EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (372 page)

“Impossible,” said Khavi, but I could see it, as clear as the light of a placid glowbug. The kobold’s chest rose and fell, ever so slightly, pulsing with life.

Gripping the worn thread of the tunic with both hands, I tore it in half, exposing the whole of the dead kobold’s torso, and as I did, the corpse’s skin burst like a bug hit with a mace. Uncountable numbers of spiders, each no bigger than one of my scales, poured from the corpse’s chest, mouth, and empty eye sockets, a living swarm that washed over me, covering my arms and face, their diminutive legs skittering all over my scales as they ran over my body.

I shrieked and slapped at my face and arms, a thick carpet of arachnids growing out, spilling out over the bare stone.

“Get them off, get them off,
get them off!
”

I flailed around on the ground. The heavy flat of Khavi’s blade thunked into my side, squashing dozens of the creatures, but scores more took their place, crawling insects replacing their fallen brethren faster than he could kill them.

Then they began to bite.

The burning venom surged into my body, and I shrieked again, thrashing and kicking, Khavi’s sword hitting over and over to little effect. The swarm of vermin stuck to his blade in clumps, crawling up towards the weapon’s hilt and swimming through the vicious fluid clinging to the steel. Khavi waved the sword around wildly, sending spiders and glowbug juice everywhere.

I turned my thoughts inward, to the fire that welled in my veins. My lack of restful sleep in the previous night had drained my power, and the biting, burning feel of the spiders swarming all over me jumbled the words in my head. I conjured images of dragon fire, of surging heat and burning metal, but the only result was a thick outpouring of smoke from my broken claws.

I rolled over and over on the stone ground, flailing my arms madly as the spiders bit me again and again, their fangs finding the gaps between my scales and injecting their poison into my skin.

Warm liquid splashed against my leather jerkin and light flooded my vision. I thought for a moment that the spell I’d cast had worked belatedly, but a rich sweet smell filled my nostrils. One I knew intimately, and I knew the truth. Glowbug juice. Energy rich, nutritious, and luminescent, the fluid was a staple of our diets and a critical tool for our survival in the dark underground. However, it had one property that always unnerved those who understood it, who were educated and could see the dangers of such things.

It was flammable.

Khavi’s sword lay on the ground, swarming with spiders, its owner with a flint and steel in his hands.

“No, no, no, no,
NO!
”

But it was too late. Khavi struck the two together, showering my body with golden sparks, igniting the fluid and bathing the whole area in light. The spider swarm collectively understood the burning fire to be the death of them all and flowed off me and away.

It didn't matter that they were gone. The feeling of them on me had been too much. I thrashed around on the ground, my armour on fire, the scent of roasting human skin mixed with the acrid scent of burned glowbug juice. I snapped off the clips of my jerkin, rolling out of it, the flaming remains of my armour basking the area in orange luminescence. I panted and slapped at my scales, fearing the flames were still upon me or that the hundreds of crawling legs would return.

Glowbug juice burned brightly, but I hadn’t felt any pain. The flames had consumed a part of the cloth under my armour. There was a sooty mark, but despite the black stain, my scales were unharmed.

Aside from a few I found and crushed with the palm of my hand, my body was free of the vermin. My armour, though, quickly burned through and became a useless pile of charred leather. The light from the burning jerkin lit up the cavern, which was almost fifty feet high and wide, the passage stretching off to the gloom on either side. All around me, hanging in the air like the ropes of a bridge, were dozens of spider webs, the threads as thick as my arm. Many had dried corpses strung out on them, hanging like cloth thrown over a line to dry. Khavi and I had, miraculously, missed all of the strands on our way down.

“What is this place?” I said, my voice tinged with awe.

“I don’t know,” replied Khavi. He struck the flint over his blade, igniting it in a burst of light.

“Will you stop doing that?” I shouted at him, “You set me on fire!”

“You were covered in bugs!”

“Spiders are arachnids, not bugs, and
you set me on fire!
”

“Well,” huffed Khavi, “the bugs are gone at least.”

“They’re not—urgh. Forget it.”

