Chapter 16: Curses and Clues
The guide, the spider marked with a single white stripe, led them out of the web-city through a grand, arched tunnel entirely lined in smooth, paper-like silk. The air grew cooler, drier. The humming clicks of the metropolis faded, replaced by the echoing drip of distant water and the scrape of their own feet. The silken walls gave way to rough-hewn stone again, but the path remained unnervingly straight, clearly maintained by their allies.
No one spoke much. The encounter had left a weird residue. Honeymuff floated in a daze of contentment, one tiny hand resting on her lower abdomen, a dreamy smile on her face. Grakthor kept casting sideways glances at her, then blushing under his fur. Tanna walked with a slight, satisfied limp, the memory of the Minotaur’s massive cock seemingly fresh in her mind. Polly was irritable, the lack of a fight leaving her jangled. Elophelia giggled every time a trickle of spunk ran down her leg beneath her dress.
After hours of silent marching, Ulrika called a halt in a wide, natural cavern where a thin trickle of water ran down one wall into a shallow basin. “We rest here. The guidance ends at the next junction. We will need our wits.”
They made camp. Minnie’s trolley squeaked into position, the sounds of her preparations a comforting ritual. Brutehilde took first watch, planting herself at the tunnel mouth they’d entered, her silhouette a mountain against the gloom.
Honeymuff, however, was buzzing with a soft energy. As the others settled into bedrolls or slumped against packs, she flitted over to their guide, who had folded her legs neatly beneath her, a silent obsidian statue near the water.
“You never told me your name,” Honeymuff whispered, her glow casting a tiny pool of pink light on the stone floor.
The spider’s front legs unfolded, performing a delicate series of taps. Click-click-tap. Swipe.
“Clarissa?” Honeymuff parsed, her head tilting. “That’s a lovely name! It suits you. Much nicer than ‘White-Stripe.’ Can you understand me?”
Clarissa nodded her cephalothorax slowly, a human gesture that was oddly touching coming from the large arachnid.
“What happened back there… it was incredible. I feel so… full. In the best way. Do you have many consorts? How does it work with the silk? Is it true you eat the males afterwards? Not that I mind, if it’s consensual!”
The spider’s legs moved again, a more complex, languid dance. Honeymuff listened, rapt, her questions flowing into the quiet dark. They spoke, or rather, Honeymuff spoke and Clarissa replied in a tactile language the pixie was learning with preternatural speed. They discussed anatomy, fertility cycles, the aesthetic properties of different web-spins, the flavour of mates. Hours slipped by. The pixie’s glow and the soft, clicking taps were the only signs of life in the deep watch of the night.
When Brutehilde woke Minnie for her watch, she saw the pair still communing, Honeymuff perched on one of Clarissa’s smooth front legs, gesturing animatedly.
Morning came, grey and sourceless. The group stirred, stiff and gritty-eyed. As they packed their meagre gear, a collective pause fell.
Clarissa stood by the water basin, but she was… different. She had adorned herself. Each of her eight powerful, segmented legs was sheathed in the finest, sheer black silk, fastened at the top with intricate webs of silken suspenders that criss-crossed her glossy abdomen. The stockings highlighted the elegant curve of each joint, the subtle power in the limbs. It was bizarre, elegant, and unsettlingly seductive.
Perched on Scoffer’s shoulder, Honeymuff was preening. She too wore a minute, perfectly fashioned set of black silk stockings, a gossamer garter belt fastened around her tiny waist. She struck a pose.
“Do you like them?” she chirped. “Clarissa and I were talking all night. We got onto the subject of interspecies attraction. I was explaining that for humanoid males—and Minotaurs, and Orcs, and what have you—visual stimulation is key. The art of the reveal! I told her about lingerie. She thought it was a fabulous application of her spinning skills. So we collaborated!”
Polly stared, her cigarillo halfway to her lips. “You put fucking stockings on a spider.”
“She’s a lady! Ladies should feel glamorous!” Honeymuff retorted. “And she’s very taken with the concept. She’s already planning a whole collection. She thinks Dravion might be a good model.”
Dravion, who had been looking paler than usual since leaving the web-city, managed a weak, flattered smile.
Clarissa gave a soft, clicking curtsey, the silken sheen on her legs catching the faint light.
“Aye, well,” Brutehilde grumbled, shouldering her pack. “As long as she can still guide. Let’s move.”
Clarissa led them to the promised junction: a place where three tunnels met under a vault of jagged teeth-like stalactites. Here, she clicked a brief farewell, gesturing definitively down the left-hand passage. Then, with a final, elegant rustle of her silk-clad legs, she scuttled back the way they had come, vanishing into the dark.
