Chapter 15

Charlotte and Sari walked around one another in the quiet darkness of the underground chamber – their feet making soft, rasping noises as they drew across rock, gravel and bits of spiderweb. The other spider-girl remained watching, her eyes half slitted, her face pensive, as if she wasn’t sure what was about to take place. Charlotte’s own eyes were wide and staring ... but no more intently than Sari’s eyes were as she looked the other woman over.

Charlotte’s skin was now rubber-black, sleek and hairless, decorated only with a fine patina of pale white freckles – the perfect inverse of her old freckles. Her hair was pale white and framed her features in the exact same way they had before. It was just that those features now included sharpened fangs and extra eyes, giving her a full arcahnid set above and below her originals, and each of them blood red and glowing. Her arms bifurcated into a pair each, granting her six limbs – not quite the amount of a proper spider, but clearly as close as her humanoid frame could take. Her joints had each become more tapered, her legs and her arms fitting together like those of an insect’s, retaining only the grace and femininity of humanity by their sleek shape.

She took in Sari’s new form – her bright red skin, her spade-tipped tail, her black on orange eyes, her curled horns, her knotted girldick – with the same slow awe as Sari.

Sari spoke first. “ ... do you want to explain first, or...”

“Well, I...” Charlotte said, then glanced back at the reclining spider girl that was watching all of this. “I suppose you should explain first?”

“Uh, okay,” Sari said. The distant sounds of gongs echoed throughout the subterranean chamber. Sair’s tail whipped nervously. “I wonder how long we have before the Necromancers come after us.” She shook her head, focusing on the tale of it. “S-So, uh, I was killed by the Corpse Lord after she ... killed you?”

“I wasn’t killed,” Charlotte said, then scowled. “That bitch.”

“Oh?” Sari asked.

“She didn’t say she had killed you!” Charlotte said. “I’d never have-”

She stopped, suddenly.

“ ... never what?” Sari asked.

Charlotte coughed. “S-So, uh, how did you survive, if the Corpse King killed you?”

“Well, ah, do you recall the demonic servitor granted me by Master Phenrig?” Sari asked. At Charlotte’s nod, Sari’s head jerked and her face rearranged itself – the same features, but animated by an entirely different intelligence, her smirk growing wicked. “I have to admit, Charlotte, I rather like the new look. Your old form was rather vanilla. Now you’re properly corrupted.” She grinned, wickedly – then shook her head, putting her hand on her forehead. “That was Rana. She fused with me to repair the damage and to ... yank me back.”

“Dragon’s Blood,” Charlotte swore, her mouth actually birfucating – her lower jaw opening and then clacking shut as she revealed that the thin line of black-on-black that marked her chin and lips wasn’t decorative, it marked the seam between her lower jaws two haves. As her mandibles snapped back together, she let out a little chirruing noise. “But why? Demons don’t sacrifice their essences for anything, even their Demon Lords. It’s kind of the whole thing about demons. The only thing that would possibly compel a demon’s long term loyalty would be, like, the Umbral Messiah himself!”

Sari coughed. Her tail twitched.

She spread her hands. “Ta-daa?” She asked, nervously.

Charlotte tensed. Her lower hands clenched. Her brow furrowed and she frowned.

“I see,” she said, quietly.

Sari frowned right back. “Wait, wait, wait,” she said, scowling slightly. “Before you leap to any judgments ... I...” She shook her head. “I’m controlled by my father. And ... and what about you?” She thrust out her finger at Charlotte. Charlotte looked guilty, her hands relaxing – but Sari continued before she could speak. “Your uncle was working with my master, Phenrig. If your linage is here to end the Umbral Messiah, to disrupt the prophecy, then why did your uncle work with Phenrig, who worked his ass off to see that not only was it done, but ... but that I was prepared.” She gestured to herself. “He trained me since I was a child to use sword and spell – he gave me the Rebis potion that made me qualify as twice born.”

Charlotte looked aside, her upper arms shelving her breasts, her lower hands on her hips. “I don’t know,” she said. “My uncle is dead. Whatever his plans were, they’re dead with him.”

