Shadow Lullaby

I had thought to kill the "evil" that was in front of me. I had grossly overestimated my own abilities.

It stood above me, this nightmare made flesh. My weapons lay scattered or broken all around me, with any potentially useful pieces just out of my reach.

I have never been more terrified than at this moment. The monster's eight legs stretched out over me, its clawed palps lined up directly over my torso.

Each of the long, cruel-looking purple and black spindles had golden bands affixed to each of the two lower leg segments. Each band held an aqua-blue jewel that seemed to glow of its own accord; the jewels were set deeply within the metal.

The dusky grey-purple flesh of its face and torso seemed to catch glints of bluish-purple light from somewhere I couldn’t see.

The beast roared, and the greyish stalactites of its cavern shook. Condensed moisture droplets fell everywhere around us, and I heard stalactites crashing in the distance.

I winced, turning my face away as the creature’s face drew closer to mine... so close that I could smell its breath, which smelled oddly fruity.

I had expected decay and rotted meat, maybe stale blood.

I had taken a precaution in case a scenario like this would play out—I would simply cause a cave-in, effectively trapping the beast and cutting off its food source simultaneously.

The infants—including the one that I had been hired to retrieve—were likely already dead, as I didn’t hear a peep out of them during all of this, so it was just the thing and me.

It was a terrible way to die, but I had nothing left to go back to anyway.

Quick as a cat, I pulled the spell from within my leather jerkin that would detonate the charged crystals surrounding the cave’s two entrances and speedily began to chant.

I grinned up at the thing with menace, and its eyes went wide.

In the glow emanating from the scroll, I caught more details.

This thing was actually quite pretty, if not for the monstrous qualities.

It was a dark elf centaur of sorts, with the elf half up front and a spider-shaped body for its lower half. His lower half, for it was indeed a he—if a bit androgynous-looking—was completely made up of crystalline shapes.

The main body was amethyst, with spots of what looked like rose quartz, aquamarine, and sapphire; the legs were black and a dark purple. The jewels within the cuffs on those legs started to glow brighter.

He also had what looked like a death’s head on his lower abdomen—an odd combination, to be sure.

His upper half was humanoid: slate-purple-colored skin with long, silk-straight white-silver hair. Sharp and slim, chiseled features and body, eyes the brightest purple that I had ever seen.

As his pupils widened, they began to change color, glowing that aqua hue like the gems on his leg bands.

He wore a sort of half-wrap blue-purple robe that ended a little past his waist—it was oddly trimmed in gold as well. Something was off about this guy. He would have looked completely normal from the waist up if he didn’t open his mouth... which was now gaping in front of me so I could get a good view of his rows of sharp white teeth. And his oversized incisors were extending... then I noticed that there was something dripping off of them. Where it hit the cave floor, the stone began to sizzle. I tried to roll out of its way, but moved too late.

The venom dripping off his too-white fangs started numbing any spots it hit on my exposed skin.

He had neurotoxin venom... great, that was just great!

As I completed the chant, he jumped away from me, landed an impossible distance, grabbed a staff—gold and topped with that same glowing blue crystal, a large chunk of it—and did a counter-chant while waving it in the air.

Runes all over the cave walls lit up, and then I heard all of my detonator crystals pop one by one.

He had created an energy shield to counteract the explosives.

He was no mindless beast (as I had been led to believe). I took advantage of his distance from me and tried to scramble to my feet. Between my shock and the venom’s effects kicking in hard, I was only able to make it weakly to lean against the nearest cave wall.

The venom-induced paralysis was quickly worsening, and my movements were hampered long enough for him to flip himself back over to me and pin me against the cave wall I was crawling along.

I felt sick and euphoric at the same time.

With his face inches from mine, he began to web me down to the wall. He hissed something at me in a language I had not yet heard and then thunked my head against the rock wall, and my lights went out. As I was losing consciousness, I heard an infant squalling, and tears fell. I hadn’t been able to save them, and I had almost trapped them in here with a monster. I had failed.

I had a few short bursts of consciousness. With them came the feeling of being dragged over the rough rocks and outcroppings of the cave floor... sharp rocks smacking and prodding my already tender skull and back.

