Post by Jaezred Vandree on Jul 11, 2022 19:16:00 GMT
Miss Celia Brockenhide’s ability to peer into the cosmos, to cast her gaze beyond the boundaries and laws set by time, will one day prove to be an invaluable asset to the Witching Court. Of this Jaezred has no doubt. And yet, even she could not pierce the veil of anti-divination that the blue-hooded woman has set around herself. Each day he asks if she has found anything on the errant necromancer, he is answered with a demure shake of the head.
However, small progress is made when he has the idea of showing Celia the mark that had been left on the tiefling girl’s shoulder. Sitting down together in the Three-Headed Dragon, Celia closes her eyes and traces a finger over the symbol, which resembles the letter P with sharp edges, inked in black on Leonida’s skin. After several moments, her grey eyes flutter open, then she turns to face Jaezred and tells him of what learns.
“The first sensation I felt is of travel, or movement. I’m…not exactly sure who or what is moving… It feels inert, but perhaps something was there previously, like footprints in the sand. The mark of something moving but not being there at the time. The second feeling is of bonds: familial pride and identity, but masked now by…change and purpose.”
Jaezred nods thoughtfully. “Very good, Miss Celia. This gives us a place to start.”
But it’s far from enough. There’s more that can be extracted, perhaps directly from the source herself — but it must be done by himself, alone.
And as he formulates a plan in his head, he watches Leonida from the corner of his vision. The tiefling hasn’t stopped staring intently at Celia for the entire time, her reddish-orange eyes smouldering like hellfire. He does not like the leer in that gaze.
After saying their thank yous and farewells, he tells Celia to stay in the Mountain Palace for the time being.
When Jaezred reveals his plan to Imryll in the privacy of their bedchambers, she turns to him with the usual roguish smirk on her face. “Hmmmm. Invading the dreams of strange women… A ‘babe’, no less, according to you. Are you sure this is just an investigation you’re after, dear? Not looking to get burned again, are you?”
“Ah, you’ve uncovered my true plan. Why yes, I’m planning to have a dream sex marathon with her.”
“Well, you could have at least invited me too!”
“It’s not my fault you’re too incompetent of a mage to learn the spell. Anyhow… The danger here is obvious. I’m revealing myself to her.”
“I just excel with a more…up close and personal approach, my love,” she giggles. “But yes, you would be indicating yourself all the more. And she has been prudent enough to avoid detection this long, she may have other means to protect herself too. What exactly are you hoping to find out with this, though? Her location? Her plans? Dress size?” She smirks again.
“Whether she prefers chardonnay or port. But what do you think? Is there any particular piece of information that would be useful to learn, other than the obvious?”
“Anything, at this point, would be better than what we currently have, dear. We know next to nothing about what she wants or is doing — only the remains of her experiments.”
“Hm. Indeed. All that’s left is to try. She is known to have operated in both the Material Plane and the Feywild… She must be in one of these places.”
He walks up to her to grasp her chin gently and leave a fond kiss on her lips. “For good luck,” he says with a grin.
When the clock strikes 3 a.m. — the Witching Hour — Imryll tucks herself under the covers as Jaezred draws in chalk a hexagram enclosed in a circle, marked with a variety of occult symbols, on the polished stone floor in front of their shared bed. He places lit candles on each point of the star before sitting down cross-legged in the centre of the sigil. He utters a few words of incantation, picturing everything that he has witnessed so far — the purple gemstones in Lostbell Mine, the gore-filled vault in the Anuhlin Shambles, and every single instance the woman in blue has been mentioned to him.
The dream spell takes hold — he knows it because he feels himself entering a trance. But he sees only the usual darkness for now. Despite the ungodly hour, she must not be asleep yet.
So he waits.
The woman in blue is walking down a path in a dark and misty wood. The full moon, bright and impossibly large, is always hanging above her head no matter which way she moves. She is calm, despite the fact that with her every step, she feels watched. By eyes hidden behind the trees and bushes, hidden between the leaves and the rocks — eyes that disappear each time she turns her head to look at them.
Eventually, though she cannot be sure how long she has been walking, she reaches a wall of trees with a large, perfectly circular hole in it. Not cut by humanoid hands; rather, appearing as though the trees had contorted and shifted themselves to form this opening.
Stepping through the hole, she finds herself in a forest clearing. There is a long, mossy stone table in the centre and a variety of makeshift chairs placed around it: a tree stump with a backrest carved out of it, a giant mushroom, a stack of stones, a mound of moss raised from the ground, and so on. The table hosts a dazzling array of lush and fluffy scones, sandwiches, cakes, and tea being poured into painted porcelain cups by invisible hands.
