CHAPTER FIVE
Three days of preparation, and the young wizard and his dragon accomplice were ready for the final leg of their journey. The morning started off with a hearty breakfast of oatmeal, bread and pork. They went over their equipment; Kiran mostly taking up that task.
Kiran had gotten some more supplies from the merchants in town, storing them in the back of his quacycle and backpack. Trewanti was the first to leave, transforming into her frightening form and flying back to the forest. Kiran and Gatril got onto the quacycle and rode off, waving back at the shrinking image of Aparna.
The quacycle’s wheels spun over miles of earth and grass uphill until their destination faded into sight.
It was once called Ashfield Road, named after the legend of bodies that were burnt after a massive war between two tribes, and the crisp remains of the corpses had rained upon the land that day like dark snowflakes. But that was decades ago, and now lush trees that called all manner of wildlife within the surrounding greenage stood here, hence its new name the Preteblu Hills.
Mongooses scuttled across the ground and gay birds chirps and flew overhead. The leaves ruffled like paper being crushed next to the ear in the winds, and for the briefest moment, the thought of confronting ferocious beasts slipped out of Kiran’s mind.
Gatril felt his muscles relax, and the quacycle slowed. “You feeling okay?”
“I’m good,” Kiran said.
Gatril tightened her arms around Kiran, and rested her chin atop his locks. Regardless of the barriers of their species and social standing, the comfort of his presence was too good to pass up on.
“We’re almost there,” Kiran said.
And that was when their ambushers struck, barging out of the bushes with clubs, machetes and crude-looking blasters in hand.
They were of the shape of men, hairy with a hyena’s snout and ears, hunched over with a mane of bristly hair running from their backs atop their heads. Grating cackles filled Kiran’s and Gatril’s ears, and they quickly stopped the quacycle and hopped off as the seven beasts surrounded them.
“What are they?” Kiran said, switching between the individuals, the stones in his staff already lambent from his spirit energy.
“Bultungins,” sneered Gatril. She forcefully flicked her tail around unpredictably, sending a message to the beasts one foul move would befall something horrible upon them.
They all wore various animal skins that had crudely torn edges, and all manner of trinkets that seemed to have sculpted by more skilled hands as opposed to the dirty, clawed ones of the bultungins.
Kiran knew the human crafts in particular the bultungins didn’t get by righteous means.
One with his mane dyed white approached them, eagerly tapping a femur tipped with an axe-head in his palm. He rose above them by inches, and the width of his shoulders told the pair a blow dealt by his hand would be fatal.
“Little meatballs,” he said, “you look like you’re a long way from home.”
“Yeah,” giggled one of the others, gesturing with his machete, “you tell ‘em boss.”
“Piss off!” said Gatril, keeping her eyes on the ones with blasters. “I’ll melt you all alive if you touch us!”
The leader grinned, and gobbets of saliva reeking of rotten flesh fell from his mouth. “Hey boy, hand over that quacycle and your stuff, or we’ll show you how our gang does things around here.”
Kiran touched Gatril, stealing her attention. She saw the glow of his spirit energy in the jewels on his staff, and face laced with concentration. She realized his stance wasn’t that of a coward seeking someone to save him from his demise, but a man trying to gather his bearings to access the situation.
Kiran wasn’t afraid anymore.
“Last warning,” said Kiran, unflinching, “leave us alone.”
Two of the bultungins charged and abruptly stopped, baring their teeth. It was a tactic meant to inject fear and unease into their targets, but Kiran’s countenance reflected his inward annoyance rather than the terror they’d hope to see.
Realizing this, the leader couldn’t let this standoff continue with words. He dropped his axe by his side, tensing his arm. “Don’t say I didn’t try to play nice. Get ‘em!”
And Kiran tapped the ground with his staff. Earthen walls sprung up with multiple quakes, catapulting two bultungin into the air and barricading Kiran and Gatril from their gunfire.
Gatril instantly followed up by jumping onto one of the walls and into a bultungin with a gun. She twisted her body and slapped him away with her tail. She sprinted on all fours, darting left and right, tripping them with her tail and cutting them open with her claws.
“Blast!” The leader turned and ran. “Let’s get outta here!”
The remaining two men fled with their boss.
