Fifteenth Entry

I was shaken from my trance by Smeak’s startled cry—he had just laid eyes on the dragon’s corpse sprawled before him. He’d been unconscious for the entire battle with Venomfang. Someone helped me to my feet. I’m not sure who. I just took the hand and walked back toward the cart in a daze.

The tarpaulin lay crumpled on the ground, its supporting posts snapped and unsalvageable. But the cart itself—miraculously—was still intact. One of the wheels had come off, but it wasn’t splintered. We could jury-rig it, if we had to. But… the horses.

I rushed over. Their massive bodies lay twisted and still, long succumbed to the dragon’s poison. Raph’æl was already there. My heart leapt. Of course he was. The heart of the true Ilmater runs through his veins. I found myself watching, almost entranced, as his hands moved gently over their manes—interlocking, then spreading—preparing a spell. Cure Wounds, maybe. I winced as nothing happened. No stir of life. No breath.

They were too far gone. They needed resurrection, not healing. And that was beyond what either of us could offer.

But then—Sister Garaele. As soon as I thought of her, she appeared, striding toward us with Jack at her side. They were already discussing the cost of bringing one horse back. Three hundred gold. Too steep for us to afford outright, but she offered to cover it and let us repay her later.

I turned away with a sigh. All these amazing people around me. What did I ever do to deserve them?

Because of her, we were able to continue.

I remember sitting quietly in the cart while the team secured our one surviving steed and argued over weight distribution. The others were still salvaging what they could from the dragon. Super came up to me, trying to mask his solemn mood with a mock-casual voice, asking if I wanted any specific dragon parts taken back to town. I had no idea what to ask for. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure who was organizing it (looking back, probably Ragar and whoever she was secretly working with at the time). I glanced toward Venomfang’s fading emerald body and murmured something about saving me some scales. Maybe I could find a magical use for them—or just sell the hide to put toward my house fund.

I continued just sitting there, tracing my fingers over the new bead on my wand—the one that had helped turn the tide of the fight.

I was hoping that I was getting closer.

Closer to standing beside Super and Ragar without feeling like dead weight.

Closer to earning Jack’s open respect—even if his compliments are reserved for one-on-one conversations. I respect his strength.

And Raph’æl… I yearned to get closer to him in… more ways than I could’ve possibly understood back then.

We rested. We recovered. And then… we were back on the road.

I had no need for further rest. My magic was brimming, my body had survived, and yet… the anxiety was undeniable, spinning through my thoughts like wheels without traction. Restlessness settled into my bones, not from fatigue, but from anticipation. Dread, most likely. I had spoken to Jack briefly about how fragmented everything felt—how Venomfang’s ambush nearly unmoored us from our path entirely. The hunt for Gundren had almost slipped through our fingers again. Sildar, for his part, remained firm: he intended to parley with King Grol if needed, if only to recover his friend’s remains. Give him peace.

And I—I could only press my back against the cart’s interior and hope the road ahead would not fall away again.

The rhythmic rattle of wheels. The murmured tactics. Super crunching through another pickle. Even Smeak humming his off-key little tune. They should have grounded me. But all I could hear, beneath it all, was a soundless tension. The taut string of a bow aimed right at us.

I closed my eyes. Let the hush of the nearing sunset and soft woodland breeze try to settle me.

But when the cart finally began to slow, I knew. We all knew.

Cragmaw Castle.

The silence ahead of us wasn’t the sleepy kind that blankets twilight. It was unnatural. Wrong. No torches lit. No voices within. Not even the crackle of a distant hearth or the clatter of goblin feet on stone. Illogical for a keep that was supposed to be brimming with goblinoid soldiers.

And then we saw it. East of the castle: a massive catapult. Not concealed, not guarded—just sitting at the edge of the tree line, spent and abandoned like a beast with its belly emptied.

We approached it.

There was something… familiar about it. Not the machine itself, but its construction. The braid of its ropes. The strange lettering. Like seeing a name you don’t remember ever hearing, but somehow knowing it was meant for you.

Jack confirmed what I could only suspect. “Looks like a collaboration,” he muttered, eyes scanning the weapon. “Hybrid construction. Human. And Drow.”

I swallowed dryly. No… not again.

“Drow?” I heard Sildar echo, confused.

Then came Raph’æl’s voice. Sharp. Certain. “Dirt elves.”

His words hit me in a way I didn’t expect. An ethereal punch to the chest.

“Dirt elves?” I repeated before I could stop myself. I hated the tremor in my voice.

He turned to face me. There was no malice, but no hesitation either. “Drow are elves who purchased evil in exchange for the sun.”

Ragar scoffed from behind him. “Kinda messed up to condemn a whole race based on the lighting they prefer.” She didn’t sound angry, just… amused. Detached.

Their conversation faded from my broken ears, warbling like veins of oil and ash on marble. I stared ahead—past the catapult, past the trees, to the new gaping wound in Cragmaw’s stone wall. A breach.

From Drow.

Of course fate hadn’t let me go.