At the head of the table, there is a drow. He is seated on a throne of woven branches, the leaves on the wood growing, withering, falling off, and growing anew as seconds goes by. He watches the woman in blue approach with a smile.
“Welcome. Took you long enough. Please, sit, help yourself,” says the drow.
“I take as long as I need.”
She sits on the tree stump chair to his left and looks at the food before her consideringly for a moment, but ultimately takes nothing for herself. She smiles at the drow from across the table, her fingers idly playing with a wilting blue flower on the edge of the seat.
“Nothing to your liking? I assure you, this is all a dream, you will not be occupying the loo all day tomorrow morning… In fact, it’s more likely to make you grow ten feet tall or shrink to the size of a dormouse, depending on the mood.”
“Oh, I’m well aware what this is and have no interest in faux pleasures. I am merely waiting.”
His smile morphs into a smirk. “Straight to the point. I like that in women. Several eyewitness reports have noted your beauty and I must say, they do not lie.”
Still smiling, she makes no response.
“Do you know who I am?” he asks.
“Not yet.”
“Shall we introduce ourselves to each other, then?”
“No, I don’t think that will be necessary.”
“Fair enough.”
He picks up a teacup and saucer, a fragrant smoke billowing from it, and moves towards where she is seated at the table. Her black gaze follows him, watching, waiting for something interesting to happen. Her eagerness is well-concealed, but the many-eyed spider sees all that is hidden.
“You say ‘faux pleasures’, but you’re certainly enjoying yourself right now,” he observes casually as he half-sits himself on the stone table next to her.
“It is so rare that these little distractions arise, it’s good to enjoy them while they are here.”
“Well, I’m glad we feel the same way. Now, you can probably guess what I brought you here for.”
“Probably, but why don’t you tell me?”
“Why, your amusing little experiments, of course! If only you had the habit of cleaning up after yourself.”
“Mmm, yes. But that doesn’t explain your intentions for bringing me here, only the leading cause.”
“I’d just like to chat with you. Will you humour me, Miss Blue?”
She raises an eyebrow as the smile affixed to her face widens slightly. “Most conversations do not begin by invading dreams.”
“Well, it’s not as if you left an address for me to send letters to. Not sure if you even have one, though. You seem to be always on the move.”
“Do you often expect strangers to leave you letters?”
“Why indeed. As it happens, I am well-liked and popular!” He grins.
“What strange people you must meet, then.”
“You may, by the way, address me as ‘my lord’.”
Her smile only widens further. She is practically beaming at this point. She is enjoying this very much.
“Alright then, let’s begin,” says Lord Spider. “So… You’ve been conducting research into the practical arcane uses of negative emotions, do I have that right?”
“You certainly seem to think so, but do go on.”
“No, please, correct me if I’m wrong. I insist. I would hate to misinterpret your hard work as a scientist.”
“Hmmm. No, I think for now, I’m quite content to hear the theories of another.”
“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but that’s all I’ve got for now. I cannot tell what the end goal of this research is. But you’ve put so much effort into it that I’m sure it’s a worthy question to explore.”
“Oh. Well now, I had at least hoped this would last a little longer than that.”
“Do I delight you, Miss Blue?”
“Amuse, perhaps.”
He scoffs and sips his tea.
“Now, if you will permit, I might make some of my own observations?” says Miss Blue.
“Please.”
“Firstly, you are clearly someone of some skill, or at least in the presence of someone with skill, to not only have used the dream spell but also use it on me. Your preference for being called ‘Lord’ is yet to be confirmed whether it is of some merit or just hubris, but the combination would suggest you casted the spell.
“Second, I could assume that, given you have mentioned some of my research, you, or the person you are with, are at least marginally aware of my work, which leads me to believe you are one of two things: a patsy sent in place of another who wishes to remain out of sight, someone expendable, or someone silly enough to go poking their inquisitive nose into matters. Given the first assumption, I think we can proceed with you being an inquisitive mind for now, now need to confirm just yet.
“Thirdly, the fact you have even been able to locate me with the dream spell means you have access to the Feywild, yet you do not strike me as…brazen, or…trivial, shall we say, as some of the plane’s denizens. Moreover, you have done so with the aim of simply having a ‘chat’. Further reinforcing the idea of your own self-viewed status, something I am not at all unfamiliar with. That, along with a few other assumptions I can make would lead me to a final conclusion and prompt one further question.
“Did you lose anyone in that nasty business with the gith recently?”
The grin on Lord Spider’s face grows very wide.
“Well as a matter of fact, Little Miss Detective, no,” he replies. “None of those who died were of importance to me. But I can see why you’ve taken an interest in that matter — lots of grief and misery there right now, isn’t there?”