But Kiran wasn’t having it, and he holsters his staff and took out his cannon. Kiran aimed it at the bultungin running through the trees and fired with honed precision. The sticky blob knocked the leader in the head and grounded him.
Gatril darted after the others and leaped into the back of one with the force of a raging bull. She heard a loud snap of something vital to the beast, and switched to the other one. Gatril hawked up an acidic ball that splattered onto his back. The bultungin wailed at the sound of his sizzling flesh; like fresh lava had been poured onto him.
Kiran went to the quacycle to check if he had accidentally damaged his vehicle in the ruckus, while Gatril dragged the leader back to the side of the road.
Gatril tossed him by his foot unceremoniously before Kiran. “Start yapping,” she said.
The cowering bultungin raised his trembling hands before him as if he expected one of the two to stomp-in his face. “I-I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to attack you!”
“Where did you get all those ornaments?” said Kiran.
“We found them in a town up ahead,” he said. “It was overrun by the j’bafofi. The entire place has been murdered. The only people there are the dead ones. W-We just happened on it and found all this jewelry. Then they chased us out!”
“They…?” said Gatril.
“The males!” the beasts said, his lips wet with disdain. “The bastards chased us out. They want all the territory for themselves to farm food to impress the female.”
“Thanks for the information,” said Gatril, kicking the man in ribs. “Now get going!”
But the bultungin couldn’t move from the hellish pain Gatril inflicted on him, and the two simply went the quacycle and left the squirming gang of beasts.
Another path veered off the main one into a hazed outline of buildings, and they followed it. Though the wind blew, the tees barely moved as if they were petrified, and the birds didn’t take to them either. But the closer Kiran and Gatril got, they saw the reason for this.
A galaxy of webs had been thrown over the trees like a white sheet stretched to the thinnest fiber. They knitted the leaves and branches dead stiff, preventing the grace of the winds from permitting them a swaying dance. Hung within them like the leftover of a demented child’s macabre play things were dried corpses of animals who’d fallen prey.
And on their path into the town, it was no different. The webs were all over the buildings, and Kiran decided he better save his vehicle from going further into the webbed museum and turned off the engine. He and Kiran got off, looking for anything that waited to surprise them.
“Do you smell anything, Gatril?” said Kiran.
Gatril’s nose inhaled the choking smell of rotten wood, alkaline and something dead. “Nothing out of the ordinary,” she said. “I never picked up the scent of a j’bafofi before.
Kiran saw the unattended windows and doors. It ran across his mind to search them, but he remembered something about spiders. They were creatures of stealth, lying in wait for something to carelessly wonder into their trap of threads and deliver a paralyzing blow, leaving the prey defenses as its organs were liquified and consumed alive.
A most gruesome ending Kiran didn’t want him and his friend to fall to.
“Gatril,” he said. “Either they’re hiding in the buildings, or they’re out hunting.”
“Then what do we do?” she said. “Should we lay the trap here? This isn’t the queen’s lair.”
Kiran considered his options, and said, “I guess I’ll take that chance.”
He went to his quacycle, only to have a six-legged fiend fall off a roof onto it.
It had a glaring pink-red coloration, and a pale face with beady black eyes above two nostrils and its jittering mouthparts that possessed actual human teeth.
Kiran screamed and ran away, stopping once next to the muscular bosdrake. “Eeek! Spider!”
Gatril took the cannon Kiran gave her off her back and positioned the arachnid within her sights. She had previously switched the sticky rounds with a cartridge that held eight lead bullets.
Just one of these creatures made the bosdrake and human nervous, and when more of them crawled out of the houses, unconditional terror embraced them.
“There are dozens of them!” said Kiran, looking at the spiders blocking off all exits. Their thoraxes were long, narrow and flexible, a design granting them the ability to aim their spinnerets over their heads. Their front legs were modified into three-digit grasping appendages. Their mouths made clicking and snapping sounds that Kiran’s ears couldn’t translate.
“Gatril, can you understand them?” he said.
“I’m not familiar with their language I’m afraid,” she said. She saw them inching their way closer. She roared, they snapped into a quick retreat, but advanced once again. All of this spoke to Gatril. They didn’t have the intelligence of beasts to know what a gun was or the power she and Kiran possessed. They moved purely on instinct. Confident in their numbers that their prey would go down.
