Herded off the stage by the auctioneers, a member of the smallest aranae variant led us down a narrow hallway and placed us in a bland room with a single door on every wall. At the start of the auction, the food here had probably been a grand feast, but after almost thirty people, all that remained was a piled mess with no discernable way to eat politely.

  A messy plate was of no concern to me, and I took a seat at the table. I tried to eat with grace, but for the last three days they’d fed us only twice a day and even then, the portions sizes were tiny. No matter how much we asked or complained, they never gave larger portions.

  All that kept me from shoveling the food into my mouth like an equarrel was the fact that four sets of eyes rested on me and I wouldn’t disgrace the cult that way.

  I recognized barely a third of what was on my plate and while the rest of the group joined me at the table, their own plates filled with food, none of them had made the adventurous choices I had.

  “Bran, come on man, you don’t even know hat that is.” Mika pleaded; his voice filled with false disgust.

  “Doesn’t matter. I am starved, and the food is delicious.” I rebutted and liberally spread a blue-colored cheese onto some kind of whole grain bread.

  “Where is that cheese from, ya think?” Nora asked, voice carefully innocent. “What if it’s goblin milk?”

  Images of both goblin species flashed through my head, and neither was something I wanted to think about. So instead of dwelling on the idea of eating something from their milk and ruining what was quickly becoming one of my favorite cheeses; I made a show of turning my back to Nora and spreading more cheese onto another slice. I heard Nora laugh behind me and smiled as I took a bite into the creamy cheese.

  ~~~***~~~

  Ten minutes later, a quiet knock, and another of the smaller aranae, entered the room and bowed her head.

  “Am glad to see eat, yet follow please, bring to spiress.” The woman said in broken Trade Tongue.

  All five of us got up and after five minutes of getting our stuff back on, during which the aranae woman would not stop dancing in place for us. As we followed her, she led us through another series of tunnels that felt like they were designed to confuse before she led us out of the auction house for the first time since we arrived.

  Habit raised my arm to shield my eyes as we left the building. I felt silly right away when I remembered there was more rock above me than I could imagine. I tried to play it off like I’d just wiped my brow, but a small snort from Nora told me I’d failed.

  When we walked behind the aranae woman. I expected her to take us right to the winner’s home or to some kind of training yard. What I was not expecting was to find a carriage with a massive centipede strapped to the bridle of the carriage.

  Designed unlike anything I’d seen or read about. The carriage was entirely stone. Six wheels on three axels held up a cylindrical cab with an intricate lattice near the top.

  There was a spirit beast that looked like someone designed a centipede off a vaguely recalled vision hooked up to the carriage. As tall as a horse at its many shoulders, and three times as long as the creature still looked stubby. Like it’d been squashed flat in its sleep. It had long, jagged mandibles held in control by reigns made of flexible metal. The small aranae woman walked us out to her carriage. We rode in silence. The woman who led us in was an aranae woman, and the goblin driver was a small man.

  That didn’t really matter because as soon as the door opened, all five of us, including Maggie, scrambled inside to get a better look. Cushions made from a silk I’d never seen before adorned all the stone seats.

  The silk cushions felt like sitting on a cloud. Ellen climbed in after me and I noticed that rather than tilt, the carriage bounced. Its entire body sinking to accommodate Ellen’s added weight. The sensation was barely noticeable, but similar to sitting on a tree branch. There was give, but it was secure enough that you still feel safe trusting your weight to it.

  When Maggie was in and the small aranae woman closed the door behind us, I took the time before we set off to inspect the designs carved into a lot of the carriage’s interior.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  No material was too expensive for this carriage. Enough precious material and gems to fund the Cult for a year inlaid every swirling, blocky design. I focused on the wealth that encapsulated us for a long moment, during which the woman who led us here said something to the driver in her native language and we took off.

  I watched the buildings as we passed by, taken further into the cavern and away from the center of the city. I expected the buildings to grow smaller and more destitute, like they had when we first entered the city. In contrast to my expectations, the buildings only grew larger and more ornate.

  Extravagant displays of bones on the goblin homes and dazzling tapestries on the aranae spires covered the facades of the homes. The further we travelled, the more green spaces I saw. Beautiful gardens filled with exotic flowers, bushes, and a variant of mushroom with a spotted orange cap that grew up to five feet tall. The presence of these green spaces, according to an old urban planning textbook in my mom’s library, meant we were now in spaces designed for the elite.

  We were in the carriage for at least another hour before the driver slowed in front of the largest individual spire I’d yet seen. Smaller than the spires attached to that massive central building, this spire dwarfed its neighbors and made them look like twigs next to a tree trunk. The top of the spire was already in the process of mineralization, and tapestries dedicated to the glories of clan Virtanen covered any spot not turned to red stone.

  I saw scenes of battles, duels, item creation, building, gardens, and everything in between. Yet every tapestry had the common theme of an enemy defeated, a foe vanquished. Whether that foe was goblin, aranae; or if they’d bested an enemy in a drinking contest or war did not matter. All that mattered was someone had to be the loser in their glories.