“There certainly is! But like the ‘little detective’ I am, my question serves other purposes. Do tell me though, you seem to be familiar with my work, what do you make of it all? The locations, the setup, the method… You must have some insights of your own even without an end marker in sight, no?”
“You wish to know my honest thoughts?” He makes a show of rubbing his chin and intoning a hmm sound. “To summarise — careless. In every sense of the word.”
“Oh? And how so?”
“I know you don’t care if your work gets discovered or interrupted because you know you can simply repeat it and because you’re confident you won’t be caught. And as you’ve already indicated, you don’t spare a single thought for the denizens of the places in which you worked.” He stands up and begins walking around her. She remains calm and smiling, not bothering to turn her head to look at him. “So answer me this — why the Witching Court?”
“Bold to assume I don’t care, don’t you think? I should think if I am to be accused of such a thing, you would have some proof of where I had indicated this?”
Lord Spider laughs and shakes his head. “You could at least try being a little more subtle about your questions.”
“But that would take the fun out of your little interrogation, then, I fear.”
As he stops walking, pausing to stand to her left, the chair of stacked stones moves seemingly of its own accord towards him for him to sit on. “Come on… Why the Witching Court? It’s not like the Dawnlands or the Sword Coast has not seen a lot of tragedy in recent times. You had to go looking for old, ruined places where horrible things happened long ago, and when that didn’t suit your purpose, you had to actively create more misery. There’s got to be a reason why you went through so much effort.”
“Does there? It seems to me that there are plenty of people doing things for nonsensical reasons abound. Such as you — why are you so interested in the Witching Court if you are indeed from the Material Plane?”
“I’m a… How did you put it? An inquisitive mind. Well, since I cannot see a logical reason, I must presume that it was an emotional reason.”
“And you are welcome to make your own presumptions.”
“Do you miss your family?”
“Do you?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know. I mean, with all that travelling, you must be yearning for home, no?”
“Perhaps I already am home?”
“How forward. You really should buy me dinner first…”
“Why? You already came with food.” Miss Blue gestures to the table.
“Which you have not touched. Come now, I’ve put a bit of mental effort into these… Here.”
His hand reaches forward and pulls a plate of pie in front of her. It has a symbol resembling the letter P stylised with sharp edges carved into the crust.
“Perhaps you should have been a chef, then, if you are so proud, but once again, I am not interested in faux pleasures,” she says.
He ignores her, cutting a slice of the pie and then placing it on a small, empty plate next to the undrank cup of tea meant for her. The plate, she now notices, also has the symbol painted in red in the centre of it. And it is a delicious-looking pie.
“At least give it a try.”
“No, I think I’m fine.”
He raises the teacup he is holding to his lips. The symbol is present there too, in tiny, repeating patterns below the rim. “Alright. Will you at least tell me why you’re going about branding people?”
“Branding people now as well? You must really think me a monster.”
“Maybe you are, under that pretty face of yours.”
She has been dutifully playing the part of an innocent girl with the smile fixed in place during the entire time, but it is not a perfect performance. With his keen crimson eyes, the Spider has watched her carefully, learning the habits of her movements, and he sees the tells each time he speaks of her deeds: a slight lift of the eyebrow here, a minute cock of the head there. In every gesture, a small confession.
Above all, she is deriving immense pleasure from their back and forth. The odd questions that occasionally crop up from him seem to please her to some degree and the challenge of keeping him out is stimulating to her. She is holding herself together, as if she is enjoying this more than she is letting on.
This thrilling sensation of chasing a luscious prey who secretly desires her hunter and finds arousal in the pursuit — it is something almost familiar to him. It reminds him of someone close to him, one who resides in his life beyond this dream…
“So, why necromancy?” Lord Spider continues. “Or more precisely, why the animation of corpses? It’s so…” He wrinkles his nose as he puts his cup on the table and entwines his fingers together. “…crude.”
“Well, if there is a monster beneath this pretty face, surely something so crude would be fitting, no?”
“I just think it’s such a waste of magical energy. I’ve seen your demiplane. You’re capable of some competent arcana.”
“Is that so? And how, then, should I be focusing such talents?”
“Oh, I don’t know. You did a pretty good job torturing that annoying amateur historian in the Shambles — why not specialise in that?”
He grins when he says that, and something cold glints in his hungry eyes.
“Ah, so you would make me a monster,” says Miss Blue. “Tell me, do you enjoy inflicting pain on others? Torturing them? Is it just this pretty face you were looking for, or is it the claws it bears?”
He leans in close and whispers in her ear, his voice low and sensual, almost sending shivers down her body: “It takes one to know one.”
