The Shadow of the Spider Queen - escaping Hell with Sorrel

The screams and the fire woke her. The flames licked around her bed as the children burned and the mothers wept. Beams crashed through the ceiling as the devil’s tongues flickered through the gaps in the walls, reaching towards her feet and arms, searching for her warm soul to devour.

She reached under her pillow for her silvered short sword as she rolled and was out of the bed holding a perfect mezzo mezana guard almost before her eyes were fully open. But there were no children and no mothers. The room was quiet and dark. Somewhere in Fort Ettin Silvia was sleeping. Sorrel could feel her.

The dreams were here. Even before the Hunger Spirit the dreams were dangerous when they came. During her infection from the Shadowfell, they filled even her waking hours, but they had been silent for weeks.

Sorrel slumped on the bed. Amongst the usual images she had seen new terrors – the spiders in the Abyss. The thick rope webbing wrapped around proud buildings torn from their roots. Lord Jaezred’s spider legs shooting from his flesh. The disturbing creatures rotting in Lolth’s infinite larder of pain.

The price of war was high for victor and vanquished.

One thing she knew, she was not safe to be around right now. She wrote a note to Silvia, trying to explain. For once, she felt she might be understood. If anyone had faced the night with panic rising it would be the slender warlock. She would be back, she promised, and reminded her that when Sorrel Darkfire promised something, not even death would prevent her from fulfilling it.

She read that last sentence back. “This does not mean zombies,” she added. Just to reassure her.

And then she grabbed her backpack and made for the road, the balm of the moonlight offering a little peace..

She started a gentle run, the straps of her pack cutting her shoulders like blunted blades, and she had made good time before she cadged a lift with a lonely waggoneer, grateful for her weapons in case of bandits. He was anxious to get home, so Sorrel spoke to his horses to urge them on, and they were in sight of Daring Heights before dawn. As the lights of city came into view, she thanked him, slipped a gold piece in his pocket and rolled from the moving vehicle.

The Secret Garden

She took her bearings, nodded, checked the roadside for the House markings she had left there a few months past then counted the Huela Jintoor Five Colour codes on the trees. She found the elegant Colbauth rune and, after checking the road was empty, slipped silently between two large boughs and started a steady run across the uneven forest floor, following way markers until she reached the first of the traps protecting her clearing.

Disarming them was delicate work. Even an experienced golhyrr could lose a limb if they approached their own traps with too much confidence. She found the careful ritual work of releasing hair trigger springs and tracing false floors soothing, and her mind was still when she stepped out into the shaded space, hidden from above by the graceful bowing of carefully trained trees.

She began her drills, approaching the long, fallen boughs arranged in an elaborate pattern, some wide and rough, others barely branches covered with the treacherous bark of the silver birch. She walked the route forwards and backwards, eyes open then closed. She repeated the pattern on tiptoe, one leg in front of the other, forwards and backwards, eyes open then closed, faster and slower until she was centred.

She dismounted, took her guard and worked through some warm-up drills with weights on her rapier pommel - lunge, parry, recovery, disengage, parry quarte, riposte, disengage, counter, thrust, deceive, coulé, disengage, lunge, disengage. The sun rose slowly, the first rays shining through the canopy of leaves and nearly blinding her, so she drilled into the light, heading for a chalk target on a towering oak tree split and charred by lightning years before.

Each time she paused the visions swam back in front of her eyes. Finally, she had to rest. She stretched out her aching calves, eased her quads and loosened up her back to release a nagging sciatic nerve. Then she sat on one fallen mallorn, eased her canteen from her backpack and the images washed over her;

What the Gloomstalker Saw

They should not be alive. She could not understand it. Sorrel had been trained by the best. When the House deployed an exfiltration team it would send 12 specialists:

Two archers operating cover and assassinations.

Two medics (clerical training optional depending on faith… the house preferred those who worshipped war gods or healers – with twig lovers an option for forest work).

Two construction/teleportation/illusion-based mages for crowd control and transport.

Two psychics, ideally soul knife specialists.

Two assault shocktroopers with an excellent supply of obscenely shaped weaponry, most often from one of the barbarian tribes that tattooed their skin with the blood of dead enemies.

