Phiralei crouched low beneath the tangle of pine and ash, fingers brushing the soft impressions in the moss where Bella’s bare feet had passed. The trail wasn’t fresh, but it still spoke to her. A broken stalk, a pressed heel; she could almost feel the girl’s weight lingering on the dirt.
A shiver took her. Not cold or fear, but something deeper. It slid down her spine like water, standing the hair on the back of her neck, tightening her breath and stealing the steadiness from her limbs. For a heartbeat, everything in the forest fell silent. No birds. No wind. No self. It was as though something had passed through her. Claiming something quiet and ancient inside her and moving on. She blinked. Swallowed. The sensation was already vanishing, like waking from a dream with the taste of a nightmare still on her tongue.
She rose slowly. Her eyes scanned the forest, but there was nothing, just green and stillness, and a sense of unease. Something had changed.
“Can I help you?” Bella asked, staff in hand, her voice calm but edged. She stood ankle-deep at the river’s edge, soaked to the bone and shivering from her tumble through the cold current. Her wet hair clung to her cheeks in long strands. Across from her, the man raised both hands beside his round, smiling face in a gesture of peace.
He had curly copper hair that peeked out beneath a wide-brimmed hat, and soft brown eyes that flicked toward her without daring to linger. His clothes were plain, homespun, the sort worn by farmers or travelling merchants. A simple wooden staff leaned against his shoulder, not unlike her own, and she marked the dagger tucked into his belt with a flicker of instinctive caution.
“No harm!” he called, bowing his head slightly as he took a careful step back. “Mean no harm, swear it. Saw you … swept under … I come, I help.” His voice was gentle, coaxing. Aside from a few nervous glances toward her eyes, he kept his gaze fixed politely at her feet.
She had seen this before. At the Castle of the Lost Moon, when her family had first arrived, the staff had treated them warmly, laughing, sharing stories, and sneaking them sweet rolls from the kitchen. They had been humane. Kind. Until the Lord made his intentions known. After that, the warmth vanished. The same servants spoke to her only when summoned, and even then, with bowed heads and trembling voices. They called her Mistress now as if the word itself was a warding charm. They wouldn’t meet her eyes.
She remembered asking a maid why, what had changed.
The girl had bowed lower, voice shaking. “Forgive me, Mistress. I mean no harm.” As though even kindness was a punishable offence.
Bella shifted her grip on the staff. This man had that same look, afraid of what she might do if confronted, but it wasn’t fear alone that set her teeth on edge. It was the shape of his voice, too smooth around the edges, like a story practiced more than once. The way his eyes flicked to the left before settling on hers, like he was remembering where the truth ended and the lie began. It wasn’t his fear that bothered her. It was the performance of it.
“Have camp, yes?” the man said, gesturing toward the distant treeline. “Food. Fire. Dry your clothes, mmm?” His grin was easy, almost apologetic. He beckoned with a limp-wristed wave, hobbling a few steps forward. “You come. Warm up.”
Bella didn’t move. The staff remained steady in her grip, her weight low, balanced and ready.
“Cold water, warm fire,” he said again, soft as a lullaby. “Come.”
He turned again and began to hobble off. Bella watched him cautiously. There was something wrong in the gait, too steady for pain. She caught it in the rhythm: a hitch that never varied, a timing too precise. Not the stumble of a wounded man. The choreography of one pretending to be. His staff barely touched the ground when he shifted weight. The illusion peeled away like wet bark.
Still, she lingered. Just a moment longer. The air was still, swollen with moisture and the green hush of summer. And yet her breath fogged in front of her lips. Small. Brief. Like a warning only her body could read. Her bare torso was slick with river water, gooseflesh raised despite the thick, humid air.
The warmth the sun should have offered on her dark skin never came. It wasn’t just the river’s cold that clung to her. It was like the water had taken something from her and left something else behind. She flexed her fingers, rubbed at her arms, and stared after the man’s retreating form. He hadn’t looked back once. Confident she’d follow. Maybe he knew how cold she’d be. Perhaps he was counting on it.
She bent, picked up her soaked pack, and slung it across her back with a grunt. The fabric slapped wetly against her spine. Her staff tapped once against the ground, steadying her. She took one step forward. Then another. She sighed, low, resigned, then followed.
The Cardy River murmured just out of reach, a lazy silver thread curling between wildflower banks and golden grasses. The air was thick and damp, and each breath clung to the lungs like moss. The man knelt in the dirt, hunched and glistening with sweat, his tunic stuck to his back in dark patches. His right eye was nearly swollen shut, his mouth bloodied, eyes glassy with pain and spite. His quarterstaff lay snapped a few strides away, clean break, one end still scorched. Phiralei crouched across from him, posture loose, dangerous, like a cat toying with a mouse; she hadn’t yet decided to kill.
“You’ve got gall,” she said, brushing a copper curl from his cheek with the flat of her blade. “To drag a Wildborne into the grasslands and think no one would come looking.”
Her voice stayed steady, but something hard and frantic twisted under the surface. She didn’t have time for games. Not now. Not after losing the trail, again. She rose slowly, blade still in hand, and let her eyes slide toward the man’s pet weasel hanging from a nearby tree, trembling and watching with wide black eyes. “You’re going to tell me where you hid her.” She took a slow breath, tasting clover and copper in the air. “Or I’ll carve it out of you and your pet one gram at a time.”
The man gave a wet chuckle, more nerves than defiance. “Left her?!? Gods, I should have run the moment she stepped out of the water.”
He described standing ankle-deep in it, eyes tracing the ripples, when she arrived: a figure like a breeze, sun-baked limbs and darker eyes, draped in mossy greens and ringed with seeds.
“She asked me what I was doing to the water,” The man muttered now, eyes slipping to his keeper’s. “Like it mattered. Like it was hers.”
Phiralei didn’t speak.
“I told her I was just cleaning my knife. She said I was lying. Said the grass knew.” He snorted. “Said the water knew.” He said Bella had circled him once, barefoot in the mud, as if sniffing him out. He'd felt it then; whatever she was, it wasn’t kind. Not fully. Not to simple men like him.
“She said I could walk with her or walk away. That’s all. No threats, no bargains. She didn’t need to.”
Phiralei crouched next to him, the blade idling between her fingers like a question she already knew the answer to. “And you chose to follow.”
“I didn’t choose,” He spat, then coughed. “She took me. That’s what they do, spirits, witches, whatever the fuck she is.”
"Mud Monster." Phiralei thought to herself, the old slur slipping unbidden to the front of her mind. It had come like a reflex, sharp and sour, rising from some dark root buried deep in her childhood. She winced, but didn’t let it show. Not in front of this pathetic turd.
The term was older than her, older than the laws that pretended to make things equal. Faelkin, half-animal, half-human, all mistrusted. They were tolerated in the cities, but rarely welcomed. In the border towns and noble courts, they were property at worst and chased away like pests at best. Even among mercenaries and wardens, the kind who prided themselves on being above old superstitions, the prejudice still simmered. Slurs whispered behind backs. Accusations that certain blood ran too hot, too wild.