Her smile now curls into a wicked grin. “Then perhaps I should be interrogating you, monster to monster…”
“As if you haven’t been doing just that this whole time.”
“I think you will find it was you who brought me here.”
“Please, I am a drow. You can drop the pretence of being above manipulation. There’s no need for disguises here…”
“And yet this chat has been cloaked in disguise, has it not?”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“It’s a lovely show of the moon and creeping flower chairs… And you really have been quite the host, but you have not simply come here to chat. You seek to learn about me, to stop me perhaps. No amount of pretence and playing at being a monster changes that fact. I have already called this what this is: an interrogation.” She turns her head to meet his gaze head-on. “The only real question remaining is: when will you drop this disguise of playing nice and actually try your hand at playing rough?”
His hand slowly slides up her arm, up her shoulder, towards her neck where it stops. It just lies there gently, not squeezing or applying pressure, but the tension in the muscles of his hand tells her that he can.
“Do you want me to play rough?” he murmurs.
She grins back. “Do you want me to play rough?”
He bursts out chuckling. The tips of his fingers start pressing into her skin.
“I want you to know I don’t care how many people you maim and kill if you’d done it in some other part of the world. You chose the wrong places to do it, and you chose wrong because now you have my attention. And no one, my lovely monster, no one escapes from my webs.”
“Webs will only catch you flies, small spider. And I have crushed bigger and uglier bugs than you.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Never forget: spiders eat other spiders.” He leans in next to her ear again and whispers, “Come find me in the Dawnlands. We’ll continue this game there.”
Quick as a flash, her hand shoots up and catches his collar, holding him in place as she whispers back.
“I’m already here.”
And the woman in blue vanishes before his eyes.
The scene quickly begins to devolve and distort. The banquet table and the forest fades away, leaving him alone in the familiar darkness of reverie.
The dream has ended.
Jaezred exits the trance and rubs his eyes. The bed is empty and already made. He finds Imryll deep in a book on the sofa when he steps around the ivy screens to walk into the sitting area of the chambers.
“Did you get any sleep?” he asks, touching her shoulder.
She looks up from her book. “Enough. How was your night, my love?”
“Interesting,” he says as he runs a hand through his hair. “Didn’t learn as much as I would have wanted. She’s extremely guarded, but she seemed to really enjoy my questioning of her.“
“No surprises there, then… Well, aside from enjoying your questions. She really must be quite mad.”
“What surprised me was the dream spell being ended not by my own accord. Someone in the proximity of her physical body must have dispelled the magic. She has an accomplice, or at least a simulacrum.”
Imryll looks a little impressed. “That is…quite a bit of foresight on her part, then. Any idea who it might be? Did the dream get cut off while you were still talking?”
“No, it was ended on her terms…”
Feeling the need for clean clothes and fresh bandages, he trods back behind the ivy screens. “Perhaps more importantly, dearest,” he calls out as he grabs a pair of trousers from the wardrobe, “I think her attention has been diverted away from the Witching Court and towards the Dawnlands.”
“Really now? As good as that news is in the short term, for the Court anyway, what makes you say as much?”
“A lot of death and destruction and traumatised survivors there now. Plus, she mentioned it a couple of times during our chat. She figured out that I am tied to that damn place. But if she does have a simulacrum or an accomplice, or multiple, she can cover both planes of existence at once.”
“Did you find anything else? The Queen will likely be happy for another lead, but if they only point towards the Dawnlands, she may leave it for the adventurous rabble there to defend themselves.”
“No. But it would be wise to still keep our guard up here. There’s still no apparent logical reason as to why she chose this place over anywhere else with more tragedy and misery. It must be personal somehow.”
“Well now…” Even though his view is blocked by the screens, he can sense that she is thinking. “Did she say anything about the Court?”
“Apart from saying that she thinks the fey to be ‘brazen’ and ‘trivial’…no. She was a hard one to bait.”
“Hmph… Rude… But anyway, if she hasn’t explicitly said she has a problem with the Court, and she is making her way to the Dawnlands…can we really rule out she hasn’t worked elsewhere before?”
She raises a fair point. He has contacts in the major courts that he can enquire about this: Delilah in Twilight, Lord Emmantiensien in Summer, Elias and the Lady of Silence in Winter…
“No, we can’t,” he answers. “But it still begs the question: why here?”
“Indeed… Although we could ask the same for everything she is doing. I do know, however, have another pressing question I’m afraid I will need an answer to, my love… How much of a babe are we talking here?”
Jaezred emerges from the ivy screens again, now fully and impeccably dressed, holding his spider-topped cane in one hand. “Very much a babe.” He grins. “And guess what? I think she’s into me. She likes it rough, too.”