Two entirely different thoughts intertwined in my head, forming a unique thread under strain of cognitive dissonance:

The first—somewhere in this castle, the scent of spiderwebs lingers. Her fingerprints. Her will. Lolth’s ilk. Yet again fate throwing me an uncomfortable reminder that I could possibly be running from something I am destined to stop. Something I didn’t want to believe.

The second—Raph’æl’s words. His easy certainty. The way he said “dirt elves” like a fact of the world. If that was what he thought of the Drow… what must he think of me? I am smaller than them. Weaker. Less… striking. A pauper in comparison to their power. And still he holds me gently. Smiles kindly. Encourages me. But if not for my disguise… if not for the bond we’ve built…

Would I just be dirt?

Or… beneath it?

The thoughts had nothing to do with each other. And yet, together, they fermented into something thick and bitter. Something so new to the forefronts of my mind, I was immediately swallowed by it:

Resentment.

Resentment that surged through me like fire through a fuse. It drove my feet towards the castle… and my heart did not stop them. I marched. I’m not sure who called my name, but I think it was him. It must’ve been, as my feet only grew more certain of where they were taking me: forward.

Closer to defying this suffocating “prophecy.”

Further from the confusing feelings I was starting to crave.

I cannot allow Lolth… or The Messengers… to pave my future anymore.

I stepped over the rubble and into the castle through the fractured stone wall. The stench hit first—thick and sweet with decay. But no bodies in sight. Not yet. That wasn’t unexpected. If these webs belonged to the spiders I thought they did, then the goblins had likely already been drained or bound up, cocooned in the silken sheets that now veiled every inch of Cragmaw.

I plucked a fallen torch from a broken sconce, snapped it upright, and lit it with a quick flick of flame—just a cantrip, nothing showy. I didn’t need the light. I needed the fire.

Raph’æl’s footsteps were behind mine. Measured, as always. Close. I gritted my teeth and pushed forward.

I recall this was the first time I didn’t know how to feel about him following me. Bitter comfort. As if he was here not because he trusted me, but because I needed supervision. Because I might fall apart again, or make another choice that cost someone too much.

Immature thoughts. You know better. We are allies. Partners. We are working.

Your Fireball should be enough self-proof that you are capable of being an equal.

Jack was not too far behind—his footfalls were unmistakable. Super strode past my peripheral. He had chosen his own vertical path, climbing and clinging onto the walls, his movements less monk and more common tree frog.

The deeper we moved, the thicker the webs became—curtains of silk stretched over every archway, every hall. I used Control Flames to widen the torch’s burn, feeding heat to the veils and watching them shrivel and vanish with each step.

There was tension in the quiet. In the pause before every doorway. In the crackling webs. I could feel it pressing down on all of us, but especially on me. I had to speak. Even if it was just to chase away the pounding in my own head.

“What do you know about the goddess Lolth?” I asked, voice low, eyes forward. Raph’æl’s presence hovered close at my back.

“Not very much,” he said, quietly. I wasn’t surprised. She belongs to a pantheon that would sooner gnash teeth at Ilmater’s name than kneel before it.

“She… well…” I waited for Jack and Super to draw near again. I wasn’t really lecturing. Just talking to keep myself from thinking. But still—better to offer something useful. “She’s called the Spider Queen. A patron deity of the Drow. Not all of them, but… many.”

Then I saw it: light flickering ahead. The main hall. The one where we once dined with the so-called king of Cragmaw.

The table was gone. Or rather—burnt to embers, repurposed into a bonfire. The flames licked upward, surrounded by what I first mistook for stones. Or chairs.

They were neither.

Bodies. Goblins. Bound in silk, stacked like offerings. Mummified in web. Their shapes compressed by the tightness of the threads until they were unrecognizable.

I swallowed against the dryness in my throat. “I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but…”

“Oh, I think you’re safe to assume,” Jack said, flatly. “Drow siege weapon outside, and spiderwebs inside. Not exactly subtle.”

I hated that he was right.

Then he added, “Wait. That catapult was human and Drow design. Does Lolth have… human followers too?”

I clenched my jaw. “Gods, I hope not,” I breathed, as I stepped toward the fire and released the torch. “Her domain is cruelty in beautiful disguise. Lies made holy. Her ambition is rot. If she’s reaching aboveground now…” I trailed off, afraid to name what it would mean. “She was once a goddess of the elven courts. Some say she betrayed them, others that they cast her out. Either way, the Lolthites were driven deep underground. The Underdark is their exile. This—” I gestured at the broken castle walls and the burning pillar in the center, “—this is not where they belong.”

My voice caught. Because even as I said it, I could hear The Messengers again.

They drilled these stories into my skull until they were indistinguishable from identity. They claimed I was chosen to see Blingdenstone triumph. That I would end Lolth’s grasp on the world. That I was born to stop this.

I never wanted to believe them.

But here it was. Spiders on the surface. Silken threads brushing my cheeks like they remembered me. A catapult half-built in the languages of those who crawled from below.

