NOVEL NEXT Chapter CCLI.
Anna's Parlor.
The arachnae sighed as she lounged upon a sea of silken bedding. Her blue-hued skin and black carapace idly sliding across the smooth fabric woven together by the worthless hands of thousands of slaves. What she wouldn't have given for a single artisan silk spinner to weave her thread like a maestro of an orchestra.
Alas, such valued persons were quickly scooped up by the nobility of her homeland. Leaving her to discipline the untold masses for every misstep. Handling such a luxurious resource was already a great honor for them. But the wretched things couldn't even be bothered to handle it with the proper care and respect it deserved.
She had thought the first hundred that had their grubby hands cleaved from their beaten mortal coils would be enough to get the point across. But it didn't. She sighed as she traced a clawed finger across the gilded carvings along the wall beside her bed. Training such slaves was beneath her. Yet her brood was... less than suited for the task of breaking the spirits.
"Oh how I miss my attendants." She said in a nostalgic tone.
They had been taken from her during her... ascension. Either as sacrifices for the ritual or taken from her during her time of weakness. She missed the smoothness of their hands as they lathered scented soaps and oils upon her. The silence they kept while attending her. They were more than just mere slaves. They were servants. Those served her willingly. Either because they were valuable enough to be worth sparing the lash, or because she had a liking for their appearance.
It was also their duties for the more refined matters that the lowly slaves were incapable of doing, but beneath her own delicate hands. The training of slaves in specific professions such as metal working or carving with finesse for one.
But for decades she's been without. After her ascension any chance of servants vanished along with her status among the clergy, her estate, her allowance, and the numerous privileges afforded to her. What few she was able to capture that held more than "kill" in their pitiful heads lasted only long enough for them to try and escape.
They didn't obviously. Escaping the brood of thousands is near impossible for even the best of sneaks or daring adventurers. What rare few that did always ended up at the mercy of the horrors of the Umberdwell not long after. Or unfortunate accidents in their sleep some time later. Which ever came first.
Anna lounged in the tortuous agony that was typical of elvish melancholy. She had a patron again. A source of power. Of something akin to stimulating conversation again. Yet what did she do? She threw it away! She groaned as she recalled her folly.
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"If he desired the mortal creature, you should have given to him. But instead pride reared and ruined it all."
What was supposed to be a simple gift was instead the instrument of her fall from her rise to prominence once more. Her Lord had asked. ASKED! Not demanded but asked for the foolish human back! The unsightly predator in her must've thought it a sign of weakness and fought so hard to keep the human.
Now? Now she had neither the fool human nor Her Lord. What favor she had cultivated was washed away in her foolish pride. She could've had her Lord in her bedchambers by now. Had Him by her side expanding their dark domain. Their spawn growing to form a new upper echelons that would make the cruelty and power of the former nobility of her once home look like savages playing at civilized court.
Yet now she languished in a miasma on par to an ennui. Her plans ruined. Her ambitions now gone. Even the wailing of slaves whipped and flayed did nothing to alleviate this dreary fog. The succulent glazed meats and sweet fruit didn't fulfill her other than what her body's base needs demanded.
No. She was lost. Had lost. She had came so close to another plane of existence that was right at the tip of her fingers, and it was snatched away before she could even knew the light was upon her skin face.
"Damn this ennui." She cursed half-heartedly.
Any sort of effort to do anything more than sulk was met with apathy and indifference. She could, should, be trying to regain her favor with her Lord. Acquiring a hundred, no, a thousand slaves. Lavishing vast wealth and riches. Anything to regain that warmth she so barely touched.
It wouldn't work. Such a being such as her Lord wouldn't be satisfied with mere mortal things such as slaves or gold. Such things barely held sway over even herself. She could make then kneel in supplication. Offer their blood and souls to Him. Make them scream His name as their lives were snuffed like a candle in a storm.
She groaned. She sounded like those pathetic suitors that had once tried to court her long ago. Such promises were quite common among such affairs. Not in the least because they were quite easy to do. A slave already did what one demanded of it, what was praying to a new God any different?
But no. Even such thoughts were marred and marked by a cold malaise. Her connection to her brood told her that the basic functions of her demesne was being seen to. But little more than that. It was strange though she thought. While her brood could feel and sense her emotions, they weren't ever affected by them. But after the encounter with her Lord, the brood seemed particularly attuned to her mood at the moment.
Hunting was done by only the most opportunistic of her brood that were content to lay in wait and seize whatever happened by. Tunneling slowed to a crawl as the great burrowers sluggishly pawed their great forelimbs against the stone and rock. She could even feel some among her brood halt any activity altogether and fell stationary where they were.
It was if a heavy and stifling blanket had been laid upon her brood. The fog that enveloped her enveloped her brood as well. Outside of the bare minimum, everything within had come to a stall. She could see through the eyes of her brood the more lively slaves take the chance to attempt an escape through the vast labyrinth that was her home. But she didn't care.
Partly because they'd never find their way out before they inevitably got themselves killed. Somehow. But mostly because she merely did not care for them. The thought of a hunt didn't send a thrill in her as usual. The many and ever inventive tortures she could inflict didn't inspire her.
It was as if she was cursed.
Which was impossible. One such as herself would know the tell tale signs of being cursed. Though being on the receiving end of Divine retribution wasn't something she's felt before so it could be different compared to crude yet affective curses of swamp hags and seers.
But more than likely she was just depressed. It would pass as all bouts inevitably did. In about a decade or two she would shake off this malaise and begin her efforts to reclaim her Lord's favor.