“Well, so is my master,” Sari said, gently. She took a step closer, cupping Charlotte’s cheek. Her voice was soft. “And the Prophecy is a little unclear as to what the Umbral Messiah does. In the end, I will get to choose. And I don’t want to see this world reduced into the void. Not with you in it.”

Charlotte’s cheeks actually flushed – black turning dark green as her new blood went flowing.

“A-And, uh, Tanner has, uh, changed as well ... so, I suppose, each of us has transf-” Sari started, with the aim towards cheering Charlotte up. Charlotte choked.

“Tanner’s alive?” She squeaked.

“Yeah!” Sari said. “She is.”

“She?” Charlotte’s eyes bulged. All eight of them.

“Haaaa, well, uh, kind of a long story,” Sari said. Then her face shifted as Ranna took control once more. She pursed her lips, craned her head, and peeked over Charlotte’s black shoulder. Her brow furrowed. “Say, uh, where has your other spider friend gone?”

Charlotte snapped her head around.

The other spider girl was gone.

“Hells!” Charlotte swore, her mandibles clacking. “I thought she was coming around to my side...”

“How many times did you fuck her?” Sari asked, chuckling quietly.

“Three or four,” Charlotte murmured, leaning against Sari as Sari slid her arm around her for a quick hug. In the distant, gonging sounds grew more pronounced – ringing out again and again and again. A warning. A call to action.

“Well, you need more than that to mind break someone,” Sari said, huffing slightly.

“ ... you really need to tell me every detail,” Charlotte said. Sari paused. Leaned in. Her nose flicked open – breathing in Charlotte’s scent. She sniffed again. Then her grin grew wicked as she kissed up to one of Charlotte’s black ears.

“And I need to know about how you fucked the Corpse King,” Sari whispered.

Charlotte froze.

In the distant, the clamoring call of voices rang out and the squeaking and crunching of armor. There were no torches. Vampire Knights didn’t need them. Charlotte felt Sari’s tail squeeze her ankle, then Sari stepped to the side, her palm gliding along her ass. She frowned a bit as she did so. “I lost my gear in the plunge down here,” she said.

“Let me see if I can fix that, darling,” Charlotte said. Her lower hands pressed together, while her upper arms formed a complex pattern, fingers interweaving as she whispered incantations under her breath. Ice collapsed inwards, creating a sleek blade that bled a fine cloud of mist every second. Gravel crunched and compacted and a handle, formed of compacted rock, slammed up from the floor and into the base of the blade, creating a grip that Sari grasped. Charlotte let out a little giggle. “The extra arms really help when it comes to complex formations of improvised magic, you know?”

“I can only guess. Maybe I should try incorporating my tail. Now ... make sure they come at me one at a time,” Sari purred, quietly.

“Gladly,” Charlotte said.

Red eyes met orange and the two women – so far from where they had started, but so comfortable in their new skins – smiled.

The first Vampire Knight led the way into the chamber, sword drawn, shield in arm. He hissed furiously and leaped at Sari – but then grunted, stopped in midair as ice spikes exploded from the ground, impaling him through his chest plate with a grinding crunch. Sari stepped forward and decapitated him with a double handed, downward chop. His helmeted head went tumbling away as his body dissolved into ash, hissing and streaming around his plate armor while a pair of Vampire Knights tried to enter the room. One of them dissolved – armor and mace and shield and all – into a hissing mist, while the other simply sprang over the rapidly decaying corpse of his comrade, longsword gripped in both hands. His boots crashed down to the ground right before Sari as she turned his swing aside with a quick parry and pirouette.

The mist coiled up around behind her, forming into a vampire knight – who froze in place as two black palms pressed to either side of his helmeted head, and two other hands made complex, weaving patterns. The crackling electricity that exploded and bounced between both palms danced along armor as the vampire knight trembled, thrashed, bucked and then fell, dissolving into a pile of bones, while Sari parried another stroke, another, another, and then, with the vampire she faced over extended, grabbed onto his chest-plate with her hand, hooking fingers over a seam, then drove the ice sword she held through his slitted visor. The sword shattered inside of his head, but the vampire knight didn’t live long enough to appreciate that.

As the dust pattered to the floor, Sari called out: “Sword me!”

