Page 227 of Vasmora

Exhaling a sharp breath, Zevander shook his head and turned to Branimir. “You’re okay with this?”

“What choice do I have?” Branimir swiped the golden thread from Dolion’s grasp and turned his back on them. When he twisted around again, the thread was secured to the spider’s leg.

Dolion shuffled toward the stone wall and drew his finger over its surface in the outline of a circle. The center of it wavered as the portal opened, and when Branimir set his spider on the floor, Dolion backed himself away.

The other side of the barrier showed the crumbled brick wall of the Arcanaca Tower, where Dolion and Allura had apparently snuck in just days before. Thick webs covered the opening, the darkness somehow illuminating their gossamer threads. Without any verbal prompting, the spider stepped through, the thin strand of gold unspooling after it, as the creature quickly passed over the web and disappeared inside the opening.

Dolion set the parchment and a thin stick of charcoal on the floor for Branimir, and after handing off the spool to Dolion, Branimir lowered himself to the floor, the spool wildly unfurling in Dolion’s grasp.

Closing his eyes, Branimir exhaled a long breath and set to drawing, his hand whipping across the parchment in fast strokes.

To Zevander’s surprise, the image formed quickly, the shape of a tunnel immediately recognizable.

“Incredible!” Dolion remarked, nearly dropping the spool. “Marvelous detail. As if you were there with it!”

The connection Branimir had with his spiders had always baffled Zevander. While he could certainly feel what his scorpions felt at times, he’d never had the ability to see through their eyes. Good thing, too, given the many times he’d tasked them to explore the innards of his victims.

Branimir’s hand seemed to move of its own will, quickly sketching what he saw with a speed that defied logic. His brother tossed the first parchment aside and kept on with the second, the corridor he’d drawn before extending up from the bottom of the next page. Stone walls arched into a curved ceiling filled with webs, and Branimir seemed to capture every angle, as if he were looking through a hundred eyes at once.

His hand slowed to a stop, a deep crease forming in his brow.

“What is it?” Dolion knelt alongside him, tipping his head as he studied the image.

Branimir’s arm shook as he kept on with his drawing, though Zevander couldn’t see the image with Dolion blocking his view.

“Dear gods.” The mage finally straightened, and drawn on the page was a cavern filled with hundreds of the cocoons Zevander had seen back in The Rotting Tree. Dangling from the ceiling, piled on the floor, attached to the walls. All of them, the size of a mancer's body. “So many in one nest.”

“And there may be multiple nests,” Branimir added, as he slid the drawing aside and swiped up another piece of parchment.

“Each infected body is filled with hundreds more.” Zevander stroked his jaw and rubbed the back of his neck. “Tell me again why we shouldn’t just torch the tunnels and be done with it.”

“Because I suspect these spiders are all over Aethyria. All Pestilios would need to do is jump from one body into another, but if he believes he stands a chance against you, he’ll stay in whatever form Cadavros has taken.”

“Whatever form?” Zevander asked.

The spool of thread bounced in his hands, and Dolion twitched to catch it before it fell to the floor. “He was an Orgoth mutation last I saw.”

“Perfect.”

“Zevander! Come quick!”

The urgency in Rykaia’s voice turned his muscles rigid, and he twisted around to see her scampering toward them.

“It’s Maevyth!”

“What is it?”

“She’s fallen asleep in the library and won’t wake!”

“Oh, my,” Dolion said behind him.

Abandoning Branimir and Dolion, Zevander tore through the corridors after Rykaia, following the passages leading to the upper level and the library. He stepped inside to find her slumped over a book, as if she’d passed out reading. Kneeling beside her, he stroked her hair and gave her shoulder a gentle shake.

She lay completely still.

It was then he noticed her chest wasn’t rising and falling.

Pressing his fingertips to her throat, he felt no pulse, and his heart hammered in his throat, panic rising from the pit of his gut. “Maevyth,” he said firmly, giving her another shake.