She remembered her parents at the dinner table, her father with his wine-stained teeth, her mother brushing crumbs from her silk sleeves.
"They don’t behave like us," her father once said. "They’re closer to livestock than people."
"You can always spot the ears, even if they try to hide them," her mother added. "Keep your voice firm and your hand on your weapon."
Phiralei had laughed along back then. Just a child, eager to please, eager to belong. Until she’d realized they meant Bella. Bella, who smelled like sage and river water, danced barefoot in the moonlight and whispered stories to the trees. Bella, who kissed her lips once in the dark, before confessing her love.
It hadn’t occurred to her, not then, not really. Not until later, when she was older, more travelled, and more seasoned. When Phiralei had brought in another of her kind. "Ugh! A Muddy?" The guard had complained, pinching his nose against some imagined stink. “Can’t you just kill it?, I’ll pay you double."
It had all come back in a sickening rush, the quickness of Bella’s reflexes, the subtle twitch in her pupils when startled, the way she moved as if the wind itself warned her of danger. She hadn't wanted to believe it. Not because she thought it made Bella dangerous, but because it meant she had failed to see her, truly.
Now here she was, years later, scouring the grasslands with a blade in her hand, chasing someone whose trust she had once tasted like springwater on her tongue. Someone who had laughed beside her fire and leaned into her silence without asking for anything more. And she, Gods, she’d answered that closeness with distance, with silence, with the shield of duty. She’d told herself it was protection. More likely, she felt, it was cowardice.
She clenched her jaw, staring down at the trembling man. “Where is she?” she growled.
“She got into my head. She made me see things.”
“Where?” Phiralei asked again, this time more gently, so soft it sounded like something breaking. “Where is she now?”
The suspicious man spoke incessantly as they approached a small fabric tent next to a smoking campfire. Bella, who followed some distance behind, had tuned him out to a low, constant drone. She was beckoned forward by the bold scents of burning wood and simmering coffee, now. She felt cold to her core, like it was in her bones. She shivered uncontrollably, all goosebumps and chattering teeth. She huddled close to the small fire pit, arms wrapped around her knees, shoulders hunched as if she could fold herself into the heat. Her wet hair clung to her cheeks and neck, and rivulets of water dripped from her skin, sizzling faintly when they kissed the firestones. Steam rose in fragile threads from her body. Her dark skin, usually warm and radiant, looked dull in the firelight, shadowed by cold, with traces of purple where the blood had receded. She turned her hands toward the flame and let out a breath that rattled.
“Makes you tired, that cold,” he murmured, voice low and slow, each word rolling out like it had weight. “Sleepy. Makes the eyelids heavy.”
The flames crackled softly in the hush between them. Bella barely heard the sound of movement, the faint scuff of boots on damp dirt, the whisper of wood being gathered from a pile she hadn’t noticed nearby. She didn’t see him lean in to feed the fire, but it swelled under his hand, licking higher, brighter.
“Warm fire,” he said gently, almost a whisper now. “Make you cozy.”
She blinked, slower than before. Her hands, still cupped near the flame, ached less. Her thoughts drifted like mist off the river. She didn’t see him retrieve the mug either, not from the green stump by the tent, but suddenly it was in his hand, brimming with steam. dirty, bitter, alive.
He offered it without a word, and she took it, fingers brushing his only briefly, lifting it to her lips with no more resistance than a leaf floating downstream. She didn’t thank him. She just drank. Deep, greedy sips. It burned down her throat in the best way.
“Warm drink,” he said, as if reading the thought. “Warm bones.” She nodded faintly. The fire danced. Somewhere, deep down, her instincts stirred, but the coffee was hot, it eased the sting in her skin, and the man’s voice had the calm cadence of a bedtime song. “Warm fire,” he said gently. “Make you cozy.”
She should have questioned it. That word, cozy, didn’t sound right in his mouth. But the warmth was creeping into her spine now, pulling the tension from her shoulders, softening her breath. Bella nodded faintly. The firelight danced across her bare shoulders, chasing the chill in shallow waves, but something was off. Her pulse was still slow; her thoughts were slower.
And a scent, just under the coffee and smoke. Wet soil or fungus. Not unpleasant, but not right. She shifted slightly, blinking too slowly, and the trees near the edge of camp seemed… farther than before. The tent looked too still. The man’s shadow flickered, then held still a second too long. She wanted to frown, to question, to raise a hedge between them, but the coffee was hot. Her fingers ached.
Phiralei crouched over the shallow footprint pressed into the soft dirt beside the camp’s edge. Barefoot. Narrow. The heel is light, the toes wide-set. She recognized the shape instantly. Her stomach turned.
“You said she was gone,” Phiralei murmured, her voice like frost.
He flinched and waved his arms around as if to show her lack of presence. “She is gone.”
She rose slowly, eyes narrowing to slits.
He lifted both hands, palms out, like she was a startled beast. “ I-I tried to help her,” he stammered, voice low and quick, “She came through here two days past. Alone. Looked like she'd nearly drowned, mud up to her knees, shivering, no pack, no clothes.” He glanced down, his fingers fidgeting at the hem of his tunic. “I gave her fire, blankets. Let her sit. Fed her the last of my smoked eel. She didn’t say much, just watched me with those glass-green eyes. Like she was listening to something I couldn’t hear.”
He gave a forced, nervous laugh. “I think she was… sick, maybe. Not right. Muttering to herself. Something ‘bout dwarves, or roots,” he twisted his hands on either side of his head. “She was in her head.”
Phiralei stepped closer, silent as a storm cloud.
The man swallowed. “Left! In the night. Took my knife. Scared my weasel ‘most to death!” He nodded toward the footpath, eyes darting back to hers. “That way.”
The words lingered in the air like a bad spell. Phiralei looked back at the print. Too fresh for three days. Still sharp-edged.
He pointed down the footpath again, more urgently this time. “She went that way. I watched her vanish into the trees, swear on Essan’s little soul.”
But Phiralei didn’t move. Not that way. Her gaze slid in the opposite direction, toward the stand of trees behind the lean-to. Not toward the path, too clean, too obvious, but toward the quiet places predators preferred. She walked slowly, scanning the undergrowth, letting the silence speak.
Just past a low rise, the grass changed. Tall blades flattened in strange patterns, some crushed under a boot, others folded unnaturally, bent as if someone had fallen, or been forced low. Ten paces farther, she found it.
Drag marks. Two parallel grooves in the soil, just wide enough for a body. One side deeper, like the weight had shifted or resisted. Clumps of torn moss trailed in the furrow, wet with dark loam beneath.
Phiralei crouched and pressed her fingers into the marks. The soil was still damp beneath the top layer. Still soft. Still recent. She looked over her shoulder, slowly.
The man squatted at the edge of the clearing, fidgeting with his sleeve. “Is that where she fell?” he offered, too quickly. “She was so weak, I just forgot.”
Phiralei rose without a word.
Bella felt herself being lifted, arms sliding beneath her back and knees, gentle, careful. The ground fell away.