I grimaced as the venom worked its way through my veins, stinging me from the inside, but I grit my fangs and bore it out. I was a warrior, and I was accustomed to pain. Pain was passing. I would live or I would die.

After a moment the burning faded. I stripped off the last of my armour and the cloth padding underneath, clad only in my scales and the pouch of my eggshells around my neck.

As I did my scales crawled. Khavi’s eyes were watching me. I stared back at him, his eyes roaming over my body, and I was reminded that he was assigned to breed with me before the disaster had taken our city. The thought had completely fled my mind until that moment, and I suspected that he had not put much thought into it either, but the look he gave my naked body brought that little problem back to mind.

The strangest thing, though, was that I was more comfortable than I thought. He'd seen me without clothing before, but there was something subtly different here. We weren't hatchlings huddled together for warmth anymore, or trainees struggling under Yeznen's whip. Now we were adults, assigned to be together.

I thought I would feel dirty, feel objectified, or feel threatened by the change in atmosphere; instead, there was simply a vague feeling of unease. Perhaps I was more comfortable with him than I thought. Perhaps my reluctance to do my duty with him was simply my inexperience in these matters.

That, in itself, was unsettling. I didn't like being afraid.

The silence persisted uncomfortably, and then I reached down and grabbed the cloth padding I had discarded. It was mostly intact, singed on the edges, but I put it on anyway. Covering myself seemed to break the tension, and Khavi finally looked away.

I didn’t feel like talking about what had just happened, so instead, I staggered over to the burst corpse, kicking at it with my foot to ensure that there were no more spiders within.

“I think it’s safe,” Khavi said, grinning at me. I didn’t like the way he did that.

Unwilling to meet his gaze, I turned to the dead Darkguard, a shudder running down my spine as I stared at the empty-eyed corpse, her chest turned outward. I understood now why her expression was so horrified. I imagined the Darkguard as the tide of insects rushed into her eyes and mouth, feeling them lay their eggs into her flesh while she was still alive.

It was best not to think about it.

“Khavi, retrieve the chainmail. The Darkguard doesn’t need it anymore, and I don’t fancy being unarmoured in this place.”

He stared at me like I had ordered him to cut off all his own limbs and head. “There is absolutely no way, in this life or the next, that I am touching that infested thing.”

I sympathised, and being honest with myself, I wouldn’t want to touch it either. As much as I disliked Khavi leering at me, I disliked giving an order I found personally revolting more.

But I needed something to take his attention away from me.

“I don’t care. You burned my armour; I’ll need some more.”

“I saved your life!” protested Khavi.

“You set me on fire.” I reached into my pouch, removing my flint and steel and a glowing vial of my own. “If more spiders remain, I’ll be sure to return the favour.”

He crossed his arms. “It’s not like you could burn anyway.”

I frowned. “Why would you say that?”

“You didn’t before when you were in the furnace.”

I reached for the pouch around my neck. “No, but that was…” I didn’t know how to explain it. “That was just a one-time thing.”

“Was it? The glowbug juice—wasn’t it painful?”

I looked back up at the myriad of criss-crossing spiderwebs above me and at the dried corpses hanging there. Fire was rare underground as it stole breathable air. The forges of the city ran once a day. Even with my magic I’d never touched open flame before today.

Glowbug juice didn’t burn hot, but the mark on my shoulder was undeniable. I couldn’t feel any pain there specifically, but I felt pain all over my body from the spider bites. A burning pain. I couldn’t tell the difference.

My instincts told me not to question this too much.

“I don’t know. The fire was on my armour.” I glared at him. “Armour that
you
destroyed. So go get the chainmail. Now.”

Kobolds taught our warriors well. Our warriors followed orders even if they would lead to their doom. Still, it was with palpable reluctance that Khavi removed the shirt from the kobold body, careful to keep himself as far away from the hollow corpse as he could.

“Here,” he spat, throwing the mail on the floor at my feet, a shiver running from his feet to his snout.

