Daar’zel was sitting on a rock outcropping taking advantage of one of the rare moments when she could simply be herself.
Some of her questions had been quickly answered, and life had taken on a surreal normalcy since the rite. No one else was pretending. The changes in the other acolytes were real, and every woman who had undergone the ritual before her had been transformed just as completely.
Daar’zel was careful to act as her role demanded. She brutalized the slaves if she was assigned to the pens and punished the male elves whenever it seemed expected. She made an appropriate number of assassinations attempts against her older sisters and showed a proper degree of anger for the ones that failed, and satisfaction when they did not. But her heart wasn’t in it the way it was for the other matrons. That’s why she was on patrol today.
The males she led today were off in a side passage dealing with some giant rodents that had found their way into the tunnels through a crack. They wouldn’t require any offensive magic to take care of them and she could heal any minor wounds afterwards. The exercise and fresh meat would be good for the males anyway. It wouldn’t do to let them get too lazy or let their bloodthirstiness wane.
The line of spiders marching along the passage wall caught her eye. She hadn’t seen that kind since the day she found the ring and the cache of fresh eggs before the ceremony. She wasn’t on harvest duty anymore, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t gather a few for herself.
At first glance, the spiders seemed to be disappearing into a tiny hole in the rough tunnel wall. When she reached out, her hand found a crack in the surface, one that her darksight had not shown.
The crack was narrow, even for a young elven woman’s frame, but she turned sideways and slipped through into a small chamber. Ropes of web, thick with the dust of centuries, formed canopies between stalactites. The scuttling of countless tiny legs echoed through the space in a ghostly whisper.
The spiders she was following were easy to see. The column was gathering around one of the thickest and oldest clusters of cobwebs on the wall. It didn’t look like an egg sac, but Daar’zel wasn’t thinking about those anymore.
As she cut through the last layers of webbing, her dagger scraped against a simple metal scroll tube at the center of the mass. How long had that tube been swaddled by those ancient webs waiting for her to find it?
She’d have to investigate the contents later. She could hear the rough laughter and jibes of the males bragging to each other about the fight. They wouldn’t dare question her absence, but a casual word in the wrong ears meant certain death.
She slipped the tube into a pocket deep in her robes and squeezed back out of the passage to where she had been waiting before.
Secrets had always been at the core of her life, but those were secrets that were expected, not personal ones like the mystery of the tube. She couldn’t risk investigating it, not even in her chambers. The eyes of the mistress watched her entire realm, and secrets like hers could draw more than the usual attention.
She found a few moments alone during her next patrol, sending the males off to investigate a sound she had created with a simple cantrip. Eagerly, she opened the small tube, and a single sheet of ancient vellum slid out. Despite the preservation spell that must have protected it for the scroll to exist at all, the brittle hide cracked with age as she carefully unrolled it.
The scroll was in a language she had never seen before. It resembled the oldest temple writings, but only in vague, unsettling ways.
One word stood out.
The name on her ring was in the scroll!
The males would be back soon, and she still couldn’t read the scroll. Time to put it, and the mystery of the name, away for now.
The scroll defied simple insights. She tried basic arcane and divine spells that should have translated any dialect of the dark elven tongue or magical runes from all the known schools, but none helped. So far, the best they had done was to make the letters shimmer or warp before stubbornly settling back into the cryptic symbols.
If she wanted to understand the scroll, she would need to be one of the sisters who conducted deep patrols and ensured that lesser races understood the will of the goddess. Their training ensured that they could translate the glory of the mistress and enforce her demands in any tongue.
She felt a momentary pang for the rivals standing in her path, but they would eliminate her for much less important reasons. She would find where the spiders were leading her no matter where the threads led.
The notes for the spell were scrawled in the margins of an obscure text on ancient languages. The writer theorized that the standard translation spells drew knowledge from the minds of living beings who understood it now, and that was why they could fail on ancient languages that were lost to time.
The notes went on to suggest that if you combined a spell to speak with the dead with a translation spell, it should work on any language that any spirit in the planes knew, alive or dead.
The research would take time, but if she told the War Mistress that it was to translate the archives of human battle plans, she might approve. Their lives were so short that their languages lived and died in the space of centuries, hardly long enough for an elf to bother to learn them.
Translating the human languages was easy, but she pretended the attempts failed while the experimented on the scroll. The unknown author had been correct, combining the spells in various combinations had allowed her to read almost any text, but the words on the scroll stubbornly refused.
The letters squirmed more and took longer to reform into the cryptic runes, but they would not form into words she knew.
Her final, most desperate attempt bore fruit, but at the cost of her troupe of males, and risk of her own exposure.
She had pored through every text on translation spells in the enclave library, looking for more notes from the mysterious writer who had given her the idea in the first place. She found occasional cryptic references about dead languages, but nothing concrete, until she happened to flip through a text on necromancy while she thought about the other issues.
The entire chapter was written in the same crabbed hand as the margin notes!!
Of course! that’s why she couldn’t find anything else in the translation texts. The author was a necromancer, not a diviner. The chapter was on powering necromantic spells, and revealed that death calls to death, and the farther back you need to reach, the more the gods demanded.
Her first attempts were promising. She had tried casting the new spell after her patrol had slain rodents and other creatures finding their way into the tunnels, but as close as the words came to making sense, they refused to yield their secrets. Animals just didn’t have enough life force to entice death to speak from that far in the past.
