ANYTHING.
I'm just glad I'd known where they were, from scouting earlier.
Which I would have told you about, if I wasn't terrible at planning. And spider cults. And time zones.
Anyway.
The spider cult had this big altar, under the city, in one of the old subway tunnels. It was blocked off because of a demon infestation the Paladins hadn't gotten to yet, but I think that the infestation got a demon spider infestation of itself.
I hate spider cults. Even the nice ones.
I hate them even more now, but...I'm kind of an arachnophobe. Or I was before the Cacophony, anyway. Before dark gods and mile long snakes and spider cults became an everyday occurrence. It's kind of stuck around, though, whenever I'm around a bunch of giant demonic spiders and their pet humans.
Luckily, most of these were the Widow's Mates. I mean, they were still as big as a small car, but compared to the Widow herself, or her Daughters, nothing major.
She wasn't there, thank the Song--that's probably what I interrupted, an attempt to get Her Hugeness into this reality.. Her little girls were, though. Just two of them, but both of them were a whole lot bigger than their daddies were. Fortunately, they were more interested in whittling down their potential pool of father/suitors than they were anything else, for most of the ceremony.
I'd describe the ceremony, but it really wasn't anything special. Lots of black candles, chanting, and some idiot on a guitar trying to harmonize with whatever web-filled hell the Ebon Widow calls home. The standard stuff, really. The guy wasn't even a captial B bard, just some schlub with a half-assed score the Widow's probably been singing into his dreams.
But, they had sacrifices, and a deliberate, planned and executed death disrupts the Song more than anything else. It would've made up for all that terrible singing and clumsy guitar playing, especially if he broke a channel for the Song at the same time.
There were two dozen of them, about half that in Widow's Mates, and a pair of very hungry Widow's Daughters. Not really out of my favor...but without Katrina I was nowhere near as effective as I could have been.
So, I took out my oboe, casually walked down the stairs, and I started playing the Tarantula Hawk's Warcry, which sounds retarded on a woodwind, especially an oboe, but it did its job well. The spider demons shrieked in terror and ran as fast as their eight little massive legs could carry them down, deeper into the subway tunnels, as I could feel the Infinite Song humming, buzzing around me.
The cultists realized what I was doing. They should have been trying to stop me--they might have succeeded if they'd tried to stop me, but instead, they went back to the ritual, trying to chant and play as quickly as possible.
And then the air was full of wasps.
Did you know the tarantula hawk has one of the most painful stings in the world? Well, now those cultists do, too.
When I got to the altar, my...wife (I am so not used to calling her that) was already cutting herself free with a knife she's managed to hide on herself. I grabbed Katrina and tried to get her out of there, because without a string instrument the Warcry would only last so long, but noooo, she insisted that she had to get her "swords" first. Why would someone charge into danger just for some dumb weapons, anyway?
Of course, I understood a bit better when I saw one of her "swords" was an assault rifle. A blessed assault rifle, I might add, with a unique place in the Song. She even named it. "Ferocity". Who does that?
She also had a normal sword, which she named "Devotion", but seriously, I'm still hung up on the whole naming her weapons thing.
Anyway, she speared the leader of the cult--or at least, the one who was about to sacrifice her, before we left, and then we hightailed it just as the Warcry started to fade, and the Widow's Mates and their hungry little girls started coming back up the tunnel.
We ran and ran, and then my wife, Knight Lieutenant Mab, laughed and said that if this is what our honeymoon was like, she'll be excited for our first anniversary.
I tried to explain to her that it was Shadow Destiny that married her, and not me, but she won't hear it. She wants to travel with me, and she won't take no for an answer...
...so I guess I'm traveling with my..um...wife now. And Shadow Destiny, because I know she's still able to exert at least a little influence over me--or, at least, I'm assuming she can until I have proof otherwise.
I really have no idea how stuff like this keeps happening to me.
~~Destiny
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