“Excellent.”
He chuckles, and smooches Imryll on the cheek before leaving to get more work started. Though his gaze lingers on her in an odd sort of way as the double doors slowly close shut behind him.
Co-written with Anthony
However, small progress is made when he has the idea of showing Celia the mark that had been left on the tiefling girl’s shoulder. Sitting down together in the Three-Headed Dragon, Celia closes her eyes and traces a finger over the symbol, which resembles the letter P with sharp edges, inked in black on Leonida’s skin. After several moments, her grey eyes flutter open, then she turns to face Jaezred and tells him of what learns.
“The first sensation I felt is of travel, or movement. I’m…not exactly sure who or what is moving… It feels inert, but perhaps something was there previously, like footprints in the sand. The mark of something moving but not being there at the time. The second feeling is of bonds: familial pride and identity, but masked now by…change and purpose.”
Jaezred nods thoughtfully. “Very good, Miss Celia. This gives us a place to start.”
But it’s far from enough. There’s more that can be extracted, perhaps directly from the source herself — but it must be done by himself, alone.
And as he formulates a plan in his head, he watches Leonida from the corner of his vision. The tiefling hasn’t stopped staring intently at Celia for the entire time, her reddish-orange eyes smouldering like hellfire. He does not like the leer in that gaze.
After saying their thank yous and farewells, he tells Celia to stay in the Mountain Palace for the time being.
When Jaezred reveals his plan to Imryll in the privacy of their bedchambers, she turns to him with the usual roguish smirk on her face. “Hmmmm. Invading the dreams of strange women… A ‘babe’, no less, according to you. Are you sure this is just an investigation you’re after, dear? Not looking to get burned again, are you?”
“Ah, you’ve uncovered my true plan. Why yes, I’m planning to have a dream sex marathon with her.”
“Well, you could have at least invited me too!”
“It’s not my fault you’re too incompetent of a mage to learn the spell. Anyhow… The danger here is obvious. I’m revealing myself to her.”
“I just excel with a more…up close and personal approach, my love,” she giggles. “But yes, you would be indicating yourself all the more. And she has been prudent enough to avoid detection this long, she may have other means to protect herself too. What exactly are you hoping to find out with this, though? Her location? Her plans? Dress size?” She smirks again.
“Whether she prefers chardonnay or port. But what do you think? Is there any particular piece of information that would be useful to learn, other than the obvious?”
“Anything, at this point, would be better than what we currently have, dear. We know next to nothing about what she wants or is doing — only the remains of her experiments.”
“Hm. Indeed. All that’s left is to try. She is known to have operated in both the Material Plane and the Feywild… She must be in one of these places.”
He walks up to her to grasp her chin gently and leave a fond kiss on her lips. “For good luck,” he says with a grin.
When the clock strikes 3 a.m. — the Witching Hour — Imryll tucks herself under the covers as Jaezred draws in chalk a hexagram enclosed in a circle, marked with a variety of occult symbols, on the polished stone floor in front of their shared bed. He places lit candles on each point of the star before sitting down cross-legged in the centre of the sigil. He utters a few words of incantation, picturing everything that he has witnessed so far — the purple gemstones in Lostbell Mine, the gore-filled vault in the Anuhlin Shambles, and every single instance the woman in blue has been mentioned to him.
The dream spell takes hold — he knows it because he feels himself entering a trance. But he sees only the usual darkness for now. Despite the ungodly hour, she must not be asleep yet.
So he waits.
🕷️🌕🕷️
The woman in blue is walking down a path in a dark and misty wood. The full moon, bright and impossibly large, is always hanging above her head no matter which way she moves. She is calm, despite the fact that with her every step, she feels watched. By eyes hidden behind the trees and bushes, hidden between the leaves and the rocks — eyes that disappear each time she turns her head to look at them.
Eventually, though she cannot be sure how long she has been walking, she reaches a wall of trees with a large, perfectly circular hole in it. Not cut by humanoid hands; rather, appearing as though the trees had contorted and shifted themselves to form this opening.
Stepping through the hole, she finds herself in a forest clearing. There is a long, mossy stone table in the centre and a variety of makeshift chairs placed around it: a tree stump with a backrest carved out of it, a giant mushroom, a stack of stones, a mound of moss raised from the ground, and so on. The table hosts a dazzling array of lush and fluffy scones, sandwiches, cakes, and tea being poured into painted porcelain cups by invisible hands.
At the head of the table, there is a drow. He is seated on a throne of woven branches, the leaves on the wood growing, withering, falling off, and growing anew as seconds goes by. He watches the woman in blue approach with a smile.
“Welcome. Took you long enough. Please, sit, help yourself,” says the drow.
