The Queen tightened the funnels until the nearest retreat sealed behind me. Every other path ended in silk or legs.
I got an arrow onto the string and searched the webbing for weakness. The funnels narrowed between mineral pillars, crowded with layered silk and pale bodies. Spiders clung to the walls, ceiling, and cords strung across the air. Some fit beneath my palm. Others had legs longer than my arm. None moved without the web carrying the motion outward.
“Fine,” I whispered. “I’ll make my own door.”
A swollen bundle hung above the left-hand funnel where three heavy cords met. It was too high for the axe and too far for the sword, but the bow could reach it, if a ruined hand could be made to hold wood. I wedged the bow's belly against my splint and drew with the left, badly, the string cutting a line across my palm. Every breath felt borrowed.
There was no one behind me, no one waiting to drag me clear if the shot failed or curse the plan before I tried it.
I drew.
The arrow struck the bundle. Silk burst outward. A spider dropped from it, flailing through the crossing cords, and hit the funnel below with a wet crack. Two anchors snapped. The left side lurched as the web bridge sagged and tore open, leaving a narrow strip of bare stone between the pillars.
I let the bow fall against its sling, closed my left hand around Kade’s hilt, and drew the sword across my body. The motion was slower from the wrong side, but the blade came free. The axe stayed hooked beside my buckle. One useful hand meant one weapon at a time.
I moved before the spiders understood what had changed.
The first phase spider struck from my left. I twisted hard, and its fangs scraped my shoulder instead of sinking into my throat. Pain flashed through the cut already there. I drove my boot into its body and shoved sideways, dragging the leg after me.
Another limb punched through the silk where my head had been. I ducked beneath it and ran for the gap, the shortbow clattering against my hip. Silkward shifted over my ribs, light and responsive, but every strand brushing the armor tugged at me as if the nest had learned my shape.
Three spiders dropped into the opening.
I slashed the nearest across the face with Kade’s sword. Its old blue enchantment flickered along the edge, weak as a dying star, while the power in my palm gave the cut a colder bite. The spider recoiled. I stepped over its legs and drove my shoulder into the second. The impact nearly put me down. My footing slid, and the third spider’s forelimb swept toward my throat.
The pact mark burned beneath its bindings.
Left.
I bent away before the limb could open my neck. It scraped across my collar, and I stumbled through the broken anchor into the clear strip of stone.
The Queen settled her forelegs across the funnels. Strands tightened beneath her weight, and fresh silk narrowed the opening behind me. Smaller spiders crowded the plated joints.
She struck the web once with a foreleg.
The blow travelled out along every strand in the cavern. It wasn’t loud or deep, but it carried through the stone and into my teeth.
The court obeyed.
Spiders poured across the walls. Phase spiders slipped between the cords, their bodies blurring whenever torchlight caught them. The gap I’d made vanished beneath a crawling tide of legs. Above, the Queen lowered herself until her face hung between the pillars, every eye fixed on me.
Her front limbs struck.
I turned and ran deeper into the funnel. A hooked leg split the stone beside my boot. Another swept across my back, Silkward taking the force and throwing me forward. I hit the ground on one knee, caught myself with the sword, and felt its old enchantment stutter beneath my grip.
The spiders closed from both sides.
I rose with the blade low in my left hand. The axe knocked against my belt, available only if I put the sword away or lost it. My breath came fast. My arms had already begun to shake. The Queen filled the cavern behind the advancing court, dragging the web taut behind her as she pressed forward.
The first spider lunged for my face.
I caught its foreleg on Kade’s sword and twisted aside. Blue light trembled along the edge as it scraped the joint, but the creature’s weight drove me back two steps. Silk dragged at my boots. A second spider came over its back, fangs opening above me, and I threw myself beneath it.
My shoulder struck stone. Pain flared through the wound beneath my armor. I rolled as the spider landed where my head had been, then kicked its abdomen hard enough to make it rear. The motion tore at my ribs, and my knee nearly folded.
I came up on one knee and cut low. The sword bit into a cluster of legs. The spider shrieked and collapsed sideways, blocking the funnel for half a breath. I used it to limp deeper beneath the webbed arches while the Queen’s limbs clicked against stone behind me.