“Kiran,” said Gatril. “We don’t have a choice now…”
“Do it!” said Kiran, covering his mouth and nose with his shirt.
Gatril inhaled for a big air push and exhaled, spinning as she spread the green mist. The spiders railed in displeasure. Enraged sounds channeling from their mandibles.
Kiran blasted away two of the spiders. “Run to the back of the town!”
Gatril and Kiran made toward a street. It was walled off by webs—until Gatril melted it with acid. But the further the pair went, the more spiders they saw coming at them.
Kiran and Gatril had a little more speed as opposed to the spiders burdened by their hard exoskeleton; which they compensated for with the long reach of their spewing webs at the feet of the fleeing duo.
Gatril burned them another passage through the webs, and a third. Kiran used his earth-pillar and made a path over the webs on the ground and the spiders coming from the sides. Gatril took a few shots that popped messy yellow holes in their hides. The spiders screamed and collapsed. Kiran used his force-counter and knocked away three more of the spiders into the side of a house.
Their persistence led them to a path into a thin forest where they found more deceased animals entangled in the webs, and a smell of stale urine and moss assailed their senses like a stealthy, stinky predator.
But in the distance, Kiran and Gatril saw it.
“There’s a cave!” said Gatril, her keen eyesight catching it before the human.
The dark hollow was supplanted into the side of a high mound. Threads stained in yellow split from the mouth and matted around it. The plants were withered as if the threads were robbing them of life, and the pungent smell tripled.
Kiran spun around with his staff, ready. But to his surprise the spiders hesitated. “Look, they stopped.”
Gatril witnessed the once bloodthirsty arachnids stalling, placing their feet forward and back, hesitant as their food was so close, yet so was the abode of the female.
“Are they afraid of the female?” said Gatril.
“At least they aren’t going to kill us anymore.” Kiran took Gatril’s arm and walked back into the cave, keeping his eyes on the males just in case they mustered enough courage to come closer.
The sunlight died soon inside, and Kiran felt goosebumps all over him. “We forgot the lantern back on the quacycle,” he said. “Gatril, can you by any chance breathe fire yet?”
“Not naturally like my stomach acid,” she said. “If we had some potassium and glycerin to eat I could though.”
Kiran channeled his spirit energy into his staff. “I guess it’s a good thing I made this spell with Trewanti’s queex.”
Kiran activated his fourth spell from a white orb with blue streaks. Light swelled from it, forming its photons into the shape of an eye. The iris sparkled and a second body of radiance stung the dark out of existence, revealing a rocky ceiling from which twisting roots ran into the walls and floor, all covered in moss. Insects who relished the dark hurried from the scorching light exuding from Kiran’s staff.
“Shall we?” said Kiran.
Gatril shoved Kiran along. “Stop trying to sound all fancy like.”
Kiran and Gatril found two separate, winding paths. The angle making it seem the lumpy walls intended to close and chew them up. The first one they took revealed insects and small rodents who expertly traverse the surface of the web-laden walls and ceiling. It seemed to have been an adaptation, which made Gatril in particular wonder how long the j’bafofi had been here.
The width of the path grew as they went, seeming more befitting of the massive beast fabled to live inside here. Then they reached the end, but contrary to the fangs, claws and beady eyes they were expecting, a mass of corpses piled on top of each other stood at the end, waiting on them like some sick trick.
“Holy crap…” Kiran tried to contain the urge to vomit, triggered by the scent that burnt his lungs.
“They’re hundreds of them,” said Gatril.
The corpses were a menagerie of humans, beasts and animals, like a deranged necromancer’s collection. The ones at the very bottom were nothing but bones infused with moss and other discoloration over time, while at the top the newcomers still had their skin, though it was shriveled, and with the impact of the moisture had sagged and fused with heat of the others as if they were all trying to become one—souls locked together in an embrace of death.
Kiran pointed the light above the bodies, where they found a tunnel leading to probably the source of where all these remains came from.
Kiran shuddered as if he could feel multiple hairy legs on him. “It’s like this place is—”
“A dumpster,” Gatril finished. She saw rats scrabbling to the top where others nibbled at the scraps of flesh left. “Come. We should go.”
