough. It was buried in a small pile of rubble and affixed by a soldered wire to the column itself, but he pulled it free with only a few tugs.

“Help me pick up the shards,” he said. Aletheia caught the drift first, then Jason. Together they grabbed the melting bits of ooze and tossed them together into the trough.

“The beast has been killed, hasn’t it?” Astera said.

“You need to hear more monster stories,” Jason said.

Rook’s mind was not altogether composed as he checked each shadow for spiders—still no signs—but even he was stunned by this apparent lack of connection in Astera’s mind. Another demonstration that for all an elf’s perfection, the immortals of Seneria possessed no guarantee of intelligence.

Soon the majority of the ooze was gathered. It was already beginning to regather itself—they’d done much of the work for it. He took the sloshing, icy mix and carried it back into the room with the sarcophagus, and there he dumped it.

“Lid,” he said. With the help of the rest of his party they lifted it back up, placing it where they found it, setting it into its groove and sealing the ooze within.

They stood silent, panting, for a moment.

“Think that’s watertight?” Jason said.

“Too bad Eris isn’t here,” Aletheia said. Everyone looked at her. “For Hold Portal, I mean…”

Rook smiled and tipped the tiara up on her head affectionately, then wrapped an arm around her shoulder, just for a moment. “Well,” he said, “the Great Ooze of Arqa has been dealt with. The temple is safe. Let’s away.” He started off toward the stairs.

“We don’t have any loot,” Astera said.

“I’m looking at it right now,” Jason said, toward Aletheia. “But we could use a lot more.”

Rook made it as far as the door. There he stopped, closing his eyes.

He came to Arqa for adventure. They were in a tomb already. Unplundered. His friends needed his help. And he wanted to run, because someone saw spiders here? What were spiders to a Korakos?

Hairy. Disgusting. Evil. And they lived in Arqa, near the town, and this was their lair.

He glanced back down the dark hallway. He realized then that he would never be able to walk through the deserts of Darom again without clearing these spiders out. He took a deep breath.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll lead the way.”

At the end of the hallway they reached a locked door. They happened to have a key. Rook used it, pushing open the door cautiously. No spears shot out. The hallway widened on the other side—but strewn before them, for as far as their light could reach, was a thick wall of white string.

Web. Curtains of web. Giant web, for catching human-sized prey.

He shuddered.

“Aletheia,” he said, his voice cracking somewhat. Rook had a naturally deep baritone, but he was still young, and it broke occasionally. This was not the same sort of break. “Can you make a flame?”

She nodded. It took several tries, but a few seconds later she snapped her fingers together and a candle’s worth of open fire appeared atop her thumb. She touched it to the web—

The white threads shriveled, fire spreading a few inches. Nothing more. She glanced back at Jason, who shrugged.

She took another few minutes. This time she conjured a ball of fire in her hands. Small, but Rook felt the heat. She worked slowly, clearly wary of overtaxing herself. Once it was the size of a large rock she tossed it underhand down the hallway.

The webs cleared away. Small fires spread up and down the threads, sending harsh orange light across the yellow stone of the hallway’s ground, roof, and walls for only a brief second, before all was incinerated.

Aletheia faltered, stumbling against Rook, but he helped her stay upright. Astera hugged her from behind.

“Good work,” he said. “Are you ready?”

Astera nodded. Jason drew his dagger. Aletheia waited a few moments, but soon she nodded too.

Rook and Astera advanced side-by-side with their swords outstretched. A phalanx in miniature. The ceiling overhead grew higher. Darkness above them, but he checked for spiders and saw no sign of anything but sandy stone. They were deeper underground than he realized, or the tomb was only just buried beneath the sand. His morale wavered again with each step, but still came no further evidence of any animal within this place.

Something scuffed behind. He wasn’t paying attention—too focused on threats ahead.

Aletheia screamed.

He looked up.

From the tan sandstone of the ceiling extended eight tanned legs, and from the brick became visible the tanned torso of a tanned spider. A sandspider, with an exoskeleton the exact same color as the area around which it hid.

The spider’s thorax was the size of a bear.

Goosebumps started on Rook’s legs. They spread up his body in reverse.

He stared and did nothing.

A second spider fell from the ceiling. It landed precisely atop Jason, crushing him with its weight, and he fell to the ground. Astera jumped to his aid; she wielded her sword like its blade could cut through anything, slicing through its legs in clean arcs, carrying the momentum up over her head, around her shoulder, back down into another leg, until four, then five, bled pale red at stumps. With his own knife Jason stabbed the creature in the mandibles again and again, holding it at bay; soon it went limp, but not before the other fell between Astera and Rook.