The burrowing titan was her chance. The patrol could have wiped them out with less casualties, but she withheld her aid and let them fight it alone. A quick dagger through the eye looked after the last few males who survived, and she quickly prepared for the ritual. The death of the squad might trigger a seer to scry the area, and if they saw the spell she was casting, there would be questions she dared not answer.
With the tang of blood heavy in the air, she called out the last words of the spell and looked hopefully at the text on the scroll. The words writhed with a greater life than they had before, drawing on the death around her to power the search. At last, the words settled into a readable form.
The translation was still in the oldest religious runes of her people, she could read it, but its contents gave no answers, only more questions.
From: His High Excellency Vaelithir An'daerion
To: Invasion force leaders in all enclaves
Divine, arcane and clerical forces are all aligned to support the plan.
Ariachne will be bound and her children enslaved. The Dark One assures us that he and his allies will be able to create the new Weave after the Binding.
Our priests and wizards are prepared to enact the Twisting on the matriarchs and bind them to her service. The Ichor will ensure that their successors are also Twisted.
Coordinate surface attacks to coincide with the beginning of the Binding ritual. Field troops will launch visible offensive on Midwinter Eve to ensure longest campaign time before sunlight favours our enemy. Diggers will initiate internal incursions to coincide with maximum field engagement.
Carry out my will and we will rule the surface again. Our enemies can rot in the caves they forced us into for so long.
My will is your will, and I will this be done.
The letter was mysteries upon mysteries. Who was Ariachne and when and why was she bound? Why was her name on Daar’zel’s ring and how had it come to be on her hand after so many centuries? Who is the Dark One and what does it have to do with the Weave? What is the Weave? Is it the one that the gods wove on a loom to share magic with the world? Who was Twisted and what did that mean?
Daar’zel had no way to investigate it now and no time to spare thinking. She slipped the translated scroll back in the case and cleaned up traces of the spell.
The Mistress of the deep patrols would have questions. Daar’zel had little time to prepare answers that would survive a truth spell.
The Parvis Room
Had she known that the goddess had shown her will that day, she would have worried much less about anyone paying attention when she returned from patrol.
The sacred brood had burst out of their nest during midday services and slain most of the matrons at the altar. The High Matriarch was slain by the golden avatar of the goddess herself in a sudden strike with her jeweled fangs. Daggers flashed and poisoned darts flew as the remaining Matriarchs vied for power. The goddess would accept whoever was strong enough to lead. Or she would not, and the struggle would begin anew.
Daar’zel would have to manoeuvre carefully to maintain some freedom. It would be helpful to rise far enough to avoid scrutiny, but not so high as to have her time filled with the goddess’s service.
Mistress of the Wards was a perfect position. A few well-timed successes and better-timed failures had given her control of an office no one wanted and little oversight for her day-to-day activities. She was responsible for ensuring that the warding mages kept the defensive spells intact and coordinating with the scryers to reinforce expansion and control efforts.
The temple wards were hers alone to inspect and maintain. A weakness at the heart of the goddess’s web could not be tolerated, and reinforcement of those powerful spells was one of the few times a maiden of her stature could summon the Matriarchs. The rituals had last been renewed less than a century before, so there was little chance of failure, but the temple wards were inspected weekly to be sure.
If her ring hadn’t reflected the dim fungal light at just the right angle, she never would have noticed the thing that couldn’t be where it was.
Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a vague door-like shape in the temple wall, but when she tried to look at it directly, it wasn’t there. The more she tried to see it, the harder it became to focus on that section of wall at all. She reached out towards the wall to steady both her body and her mind, and as her fingers touched where the door had almost appeared, the ring on her finger came to life and ran down her finger like a graceful hunting spider. It crawled into a near invisible hole and then straightened, its body sticking out like the head of a key.
The mystery of the scroll and Ariachne’s name on her ring was never far from Daar’zel’s mind but this was the first clue she had found since the translation. She had pored over the oldest texts she could find for any reference to the war or anything in it, and other than noting that Ariachne was similar to one of the oldest dark elf words for spider, she had found no other insights.
She grasped the ring and turned it, expecting resistance from a lock that must not have been used in the memory of the elves. It clicked like it had been oiled that morning and the door suddenly appeared so completely that she wondered how it could ever have been missed in the first place.
She had access to every plan for the temple and all its protections, and there was no record of a door here or an obfuscation spell of any kind in the temple grounds. What power could have kept this door hidden from countless generations of the goddesses most powerful servants? Not only kept the door hidden, but the very spells that protected the door from sight protected themselves from detection as well.
As the door clicked open, the spider stretched back out of the lock and settled itself comfortably on her finger once more. If she hadn’t seen it happen, she would not have believed it in a story. She slipped through and up the narrow stairs it revealed. The door swung gently shut behind her, but it was obvious that it was a door from this side, and she was sure she could get back out.
The room shocked her. Not because of the strangeness of the contents, but because most of them were exactly what she should have expected. She should have expected this room to be exactly where it was like every other temple she had visited.
It was a parvis room!
The shelves appeared to contain religious texts and record books. The panels on the walls would expose magical viewpoints to the courtyard out front and the parishioners inside.
