Interlude 2 - A Spider's Parlor

The Rantul are a species of  sentient arachnids that has been present in Aos ever since the dawn of history, though according to some elven sources they have made their appearance only a few centuries before humanity.

Rantul reproduce parasitically by laying eggs inside of the bodies of other living creatures, so that the larvas can incubate safely and have an assured food supply for when they hatch. According to their birth process, the Rantul are divided into three subspecies: spawnlings, hybrids and matriarchs.

Spawnlings are the most common Rantul breed, which is not surprising since as many as a hundred of them can hatch from a single host. They resemble huge tarantulas, except for talons on their legs, and they can grow to the size of an adult hound. They are quite intelligent but still little more than animals, mostly ruled by their instincts. They are very social and they hunt and fight in big packs, relying on numerical superiority, their talons and their venom to kill their prey. They are naturally subservient towards hybrids and matriarchs.

Hybrids are born whenever the implanted eggs are absorbed into the host's body and mutate it instead of hatching into spawnlings to devour it. The resulting hybrid is a mix between a Rantul and the host's native species, though the instincts are purely those of a Rantul. Any previous memory and personality is erased during the transformation, though some faint traces of it may remain as quirks in their behaviour, and the instincts are purely that of a Rantul. Hybrids vary in how dangerous they are depending on their original species, but they can be extremely strong, since they can retain part of their innate magic, if they had any. In battle, sentient hybrids often lead spawnlings and less intelligent hybrids, but are instinctively subservient towards matriarchs.

Matriarchs are born when one egg somehow absorbs all of the other eggs before hatching, resulting in the birth of a single Rantul from a single host —which is always female in this case, as the matriarchs seem to incubate inside the host’s uterus or an equivalent reproductive organ. They are very similar to spawnlings in appearance but are many times their size, easily reaching the size of a cart or even bigger. Matriarchs sit at the top of Rantul society and they are the one leading the various nests, with the hybrids and the spawnlings instinctively obeying to all of their orders. Matriarchs are also the only Rantul who possess the innate magic of their race, in their case the ability to create and manipulate magical webs. These webs can be used for a lot of purposes, from offense to building and even healing. Silk produced by a Rantul matriarch is considered an exceedingly rare and precious material, often used for magical garbs which are even more resilient than actual plate armor...

The Arachne are a subspecies of Rantul matriarch that are the result of a mix up between the hatching and the hybridization process. An arachne looks like a normal matriarch, only with the torso of the host attached to its cephalothorax. Sadly, this part of the host retains their memories and personality, which contrasts with those of the matriarch, something which leads the Arachne to mental instability and madness. However, Arachnes are also extremely powerful, having a much more powerful aura compared to other matriarchs and also possessing the native magical abilities of both Rantul and their native species. Because of their power and madness, Arachne are considered very dangerous even by their own kin, and are often killed as soon as they are born.

Excerpt from “A Wayfarer's Guide to the Unknown Volume III, Creatures and Monsters” by Septim Logan, published by Auric Golden Press

Deep into the Caligare Forest, the Greenward Mountains emerged from the trees like a colossal gray wall, with their steep, rocky sides almost completely devoid of vegetation. Spiral of mist climbed over those mounts, mixing themselves with the low clouds that had been trapped by the peaks. It looked like a completely impassable barrier with no weak points, one that could stop just about everything.

Except for one place.

A narrow valley cut through the mountains, similar to a crack when compared to the humongous size of the nearby peaks. But even here the way was obstructed, though not by a natural formation, but by a mighty fortress that occupied the whole pass, an ancient relic of some long-forgotten civilization that had sought to create a wall between itself and the threats loming in the nearby Dark Heart. Untold centuries had passed from the time of its construction, but the castle still stood, solid and immovable, though its walls had been breached in many places, either by the passage of time or by the deliberate assault of some humongous creature. And right now, the place was actually occupied and cared for. The surrounding area had been cleared of trees, and the wood had been used to make some rudimentary reparations to the fortifications.

From the crude quality of those works, and from the fact that a lot of big, fat and scaly creatures were patrolling the surroundings it was easy to deduce that the current inhabitants of the fortress were orcs.

The name of the fortress had been lost to ages, but now it was known simply as the Wall, and it was the headquarter of the united orc army.