It was enormous. Its legs long and powerful, its head huge, plastered with a giant eyes and giant fangs within its mouth. It couched itself, then jumped toward Rook, barreling into him. He was still too terrified to do anything. The impact knocked him to the ground, causing him to drop his sword. Aletheia tried to use her bow, but there was no room, and the spider easily pinned her against the wall with its weight. It went for her neck with its mouth—

Astera’s sword came soaring through the air point-first. The blade hit the spider in its back, skewering its rear, and it stumbled back. It fell on the ground beside Rook, and he came face-to-face with its hideousness again and had no choice but to shout and roll away, jumping toward the far wall as the spider scurried back up onto its feet.

It moved fast. Like a dog trying to escape capture, down the hall, hitting the wall as it went—but Astera gave chase. She caught up, pulling her sword free, and with another single stroke she cut its head in two.

Rook watched the blood pour from the wound, but even dead the sight was too awful. He closed his eyes.

Breathing slowly.

“Are you okay?” Astera said, voice drawing nearer.

“Yes,” Aletheia said.

“Fuck!” Jason said. Rook heard him scramble to his feet. “It bit me. Here. Do they have venom?”

No one answered. “How many more?” Aletheia said.

No one answered.

“Fuck! That was horrible!” Jason said.

“Let me treat it, just in case. Keep watch,” Astera said.

No one said anything to Rook. They left him there, cowering. Their leader, technically. The one who kept them together. The one who said he’d die for them. And he’d done nothing, not for his friends, not even for Aletheia. He would’ve watched her die, all because he didn’t like spiders.

He wanted them to berate him, bully him, harass him for his phobia, but they didn’t. They ignored him and treated Jason’s injury.

There came a point some minutes later when he came to stand to look at the dead arachnid bodies, though he couldn’t bring himself to move from his place against the wall. It was then that Aletheia hugged him.

He felt too much shame to say anything. She didn’t say anything, either.

“Maybe we should go back,” Astera said once she was done with her field dressing.

“The hunter said he only saw one around here. Those things are big. There can’t be many more,” Jason said. A pause. “How did I become the brave one? You’re all the fighters.”

“Can you keep going?” Astera said to Rook.

Rook breathed. He let Aletheia go and took a step toward one of the spiders, shivering again, but trying to grow accustomed to it.

They were animals. They died easily. Effortlessly. If there was only one more, or a clutch of eggs—that he could handle. And he couldn’t end on this note.

He nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Let’s finish this place and go.”

The hallway extended for some farther distance, then curved gently to the left, growing wider still with each step. They traversed about a crescent. At its midpoint came an archway to the left, leading into a circular chamber. The hallway must have formed its outer walls. Here it was dark and musty. Cobwebs in every corner. More hieroglyphics across the walls.

They stepped into the archway.

From each and every wall of the chamber hung a large white eggsack. The air was humid and thick with the coppery scent of blood, though that may have been Jason’s clothes. Across the ground were strewn bones—human, animal, monster—and as Astera sent her light forward, toward the opposite wall, something stirred.

A massive, hulking, jagged shape, with eight legs and eight glowing red eyes.

Beneath it stretched a vast sea of darkness. Some strange substance covered the ground here, waste or something far worse, the bones like bleached islands with uneven shores.

The spider clung to the wall. It inched toward them, without ever touching the ground itself, supporting all its massive weight on its legs, impossibly.

It spoke.

The words meant nothing to Rook, but it spoke them all the same, clearly, pronouncing each syllable as if through a human mouth.

“It’s speaking Regal,” Aletheia said quietly. “It says—murderers, step forward…to face judgement, or leave now.”

“Shoot it!” Jason whispered.

Rook stuttered. “Ask—ask—ask its name.”

Astera stepped forward and did just that. Aletheia continued to translate. “I am Samdosa, mother of arachnids, queen of Arqa…”

“How did you come to be here?” Astera said.

Samdosa inched closer toward them on the wall. Just then she revealed behind her back an elongated body, narrowing down to a scorpion’s stinger: half spider, half scorpion. She raised it in the air. “Murderers kill my children in my home, and ask questions of me?”

“Drive us off if you’re so tough!” Jason said, false bravado in his voice, but no one translated.

Rook noticed then another two sandspiders on the walls. Smaller ones, perhaps immature, watching them closely—intelligence in their eyes.