“I take as long as I need.”
She sits on the tree stump chair to his left and looks at the food before her consideringly for a moment, but ultimately takes nothing for herself. She smiles at the drow from across the table, her fingers idly playing with a wilting blue flower on the edge of the seat.
“Nothing to your liking? I assure you, this is all a dream, you will not be occupying the loo all day tomorrow morning… In fact, it’s more likely to make you grow ten feet tall or shrink to the size of a dormouse, depending on the mood.”
“Oh, I’m well aware what this is and have no interest in faux pleasures. I am merely waiting.”
His smile morphs into a smirk. “Straight to the point. I like that in women. Several eyewitness reports have noted your beauty and I must say, they do not lie.”
Still smiling, she makes no response.
“Do you know who I am?” he asks.
“Not yet.”
“Shall we introduce ourselves to each other, then?”
“No, I don’t think that will be necessary.”
“Fair enough.”
He picks up a teacup and saucer, a fragrant smoke billowing from it, and moves towards where she is seated at the table. Her black gaze follows him, watching, waiting for something interesting to happen. Her eagerness is well-concealed, but the many-eyed spider sees all that is hidden.
“You say ‘faux pleasures’, but you’re certainly enjoying yourself right now,” he observes casually as he half-sits himself on the stone table next to her.
“It is so rare that these little distractions arise, it’s good to enjoy them while they are here.”
“Well, I’m glad we feel the same way. Now, you can probably guess what I brought you here for.”
“Probably, but why don’t you tell me?”
“Why, your amusing little experiments, of course! If only you had the habit of cleaning up after yourself.”
“Mmm, yes. But that doesn’t explain your intentions for bringing me here, only the leading cause.”
“I’d just like to chat with you. Will you humour me, Miss Blue?”
She raises an eyebrow as the smile affixed to her face widens slightly. “Most conversations do not begin by invading dreams.”
“Well, it’s not as if you left an address for me to send letters to. Not sure if you even have one, though. You seem to be always on the move.”
“Do you often expect strangers to leave you letters?”
“Why indeed. As it happens, I am well-liked and popular!” He grins.
“What strange people you must meet, then.”
“You may, by the way, address me as ‘my lord’.”
Her smile only widens further. She is practically beaming at this point. She is enjoying this very much.
“Alright then, let’s begin,” says Lord Spider. “So… You’ve been conducting research into the practical arcane uses of negative emotions, do I have that right?”
“You certainly seem to think so, but do go on.”
“No, please, correct me if I’m wrong. I insist. I would hate to misinterpret your hard work as a scientist.”
“Hmmm. No, I think for now, I’m quite content to hear the theories of another.”
“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but that’s all I’ve got for now. I cannot tell what the end goal of this research is. But you’ve put so much effort into it that I’m sure it’s a worthy question to explore.”
“Oh. Well now, I had at least hoped this would last a little longer than that.”
“Do I delight you, Miss Blue?”
“Amuse, perhaps.”
He scoffs and sips his tea.
“Now, if you will permit, I might make some of my own observations?” says Miss Blue.
“Please.”
“Firstly, you are clearly someone of some skill, or at least in the presence of someone with skill, to not only have used the dream spell but also use it on me. Your preference for being called ‘Lord’ is yet to be confirmed whether it is of some merit or just hubris, but the combination would suggest you casted the spell.
“Second, I could assume that, given you have mentioned some of my research, you, or the person you are with, are at least marginally aware of my work, which leads me to believe you are one of two things: a patsy sent in place of another who wishes to remain out of sight, someone expendable, or someone silly enough to go poking their inquisitive nose into matters. Given the first assumption, I think we can proceed with you being an inquisitive mind for now, now need to confirm just yet.
“Thirdly, the fact you have even been able to locate me with the dream spell means you have access to the Feywild, yet you do not strike me as…brazen, or…trivial, shall we say, as some of the plane’s denizens. Moreover, you have done so with the aim of simply having a ‘chat’. Further reinforcing the idea of your own self-viewed status, something I am not at all unfamiliar with. That, along with a few other assumptions I can make would lead me to a final conclusion and prompt one further question.
“Did you lose anyone in that nasty business with the gith recently?”
The grin on Lord Spider’s face grows very wide.
“Well as a matter of fact, Little Miss Detective, no,” he replies. “None of those who died were of importance to me. But I can see why you’ve taken an interest in that matter — lots of grief and misery there right now, isn’t there?”
“There certainly is! But like the ‘little detective’ I am, my question serves other purposes. Do tell me though, you seem to be familiar with my work, what do you make of it all? The locations, the setup, the method… You must have some insights of your own even without an end marker in sight, no?”