They went back to the beginning of the fork in the cave and took the other path. This one was larger, very. Big enough to permit an elephant passage. Gatril’s intuition gnawed at her body and she readied her cannon. Kiran drew his knife just for safe measure.
And it came so unsuspectingly that it had the same effect as something leaping out of the dark to bite them. A sweet tune, a hum that came from a throat of liquid crystal. It was soft and reassuring, like the lullabies Kiran’s mother would sing to him.
“What? Who is that?” Kiran wondered if the cave was playing tricks on him. The song was unbefitting of the accursed hole they’d wondered into. It had to be a trap; a siren’s song to lure wary sailors to their doom, as his grandfather would tell Kiran at night when he visited the old man.
And then came an orange glow from around the bed. Faint, flickering, casting jagged shadows on the walls.
“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” said Kiran.
Gatril gestured to the ground briefly. “The webs here are a bit fresh. And now that I know the scent of spiders, it’s like this one’s right under my nose.”
They closer they got the slowler their steps became. But it seemed by the room they found, they had been right to be so cautious in their approach.
A flame burnt in a bronze urn close to the wall, and the essence of freshly sundered wood and mint seeped from it. Thick branches were stuck to the walls of the chamber, holding enough books that seemed to be the humble beginnings of a library. In the corners of the room were trinkets, jewelry that sparkled from the grace of the flames. And in the center, there she was.
It was something humanoid, female in shape, but the body parts composed of jointed limbs and a segmented torso. She had four long arms, each ending in four digits, and her pelvis was squishy looking and pink, contrasting the brown of her chitinous body. The thighs were thick and attached to the outermost of pelvis, from which a long tail hung, tipped with spinnerets. Her six eyes were occupied by a book before, her mandibles clicking thoughtfully as she processed the information, and she briefly brushed back a lock of her black hair with a hand.
But the legs weren’t set in preparation for a lunging attack. The hands weren’t about to wring their necks, and her fangs weren’t dripping neurotoxin in the hindsight of puncturing their flesh. Even when she lifted her head from the book she was reading and spared them a glance, she looked away, only to do a double take as if surprised by who was there instead of the fact that they snuck up upon her.
“Who are you two?” she said, her voice high pitched but grainy.
“My name is Kiran Kehomba,” the boy said. “I’m sorcerer seeking the queex of a j’bafofi. I came here seeking your assistance.”
The six eyes turned to the bosdrake. “And who is this?” the spider said.
“I’m Gatril,” she said. “I’m his friend.”
The spider closed the book, and between her mandibles they could see her lips making a smile. “This is quite the surprise. I was just reading a tale about a human female, falling in love with a beast. To think I’d see something similar even here. The universe must like me.”
Kiran said, “I don’t mean to be rude, mam, but I want to ask you a few questions.”
“You come into my domain, and want to question me?” the spider narrowed her eyes.
Kiran and Gatril’s nerves went array, and their spines wanted out through their backs,
“Shit,” said Gatril. “Quick, Kiran offer to eat her crotch!”
Kiran was a stuttering wreck: “I-I-I-I—”
“Enough!” said Gatril. She approached the spider, flinching when she saw the size of her mandibles. Seven inches. The size of Kiran’s cock. “Now look here!” Gatril pointed, but her finger was too close to the spider’s face and she dropped it. “We just—”
The spider grabbed Gatril by the throat. Gatril tired prying her hand open but the spider’s strength was more than hears, a mighty dragon.
Kiran’s spine suddenly straightened in his back. “Gatril!” He approached the spider. His staff raised with orb for the force-counter pulsing. “Put her down! Please!”
“My,” the spider said, her mandibles salivating. “I’ve never had a dragon before.”
“Bitch!” Gatril squeaked.
“I said drop her!” Kiran boomed.
The spider finally recognized Kiran’s killing intent and payed him heed. She sensed a supernatural force emanating from his staff, and narrowed two of her eyes at him. “You’re a sorcerer…”
“That’s right,” Kiran said, trying his best to contain his rage. “Now put her down before I tear this place down!”
The spider dropped Gatril, not out of fear, but intrigue with the human. Gatril gasped for air and retreated behind Kiran. “You freaky bug! The next time you do that you’ll regret it!”
The spider rose, tendons and chitinous body parts rubbing together like sandpaper. At three meters, she towered over them.