No clean ground remained. Silk cords crossed the cavern in deliberate rows, tightening when I shifted and steering the court toward my failing footing. A phase spider vanished beside a pillar and reappeared at my shoulder. Pale limbs flashed. I ducked, but one caught my upper arm.
Cold spread beneath the cut.
I pressed hard around the cut until sensation returned. “You’ll have to do better than that.”
The spider disappeared again.
I regretted the invitation at once.
Behind.
I turned at Astarra’s warning. The hooked limb missed my spine, but its point caught the back of my thigh and flung me forward. I struck the webbed floor hard enough to bite my tongue.
My breath vanished. The court surged.
I rolled beneath a giant spider as its legs hammered down around me. One point punched through Silkward and scraped my ribs. Another caught my sleeve. I tore free, leaving cloth behind, and drove my sword upward into its soft underside.
It convulsed above me. Hot fluid ran over my hand.
I wrenched the blade loose and crawled between its legs before the others closed. My chest heaved. Every breath came with a stitch driven under my ribs. The sword felt heavier, its faint enchantment dimmed to a thin blue thread.
The Queen pressed forward.
She didn’t rush. She didn’t need to. Her limbs took the cavern apart by pieces, sealing one passage after another. The smaller spiders moved wherever she left room, driving me toward the narrow strip between two stone pillars. I knew what waited there. Strands were thickest at the bases, layered into a funnel that could hold something much larger than me.
I tried to cut through the nearest anchor.
The sword glanced away.
My wrist jolted. The web flexed, absorbed the blow, and tightened around my boot. I hacked again, but a spider struck from the side. I parried with the flat of the blade, lost my balance, and went down hard on my hip.
A giant body crashed across the opening.
It wasn’t attacking me. It was blocking the only space where I could still move.
I understood the trap a heartbeat before the Queen’s foreleg dropped behind me. The spider had pinned my line. The Queen used it.
Her limb came down.
I caught it with Kade’s sword.
The impact drove me flat. My left elbow struck stone. I kept my left fist locked around the hilt and braced my splinted right forearm against the flat below the guard. It wasn’t a grip. It was one ruined limb helping keep the steel between my face and the Queen. The blade bowed, blue light racing from guard to tip as she narrowed her wagon-sized weight onto the old steel.
My arms shook.
“Come on,” I gasped. “You’ve held worse than this.”
I didn’t know whether I meant the sword or myself.
The answer came with a sharp crack.
For one bright instant, the enchantment flared. Then Kade’s sword broke against the translucent limb. The tip spun into the webbing, flashed once, and vanished. The remaining length clattered from my hand.
My palm stayed closed around the empty grip.
So much for that.
I’d seen that sword in Kade’s hand through more fights than I could count. I’d taken it from beside his body because he no longer could. Now nobody stood behind me to slap my shoulder and call the break expensive.
Nobody stood behind me at all.
The thought struck harder than the Queen’s limb. For one breath I was beside Kade again, hearing his laugh after a bad practice stroke, watching him reach for the sword with a man’s easy faith that tomorrow would bring another chance to mend today’s damage.
Then the Queen lowered her jaws.
I reached for the axe.
It’d torn free of my belt and lodged in a seam of stone near my left hand. My fingers closed around the haft, but the first tug failed. The second sent pain through my shoulder and down my right leg so violently that my teeth clicked together.
The Queen struck.
I wrenched sideways. Her point punched into the rock beside my ribs, shaking the bridge as dust sifted from the webbed ceiling. The axe tore free, and I dragged it against my chest while another leg scraped across Silkward.
My right hand closed around the grip by habit.
It failed.
My fingers hung crooked. I shifted the axe into my left hand and tried to rise. The runes along its haft stayed dull.
For half a breath, nothing answered.
Then I stopped asking the broken sword to save me.
The pact mark burned beneath its bindings. Heat ran from my wrist into my palm, through me and into whatever I held. Darkness gathered along the axe’s edge, swallowing the dull runes instead of lighting them. Nightblade belonged to me, not to the weapon.
The axe settled into my left palm, its weight honest and its balance familiar. Silk cords tightened whenever the court moved. The Queen’s foremost limb dragged a fraction behind the rest.