“Mama?” She was a child again, small, feverish, cradled in the crook of her mother’s arms as they crossed the moonlit hallway toward her room. She remembered the warm press of her mother’s cheek against her temple, the smell of crushed chamomile and river soap, the way each step rocked her gently as if the world itself meant to sing her to sleep. Her mother had whispered.
“Shhh.” Rocking roughly as she walked. Her voice was unusually low. "Warm bed. Dry clothes. Shhh, now.”
Bella’s brow twitched. She shifted in her mother’s arms. The dream ebbed like a soft tide, her mother’s soft robe brushing her skin, the worn fabric of a burlap shirt against her cheek. Mama smelled of river clay and fresh-cut bay leaves, or was it compost and fungus? She swayed in that familiar dance that wound about the furniture in the narrow hallway, one foot dragging slightly, as though overburdened. The soft song of her whispered voice, filled with the heavy rasp of years drawing on a pipe. “Almost there, sleepy head.”
Bella whimpered, a sound she didn’t mean to make. She pushed her eyes to flutter open, but couldn’t hold it. All around her, the dark shifted. She heard others. Quiet. Hushed. Whimpering. Someone was sobbing into their skin. Her brow furrowed. Something was wrong. Her mother never cried like that. Bella shifted, trying to lift her head, but her body felt sunk, heavy, as if sleep had tied weights to her limbs. She wanted to wake. Wanted to see. But her eyes refused her.
“It’s only a nightmare,” Her mother had told her as a child. So, half-lost in sleep, she whispered the words she’d been taught as a child, the old prayer curling like steam from her lips.
“Leaf and vine, root and bloom… keep me safe within the gloom.” The darkness pulsed, but she clung to the chant. She felt herself being lowered gently onto a cold, dirty mattress. Instinctively, her hands pulled a blanket up to her chin, threadbare but warm, smelling of lavender and smoke. Just like home. Somewhere, the weeping still echoed, distant but sharp, and Bella stirred uneasily beneath the knitted quilts.
Phiralei shoved him hard between the shoulders, sending him stumbling forward into the yawning black of the cave mouth. He caught himself against the damp stone with a grunt, curling instinctively around the trembling form of his familiar. The ginger weasel let out a thin, pained whine, its leg bent at an unnatural angle, bone broken and left untended. He cradled it protectively, muttering half-formed excuses through cracked lips.
The moment she stepped into the cave, the stench hit her, sweat, fear, and rot, heavy and close. The air clung to her skin like breath that didn’t belong to her. Her eyes adjusted quickly in the gloom, and what she saw made her grip tighten on her blade.
Cages. Four of them, arranged in a harsh line against the stone wall, each barely larger than a travelling trunk turned upright. Their doors were chained shut, not to keep animals out, but to keep something precious in. No bedding. No comfort. Just damp dirt and rusted iron. In the first cage sat a girl with dark curls matted to her forehead, face bloodied but unbowed.
Next to her, hunched and whispering in a language only she could hear, was a flaxen-haired girl with trembling hands. Her fingers were wrapped in makeshift bandages, and the way she flinched at every sound said more than any words. Her mouth moved constantly, silently, a prayer or plea, or both.
In the third cage, a redheaded child no older than twelve curled into the corner of her cell, her body shaking with each sob she tried to stifle. Her dress was tattered lace and festival colours, now caked with ash and mud. Raised welts striped her arms and legs. When the man cleared his throat, she whimpered.
And at the end—utter stillness.
A girl sat motionless, staring straight ahead with hollow eyes that didn’t blink. Her lips were chapped, her skin greyed, and her limbs hung loose like a doll left in the rain. She didn’t speak. Didn’t move. Her dress was stiff with dried blood. Even the others didn’t look at her.
And all around, webbing. Thick ropes of it stretched across the ceiling and corners, wound around roots and stone like the remnants of a nest abandoned. The silk caught what little light crept in, glistening faintly like dew and bone. Something had lived here, something large.
Phiralei’s jaw clenched. She turned slowly to look back at the man, who sat hunched over his broken familiar like a penitent man before an altar of lies.
“I’m going to ask you one last time,” she said, voice low and blade-drawn. “Where is she?”
“She did this!” The man rasped, eyes wide, breath shallow. “The green one. The witch.” He pointed a shaking hand toward the glistening strands of web about the room, cradling his broken weasel tighter. “She came from the forest like a curse, I swear it, speaking to shadows, weaving filth into the air.” He looked up at Phiralei with trembling sincerity. “She cursed this place. Took them, hurt them. I tried to help! I did!”
“Liar!” From one of the cages, a harsh voice cracked through the silence. Phiralei turned. The speaker was a young woman with blood on her sleeve and fury in her eyes. She gripped the bars of her cage with white knuckles, teeth bared. She clutched a stone in one fist. Her lip was split and her arms bore the yellowing bruises of restraints, but her voice hadn’t broken. Phiralei saw the spark in her, that hard refusal to be small.
“He drugged her!” she shouted. “Dragged her in here like the rest of us!” The others stirred now, sobbing harder, some murmuring agreement.
“Where is she now?” Phiralei took a step closer.
The girl pointed upward, her hand shaking. Phiralei followed her gaze up into the shadows above, where the ceiling narrowed into a dome of stone and silk. There, high in the webs, a shape hung suspended. Slender. Still.
There was an explosion of green and brown spores as Bella stepped into Siodore, her sanctuary, her sacred space, the threshold between form and freedom. But this time, she stumbled.
The ground rose to meet her far too fast. Her knees struck moss with a dull thud. Her palms sank into the cool softness, but her arms gave way, trembling. The humid air, once a balm, felt thick and cloying, and her breath caught in her throat like smoke. She collapsed fully, her cheek pressing into the fragrant floor of the Vale. The glowbugs above flickered uncertainly in the low, wistful fog. The moonlight turned pale on her skin, and the trees whispered, but they did not reach for her like they used to.
At its center, still as silence, atop the throne of stone and flower and vine, crouched a giant Wolf Spider, so dark she was almost invisible in the shadows. She watched Bella, unmoving. Then the goddess descended with quiet purpose, her many eyes glittering like dew on obsidian.
Bella felt it, felt her, before she saw her. Each of those long, bristled legs landed in soft rhythm, a dance of weightless dread. The spider’s massive body gleamed in the moonlight, ink-black and glistening, and all eight of her eyes watched Bella’s prone form with eerie stillness.
The poison he'd slipped her was still in Bella’s blood, and clashing with the wild magic that tried to hold her steady. Her stomach churned. Her eyes swam. She tried to speak her plea again, but her tongue was too heavy. The goddess lowered her front legs, bringing her massive head close. So close, Bella could feel the whisper of air between their faces.
The spider sniffed her. A slow intake. As if determining whether this dying thing in her nest was a sacrifice… or supper.
Bella wanted to speak, to cry out, to rise, but she could only tremble. The goddess tilted her head, one limb gently brushing Bella’s arm as if testing her ripeness.