  We stood before the main door to the spire, unsure how to approach. None of us besides Maggie had ever sold our services to the highest bidder; and Maggie wasn’t sharing the proper protocol for this moment. Beside me, Nora took a deep breath and, after a minute of hesitation, stepped towards the door to knock on the massive stone door.

  Her determination was wasted when, before she could even make it up two steps, a woman with three heads opened the door. Three larger women, each with two tails surrounding her. The woman with three heads looked to be in her mid-forties, and each of her faces possessed the laugh and smile lines I associated with the mothers of Twin Oak. In contrast to her, the women around her all lacked a single wrinkle; their alien faces shining with the vitality of youth.

  “Welcome to the Malburg subspire of clan Virtanen. Please follow me, the spiress has been waiting.”

  The woman’s voice, hindered by the same choking quality all aranae seemed to speak the Trade Tongue with, sounded regal enough that I could instantly imagine her seated on a throne. Though that thought forced the question of how aranae used chairs into my mind.

  The ground floor of the spire was sparse, its only features a large circular rug and a few glass cabinets displaying rough cut gemstones. Yet for a space I assumed saw plenty of foot traffic, it was immaculately clean. I couldn’t find a speck of dust anywhere I looked. The trend towards cleanliness continued as the woman led us up a flight of stairs at the back of the room. One of the two-tailed aranae slipped behind us to be at the back of the group.

  Every floor we passed on our way up the spire, was concealed by a closed stone door. By the time we passed the twentieth door, I was sick of the things and my legs roared with fatigue, the lactic acid building like geysers. I was the best off out of all of us, and Mika, with his pack of stone golems, had to pause on each floor to recover before he could continue. Finally, however, the woman with three heads stopped at a door and led us into the suite beyond.

  Like with the adventurer’s suite back at the auction house, the floor beyond the door comprised a semi-circular common room surrounded by a wall of doors. The common space demarcated into sections by groupings of furniture all made for the aranae body plan. The couches that took up the left wall of the room lacked all arms or backs and were just elevated cushions.

  Gilded curule chairs surrounded the dining table. Aside from the furniture, the other thing about the space that caught my attention was the sheer abundance of soft things. Rugs, pillows, and blankets were everywhere. Aranae silk, which I was becoming quite good at recognizing, made some things, but a majority were made from fabric available on the surface. Some pieces were made from fabrics I had never seen before, such as a yellow pillow whose fibers looked like they sparked, absently waving in a non-existent breeze.

  The last thing to catch my attention about the room was that unlike every other building I’d been in, up to this point, the walls were made of the same porous wood that the pathway into the city was. Expect the holes in this were both wider and spaced further apart. For every board of the stuff, rather than there being tens of thousands of needle sized holes, there were only a dozen coin sized ones instead. Just looking at it, I could tell the wood itself was a naturally light color, but they’d stained it to an almost white.

  The woman who welcomed us into the spire gestured for the five of us to take a seat on a couch. Once seated, she quietly excused herself back to the entrance. She didn’t leave, however. Instead, her and all of her guards grew still and tried to fade into the background.

  Across from us was a highly decorated curule seat. A hard-edged geometric pattern that swirled out from a central point in the frame was carved into the stone and inlaid with twisted threads of emerald and sapphire. Dyed a vivid red, and embroidered with golden thread, the seat cushion depicted flora and fauna I’d never seen before.

  The showcase of opulence combined with the guards and attendant behind us was designed to suffocate us as we waited for the spiress to join us.

  I’d read about power games like this, usually in adventure novels but occasionally in political treatises. In most cases, the [Heroes] in the stories I’d read wilted under the display presented to them or, in a feat of willpower, marshalled the resolve to stay unbowed. I always found it a little silly that in the books [Heroes] who disregarded the power game would leave their allies to wither under the pressure. So rather than emulate the storybook [Heroes] I grew up idolizing, I brought my party mates into it as well.

  “How do you think aranae sit on chairs?” I asked into the silence.

  It wasn’t my finest work in raising morale, and some of my trainers would have dressed me down if they’d heard the attempt. However, by the thoughtful looks on everyone’s faces, including Maggie, the question did its job.

  “Maybe they lean their upper bodies on the cushions.” Ellen ventured.

  “Nah, the chairs are too close to the ground for that. Two silver says they climb up onto them and just cross their legs before they sit.” Mika countered.

  “There isn’t a chance that’s true.” Nora rebutted. “Think about what that’d look like. They’d look like dogs sitting in bed.”

  “I’ll bet a copper they hang upside down from the bottom of the things.” Maggie said with a smile.

  “Why would they do that?” Ellen deadpanned.

  “C’mon, think about it. There has to be a spider somewhere in their heritage, and spiders like to hang from things.”

  “Maggie, that is the most –“

  Eventually, what started as quiet speculation turned into a heated whisper match between two camps. Ellen, Mika, and I argued for a variation on sitting normally in the chairs. Maggie and the traitor Nora, who’d switched sides once we ganged up on Maggie, were vehement defenders of the hanging upside-down theory.

  Nora was about to launch into another point, but the sound of a door opening and a legion of quiet steps interrupted her.