An eldritch knight skilled in extreme violence from the arcane to the physically brutal, and a shady figure from the Dark Rooms who could do unspeakable things if required.

This was the ideal outfit – a range of skills, small enough to move discretely, disciplined, fully planned, supplied and logistically supported.

Standing in a strange temple in, for want of a better word, Hell she counted off her current team:

Sorrel herself, with hormones boiling over like poorly mixed cocktail accidentally placed in the oven.

Kelne, the cleric, who seemed to be in the middle of a spiritual collapse.

Oziah, the incredibly bad tempered and equally gorgeous former holy warrior with a chip on her shoulder big enough to carve a fair-sized canoe from.

Delilah… well, at least they had a shady figure.

And the team leader Jaezred, a sorcerer currently in a coma in the middle of the room.

They were, even by a generous assessment, understaffed.

Assets? A handful of drow of uncertain loyalty and an attractive priestess.

Liabilities? Being in Hell. Being in the part of Hell owned by Lolth, the demonic spider queen goddess. Being tracked by said demon spider queen goddess who had some kind of link to their team leader. Having no logistical support. Having no clear escape route. Having no obvious plan. She stopped there. The list was far longer but despair was best avoided.

This squad may have been a disaster but, as the Master had said before every deployment – when in doubt, attack.

At which point, all Hell broke loose.

Whose Side Are You On?

Or rather, four creatures in this very specific corner of Hell broke loose.

In rapid succession, Jaezred’s eyes snapped open, the priestess moved forwards and Oziah pointed up to the ceiling where a giant demonic spider was crawling towards them.

Sorrel hesitated, watching Jaezred carefully. She was sworn to him, and by the oath of the House his enemies were her enemies. These drow, however, did not carry the same Mark and were not, she assumed, Chosen of Lolth. This priestess served Eilistraee, the goddess who had fought the Hunger Spirit and helped save Sorrel’s soul.

Following the Bloodtooth Summoning Catastrophe in the days of the Second Master, additional rules had been written by the few survivors with intact limbs, allowing operatives a certain freedom when it came to interpreting the nature of protection.

Under the sanity clause – whose existence Sorrel had doubted until she had read it for herself – if the client’s actions were deemed a threat to themselves, to the House, to any specific civilisation or to the survival of a plane or demi plane, the team were permitted to save the client from irrationally harmful decisions.

In these circumstances, the client’s survival remained paramount, but they could be restrained until such time as an enquiry could determine… Sorrel didn’t have time for the details. Bottom line, if Jaezred attacked the priestess Sorrel would knock him out.

There was no clause, however, to cover what a team should do if spider legs burst out of the client’s body and they fell to the ground, jaws snapping open into fangs.

Presumably, this was some sort of Lolth inspired unpleasantness, Sorrel reasoned. In which case, could Jaezred reasonably be considered still the client or, as he appeared to be an incarnation of a demon from the 66th layer of the Abyss, was his client status revoked?

It was a puzzle. Sorrel flicked through a few pages of the standard House contract in her mind, searching for the page on demonic possession.

The priestess, however, appeared to be expecting this. “I have something to save him, she screamed. “Keep him busy.”

Uncertain of her current contractual position, Sorrel decided the safest bet was to take out the demon spider. First, however, she channelled her debut as a servant of Selûne and sent the goddesses blessing to her comrades. She felt the holy power flow out from her, and almost wept at the beauty of her mistress’s love, then felt a sharp flicker as Oziah threw off the blessing, her face an insolent snarl.

Damn, that look suited her.

And then Sorrel saw a glittering beam of force fly from the Jaezred Spider’s limbs – she gasped as she recognised the disintegration spell, the enemy of those she loved. The full force of the beam hit Delilah square on, hurling her back across the temple floor, with the… Thing firing crossbow bolts into her semi-conscious form.

Delilah was down.

This was inappropriate behaviour from a team leader, Sorrel felt, demon possession notwithstanding, and she almost turned her bow on the boss, but years of training were hard to overcome.

Besides, the Abyss was not the place to discuss HR issues and she noticed Oziah pick up unearthly speed to hurtle forward with arcane energy, raining blows on the Thing.