If she hadn’t been certain no one knew about the chamber, she would have thought it was still in use. Not a speck of dust had settled on a single surface, though the some of the oldest books had begun to collapse to collapse under the weight of time, despite the preservation spells that must be on the room. It did not appear that even the smallest of her mistress’s children had created a web in this room, and no where in the temple was completely free of them.
The holy symbol on the books and in icons on the wall was not the goddesses, but the sheer malevolence contained within them caused the hairs all over her body to stand out like a spider on high alert. She knew well the capriciousness and offhand cruelty of her mistress, but the focused, structured evil inherent in the sharp angles and harsh lines of these abominations was almost too much to absorb.
The eyepiece and notebook on the table were the only things that did not belong at all in this space. Both were clearly arcane, and seemed far newer than the other items, still ancient but far newer than they should be. The more common religious decorations had been shoved carelessly aside suggesting that whatever they were, the last occupant of the room was using them for something.
The eyepiece was delicately crafted of rare metals and inscribed with countless arcane runes. The lenses were perfectly clear diamonds cut into unnumerable facets on the outside and gently curved on the inside. They rested gently on fine velvet, the notebook placed carefully beside them. The book was humble, something a workman or researcher might use for notes, but the delicate spider inscribed on the cover caught Daar’zel’s eye and the noticed the symbols she now knew meant Ariachne on the cover.
She stood near the door, trying to take in the scene and what it might mean when the courtyard wall suddenly turned misty and revealed the outer cave. Two of the temple matrons had entered the courtyard and would be in the temple properly in a few moments. She would have to investigate later.
Daar’zel slipped quickly back down the stairway and through the door at the bottom. As she released the door, it swung gently closed and vanished as if it had never been there. This was no mere secret door.
Elves had keen senses, and it was rare for them to miss a hidden door at all, and once they knew of one, they would always see it. Once this one had closed, she again felt the urge to look away, to not notice, and if she had not known for certain the door was there, she might have thought she imagined the entire thing.
Temple records confirmed that the room didn’t exist. Not that it was hidden, that it had never been built.
Her translation spell let her read the original construction notes, and the first creators had decided against adding one. The plans and records all agreed: the space did not exist and never had. No revisions, no later additions.
If it was ever part of the goddess’s temple, why did it have that strange, disturbing holy symbol?
That image looked nothing like the shifting, wildly unrestrained icons favoured by her goddess. The sense of ordered unrelenting cruelty in every line of it still haunted her.
The eyepiece and notebook refused to give up their mysteries easily.
The duties of her office occupied much of her time. Reinforcement of the punishment barriers on the slave pits was an ongoing task, and she had had to join campaigns to put down troublesome lesser races more than once.
When she was in the temple proper and had free time, she often could not get to the secret room for long, if at all.
The translation spell had worked well on the other books in the room. Death was never far away in the goddess’s holy places and there was plenty to fuel the incantation. But the book was in an arcane language not a divine one, and her current spell would need to be adapted.
She wasn’t worried about getting caught once she was in the chamber, or about anyone else finding the door. Everyone instinctively looked away from that wall as they passed through the antechambers. Even on the busiest holy days, that part of the hallway encouraged moving on, not lingering.
A closer examination of the viewports showed the frames inscripted with arcane runes, scratched in and around the divine ones. Those must be what had triggered the viewports when the courtyard was entered. Parvis rooms were used for more than observation, and the viewports would have been a distraction for any other uses. A mage had used this room to spy on the congregation and it wasn’t any of the goddess’s servants.
She wasn’t sure why they had been changed, but they made an excellent early warning system that she was no longer alone in the temple. When she was in the room going through what she could understand so far, a fading wall meant it was time to leave and let the room hide itself again.
No Matron, or even the goddess herself in her wildest wanton cruelties could match the horrors in the everyday notes from the parvis records.
The smith’s head was not properly bowed in obeisance. Crush his children slowly in front of him until he learns proper humility. As sayeth our Lord “You will bow to me in full abasement. Nothing you create matters before me.”
…
The merchant’s wife wore robes that were worn. Have her flayed alive in the public court. As sayeth our Lord “My vestments are as holy as your own skin. Respect and honor them in my name.”
The references to our Lord and the symbols on the walls were as impossible as the room itself. The records she had pored over had detailed every step of the construction of the great temple, and every modification since. These halls had never heard cries to any deity but the goddess and to call her magnificence Lord would be an affront to her essential nature.
She had tried the jeweled glasses, but the diamond lenses were impossible to see through and the attempt left her sick for days. She had had to beg off her regular duties claiming an overindulgence in candied cave slugs.
Progress was slow on adapting the translation spell. Speak with the Dead was a divine spell, so it had been easy to combine with a clerical translation spell, but it was not as easy to match with arcane rituals. Channeling the power of the spirits into something meant to draw from the weave was unpredictable at best.
The only word she could recognize after many failed attempts was the one that had first caught her eye.
Ariachne
If she hadn’t been injured by one of the mistress’s children during a recent patrol of the outer wards, she might never have succeeded. A digger had undermined a ward in a secure district, and she had had to summon support. The larger cave spiders would enjoy the meal and could plug the hole with webs that she could harden and ward. In her zeal, she hadn’t noticed the one behind her when she ordered them to attack and was knocked against the cavern wall. Her hand would be in a cast for months.
