Spider spider where are you.

[Johanna]

Her dreams were not so pleasant. It might have been the fairly large amount of wine she had shared with Selena, it might have been the two marks on her arm from the sting and the poison residue in her body. But the legs that clicked over the stone floor and the many glowing eyes glaring at her from every corner made her toss and turn in her bed only to wake up in sweat soaked sleeping clothes.

Euraina sat up and pulled her legs up under her chin, folded her arms around them and shivered. She sat there for a moment trying to get the sights away.

The breaths from Selena in the bed on the other side of the room were unsteady, apparently she was not sleeping well either.
Something moved on the wall creating long shadows in the damp light from the lantern and the flickering candle within.

A spider.

Euraina screemed.

[highlander211]

Sleep brought little rest..Darkness..snarls and growls all around..scaly clawed hands pawing at her..a rope round her neck, tighter and tighter..

Selena was mercifully woken by the scream, and she sat upright in shock, dagger drawn in one swift movement and she looked around the room, trying to remember where she was. Her eyes fixed on the figure on the other bed, slight and trembling, staring fixedly at a spot on the wall. She rubbed her eyes and follwed the elf's gaze...to a tiny spider scuttling down the wall and under the bed.

"Euraina?" she ventured, quiety.."What is it?" The elf said nothing, just stared at where the spider had vanished to. Selena looked at the wall, and then back at the elf, and, her mind having woken up, remembered the cave and the spiders...and the bite. She frowned as she made the association, and then rose slowly and walked over towards Euraina's bed. She sat next to the trembling elf, pulled up a sheet around her shoulders and held her as she slowly calmed down. They sat together for a while, and watched out of the window as the sun rose over Rivendell, each lost to their own thoughts but neither wishing to intrude on the other as some piece of darkness had entered both their worlds.

What did I do...it feels strange...different. My first thought was her...and not me...and not just curiosity about what happened to her. I have heard of this though..this fear...but have never seen it...no - think not of that just now, there is time enough to heal her. Must be this place, and the influence of the elves. How different could it have been? How foolish have I been? Life will never be quite the same again...I have lost something, but I think I have gained also. Time will tell...

[the-small-print]

Excellent. I really enjoy these little snippets of insight into peoples' characters. Make sure they continue ;)

[Johanna]

When Selena wrapped the sheet around her, she finally let her eyes drop from the spot on the wall and she started to sob quietly. Selenas comfort and presence made her heart still and the sun slowly rising over the edge of the valley started to warm the air in the room.

I feel so different. I am not like the others. Or will I be, when I get older? Is my teacher just testing me?

Her thoughts wandered of as they just sat there but every now and then the spiders touched her mind.

I was so scared. I though I lost a friend to the orcs.

Euraina glanced at Selena, she sat calm watching out the window.

Do I really know this girl? I don’t care, she is my friend.

The sun travelled higher with every minute, but the time stood still.

[Validriel]

In the briefest moment before she dealt the final, critical blow with her glistening greatsword, Validriel stared directly into the terrible dire-spider’s massive faceted eyes.

There, behind the reflection of the Greenwood’s forest foliage, and behind the beast’s bloodthirsty anger at Validriel’s slaying of its five wicked sisters — their broken limbs and bodies strewn all about — behind both of those was… was… could one call it a sort of intelligence?

Not the kind of intelligence common to elves, or men, or dwarves… no. But a much stranger sort of “collective intelligence” that seemed to draw its primitive impulses from the other spiders of the wood… as if a web of thought connected these monsters as surely as their sticky, sinewy lairs brought them together.

And in that moment, Validriel sensed the spider paused before her crying out a silent scream… was it to alert other spiders nearby of the danger, using this strange spider-thought it possessed? Or… or… was it some last battlecry to some distant arachnid matriarch… perhaps the one from the east she’d heard of, the subject of so many odd rumours that piqued Validriel’s curiosity of late.

She could check her swing no longer, and the gash Validriel dealt cut clean through the spider’s head all the way to the vermin’s neck, spattering thick black blood against the tree trunks for thirty feet in all directions. The earth jarred as its massive body slumped, its eight massive legs surrendering to death.

As Validriel wiped her blade dry once more, she thought again of that moment’s pause, and of what she saw in the spider’s eyes… and she pondered whether somehow her destiny might be intertwined with these foul foes… and how perhaps her stars might one day even lead her to that most terrible evil, that daughter of Ungoliant, who gave first spawn to so many dealers-of-grief such as these…

//forgive me if this contribution distracts from the narrative you two have started... it was just quite a coincidence that V's been recently preoccupied with thoughts of spiders as well. :)

[highlander211]

Selena stuck her head out of the door of Elviro’s and groaned at the teeming rain bouncing off the cobbles outside. The elf had indulged her endless browsing for long enough, and she had not even noticed the day turn to night and the worsening of the weather. She hastily stuffed the newly purchased tome up the front of her tunic, turned her collar up and ran out into the street. She moved swiftly and nimbly, dodging under the eaves where she could, but was still soaked through when she turned the final corner into her street. In the dark and her haste her attention was not all it should have been, and she never noticed the figure lurking in a doorway, nor the booted foot swiftly stuck out on front of her, which, as the assailant intended, sent her sprawling face first into an especially muddy and foul smelling puddle. The book under her tunic fell out, and landed next to her, pages open to the still pouring rain.

