- The Prize of the Spider King

"What? How?" Tess asked as she approached Elanor. As she neared the entrance, she raised an arm to touch the invisible wall that now blocked the entrance. She continue forward, wanting to feel the wall to try and figure out what caused it.

But the wall never stopped her.

She effortlessly passed through the space and passed by Elanor. Elanor's eyes widened and her heartrate increased as panic began.

"Huh? No wall?" Tess exclaimed.

Despite the undeniable fact that she had just passed through the space, she could now feel the wall's presence, as if it were a living thing that she could sense breathing rather than an inanimate object. She reached out to touch it, while already knowing that the wall existed there.

'What is this?' she thought to herself. The energy that she could detect from the wall reminded her of the shadow puppets she could create, animate objects that carried out the will of the caster, with no semblance of free will.

"It's a magical barrier, there's no doubt about it," she declared. "But... I don't think I've ever heard of magic like this, of barrier magic."

Her thoughts immediately went back to the small mentions of the Spider King she had stumbled upon. Intrigued by the legend, she sought out more texts that referred to the King in any way, even going as far to learn about the era that he had existed in.

Information was scarce, mostly due to a large war that had occurred. The war was catastrophic, shattering the world at the time, leaving only broken monuments to a lost society standing, telling their fractured tale to those to come next. The war was fought with grand magic, magic discovered through great strides in technology. Magic that could provide artificial light to an entire city, magic that could automatically make a carriage move on it's own, without the need of animals to pull it. Magic which seemed to harness the very elements themselves to wreak havoc on their targets.

Worship of the elemental deities known today still happened, however their actions were not as impactful on the previous society as they are now, due in large to the eruption at Laythol. Thus, their actions were discreet, barely noticeable when compared to the actions they made today.

It was not such a stretch to think that an action that they performed was to form a one-way barrier in a maze for someone as powerful as the King. The question, Tess decided, was why? It was obvious that something was being kept here, something that would try and leave, but why was it kept here? Why was the barrier used?

"Should we come through too?" Roxy asked, running over to the space where the barrier stood.

Tess glanced over at Elanor, who returned to studying the wall with a renewed determination, as she thought.

On the one hand, she didn't want the others to be trapped inside the barrier, and to potentially be condemned to death, especially with how little they knew of it in the first place. On the other hand, she would need both of them to help if she was to successfully find a way to free the captives and get them out of Dirella.

While her mind was useful, Elanor wasn't too useful in a straight fight since her Manan capacity was so low, a fact that Tess didn't want to admit in the situation they found themselves in. It was possible that the two of them would be able to both rescue the people and get out of the barrier, however it would be too dependent on luck and the actions of others.

"Yeah. I'm gonna need the both of you here." Tess turned back towards Roxy and gestured for Marcus to come over as she spoke. "We have no idea what we're walking into, so keep your senses sharp," she warned them as she began walking into the maze of walls. She turned around as they reached a corner, formed by the wall to their right and a newly discovered wall directly ahead of them, and found that Elanor wasn't with them.

She remained near the entrance to the maze, her focus still fixed firmly on the wall. They watched her for a few minutes, as she continued to run her hands over the surface of the wall. After a few minutes, she slowly began to move her lips as her focus crept over the engravings on the wall. Eventually, a wide smile spread onto her face and she stepped back from the wall, before looking around herself in confusion, only now noticing the absence of her friends.

Spotting them after hearing her name called, she rushed down the hall towards them, the smile still etched onto her face like a carving in stone.

"I figured it out!" she exclaimed with glee as she approached them. "It took a while, but I figured it out!"

Without giving them a chance to ask, she began to explain.

"So, I looked at the wall, and I could understand it, at least faintly. It was like I was looking at something from my childhood, something that I had forgotten long ago. I don't quite know how, but I assume it was something to do with the 'burden' that the skeletal warrior mentioned up at the throne. Eventually, after looking at it for long enough, I begun to figure it out, begun to understand it."

"Understand... what, exactly?" Tess asked in a confused tone, furrowing her eyebrows.

"The walls!" Elanor exclaimed, retaining her gleeful tone. "The markings, the odd grooves, it was words!"

"Words?" Roxy asked.

"Words," Elanor confirmed with a nod. "They were a message, or a warning, or maybe even a spell. It mentioned the 'prize of the King,' and we... we were wrong."

"Wrong? About what?" Tess asked.

"The prize! The prize was never the ring and the parasite, that was just a wrongful assumption."

"Then what is the prize? What are the syndicate searching for down here?" Marcus asked."

"It's entirely possible that they are looking for the ring, for the power of the King, or that they believe they are. Their backers might know what's truly down here, what they are truly searching for. If they do, then they are probably far more dangerous than we can imagine, after all, why would they want something like this, something this powerful, if they weren't going to use it to cause chaos across the world, then why would they want it..." she began rambling on, her mouth filtering none of her thoughts on the matter.

"Elanor, focus!" Tess said sharply. "What is the prize? What's down here?"

"A calamity. A huge calamity. The very thing that caused the destruction of the King's domain, the thing that drove him to his final fight, the thing that forced him to take such drastic measures as entering the mountain, turning his forces to stone, and giving his life to trap the thing."

"Stop being vague, for fuck's sake. What is it?" Marcus demanded in an exacerbated tone.

"Caleveh, the witherer. Great Elemental of the Corrupt One."

"The Corrupt One?" Tess asked.

"That's the best way to translate it into our modern languages," Elanor responded. "Literally, it would be something closer to "He who allowed His being to become badly changed and not good."

"Not good?" Roxy asked. "You sure you don't mean evil?"

"I'm sure. Believe me, the word choice confused me a lot, too. It feels like it was done for a specific reason, and not just an oversight by the engraver. It's like...like they explicitly wanted to avoid the term evil."

Marcus and Tess shared an uneasy look. Without a word, they both understood what the other was thinking.

'If by Corrupt One they mean Yar-Anar, then the benefactors are definitely the cult,' Marcus thought. 'And if I want to avoid that...'

"We need to hurry." Marcus moved as he spoke, a layer of panic hidden at the bottom of his tone.

"No." Elanor's voice was strong, and her tone was decisive. "We shouldn't, no, won't rush into this. When I took the ring, the skeleton said something about a burden. Since then I've began to understand things about this place, felt feelings from situations I never experienced. "It's like... like..."

'Like someone else has joined you,' Marcus thought to himself. 'It's enough to drive you mad, isn't it?'

"Anyway," Elanor continued, "I think I've figured out what this place is, what the skeleton is. It's a prison, and the skeleton was the warden. Now, I think I am."

"So that means..." Tess began.

"You'll have to stay here afterwards? To guard the prison?" Roxy finished.

"I gue-"

"No."

Everyone's eyes quickly snapped onto Marcus.

"A prison doesn't need a warden if the prisoner is dead. We kill this thing," he commanded with a glance to Elanor. A glance with eyes that looked at her a little more softly than she was used to, and perhaps that she had seen in a very, very long time.