A few months meant nothing under normal conditions, a Matron died from weakness, not age, but she had a new idea for the spell, and she could adapt the ritual for her other hand.
She had felt the souls of the dead hover over her casting before, but they remained unfocused. Daar’zel reached out her hand and touched the cover as she spoke the final word.
The ring on her finger squirmed and sprang to life. The silver spider ran quickly down her fingers and stretched towards the silver web inscribed on the cover.
A flash of light that could only be felt, not seen enveloped the book as the power of the spell settled and the runes finally began to find a new shape. By the time she realized what had happened, the ring was back in its accustomed place and appeared lifeless once more.
Had her adaptation of the spell worked, or had she approached it wrong from the beginning? She had never had her ring hand involved in the ritual before so was that why it worked? Or did her spell just use the nearest tool?
The enchantment had worked, and the book would remain translated. Any answers there were to find would have to start there.
The title read more like a military text than a magical tome and the letter inscribed on the first page confirmed its intent.
Ariachne Project
Field Guide and Log
From: Archmage [name], Grand Magister of the Seventh House
As the voice of His High Excellency Vaelithir An'daerion
To: All stewards of the Ariachne project
You have found favour in the eyes of the Dark Lord and his living expression, His Excellency Vaelithir An'daerion, Avatar of Fury, have chosen you to remain in the homeland and ensure the continued success of their will.
The Binding of the foul Ariachne was a glorious success and her treacherous children have been sentenced the prison they deserve. No longer will we be trapped in her webs of intrigue and lies. The Fury of the Dark Lords Avatar has burned them to cinders.
Your honour shall be the duty of monitoring the vermin and ensuring the Attunement continues until they learn their place.
His Excellence has commissioned the Ocularius to assist in your glorious task.
The Keepers of the Undercroft will provide for and replace you as necessary until the Attunement is complete. Your sacrifice serves the greater glory of the Dark Lord.
Give Thanks that you have been Chosen to serve.
The next several pages were an arcane explanation of the Ocularius that was far too technical for her limited understanding, but at the end of the explanation were three command words that she was able to read.
See
Strike
Summon
Not all of the pages were full, but those that were, were written in different hands as if written by generations of observers.
The earliest pages were cryptic in their efficiency. Shorthand notes about Twisting effectiveness and behaviour culling. Tallies of names like cattle to be tracked and genealogy notes to ensure taming.
A few lines stood out with words from the letter she had found in the scroll tube.
The Keepers will be required to maintain the flow of sacrifices to ensure the Ichor is drawn by the ritual until the worshippers are fully transformed and feeding sufficient power to support the ritual on their own.
Manual culling should only be necessary for the first three to four generations to ensure the Twisting cycle is fully integrated. After Attunement the vessel will draw only on the collective for reactions.
By the time the second author had taken over the accounts, the notes had become more specific, tracking names and groups that were followed until eliminated. Individual leaders often had the symbol for Strike beside them, groups were mostly noted with Summon. Others had notations that suggested they had been eliminated by internal forces and conspiracies. As the journal progressed, she found more and more of the Strike and Summon notes paired with a small spider symbol.
Whoever had made these records, had tracked generations of elves over hundreds of years. No mean feat for any race. Even another elf would have had to dedicate a lifetime to recording the notes of any single observer.
The third set were much like the second, but with more spiders noted and a more observational tone. The final note to whoever replaced them had a personal tone as much as an official one.
Welcome to our glorious duty. The Attunement has been completed, and the Twisting will continue. Observe and note for as long as the Keepers are able to sustain you, then join us in sacrifice to the Dark Lord’s glory.
There was a single entry in the final hand.
The glory of the Dark Lord is realized, and I go to fulfil my final duty. No intervention has been necessary in half a generation and today I receive the sign that our work was complete. The brood has been unpredictable for some time. Today, I barely escaped the chambers.
The Dark Lord has sealed the Undercroft, and I will offer myself to the brood in thanks for his glory. The Keepers will realize their duty soon enough and complete the final rituals.
Daar’zel sat back and gazed thoughtfully at the eyepiece.
She had command words for it now, but she would have to see if she could learn anything else before she experimented with them. A wizards’ artifact in a clerical room that did not exist, dedicated to a god that had never been worshipped there was the smallest of the new questions the journal raised.
The temple records confirmed what she already knew. The brood chambers were carved from solid bedrock and led nowhere but to the grave. Any Undercroft entrance from them was as impossible as the parvis room before it.
Public humiliation for the failed assassination attempt was worth it to become the Matron of Threads clerk for a few cycles. A carefully planted rumour that she was going to try and take Matron’s place if she could, ensured her failure, and complaints about working under her in the past, ensured the punishment would fit her ends.
A research request gave her the chance to show her dislike for the dust and disorganization of the oldest records and get her banished to where she needed to be.
She had never really thought about the name on her ring. It resembled the oldest words for spider in her tongue and variations of it had been popular in every age, but it’s absence from the records made it stand out in its commonness.
Comparing the efficient clinical notes of the mages to the language in the records of the Threads took some work, but she was able to match many of the names from the journal to the oldest records in the archives.
A patten began to emerge the more names she matched. The deaths that the observers had noted as Strike or Summon had all happened in the temple proper.