And from her, something unseen shuddered, a pulse that did not belong, still echoing. A ripple, not of this place, tore through the Vale like an echo off-key. It didn’t ride on wind or song, it bruised the air. Bella gasped, her body reacting before her mind could name it. The glowbugs flickered erratically. The vines recoiled. Even the spider halted mid-step, one leg raised, as if the space around them had curdled.
Talia's knees throbbed, pressed to her chest for gods-knew-how-many hours. The cage was barely wider than a wine barrel, iron-bound and wood-planked, meant to confine a body, not contain a life. Her back ached, her shoulders burned, and her muscles had begun their slow rebellion against stillness. Her limbs pulsed with the ache of stilled fury. She’d lost track of days, but not of details. She knew the other girls by the way they breathed in the dark.
The flaxen-haired one two cages down, Mira, had once sung lullabies to herself in a language Talia didn’t know, until her voice turned to muttering. She whispered the same three names every night before falling into restless sleep. Talia suspected they were siblings. Or children. Sometimes Mira woke screaming and wouldn’t stop until Rotmouth banged on her cage with a shovel.
The redhead, Sella, was the youngest. Couldn’t have been more than twelve. Her festival dress was still bright in patches where blood and grime hadn’t swallowed the colour. She didn’t speak anymore. Not since her second punishment. But sometimes, when Rotmouth was away, she curled her fingers through the bars toward Talia’s hand, and they just breathed together until the silence felt less sharp.
And then there was Ilen. The girl in the farthest cage. The one who spoke no more. Talia didn’t know what happened to her, only that she had been here the longest and hadn’t always been like that. Mira said Ilen had spoken softly, kindly in the first nights. She’d tried to comfort Mira when the lash marks were fresh. She told stories about her village and the boy she was promised to. But then something happened, a night of muffled screams and crying. After that, Ilen spoke very little and moved less.
Talia did her best to massage the ache from her muscles when the bastard came back. She called him Rotmouth, because he hovered over the girls at night, with his brown teeth and the rotten breath, spitting and slobbering lies and horrors upon them. Poking them with sticks and those long, nasty fingers through the bars.
She heard a grunt as a shadow darkened the entrance to the cave. The mangie weasel entered first, prancing jubulantly around Rotmouth and the young woman he dragged behind him.. He followed, hunched and mumbling that disgusting mantra meant to lull the vulnerable to sleep. “Warm fire … cosy bed … sleepy girl”
Talia stiffened, biting back a grunt as her ribs protested the movement. The moment the bastard ducked through the bough-draped entrance, dragging the limp brown-skinned girl behind him like a sack of wet laundry, Talia was already twisting to see. Her ribs protested, her knees screamed, but her fire surged higher.
The woman being pulled across the floor was petite and strange, barefoot, barely clothed, her skin dark and glistening. Her hair hung in wet ropes down her back, and her lips were faintly parted in unconscious breath. She looked more statue than person, still, too still. Talia wondered then how she had looked when she’d been dragged in the same way.
“Rotmouth!” she snarled, her voice low and bitter. “You rodent. Get your filthy paws off her!”
He didn’t look at her. He never did when he brought in new ones. His eyes stayed fixed on the prize. Always. He brought her to the middle of the room and laid her down with a sort of gentleness that made Talia’s stomach twist. No ropes. No gags. No bars. Just a slow, deliberate arrangement of limbs, smoothing her hair back like she was a sleeping child, or an offering.
“Hey, I’m talkin’ to you, slug-licker,” she hissed, rattling her cage as much as her cramping muscles allowed. “You drag her in here like the others, and I swear by the Hollow Gods, I’ll chew your face off the second these bars come loose.”
“Slug-licker.” He snickered. “Guess what that makes you, little pet?” He laid the dark-skinned woman down in the center of the cave with eerie care, brushing her hair from her face like he was tucking in a child, or an offering.
“Get your hands off her!” Talia growled. She pressed her forehead to the bars, eyes narrowed. “Maybe she’ll do what I should’ve, the first night you got too close.”
His face twitched. A small tell. He straightened slowly, muttered something to the weasel like a lullaby, and turned toward the cave’s exit without a glance back. The weasel, whom he called Essan, scurried over toward her. Talia bared her teeth and hissed after him: “Coward! Parasite!.” She knew what came next, and she was ready. The weasel, now atop her cage, began pissing in her hair. She wormed her arm up inside the tight cage and grabbed the weasel by the balls.
Essan squealed and tried to bite her, but she pulled her fist down as the weasel screamed and struggled to crawl away.
“Stupid Bitch!” Rotmouth picked up a shovel and rushed over to her, banging on the cage. “I’ll sell you to an Orcish brothel!” She made herself small but refused to release the beast, determined to neuter the little monster, until the man drew his dagger and jabbed it into her hand. The weasel scurried up into his arms, whimpering.
“Kiss his balls better, pedo,” she yelled, weasel piss running down her face. Then, without a word, he left, muttering into the weasel’s fur, disappearing through the curtain of hanging branches that served as the cave’s door.
Talia kept her eyes locked on the dark-skinned woman even after Rotmouth vanished into the sunlight. Something about her was … too still. She didn’t look dead. But she didn’t look alive either. Then the girl’s breath hitched. Her chest rose unevenly, then fell with a shudder that rolled down her limbs. Her fingers twitched once, curled into loose fists, then went still again.
“Hey!” Talia called out, trying to wake her. Hoping to get the girl to run for help. “Hey, wake up.”
Talia felt something then. It began as a tremor in the silence. Not a breeze. No shift in the stone or dirt. Just a sudden tightness in the chest, like the air itself forgot how to move for a moment. Ilen felt it first. The little broken girl, silent for days, slack-jawed and staring, twitched. Then convulsed. Her arms flailed against the cage bars, her back arched, and then came the sound. A scream, long and raw. It wasn’t a cry for help; it was the scream of something burning from the inside out. Talia jerked so hard she slammed her elbow against her cage wall. Mira whimpered. Sella pressed both hands to her ears and curled inward, eyes shut tight.
“Ilen?” Talia gasped. “What the fuck?” But then she felt it too. A pulse, like a shiver that didn’t touch the skin. It entered. A vibration behind the eyes, a thrum through the teeth. It rattled Talia’s heart in its cage and sent chills peeling down her spine despite the humid air. Her vision doubled, and for a heartbeat, she felt ancient trees, forgotten ruins, and the voice of a god with no face.
And then it passed. Gone, like a tide pulled back to sea.
Ilen collapsed, still screaming, until her voice cracked into gasps. Then she went silent again. Worse than before. Talia was panting. Sweat gathered at her brow. Her fingernails dug crescent moons into her palms. Talia didn’t know what, but something had happened.
A few feet away, a low, wet crack sounded from beneath the girl’s shoulder blades. Talia jerked back from the bars. Then something tore free from her skin. It pushed out from the base of her spine like a curved blade, green and glistening. Another followed, then another, long and barbed and twitching as if feeling the air for the first time.
Talia stared, breath trapped in her throat, too terrified to blink.
The girl’s back arched, and her mouth opened - not in a scream, but a soundless exhale, like pain she didn’t have the strength to voice. Her legs spasmed. Her arms cracked at the elbows, distending briefly before snapping back into place with inhuman motions.