They were alone again.
The left-hand tunnel was different from any they’d seen. The walls were smooth, as if melted, and covered in faint, phosphorescent markings that pulsed with a sickly green light. They weren’t carvings. They looked more like stains, or the residue of something vile that had seeped from the stone itself. Swirling, nonsensical patterns that made the eyes ache if stared at too long.
“Do not touch the walls,” Ulrika commanded, her voice tight. “Do not read the markings. This is old curse-work. Necrotic graffiti.”
They filed in, hugging the center of the passage. The air grew thick and hard to breathe. A low, sub-auditory whine seemed to vibrate in their molars.
Dravion, walking just behind Tulip, began to mutter. “No… it can’t be. This sigil… the inverted hydra… this is Barrow-mark. Family Barrow-mark.” He reached a trembling hand out towards the wall.
“Don’t!” Tulip snapped, grabbing his wrist. Her green eyes, sharp with druidic insight, fixed on his face. “You know these markings.”
“I… I’ve seen them in my family’s annals,” Dravion stammered, pulling his hand back. “Ancient, forbidden things. My great-great-uncle dabbled in cartomancy of the lower depths. This is his hand! I’m sure of it! He mapped these cursed paths!”
“Convenient,” Polly muttered.
“It’s not convenient, it’s tragic!” Dravion wailed. “It means we are in a zone of his catastrophic misfires! His curses were… slapdash!”
As if triggered by his words, the markings on the right wall flared brighter. Scoffer, who had been staring at them curiously, opened his mouth to speak.
“Ti od nac uoy,” he said.
He blinked. So did everyone else.
“What?” Brutehilde said.
Scoffer looked panicked. “Ti od nac uoy!” he insisted, pointing back the way they’d come. The words were his, but perfectly reversed.
“Speech reversal,” Tulip breathed. “A simple inversion curse. Try not to talk.”
But it was too late. The curse was in the air, contagious. Grakthor snorted. “Eman ym siht sah woN.” He clapped his hands over his muzzle.
Panic began to bubble. Tanna tried to give an order. “Dnuora ecnerruc, yllanif!” The reversed command made her sound insane. She drew her sword, but the movement was jerky, confused.
Then Minnie, trying to calm everyone, went to take a step forward and stumbled. Not on a rock. Her own foot, her wooden clog, seemed to twist of its own accord and knock against her chin. She sat down hard, more surprised than hurt. “Och, ya bampot!” she scolded her own foot.
“Literal foot-in-mouth disease,” Ulrika snarled, dodging as Grakthor, trying to shake his head, almost slapped himself with his own hoof. “The curses here are childish and vicious. We must run. Now. To the end of the tunnel.”
It became a nightmarish scramble. They ran down the sloping, green-pulsing passage, a group of seasoned adventurers turned into a chaotic, silent-film pratfall. Scoffer tripped over his own enormous clown shoes, which seemed magnetically attracted to his face. Polly, yelling a reversed stream of obscenities, punched herself in the thigh. Tanna’s perfectly executed combat roll ended with her own armored elbow jabbing her in the ribs.
Worst of all, the curses seemed to feed on fear and suspicion. The paranoia crept in, a cold whisper in the mind.
Dravion knew this place. He led us here. He wants us cursed, dead. The elf thinks so. See how she looks at him.
Brutehilde shook her head, trying to clear the invasive thought. It felt alien, yet persuasive. She glanced at Tulip, who was staring at Dravion with undisguised hostility. Had it been there before?
The Orc is no god. He’s a fraud. Laughing at you. The Minotaur is an idiot who will get you all killed. The pixie is a selfish slut, breeding with monsters. Your sister is a burden. Her trolley. That squeak. You could smash it. Smash it and be free.
Tears of frustration and psychic assault stung Brutehilde’s eyes. She saw similar agony on the faces of the others. Grakthor was growling at his own reflection in a polished stone. Scoffer was whimpering, curled slightly as if expecting a blow from his own followers.
Only Minnie seemed somewhat immune, her simple, tea-based worldview a fragile shield. “It’s jus’ bad magic, children! Ignore it! Keep moving!”
The tunnel forked ahead. In their panic and curse-addled states, they didn’t see it as a group. Brutehilde, fighting the voice that told her to abandon them all, lunged for the left fork, thinking it was the main path. Tanna, seeing her leader diverge, followed without question.
Polly, seeing Tulip veer right, grabbed her lover’s arm and yanked her after Brutehilde. “Em oc!” she grunted.