Strike victims were noted with phrases like, “The goddess expressed her divine will” and “Beware those who stand tall before the goddess’s jeweled fangs.”, common notations for those slain by the avatar of the goddess.
With that realization she was quick to note that Summon coincided with manifestations of the sacred brood. Their hunger eliminated groups of Matrons that the observers had recorded as concerns.
Not everything was clear. The spider symbols defiantly held their secrets in their webs, but the observers had been involved in the history of her people in their earliest days, and the journal implied they were part of an older story still.
The Threads were kept for practical reasons and contained little beyond the required records. Her people did not keep records of the treacheries of day-to-day life. Evidence was a weakness, and any account would have only served the author. Beyond confirming that the other names in the book had lived and died and Ariachne had not, she would find little else in the official sources.
Her service to the Matron wasn’t finished, and it would be a few more cycles before she would have a chance to find out what the Ocularius would reveal and plan to investigate the brood chambers.
Her loss in status had forced her to take on a junior position under her replacement, but Daar’zel plans to regain her lost freedoms were progressing well.
Weakening the wards around the more powerful Matrons’ estates and then provoking attacks had left her without allies and the riots in the slave pits were putting a strain the pain enforcers. The containment barriers were threatening to collapse if not reinforced properly soon.
She had made an excuse to meet the Mistress at the temple today and slipped away afterwards to check the parvis room. The Ocularius was in its place and Daar’zel couldn’t wait to try it.
It was both the reason she wanted her post back so badly and the biggest challenge to getting it. She had never had an assassination fail that wasn’t planned to before. Thinking about the Ocularius and what it meant was occupying too much of her thoughts and she had been sloppy.
Daar’zel knew the viewport to the nave would be active when she entered; she had timed her moment in the hallway for after the Mistress and her companion had passed through; so, seeing the Mistress and Matron near the altar wasn’t a shock.
Her new perspective on the scene after donning the Ocularius and whispering the command word “See” was.
Daar’zel’s vision swam and then cleared into a jeweled view that would give her a headache if she focused on it too closely.
She was gazing through the eyes of the goddess’s golden avatar!!!
The Mistress might as well have been kneeling at Daar’zel’s feet in prayer as the Matron chastised her for her failures.
Was the Ocularius the solution to the problem after all?
She called out the command for Strike and felt a shiver of pleasure as the goddess’s jeweled fangs sank into her rival. Whatever the Keepers might have used it for, it had served her purpose now.
The brood might not have been satisfied with only two victims if she had used Summon and she was not ready to try and deal with them yet. Besides, she might have been forced to take the Matron’s office, and that would have been far too public for her needs.
The skill with which she rewove the wards she had compromised cemented her return. She would remain Mistress of the Wards until she chose otherwise.
Daar’zel was caught in the hunter’s trap before she realized it. Thinking about her plan to enter the brood chambers had distracted her at the wrong moment and the sticky webs had her frozen he in an instant.
The goddess’s children were hungry, and an unwary dark elf was as good of a meal as any. Her servants’ wards did not stop her children, they embodied her will and would hunt as they wished.
The poison on the dagger-like fangs above her glistened as it prepared to strike, then it hesitated, suddenly unsure if she was prey. Every facet of its jeweled eyes focused on her as its legs reached towards her, then lowered, as if bowing to her in obeisance.
The fangs, when they flashed towards her, severed her bonds and left her free. The hunter looked at her once more then scuttled off in search of less confusing prey.
Daar’zel had never doubted that she was uncovering events that had shaped her people, but this was the first time she suspected that she might be part of them.
Undercroft
Daar’zel had no idea why, but her tests confirmed it. No spider would harm her.
She had purposefully wandered alone in the caves that the goddess’s hungriest children haunted, and they avoided her like one of their own. Even those summoned by spell would ignore her order to attack herself. They shivered in indecision until she released them to scatter.
The sacred brood were direct manifestations of the goddess’s will. Safety was far from guaranteed in their lair, but this meant her plan might not be as risky as she had assumed.
An upcoming gifting ceremony provided the opening Daar’zel had been waiting for. She claimed an urgent tour of some of the outer wards to excuse her absence, ensuring her freedom at the critical time. The temple was busy but slipping through the hidden door was something she had become skilled at, and it was a perfect place to execute her plan.
The Ocularius wasn’t the only reason the goddess’s statue chose to act, she had witnessed its wrath while she was in the room and was confident that only herself was aware it was there, but she had used it more than once and if all went well, it would help her today.
She waited until the Drawing ritual was at its peak to intone the word for Summon. The brood had rarely inflicted its fury on acolytes, but the goddess was unpredictable and nothing was impossible.
The brood sprang forth as the ritual failed. Matrons collapsed with residues of unused power and initiates screamed as the horde fed. Before long the altar would be cleared of the living and the brood sated with fresh meat. Daar’zel would never get a better chance to investigate.
She was not welcome in their chambers. They did not approach her as food, but danced at a distance, daring an enemy to chance their reach. They cleared from her path but in barely restrained defiance, not reverence. She understood that they must bend to the power protecting her but would not submit. Whatever the brood were, they were not like her other children.
Had Daar’zel not known from the plans how large the chambers were, it would have seemed an endless maze of cobwebs and bodies hung to cure. The wall she was looking for was in the deepest chamber, obvious to anyone suicidal enough to get that far.