Sorrel’s arrows buried themselves in the demon spider, which was scuttling towards Kelne. Torn between her responsibilities, Sorrel decided the priestess should be the focus of her protection. If she could save Lord Jaezred, it was like a two for one deal. A win-win. Or at least not a lose-lose.

Spells and counter spells crackled through the air. Delilah was down, crawled back up, fell again whilst Oziah and two of the drow laid into the Thing as best they could. Kelne and one of the drow had retreated, stunned by the violence, only to find the demon spider descending in front of then, venom dripping from its pincers.

Then, her rage exploding in a desperately sexy scream of vengeance, Oziah’s sword crashed into the Thing which slumped to the floor, all life torn from its mutant frame.

Just the ravening demon spider to finish off then, Sorrel gave a hopeful war cry as she sent a couple of jaunty arrows into its heavy body.

Then the priestess healed Jaezred and they all lived happily ever after.

The End.

If Only...

The clearing was unusually brightly lit.

Judging by the sun it was mid-morning. Sorrel returned to her drills, cycling through them relentlessly until her muscles blazed with pain, then loosened the ropes holding four large boulders held in tightly woven nets and started them all swinging in a random sequence, dodging under and around their heavy stone edges as she sprinted a zig zag path through a row of neatly maintained bushes.

It didn’t help. Her mind kept returning to the temple and she had to rest to avoid getting caught by one of the rocks.

She remembered Oziah healing Delilah, her touch tender, her eyes filled with pain, hope and anger.

As the masked warrior rose to her feet, Sorrel could the relief washing out from Oz, then heard her gasp as her eyes came to rest on the Thing’s twitching corpse.

The twitching continued, until it became movement, then, slowly, unbelievably, the creature rose from the dead, wounds still pulsating, spider eyes flashing, mandibles twitching and thousands of tiny teeth mashing together frantically.

Delilah stood, her eyes on Oziah, seeking permission, the intensity of their bond palpable. Oziah nodded, and Delilah flew into combat so fast Sorrel barely saw her move. Then the Thing flashed out and hit Oziah, who fell, bleeding out in great gouts. Sorrel had never seen such wounds. And the Thing kept attacking her dying form, tearing her defenceless flesh.

Kelne finally shook themselves out of their frozen state and rushed to Oziah, saving her as she stood on the brink of eternal destruction while Delilah’s blows sent the Thing spinning, falling, helpless as the drow warriors and the shadow monk delivered the coup de gras.

Almost incidentally, carelessly, Sorrel finished off the demon spider. She’d forgotten it was there. And then made sure it wasn’t.

For a second she relaxed.

Then the creaking, fleshy sound. The new legs pushing out of the ruined flesh. The jaws clawing at the air. The Thing rising yet again, monotonous, endless, the clicking of its chitinous feet on stone floor a relentless torment. It’s huge swollen body, a vast bloated bag, swaying and sagging between its legs; its great bulk black, blotched with livid marks, but the belly underneath pale and luminous. Its legs were bent, with great knobbed joints high above its back, and hairs that stuck out like steel spines, and at each leg's end there was a claw.

As soon as it had squeezed its soft squelching body and its folded limbs up from the floor, it moved with a horrible speed, making a sudden bound towards Delilah.

Habeas Corpus

House contracts traditionally contained a post-death clause that assumed contracts null and void once a client passed, unless monies were outstanding in which case the family was expected to fulfil financial obligations. Unless, of course, the death was provably the fault of the team. But that had never happened so precedent was unclear.

The contracts allowed, however, those clients risen from the dead to assume previous terms for a small additional fee on a one-off basis. Risen clients – undead were accepted provided they had the capacity to sign, and pay for, a contract – were heavily fiscally penalised on a second re-signing. To lose one life may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness. Three resurrections, however, voided all obligations.

Whilst Sorrel felt her bond with Lord Jaezred exceeded the terms of a House contract, she was equally certain this Thing was no longer Lord Jaezred. She notched an arrow and prepared to let fly, battling the rising nausea her training instilled, before giving way and selecting a non-lethal bolt designed to quell civilian disturbances. These rarely caused death and, in the unlikely event they did, ramifications could usually be avoided by announcing and then ignoring a public enquiry.

