Jaleigh Johnson - Spider and Stone

“The Black Creeper.”

“Nameless, Houseless wanderer.”

“How does he earn the mistress’s favor?”

“He is nothing.”

Sweat broke out on Icelin’s skin. Fire rose up from the spider’s web, hungrily consuming the temple. Somewhere, she heard Zollgarza’s scream of surprise and fear. This was no memory she pulled from his mind. It was her own memory, mingling with his-fire, the wild magic unleashed within her.

Icelin gasped. She felt herself losing control, her body trembling. Every part of her screamed at her to rein in the spell, to stop now before someone died.

No. I can’t do this.

Then, from the depths of the fire, a new voice spoke directly into her mind: Let it go. I’m here. I will watch over you .

Mith Barak’s voice, Icelin thought, dazed. Yet the rough scrape of the dwarf’s voice changed and distorted in her mind, becoming by turns a woman’s voice, gentle, soothing, and familiar, before turning back the Mith Barak’s again. A presence enveloped her, like cool hands clasping her shoulders, urging her to relax, and fall.

Icelin released a breath and let herself go.

The Silver Fire erupted in a storm.

Distantly, she heard Zollgarza scream again. Perhaps the Silver Fire would tear both their minds to pieces-yet Icelin felt no such madness descend upon her, linked as she was to the drow. Wherever Zollgarza’s pain came from, the Silver Fire wasn’t causing it.

Instinctively, she reached for the drow with her mind, seeking him among the fiery ruin of Guallidurth. She ran down unfamiliar city streets, rearing back as flames surged out at her, forming strange shapes in the air. Spiders, the face of a drow priestess, a demon formed of ripples of melting flesh. Icelin cried out and covered her eyes.

“Icelin! Icelin, wake. Wake!”

Ruen’s voice echoed above the roaring fire. Icelin uncovered her eyes, but a light blinded her. Unseen hands grabbed her and pulled her off her feet. She soared above the city. The buildings shrank beneath her, and the fire and black smoke became a dizzying blur.

“Wake!”

Her eyes snapped open.

She was in the library, lying on her back on the floor, the sphere clutched to her breast. Ruen and Sull’s faces floated above her, their voices calling to her, but faint and jumbled, as if she were underwater and they slowly drawing her up.

“What happened?” Icelin asked. She blinked to clear her vision and tried to sit up.

“Take it easy for a breath or two,” Sull said. He supported her back so she could look around the room. Slowly, the objects and people in the library swam into focus.

Mith Barak lay on the floor not far from her. His face glistened with sweat, and he was pale, so pale that Icelin instinctively reached out to him. “He’s hurt!” she cried.

The dwarf waved away her concern. “I’ll be fine,” he said. He drew in a wheezing breath. “You can hold a lot of power for one little girl.” He coughed and wiped a stream of blood from his chin.

“What happened?” Icelin repeated insistently. “Where is Zollgarza?”

“Here.” Ruen laid a hand on Icelin’s shoulder. Icelin twisted to look behind her.

A figure lay sprawled on the floor, naked, obsidian skin slick with sweat. A thick fall of pure white hair obscured its features. Muscles stood out in rigid lines on bare arms and legs. As Icelin watched, the figure moaned softly and rolled over.

“Oh, gods,” Icelin said, breathless. “What have I done?”

Beside her, Sull grunted and shook his head. “Not what I was expectin’ either.”

The drow lying on the floor was Zollgarza. Echoes of his features shone through plainly in the face.

A face that was also unmistakably female.

Zollgarza’s last coherent knowledge of his surroundings was the thin man holding his arms behind his back. Mith Barak’s eyes glowed silver; then the girl, Icelin, released the sphere’s power. After that, reality faded, and suddenly she was in his mind.

He’d braced for an immediate assault, fully expecting that this was the end. Something was wrong, though. She didn’t try to probe his thoughts the way the dwarf had. She only watched, waited, hovering at the edges of his consciousness. Her terror filled his mind until he gasped with the force of it. What was she frightened of?

Pain tore apart Zollgarza’s world.

He remembered once, long ago, he’d been hit by a spell that sent dark bolts of black lightning rippling across his skin. He didn’t remember who had cast the spell at him, but the energy had seized his heart and threatened to explode it out of his chest. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, and he’d lost all control over his muscles.

That pain had been nothing compared to what he felt now.

Muscle ripped off his bones, swelling and reshaping while he howled in agony. Then even his voice failed him when one by one his bones shattered and reformed, grating against each other and pushing at his skin. Zollgarza squeezed his eyes shut. The pain made him weep. He didn’t think he could stand to witness whatever transformation his body was undergoing. It would drive him mad. He gritted his teeth and tried not to bite through his tongue as his body convulsed and slammed against the stone floor.

It was over faster than he’d expected, or more likely, the pain had made him lose consciousness. When he opened his eyes, the first thing Zollgarza noticed was the curtain of white obscuring his vision. He reached up to brush it away. That was the moment he realized he still had hands and hair-though the latter had lost all its black color and was now pure white.

Pushing the hair out of his face, Zollgarza noticed something curious about his hands. He held the left one up in front of his face and tried to discern what the curious thing was.

His hands were larger than they had been before-larger, yet the fingers were long and slender, ending in finely sculpted nails. Had he seen such hands on a female drow, Zollgarza would have called them exceptionally beautiful. Running his thumb along his palm, Zollgarza discovered more curiosities.

His calluses, those hard skin patches where his dagger always pressed into his palm, were gone. For some reason, this absence disturbed Zollgarza more than anything else that had happened to him. His hands trembled, and an oily knot of panic welled in his stomach.

Wrong-this is all wrong. What have they done to me?

A soft moan escaped Zollgarza’s lips. But the voice-the voice wasn’t his. The sound that came from his throat was soft and rich as velvet. It put him in mind of the mistress mother as she whispered in his ear.

Zollgarza could bear it no longer. He rolled over and pushed himself up so he could look at the rest of his body. What he saw was stranger than anything he could ever have imagined.

Breasts.

Naked, Zollgarza could take in the full extent of his alteration. Hard muscles had reshaped themselves into feminine curves. The muscles were still there, and the power, but that power came from a different source. He no longer had the body of a drow warrior, one who fought with a dagger and crept in the shadows. The lithe body he inhabited now most closely resembled that of a drow priestess. Female drow were naturally bigger and stronger than males-what they lacked in a warrior’s training they made up for in sheer physical girth.

Zollgarza licked his lips-even those felt different, strangely full under his tongue-and angled his naked body toward Icelin and the others. Mith Barak had collapsed several feet away, no doubt spent by the force of the magic needed to transform him into this.

“Why?” he asked in his new, unfamiliar voice. “Why did you change me?”

The four of them stared at him without speaking for several breaths. Zollgarza swallowed, trying to force down that knot of panic that continued to swell within him. Why were they staring at him that way, their mouths open like dumb beasts? Were they playing with him?