“If you wish to speak to a queen, step forward and kneel before her, and perhaps she might spare you.”

Astera did step forward, only slightly. Rook felt goosebumps across his body again, but now he was determined to follow after, and he did so—

And he saw the black sea on the ground part for them.

It wasn’t waste, or anything at all, except a tide of arachnids. Spiders and scorpions. Normally sized. So many to line the entire ground, so that it looked before a solid coating, tens of thousands of them, writhing and rolling over each other at the party’s approach.

No fortune was worth this. No life. Not even his own. Rook nearly screamed and ran, but Astera grabbed him by the bicep, and that kept him standing still.

“Your children attack the townspeople. You can’t stay here,” Astera said.

“I have been here centuries. When I was small I came through the trap in the sand beneath the saguaros; now my children bring tribute to me. Why should I move, and not your village? Why should a queen listen to the requests of humans?”

“We extend the invitation to leave as a recognition of your right to live. But we will kill you if you stay.”

“Perhaps a queen says the same. Perhaps Samdosa says to humans they must leave, or they will die. There has been much death already. There is no need for more. Leave now, live. Stay, my children feast.”

She didn’t want to fight. Rook didn’t want to fight, either. He wanted to leave desperately.

“That isn’t good enough,” Astera said.

“Yes it is,” Rook said. “Let’s go. We can’t stay.” His breath came quickly.

Every single spot of motion was like a glaring sun to Rook. He was focused on it all. That was why he noticed, against the other wall, the camouflaged creeping of a juvenile spider. It was nearly to the arch now, readying to drop onto them, preparing to strike—when Rook’s head moved it saw, and it poised itself to jump, and then Aletheia saw, too.

Her bow was at the ready. This time she had room. She loosed a single arrow. The spider fell to the ground upside-down, wounded, thrashing, trying to right itself.

Samdosa screeched. She jumped off the wall. Astera stepped forward, but the hulking spideress was too big. She hit the elf with the side of her tail, nicking her shoulder with the stinger, sending her to the ground.

The second juvenile spider jumped for Aletheia. It flew through the air, but this time Rook was ready. He raised his sword high and skewered it in the torso, catching its momentum. It hit the ground near Aletheia; with the claws on one of its feet it sliced at her and she screamed, bleeding from her arm and dropping her bow, but he hacked it again and killed it for certain.

Samdosa screeched again. All eight of her legs pounded like elephant’s against the ground, and she charged in their direction.

A spider the size of a dragon. Maybe ten dragons. Maybe a hundred. It made no difference to Rook; she was infinitely larger than he could face.

But this time, he stepped in front of Aletheia and leveled his sword.

She swiped her stinger at him. He dodged, jumping to the side—it was huge and slow, relatively, compared to the rest of her, but she moved too quickly for him to land a counterattack. Again, and the same. Aletheia shot another arrow, but it deflected off her exoskeleton. Jason tried to swipe at it with his dagger, but gave up after only a second.

She came at Rook with her mandibles next. The air rushed past his head as fangs snapped an inch from his head. He retreated through the archway, and she was just barely large enough to fit; her stinger hit its top, and the moment of pause gave Rook the time to strike at her face, gouging out an eye with his sword’s point.

Samdosa roared. The sandstone shook around them. Rook’s ears rang. She threw herself against the arch, enraged, and it cracked—then it gave.

Rubble rained onto them.

The archway broadened.

“Shit!” Jason screamed. “Run!”

Rook didn’t want to leave Astera; he swiped at Samdosa again, but she barreled forward, the blade too small to make any difference against such a colossal foe, and threw all her weight toward him. He was forced to roll backward; she fell to the floor, scurrying back up to her feet, turning again toward the party.

Aletheia screamed. She and Rook both ran, routing down the hall, back toward the stairs.

Rook stayed a moment longer. Shaking. Staring at the monstrosity before him. Desperate to do something—

Samdosa barreled toward him with a horse’s speed and an elephant’s mass. He could stab her in the brain and kill her in an instant and still be crushed.

So he turned, and he screamed, and he ran.

Thunderous scurrying, not words often thought together, echoed behind him. He caught up to Aletheia quickly, and he scooped her up into his arms, sprinting past Jason, to the stairs, then up and to safety.

The doorway was far too small, and too solid, for the spider queen. There was no way she could break through. He put Aletheia down and stopped, panting, readying his sword, trying to think of what to do next—

The ground shook.

Silence.

Again, the ground shook.