The sword had never been the source.
“That’s better,” I said, though my voice came out rough.
The nearest giant spider charged.
I stepped toward it instead of away. Its fangs snapped shut where my head had been, and I buried the axe in the foremost leg’s joint. The blade punched through shell. I ripped it free and turned, letting the collapsing body smash into the spider behind it.
Two legs swept for my knees.
I jumped. My right leg screamed when I landed, but the axe answered before pain could slow me. I chopped through the silk anchor above the funnel. The cord parted with a wet snap, and the woven section sagged, dropping three spiders into one another.
The Queen reared.
Her movement drew every strand tight. The floor tilted. My left boot slid forward, my wounded right leg trailing as the court rushed through the narrowing space.
I cut one leg aside. A second struck my shoulder and spun me. A phase spider flickered into view at my back.
The phase spider committed first to my left.
I turned into its return. The axe caught the phase spider beneath the head as its body finished returning to the world. The blade opened it from throat to breastbone. It collapsed against my hip, and I shoved the corpse away before another creature could use it as cover.
My breath came in ragged pulls. The power stayed sharp through the axe. It didn't tire. I did. Every cut still had to travel through a wounded shoulder, a ruined hand, and a leg that wanted to fold. I could fight, but my body couldn't keep this pace.
The Queen drove the court at me again.
I retreated along the funnel, cutting only when a body entered reach. A giant spider pinned my left side against a pillar. Another crawled across the web above, seeking my face. I swung too wide, missed the first, and barely caught the second across its mouth.
The Queen's remaining forelegs closed around the space.
One struck high. I hunched behind my left shoulder. The blow slammed across Silkward and jarred my teeth. Another came low. I jumped it, but my right foot landed on a loose strand.
My leg folded.
I fell between the Queen's limbs. Her point punched through the flesh of my right calf and drove deep before tearing free. The pain was white, total, immediate. My boot filled with warmth.
I hit the stone on both hands. The axe skidded from my left grip.
The court gathered around me while blood ran beneath my right leg, and the Queen lowered herself until her jaws filled my sight.
The axe lay beyond my reach. A thin trace of Nightblade clung to its edge while the carved runes stayed dull. I hooked my left fingers into the webbing and dragged myself toward it. My injured leg followed badly, leaving a dark streak across the stone.
The Queen lowered herself.
Her jaws opened above me, black and glistening, each fang longer than my hand. Smaller spiders crowded her legs, sealing the funnel behind me in a shifting wall. The court had heard her command. Every retreat was closed.
I reached again. My fingertips scraped the axe haft.
The Queen struck.
I twisted aside. One fang punched through the webbed stone where my throat had been and sprayed chips across my cheek. The other glanced off Silkward. The armor hardened across my shoulder, turning a killing blow into force that rolled me within reach of the axe.
It was the first generous thing Shadowmaw had done.
I seized the haft. The runes remained dead scratches in old iron, but darkness gathered along the edge anyway.
The current came cold and immense. I gave it the only path I had.
The Queen swept a foreleg across the funnel. I rolled beneath it. A smaller spider caught my sleeve, and I hacked down through its shell. The cut opened deeper than the strength behind my arm had any right to manage.
For a heartbeat, delight rose cleanly through the terror.
I could do this. Not well, not for long, but the old rules had stopped applying to every blade I touched.
Then the dead spider trapped the axe beneath its weight.
The Queen came down again.
I planted my left hand and crawled. My leg folded. A fang struck beside my face. Venom spattered the stone and ate pits into it.
There would be no next escape.
Kade’s sword had broken while I fought for no life but mine.
The Queen lifted her head for the killing thrust.
I wrenched the axe free. Nightblade gathered, cold and dark, along its edge. The Queen’s jaws filled the space above me, and the haft shook in my grip.
The mark tightened beneath my skin.
Flood.
One word. The power she’d already given me was mine. This was different.
Open fully, and I answer fully. Afterward, I hold one claim upon your future. Its shape and hour are mine.
The Queen’s head descended.
I wanted to live.
Worse, I wanted the power. I wanted the distance between thought and violence gone. I wanted the Queen to learn she’d cornered the wrong creature.
Then her fangs came down.