Scoffer and Grakthor, a tangle of misplaced limbs, stumbled straight ahead into a third, narrower cleft.
Ulrika, shouting reversed orders that no one could understand, was separated by a sudden, grinding shift in the stone—a subtle curse of division. One moment she was behind Brutehilde’s group, the next a bulwark of rock had slid soundlessly from the ceiling, cutting her off with Dravion, Minnie, and the squeaking trolley in the right-hand fork.
Silence.
The green glow faded. The oppressive whine vanished.
Brutehilde, Polly, Tulip, and Tanna stood in a dark, quiet tunnel, panting. The curses had lifted as suddenly as they’d descended, leaving only the sour aftertaste of fear and the chilling, absolute silence of isolation.
On the other side of the stone barrier, Ulrika lit a cold-fire lantern. The blue light illuminated Minnie’s worried face, Dravion’s terrified guilt, and the solid, insurmountable wall that now divided the party.
Somewhere else entirely, Scoffer, Grakthor, Scruffulus and Elophelia were tripping over each other in the dark.
“Well, fuck,” Polly’s voice echoed in the new, empty dark, finally the right way around.
“Well, fuck,” Polly’s voice echoed in the new, empty dark, finally the right way around.
Brutehilde slammed a fist against the smooth, unyielding stone that had sealed the tunnel. The impact was a dull, final thud. No crack, no shudder. It was as permanent as the bedrock itself. A curse of division, solid and silent. She rested her forehead against the cool surface, her broad shoulders sagging for just a second under the milkmaid’s apron.
“Minnie,” she breathed, the word thick.
On the other side, they heard the muffled, tinny squeak of a trolley wheel. Then nothing.
“She’s with Ulrika,” Tanna said, trying to sound assured. Her hand went to the magical plug beneath her armour, a habitual comfort. “They’ll be fine. It’s us I’m worried about.”
Tulip was already examining the walls of their new prison. Her green hair seemed to glow in the absolute blackness. “This isn’t natural stone. It’s a psychic projection given permanent form. The paranoia curse made us believe in the split, and the tunnel made it real. We’re stuck with the reality of our own fear.”
“Philosophy later, Druid,” Polly snapped. She lit a match, the flare blinding. “We have one way to go: forward. Let’s find a way around this bullshit.”
The matchlight showed a passage that sloped downward, the walls weeping a viscous, clear fluid that smelled of ozone and decay. They moved, a tighter, quieter unit of four. The absence of Minnie’s chatter and the squeaking wheels was a physical weight. Brutehilde led, her wooden clogs crushing brittle fungal growths underfoot.
After an hour of descent, the tunnel opened into a cavern so vast their tiny light couldn’t find the ceiling. The floor was a forest of thick, waist-high mushrooms with phosphorescent blue gills. The air was warm, humid, and carried a sweet, cloying scent that coated the tongue.
“Spore territory again,” Tulip warned, her skin prickling. “Different variety. Don’t breathe deeply.”
Polly grinned, a white slash in the dark. “Maybe this batch’ll make us see something fun for a change.”
On the other side of the division, Ulrika’s cold-fire lantern painted three faces in stark shades of blue. Minnie was patting her trolley, whispering assurances to her spirit-stove. Dravion was leaning against the cursed wall, panting dramatically, a lace handkerchief pressed to his lips.
“My heart,” he murmured. “The strain. The tragedy! To be so cruelly separated from our stalwart companions—”
“Shut up,” Ulrika said. Her voice was like a wire drawn taut. She did not look at him. She was running her slender, black-gloved fingers over the seam where the wall met the floor, searching for a flaw, a trigger, anything.
“Aye, save the performance, lad,” Minnie said, not unkindly. She put her kettle on. “Tea first. Then we think.”
“Tea won’t dissolve a curse of this magnitude,” Ulrika stated, standing. She turned her head slowly, her pale eyes fixing on Dravion. “But knowledge might. Your family’s annals. Your great-great-uncle’s ‘slapdash’ cartomancy. You recognized the markings. You know what this is.”
Dravion paled further. “I know of it, dear lady! A tragic legacy of familial folly! I am a victim here as well!”
“You’re a lying little shit,” Ulrika said, conversationally. She took a step towards him. “The paranoia curse is gone. But my suspicion isn’t. It’s based on fact. You guided us to the spider city. You were curiously unsurprised. You recognized these tunnels. You’re mapping us, Dravion. For whom?”
He backed up, his heels scuffing the stone. “For posterity! For the epic poem!”