Her face twitched. Once. Twice. And then her jaw cracked, dislocated, then rearranged.
Talia watched, frozen, her back pressed to the bars, heart hammering.
Another groan. More like a sob this time. Then resolve. The woman scraped at the dirt, but seemed weak and uncoordinated. She heaved her weight upright, not like a person rising from sleep, more like a puppet pulled upright by a dozen invisible strings, but up she came. The girl stood. Not entirely human, her hips twisted with imbalance. Taller than she should’ve been, her limbs trembling with every heartbeat. Her head hung low, dreads plastered to her damp face, until it jerked up too fast and fixed its uneven eyes forward. She wasn’t breathing hard, barely at all. Then she moved, slow and deliberate.
Talia whispered to herself, a curse or a prayer, she wasn’t sure which. Her stomach twisted, but she couldn’t look away. She wasn’t sure if the woman was dying or moulting. The red-haired girl in the last cage let out a soft, pitiful sound. A mewl. Then nothing. Talia glanced at her. Ilen’s eyes were open, but not seeing. Her fingers twitched once, then stilled.
Talia didn’t breathe.
The dark-skinned girl shifted again, slow and twitching. Her limbs moved like they were still unsure of gravity. Her head lolled, one lock clinging to the side of her face, and then her eyes blinked in slow sequence. Not searching. Scanning. She didn’t walk so much as glide softly across the stone as she approached the cages. Her arms hung slack at her sides, fingers twitching, legs barely touching the ground. Her head tilted slightly with every step.
She stopped in front of Mira. The blonde girl whimpered, curling tighter into herself, whispering frantic nothings. She leaned in close. Too close. Her breath steamed against the bars. Mira didn’t scream, but only because the sound had drowned inside her already.
Then she moved on. Past Sella, who’d gone rigid with terror. Past Ilen, who remained motionless, eyes wide and empty. And finally… to Talia.
Talia gritted her teeth, fists clenched. “Help us,” she growled. Bella’s head twitched at the voice. Her face didn’t change expression, but one of her eyes narrowed on her. Focused. Then tilted her head again, just a hair, like she didn’t understand, or like she was trying to remember.
“Don’t move,” Phiralei said, her voice low and final. The man, arms curled protectively around the whimpering weasel, remained on his knees, his mouth twitching with excuses he didn’t dare speak. She didn’t need a confession. The filth in this place was evidence enough.
Her gaze swept the cave, too warm, too wet, crawling with web and rot. The cages along the wall were as cruel as they were crude. The girls inside stared with wide, exhausted eyes.
Phiralei stepped forward, her blade lowered but ready. Her attention flicked to the iron bars, then to the man. “Key.”
He blinked. “W-what-?”
“To the cages,” she said, placing the tip of her rapier just under his chin and lifting his gaze to meet hers. “Now.” He hesitated, shifting his weight. The weasel in his arms gave a pained whimper. Fumbling with one hand, he reached beneath his coat and pulled a rust-flecked ring of keys from a hidden loop at his hip. He held them out with shaking fingers.
Phiralei stepped forward, snatched them cleanly, and turned her back on him without ceremony. She approached the first cage, the one where the Elven girl sat coiled and glaring like a panther in a trap.
She knelt at the lock and pressed the first key in, but it stuck halfway. That’s when she noticed the webbing. Thick and translucent, clinging to the keyhole like it had grown out of the lock. She brushed it lightly with her fingertips, and it clung, sticky and slow to release.
Above her, a strand swayed… and stuck to her pauldron. She looked up. The ceiling disappeared into shadow, and somewhere in it, something shifted.
Phiralei slid the ring of keys into her off-hand and drew her dagger. She crouched at Talia’s cage and pressed the tip against the thick skein of webbing protruding from the lock. The silk clung, dense and matted. She tested it with a shallow slice.
It fought back. Not with strength, but tension. The way skin pulls around a wound. Each stroke dragged longer than it should have, like the web wanted to stay. With every pass, the silk curled and resisted, strands clinging wetly to her blade, her gloves, her wrist.
She leaned closer, bracing herself with one hand against the stone, just as something touched her.
A strand, thin as thread, brushed the back of her neck. She recoiled before she even understood what she felt, jerking away from the lock as the webbing reeled out behind her, still attached, still clinging. She reached up and caught it between two fingers. The strand still stuck to her collarbone twitched, as if reluctant to let her go. With a hissed breath, Phiralei snapped it free and wiped her fingers on her thigh.
The ceiling loomed in shadow, choked with silk. Dozens of strands hung loose, some barely visible in the flickering torchlight. They swayed like they’d only just settled from movement.
“Persistent little bitch,” she muttered, more to herself than to the girl behind the bars. She turned back to the lock and buried her dagger into the webbing again, harder now, deliberate, like cutting flesh instead of silk. The strands resisted, then tore with wet, fibrous snaps.
Above her, another strand shifted. She worked faster. Within moments, the last of the webbing peeled away from the lock in damp, twitching strands. She tucked her dagger back into her boot, pulled the keys again, and inserted the first into the exposed keyhole. The metal clicked, the lock popped, and the front of the cage exploded open.
“I’ll fucking kill you!” The young blonde girl burst from the cage, a rock clenched in her fist and raced across the room. The skeezy man crawling quietly toward the door turned back in time for the young girl’s knee to connect with his cheekbone. He fell to the floor, accidentally tossing the weasel, tumbling and yelping across the dirt floor. Keeping her momentum, the girl stepped over the man and punted his injured pet against the cave wall. The beast hit the wall with a muffled pat and fell to the floor. She turned back to the man and pounced, knees first, onto his back and began beating him over the head with the rock.
Phiralei snickered as she turned toward the next cage. A young woman, human this time, no more than sixteen. Her cheeks were hollow, lips cracked, but her eyes shone with a spark of terrified hope.
“Hold still,” Phiralei said, stepping forward, but the webbing had gotten bolder. Another strand drifted down in front of her face like a curious finger. She slashed it aside with a flick of her dagger, only for two more to hang lower as she reached the lock. They clung to her arms like damp fabric, sticking to her bracers, her neck, her hair.
She batted them away and knelt. This lock was even more tangled than the last, coiled tight in a bundle of silk that pulsed faintly in the firelight. Like a wound trying to scar itself shut. She cut again, quicker now, but each severed strand seemed to summon more. From the ceiling. From the corners. From the very walls.
The key barely slid into the hole before another strand latched onto her forearm. Sticky. Clinging. Like fingers curling around her wrist. Phiralei growled and tore it away.
“You’re not stopping me,” she muttered, voice tight. The ceiling stirred in the corner of her vision. No shape. No sound. Just movement. A ripple in the dark.
The lock clicked, and the cage door creaked open with a groan like a sigh. The girl didn’t wait. She crawled out, stiff and slow, dragging cramped limbs into motion with a whimper.
“Stay behind me. Don't touch the walls.” Phiralei gave her a nod. The girl nodded, breath ragged, and sank low to the floor.
