Page 63 of Vasmora

A click of the lock freed his hands, and he quickly went to work on the binds at his ankles.

Once unshackled, he clambered to his feet, stumbling on weakened muscles and catching himself on the wall to steady himself.

The spider stood in the path of the cage door, but as Kazhimyr took one step toward it, the creature inched to the left. Another step toward the door, another inch to the left. Until the path cleared, and he hustled to unlock the door.

As soon as his bare feet hit the ground, Kazhimyr hurried toward the camp but slowed his pace on spying a trail of blood spilled over the underbrush.

The two soldiers he didn’t recognize lay with their heads cocked to the side, milky, white eyes wide with fear, and skin a frigid blue, it looked as if the heat had been sucked right out of their bodies. Their chest cavities had been busted open, their organs nothing but strings of chewed meat hardened by the white dust of frost that coated their ravaged corpses.

Kazhimyr ran his tongue across the back of his teeth, tasting the coppery blood in his mouth. He turned to Zivant, who lay seizing on the ground, his skin a ghostly white, but his body intact aside from streaks of blood leaking from his eyes. A gasp slipped past his blue lips, as he lay scratching at his chest.

Kazhimyr knelt down and lifted his loosely tucked tunic up. Beneath was a hard black carapace crawling over his stomach, reminiscent of the human spiders he’d seen back in Mortasia, and he yanked his arm back with a grimace.

The captain’s mouth gaped, and he rasped something Kazhimyr couldn’t make out.

A spider crawled out of his mouth.

Another followed.

Kazhimyr twisted around, and spying the captain’s sword lying with its scabbard nearby, he swiped it up.

“P-p-please …” The captain’s eyes widened and he coughed, gagging up another black spider that plopped to the ground beside him. He let out a sound of disgust and loathing, lips downturned, as if he might cry. “Help … me.”

“I told you earlier,” Kazhimyr said, raising his sword. “I’m going to kill you.” In one quick strike, he brought his arm down, the blade slicing through the man’s neck and severing his head.

Black ooze poured from the stump.

Another spider crawled out, and he trailed his gaze after it, watching it join a line of spiders scampering off into the night. As if they were all headed in the same direction.

Snapping out of his daze, he twisted toward one of the mutilated soldiers who was roughly his size and strode toward him. The man’s boots sat neatly off to the side, their shiny luster dotted with bright red drops of blood. He slid them on—a snug fit, but bearable—and scrounged what he could of their pauldrons and weapons, avoiding any of the pieces which bore King Sagaerin’s sigil. Once armored and dressed, he made his way toward the tethered horses, letting the two which had pulled the wagon free. After tacking up the third stead, Kazhimyr mounted the horse and took off in the direction from which they’d originally come.

Back to Loyce’s palace.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

MAEVYTH

The ground crashed into my shoulder on a plume of dirt, pain shooting up into my neck like a jagged volcanic fissure. I coughed and rolled onto my back, staring up at the edge of the pit, where Drefan and General Loyce stared down at me.

“Might you be familiar with the breeding cycle of Charnelyths, Captain Drefan?”

“Can’t say that I am, General.”

The whimsical tone of their voices was a distant sound to the thrum of panic pounding through my skull.

“A fascinating succession. The queen only bears males for the majority of her breeding cycle. They fight. They consume each other. Until the two strongest remain. Then, when her season is coming to an end, she bears females, which she proceeds to kill, keeping only the male eggs.”

While Loyce prattled on, I sat up, coughing again, and glanced around. Those three ominous caves stood behind me, the sight of the darkness within them curling the hair on the back of my neck.

“No queen wishes to be dethroned, after all,” Loyce continued. “It’s at this point the males begin to protect the female eggs. They will fight the queen, the betraying, traitorous cunts. The one to destroy the queen is the first to mate the new female when she comes into her cycle.”

“Efficient and honorable,” Captain Drefan said.

I surveyed the height of the wall, searching for divots or protrusions that might help me climb, but spied nothing significant.

“It so happens we’re nearing the end of the queen’s cycle. The males will be desperate to hide their newborn princess in a nice warm body.”

Dread coiled in my stomach as I forced myself to absorb what she’d just said.