I closed my left hand around the axe, pressed my splinted right forearm against the haft for what little brace it could give, and looked into the cluster of my own reflections in her eyes.
I opened myself.
The Queen’s fang struck the axe head.
For one heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the mark on my wrist split with heat.
Power rushed through me so violently my spine bowed. The axe rang beneath the impact. My splinted right hand closed around the haft beside my left. The bones were still wrong inside it. I felt each one. The pain simply lost its vote. Force meant to drive the weapon into my skull ran through both arms and shoulders into the stone.
The floor cracked.
I shoved upward.
The Queen’s head jerked back. Her fang scraped my cheek, drawing a hot line, but the rest of her recoiled as if I’d grown too heavy to move. I rose beneath her strike, legs unfolding with strength larger than my body.
My right leg screamed. The pain failed to matter.
I drove the axe into the joint beneath her nearest eye. The blade sank through chitin. Black fluid burst across my hand. Her scream shook the nest, and the spiders scattered.
They were too slow.
I tore the axe free and turned with it. A giant spider lunged from my left. I caught one foreleg, stepped inside its reach, and split its head against the floor. The impact jarred my teeth. I barely noticed.
The Queen snapped again. I ducked beneath her jaws and sprinted for the nearest web anchor.
The other side of the chamber looked suddenly close. I saw the path and my body took it before fear could object.
The anchor rose like a pale tree, silk wrapped around old stone. I swung once.
The axe cut through it.
Every web funnel attached to the anchor collapsed. Threads snapped overhead. Spiders dropped from the ceiling, some crushed beneath their bridges, others tumbling into the court below. Whole ranks vanished under falling silk. Others fled onto bare stone where the Queen’s signal no longer reached them. The chamber filled with shrieks and frantic, dry legs.
I laughed.
The sound came from my mouth, but it didn’t feel like mine. It was too bright, too delighted. Pressure filled the space behind my eyes until the cavern sharpened into black-edged pieces: anchor, throat, joint, distance. Nothing blurred. Nothing frightened me enough.
I hated the laugh.
I loved what my hands could do.
Again.
I crossed the floor before the word finished in my skull.
A phase spider flickered beside me, fangs descending. I struck without turning. The axe opened its throat. It vanished as it died, leaving a wet collapse against the webbing.
Another came through the stone behind my shoulder.
I felt it before I saw it. The mark burned. I pivoted, caught it by one leg, and hurled it into the Queen’s wounded face. Her mandibles closed on her own court. The spider burst between them.
I ran toward the second anchor.
The Queen struck behind me. Stone jumped beneath my boots. Silk lashed across my path, but I cut through and kept moving. Giant spiders poured from the nest, legs colliding as they raced to reach me.
I took their frantic skittering for panic, not obedience. Whatever command the Queen meant to give had already broken apart.
I reached the anchor and cleaved it from its base.
The central web sagged. The court broke with it. Some spiders scattered into cracks; others stayed caught beneath the descending silk and disappeared when the Queen lunged after me.
Brood sacs hung beneath the Queen’s nest, pale and trembling. Hundreds of small bodies shifted inside. Scratches moved through the silk.
They’d hatch.
They’d spread through the tunnels, find the roads and farms, and reach people who’d never seen this chamber.
I raised the axe.
“No,” I said, though I wasn’t sure whether I meant them or myself.
I brought the blade down.
The nest split from crown to roots. Brood sacs burst beneath it. Young spiders spilled across the webbing in a crawling white mass. I stamped, swung, and crushed them beneath the axe until the movement stopped.
The Queen came down on me.
Her weight struck my back and drove me to one knee. One leg pinned my left arm. Another hooked my waist. Venomous teeth clicked beside my ear.
I jammed the axe behind me and hacked upward.
The blade severed the leg across my ribs. I rolled beneath her body, came up under the carapace, and drove the axe into the soft underside once, twice, three times.
The Queen reared.
I left the axe buried in her belly, hooked my left arm around one leg, and tore it toward me. The Flood answered. The limb came free in a spray that painted my face. I wrenched the blade out as she collapsed sideways, crushing the nest. The impact flung me across the chamber. My right leg struck stone, and pain returned in a white burst. I hit the floor hard enough to lose my breath.