Charlotte began to work her hands together, her voice a soft hiss as she breathed out the words. The new blade that burst to life from Sari’s hilt was a glittering blade of flames, and the light it cast – not needed for Sari’s dark adapted devilish eyes – saw that a ghoul was rushing forward. Sari tensed ... then shook her head. “Wait!”

She held up her hand, stopping Charlotte from unleashing whatever magical blast she had been planning for. The ghoul sprang into the room, looking utterly smug. It was One Eye, and she bumped her head cheerfully against Sari’s thigh, before drawing her head back, hissing at Charlotte.

“This is Charlotte,” Sari said.

“Fuck me, it is,” One Eye said, drawing her head back even further, forcing her to balance on the balls of her heels.

“Ah, One Eye,” Charlotte said, her cheeks turning dark green again as she crossed her upper arms over her breasts.

One Eye sniffed again. Her one eye widened. “You fucked the Corpse King?”

“How can you all tell!?” Charlotte exclaimed, her lower arms grabbing onto her hair, bunching into fists of frustration.

One Eye grinned. “Was she good?”

“Ahem,” Sari said, snapping her fingers. “One Eye, you found us. That means you know the way out of here, right? We need to get out of here before they bring down even more of their forces. And we need to figure out how to open the portal back home.”

One Eye’s grin grew wider. “I know lots of things.”

“Then lead the way,” Sari said, gesturing. “We need to get moving.”

One Eye’s grin grew sideways as she cocked her head so hard it almost snapped off. “Okay.” She turned, then started to scamper along the wall, scrambling that way so swiftly that Charlotte almost tripped trying to catch up with her. Sari jogged along, her tail swishing behind her, feeling the faint breeze of her motion singing along her skin. She saw One Eye leap and slash with her claws before she saw the enemy that was coming around the narrow bend – One Eye released her crossbow in the same motion, so when Sari skidded to a stop, she saw that one Necromancer was sprawled on the ground, One Eye’s claws in his throat, while the other remained standing, shocked, a bolt in his left eye. The robed figure started to drop as Sari hooked her finger on the scruff of One Eye’s neck, jerking her away before she had done more than bite a few fingers off.

“No snacking!” She snapped.

“Hssss!” One Eye spat back.

They came to a set of stairs leading up and out of the spider pit and into a region of the Halls of Salt that seemed to be carved by a madman: Narrow, twisting corridors that wound in and out of one another. Sari half recognized the design: It was an old mine, one that had been carved out ages before. She wondered who or what had scraped iron and gold and silver and mithril from these veins and left behind this twisting maze of underground warrens. She had no time to ask the question – no time but to rush after One Eye, who took bend after bend with clear surety.

They burst out – and Charlotte was barely panting, Sari noticed – into actual corridors to find that they had either missed the guards rushing into the warren or those guards were already dead. One Eye glanced left, then right, then left again, then began to sprint deeper into the corridors, following some instinct, some call, some knowledge that she did not deign to share with Sari. Sari caught onto one of Charlotte’s hands, holding it as they ran after the ghoul, deeper into the Halls of Salt.

One Eye felt the call of it. It smelled like her old Mistress – but different. It buzzed and crackled. It drew her. Drew her along the thread that had once tied her to the Corpse King, but was now broken. It drew her and she followed, and trusted Sari and the changed Charlotte to keep up after her. Her nose flared and she scented promise: Wood, stone, flickering torches. They emerged around the corner and there, ahead of them, was a massive double door, decorated with the dancing death, the Danse Macabre, and the life story of the Corpse King, etched in the curved arch of the door. There she was, traveling to the college that had trained her. There, she was buried in state. There, she was drawing the body parts together that had formed her Revenant body. There, she marched towards the conquest of the world...

Sari reached the door before One Eye, laughing. “Hah! This is the chambers of the Corpse Lord!” she said, glancing back at Charlotte. “Now we just need to get the door open.”

“Before anyone finds us, yes,” Charlotte said. She held up her hand, her eyes closing. “The door is warded. I think I can get it open in a few minutes.”

One Eye and Sari both heard the sound at the same time. Shuffling. Thumping. Dragging. Groaning. Sari and her looked back the way they had come as Sari gripped her magically crafted sword in both hands. “Work fast,” she said, as Charlotte began to whisper, incant. Her fingers moved and she spread her four arms wide, her bared black back turned to face the sound – as if the approaching foes were nothing, no note at all. One Eye grinned and then drew herself to her full height, peering over Sari’s head. She placed her clawed fingers on Sari’s shoulder, feeling Sari’s tail caressing her thigh.