“You wish to know my honest thoughts?” He makes a show of rubbing his chin and intoning a hmm sound. “To summarise — careless. In every sense of the word.”
“Oh? And how so?”
“I know you don’t care if your work gets discovered or interrupted because you know you can simply repeat it and because you’re confident you won’t be caught. And as you’ve already indicated, you don’t spare a single thought for the denizens of the places in which you worked.” He stands up and begins walking around her. She remains calm and smiling, not bothering to turn her head to look at him. “So answer me this — why the Witching Court?”
“Bold to assume I don’t care, don’t you think? I should think if I am to be accused of such a thing, you would have some proof of where I had indicated this?”
Lord Spider laughs and shakes his head. “You could at least try being a little more subtle about your questions.”
“But that would take the fun out of your little interrogation, then, I fear.”
As he stops walking, pausing to stand to her left, the chair of stacked stones moves seemingly of its own accord towards him for him to sit on. “Come on… Why the Witching Court? It’s not like the Dawnlands or the Sword Coast has not seen a lot of tragedy in recent times. You had to go looking for old, ruined places where horrible things happened long ago, and when that didn’t suit your purpose, you had to actively create more misery. There’s got to be a reason why you went through so much effort.”
“Does there? It seems to me that there are plenty of people doing things for nonsensical reasons abound. Such as you — why are you so interested in the Witching Court if you are indeed from the Material Plane?”
“I’m a… How did you put it? An inquisitive mind. Well, since I cannot see a logical reason, I must presume that it was an emotional reason.”
“And you are welcome to make your own presumptions.”
“Do you miss your family?”
“Do you?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know. I mean, with all that travelling, you must be yearning for home, no?”
“Perhaps I already am home?”
“How forward. You really should buy me dinner first…”
“Why? You already came with food.” Miss Blue gestures to the table.
“Which you have not touched. Come now, I’ve put a bit of mental effort into these… Here.”
His hand reaches forward and pulls a plate of pie in front of her. It has a symbol resembling the letter P stylised with sharp edges carved into the crust.
“Perhaps you should have been a chef, then, if you are so proud, but once again, I am not interested in faux pleasures,” she says.
He ignores her, cutting a slice of the pie and then placing it on a small, empty plate next to the undrank cup of tea meant for her. The plate, she now notices, also has the symbol painted in red in the centre of it. And it is a delicious-looking pie.
“At least give it a try.”
“No, I think I’m fine.”
He raises the teacup he is holding to his lips. The symbol is present there too, in tiny, repeating patterns below the rim. “Alright. Will you at least tell me why you’re going about branding people?”
“Branding people now as well? You must really think me a monster.”
“Maybe you are, under that pretty face of yours.”
She has been dutifully playing the part of an innocent girl with the smile fixed in place during the entire time, but it is not a perfect performance. With his keen crimson eyes, the Spider has watched her carefully, learning the habits of her movements, and he sees the tells each time he speaks of her deeds: a slight lift of the eyebrow here, a minute cock of the head there. In every gesture, a small confession.
Above all, she is deriving immense pleasure from their back and forth. The odd questions that occasionally crop up from him seem to please her to some degree and the challenge of keeping him out is stimulating to her. She is holding herself together, as if she is enjoying this more than she is letting on.
This thrilling sensation of chasing a luscious prey who secretly desires her hunter and finds arousal in the pursuit — it is something almost familiar to him. It reminds him of someone close to him, one who resides in his life beyond this dream…
“So, why necromancy?” Lord Spider continues. “Or more precisely, why the animation of corpses? It’s so…” He wrinkles his nose as he puts his cup on the table and entwines his fingers together. “…crude.”
“Well, if there is a monster beneath this pretty face, surely something so crude would be fitting, no?”
“I just think it’s such a waste of magical energy. I’ve seen your demiplane. You’re capable of some competent arcana.”
“Is that so? And how, then, should I be focusing such talents?”
“Oh, I don’t know. You did a pretty good job torturing that annoying amateur historian in the Shambles — why not specialise in that?”
He grins when he says that, and something cold glints in his hungry eyes.
“Ah, so you would make me a monster,” says Miss Blue. “Tell me, do you enjoy inflicting pain on others? Torturing them? Is it just this pretty face you were looking for, or is it the claws it bears?”
He leans in close and whispers in her ear, his voice low and sensual, almost sending shivers down her body: “It takes one to know one.”
Her smile now curls into a wicked grin. “Then perhaps I should be interrogating you, monster to monster…”
“As if you haven’t been doing just that this whole time.”
“I think you will find it was you who brought me here.”
