They had first heard the screams only a few minutes prior, before they had taken off running back down the Narrow Road. They kept on the trail, sweat slipping off their brows, until they came across the monstrous mess of spiderkin silk and torn clothes, which had not been there when they passed by this way not long ago.
Raquelle knelt to inspect the leather boot she found on the ground. Clair. That lowborn idiot had lost all of her clothes, she realized. But there was more, as Zo’Lara had discovered nearby.
Raquelle crept lightly over the silky ground, which began to stick to her heels. She found her barbarian companion hunched over the forest brush.
“What is it?” Raquelle asked, anxiously. She saw nothing but the plants, rocks, and dirt.
Zo’Lara shot her one of her nasty glares. She pointed with her hoof at one of the rocks, and then Raquelle saw it. A slimy green liquid of some kind.
Zo’Lara stuck her hoof in the muck and brought it to her lips.
“Oh god! Don’t!”
Zo’Lara licked at the liquid, and took her time to taste it.
“That’s foul,” Raquelle spat.
“Spit,” Zo’Lara deduced, “Spider spit. Just left. Two minutes ago at most.”
“How do you know that’s not venomous?” Raquelle asked, dryly.
Zo’Lara stood up from the ground, now towering over the short-statured Raquelle. Commander Valkyrie had thought of the two as an amusing pair, and required them to make the journey through the woods together.
“Spit cannot kill Zo’Lara,” Zo’Lara laughed. An earth pony of the Ozurk Tribe, Zo’Lara possessed a seemingly supernatural sense of hearing and had reliably quick instincts. She rarely spoke, and when she did it was most often in the Old Tongue. Her Equuish was not bad, considering the circumstances, Raquelle thought. She had once read that the Ozurk communicated mostly through hoof-signals, rather than by speaking. Zo’Lara was sent to the Sorceresses’ Academy by her tribe in an attempt to foster good will between the tribe and the powers of Augusta, who were skeptical of the Old Tribes’ brutish ways. Zo’Lara had a coat of light mossy green and a golden mane. She had a muscular build and wore clothes made from animal skins.
Raquelle trotted over to the wall of webbing, where she found Clair’s sword still lodged in the gummy mess of silk.
“Not gone long,” Zo’Lara decided, before pointing at a spot in the brush. Hoofprints. Larger than they should have been, “No ordinary pony.”
“No kidding,” Raquelle said, “...We should wait for the others before we go searching for them. Valkyrie should pass this way soon.”
Zo’Lara shook her head, and pointed at Raquelle’s pocket watch that hung out from her satchel.
“Time, too late,” Zo’Lara said, “Captain should have been here already. Something wrong.”
Raquelle took to her meaning, and a feeling of dread suddenly overcame her. We might be the only ones left.
“We should turn back,” Raquelle said, “If the others couldn’t handle this, why could we?”
Zo’Lara raised an eyebrow.
“Others are not Zo’Lara.”
The barbarian took off into a jog following the hoofprints that led off into the wilderness, and Raquelle sighed in dismay.
Raquelle was born a unicorn to a rich, noble Augustan family - prominent medical professionals who worked in close relations with the royalty at Shimmering Spires. Her aptitude for magic was discovered early on, and she was sent to the Sorcerers’ Academy of the Quiet Spring at the age of 8.
At the Academy, Raquelle garnered a reputation as a perfectionist who took her studies extremely seriously. She was not particularly sociable, and possessed an elitist mentality that was brought about by relentless positive reinforcement from her parents while a child. Despite her reputation for thinking herself above the Academy, her abilities made her indispensable, and she was always at the top of her class. She had a long, curly light brown mane, an off-white coat, a golden necklace with an enchanted ruby jewel, a loose, off-white silk robe. She had bright green eyes and big lips.
Raquelle kept up as best as she could, relying on the barbarian’s tracking abilities to steer them on the right course. There was no reason for her to be so afraid, she thought. There was no blood, nothing but the silk and clothes and strange saliva.
They came across claw marks on the trees, and more of the strange webbing stuck in the trees and bushes as they continued on.
“Close,” Zo’Lara said, after they had crossed the first mile into the forest.
The barbarian had her crude sword stuck between her teeth as she leapt through the woods.