The vaguely rectangular shape in the rough-hewn wall should have been as thickly coated with webs as the rest of the chambers. Anyone determined to find bare wall in the rest of the space would have needed sharp knives and fire to make a dent, but this spot, at the heart of their nest, was as bare as if carved yesterday.
The ring had provided the key before, maybe it would again.
It sprang to life and ran down her had as she touched the space, but it didn’t disappear into a hole and transform into a key. Instead, it ran up the door and began to weave in ghostly silver thread.
The runes it left behind as it returned to her hand shimmered with power but meant nothing until it sank its fangs gently into her finger once more.
She invoked the now clear letters, a command to open in an ancient language that tore from her throat. The cavern wall shimmered and vanished in front of her.
The gaping hole that remained absorbed everything and gave nothing in return.
An outsider would imagine the deep caves to be as dark and silent as the tomb, but its denizens knew that light and sound were ever present for those who knew how to look and listen. The faint glow of luminous fungi and the sounds of countless legs skittering and slithering on rocky walls created a persistent glow and a hum that echoed at the edge of perception.
This was as dark as a hole in the surface of reality, and no sound issued from its depths.
She summoned faerie fire to light her way and stepped through to the top of a steep, ancient stone staircase.
Were the dark elves a people to honour the dead and build a necropolis within their temples this staircase would have been the architect’s dream. Walls lined with elven skulls in such number and orderly precision as to hide whatever shelf they might have rested on in the past.
The walls fell away as she stepped into the main chamber. The scene before her was as out of place in this house of death as the Undercroft was in the temple itself.
A meeting table and chairs occupied the centre of the room. Piles of gear and sundries piled in corners and hung from the carefully stacked bones, as if the living had decided that this space was theirs and the dead could remain as they were.
Whatever preservation spells protected these forgotten spaces, it was still strong, and the supplies looked like as fresh as any in the city above, but even something that strong could not disguise the feeling of air that had not been disturbed in its memory.
Her time was short and questions about the supplies could wait. For now, she needed to see what else might be down here.
Most of the rooms off the main chamber contained equally banal items that showed the living imposing themselves on the dead. Bed chambers and cook rooms. A privy and a common larder, though the fresh meat hanging from the ancient bones was a sight that Daar’zel would not soon forget.
A colorful book lay open on a small desk, its pages filled with illustrations of strange, pale elves. A child’s primer, it seemed. She wouldn’t be able to take much, but what they told their children could teach her a great deal.
She pocketed the small volume and moved deeper into the complex.
The passage had twisted and turned several times as she had explored, finding storerooms and abandoned spaces where the bones of inconvenient occupants had been piled. Daar’zel didn’t realize where the room she entered was until the force of its contents hit her like a physical blow.
Her faery fire lit up the twisted, evil image in the center of the room as the feeling of dread from the unholy symbols around it assaulted her senses. Here were the remains of the last occupants.
A dozen sets of elven bones. Nine piles arranged as if the body had fallen forward from its knees, the two smallest in disordered piles nearby. The last lay in a crumpled heap in front of the rest, a golden dagger still protruding from its ribs.
The symbols were the same as those in the parvis room, but the statue they framed was a horror she could never have dreamed and struggled to describe in her own mind.
If rage and fury were to fuse into righteous hatred, it might approach the outermost fringes of the pure malice clouding the figure from any true perception. The lines of magical energy connecting it to the ceiling appeared to be chains binding it in place until she saw that they wrapped in the vile creature’s claw. A golden tube ended in a blood-stained chute above the gaping jaws and a funnel sat below a deep gash carved into the statue’s thigh.
As she took in the scene she came to a startling revelation. The passage had led her back under the main altar. She would have to come back and map the necropolis to be sure, but she was certain that the altar in front of her sat below the goddess’s golden avatar.
Thinking of the altar reminded her of how uncertain her time was, and she headed back. If the brood would avoid her in future, then she didn’t need to make as much of a scene to come back.
The wall had resealed behind her, but she could hear movement on the main altar as she got near the exit from the brood chambers. The brood were even less impressed with her return through their space, dancing and chittering in frustration around her invisible shield, but they once again provided the moment she needed.
One of the larger spiders tried to run at her and shied off at the last second, skittering out onto the temple floor. Any sign of the brood was sure to clear the temple in an instant after the events of earlier in the day. A scream and a flap of running robes and she was able to sneak out and off to complete the duties she had claimed before.
The close air of the smallest cave systems felt like it flowed along the freshest underground river after the oppressive air of the necropolis, and she needed time to think.
She would have to feign surprise and assess the new power structure quickly to ensure she maintained her freedom. Advancement to the wrong ministry would be disastrous.
The volume she had taken was a child’s history primer and it yielded easily to her translation spells. The contents answered more questions than any scholarly book likely ever could.
In the time before time all elves were caught in the web of lies spun by the Spider. It was a comfortable web, and we accepted our assigned roles in it as Weavers and Trappers, Hunters and Keepers of secret places.
The Trappers kept to their forests and jungles, the Weavers to their cities of light and life. The diggers carved their cities below and the animal races occupied the spaces in between. All were connected to her silken threads and her influence kept all in balance.
