The Last Satyr: The Two Paths Part 2

The company headed back to Ched Nasad in silence. They were now six instead of seven with Leradien gone. After a while, Graybeard then instructed others of what they were to do once they snuck past the man-orc defenses at Thera Pass. Marroh was nodding in agreement.

But the boy wasn’t listening. His feet and his heart grew heavier with every step. He expected his natural fear to overcome his courage, but even this most faithful part of his character was soon defeated.

He could not leave Leradien.

“I go back,” the boy decided.

He turned about without another word or a glance and started solemnly back up the road. No one stopped him or called out to him. None of the others had made such a vow to Leradien and, besides, Graybeard had a plan and it didn’t involve them getting killed here by Lolth. Few would argue with that logic and so none followed him now.

What it was they planned to do he did not know and no longer cared beyond wishing them success. He had a promise to keep to a lonely girl willing to die for him.

Yet another pair of footsteps caught up. It was Ronthiel.

“You really didn’t think I’d let you go back there alone, did you, Master Satyr?” he asked, joining him.

“I release you from your oath to me,” said the boy. “I doubt that a blind elf will be of much use in a battle with Lolth.”

“As to releasing me from my oath,” Ronthiel countered. “Perhaps I don’t go back for you? Perhaps I go back for Leradien? And, for being blind, I can still aim an arrow by sound.”

“We shall have to hope the enemy brings a brass band then,” said the boy. “For I doubt we shall hear either arrows or Lolth.”

“Even with your poor aim, you couldn’t miss her,” said Ronthiel. “They say she is twice as big as a barn.”

“That is such a comfort to hear.”

“Between us, we have about sixty arrows,” stated Ronthiel. “Some will hit. Most will break, but a few won’t. You must aim for her head as her spider body is proof against arrows. I already learned that from hitting Leradien. Nothing penetrates her spider demon’s shell.”

“How can we see her in this dark to even aim for her head? I can barely even see you!”

“Get her to talk.”

“How am I to do that?”

“You’re a satyr. You figure it out.”

The boy put his mind to that. Why would Lolth speak in an attack?

His satyr mind knew the answer to that. Get a woman angry enough and she’ll speak her mind all right. In fact, you’ll be wishing she’d shut up soon enough.

“All right,” he agreed. “I can do it.”

“There! You see? Already we have a plan in which we work together as one—your mind and my ears.”

“And both of you are insufferably big on yourselves,” a familiar woman’s voice said from the darkness ahead. “Why have you two come back?”

“Isn't it obvious, Leradien? To watch you defeat Lolth,” said Ronthiel.

“And to keep you company,” added the boy.

“I shall not be the cause of your deaths,” answered Leradien, coming forward.

“And we shall not let you die alone,” vowed the elf. “So we are here.”

“Since when does an elf care about a drow?” asked the drider.

“I do not care about a drow, but I do care about a Light Elf,” Ronthiel said. “And you are a Light Elf even if you pretend differently.”

“I do not think I pretend,” she said. “But I admit I am glad you are both here. I was feeling lonely, and that is a very painful feeling to a drider.”

“Then bid your pain farewell,” Ronthiel assured her with a bow. “For with us, you shall never be lonely again!”

“Why? Because I shall only live one more day?”

“No, Leradien. Because we are your friends,” the elf spoke decisively. “And, after we defeat Lolth, we still shall be.”

“How can an elf befriend a black blooded drider?” asked Leradien. “Are you not here only out of your vow to the boy?”

“He released me from it, the same as you did him.”

“Then why are you here?”

“So that you do not face death alone,” replied Ronthiel to her.

“The boy is with me. I am not alone. So why are you here?”

“Out of loyalty to you both,” he replied. “Why? Am I unwanted?”

“That depends upon how you define unwanted.”

“Enough arguing already!” interrupted the boy. “We are all here! We face this thing together! That is all that is important.”

Leradien wanted to question Ronthiel further but suddenly raised a foreleg claw to silence them.

“She’s here!” she warned.

“You can see here?” asked the boy, unslinging his bow.

“I feel her,” answered Leradien, cautiously on the alert. “My demon blood and spider senses are much more acute than hers, but her drow vision is more acute than mine. She sees us.”

“But you can’t see her?”

“No,” she replied. “As a half-drow, I only see a little over half as far as she does. Even with my heightened senses, it is still not enough to make up the difference. Yet I feel her cold thought.”

“Can you tell where she is?” asked Ronthiel, readying his bow.