“Human, how many spells do you know?” said the spider.
“Four,” said Kiran. He and Gatril looked at each other with uncertainty.
“Why would a spider be interested in spells?” said Gatril.
“Isn’t it obvious by what your eyes see?” said the arachnid. “I’ve become enlightened. I no longer thrive on my instincts except to feed to maintain my health.”
“Is that why you haven’t laid any eggs?” said Gatril.
“Yes,” she replied. “I’ve recently stopped accepting offers from the males. They are lowly beasts. Not bright in the head. I’ve sharpened my mind, nourishing it with the knowledge of humans.” She showed them her hand, conjuring within it a ghostly white energy that danced like a swirling mist.
“That’s…spirit energy,” Kiran said.
The spider closed her hand and the energy vanished. “I’ve grown fond of this power that some humans possess, to point where I managed to discover it in myself. Kiran, if you can teach me about magic, I can give you the queex you want.”
“What?” Gatril turned to Kiran, expecting to see him speechless just like her, but the boy smiling much to her dismay.
“Wow!” said Kiran. “That sounds like a fair trade.”
Gatril grabbed Kiran by the shoulders and quickly walked him back to the mouth of the room. “What are you doing?” Gatril whispered.
“What’s wrong?” said Kiran.
Gatril pinched his lips. She looked over her shoulder at the spider’s six eyes visually ravaging her. Gatril flinched and turn to Kiran. “You can’t teach her magic. You’ve seen what she did to those bodies. Imagine if she starts walking around with a bunch of spells.”
Kiran’s train of thought came an abrupt stop, reversing to take another route that brought him upon a different outcome. “Oh, no,” he said.
“I can hear you, you know,” said the spider.
Kiran and Gatril spun around with innocent smiles. “Umm, you might have misheard,” said Kiran. “We were just talking about how pretty your vagina looks?”
The spider flexed her arms. “You don’t have much of a choice,” she said. “Either teach me about magic and get my queex, or I trap you here until you change your mind. One scream, and all the males will come running in at my side.”
“Then we’ll just have to make this quick,” said Kiran, raising his staff.
The spider flicked her tail and unleashed her webs in an arc. Gatril and Kiran dove out of the way of the silky strands.
Kiran used his force-counter spell, but the j’bafofi leapt into the ceiling. She uttered a high pitched clicking sound that froze Kiran and Gatril.
“Shit!” Gatril said. She opened fire at the spider but the J’bafofi was too fast; scurrying over the surface of the room, spewing more webs that threatened to fill the area. Gatril quickly spat an acidic mist around her that melted the webs, and the j’bafofi seized the opportunity, lunging with a kick that threw Gatril into the wall.
The spider hissed and lunged once more, only to have a column of rock punch her in the stomach. She winced and crumpled, quickly leaping into the ceiling.
Kiran lifted a large rock out of the floor again and launched it with his force-counter. “Got you!” he said.
But the j’bafofi caught the rock and attached it to a thread of silk from her tail. “Thank you,” she sneered.
Kiran felt something heavy drop in his gut when the spider threw the rock at him. Luckily Gatril already got up and dove with Kiran out of the way. The she-spider used the rock and silk like a flail, constantly trying to smashed the human and bosdrake, forcing them all over the room, tripping and kicking over books in their way.
“Kiran!” said Gatril as she ducked beneath the flying rock. “Get me some higher ground!”
“Got it!” said Kiran, tapping the floor and ascended Gatril atop a column. At this height Gatril got a better shot, and managed to put a round in the spider’s shoulder.
The j’bafofi screamed and drop the rock, falling to the floor ground with brute force.
Gatril laughed. “Stay down bitch!”
But unbeknownst to the dragon, a single strand of silk as thick as her pinky had flowed from the spider’s tail and attached to Gatril’s foot. The dragon only found out when the spider yanked her tail and snagged Gatril’s footing from beneath her.
Gatril fell into the j’bafofi’s grasp. The spider held her arms and legs with all of hers. She brought Gatril closer to her impending, salivating fangs. Kiran leaped at the spider with his staff, only to have her tail coil around him.
However, Kiran’s hand with the staff was free, and he looked to the ceiling with epiphany. I hope this works! Kiran thought, and he charged his staff with spirit energy and tossed it into the ceiling.