A cactus toppled over. A vacuum of sand appeared a few feet before them, torrents of the desert slid like a whirlpool belowground.

One last shake—

Sand erupted upward like a volcano’s first blast. Shards of rubble rained down onto them, dirt pattering after it like rain against hard ground. And then—

Samdosa. She clawed herself from the whirlpool, skittering up onto the desert. She turned in circles blindly, as if her eyes were adjusting to their first daylight in an century, before finally spotting Rook.

“Hey Rook,” Jason said. “Why’d you want us to come here again?”

Rook shook. He was terrified, and now he was angry. He pushed Jason back with a closed fist and assumed a stance with both hands on his sword.

Aletheia yelled as Samdosa galloped in their direction. She raised a hand, shouted a swear, and—sparks flew from her fingertips. She collapsed unconscious to the ground. Jason ran to her side and picked her up, pulling her away.

Rook strafed to the side. This time he was on his own. But now he had room to maneuver.

Samdosa used her stinger. It gave her the advantage of range. One strike: he stepped to the side. Another: the other. She swiped at him with a massive, hairy leg, and he used the chance to duck under her, darting beneath her. He stuck his sword through her underbelly and dragged it some inches before she lowered herself, trying to crush him—but he pulled himself free just in time and rolled away, ducking into the sand. She raised herself in fury onto her back legs, but he remembered back to Astera in the hallway and hacked at the nearest joint, slicing at his head’s level.

His blade was very sharp. It went cleanly through, a chunk of spiderleg falling to the ground. Samdosa roared again and toppled in pain downward, swatting at him with another limb, huge claws bared, but he rolled again out of the way.

Now she was more cautious. Much slower. He was winning. He only had to keep this up for seven more legs. Just five would probably do it—

She jumped at him with her back legs. A pounce, like a cat—and she was so huge, so enormous, with so much surface area, that there was nowhere for Rook to dodge. They collided by a cactus. It was leveled. Rook was sent flying.

He smashed hard against a boulder, the wind knocked out of him, his sword thrown from his hands.

Samdosa lumbered toward him. She turned him over onto his back, then pinned him in place with a leg. Claws bit into his stomach, crushing him, slicing his guts open. This was the worst way Rook had ever imagined he might die. He grabbed the leg, fighting against it, feeling its disgusting hairs and slimy chitinous skeleton, when her stinger came back over her head.

It centered on his torso, then drilled inside. A spearpoint plunging into sternum.

He struggled harder, but she weighed far too much, he couldn’t move her to save his life. When the tail withdrew, blood poured down his chest. Samdosa lowered her head to his, saying something he couldn’t understand, speaking hideous spidery words, pressing her hairy head nearly against his lips in vindictive retribution—

“Rook!” Jason cried.

He slid his dagger on its side across the desert. In an instant Rook let go of the leg, grabbed the dagger, pulled it from its sheath, and rammed it into Samdosa’s skull. She pulled off of him, stunned, and he grabbed her by the head, and one by one he went for her eyes, all of them, gouging out each; and once every eye was gone, he stabbed her head savagely some more, until he was coated with blood and the entire gargantuan abomination was limp on top of him—and he was completely pinned by its corpse.

Jason pulled him out from beneath the spider queen’s body. Aletheia ripped off his shirt and jacket and used them as bandages to staunch the flow of blood. He knew he was dying, but he didn’t much care. He had slain the mother of all spiders, or at least the ones in Darom. Now he felt his life’s work accomplished. What more legacy could a man want than that? He had so much left to do, so many more places to go and see, a trip to Katharos to make—but if he had to die now—so be it. Now he could…

Astera appeared over him. Her arm was badly wounded, flesh devastated, still covered by ragged clothing. Rook’s ears rang too loudly to make out anything she said, but her eyes flashed green from their usual pale white—elves had no pupils—and he felt a sudden revitalization flood through his veins.

The world came back into focus. So did the pain.

“Rook,” she said. “Can you hear me?”

He nodded. He was exhausted, and he let himself go limp.

“We must get him back to Arqa.”

“Aren’t we going to check her lair for loot?” Jason said. “I mean—we did the work!”

“Later. Help me carry him.”

They lifted him upright and dragged him toward town. A few steps from the body of Samdosa, Rook coughed, gagging, throwing up, and he motioned to be put down on a boulder. There he rested for a long time. His whole body numb. He never felt worse in all his life. But still, never to be deterred, he grabbed hold of Jason’s tunic, looked him in the eye, then motioned for everyone to be still. Slowly he proclaimed through a hoarse voice:

“Throw spiders down a pit // All spiders should go die // Spiders should eat shit // Fuck spiders.”