Ulrika closed the distance. In one fluid motion, she hooked a foot behind his ankle and shoved him hard in the chest. Dravion yelped, crashing onto his back on the cold stone, the wind knocked from him. Before he could gasp, Ulrika was on him.
She didn’t strike him. She settled her weight onto his torso, pinning his arms with her knees. She gripped the high collar of his doublet and ripped it open, buttons pinging off the walls. Then she shifted, twisting her body, and lowered herself until she was kneeling over his face.
She wore tight, black leather breeches. With deliberate, brutal efficiency, she undid the fastenings at the hips and peeled them down, just enough. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. The dark, neat triangle of her pubic hair was directly above his mouth. The intimate, musky scent of her filled his nostrils.
“You talk too much poetry,” Ulrika whispered, her voice dripping with icy contempt. She lowered herself another inch, the damp heat of her settling against his lips. “So now, you don’t talk at all. You have one function. Confess. Tell me who you’re working for and what this map leads to, or I will suffocate you between my thighs. I will grind your nose into my cunt until you drown in it. Do you understand?”
Dravion’s eyes, wide with shock, stared up at the shadowed apex of her legs. Then, a change. The panic melted, replaced by a glimmer of something else. A dark, eager relish. He didn’t struggle.
He nodded.
Ulrika lowered herself fully, smothering his face with her sex. She pressed down, using all her strength, a ruthless, smothering weight. She felt his nose mash against her clit, his mouth forced open against her labia. He made a muffled, choking sound.
“Confess,” she growled, grinding against him.
But the sound he made wasn’t a gag of terror. It was a moan of pleasure. Deep, resonant, and utterly sincere. His tongue lashed out, not in a desperate attempt to breathe, but in a hungry, eager swipe along her slit. He devoured her with a starving, desperate ardor, his hands straining against her knees not to push her away, but to grab her ass and pull her deeper.
Ulrika froze. This wasn’t resistance. This was ecstatic submission. He was feasting on her, his tongue plunging inside her, sucking and lapping with the fervor of a dying man at an oasis. She felt the tension coiling in her own belly, a treacherous, unwanted response to his skillful, enthusiastic tongue.
“You… degenerate…” she hissed, but her hips gave a tiny, involuntary jerk.
Dravion redoubled his efforts, his entire being focused on worshiping her pussy with his mouth. He was good. Obscenely good. He found a rhythm that made her thighs tremble. The wet, slick sounds of his face fucking her filled the small space.
Minnie, from her seat by the trolley, took a long, deliberate sip of tea. She ignored the proceedings entirely, humming a faint, wandering tune.
Ulrika tried to hold. She tried to maintain her leverage, her threat. But her body betrayed her. A sharp, shocking orgasm ripped through her, clenched tight and hot. She arched her back, a silent scream on her lips, pressing his face deeper as she rode the waves of it.
When it subsided, she was panting. Dravion was still lapping gently, happily, like a cat at a saucer of cream.
With a snarl of utter disgust—mostly at herself—she wrenched herself off him. She stood, yanking her breeches up, her movements sharp with fury. Dravion lay on the stone, his face glistening with her juices, a beatific, dreamy smile on his lips. He was painfully, obviously erect, tenting his fine trousers.
“You enjoy that too much for it to be a threat,” Ulrika spat, wiping herself with a cloth from her belt with violent, punishing strokes. “You’re not a noble in over his head. You’re something else. A predator who gets off on the game.”
Dravion sighed, the picture of satiated bliss. “My dear, ruthless Ulrika… can a man not appreciate a dominant woman? Must all interrogation be so dour? I merely answered your… physical question… with enthusiastic affirmation.”
“You answered nothing.” She buckled her belt, her composure a frozen mask again. “But I will discover what you are. Sooner or later, your performance will slip. And I will be watching.”
She turned her back on him, her mind already re-calibrating. The threat of pleasure had failed. He was insulated by his own perversions. She needed a new lever.
“The tea’s still hot,” Minnie offered, holding out a chipped cup.
Ulrika took it, her hand steady. The hot liquid was a focal point. Dravion sat up, adjusting his clothes, the smug, secretive smile never leaving his face. He had won that round by losing exactly as he wished to.
Somewhere in the vast, branching dark, lost and arguing over the smell of their own feet, Scoffer and Grakthor stumbled into a nest of giant, blind cave newts. Scruffulus and Elophelia tried to haul their larger companions out, but only ended up getting pulled in too.
And Brutehilde, leading her small group through the glowing fungal forest, felt a deep, resonant shiver in the stone beneath her clogs—a shiver that had nothing to do with curses, and everything to do with something very large, and very hungry, beginning to move in the depths below them.