Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1984: Entering the Depths

"Nobody marked an end," Andre replied. "These are the surveyed sections. Some join up, some stop where the surveyors stopped."

Celia looked down at the pages.

"That’s why I brought so many supplies. If we have to search the branches, we might need to sleep down there."

Quinlan studied the lines descending beyond the last marked junction. Reaching the entrance had been the easy part. The missing expedition could have taken any of those routes, and they had yet to find a trail to follow.

"Could you keep close to me?" Sera asked Celia.

The girl nodded to her. Andre went down first with Marielle behind him, and Celia followed between Sera and Serika.

The stairway opened into a corridor whose walls had been cut square long before the hillside swallowed them. Water ran down one side, leaving the other dry enough for the old expedition’s chalk marks to survive.

Andre checked each mark against his map. At a collapsed junction, he pointed out the turn the surveyors had used to bypass it.

"The lower galleries join up beyond here."

"Assuming they still do," Kaelira said. She angled the lantern toward a split in the ceiling. "That block has moved since someone marked this wall."

Marielle glanced up.

"Then we’ll avoid standing under it."

"I’d suggest passing one at a time. The slab beside it is carrying the weight now."

"Andre first. The rest of you follow him."

She waited beside the junction while they crossed separately, then gave Quinlan an impatient look when he paused to study the damaged stone.

"Your smith has already inspected it."

"I like to learn from her. I’m studying what she saw."

Kaelira nearly bumped into Sera ahead of her. The healer caught her elbow, giggling, while Marielle looked at Quinlan as though he had just drooled on himself.

"You really are hopeless."

Beyond the collapse, the worked corridor ended at a shaft whose bottom lay beyond the lantern’s reach. Worn steps wound down its inner wall, interrupted where slabs had broken away from their supports.

Andre tested the first landing before waving the others after him. Serika stayed beside Celia on the descent, offering her hand wherever the girl had to step across a gap.

Water dripped somewhere beneath them. The sound followed Quinlan down until they reached a lower arch, where Blossom paused with her nose raised.

"Master, the smell goes this way."

"The map says left," Marielle replied.

Blossom pointed through the arch to their right. A broken pack buckle lay beside a dark smear on the paving.

Andre crouched to examine it, then checked the next sheet.

"This joins the lower survey route. We can follow it."

Marielle folded her arms and scoffed while he marked their turn. Celia watched him add the arrow before putting her own papers away, careful to keep the pages dry.

They descended through another flight of galleries, stopping where fallen masonry forced them to crawl beneath a leaning beam. Quinlan waited while Celia passed her pack through to Serika, then followed her into a passage whose walls had vanished under sheets of silk.

By late afternoon, they had been underground for hours. At the next dry landing, Celia passed around bread and water while Andre compared the route they’d taken with the surveyors’ marks.

The papers showed more junctions below them. Blossom kept finding scraps caught in the webbing: a torn strap, a strip of cloth, then the rusted head of a broken pick.

With that trail to guide them, they continued down.

The next sloping passage opened into a broad gallery with empty doorways along both sides. Webbing hung in sheets across the openings, thickening toward the far end until the lantern couldn’t shine through it.

Blossom stopped sniffing.

"Master. There are people."

Celia lifted her head.

"Alive?"

"Blossom can smell blood. And..." Her ears turned toward the nearest doorway. "Someone’s breathing."

Quinlan heard it when they stopped moving: a faint, wet drag of air behind the silk.

Marielle raised her staff, but Aurora caught her attention with an upraised palm.

"There might be someone directly behind it."

"I wasn’t going to burn the whole room down."

"..." Aurora elected to say nothing.

Andre slit the sheet with his sword. The cut exposed a long chamber crowded with bundles suspended from the ceiling.

Something moved inside the nearest one.

Celia took a step toward it, then stopped when Sera touched her shoulder.

"Let me look first."

Serika guided Celia inside behind the others, keeping her near the back of the chamber while Lucille and Kaelira watched the doorway. Quinlan stayed beside Seraphiel; Marielle and Andre remained out in the gallery.

"[Divine Arsenal]," Seraphiel murmured.

She drew the spell’s light into a blade and opened the outer wrapping. A woman’s face emerged beneath strands of dirty hair, her eyes closed and her lips parted around a thread of saliva.

She was breathing.

"Oh, thank the Goddess..." Celia whispered.

Sera cut farther down the cocoon. The woman’s arm slipped out, ending in a healed stump above the wrist.

Celia’s hand rose to her mouth.

Above the stump, fresh punctures marked the exposed skin. A thin, hollow strand remained embedded near the elbow, running from her arm into a knotted mass of silk on the wall.

Dark fluid moved through it.

Aurora leaned close without touching the strand.

"Sera, wait. Something’s feeding through that."

Quinlan followed the tube with his eyes. Smaller bodies stirred inside the wall’s silken pockets, their legs pressing against the translucent covering as the fluid reached them.

From behind Serika, Celia made a strangled sound.

"They’re eating them?"

Sera lowered the woman’s weight carefully into the opened wrapping while she examined the tube. Before she could answer, a heavy scrape rolled down the gallery.

Blossom’s ears snapped toward the sound.

"Master. Something powerful is coming."

The webbing over the far arch tightened. Dust trickled from its upper stones as a hooked leg pushed through, feeling along the floor with a tip longer than Andre’s sword.

He raised his shield and backed toward Marielle.

"Something very big," he said hoarsely.

Another leg drove into the paving. Cracks spread beneath it, and the impact shook the hanging cocoons against one another.

Celia clutched Serika’s arm. From the back of the room, she could see the doorway framing those enormous limbs, could hear the wet clicking coming from somewhere above them.

"That’s what got Father...?"

Serika drew her behind her shoulder as the creature forced its forebody through the arch.

Armour grated against masonry. The monster folded her legs tightly along her flanks, scraping furrows into both walls as she dragged herself forward. Her swollen black abdomen remained wedged beyond the opening, pulsing beneath coarse hairs tangled with webbing.

Marielle’s staff dipped.

"That can’t... Andre, the ones outside weren’t... Just what level is this monster?!"

"I don’t fucking know, but this is way beyond us!"

He caught her sleeve and pulled her back as a foreleg stabbed into the place where she’d been standing. Chips of paving struck her boots.

"Away from the walls!"

The queen monster lowered her head between them.

Red eyes crowded the ridged plates above her fangs. As the lantern beam crossed them, they turned together toward the open feeding chamber, tracking Sera’s hands on the captive.

Quinlan’s women spread out inside the chamber, leaving each other room to fight. Ayame’s thumb eased her katana free of its sheath, while Lucille lifted her hammer beside Kaelira at the door.

Kitsara’s tails pulled tight against her legs.

"Oh, fuck that."