And then the priestess cried out from behind her – “I have it. Draw it out into the open.”

Sorrel glimpsed a golden arrow glowing in the slender drow’s hands, and saw the Thing sheltered by temple pillars some distance away. Sorrel stepped forward, unleashed her arrow into the Thing’s festering jaws and screamed insults at its malignant form, taunting it and daring it to rush towards her.

The drow warriors hit and ran, whilst Delilah struck out with all her might forcing the Thing back and into the open just far enough for the priestess to hurl her arrow.

After that, things became unclear for a while. The arrow melded with the Thing, its light burst out, blinding everyone for a few seconds and as their vision cleared they saw Jaezred as he had always been, unconscious on the temple floor.

As they watched his eyes flickered open.

Sorrel was shocked by the emptiness of his gaze. It wasn’t just that surveyed the room with calm equanimity, clearly unaware that he had nearly murdered his friends. It was also the lack of… something… an energy, whether good or ill, that you only recognised when it was gone.

“You have been stripped of Lolth’s gifts,” the priestess said, with a cruel lack of fanfare. “You have no spells. Now, I suggest we get out of here. Lolth will notice your absence and we are in the heart of her domain. We do not have long before the horrors descend.”

As Jaezred staggered to his feet and the priestess healed those who needed it, Sorrel knelt before the temple altar. This was an ancient god from another civilisation – the tall stone statue was a tall, slender man with pale skin, flowing white hair and bright blue eyes that that burned with the fire of devotion. Either magic or a trick of the light, Sorrel concluded. But the moon featured prominently around the walls and on the altar itself Sorrel found a delicate amulet with a crescent moon carved along its edge.

There were chests of money and jewels stacked alongside, but Sorrel was no longer in the temple sacking business. Stripping this god of his devotees offerings as the Abyss closed around him was cruel.

She offered a brief supplication to whoever this god might be and another to both Selûne and Elistraee for their power and mercy. Then she rose as she heard her companions ready to leave and noticed the spider she’d slain had melted into the twisted form of some kind of demon.

They couldn’t leave too quickly, as far as she was concerned, so when they stepped outside, and Sorrel heard Kelne gasp with fear as they looked out over the void her heart sank.

What Fresh Hell Is This?

For a second she couldn’t work out why there was a note of despair in the cleric’s wordless cry. Then she saw – the portal they had entered by was gone. The stone ledge had fallen deep into the Abyss, beyond their sight.

They were trapped.

For a moment, a ripple of panic swept through the drow warriors, but the priestess soothed them. Sorrel cast spells of stealth to avoid attracting the crawling horrors on the tendrils above and they turned to the priestess for direction.

“There will be other portals,” she said, uncertainly. “We just have to find them.”

And so began a long, tiring crawl along thick webs and rotting carcases, through decaying buildings and across vast creatures, rocks, towers and trees all slowly collapsing through measureless eons beyond history, torn at by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the darkness.

The heat was oppressive. All the rules of matter and perspective seemed upset, and they struggle to comprehend their surroundings. It was impossible to be sure whether they were travelling along the horizontal or the vertical. Sorrel would suddenly become dizzy as it seemed she was hanging upside down over a vast hungry mouth filled with a thousand gnawing fangs.

Finally, they found another portal. The party were tired, the drow scared, Jaezred coming to terms with his loss of Lolth’s magic, Oziah supporting him and Kelne uncertain and feeling powerless as their god’s spells seemed weaker in the Abyss. Sorrel met Delilah’s eyes and together they pushed through the fleshy barrier.

They stepped out on the crest of a hill. What she noticed first was the light. It was dull, deep red and cheerless. They were standing on a flat paved surface, walls around them, the remains of buildings that had crumbled away, and the sky was a dark, deadly grey – a grey that was almost black. When she looked at the sky she wondered that there should be any light at all.

Some walls rose high, with great windows that had no glass through which she saw nothing but black darkness. Nearby there was a basin, with a fountain that was dry as a bone. The dry sticks of some sort of climbing plant had wound itself around a broken statue but there was no grass or moss between the broken flagstones. She saw great pillared arches, yawning like the mouths of insatiable creatures from the mind of a mad god.