From  her observation point, hidden on a small plateau a few hundred meters above the valley, Anak'si the Pale Matriarch sneered with contempt while spying on the orcs. Those savages toiling below her had no idea that their impending doom was almost literally waiting above their heads. In their carelessness they could barely be bothered to keep watch on the side of the fortress facing towards the Dark Heart, and not even their leader had thought of scouting the surrounding mountains for possible threats. This was a huge oversight, and one that would eventually cost the orcs their supremacy over the Caligare Forest.

But it wasn't time for action yet. The seeds of anarchy and dissatisfaction had yet to bloom amongst the orc army, and facing them before their strength and unity waned would be folly. Still, judging from the information she had acquired, Anak'si knew that she wouldn't have to wait for long.

Having seen what she needed to, the Matriarch turned around and started walking back to her home. The road, if it could be called such, was incredibly steep and filled with obstacles, from huge holes and crevices to sharp rocks and huge stones that obstructed the way. It was so difficult that even an expert mountaineer would have thought twice before taking such a path, which Anak'si percurred with incredible ease, going at a pace that any human would have struggled with even on an easy road.

But Anak'si wasn't human, or at least not entirely. Her upper torso was that of a human girl, and a really beautiful one at that, but the rest of her body was a colossal, white furred spider with the torso simply attached to its cephalothorax. This immediately identified her as an Arachne, a rare subspecies of Rantul matriarch that was usually feared even by its own kin due to its great power coupled with a mental instability caused by the presence of two different heads, a human and a Rantul one, each possessing a different and contrasting will. But luckily Anak'si had no such problem, since she had only one will and therefore was perfectly sane. She enjoyed only the perks of her condition, which mostly meant better thought clarity and a greatly increased aura.

Using her eight powerful, talon-tipped legs, she easily crossed the mountains, often walking over vertical surfaces without slowing a bit. While her spider head followed the path, her human one scanned the sky in search of possible threats, though she wasn't overly worried about that. Not only she herself was strong enough to be able to deal easily with most threats, even while so close to the Dark Heart, but she also had Nero watching over her. Even if she couldn't see the Deathstalker, she felt his reassuring presence nearby, ready to deal with any creature foolish enough to attack her.

It wasn't long before she finally reached her base. It was located in a valley hidden between the peaks of the Greenward Mountains. It had been dug over the centuries by a small stream, and it was about ten kilometers long and one or two kilometers wide. The entire valley was filled by huge spruce trees, which formed a dark mass that no light could penetrate.

Without slowing down, Anak'si entered that small forest. She immediately felt the presence of invisible webs stretching from tree to tree, but she passed through them as if they didn't exist. Those webs were magical after all, put there by herself or by one of the other matriarchs serving under her, and they would only break at the passage of non-Rantul, causing a really loud, high pitched noise in the process. It was a typical alarm system of her kin.

As she walked deeper into the forest, the presence of the Rantul became more apparent. Huge webs, this time perfectly visible, had been spun from tree to tree, creating a labyrinthine structure that spanned the whole forest and basically formed something resembling a village, with walls, ceilings, huts and even roads made of webs and pieces of wood. Countless Rantul spawnlings crawled over everything, while bigger hybrids emerged from that chittering mass, some walking on two legs and some on four, but all moving with a definite purpose while carrying out their duties. Here and there some even bigger shapes could be seen, showing that Rantul matriarchs were present as well.

The lesser Rantul all took notice of Anak'si's presence, parting respectfully to give her space to pass, with some humanoid hybrids even bowing with deference, something which pleased the Pale Matriarch, but she didn't show anything on her face and just kept walking until she reached a small clearing.

A huge structure had been built at the center of the clearing, occupying most of it. It was made entirely out of thick, silvery webs, spun into a shape resembling that of an eastern shrine. As soon as Anak'si approached, those webs started glowing, a magical reaction to her presence, and one of the walls opened like a curtain, letting the Arachne in.

The inside of the building was basically just one big room with the floor and the walls covered by gray silk tapestries, with a few wooden boxes scattered around and the glow of the webs providing enough light to see. A huge, hammock-like web also dangled from the ceiling and Anak'si jumped on it with relief, letting her legs rest after the long walk. Not that she was tired or anything, she just wanted to relax a bit.

