Annihilation

The result of all of it was that Jeggred's severed hand grew back. Pharaun found the sight of the thing slowly taking shape from the dead end of the stump even more fascinating than the exchange between the two females. The hand came together in layers: bone, sinew, muscle, blood vessels, skin, fur, claws.

When they were done, the draegloth stood, flexing his hand, jaw agape, body quivering.

The two priestesses stood with him, separating, their eyes once again going cold toward each other.

Jeggred looked first to Danifae and said, "My thanks, Mistress." Then to Quenthel, "Mistress Quenthel. .»

Anger poured over the high priestess's face like fog, and she turned away from her nephew, quickly gathering her pack.

"We've rolled around on the floor long enough," she said, already walking swiftly down the corridor. "This way."

Danifae motioned to Pharaun to proceed, and the wizard gladly went after Quenthel. Valas followed behind the wizard, and Danifae and the draegloth took up the rear. Any distance, any buffer between the two priestesses was a good thing, and Pharaun was happy to provide it as long as they got moving. The Master of Sorcere was all but overwhelmed with curiosity.

Quenthel led the way with a confident stride and such assurance that none of the rest of them argued or second-guessed her at all. They went from one corridor to another, passed through rooms, sometimes through doors that Jeggred had to force open by brute strength. All the while the interior of the spider fortress maintained its cold, dark, dead, rusted feeling. Though Lolth's power had definitely returned to the two priestesses, the construct was as dead as ever, and Pharaun got the distinct impression that wherever that power was coming from, it wasn't the sixty-sixth layer of the Abyss.

When they saw light at the end of one of the passageways they all stopped, clinging to the walls and the concealing shadows. As he ran through the spells still available to him and closed his fingers over a wand that would send bolts of lightning crashing through the air, the Master of Sorcere took stock of the rest of the expedition. Quenthel and Danifae both looked down the corridor with hopeful, excited expressions. Jeggred looked at Danifae in the same ma

"What is it?" Jeggred asked, his voice as quiet as was possible for the massive half-demon.

Pharaun guessed, "A gate."

"It's where we have to go," Quenthel said.

"She's correct," said Danifae.

"Well, then," Pharaun replied, "we ought to proceed right away. Should we be prepared to fight our way through?"

Quenthel stepped away from the wall and started walking quickly, back tall and straight, toward the strange purple glow.

Pharaun shrugged and followed, still holding the wand in one hand and the list of spells in his mind. The high priestess hadn't actually answered his question after all.

By the time they got to the end of the corridor Pharaun's instincts were telling him to approach more slowly, more cautiously—but he'd also grown accustomed to following the lead of the highest ranking priestess in attendance, so he followed Quenthel into the chamber at the end of the corridor with a hesitation in his mind but not in his step.

The corridor opened into a huge, round, high-ceilinged chamber walled in the same rusted steel as the rest of the spider fortress. In the center of the otherwise empty space was a circle that appeared to be welded together from jagged, rusted pieces of the fortress construct itself. The circle stood up on its end, perhaps eighteen feet in diameter. The center of the ring was filled with opaque violet light, swirling and folding in on itself as if it came from a luminescent cloud of vapor trapped in the confines of the circle.

Pharaun heard footsteps and brought the wand out from under his piwafwi.

"You will not require that here, mage," a voice echoed in the chamber.

As the others filed into the room, Pharaun looked for the source of the voice. He sensed a figure lurking in a particularly dark shadow.

"There," Pharaun whispered to Quenthel. "See it?"

Quenthel nodded and said, "You will cast no spell; you will make no move toward it unless I order it. Do you understand?"

Pharaun said, "Of course, Mistress," but the others stood silent.

"I said," the high priestess reiterated, "do you understand?"

Danifae and Jeggred nodded, and Pharaun again said, "Of course, Mistress. Can you at least tell me what it is?"

"I prefer to be referred to as 'she'," the voice said, "being female."

The figure stepped out of the darkest part of the shadow and strode confidently into the purple light from the active but untuned portal. The sight of it took Pharaun's breath away.

The figure of a drow female slowly twisted and writhed a good ten feet in the air. The drow was perfectly formed and nude, her body more like Danifae's in its fullness than Quenthel's modest, strong frame. She dragged her hands over her body in long, slow caresses for which no part of her was forbidden.

From her sides grew two sets of long, segmented spider legs. It was those four legs—and four more like it all together—that held the drow female up above the rusted floor.

Pharaun had seen too many driders to count, but what stepped out in front of him was no drider. Everything about the spider-drow creature demanded the wizard's full attention. The drow form was beautiful—beautiful in a way that Pharaun had no words to describe. Her long, spindly spider legs simply reminded him of where he was: the home plane of—

The Master of Sorcere shook his head slowly from side to side. It couldn't be.

"Lo—?" he whispered.

"I am not the Queen of the Demonweb Pits, Master of Sorcere," the spider-drow said in accented High Drow. "To even say it would be blasphemy."

"I've only read about you," Quenthel whispered.

A second spider-drow appeared, stepping lightly out of the gloom, and a third hung suspended from the ceiling, both their drow bodies those of a writhing naked drow female.

"Abyssal widows," Danifae said.

The name meant nothing to Pharaun.

"You are her handmaidens, and—" Quenthel started.

"And her midwives. We were only legend," the first abyssal widow purred. "We were only prophecy."

"Prophecy. . " Quenthel whispered.

"We exist now," the abyssal window said, "to guard the entrance to the Demonweb Pits."

"But," Pharaun said almost despite himself, "we're in the Demonweb Pits."

The beautiful drow female smiled, her teeth perfect and clean, the skin of her cheeks smooth and utterly devoid of blemish or imperfection.

"No," the creature replied, "not anymore."

"What's happened?" Quenthel asked. "Where is the goddess if not in the Abyss?"

"All your questions will be answered, Mistress," said the widow, "when you pass through the gate."

"It's a plane all its own now," Pharaun guessed.

The abyssal widows all nodded in unison and moved to stand on either side of the portal—guards along a procession route.

"You have come this far," one of the widows said.

"And so have proved you are worthy," continued another.

"To face Lolth and speed her into her new form," finished the third.

"Her new form?" asked Pharaun.

The abyssal widows all shared a coy look and gestured to the yawning violet portal.

"Did you. ." the Master of Sorcere said, his throat dry, his hands shaking no matter how hard he tried to stop them. "Did you call yourself a midwife?"

"Pass," one of them said. "You are expected."

Quenthel stepped forward, Danifae close on her heels, and boldly walked into the roiling mass of purple light. She disappeared instantly, Danifae only steps behind her. Jeggred was a bit more reluctant, regarding the abyssal widows with blazing eyes as he passed them. Soon enough, he was gone as well.