“That way,” said Leradien with a nod of her head.

Peering in the direction she was looking, nothing was to be seen. It was too dark. Yet something could be felt.

As they strained their eyes in the direction Leradien indicated, they saw nothing but suffocating darkness ahead, obscuring any semblance of sight. The oppressive blackness seemed to swallow even the faintest hint of light, leaving them blind to the lurking danger within. Yet, amidst the impenetrable gloom, an ominous presence loomed. They felt something dreadful definitely looking back.

A gurgling, venomous hiss of warning sounded followed by the creaking of many limbs. Something was moving closer in the dark.

“I think it’s time you got her talking, Master Satyr,” reminded Ronthiel.

The boy mustered his courage to find his voice. His first words were so weak with fear they never left his mouth, so he tried again.

“So,” he challenged, “has the fat and bloated Lolth finally come forward to challenge the mighty and beautiful Leradien; queen and goddess of all?”

“Laying it on a bit thick, don’t you think, Master Satyr?” whispered Ronthiel.

But the boy ignored him.

“Is that why you slink in fear, oh miserable Lolth?” he called. “Do you bow to the greater beauty of your own superior goddess?”

Leradien was now looking at him strangely, wondering what had gotten into him, yet liking what she heard.

The bubbling hiss drew nearer. This time, it spoke.

“You have a made a fool of my orc captain and my drow general,” the cruel voice spoke. “Let us see if you can make a fool of me!”

The boys held up their star glass gems to illuminate her, but Lolth was immune to elf lantern gems and was neither blinded daunted, or seen. The light of the gems only to illuminated more blackness, for a great cloud of murkiness and malice was before them, blocking their vision. With deadly stealth, that utter blackness came forward.

“She uses a spell of darkness,” warned Leradien, as she cast a ball of fairy fire directly at it. The fairy fire struck home and, for but the briefest moments, there was a glimpse of many legs and two eyes. A woman’s eyes, they were but monstrous and abominable, and gloating with hideous delight to find them so easily trapped and beyond all hope of escape.

Ronthiel let fly his arrow, and so did the boy. He could hear his arrow hit and break against their target, almost as if they had hit some iron armored shield. Yet Ronthiel’s arrow must have come closer to its mark, for it made no noise of hitting, and the utter blackness of that form drew suddenly back.

Got her!

“What?!” cried the boy at her retreat. “Does the wretched and foul Lolth flee before her superior to run off and hide, ashamed of her ugly face before the great Leradien’s?!”

That vast, bloated, black shape that repelled all light did not back up very far with those words. As if chagrined at the boy, it halted its retreat to circle around them, looking for some weakness.

As it did, the true size of that thing became more apparent. The boy thought Leradien was big, big enough to ride, but hardly huge. But this thing was enormous! He could sense the movement of spider legs for the full length and width of that immense shadow. Lolth must have been over five times Leradien’s size. Their drider had no chance against the spider Queen! Fighting this thing was pure suicide!

It seemed to sense their fear, taking delight in it.

“Fat am I?” mocked a woman’s voice from within that vast blackness. “Bloated am I? Ugly am I?”

Ronthiel and the boy let their arrows fly towards the sound of that voice. Again, two arrows broke harmlessly off a hard object.

The boy grew anxious. How does one kill what one cannot see?

Briefly, Lolth allowed herself to be seen, dropping her spell of darkness. Her spider body was the same as Leradien’s—only much, much larger. But, unlike Leradien, who had a beautiful woman’s body from the waist up, Lolth had only the head and face of a woman joined to her thorax. All the rest of her was a gigantic black spider. It made her head a mighty small target.

Then there was sudden blackness again as Ronthiel let another arrow fly and the sound repeated of it breaking uselessly on her shell, and then the light flickered on her again, as if by lightning flashes.

Again, they saw her for a second instant. Her face was that of a drow woman’s, dark-skinned and white-haired, with unnaturally intense eyes. The boy feared her dark face was made of the same black armor as her body and, it too, would repel their arrows. He let his next arrow fly just as the blackness returned followed by the sound of his arrow once again shattering and deflected harmlessly away. The boy's arrows would have pierced a troll, yet they did nothing but break upon Lolth.

She laughed a cruel laugh of relish.

“She toys with us!” said Leradien, casting her fairy lights one last time to light up the monster.

Lolth was resistant to magic, and that included Leradien’s fairy lights. Yet the drider’s demonic blood enhanced her magic, making it stronger than any drow’s. The impenetrable black darkness of Lolth’s spell was now ever so slightly revealed, showing the horrid movement, loathsome shape, and dreadful size of the body within. Yet it was not enough to aim by.