She looked around at her current abode. It was relatively small for sure, but also very cozy, a refuge from all the stressful things that happened in the world, and Anak'si liked it very much. Sadly, thinking about it also carried some measure of annoyance as well, not because of the place itself, but rather because of the memories connected to his past homes.

This was the fourth nest that Anak'si had to build, since the previous two had been burned down by the orcs, and thinking about that desecration filled her with murderous rage. The first nest had been lost as a result of a lost battle... a battle that had started with the Rantul successfully ambushing the orcs and attacking them with superior numbers and from an advantageous position. How had they managed to lose was something that still boggled the Matriarch's mind. One moment her forces were steamrolling the orcs and the next one they had been completely routed by a counterattack that had come from nowhere. And from there things had gone downhill, resulting in the Rantul being forced to run for their lives, abandoning their nest and Anak'si's first home.

The second and the third nests were lost because the orcs had somehow managed to find them, even though they shouldn't have been able to. Both places were rather far from the orc territories and were very well hidden, but somehow this hadn’t been sufficient . Luckily Anak’si’s spies had informed her of the impending attack, allowing her to evacuate the nest without suffering any loss, but she was still incensed by having to abandon her home. She was particularly incensed by the deep unfairness of it all. After all she had spent months building up her spy network, making sure that she would know pretty much everything that happened in the forest, and the orcs —those dumb, lazy and gluttonous brutes whose first solution to any problem was trying to eat it— had still somehow managed to outsmart her. It was maddening.

Still, despite these precedents, she was pretty sure that those idiotic humanoids wouldn't be able to find the current nest. For starters, despite its closeness, it was incredibly well hidden amongst the mountains, probably the best hidden nest she had ever built. And second, and most important, it was protected by a three layer security, with the operatives occupied with raiding and spying reporting to a bunch of small outposts hidden in the forest, with no idea about the location of the main nest. That way, even if the orcs could track them back to their bases, it would only be a minor loss and there would be no hint for them to find out where her main force was hiding.

Sure, there were a few agents that reported directly to Anak'si from the field, but those were her personal agents, and most of them weren't even Rantul to begin with. They were simple spiders that she had bound to her service through her powers, so the orcs had no reason to suspect them, even if they did find them. They were ideal spies if not for the fact that their minds were very small, which limited the amount of information they could relay. Still, their number and stealthiness was enough to always keep Anak'si informed about the general state things, and besides the Matriarch controlled other, more intelligent arachnid species, like the Cerebrarachnids —or Brain Spiders, as they were commonly called— who had infiltrated the orcs' ranks by possessing the bodies of some orc grunts. Those were the best agents she possessed, since they actually received first-hand information about what the orc leaders were up to. In fact, it was thanks to them that she had been able to evacuate her previous nests in time.

Which in turn meant that the merit of saving the nests went to Anak’si herself, since she was the one who controlled the spiders to begin with.

The arachne was born with this power, the power to enslave other arachnids to her will. All she needed to do was just to touch a spider, whether with her own hand or with her magical webs, and it would immediately be brainwashed into her service. Not only could she order them around as she saw fit, but she could also commune with them by touching them, getting access to their thoughts and memories. Sadly there were limitations to this power, as it didn't completely work on sentient beings, but even in that case she could exert a more subtle but still substantial influence. It was thanks to this that she had been able to unite multiple Rantul nests under her rule, despite the fact that in normal circumstances the matriarchs from different nests would instinctively be at each other's throat. And the best part was that the other matriarchs didn't even realize that they had been manipulated into her service, instead thinking that they had done so completely out of their own will, out of fear of the orcs. Which was true, in a sense, as all that Anak’si had done was to magnify that fear, while simultaneously instilling into them the feeling that only she could save them.

The Arachne smirked. Truly, in order to succeed the first thing to do was to deceive the ones closest to you.

