“Don’t you know where all the traps are?” Tor asked. “You say you were here when this was created.”
“That wasn’t my responsibility.”
“What did you do then?”
“I put him in his tomb.”
The Berserker gave me a considering look, his horns glinting ominously in the dim light. “You must have been close. That’s usually reserved for family.”
I shrugged. “He served a purpose.”
“He waged war,” Alek said, mirroring his brother as he studied me. “For you?”
I jerked my chin in a sharp nod. “It looked like it was going to be a successful endeavor, up until the end, anyway.”
“No one knows how close the apocalypse was,” Pan murmured.
“They never do. Blissfully unaware, even now.”
“I envy them,” Tor said quietly.
“You do?”
“It would be nice to focus on happiness for once.”
He wasn’t wrong about that. Even so, I preferred to face my destiny with eyes wide open.
“So do we have a location in mind, or are we just wandering around aimlessly?” Pan asked.
“I just told you I placed him in his tomb. Obviously I know where we’re going.”
“Care to enlighten the rest of us?”
I gestured toward the much larger building in the center of the city. It wasn’t exactly a palace, but it was as close to one as a place like this had. “There.”
With grim nods, we continued on in that direction, Alek letting out a soft, “That’s more like it.”
“More like what?” I asked.
He pointed at a couple of cobwebs hanging off one of the buildings. “More like I expected.”
“Fucking spiders. They’ll make a home anywhere,” Tor said under his breath.
I had a bad feeling about this new development.
“If the town is dead, what do the spiders eat?” Alek asked.
Reaching up, I brushed a large cobweb away from my face. This one spanned from one building all the way across the road to another. The sticky web got caught around my hand, and I had to brush it off on my pants. It didn’t want to release me. With a grunt, I tried harder, not really seeing my surroundings as I stumbled across another string of web closer to the ground.
Two things happened at the same time: Pan grabbed my shoulder, attempting to pull me back, and a foul stench wafted from the ground. A chitinous sound rolled through the air, sending all the hairs on my body to attention.
“What was that?” Pan asked.
Before I could answer, an enormous spider darted out of a trapdoor in the earth and snatched him up in its forelegs.
“Gaaahhh!” Pan screamed, caught completely off guard as he flailed about upside down. “Unhand me, you fiend!”
“That’ll teach it,” Alek said with a snicker.