Raquelle never much cared for her sort - the mercenaries, sellswords, low-born upstarts. They had already brought along a thief of all things, why did they need the foul-smelling creature too?
Raquelle sighed to herself. Perhaps she was being too hard on the girl. She didn’t really stink. She might actually have been glad to have been paired with Zo’Lara; it was apparent that the woodland wilderness was the barbarian’s true home. While Zo’Lara may have been a fish out of water at the academy, here the roles were reversed.
An hour ago, it had been Zo’Lara who had dispatched a giant worm that had taken them by surprise; it would have swallowed Raquelle headfirst if the barbarian hadn’t bisected the beast with a single swing.
Raquelle was not built for such brutish forms of combat. Though physically out of shape, with a slightly zaftig figure where all the fat went to her thighs and posterior, she was not helpless; Raquelle was trained in a more elegant art, that of the sorceress. Magic was a fearsome force, and nobody took her studies more seriously than Raquelle. Melee was simply no match for the power of magic, unless her opponent’s name was Valkyrie, a generational talent. Raquelle grimaced at the memory of Valkyrie slamming her on her back after dodging a well-cast blast of arcane fire, some weeks ago. Lucky hit. None of them work as hard as I do. None of them earned the right to call themselves master, not anypony but me. Raquelle smiled to herself, thinking of all the pathetic low-borns she had the pleasure of tossing into walls or freezing in blocks of ice. The only other unicorns who gave her any challenge in the training yard was that dour bitch Merigold and that foreign whore Shara, though by the time of the Great Tourney this summer, that would change. I’m taking that medal. I’ve won it already, as far as I’m concerned.
Raquelle bit her lip and remembered to focus on the task at hand. Perhaps I should let Merigold disappear. That would be one less pony to compete with. She laughed at her own wickedness, but of course did not mean it. She would much sooner savor the look on Merigold’s face after coming to her rescue, then discard such an opportunity for pride’s sake.
Up ahead, Zo’Lara grunted, and raised her closed hoof. Sometimes the barbarian seemed closer to an animal than to a pony, with the way her head jerked back and forth and how her eyes darted about restlessly, as if danger was always near.
Raquelle came to a stop, raising her horn defensively. Her bouncy brown curls fell over part of her forehead near her eyes, and she brushed it aside.
There was a silence, interrupted when a turkey flapped out of the brush, scrambling off between the mares’ hooves.
Raquelle laughed nervously, though Zo’Lara was not amused. They kept on the trail of hoofprints. The prints had too great of a distance between them to be just an ordinary spiderkin, Raquelle thought. Time for all that training to be put to the test.
Raquelle couldn’t make sense of what had happened. No measly spiderkin could have overpowered Merigold. Merigold was probably already on the trail, she was probably not far ahead of them.
Spiderkin, as understood by the Academy, was a broad term, covering a range of creatures who met a short list of ghastly criteria. All Raquelle could remember from class was that they had to produce silk and prey on creatures larger than mice. With webs this large, she supposed their target certainly fit the bill. Some spiderkin, the Magna Aranei, resembled their common arachnid relatives, only on an amplified scale. That dirty, orphaned, low-born new recruit, Clair de Lune, had infamously had a run-in with one of those beasts while bathing in a river near the woods. But this couldn’t possibly be the same creature, they were hardly a threat unless in large numbers.
There were more intelligent, semi-equine species of spiderkin as well, who were generally peaceful. Some even traded with ponies at the local forest market.
Raquelle could only figure there to be two types of spiderkin large enough to construct these types of web, which appeared to be made of flagelliform, a very uncommon strain of impossibly strong, impossibly sticky silk, the result of several genetic mutations. Mutant variants of the Speckled River Spiderkin were the only known species to produce the substance, though they were known to be harmless, thin-limbed, and fragile, and they only fed on catfish near the bog. The other option was the Greater Swamp Spiderkin, which was as large as an adult stallion, but stockier. They were territorial and aggressive, and were known to abduct and devour foals who wander off into the swamp. Unlike the other spiderkin, the Greater Swamp Spiderkin evolved to have a long, elastic second mouth appendage that was capable of swallowing prey whole.
