Chapter 37

  Day 21

  “Here they come.” Big Murdoch did not sound happy about it. He didn’t want to do this. Neither did Zayana, really.

  “Just keep it steady,” Zayana replied. She ensured that her angel’s web anchored her securely into the chariot. “And do not stop.” If they stopped, the monstrous spiders that she had never seen would web the chariot down. Then they would be in trouble.

  She had never seen anything on her moon, though apparently it was beautiful. Procyon, the Crescent Moon, was not spherical. Fiora described it as a cookie with a big bite out of it. Acarnus detailed its shape, somewhat more helpfully, as a narrow vertical cross-section of a hollow sphere with a thick shell, like a slice of a melon rind. Zayana had never seen the monsters, or the webs, or the ruins, or the people cowering in fear. She saw the stars, though, for all the stars here were made of arda. And she saw the collection of crystals that slowly orbited her body. And she saw the tips of her arrows and the webbing of her angel and the strings of her harp. The harp strings glowed in her mind, matched by the glowing cords of fathomless size that stretched from end to end of her crescent moon, rendering the entire curved moon into a vast harp. A harp with one string missing.

  Her harp and her bow were the same instrument. She made her own arrows tipped with pure arda. She nocked one now, drew it back on the red string.

  Big Murdoch hit the tracer pulse, enabling her to see the monsters as grainy assemblages of tiny white specks in the darkness—reflections of the resonance of her arda, not so much different from echolocation or even normal vision through reflected light. The vague shapes provided her with but little information about the physiology of these many-legged monstrosities, but they gave her something to aim at.

  She released the arrow. A note sounded pure and clear in the dusty breeze. The tip of the arrow flared red with the note as it left the bow, and it burst into flame when it struck one of the beasts. Another arrow swiftly followed. And another.

  Zayana never missed, not if she could somehow perceive her target.

  Big Murdoch kept it steady, just as she had said, and he did not stop. The hovering craft glided into the dark. Zayana leaned this way and that as her chariot maneuvered the terrain, but it never bumped or jolted her enough to lose balance. Zayana emptied a quiver of arrows and kicked a switch with one foot. The empty quiver cycled away at her side, replaced by a fresh pack of twenty.

  The spiders adapted, as they always did. They adapted more swiftly than before, as they always did. Zayana was prepared, as she always was. Yet she wondered: for how much longer? A point was fast approaching at which she would not be able to do this anymore. It was already getting truly dangerous, even with the latest chariot and her best driver. Even with the ninth string.

  The spiders became fire resistant; they required two shots to take down. She switched to ice (blue string), then EMP (yellow string) when the bionic ones began to appear. Her bow, which her guardian called the Heavenly Harp, rang out in a steady melody of changing notes. It made a curious music, which was just as important to this fight as the arrows themselves. Zayana glowed with light, and she sang her arda in time to the song. This was just as much a performance as a battle. It was very nearly a dance.

  A hulking brute of a spider appeared, many times larger than the rest. Zayana had learned how to deal with this one, though the price of the knowledge had been one of her drivers and a bruise that still ached. She fired two arrows in rapid succession: blue and purple. The blue arrow curved, lingering in the air so that they struck simultaneously. Zayana pulsed her arda; the purple arrow amplified the icy effect of the blue into a great explosion of cold. A follow-up white arrow shattered most of the frozen beast in a blast of concussive force.

  She kicked the switch. Another twenty arrows.

  She sensed downward movement; they had reached one of the paths underground. That meant they were getting close. It meant that Zayana had to watch not only for spiders lying in ambush, but also for webs across their path that required burning. The pulsing of the tracer device occasionally did not allow her sufficient time to react to such obstacles at full speed, so Big Murdoch had to slow down. Slowing down allowed some of the fast spiders (one of the latest and most ominous variations) to catch up from behind. And so Zayana had to pay attention to all directions at once, to fire ahead and behind.

  It was much more difficult now than it had been before. Very soon it would be impossible.

  Alone, she corrected herself. Very soon it would be impossible alone.

  Apparently, it was pitch black underground, which was a significant problem for the drivers, but not for her.

  She kicked the switch. Another twenty arrows rotated into place. The chariot jolted violently as it struck some obstacle. Zayana swayed like a reed in a gust of wind, prevented from tumbling off only by the webbing which tethered her to the vehicle.