Phiralei stood tall and scanned the ceiling with narrowed eyes. The web was learning. It wasn’t random now. The strands moved where she moved, descending when she did.
“You’re watching,” she said softly. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t bare her teeth. “Girl,” Phiralei called over her shoulder, voice low but sharp as flint. “Come here. Take her.”
Talia didn’t answer; she was too busy driving her fists into the man's hunched body, knuckles cracking against bone, rage surging through her like wildfire with nowhere else to burn. He curled tighter, shielding himself the best he could.
“Now!”
Talia rose to her feet, took one last step back. Then drove her foot straight into his groin. The man let out a strangled grunt and collapsed sideways, clutching himself with both hands.
Talia exhaled. Then she turned on her heel and strode to the freed girl’s side. Kneeling beside her, she softened instantly. “Alright, I've got you.” The girl reached for her, trembling like a leaf, and Talia caught her, one arm under the girl’s shoulder, as she helped her sit upright.
Behind them, the webs rustled like restless breath. Above, something stirred again, closer this time. Phiralei was already at the third cage, blade in hand, not looking back.
Phiralei knelt at the third cage, brow furrowed as she scraped the next lock free of its glistening sheath. The webbing here was tighter, stickier, like it had anticipated her coming. Each tug of her dagger left strands clinging to her hands, to her arms, to the hilt. She swore under her breath and kept working. Behind her, the two freed girls huddled together, wrapped in each other’s shaking arms. Talia crouched low, steadying them.
Nimuthiel, the man lying doubled in pain in the dirt, began to crawl. Slow at first, his shoulder dragging like a dead limb, his breath coming in wet gasps. He slithered toward the cave’s mouth like a snake with shattered ribs, each movement silent and desperate.
Then a sound rippled through the cave, a whip of air, and a thwack.
The man screamed as his body slammed to the ground, face first, pulled inches backward before halting with a sharp jerk. A thick strand of webbing pinned him to the ground, like an insect spat upon.
He thrashed, and a second strand dropped, striking fast, wrapping his ankle. He howled, the sound ragged, wet, high-pitched and panicked.
Talia stood first. “We’re out of time.”
Phiralei did not look away from the lock.
Above them, something descended.
The air in the cave thickened, like the walls had started sweating. The scent of damp stone, fear, and something older curled through every breath. Phiralei froze at the third lock, the key halfway in. The metal trembled faintly between her fingers. Talia felt it too. She straightened, eyes on the far end of the chamber. Even the man had stopped struggling. He lay panting against the floor, half-pinned by webbing, his face twisted toward the tunnel’s entrance in horror.
A sound came then.
Click… click… click.
Not loud. Not fast. But deliberate. The sound of clawed feet against stone. Measured. Patient.
Phiralei turned slowly toward the tunnel’s mouth, and there she was.
Bella.
Or the thing Bella had become.
She crept from the shadows on long, jointed limbs, six of them, sprouting from her hips, each tipped with hooked claws that scraped with every step. Her movement was low, fluid, and graceful in a way only predators and nightmares know how to be.
Her upper body was still vaguely human, but where once had been skin and bone, now her body seemed woven from roots and vine, dark brown and gnarled like driftwood dragged from a swamp. Her torso flexed with sinew that looked more like twisted bark than flesh, the hollows of her ribs barely concealed beneath crisscrossed tangles of living fibre. Veins pulsed beneath the surface, slow and steady, as though sap ran where blood once did.
Her dreadlocks had become something else entirely: long strands of matted moss, laced with woven belladonna blooms that pulsed faintly violet in the cave’s flickering light. Petals wilted, then re-bloomed with each breath she took. Every movement released a subtle scent, sweet and venomous. She moved low, so many limbs, so much grace for something that size.
Her face… still Bella. But not.
Her eyes were wide, dark, and endless. Reflecting torchlight like polished obsidian. Her lips were parted, her breath low, steady, and strangely audible, almost wet, like breath behind too many teeth.
She didn’t rush, didn’t speak, just moved with the confidence of a predator. She skittered to a stop in front of the cave’s entrance, her claws rooting to the floor as she slowly rose to her full height, spider-legs unfurling behind her like the frame of a throne.
“Girl …” Phiralei whispered
“Talia,” She responded.
“Keys …” Phiralei held the keys out for her, drawing her sword with the other hand.
Bella’s gaze swept across them all. The girls. Talia. Phiralei. And lastly, the man.
Her head tilted at him. Then came the sound.
Click… click… click.
Three deliberate snaps of her mandibles. Her voice followed, lower than they remembered, slurred with something unspoken.
“ … Rot … mouth …”
The goddess towered above her, all limbs and judgment, moonlight casting her chitin in sharp silver arcs. Her many black eyes glittered, not with curiosity, nor compassion, but pure, unmasked disgust. The air in the Vale tightened, thick with tension. The trees held their breath. The glowbugs hung suspended like stars awaiting collapse.
“You brought sickness here.” The words coiled around Bella’s heart like a vine turned noose.
“No…” she whimpered, swaying on her knees, breath shallow, eyes glassy. “Poisoned.”
But the goddess was already descending.
“This place is sacred,” the voice cracked like thunder, shaking leaf and stone alike. “Now it echoes with rot; With hunger that is not mine.”
She lifted a front limb, long, gleaming, tipped with a crescent blade that had sundered a thousand would-be daughters.
Bella swayed, barely upright on her hands and knees, the moss slick beneath her palms. The leg came down, fast, silent, divine.
She didn’t rise. Didn’t cry out. She lifted one hand. Her fingers, trembling, fevered, touched the strike, and with a twist born of instinct and desperation, she turned it aside. The blow thudded harmlessly into the moss beside her, shaking the clearing like a buried drumbeat.
“I came here…” she whispered, voice splintered, soft as breath on a dying ember. “…for aid.”
Talia cursed under her breath, yanking at a clump of webbing that clung stubbornly to the iron lock. Her fingers were slick with sweat and silk, trembling with urgency as she tried to clear just enough to jam the key into place. Across the bars, Mira muttered in a strange, lilting tongue, half chant, half prayer, her voice barely audible over the pounding of the heart in Talia’s throat. At her back, Sella whimpered, her small hands knotted into the tail of Talia’s shirt, white-knuckled and desperate, like a child clinging to the last solid thing in a crumbling world.
Between them and the spider-woman stood Phiralei. Back straight, blade raised; heart hammering like a war drum. She stared up at Bella, poised on shimmering chitin legs, eight glassy, emotionless eyes staring back, unmoving, curious, maybe even amused. The air vibrated with magic and a tension as thick as fog.
“Bella?” Phiralei took a step forward, sword angled to catch the light, her other hand raised in a slow, deliberate motion.
Her head cocked sharply toward the sound, snapping her gaze to Phiralei with the brittle tension of recognition. As if she’d heard her name in a language she didn’t remember knowing. The motion sent a ripple through her vine-laced form, shivering the belladonna blossoms threaded in her mossy hair.
Behind Phiralei, the key slipped in with a soft clink, and the cage door opened. Mira almost fell out of the cage, her legs stiff from the cramped space, and crawled to join Sella.