Our people, the Spiders Hunters, were charged with stalking the breadth of the world and culling those who threatened her dominion.
In the far reaches of the lands, beyond the ken of her more timid servants, the brave Hunters made a discovery that threated all within her web. A base primate species had evolved under their very noses and had begun to call itself Human.
These vermin lived lives barely longer than the rats in a pantry and bred twice as fast. A generation lived and died in the time an elf would spend on a pleasant diversion.
The Hunters brought their discovery to the Weavers and the Trappers. The infestation of humans had to be destroyed, or they would spread like gangrene over the lands of the People.
The Weavers and the Trappers refused to believe the brave Hunters' warnings that the humans threatened them all. The Trappers disappeared deeper into the woods, and the Weavers sat, confident in their cities and towns, laughing at the brave Hunters’ ominous warnings.
The Hunters trusted their kin, the Weavers. Spider had always maintained balance in the world, and the humans would be brought to heel if she decreed it. They would wait. But they would watch.
Even the wariest Hunter can miss the movements of ants, and the Human infestation spread faster than a plague through a crowded slum.
When the mighty Hunters returned to their brethren with the news and demands that the Humans be exterminated before they threatened the Lands and all below, they discovered their betrayal and the truth behind the Spider’s lies.
The foul Weavers had invited the vermin into the heart of the Lands and allowed the infection to spread unchecked. They taught the Humans to touch Her web and draw on creation itself.
The Hunters demanded answers, and the Weavers spun her lies. They explained cowardice as acceptance and timidity as submission to the balance.
We were the chosen Hunters. Enforcers of Her will and Keepers of the balance. If her other children would not act, her Chosen ones would, and Spider would protect them in their crusade.
Humans not only bred quickly, but they also learned at a furious speed. Their mages had learned to wield the power of the Web to devastating effect.
When Spider’s power reigned destruction on the valiant Hunters, they knew that they had been truly betrayed. The Humans were a blight on the balance, and She would let them spread.
Shattered and alone, Hunted as much as Hunters, we retreated into the depths of the diggers. Our faith had been replaced by righteous fury and our beliefs were now betrayals.
Whether our need called the Dark One or he was created out of divine justice for our People alone we do not know, but in the depths he appeared before us and offered us a light to guide us to our Redemption.
He revealed to our wise leaders the true depth of the Spider’s lies. Her web of magic, the symbol of “balance” was only ever meant to maintain the balance of her Power. She hoarded and controlled creation to manipulate with the flick of a thread. She did not share her Power, she bound their wills to its web.
There was no balance. There was only power and those strong enough to wield it.
Spider’s crimes had left our people weakened and with no home, but our resolve was stronger than any challenge. We were no longer solo Hunters stalking the world and watching. We were united and our purpose was clear.
The deep diggers and animal races were as complicit in her lies as the Weavers themselves, and they would be the first to submit to a new power.
Together the Hunters and the Dark One forged a new empire under the earth. Their fury and righteous rage feeding the Dark One’s power that protected them in return.
The path to empire is slow, even in elven terms and our time below so long that we came to resemble Spider’s other forgotten children, the pale and lanky Hunters of the deepest caves.
When the People were ready and our might unquestioned, the Dark One judged our people worthy of Redemption and revealed the plan that would bring us out of the caves and into our rightful place as masters of all the Lands.
The stealthiest of the People infiltrated the world above and saw that the Human infestation had spread unchecked, and the world above was not as they knew it.
The Weavers and Trappers had abandoned the Lands to their predations. Humans used the power of the Web with wanton ambition and had grown gods as selfish and short lived as they themselves.
The Dark One would use their own greed to bring them to kneel at our feet where they belong. Their foolish gods and power-hungry mages could be turned to our cause, offered Her power unrestrained but under His dominion. They would aid us in binding their own Source.
Our holy crusade against the Spider and her dearest servants, the Weavers, was won in glorious battles and the foul beast was bound.
The Weaver’s, who had accepted her lies without question, were bound in her prison with her, unable to question ever again.
The Dark One harvested her threads of silken Power and created the Weave, a web of power, not lies and guided the People to their rightful place.
You, young one, have the honour of ensuring that the foul Beast remains bound and Her sycophants properly enslaved. If the Dark One blesses you with an end to your task, you will thank him with your sacrifice on his altar.
Until now, Daar’zel had looked for answers because there were questions. One word in the primer shook her to the core because Daar’zel now understood that she had no idea what questions to even ask.
Weavers
The sensation of dread that crawled up Daar’zel’s spine was unfamiliar. Cold, insidious, and wrong. Uncertainty. She did not like it.
Everything she thought she knew about herself, and her world shattered under the weight of a single word in a child’s schoolroom text.
Weaver of the Sacred Threads was the title listed in the Archives for the first Matriarch of the goddess. Early records showed an array of self imposed, grandiose titles for Matriarchs, so Daar’zel had thought nothing of the title at the time, but the words were too much alike for coincidence.
If her people were the descendants of the Weavers, then the history carved into the very structure of her society was a lie. The Gospel of the Abyss, inscribed into the living rock of the Pillars at the entrance to every temple to the goddess, was a fable crafted by jailors to quell prisoners into submission.
