Chapter 8: The Theft
The silence in the guest quarters was thick enough to chew. It wasn’t peaceful; it was the stunned, vibrating quiet that follows a thunderclap. Wee Minnie slept fitfully on a pallet, sedated by a bitter tincture Tulip had coaxed from a compliant fungal bulb. Her plump face twitched, chasing nightmares. Occasional whimpers escaped her, nonsense words in broad Scots. Brutehilde sat on a stool beside her, a monumental statue of worry, one massive hand resting on her sister’s heaving shoulder.
“She’ll be right,” Polly said, though the words sounded hollow even to her. She paced like a caged wolf, the new spider-silk tunic whisper-soft against her skin, a cruel reminder of the gilded prison they were in. “Just needs to sleep it off.”
“She ate a sacred hallucinogen in front of the ruling Matriarch,” Tulip murmured, her green hair seeming to droop. “She called Lady Araksia a ‘spider-weeved auld boot’ and tried to bludgeon a noble with a tureen. ‘Right’ is a relative term.”
“They haven’t thrown us in a pit,” Tanna observed, her voice quiet. She was methodically checking the straps of her armour, a calming ritual. “That’s something.”
“Aye, they’re just waitin’ to see what other entertainment we provide,” Brutehilde rumbled, not taking her eyes off Minnie. “We’re Dravion’s distracted carnage. His beautiful, fuckin’ catastrophe.”
As if summoned by the mention of his utility, a soft, rhythmic scratching came at the door. Not the official tap of a steward. This was furtive, insectile.
Polly was there in two strides, dagger appearing in her hand from a hidden sheath. “Who?”
“A humble servant of the eight-legged muse,” a sibilant voice whispered through the wood. “With a gift for the small, curious one. From an admirer in the shadows.”
Polly glanced back. Honeymuff, who had been listlessly tracing patterns in dust on the windowsill, perked up immediately, her wings giving an eager flutter. “For me?”
“Don’t,” Brutehilde warned.
“It’s just a gift!” Honeymuff protested, zipping to the door. “Maybe it’s an apology for the boring party!”
Polly, against her better judgment, cracked the door. No Dark Elf stood there. Instead, a spider the size of a large cat waited patiently, its body a sleek, obsidian oval. In its delicate, hooked mandibles, it held a tiny, silken pouch. It made no aggressive move, simply tilting its cephalothorax, its multiple dark eyes glittering with unmistakable intelligence.
“Fuck me,” Polly breathed, lowering her dagger an inch.
Honeymuff gasped in delight. “Hello, beautiful!” She flew forward, heedless of danger, and alighted on the door frame, eye-level with the creature. The spider slowly extended its foremost legs, offering the pouch. Honeymuff took it, her tiny fingers brushing against cool, hard chitin. The spider gave a slight, graceful dip, then scuttled away down the dark corridor with startling speed.
Honeymuff hefted the pouch, untying the fine silk cord. She upended it into her palm. Two items fell out. The first was a perfect, minute carving of a spider from a single deep purple gemstone, so detailed each joint was visible. The second was a folded sliver of parchment.
“‘To the pixie whose song shattered crystal,’” Honeymuff read aloud, her voice a mix of pride and confusion. “‘A trinket, and an invitation. The Weavers see your fascination. The third web-left of the Hall of Frozen Tears, when the glow-fungi dim to sleep. Come alone, if curiosity truly bites. Yours, in shadow, D.’”
“He’s not even tryin’ to be subtle now,” Polly snarled, snatching the note. “It’s a trap. A fucking obvious one.”
“But the spider…” Honeymuff murmured, clutching the gem carving to her small chest. “It was so… polite. They’re intelligent. He said they see me.” Her huge eyes were full of a yearning that went beyond mere lust. It was a scholar’s hunger. “What if they want to talk?”
“They wanna eat you,” Brutehilde said flatly.
“Or fuck you,” Tulip added, her druidic insight clinical. “Possibly both. Inter-species relations in the Underworld are rarely about conversation.”
Honeymuff’s wings vibrated. “I have to go.”
A fierce argument erupted, whispered and sharp. Brutehilde forbade it. Polly called her a suicidal idiot. Tanna offered to go as a guard, but the note said ‘alone’. Honeymuff, however, had a pixie’s stubbornness backed by two decades of impulsive decisions. It wasn’t just about sex; it was about the mystery, the chance to touch something truly alien.
“I’m a big girl,” she said, hands on her tiny hips. “I’ve bedded a troll. I think I can handle a few spiders.”
“The troll just wanted a warm hole,” Polly spat. “These things… they think. That makes ‘em dangerous.”
In the end, they couldn’t lock her in a box. As the eerie fungal light in the city began its slow, rhythmic dimming, signaling the underworld’s version of night, Honeymuff slipped out through a ventilation slit, gemstone clasped in hand. The silence she left behind was worse.
Polly’s restless energy had no outlet. The tension was a live wire under her skin. She caught Tulip watching her, the elf’s golden skin tinged with blue in the low light, eyes full of shared anxiety. Something wordless passed between them—a need for affirmation, for a brutal, physical reminder that they were still alive and capable of feeling something other than dread.
Without a word, Polly stalked across the room, grabbed Tulip by the front of her silken gown, and kissed her. It wasn’t tender. It was a collision, a claiming. Tulip responded in kind, her fingers tangling in the short spikes of Polly’s green mohawk, biting at her lower lip.