The spider-creature leaned in. Slowly. Warily. Her limbs creaked like old wood under tension, vines whispering over stone as she closed the distance between them. Her head lowered until it hovered just a breath above Phiralei’s upturned blade.
Phiralei held her ground.
The creature’s face twitched, her moss-draped dreads swaying slightly as she sniffed. Not overtly. Not animalistically. Just a subtle intake of breath, curious, searching.
Phiralei dared a whisper, “Bella…?”
A long silence stretched between them, strung tight as a bowstring.
Then the creature’s lips parted. They were still human, almost, beneath the twisted bark. And from within came a sound.
“…Phee...ra...”
The name caught in her throat like thorns. Eight eyes blinked, slow and uneven, like shutters struggling open. Her head tilted to the side again, less sharp, almost childlike, an echo of something once gentle.
“…lai…arr…”
A tremor passed through her vine-wrapped frame, the belladonna in her hair shivering.
“Phee…ra…liar!” Bella’s face twisted into a snarl, bark creaking across her cheeks, lips peeled back to reveal moss-darkened teeth. “Betrayer!”
The word cracked through the cavern like a whip.
Phiralei didn’t move. Her grip tightened on her blade, but her feet held firm.
Behind her, Talia flinched at the outburst, then clenched her jaw. She pushed Sella gently toward Mira and stepped toward the final cage, shrouded in thicker webbing, almost forgotten in the dark. Talia reached for the last lock, hands shaking.
Bella didn’t notice. Her gaze was locked on Phiralei now, not as a stranger, but as something far worse. As someone remembered. She moved in a blink, no warning, no growl, just motion. One of her long, gnarled limbs arced downward like a pickaxe, aimed straight for Phiralei’s chest.
Phiralei brought her sword up just in time. Steel screamed against bark as the blow glanced off her blade, but not wide enough. The force of it drove the weapon aside and continued downward, slamming into her side with punishing weight. The sharpened limb tore through leather and flesh, piercing her and pinning her to the bars of an empty cage.
Her breath exploded from her lungs in a ragged cry. Blood bloomed warm down her ribs as she struggled, caught like a wounded hawk in a hunter’s snare. The iron bars rattled behind her, trembling under the force of the impact.
Sella screamed. Mira gasped and stumbled back, clutching Sella to her chest.
Bella loomed close now, her vine-twisted frame tense and trembling, eyes glowing with fury and something deeper, betrayal, maybe… or grief turned sour and wild.
Pinned, bleeding, Phiralei gritted her teeth and forced her eyes up to meet the creature’s.
Bella struck again. A second limb came in lower this time, faster. She adjusted, hunting not with instinct, but intent. It cut through the air with a hiss, angling to finish what the first blow began. Phiralei twisted her blade just in time to deflect the worst of it.
The sharpened leg scraped across steel, sparks leaping like fireflies, but still carved a deep gouge across her thigh as it drove past. Flesh split, blood followed; she cried out and staggered, nearly losing her footing, but remained standing, barely, back pressed to the cage.
Bella hissed, like the rustling of leaves through thorned undergrowth. Her eyes blazed, wild and focused, all eight of them narrowing on Phiralei with a predator’s precision.
Phiralei’s blade wavered, her arm trembling from shock and blood loss, but she kept it raised. And behind her, unnoticed in the chaos, Talia moved. The last lock clicked. The final cage door creaked open. The girl inside a pale, thin thing with haunted eyes and wrists ringed with old bruises looked up as Talia reached for her hand.
“Come on,” Talia whispered urgently, dragging her gently but firmly out of the dark. “We’re not dying in this gods-damned hole.”
Bella didn’t notice. She was still looming, panting, towering over Phiralei, flexed, claws twitching, readying the next strike.
The moss beneath Bella’s knees cradled her like a memory. Her breath came shallow, poisoned, but steady, like the hush of swamp wind through curtain vines. Bella closed her eyes, just for a heartbeat, and in that flicker, she was small again, bare feet on damp stone, watching her mother scatter petals in the water before bowing to the firefly-lit altar of the Grove. She remembered the scent of warm basil and loam in her mother’s arms, the way her voice dropped low when she spoke the names of their goddesses. As if they were not titles, but truths made flesh.
She’d been no more than six, her legs still knobby, her voice still unsure, clutching her mother’s hand as they stepped barefoot through the veil. The moment they passed into that deeper world, everything changed; the colours softened but deepened, the air turned heavy with green and promise, and the moon above glowed with the patience of a witness older than gods.
“Don’t speak,” her mother had whispered, crouching beside her in the dewy moss. “Not yet.”
Glowbugs circled their ankles like prayers. A web glistened across the boughs overhead, impossibly vast.
“She hears everything here,” her mother had said, her voice soft but reverent. “Not just words, but intention. She knows the shape of your heart before you do.”
Bella nodded, wide-eyed and awestruck.
“When you speak to her,” Her mother had cautioned, “Speak with care. With reverence. You wield the power, but she holds it.”
Bella understood then that she was asking to borrow something that was not hers. That lesson had stayed with Bella her whole life. Her mother’s hand was warm in hers. The soft fog curled like a breath around their feet, the sound of something shifting in the dark just beyond the trees.
Bella’s jaw clenched. She was older now, wiser. Her knees trembled beneath her. She opened her eyes.
“You came here to die.” The spider-goddess still towered before her, reared up on her hind legs with suspicion and disgust. A limb shot forward again, silent, sudden, and wide as a scythe. Bella barely had time to react. She raised both arms, palms open, and angled her weight. The blow came down with terrifying force, but she met it, not with strength, but with grace, guiding the strike downward, away from her chest and into the moss.
The ground shook. Spores scattered where the talon buried itself, inches from her ribs. Above her, the spider goddess loomed, all rage and wrath. Eight eyes glared, and the moonlight on her chitinous form gleamed like bone washed in riverlight.
“You forget yourself, child.” the Goddess rasped. “This is my realm. My root. My breath.” Another limb struck, coming in low and cruel, aimed to disable her and throw her prone.
Bella moved instinctively, her hands catching the slick, chitin joint. Her feet slipped in the moss, and she dropped to one side, letting the blow crash past her and gouge a trench into the dirt.
Her breath caught. Her ribs ached. The air pulsed with the force of divine fury.
“I am the power here. You kneel, little vessel, because that is all you can do.”
Bella gasped, her arms trembling, breath thin, blood ringing in her ears; her mother’s words echoed louder. Still kneeling, Bella did not rise, but her back straightened. Her muscles relaxed, her palms opened again, not in defence now, but offering.
The Spider-Goddess screamed, not words, just wrath. Her fury struck like lightning in a storm, fast and relentless.
“No,” Bella said, voice steady, as she swept it aside with a graceful twist of her body. Moss exploded behind her where the limb struck the ground.
The second lash in a downward arc was meant to break her.
“I came here for aid,” she said, deflecting it again, this time rising to her feet as her bare heels pressed firm into the soil. The third came faster. Bella turned into it. Her hands moved like wind through branches. “You will give it,” she breathed, “or I will take it from you.”