The Pillars told of her people’s betrayal, their choice to dwell in the deeps, and the spider goddess who found them in the darkness, whispering her secrets and granting them strength.
In this simple primer, the story of her people belonged to others entirely. Elves who had lived long before the oldest memories of her race. Her people, the Weavers, and the goddess they worshipped had been cast down, bound to this place, cursed into barbarity and servitude.
Had she been standing in the true roots of the temple? Had its altars once been consecrated in the name of the foul beast she had seen below?
She would find no more answers here. The Undercroft would need to be explored further.
Her current position gave her a certain freedom, but it was a controlled and monitored freedom. Arranging enough time to investigate the Undercroft properly without arousing suspicion would take planning.
Entering through the brood chambers no longer required a distraction. She had tested the spiders’ willingness to attack her, and they had shown they would not, even when shaking with hunger and fury. But she needed time to make a thorough study of the space and its contents. A week or two would give her time to learn whatever the Undercroft had to teach.
She had considering using the Ocularius to create another opportunity, but she needed more than access, she needed time. Had it not been several cycles without an opening, she might not have risked the consequences that she did.
When the statue struck and killed the High Matriarch, she took the chance to create the window she would need.
The death of a high-ranking Matriarch always caused intrigue within the clergy as the remaining Matrons jockeyed for power, something that Daar’zel had largely remained out of, but this time she spread rumours of her own ambitions.
When she received the report of a minor disturbance to the wards in a remote outpost, she knew it was a trap and pretending to fall for it would give her an excuse for her absence. Returning with an announcement of a successful mission would surprise and humiliate whoever had crafted it and they wouldn’t dare try to expose her lies.
Her would-be assassin didn’t expect her to make it to the source of the supposed disturbance. She anticipated the failure of her patrol troupe to report as planned. The excuse of an illness and promise for a replacement at the first outpost was superficial and delivered by a nervous intermediary.
Daar’zel was Mistress of the Wards, and she knew every weakness in the city’s defenses. As soon as she was out of sight of the gates, she disappeared down a side passage with protections she could disable and slip through unnoticed. Whoever had been sent to waylay her would be hard pressed to explain how she had vanished and would be as likely as not to claim success.
The temple grounds were just as easy to navigate unseen. She knew the rhythms of its ritual and a quick check through the Ocularius ensured the altar area was clear. She slipped through the shadows into the depths of the brood chamber and retrieved the supplies that she had stashed there in preparation for this moment.
The Undercroft was unchanged, but accelerating the growth of glowing fungal clusters in the main rooms restored it to a disturbing state of normalcy. Daar’zel setup her camp in one of the side rooms previously used as a bed chamber. She couldn’t help but wonder at the age of the stuffing in the simple mattress. The mushroom caps inside felt like they had been picked a week before. Ancient mattresses were fine for sleeping on, but she might avoid the hank of meat in the storeroom. As fresh as it looked, eating something older than her entire civilization was not something she intended to chance.
Mapping out the chambers confirmed one of her suspicions. The layout of the Undercroft placed the altar at the end of the passage directly under the golden statue in the main temple.
She hadn’t been able to get near the altar itself. The closer she got to the skeletons lying in prayer before it, the more nauseous she became. Her attempt to use a protection spell had worked for a moment, but the wave of illness that overcame her when it failed almost caused her to collapse on the spot. She had barely crawled away, and it was hours before she could regain her feet and make it back to her camp.
It started as a sound so far below the range of any beings hearing that it could only be felt by the soul, a pulsing beat of slow, immense power.
Had she not grown used to the mausoleum silence of the necropolis, she might never have noticed it, but the sound pulled her out of the latest supply reports she had been searching for clues.
Daar’zel could feel it growing in power, not so much louder, as deeper, more essential and undeniable. It had to be coming from the altar, the rest of the Undercroft had shown to be far too mundane for something like this.
The closer she got to the altar, the more her entire being objected to her plan. By the time she reached the door to the altar room, the sound had settled into her bones, resonating beneath her skin and forcing her to fight through waves of nausea to continue forward.
Ribbons of crimson ran from the ceiling to the spout above the abominations open mouth and fresh blood was cascading down its gullet. The foul heart inside drank in the life it was fed and beat stronger in return.
Daar’zel wondered afterwards if it would have been better if the altar had shattered her mind or killed her as it must have been intended to do so long ago, than witness the truth of what she saw when the heartbeat reached its final crescendo.
A shining black goo began to ooze from the open wound carved so perfectly into the statues thigh and collect in the funnel below. She had seen that viscous death many times before, but drawn from the fangs of the living goddess, not from the leg of some ancient evil beast. As it gathered it flowed up into the crystal tubes, a line of darkness threaded through the scarlet blood.
The awful sound was already growing quieter as she retreated to the main chamber to cast a quick divination. It was easy to lose track of the days without the timekeepers’ marks and her spell confirmed her suspicions.
The Matriarchs were in the middle of the Drawing ceremony and their ritual was calling this perverted substance, not the pure venom of the mistress. Something had protected her from the Ichor that the masters of this crypt had created, and she would know why.
A quick check after it had subsided completely, and she had recovered from its’ effects showed the scene she had seen when she had found the room. The altar sat in hulking menace among clear crystal tubes and shining golden fixtures. The only reminder of its function, a freshness to traces of blood around the spigots mouth.