“The rest of you, turn the fuck around,” Polly growled, breaking the kiss, her gaze locked on Tulip’s dilated pupils.
Brutehilde just sighed, a sound of profound exhaustion, and shifted her stool to face Minnie more squarely, presenting her broad back. Tanna, after a moment’s hesitation, walked to the far balcony and stared out into the gloom, her spine rigid.
Polly pushed Tulip back against the cold obsidian wall. She yanked the delicate spider-silk gown down from Tulip’s shoulders, exposing her breasts. Her mouth was on a nipple immediately, sucking hard, teeth grazing the pebbled flesh. Tulip cried out, her head thumping back against the stone, her hands pulling at Polly’s tunic.
“Want you filthy,” Polly muttered, her voice ragged. “Not your druid shit. Just this.” She dropped to her knees, shoving Tulip’s gown up around her waist. She buried her face between Tulip’s thighs without preamble, her tongue a broad, rough stroke against the elf’s cunt.
Tulip gasped, her knees buckling. “Polly…”
“Shut up,” Polly snarled into her flesh, her words muffled. She licked and sucked with a frantic, desperate intensity. This wasn’t about worship. It was about consumption. Her tongue speared inside, fucking Tulip with it, then curled up to rub rough circles on her clit. She could taste the elf’s arousal, sharp and clean, and it drove her on. She used her thumbs to spread Tulip wider, holding her open, lapping at her like a starved animal at a water source.
Tulip’s composure shattered. She moaned, a raw, unbroken sound, her fingers clenching and unclenching in Polly’s hair. Her hips jerked, meeting Polly’s mouth. “Harder,” she pleaded, her druidic poise gone, replaced by pure want. “Bite me. Please.”
Polly obliged. She sucked Tulip’s clit between her lips and bit down, just shy of pain. Tulip shrieked, her body bowing off the wall. Polly drove two fingers deep into her cunt, curling them, pounding them in time with the ruthless work of her tongue. The sounds were obscenely wet, loud in the quiet room. The smell of sex, musky and urgent, cut through the ever-present damp.
“Gonna come,” Tulip choked out, her voice breaking. “I’m gonna…”
Polly fucked her faster, her own need a secondary fire in her gut. She felt the tight clench, the tremors, and then Tulip was coming with a stifled scream, her juices flooding Polly’s mouth. Polly drank it down, kept working her through it until Tulip was limp and shuddering, held up only by Polly’s grip and the wall.
Polly stood, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her own pussy throbbed, soaked. She was about to turn Tulip around, to take her own relief against the cool stone, when a small, awed voice cut through the heavy air.
“Cor, that was quick.”
Honeymuff perched on the window ledge, her tiny face flushed, wings drooping slightly. She’d returned silently.
Polly spun, every muscle taut. “What happened?”
Honeymuff fluttered to the table, looking dazed but unharmed. “It was… it wasn’t Dravion. Not really.” She took a deep breath. “The spiders… they have a web-nursery. It was beautiful. And their Weaver… she spoke to me. In my mind. She said Dravion offered them a tribute for their silence—a rare venom they crave. In return, they gave him… access. She showed me. While we were at the banquet, while Minnie was…” She trailed off, glancing at the sleeping form.
“While we were causing a riot,” Brutehilde finished, turning her head. “What access?”
“To the tunnels behind the walls. The old ways. The ones that lead to the Holy Reliquary’s service ducts.” Honeymuff’s big eyes were wide with the horror of understanding. “He didn’t need us as a distraction for the guards at the door. He needed the entire city distracted. By us. The big, loud, disastrous surface folk. And we did it perfectly.”
The implication settled over them, cold and heavier than stone. Dravion’s poetic sighs, his tragic gifts, it was all misdirection. He wasn’t just a creepy admirer. He was a thief, and they had been his perfect, unwitting accomplices. The chaos of the banquet hadn’t been an embarrassment; it had been the catalyst for a much deeper crime.
“The artifact,” Tanna said from the balcony, her voice like ice. “He’s stolen from the Holy Reliquary. And when they discover it…”
“They’ll look for who had motive, opportunity, and a proven talent for chaos,” Tulip said, pulling her gown up with trembling hands. Her golden skin was ashen.
Brutehilde stood, her wooden clogs scraping on the floor. The sound was final. “They’ll look for us.”
Far away, in his dusty, neglected apartments, Lord Dravion poured a glass of cheap, sour wine. Before him on a threadbare velvet cloth lay the onyx statuette. It was exquisite, the figure of a Dark Elf maiden in a pose of ecstatic agony, her form carved with such skill it seemed to pulse with captured life. It was worth a fortune on any surface-world black market.
He toasted the empty air, a smile of genuine, un-tragic pleasure on his lips.
“To my beautiful, brutal muses,” he whispered. “May your chaos ever light my way.” He took a sip, the smile hardening. The theft was only phase one. Phase two required the blame to be placed irrevocably, poetically, on the scapegoats currently sitting in their guest quarters, drowning in fear and their own bodily fluids.
He reached for a fresh piece of parchment. A new poem was brewing. This one would be a lament, discovered later, about a stolen treasure and a band of crude, greedy outsiders who could never appreciate true art. It would be his masterpiece.