She had learned this lesson the hard way a lifetime ago... quite literally, since it had happened in her previous life, back when she was just a normal human girl from a different world called Earth. She didn’t really like thinking about it though, since her previous existence had been painfully mediocre. Back when she was human, she wasn’t beautiful, smart or particularly talented in any field. She had been insignificant to the point that people often forget she existed. At least, until high school, when she finally had enough to be invisible to everyone and decided to make herself special in any way possible. She quickly discovered that, despite her apparent lack of talents, she was actually very good at lying and manipulating other people, and she had taken full advantage of this in order to finally stand out. Through lies and some good acting, she had managed to get into the circles of popular girls, getting others to obey her and do her biddings. And if someone got uppity… well, she had many ways to frame them for something and then blackmail them back into her service. In a way, she had been pretty much like a spider even back then, sitting comfortably in a web of lies and waiting for her prey to fall in.

However, she had made a mistake. She had grown proud, and she had confided all of her accomplishment to her best friend —or the one she had thought that was her best friend— a shy and meek girl named Rebecca. She just wanted to brag a little bit, and the girl she had confessed all her deeds to seemed completely harmless, since she was a total doormat who followed Anak'si and her posse around like a lost puppy. Instead, the little traitor had the gall to tell everyone else about it, even presenting proofs she had gathered during their friendship. The arachne still fumed with rage at the memory. All of her hard work, undone by just one dirty little tattletale.

That had been the end of Anak'si social life. Everyone avoided her after this, no one wanted to talk to her. Even her parents had forced her to have regular appointment with a damn shrink, treating her as if she was mentally ill or something!

Back then, Anak'si, unable to have her way with other people, had turned into something of a shut in, finding some solace on the internet. The web was full of people ready to fall for her lies after all, with the added bonus of total anonymity and unaccountability, and she had made a nice nest for herself on social medias, extorting praise, sympathy and even the occasional money from her followers. She even started to play games and watch anime, first as part of her “gaming girl” persona, and then because she actually started liking them. She especially loved Isekai stories, the ones where the main characters were reincarnated and got to restart their lives with the added bonus of powers and the knowledge from their previous existence.

It had been quite a pleasant surprise when the exact same thing had happened to her.

After she had died of an aneurysm in her sleep, she had been reincarnated in this world as an arachne, and she had also been given the necessary powers to easily succeed in this new life. Being an Arachne alone gave her an unparalleled aura compared to the other Rantul matriarchs, and coupled with her ability to control all spiders and her knowledge from her previous world, she had been able to ascend to power incredibly quickly, carving a nice little empire for herself in the depth of the woods and starting the conquest of the whole Caligare Forest.

However, conquering the whole region wasn't her endgame plan. After all, she didn't want to toil in the wilderness for the rest of her life. No, what she wanted was to enjoy the luxuries of civilization, but in order to do that she first needed to consolidate her power over the forest. She knew that humans and other civilized races lived beyond the borders of the Caligare Forest, but she couldn't just waltz into their lands without a plan. They would certainly kill her or at least capture and enslave her. That's what humans did with monsters, after all. And because of this, she needed to amass enough military might to force the humans to either accept her or be conquered.

This was a good plan, if Anak'si could say so herself. And it would have most certainly worked, if the orcs hadn't interfered, waging war and disrupting all of the Arachne's preparations.

But now, the table was about to be turned.

Not only were the orcs getting weaker, due to problems with supplies and internal strife, but her new nest was slowly getting stronger than ever. The main reason for that was their closeness to the Dark Heart. Sure, that place was literally hell on earth and most of the things that lurked in there were more like nightmares incarnate than living creatures, but what really mattered was that a lot of the inhabitants of the Dark Heart were spiders, or at least enough spider-like t0 allow Anak'si power to work on them. Nero, her Deathstalker bodyguard, was probably the best catch of all. A vicious killer, an unparalleled hunter and all in all an unstoppable killing machine, he was one of the most deadly creatures that could be found even in the Dark Heart. If only Anak'si could find a female of his species to make them reproduce, she could gather an army of those dreadful arachnids that not even the orcs could hope to win against. And apart from him, there were many other horrifically lethal spiders that the Matriarch had bound to her will.

The thought of getting this much power considerably brightened her mood, to the point that she actually started humming a merry song to herself. She also took out a shard of a mirror from one of her vases and started combing her silky white hair, finally starting to relax a bit.

It was then that she heard a bestial scream echoing in the distance, and then all of the alarm webs started ringing through the nest.