The stone seemed red, perhaps thanks to the light, and was obviously ancient. The flat floor stones were cracked, and the sharp corners worn away. Some of the doorways were half filled with rubble and Sorrel had the uncomfortable feeling that something was looking out of the windows at her.

The valley in front of them was dotted with small, ruined towns and decaying forests. All was quiet – an empty silence. Nothing could grow, nothing could live in this cold, dead place. It had clearly been decaying for hundreds of years.

“Look,” Delilah gripped her arm. Sorrel squinted hard and then it hit her. The entire valley was cocooned in a thick mesh of spider webbing, blotting out the sky, crawling across the surrounding hills, locking everything inside. This whole world was surrounded and stifled by a tightly woven mesh of fine, tough threads spewed from Lolth’s maw. This was a world she had defeated and devoured countless ages past, gradually crumbling to dust.

“This is probably not the best way out,” Sorrel grabbed Delilah’s arm and they pushed back through the membrane into the Abyss.

Get Your Kicks on Route 666

They travelled on for another hour, each step a trial, every yard gained a battle. They slumped on the corpse of some enormous beast, dead for centuries, with eyes dotting its face and tentacles for limbs. As they rested Delilah nudged Sorrel.

“Another one,” she whispered.

They slipped away from the crew and pushed through the barrier, stepping through the grey portal onto a wide city street lined with pillars surrounding wide courtyards and fronting proud buildings. For a moment, her heart leaped at the sight of this magnificent vista – a proud city, signifying wealth and power.

Then she felt something shift beneath her feet and looked down. She felt bile rise. The cobblestones and pavements were covered by piles of bodies, the corpses of people and spiders, entwined in death. They saw soldiers with barbed swords buried deep in spider carcases, their own throats ripped by the mandibles of other scuttling creatures. They saw children wrapped in silk fibres, with giant arachnid legs frozen in the act of dragging them away by a mace embedded between their shattered eyes.

There was blood, dried blood, everywhere. A fine layer of dust scattered across everything, with a soft wind spinning little whirlwinds of sand across the faces of the dead, filling their mouths and nose and ears and eyes until it looked like the powder was bursting out of them. Thick webs lay across some of the bodies, while others had dead spider’s sharp legs piercing their skin. If there were survivors on either side, they had fled. But Sorrel doubted anything was alive in this place. Another dead world, cocooned and left to decay in the pits of the Abyss.

She turned to leave but Delilah grabbed her arm. “There, something gleaming…” she whispered.

Sorrel saw a shield free of rust, looking as untarnished as the day it was forged.

“It looks enchanted,” Delilah glanced up and down the silent street. “How else would it remain so bright in this horror?”

"I’ll cover you,” Sorrel nodded, strung her bow and let her eyes slip into the unfocussed Far Mountain Gaze to pick up anything stirring in her peripheral vision. Delilah moved swiftly and they were back through the portal, as certain as they could be that nothing had seen them.

Hours passed. They stumbled across a tent, quite recently set by the look of its ropes, with a skeleton apparently resting inside, an amulet of the devout still resting on its ribs. There was another portal at the back, although as Delilah stepped through this one she screamed and grabbed Sorrel’s leg. Sorrel poked her head through and saw an endless void stretching out in all directions, black and silent. Whatever had existed here was long gone, leaving the formless emptiness of eternal death.

She helped Delilah clamber back and they scooped up the amulet on the way out, offering it to Kelne who was fretting about their god abandoning them. Suddenly, they brightened.

“I can feel my power, my god, returning,” they said. “It’s not just the amulet – something over there….”

Thy pointed to the dried husk of a giant worm which appeared to have swallowed a portal and choked on it, gripping it in its mighty jaws.

No Stories End Happily, They Just Create Problems for the Next Story

This time, as they ventured through, they knew they had reached the material plane. The land was unfamiliar, but Kelne’s powers had returned.

Sorrel looked into the eyes of her companions and saw the horror within.

She knew from experience that you never leave the Abyss unchanged. If you look into the void, the problem is the void looks back into you.

Which probably explains the evening that followed….