Raquelle felt herself go pale. If this really was what she thought - a creature with the temperament and physicality of a Greater Swamp Spiderkin, who could produce the mutated, magically-enhanced silk as some Speckled River Spiderkin had. It was a terrifying thought.
She felt the magic course through her nervous network. Big and strong it might be, but a clean shot to the skull will take it out all the same.
The webbing that began at the road went on to connect between trees, block passages and form new ones, and made the forest into a hostile, labyrinthine cluster of confusion.
While Zo’Lara was able to navigate the forest floor with impeccable coordination, Raquelle meanwhile was clumsy like a newborn deer, stumbling and staggering along with misplaced steps.
At last they came to where the webbing was at its densest. A cave entrance lay before them, covered in silk. The sheets wound deeper into the form of a tunnel, beyond where the bones littered the ground along with torn pieces of clothing and discarded weapons.
Raquelle and Zo’Lara exchanged a glance, and they approached the cave entrance, which was concealed by a thin sheet of silk. Raquelle gently prodded the sheet with her hoof.
“Princess Vanderpool?” she called out into the cave, “Captain Merigold? Are you in there?”
After a silence, Zo’Lara dropped her sword out of her mouth into her free foreleg hoof, while Raquelle’s horn glowed a violent shade of ruby red.
When her horn glowed brighter, the sheet of silk evaporated into shreds. The mares took a step forward, horn and weapon raised.
Inside, the cave was completely covered in silk; large sheets of webbing stretched along the walls and ceiling and floor, and thick columns of the sticky substance rose from bottom to top. The cave floor was covered in a thin, sticky film, which greatly hindered their mobility.
They continued with quiet, careful steps, until Zo’Lara’s ears perked up.
“Mmmmmmmph! MMMMMMMMMMPH!” came something from deeper in the dark.
Raquelle gasped, as relief overcame her. They’re alive!
Raquelle’s horn glowed brighter, illuminating their way through the dark in red light, and they advanced deeper into the cave.
A few meters further, they found them. Two mares, both alive, but hardly recognizable. Each was encased in skintight cocoons of spider silk, rendered completely immobile. Both of them were frantically squirming and crying out in their sticky prisons.
“Zo’Lara, check the cave. I’ll free them,” Raquelle said, bending down beside the struggling mares. The material they were trapped in was so tight, she could make out every detail of their faces. They were both panicked, desperately trying to speak. Raquelle tried to pick at the silk, but couldn’t easily grab at it. The material was so tight that there were no creases or wrinkles to grab ahold of. She tried pulling on the girls’ limbs, but the silk would not give. Raquelle shook her head.
“OK, Zo’Lara, we’re gonna have to carry them out like this. I can’t get them free,” Raquelle explained.
“Use spell,” Zo’Lara advised.
“I don’t want to risk hurting them,” Raquelle said.
“Unicorn pony weak. Here, Zo’Lara will try,” came Zo’Lara, who began walking back over towards Raquelle.
She didn’t make it two steps, before something reached out of the dark to snatch her up by her mouth and waist. Zo’Lara managed to scream out shortly before the darkness took her.
Raquelle spun around with wide eyes that betrayed her fear. She could hear what sounded like wet fabric being rolled around itself, and some muffled screams from ahead in the dark.
“...Z-Zo’Lara?”
Suddenly the screaming was reduced to a low muffled sound, not unlike how the other victims had sounded. The sound of stretching fabric continued, and Raquelle could catch glimpses of movement in the dark as she approached it. The sound suddenly stopped, and the source of the movement disappeared, as Raquelle’s light drew nearer.
“Let her go!” Raquelle squeaked, “Face me, coward!”
Zo’Lara had disappeared, along with all the courage Raquelle had convinced herself she had. All those training sessions, all those classes, all those books. None of it seemed to matter now.
Where did I come in from? Why is it so dark?
She wanted to run. She wanted to leave now, leave them all behind, and run. But she could not find the courage to budge, and instead her eyes searched the darkness ahead of her, searching for movement, for light, for anything.
Raquelle heard movement from behind her, and she spun around just as she charged up her horn to ignite at full power, illuminating the entire cave.