I picked up the heavy suit of mail and inspected it to verify that there were no more spider-lings present. I had never seen metal armour this close before; each of the finely woven links had held together over however many years she had lain on the floor of the cavern, and I could tell even in the dim light that this was a finely made piece indeed. I slipped it over my head, wriggling into it. It felt comforting and fit me perfectly, a cocoon, the metal rings melding up against my scales snugly.

I had never trained with metal armour, but as the rings of mail nestled in to my body, a memory surged into my mind. A racial memory. Just as we were born with the ability to speak, we sometimes came to know other things as well.

One of my ancestors had used mail like this, had trained with it, fought in it, and died in it. I had no specifics of who this kobold was, a tantalising dangle of the heritage I so eagerly wanted to uncover, but try as I might, there was nothing more than the knowledge.

“Like it was made for me.”

The light dimmed. I looked to Khavi poking around the corpse with his weapon. He shoved it under the body, leaving the only available light the smouldering remains of my jerkin.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“There’s something underneath,” said Khavi, then lifted the blade with a grunt. The body, aged and dry, broke apart as he lifted it. A dozen spiders scurried out, and we jumped back, keeping our distance until they were gone.

Underneath the remains was a long, thin dagger sheathed in a humanskin leather scabbard. The hilt was an ornate black onyx carved into a narrow point. I understood what it was. I had seen these kinds of weapons before.

“She
was
a Darkguard.” I gingerly reached for the weapon, and giving it a shake, checked it all over for spiderlings. “This is a Feyeater.”

“A what?”

“A magical dagger, specifically enchanted to harm gnomes. The edges find its organs more easily, and wounds inflicted on their kind bleed more profusely, as though made by a much larger weapon.” I slid it from its sheath, revealing a blade as black as night, matte, almost invisible in the dim light of the cavern. The perfect assassin’s weapon, tailor-made for its target. “This Darkguard was hunting gnomes.”
 

“That could come in handy when we catch No-Kill,” said Khavi. “Especially if we end up taking some of its toes.”

I slipped the weapon back into its sheath and strapped it to my belt. “I agree, and anything that hurts gnomes is an asset to us at the moment.”

“Especially this.” Khavi sniffed the air. “Where to now?”

I looked up to the ceiling, but the hole we had fallen through would be impossible to climb to unless we used the thick strands of web as a ladder. Judging by how stuck the corpses were, that was definitely a bad plan.

“There must be another way out of here,” I said, retrieving my shield and short sword. I took out my bottle of glowbug juice and carefully dripped a drop onto my weapon.

I let the glow lead me as I started off towards the passage south, Khavi falling into step behind me.

We walked through the gloom for several minutes, and then we reached a web made of the same oversized web strands we had seen earlier, numerous concentric pentagrams around a single point. The web blocked the entire width of the passage, and I suspected it reached to the ceiling too.

“Can you burn through it?” asked Khavi. “With magic, I mean. We should preserve the glowbug juice if we can. I used most of mine earlier.”

“I remember,” I said, scowling at him. “Distinctly.”

“Hey, it was that or let you get spidered to death.”

I took a breath, pushing aside the crawling feeling that ran up my body. “I need to conserve my spells. My magic has been sorely tested this day, and I can feel my power waning.”

Khavi regarded the web, hands on his hips. “Maybe we could cut through it.”

“I don’t think so. I wouldn’t risk your sword getting stuck.”
 

“What could make something this big?” he asked. Khavi extended the tip of a claw to one of the webs.

“Don’t,” I hissed, recalling the bodies hanging in defiance of gravity’s inexorable pull.

Heedless of my warning, Khavi touched the thick strand. I couldn’t believe what he had just done.
 

“Huh.” Khavi tried to pull away, but his claw was stuck fast. It wouldn’t budge. He tugged again, harder this time, and the thread bent and gave, but then snapped taut and pulled his whole arm forward into the web. “Shit of the dead Gods!” he snarled. “I’m stuck!”

“You idiot! I told you not to touch it!”

“Well, I just had to!”

“No you didn’t! Hang on, let me cut you free.” I reached down for the Feyeater on my hip, but a low, echoing voice from above stopped me.

“Foodlings bring fire to my home,

Juicy smell, not like a gnome,

Smell the scent from where they bled,