For an instant, the Flood faltered.
Then I saw the Queen dragging herself toward the remaining anchor.
She hauled toward the torn center of the nest. If she reached it, the web might close around me again. I only needed to stop her.
I pushed up.
My knee bent backward. I lurched on it anyway and threw the axe.
It buried itself in the anchor. Stone split. The final support came apart, and the web canopy tore free from the ceiling in great falling sheets. Silk and broken anchor stone buried the last clustered spiders; those beyond it scattered without waiting for the Queen.
I ran into them.
My leg dragged blood behind me. The Queen vanished under silk, then heaved once beneath it. I found the axe where the broken anchor had fallen, set my right hand around the haft, and pulled.
The broken bones grated. My grip held. I ripped the axe free and found the Queen by the movement of her eyes.
She opened her jaws.
I drove my left hand between them and forced them apart.
Her fangs punched through my palm. Venom burned up my arm. My right hand brought the axe down into the center of her skull.
The Queen thrashed.
I wrenched the axe free and struck again.
Her body convulsed beneath me. Her legs hammered the stone, smashing dead spiders and breaking pillars of old web. I struck a third time, then a fourth, until the carapace split and her movement dwindled to twitching.
My hand remained clamped in her jaws when she died.
I tore it free.
The Flood ended at once.
All strength vanished. I dropped beside the Queen’s head, catching myself on one elbow before my face struck stone. The chamber lurched. The pressure behind my eyes broke when I blinked, and the world lost its hard, perfect edges.
My right leg folded when I tried to move it. Blood filled the boot. My left palm was punctured, and the axe slipped from my right hand into the fallen silk.
My chest hitched once, expecting the laugh. Only a raw breath came. I lay still and listened to it scrape in and out.
The Queen’s body collapsed inward with a wet, dragging sigh. Her legs folded beneath the carapace, crushing the nest and shuddering through the webbed floor.
I tried to rise. My right leg folded, my punctured palm slipped in blood, and I went back down.
The rune-marked axe lay tangled in the fallen silk beyond my reach.
Good. Let it lie there. I’d earned the right to lose one weapon tonight.
Threads dragged across my face. I blinked them away and turned my head. The court had broken with the Queen. Bodies lay crushed beneath fallen silk. Survivors skittered into cracks beyond the dead web, no longer moving as one. The brood had stopped moving. No fresh command traveled through the strands.
For the first time since the Flood began, nothing nearby was trying to kill me.
My mark pulsed against my left wrist.
I followed the sensation through drifting strands and broken anchors. Behind the dead nest, half-buried in a shallow stone shelf, a sword waited with its hilt turned toward me.
Dark steel caught the cavern’s weak amber glow and returned it without color. No blue shimmer ran along the edge. No fading enchantment trembled in the grip.
Not Kade’s sword.
Kade’s broken blade lay somewhere behind me. This one belonged to the nest.
Fine. Mine now.
I pulled forward on my elbows. Webbing clung to Silkward and tore free in sticky strands. My right leg dragged uselessly behind me, leaving a dark smear across the floor. Each movement narrowed my vision, but the sword stayed just ahead.
My injured shoulder screamed when I reached the nest. I hooked my left fingers around the hilt.
Warmth climbed through the pact mark.
Stay.
“I’m trying,” I whispered.
The grip was cold, wrapped in leather gone stiff with age. I pulled once. The sword held fast.
Of course it did. Even treasure wanted proof.
I braced my good heel against stone and hauled. Fire tore through my right leg. Dust sifted over my knuckles. The shelf groaned under dead silk; my breath broke into savage pieces.
The mark flared, not with the Flood or borrowed strength. Recognition passed through it. Steel hummed into my palm.
Duskfang.
The name arrived whole. I didn’t know who had given it to me, but it fit the blade before I spoke it.
“Duskfang,” I breathed.
The next pull freed the sword.
I rolled onto my back, Duskfang clutched to my chest. Beyond the fallen nest, the Queen’s hoard remained untouched. I lacked strength and sense to crawl toward it.
My fingers locked around the hilt. The chamber tipped; the blade’s colorless edge shrank to light.
Then I blacked out with Duskfang in my hand.