Soon the rocks grew smoother, and then smoother still. Finally, I felt myself be hoisted roughly and stuck in place against a smooth, warmer wall—vertically.

Well, at least I wasn’t hanging upside down.

Through my bursts of consciousness and likely concussed mental state, my mind drifted back to how I had landed here in this bizarre land with its equally bizarre creatures and barbaric people.

I had been thrown into this world from a spell that backfired. A magic user hired from a competitor of mine had decided to summon a portal-creating entity. They hadn’t checked that they were over a major ley line convergence, and so the spell supercharged and exploded out through their protective circle, blew through my little New Age shop, tore a hole in the dimensions, and landed me in a bizarre place that had more in common with a Lord of the Rings novel than a sci-fi multiverse. (I would find all of this out from one of the traveling mages that I encountered.)

I had been so dazed, but was still thankful that my small son had been with my mom at the time. I had been doing inventory, of all things.

Once I had gotten my bearings a little, I made my way to a village of sorts, and they had taken me in. It didn’t take me too long to figure out how this world worked and to notice the differences. By my count, it was around a month’s worth of moons before I had my feet under me a bit. Of course, I couldn’t tell if their days and nights matched ours, or even if whatever dimension I had landed in—something I deduced myself, as there was stuff here that could never have survived on Earth and the star positions said it was Earth, near as I could tell—had the same time system. I had no way of telling if I would return in the same timeframe that I had come from.

I knew I would find my way home, no matter what it took. I had a child to raise, and I would not see him raised by strangers because some idiot didn’t do their research. So I researched and took odd jobs while I learned as much of the common tongue as I could.

The village that took me in was named Shadow Lullabies. Its original name was Blessed Moon, but it had taken on the moniker due to the monster that lived in the caves on the outer edges of its dense forests.

The monster was a half-elven, half-crystal spider beast. They called it a Yamasil. Normally, these things stayed away from everyone and just hunted large game for food. They were not naturally occurring, for the most part, but the result of some weird religious ritual. Any religion that had the bright idea to merge anybody with a huge spider had my vote for worst religion ever... well, almost ever.

The creature had apparently gone mad and snatched infants and small children of many different races. The villagers closest to the forest edges could oftentimes hear the cries of the babies. It was a terrible sound, but the silence was so much worse. Some had tried to kill the beast... none had come back.

To quell the random snatching of infants, races from all over the lands had begun bringing their unwanted babes, small children, and even older children to leave at the Yamasil's altar.

It had made me sick, but there wasn't any way for me to do anything about it at that moment. I hated this barbaric world... for all of its beauty, it was a savage world.

Then an odd job came my way. Someone wanted one of the "unwanted" children back, and they hired me to go get the kid.

I needed the money, so I agreed, even though I am an arachnophobe and was already terrified. It gave me an excuse to kill this thing and rescue some kids (I figured I could get them to an orphanage once I was done with this thing), and on top of it, I was going to get paid to do it.

As it turned out, I was actually quite good at hunting monsters and fighting things. I had been a businesswoman back home, so I was surprised at how fast I ended up catching on to all this.

I ended up making a great mercenary. All of the other jobs in the village that paid actual coin were taken—well, except for brothel work. Not in sheer muscle, but in cunning and strategy, I made a name for myself quickly, which kept jobs coming my way and coins coming in.

The week before this job came my way, I had found out from one of the elder mages that I had contacted that, while he had found my world, I had already been away for two hundred years. Every month that passed in this world equated to a century in my own. My little boy was long gone. My heart had broken that day. I had sat staring at the wall of my hut once I heard the news. I stared for a day and a night.

Consciousness fluttered dimly at the edges of my mind.

I felt hot tears stream down my cheeks. Little Ben would have loved it here.

That was my first thought as I woke up, webbed to a smoothed wall in a different room of the cavern. I could tell I was deeper in the cavern because of the smell and the shape of the rocks around me... and the odd warmth. Caves were naturally cool.

I blinked blearily around me. There was a large table in front of me, spread with all kinds of food, while a huge copper cauldron hung over a magical fire in an alcove to my left. I say magic, as it burned in purples and blues. The room was lit with the tangerine glow of mana stones that grew from the walls and ceiling, which was vaulted. As my eyes cleared, I realized that the stone had been hewn out. The creature had done it himself—I could tell by the markings.