Then she saw him, that great ghastly thing, with his spider’s pincers and six serpent’s eyes, with his muscled, black, hairy build and a string of drool dribbling out from his teeth. This was no typical spiderkin. This was a monster. She did not have time to scream, before Zo’Lara’s body sailed through the air towards her, colliding into her at such a speed that Raquelle’s spell short-circuited before she could properly cast it. Raquelle was able to dodge most of the impact, turning to see Zo’Lara’s cocooned form land gently in a thick web not far from the other two victims. Zo’Lara was left dangling awkwardly upside down as she desperately tried to squirm free.
“Don’t worry, I’ll finish this!” Raquelle yelled, aiming her horn back towards the darkness, towards every noise, every hoofstep, but the beast seemed to evade her at every turn.
Raquelle spun around in the dark, wantonly pointing her horn. She was panicking, and felt sweat slip down her neck. She was going to end up just like the others, she thought. And she had only found two of the victims. Where was the third? Dead? I will be too.
She heard a rustling sound from behind her, and jumped back just as a stream of silk shot out from the darkness. It missed her, making impact with Zo’Lara cocooned body behind her. Raquelle fired a flaming bolt of magic at the source. The flames burned through the dark and struck something moving further ahead. The beast let out a yelp of pain, and she heard something heavy collapse to the ground. Her heart was racing. Did I kill it?
Raquelle slowly approached the source of the smoke deeper in the cave, where her firebolt had hit. But it was not the flaming husk of that monstrous creature that she found, but rather a large rock charred to bits. Realization overcame her, but it was too late; the beast’s trick had worked.
The beast worked quickly, springing out from behind her, covering her horn with a sticky mesh of silk before pulling a sticky sheet over her face, to blind and disorient her. She hardly had time to scream before she drew back on her hind legs, trying to break free.
He wrapped around her face twice, and then picked her up, beginning to wrap up her body. The silk sprayed onto her legs, and he began spinning her, passing her from hoof to hoof as he had dozens of times before. Before long, her hind legs and hooves were sealed together, and her forelegs were crossed against her chest. He continued to wrap her up until she finally stopped struggling, adding so much silk that it made it difficult for her to breathe.
He held her for a few minutes, inspecting his work, going over every detail.
“I hope you’re comfortable,” Gorgo laughed, “This is a record catch for me. Five mares, all mine.”
Raquelle was blind. She could hardly hear a thing, and worst of all, she could just barely breathe.
Please somepony save me. He’s going to kill me.
She could hear the beast speaking, and feel his hot breath over her face. The smell was enough to make her want to vomit.
She felt herself being set down, and it felt as though she was strung up in a hammock. Out of options, she rested her head on whoever was next to her. It felt good to at least know she wasn’t alone. Valkyrie and the others may have better luck. They’ll come for us.
Gorgo set the sorceress on the web with the others, and took a moment to examine them all. He sprayed a wide sheet of liquid silk over the four of them, anchoring them to the web.
“You all need to relax,” he laughed, “You’ll be here for some time.”
He felt his stomach, feeling the struggles of his last meal grow weaker and weaker. All of the excitement was making him tired, and he decided it was time for a nap.
He sealed up the entrance again, put in place brand new alarm strands, and stomped over to a wide hammock of webbing. These four would sustain him for a couple days, and he might even barter one of them off for goods. Before he knew it, he fell fast asleep, emitting a loud snore.
Morgyn opened her eyes as she slipped back into consciousness. Inside the belly of the beast, her entire body was coated in a thick green slime, what had to be proto-digestive acids meant to soften her skin and erode articles of clothing. Her dress had melted off her body, as had all of her undergarments. Now the only patch of skin that remained uncoated by the slime was around her left eye. The slime tingled, but didn’t sting. She could feel her skin become more and more sensitive, with each passing second. The stomach had begun to contract, squeezing her more and more. She could not stay awake for long, not with how little oxygen she had access to, and also in spite of the boiling-hot heat of Gorgo’s gut. Proto-digestive acids, a thought came to her, recalling some chemistry lessons from school. Little irritation unless ingested. Don’t open your mouth. This was bearable, but in a few hours that would change. Hydrochloric acid. Highly corrosive. There would be pain. There would be quite a bit of pain, unless somepony came quickly and cut her out of this monstrous beast’s stomach. Somepony will come. Merigold will protect me. She always has. She felt herself drift off again, and prayed that the next time she woke up, she would be safe and free again.