It felt like a taunt.

Come home, little light.

Come finish what we started.

I let Jack and Raph’æl move toward the cocooned remains, their hands brushing silk as they searched for anything salvageable beneath the layers. I held back. My eyes had already begun to wander toward the corridor that led down into the cellar.

None of the poor souls in this hall could possibly be alive. The wrapping was too tight. Too thorough. But… maybe someone had made it to the cellar. Maybe Gundren had managed to hold out just a little longer. Maybe there was still hope for a proper burial, something with dignity instead of fire and silk.

“Hmm!” Super chirped suddenly, standing in the middle of the ruin like it was just another sunny afternoon. “I could really go for some lunch right now.”

“Lunch?” Raph’æl murmured, his voice soft but laced with suspicion. “Super, what’re you—?”

He stopped. The sound strangled itself in his throat.

That’s what made me turn.

All three of them were staring upward—Jack tense, Raph’æl rigid, Super still looking absurdly peckish. I followed their gaze.

The rafters.

Of course. I shouldn’t have been surprised.

Giant spiders. At least three. Nestled among the beams like bloated, twitching shadows. They were already watching us.

“There’s an opening by the bear carcass,” Jack said, voice low, barely a whisper. “If we move slowly—real slowly—we might make it through without a fight.”

I didn’t even get a word out before it happened.

They’d already seen us. We were in their nest. Jack’s tail twitched—reflex, instinct—and that was all it took.

The first spider dropped like a stone, silk thread hissing behind it.

“Screw that, back the way we came!” Jack barked.

Too late.

Another one was already blocking the exit.

We were surrounded. And now, it was war.

They moved fast.

Raph’æl was the first I saw shift, his shield unstrapping from his back in one fluid, practiced motion. Beside him, Jack reached for the strange device he always tried to keep hidden—his so-called rifle. He swung it up with unnatural ease and fired a thunderous shot into the spider barring our retreat.

The blast echoed through Cragmaw like a war drum. And with it, the nest came alive.

They screamed. Not with voices, but with mandibles and legs and venom-dripping fury. Eight limbs scuttling across old stone as their rage overtook their fear.

One of them locked onto me. I didn’t hesitate.

“Lloth zhah naut vel’uss zhaun Usstan!” I spat in Undercommon, a phrase from childhood turned into incantation as I stabbed the thought-knife of Mind Sliver into its mind. It twitched, shuddered. I drew my sickle and slashed at its eyes, blinding it further.

Then came the thunder of iron and fear.

Sildar. Rushing in. His armor rang like warning bells. Raph’æl’s shield slipped from his hand and clanged against the floor. Steel met carapace all around us.

I turned my head—just for a second. Just to make sure he was okay.

That’s all it took.

The spider barreled into me, missing its bite but slamming me to the ground. My breath left me in a gasp. I landed hard—shoulder first—beside the dying fire. Its fangs dripped above me, mandibles clicking greedily. I could feel the heat of the flames and the cold of the silk on my neck all at once.

Then—

“I can’t pierce it!” Sildar cried out, somewhere nearby.

Raph’æl screamed.

In terror? In pain?

Something inside me snapped.

I reached—painfully—into the embers, my hand searing as I grabbed the torch I had discarded there. I jammed it upward into the spider’s face, its shriek sending a spike of sound through my skull as it reeled away.

Not done.

Not nearly.

With a growl that barely felt like my own, I threw a dagger into its remaining eye. It jerked again—and that’s when Super landed on its back like divine retribution, driving it down into silence.

I was up. Moving.

I followed my cleric friend’s screams until I saw Jack pulling him back, teeth bared, heels digging in.

I didn’t think. I placed myself between them—the monster and the men who had spent so long standing in front of me.

This time, it was my turn.

I leapt forward, scrambling up its hairy back, half-mounting, half-clinging. It writhed, trying to throw me. I almost fell. But I drove my sickle beneath its armor—wedged it into the soft spot between plates—and held fast. I smelled blood. Smoke. Silk and ash.

Then I took the flaming torch still in my hand and shoved it deep into the wound.

It howled.

“Your Queen had better hope The Messengers were wrong about me,” I hissed in Undercommon, voice trembling with rage and history. “Because if they weren’t—

I will be the end of Her reign.”

With one final cry, I pulled both sickle and flame in a wide arc across its abdomen.

The spider screamed and staggered away, dragging itself with fading strength. I didn’t watch to see where it went. Let it crawl into some nameless pit and die. Or remember me.

The third spider was still struggling beneath Super’s grip. He had it by the mandibles, lecturing it like it had spilled his drink rather than tried to kill him.

Then Sildar, with surprisingly good timing, slid his broadsword through its skull.

Super blinked. Shrugged.

And then… silence. Just the crackle of the fire. The sticky groan of webbing. The panting of survivors.

And my heartbeat.

Loud. Furious. Alive.

Bravado gone.

I crumpled back into the nothing I am.

At least I know that if worst comes to worst, I will stand. On truth or lie.