“Please, I am a drow. You can drop the pretence of being above manipulation. There’s no need for disguises here…”
“And yet this chat has been cloaked in disguise, has it not?”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“It’s a lovely show of the moon and creeping flower chairs… And you really have been quite the host, but you have not simply come here to chat. You seek to learn about me, to stop me perhaps. No amount of pretence and playing at being a monster changes that fact. I have already called this what this is: an interrogation.” She turns her head to meet his gaze head-on. “The only real question remaining is: when will you drop this disguise of playing nice and actually try your hand at playing rough?”
His hand slowly slides up her arm, up her shoulder, towards her neck where it stops. It just lies there gently, not squeezing or applying pressure, but the tension in the muscles of his hand tells her that he can.
“Do you want me to play rough?” he murmurs.
She grins back. “Do you want me to play rough?”
He bursts out chuckling. The tips of his fingers start pressing into her skin.
“I want you to know I don’t care how many people you maim and kill if you’d done it in some other part of the world. You chose the wrong places to do it, and you chose wrong because now you have my attention. And no one, my lovely monster, no one escapes from my webs.”
“Webs will only catch you flies, small spider. And I have crushed bigger and uglier bugs than you.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Never forget: spiders eat other spiders.” He leans in next to her ear again and whispers, “Come find me in the Dawnlands. We’ll continue this game there.”
Quick as a flash, her hand shoots up and catches his collar, holding him in place as she whispers back.
“I’m already here.”
And the woman in blue vanishes before his eyes.
The scene quickly begins to devolve and distort. The banquet table and the forest fades away, leaving him alone in the familiar darkness of reverie.
The dream has ended.
🕷️🌑🕷️
Jaezred exits the trance and rubs his eyes. The bed is empty and already made. He finds Imryll deep in a book on the sofa when he steps around the ivy screens to walk into the sitting area of the chambers.
“Did you get any sleep?” he asks, touching her shoulder.
She looks up from her book. “Enough. How was your night, my love?”
“Interesting,” he says as he runs a hand through his hair. “Didn’t learn as much as I would have wanted. She’s extremely guarded, but she seemed to really enjoy my questioning of her.“
“No surprises there, then… Well, aside from enjoying your questions. She really must be quite mad.”
“What surprised me was the dream spell being ended not by my own accord. Someone in the proximity of her physical body must have dispelled the magic. She has an accomplice, or at least a simulacrum.”
Imryll looks a little impressed. “That is…quite a bit of foresight on her part, then. Any idea who it might be? Did the dream get cut off while you were still talking?”
“No, it was ended on her terms…”
Feeling the need for clean clothes and fresh bandages, he trods back behind the ivy screens. “Perhaps more importantly, dearest,” he calls out as he grabs a pair of trousers from the wardrobe, “I think her attention has been diverted away from the Witching Court and towards the Dawnlands.”
“Really now? As good as that news is in the short term, for the Court anyway, what makes you say as much?”
“A lot of death and destruction and traumatised survivors there now. Plus, she mentioned it a couple of times during our chat. She figured out that I am tied to that damn place. But if she does have a simulacrum or an accomplice, or multiple, she can cover both planes of existence at once.”
“Did you find anything else? The Queen will likely be happy for another lead, but if they only point towards the Dawnlands, she may leave it for the adventurous rabble there to defend themselves.”
“No. But it would be wise to still keep our guard up here. There’s still no apparent logical reason as to why she chose this place over anywhere else with more tragedy and misery. It must be personal somehow.”
“Well now…” Even though his view is blocked by the screens, he can sense that she is thinking. “Did she say anything about the Court?”
“Apart from saying that she thinks the fey to be ‘brazen’ and ‘trivial’…no. She was a hard one to bait.”
“Hmph… Rude… But anyway, if she hasn’t explicitly said she has a problem with the Court, and she is making her way to the Dawnlands…can we really rule out she hasn’t worked elsewhere before?”
She raises a fair point. He has contacts in the major courts that he can enquire about this: Delilah in Twilight, Lord Emmantiensien in Summer, Elias and the Lady of Silence in Winter…
“No, we can’t,” he answers. “But it still begs the question: why here?”
“Indeed… Although we could ask the same for everything she is doing. I do know, however, have another pressing question I’m afraid I will need an answer to, my love… How much of a babe are we talking here?”
Jaezred emerges from the ivy screens again, now fully and impeccably dressed, holding his spider-topped cane in one hand. “Very much a babe.” He grins. “And guess what? I think she’s into me. She likes it rough, too.”
“Excellent.”
He chuckles, and smooches Imryll on the cheek before leaving to get more work started. Though his gaze lingers on her in an odd sort of way as the double doors slowly close shut behind him.
Co-written with Anthony