“Funnnnnnnnn,” she crooned.

From the darkness of the corridor behind them, eyes glowing with eldrich light, came what seemed to be an endless number of the walking dead. They had not been stripped of their rotting flesh, so the void energies that sustained and drove them let them shuffle ... but not sprint. They had no weapons save their bared hands and their rotting fingertips. They stepped forward in a shaggy, disordered fashion – all signs of their rapid, hasty construction. The Necromancers sought to bury them under bodies. Sari leaned into One Eye’s grip, her grin wicked.

“They made a mistake,” she whispered.

One Eye blinked her one eye as Sari stepped from her. She held aloft her sword, swept it down, then lifted her hand. She closed her eyes. Her fingers clenched and her forearm began to glow. Orange-white flames licked along her skin as she drew magic into her – similar to casting ice, only ... in reverse. Sari’s eyes opened and when they opened, streamers of smoke leaked from her tear ducts, her nostrils, her mouth. She opened her lips and sparks flew from it as she crooned out a single word – and the word made One Eye cringe from her.

Inferno sprang from Sari’s palm and fingers.

It was not just fire.

Fire did not stick.

Fire was not a jelly thing, eel like and liquid, even as it burned. Fire did not seem so mercilessly delighted as it caught and burned and burned and burned on the front and second and third row of the shambling corpses. They did not scream, cry out, or withdraw. They simply shambled forward until, one by one, their bodies dropped as if their strings had been sliced by some invisible puppeteer’s enemy. As they dropped, the flames and their released void energies worked together to turn their bodies into nothing but memories. The zombies behind them kept shambling into the flames, and they caught, and they burned, and they returned to death once more.

Sari’s hand shifted in hues – orange red faded, replaced with purple as she spoke another word, before making a yank motion. She jerked her hand backwards and a shrieking figure was pulled from the rear of the zombies: The necromancer who had been sent to oversee them. His body was wreathed in glittering purple flames as he was held aloft by Sari, her fingers making slow, twitching motions to sustain the telekinetic spell that held him aloft.

“Demon spawn!” the necromancer spat. “Foulness!”

“Hey, Charlotte,” Sari called out over her shoulder. “Is the door unlocked?”

“Almost!” she called out.

A second later, the door exploded inwards with a spray of shattered wood. The Necromancer groaned as he sprawled on the floor of the chambers, his arms spread wide, his eyes clearly dazed. Sari and Charlotte stepped in as the flames licked and danced behind them, casting their shadows into the room. One Eye stepped over the stunned Necromancer. He was fresh. Her teeth drew back and she got ready to bite off his thick, juicy thumb – but then Sari snapped.

“No! Snacking! He’s not even dead, you little beast.”

One Eye jerked her head, hissing.

But with her hunger stymied, she was able to focus ... on...

On the singing.

The Corpse Lord’s room was opulence incarnate – but it was the opulence required for a corpse. An open faced, gilded coffin, back upright, sat in the far end of the room, while statues of skeletal bodies supported the chamber’s roof. An ornate laboratory was attached to the side chamber, while a writing desk and a vast tome – easily the size of a man – sat on a plinth, with writing utensils nearby, carved more for magic than for human hands to move them. But there, on the desk, was a small stone orb, roughly the size of a human eye. It was crawling with script that One Eye did not recognize ... but seeing it, she knew the sound of the singing was coming from it. The orb glittered with blue light and the text on it throbbed in time with...

Her heartbeat.

One Eye blinked her eye again.

She knew that orb.

She started to crawl towards it.

Sari stepped to the journal. She looked at the words written. “This was updated recently,” she whispered. “Did the Corpse Lord have a similar journal? Did she write in it?”

“She updated her journal quite often, actually,” Charlotte said. “Even after...”

“And then I laid with the Menelag girl. Though distraught at her many losses, she clutched to me as if I were a life raft and she tossed into the raging sea,” Sari read slowly, her finger tracing along with the script. She clutched and she came again and again and again and-”