I grimaced as I smelled a delicious aroma wafting from the cookpot and thought about the ingredients. I felt more tears burning behind my eyes. Just as despair was overtaking me, I heard the familiar click-clacking of the beast’s legs, and beyond that, the squall of not one but three infants. The sounds got closer and closer with each clack.

The beast scuttled into the "kitchen" with three human-looking infants wrapped in spider silk webbing on his chest. He heaved a sigh and went to the table, pulling out bottles and jars and setting them on the counter. He pulled a large earthen bowl from somewhere I couldn't see in a reflexive manner and made his way to the cookpot, the children's squalls heightening in pitch the whole time. I also noticed that his jeweled leg bands were gone.

I couldn't take it anymore and cried out, "Take me, not them! Please leave them be—take me!" Tears streamed down my face as my desperation took hold.

The beast whipped his head up with a surprised look on his face. I don't think he realized that I was awake, or maybe he didn't care. Then his silvery eyebrows drew down, his mouth flattening into a hard line, and he expertly shot webbing over my mouth.

It was an efficient gag. I couldn't move or speak or wriggle—I could only cry.

He turned back to the cookpot and scooped up the hot liquid from it, then deposited it on the counter and pulled three bottles from under the counter to put them in the liquid. He groaned as the babies continued their auditory assault.

He took out a jug, pulled the bottles from the bowl, poured the jug’s contents into each bottle, then set them back into the bowl of liquid. He jiggled the infants this way and that in a sort of dance-like fashion and began humming in a low tone. It all looked like he had done this a million times before. The babes quieted for a bit, then went right back to crying. He sighed and pulled the bottles out, testing the contents of each on his forearm.

He then propped himself up on the counter, took each of the three bottles in a different spider leg, and began feeding the babes while his human arms stroked their heads.

He looked exhausted but happy.

I stared in shock. I had seen a lot of crazy things since coming here... but this was beyond anything I had ever seen. Yamasils were horrifying predators, and many went crazy in a short time after their conversion.

Compassion wasn’t really in their wheelhouse... or so I had been led to believe.

I was beginning to think that I had been very mistaken—and that a lot of people were being misled.

He burped the kiddos, put the bottles on the counter, and click-clacked off with happy and sleepy infants.

I was glad for the gag, but it was unnecessary—I was speechless.

Soon, I heard a horrendous scuttling, and my heart nearly beat right out of my chest as a whole horde of spiders came racing into the kitchen. They paid me no mind and began what looked like sped-up ballet. They chopped, cleaned, swept, washed, and put everything away. Once done, they each took a cup of whatever was in the cookpot, drained the contents, washed their cups, set them to dry, and then raced out of the kitchen.

Now I had seen it all. House-cleaning spiders. I abstractedly wondered where I could get some of those. Arachnephobia be damned—those things were handy as hell.

Between the shock of everything, the cooking smell, and whatever was on the webbing that I was held in, I passed out again.

I came to with the beast's face a little too close to mine, and I gave a muffled yelp. He raised an eyebrow and said something in a language I rarely heard. When I just blinked at him, he tried a different language, then another, and another still. He went on that way for seventeen more attempts. I grew frustrated, while he just sat back on his haunches—arms crossed, mouth twisted in confusion.

"Mmmm-Mmmmm-Hmm-MMMMM," I tried speaking through the gag.

Realization dawned on his face. Up close, I realized he looked worn to a frazzle—dark circles and all. He raised his hand and used his claws to cut the webbing, which stuck right beside my head in a nonverbal warning: if I didn't like what I said, it was going right back on.

I coughed and cleared my throat. "Can you understand me?"

He winced and said back in the same language, "Clumsy."

Then he waved his hand in front of my face. Sigils lit up the air between us, turned into English letters, and then faded.

"There. That's better. So this is your native tongue. It's interesting. I have never heard the like."

I was so happy to hear English that I almost cried. "How did you do that?"

"Language retrieval spell. Now, vandal, what the hell were you doing in my home? Besides attempting violence and vandalism." He looked pissed. I couldn't blame him.