“I never ate a dragon before,” the spider said with insidious grin behind her fangs.
Gatril bore her teeth in defiance. She tried hawking up some more acid but her stomach’s content had reached its limit. But that proved unnecessary, as Gatril has the pleasure of seeing a huge rock land in the j’bafofi’s head with a solid thonk sound.
The she-spider’s eyes rolled into her head. Her grip loosened and the bosdrake and human quickly stepped away from the beasts as she fell on her knees.
Kiran took up his staff and said, “Quick, tie her up!”
Gatril used her rifle as a club across the spider’s face, measuring the force so that it didn’t cause further damage, but dealt enough force to knockout her—which it did.
“Bitch!” said Gatril.
Kiran and her quickly bounded the j’bafofi’s six arms and legs together, as well as her tail. They sat her up against the wall, where by the time she regained consciousness she was looking across at Kiran and Gatril who’d seated themselves on some of her books.
“Well look who’s up?” said Gatril, closing a book she had been reading.
The j’bafofi tried to lunge at Gatril but instantly met with the force of her restraints. “Curses!” The she-spider struggled, but Kiran and Gatril had used a good amount of webbing to tie her that would’ve restrained even a raging bull.
“Save your energy, missy,” said Gatril. “Because we’re going to work you.”
Kiran stood, and said, “Please listen to what we have to say—”
“As if I’d take orders from my food,” said the spider. “Just wait until I get free! I’ll liquefy your organs and drink them like soup!”
“We can free you right now if you cooperate,” said Gatril.
The j’bafofi for the first time took a keen interest in Gatril. “A drake taking the orders of a human. Did he cast a spell on you?”
“No, I didn’t,” said Kiran. “She can leave or kill me whenever she wants. She just knows the kind of person I am and trusts me.”
The j’bafofi looked at the bosdrake quizzically, then chuckled. “This is a very strange thing indeed. I hear your words human, but I still don’t trust you. What do you want with me?”
“I told you before,” said Kiran. “I just want your queex. Once I get that, I’ll leave you alone. So long as you promise not to eat anymore humans or beasts.”
“Ferrans,” she said.
“What?” Kiran said.
“We are ferrans,” said the j’bafofi. “We who are not human, but part human and part beast, are not simple-minded creatures. A monster is a mindless force of destruction, and beasts are just smart enough to be a human’s pet. Ferran are those on the same level of intelligence and social development as humans.”
Kiran turned to Gatril, confused and dumbfounded. Gatril herself seemed puzzled too, but she had a knowing air about her.
“Have you heard of this before?” said Kiran. Gatril turned her eyes away, but Kiran had already seen the thoughtful, knowing look in them. “What is it, Gatril?”
“You’re young, Kiran, so you wouldn’t know,” said Gatril. “Some beasts have started to form their own communities, even cities. Those in those places are starting a movement to organize the beasts into their own identity. Ferran comes from the word feral and human; meaning one as powerful as humans, yet untamed by humans.”
“R-Really?” said Kiran. The boy snatched up his bestiary and skipped through the pages. “I know they form clans but nothing as big as that!”
“That’s why I said not to trust books written by just humans,” said Gatril. “Humans have a tendency to permit only what’s beneficial to them to exist. You, spider, what is your name?”
“Shirksire,” she said.
Gatril said, “Are you from one of these ferran cities, Shirksire?”
“Yes,” Shirksire said. “A long time ago I was exiled because of my belief that humans will never see me as equal. When I found this cave the town soon learned I was hear and tried to kill me. I defended myself—”
Kiran slapped the book shut, startling both women. Kiran put it down and looked at Shirksire testily. “That doesn’t give you the right to kill the entire town.”
“Don’t lecture me on morals, human!” Shirksire barked. “How many ferrans have you killed and skinned, beheaded and boiled down to the bone just to keep as your trophies? I only killed those who entered my cave to kill me. Their weapons are over there in the corner. The males caught wind of me here and did the rest. Besides…I doubt the entire town died. Probably some humans escaped. If the two of you can get past those idiot males, then there’s a good chance they did.”
Gatril turned to Kiran to see what his response would be. She didn’t want to tell him she mostly agreed with Shirksire; that she didn’t see anything wrong wit