Winded slightly, and thinking she had simply tripped, she got to her feet, then gasped in horror at the sight of the rapidly disintegrating book lying in the puddle. Before she could retrieve it, her assailant stepped forward, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her into the shelter of the doorway. The swiftness of it all surprised her, but quickly she wriggled free of the grasp, which was not particularly strong, and backed away, knife quickly in her hand.

The figure in front of her chuckled softly “You really should watch where you are going Selena”. Selena gaped in astonishment at the woman’s voice, and backed away even more as the figure’s hood slipped back slightly to reveal a lock of blonde hair and piercing blue eyes, which regarded her with a hint of amusement.
“Ris?” she blurted out, “you…you’re alive?”
“Oh most certainly” replied Elrissa, “and you, my old friend, have been running away from me for too long.”
“Running away?” Selena’shead filled with a hundred different emotions as she looked at her, and her head swam with all that she represented, past and future.
“You have not forgotten our pact have you Lena?” the blonde woman continued, her tone hardening somewhat “I would be most disappointed in you if you had decided our promises meant nothing.”

“How could I forget?” Selena thought to herself….and her mind returned to a dark room on the other side of the river….their hideout….the mysterious pile of gold Ris had obtained from somewhere…the knife they had both made… the mingling of their blood over the gold….and the sudden chill that had passed over her as they did so. “We were kids Ris” she said aloud, “it was years ago, you surely don’t….”

“I never go back on my word Lena” Elrissa cut in sharply. “You should know that, and you are more foolish than I ever thought you were if you think I will ever forget that we are tied in blood. I will not have you abandon me, as Rufus did.”

Tears welled within Selena; there was more than one way to strike to the heart and sometimes words went deeper than any blade. She slumped to the side of the doorway, and slowly slid down the wall until she was sitting miserably on the soaking ground, her mind filled with images she had long sought to bury beneath her books. Rufus’ body had hung from the town gallows for days, and she had returned every day and watched what was left of the man she loved being pecked at by crows before finally they let him be buried in a sack in a beggar’s grave.

“Abandon?” she whispered, finally looking up at Elrissa standing above her and tried to fathom her mind, but could not.
“You will not be taken from me Lena, “ Elrissa continued, “we have so much we can achieve…and whoever your new friends are, they will not stand in my way for long. You do not need them, only me.”
“No!” Selena snarled, brought back to the present, she closed her eyes and filled her mind with images of Rivendell, and with some new found strength she rose slowly and faced her old friend. “I will not follow your path…there is another way…”

She never finished the sentence, the fist struck her on the head before she could act, and it felt as if every nerve in her body was on fire as she staggered against the wall, twitching in pain and unable to move. She registered the dagger at her throat and Elrissa’s ice cold gaze as she moved her face to within inches of hers and spoke in a cold whisper as the rain continued to hammer down on them both.

“You are wrong Lena. There is only my way.”
With that, Elrissa turned and walked away, leaving Selena in agony against the wall, her body and mind burning. In front of her, the book had all but disintegrated, and the rain became even heavier.

[Johanna]

Euraina stepped out from the Grayflood in a pretty cheerful mood, she hadn’t visited Tharbad that many times and new things were still exciting. A bit of her joy disappeared when the poring rain greeted her on the outside but she shrugged it away and started on the way down to the market. The mud splashed up on her newly bought boots but she really didn’t care.

When she turned around a corner of a house a woman ran her over knocking her into the house wall. Two blue eyes met Euraina.

“Watch it .. elf..” the blond haired woman yelled at her in a angry way.
“I’m sorry miss” Euraina answered in a low voice catching her breath from the hard impact.
The woman snarled, watched Euraina over a few times then turned to continue her own way, disappearing into the mist of the rain and darkness.

Euraina felt confused, not understanding the ways that some people behaved and the aura this person had made her stomach twitch with butterflies. She let it pass of with the falling rain before she continue, knowing that the meeting was not the last with this woman.

The fist thing she saw was a leather binder and some sheets from it on the ground. The papers, by looking at the there colour, were old, but now some of them were mashed into something more looking like paper pulp. The second thing was the angry sobs coming from the figure leaning against the wall.

“Selena?”

Euraina looked at Selena and when there eyes met she saw the agony within and the red mark on the side of her head.