I weighed it over. I contemplated lying to him... really wanted to, but in the end, I chose honesty. Probably not the best choice.

He seemed to see me weighing what to tell him. He said nothing, made no move, and waited for me to make my choice. He was extremely patient... and creepily still when he wanted to be. It was deeply unsettling.

I took a deep breath and dove into the explanation. "I took a job to rescue one of the infants left at your altar in the woods. I'm sure that you can guess by my gear that you stashed in the corner over there that I am a mercenary." I nodded as much as the webbing would allow toward a corner of the "kitchen" where my gear was politely set.

He nodded. "I see. And you didn’t think to ASK me for the infant? Never crossed your mind?" Judgment emanated from him so thick it was almost palpable.

I narrowed my eyes at him and went on dryly. "You're known as the child-eater... so NO, I didn’t think to just ASK you to hand over your meal. It never occurred to me. Plus, I figured I'd kill two birds with one contract. I really hate people that mess with kids!"

His eyes went wide, and he put his hand to his face. "Child-eater, child-eater... that's what I'm known as. Ohhh..." he groaned, clearly deeply distressed by the information.

It made sense that he wouldn’t know. It's not like he got out a lot. And if I was right, then this was one doozy of a misunderstanding.

It took him a bit to regain his composure. He ran his hand through his hair and twisted his features. "Oh well, maybe that's for the best." He shook his head, frustration and anger filling his face. "Well, whichever child you are after, you will go unpaid today, mercenary. Since you are not from this world..."

"How did you know that?" I was stunned.

He gave me an are you stupid look. "Your language, your appearance, your very aura screams of a dimensional displacement."

I really looked at him. "You're a mage, aren’t you? I mean, everybody here seems to do magic... but you're ACTUALLY a magic user. You've had training—and it's extensive by the look of it."

He held his hands out in a sarcastic gesture. "Congratulations. Your grasp of the obvious is great indeed."

I gave him a look. "You were saying... oh great wizardliness."

He sniffed and looked at me with a slight amount of derision. "As I was saying, since you are NOT of this world... you don’t know that when a child is abandoned, they are never safe going back to the people that set them aside. Many children are cast off, killed, and subjected to all manner of unpleasantness due to political reasons. If you go back with the infant, it will be killed. So no, your job will go uncompensated."

I nodded. "I wondered. And that's fine." And it was. So long as the kiddos weren’t in danger, my interests were elsewhere.

He looked at me strangely, suspicion plain on his face. "What world do you come from that has such high-minded ideals?"

I broke down laughing. "High-minded ideals? Oh buddy, you have no idea. No, no we don’t. But we do KNOW right from wrong. And hurting the innocents—kids fall into that category by and large—is always wrong where I'm from. Now, that doesn’t mean that people don’t do it... it just means that they are sneakier about it."

He crossed his arms and peered at me. "You are a strange creature, vandal."

I looked at him and made a decision. If he had wanted to kill me, he could have many times. "That’s fine and all, but can you cut me down? I need to use the restroom, and I would like to leave here. Don’t worry, I won’t say anything about you. It’s obvious to me that you mean the children no harm, so my motivation for being here outside of money is gone—and that’s gone too. And to be honest, I had already had my doubts. The person that approached me about the child seemed shifty anyway. I had planned to take the kids—whatever was left of them—over to the next village and put them with the orphanage there. They seemed to be good people. So I will just say that the baby died and I barely escaped with my life. Sound good to you?"

He looked at me and cocked his head to the side. I thought he might refuse, but then in two quick slices, he freed me, and I dropped onto the ground. I would have hit face-first if he hadn’t caught me with his front legs... I appreciated it, but was still utterly discomfited.

I still couldn't move my body on my own, so he twirled me over with one of those spindly legs, and if I could have, I would have shuddered. It was just too creepy.

He leaned down and put his face close to mine. The silken strands of his frost-colored hair fell softly on my cheek, making me want to recoil. I had a bad feeling about this. The nasty grin he gave me—with a really good view of his long incisors—let me know that my instincts were right.

His pupils had enlarged so that his eyes almost looked black, and his voice deepened menacingly.

"What makes you believe that I would let you go?"