  Big Murdoch was forced to deploy some of the auxiliary attachments: flamethrowers, proximity pulses, high-frequency sweeps.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  At last they made it to the Inner Nest, though for one panicky moment this was in doubt. The Nest was safe, relatively speaking, for Ungoliant would not attack unless attacked first. She was patient, content to wait.

  They made it, but it had been too close. The chariot was damaged; a flung spine had struck Big Murdoch (not poisoned, thankfully); Zayana’s back and shoulders ached and her fingers nearly bled. But she took her bow, detached her grav-boots, and stepped further into the great webbed cavern at the heart of the Crescent Moon.

  She had been here thrice, and each time the fear was greater, not less. The foul, musky scent, the distant chittering and skittering, the sense of being watched by the eight blind eyes of Ungoliant—all of it metastasized into an oppressive dread. Her skin tingled; she shivered with psychosomatic cold; she sweated profusely; her stomach was a hard, aching knot. She felt sick. Her angel trembled at the base of her neck, under her braided hair where it liked to reside. But she forced herself to stand upright, to look out and up into the great web of her guardian.

  The strings of that web were the strings she needed to finish her harp; to finish her moon. To fix everything. To become a Champion, whatever that meant. The black strings, the black thread, the void web.

  She played her harp, for that was the way to summon the beast. The strings rang; light chimed out in the dark; each note was a rippling spark of light. The void web, which Zayana saw in her mind like black on black, quivered with the sound.

  Ungoliant was as blind as Zayana. She never left her web, dark thread connected her web to every other web of all of her horrible spawn throughout the entire Crescent Moon. Ungoliant descended from the unseen black to hear the words of the Hero of Crystal.

  “Why have you come, blind archer?” Ungoliant whispered. That she could fill the dark vastness of the Inner Nest even with a whisper bespoke her size. “Is it time at last? Will you take my thread?”

  “I have questions,” Zayana replied, aware that her voice was a pathetic squeak in comparison to Ungoliant’s whisper.

  “Perhaps I have answers. Yet would I share them with my enemy?”

  Zayana pressed on. She still knew so very little about her guardian. Each of their guardians was different. Some were violent, some evil, some helpful, some mysterious. Ungoliant acted as an antagonist to Zayana and the Crescent Moon, but she did not speak like one.

  “What can you tell me about the Museum?” Zayana asked.

  “Museum?” One would never guess, from that great whisper, that it originated from a monstrous spider of incredible size. It sounded so nearly like the whisper of a daimon.

  “The world of doors. I know that you know of it. All the guardians know.”

  “Yes. We know much. As much as we need, and sometimes more.”

  “Unlike we heroes, who know very little.”

  “That is your own doing.”

  Acarnus had been right. They should not have killed Arcadelt. And they had made many other mistakes. The stars were falling.

  “What is the Museum?” Zayana persisted. “What is the role of this pseudo-reality called the Narrative? Its purpose?”

  Ungoliant remained silent, so Zayana continued. “And…what happened to Kaitlyn Carter? Who was she?”

  “We are not meant to speak of such things,” Ungoliant replied. Zayana nearly interrupted to ask who or what made the guidelines that the guardians were ‘meant’ to follow, but she stilled her tongue. “I will not answer your questions about the outer world, blind archer. And I do not know Kaitlyn Carter, though perhaps Maugrim or Anzu would speak to you.” Maugrim and Anzu: Acarnus’s and Anthea’s guardians.

  Ungoliant went on. “But since you came all this way merely to speak to me, I will say this: this Narrative is little different than your world before. All are dreams. All are stories. It has never been otherwise.”

  Zayana pursed her lips. Not very helpful.

  “If you wish to understand,” said Ungoliant, “then you must succeed. You must finish this story. You must open the white door. And you, Hero of Crystal, must defeat me. Take my thread. Complete the Heavenly Harp. Play the song of Procyon. Then, blind archer, you will see. Are you ready?”

  It was a challenge. Ungoliant wanted a fight. But Zayana knew she could not do it. She didn’t stand a chance, not a whisper of one. Not alone.

  Wordlessly, she turned back to the chariot, where Big Murdoch waited anxiously.

  “The stars are falling, hero,” whispered the guardian as it crawled back into the dark heights of its web. “Your time is running out.”