The fourth strike came with divine speed, and Bella turned it aside like swatting away a falling leaf. She looked at her hands, dirty and trembling. Her breath came easily now. Her fear burned away. A fifth limb thrust forward. She caught it, fist closing around the spider's leg like a trap. “You hold this power.”
Another strike, from above, meant as a killing blow. Bella raised her other hand and caught it, too. Her arms spread wide like the branches of an old tree. The spider Goddess tried to pull herself free, but Bella held her fast. “But I wield it.”
The clearing was silent now, but for the echo of her voice. Bella’s eyes lifted, glowing faintly green. The moss beneath her feet bloomed.
“This is my power.”
“Get her up,” Talia barked to the other two girls, voice sharp with urgency. She stooped to hook her arms under Ilen’s shoulders. “Help me!”
Mira nodded and rushed to grab Ilen’s legs. Together they lifted the smallest of the girls, and Sella hovered close, wide-eyed and pale.
“Outside!” Talia shouted, nodding toward the tunnel. “Go, run.”
“But—” Sella hesitated, looking to the spider-woman. “
“Now!” Talia snapped, eyes fierce. Talia turned, breath burning in her chest, and ran back toward the chaos. Phiralei was pinned, her shoulder bleeding, her legs shaking as she barely held back Bella’s next strike. The spider-woman loomed above her, shrieking with fury, limbs twitching, eyes glazed with something not entirely human.
The girls moved quietly, bare feet skimming stone, every breath held between their teeth. Mira led the way, one arm hooked under Ilen’s, her eyes locked on the tunnel just ahead. Sella followed, gripping Ilen’s other side, her lip trembling, her gaze never leaving the monster across the room.
Spider-Bella stood still as a statue, her head cocked toward Phiralei, limbs slightly curled but not moving. For one aching moment, it seemed she hadn’t noticed them at all. They slipped past her flank. Five more steps.
A massive limb shot down, slammed into the ground before them, so fast it didn’t seem to pass through air at all. The cave shook with the impact, and shards of stone scattered across the floor.
The girls froze mid-step, Ilen sagging in their arms. The leg pinned nothing, but it completely barred the exit. Spider-Bella turned. Not her whole body, just her head, slow and jerking, as though pulled by invisible strings. Eight eyes locked onto Mira first, then Sella, and finally the motionless weight they carried between them. Her breath rasped from her throat in short bursts. Her upper lip curled.
The girls clutched each other tighter, too afraid to scream. Behind them, Phiralei stirred, struggling to rise. The leg barring the tunnel flexed, tapping once, twice, like a warning drumbeat. Then her weight shifted, and the great body lowered. Her torso swayed down toward the girls, limbs curling above like a predator preparing to strike.
The moss-draped strands of her hair brushed the stone, and her many eyes gleamed like wet obsidian. She brought her face level with Mira’s so close they could feel the heat of her breath, hear the faint click of fangs behind parted lips. A thread of saliva stretched between her teeth.
Sella whimpered. Mira didn’t blink.
SLAP!
The sound cracked through the cave like a thunderclap. Spider-Bella recoiled a few inches, more from shock than pain. Her head tilted again, slow and birdlike, blinking, confused. A flicker of memory stirred in her shifting face. Her claws twitched.
“What, the fuck, is wrong with you?!” Talia stood, face flushed, hand still raised from the blow. Her chest heaved, her eyes blazing. “You were one of us!”
The girls didn’t move. No one breathed.
“He’s the bad guy!” Talia turned and spat on Rotmouth, pasted to the ground and forgotten. She stepped between the monster and the girls, shoulders squared. “Get your shit together!” She returned to the other girls and stood between them and Bella defiantly.
Spider-Bella stood frozen, the sting of Talia’s slap still echoing in the space between them like the last clap of thunder in a storm. Her many eyes narrowed, confusion flickered, then frustration, then something colder. Her clawed hands twitched. Phiralei groaned from the stone nearby, blood soaking into her leathers. One leg pinned awkwardly beneath her, sword still in hand, but her grip faltering.
Talia stood unmoving, unafraid. Daring her.
Bella’s head turned slowly, unnaturally, first to the wounded warrior, then to the girls cowering behind her, and finally to the man still crawling pitifully toward the tunnel wall. Rotmouth whimpered; his weasel had fled during the confusion. He felt her gaze and froze.
With a surge of motion, swift and fluid as a falling shadow, Spider-Bella swept across the stone, seized the man in two clawed limbs, and lifted him off the ground like he weighed nothing.
“No! No—wait!” he screamed, kicking uselessly.
With a hiss like steam escaping cracked bark, she hurled him across the cave. He slammed into one of the empty cages with a sharp metallic clank. Before he could recover enough to slither out, Bella spat a line of silk, thick and gleaming, across the bars. Cocooning it shut with Rotmouth writhing inside, One leg poking out.
Bella turned back. Her gaze passed over Mira and Sella, wide-eyed and breathless, paused on Ilen’s trembling form; fell heavy on Phiralei. The spider-woman snorted, a sharp, guttural noise that might’ve once been derision or maybe mercy. Then pivoted with a strange, twitching grace and crawled silently out into the sunlight.
The cave fell still.
Talia exhaled.
Phiralei slumped with relief.
Dawn hadn’t broken, but the sky had begun to bleed. The campfire crackled low in Rotmouth’s clearing, little left but embers and heat, yet the girls huddled close to it all the same. They sat, wrapped in torn blankets and cloaks too large for them, shoulders pressed together. Sella hadn’t spoken since they’d fled. Ilen was asleep, if her shallow breathing could still be called that. Mira watched the woods, wide-eyed, flinching at every gust that stirred the leaves.
A few feet away, Talia crouched beside Phiralei, her hands slick with blood.
“Hold still,” she muttered, not unkindly. She pressed a folded strip of cloth into the wound just under Phiralei’s ribs, and the older woman gritted her teeth but didn’t cry out. “You always this lucky?” Talia added, her voice tight with effort as she tied off the bandage with shaking fingers.
Phiralei gave a crooked grin that didn’t reach her eyes. “Only when I’m trying not to kill my friends.”
“Friends?!?” Talia said with a sarcastic snicker, wiping her hands on her trousers.
Phiralei’s breath hitched. The blood loss was getting to her, and fast, but she was still alert enough to mutter, “Once upon a time.”
Talia paused, the firelight catching the furrow between her brows. “Yeah, I could tell!”
Phiralei smirked. Her gaze drifted toward the girls, nodding off by the fire. “What’ll you do now?”
Talia didn’t answer right away. She glanced toward the girls again, curled into each other like pups. “I’ll take them home,” she said finally. “One at a time if I have to.” A few moments passed, quiet but not calm. Only the crackle of flame and the sound of Sella's quiet shivering filled the void.
Phiralei studied her for a moment, then nodded. “You’d make a good bounty hunter.”
Talia looked up. Her brow furrowed, not in protest, but in thought. She didn’t answer, but the look stayed on her face long after Phiralei closed her eyes.