He threw up.

“Nice one,” Jason said. “Come on.”

They hauled Rook back to their accommodations in Arqa, where they put him to rest, changed his bandages, and left Aletheia and Pyraz by his side—while they went back for treasure. Neither Aletheia nor Pyraz left his side for days.

The sanctum to the dead god known as Zur-Bas where the dead spider known as Samdosa made her lair hosted four emeralds, according to Jason’s report, each of which was worth a fair sum. They also found a pair of vambraces on a skeleton, vambraces which bore an enchantment. Astera took those for herself.

They were hailed as heroes at Arqa #1. Celebrations lasted a day and came mostly in the form of Spicewine. Rook drank deeply as a painkiller. Samdosa the Spider Queen was but one monstrosity, it seemed, that plagued these people, and they quickly moved on to other problems. The day was nice, or so Rook heard. He was bedridden for the duration.

The barb on Samdosa’s stinger was small. It impaled him clean through, breaking two ribs, but missing everything else. Most of the venom she injected was neutralized by Astera’s spell—only a small dose still lingered in his blood.

It was no worse than a bad fever, but it lasted a full week. The rest of his injuries took another two months. Somehow his intestines had only partially spilled out onto the desert while he was pinned; hardly any stitches were required in the end.

Aletheia’s arm healed quickly; it was only a cut. Jason was unharmed. Astera, it seemed, had received no injury but that to her shoulder and arm. She was immune to the venom as an elf, but the stinger ripped her bicep open, inflicting a gruesome wound. It took a long time to close.

She used no spell to hasten the process. It was late one night, nearly a month later, as they drank together in Rook’s room, that Jason inquired after why.

“Why don’t you heal yourself?” he asked. “Like you did before?”

“I could, but I would shorten my lifespan,” Astera said. “I only channel my Essence to heal if I must in order to survive.”

“I thought elves lived forever.”

“No. Not forever. We live on mana. We do not age, but when the supply of magic we’re born with runs dry, we become very sick and die.”

“How long does that take?”

“Not so long, except in human terms.”

“How long?” Jason said again.

“It depends on how the elf lives. If she never casts a spell, or revives herself—millennia. For a huntress such as myself, a few centuries.”

“How many is a few?”

She shrugged. “Eight or nine.”

He gagged. “Nine centuries. And if you use your magic, you’ll lose what? A few decades?”

“Months, perhaps a year.”

He gagged again. “That’s what you’re upset about? A year out of NINE CENTURIES? If I got stabbed like that, they’d chop off my arm! Are you insane?”

“I wouldn’t expect a mortal to understand,” she said. “Death for you is inevitable sooner before later. But for Senerians—for elves—it’s different. Our lives are precious. Not a moment is worth wasting.”

“So you’re spending it, preciously, recovering from a mortal wound, in pain, in a dungeon, in Arqa? Yeah, okay, makes sense to me.”

“Existence is its own gift. I should be well enough to fight again soon.”

“Good, because the ealdorman of Arqa #2 is offering a bounty for clearing out the Old Kingdom ruins, the ones with the zombies? It’s a lot. We should pounce before someone else does.”

“I can’t go,” Rook said. “Not yet.” He sat upright, but the pain in his chest was too intense, and he lowered himself again.

“Rumors are they’re just ghouls,” Jason said. “We could probably handle it ourselves.”

“I see the taste of drachmae has turned you into quite the mercenary,” Rook said, wincing. “Brave words for a man who can’t fight.”

“Brave words for a man who can’t sit upright. I bring brains, all right? Coordination, planning, things the two of you couldn’t find to save your lives.”

“He just wants to go to Arqa 2’s brothel,” Aletheia said.

“Guilty,” he said. “The girls there don’t even have tails.”

“Will you be okay?” she said to Rook. “On your own?”

He nodded. The take from Samdosa’s lair was good, but two months of convalescence without income drained the coffers. Arqa was often plagued with the unrestful dead, and they were easy enough to deal with. If any job could be tackled without his sword, this was it.

Aletheia clearly disliked the idea, but Astera shrugged. “We will need the money, sooner before later. I have been curious to explore these ruins myself.”

“Then it’s settled,” Jason said. “You nap here, we do the heavy lifting, everyone is happy.”

Rook frowned, then sighed. “Be careful,” he said. He glanced to Aletheia. “Please.”

She smiled at him. “I will.”