Was Lolth toying with them by alternately revealing herself and then cloaking again? Perhaps, but more likely, she was responding to the boy’s insults and proving him wrong. For she was indeed beautiful. Even with her monstrous eyes, she was breathtaking. Yet so, too, was Leradien.

And that infuriated Lolth, especially to be called “fat”, “bloated”, and “ugly” by comparison. It mattered not that her spider body was so fat from the endless feedings and torturing of her victims that it was a wonder the earth could even hold her up. What mattered was what Lolth thought of herself and she thought of herself as beautiful, worshipping even her own grotesque body. So while arrows might bounce off her, personal insults would not.

“Show us your ugly face!” challenged the boy to that shadowy cloud of vomit. “Let us laugh upon it, you who dare compare yourself to the mighty Leradien!”

Another flicker of light in reply, and two more arrows flew as Lolth rushed forward.

Yet they too proved useless, and then the two spider women met in a violent collision of wills. They both disappeared from the boys’ vision in an explosion of blackness, for the very cloud that hid Lolth now also hid Leradien as they grappled.

The boys could not shoot their arrows into that light-absorbing monstrosity without risking hitting Leradien.

It was too much for the boy. He cast aside his bow, drew the huge bladed knife Graybeard had given him as a gift and rushed into that utter blackness and its teeming mass of sixteen spider limbs. Ronthiel nearly followed, stopping just short of that black cloud of empty nothingness, held his arrow poised, and studied that impenetrable blackness, watching, waiting, and listening for his opportunity.

Little did either of them realize that the battle was already halfway over. Inside that invisible black cloud, the two had met, Lolth with her far greater size and weight and Leradien with her extra two arms of a strong woman’s body filled with demonic strength. For a brief moment, they stood each other up and the two seemed equal. But Lolth had killed many driders and Leradien was just one more to her. True, Leradien was bigger and stronger than any she had ever fought before, but still no match for her. Even as the satyr boy penetrated the spell of darkness cast around her body, Lolth had already driven Leradien over backward, by using her superior size and weight. The monster was now bending over Leradien’s fallen, and still desperately flailing, form. So intent upon her victim was Lolth that she had not even realized the boy had entered her sphere of darkness behind her. She was busy trying to get past Leradien’s upward thrashing limbs to get in her deadly bite, pushing Leradien’s pointed claws aside with her own great forelegs.

The boy ran into her furthest hind leg near her great, swollen abdomen, meeting that leg’s thickest point just where its joint grew from her thorax. Only now did Lolth turn her head, aware that someone or something was behind her. It barely took her mind off her gloating, for she knew no arrow could penetrate her there. She barely turned at all to this minor inconvenience, lashing back instead with one of her many other legs at him.

The boy, unable to see, felt by his hand that he was near where the giant leg joined the thorax. Some other limb narrowly missed him as it sought to kill him, knocking him down, but its claw missing the mark. He rose as it pulled back to strike again, sidestepped it, and found where the one great leg met her thorax. There he drove the great blade into the joint between the shell of the leg and shell of the thorax with a knife made for killing drow. And, whatever else Lolth was, she was a drow.

Lolth’s eyes snapped open wide. Never before had she ever felt such pain—no, not even with the first arrow that hit her. For the first time, she knew what her victims felt when her fangs pierced them. And her attacker was driving that horrible burning blade deeper into her leg joint! She gave out a shriek and struck angrily at him again with her nearest leg, seeking to impale her tormenter on its claw. Again she missed, hitting herself instead, her pointed claw bouncing harmlessly off her own armored body with a striking sound.

Ronthiel heard that shriek close at hand and let it guide his arrow from the very edge of that black emptiness that swallowed up all light.

“Thunk!”

This arrow did not break. It buried itself in something.

Lolth now knew what it meant to be under attack. Yet a second arrow had found its way deep between her neck and her thorax armor and was sticking out of her. Unlike Leradien, she was not black blooded and her blood would not dissolve the arrows. They would remain. Instinctively, she lashed outwards at an elf standing close by with a bow, using enough force with her claw to cut him in half. But the elf was so close and her leg so long that her claw missed him completely, though her leg did not. Both elf and bow went flying.

Now she dealt with the nuisance behind her as she felt the agony of the killer blade being twisted and ripped back out of her. Furiously, she turned about to end the life of its source.