Arachnophobia content warning: this story features a jorōrogumo, a spider-woman from Japanese mythology. If spiders skeeve you out, this is not the story for you.
And once again, we have a bit of setup to this chapter, so if you wanna cut right to the good stuff, look for this symbol: 🕷️
Aconite watched in quiet horror as the draugar returned to normal. Flesh paled to a deathly shade as it pressed itself tightly against bone, hair withered or vanished entirely, and eyes lost all traces of humanity, leaving nothing but milky pools with the vaguest hint of irises. But the flowers remained. How had she not noticed them tangled in hair and clinging to shirts? As the colors around them faded, the flowers became even more prominent, their roots snaking just below the taut, leathery skin. Her stomach flipped. They had been all over her. She had the enchanted ring, but did parasitic plants count as disease? Could it only sprout in a corpse, or would its seeds travel through her body, burrowing in her muscles and blooming through her skin? Would it turn her into one of them? They had pumped her full of their nectar. She had learned their bodies just as they had learned hers. Her skin began to creep. She could practically feel the floral network worming its way through her. She bit back the urge to scream. She jerked up her trousers, fixed her scarf, and scrambled to the end of the hall, pushing her weary legs as hard and fast as she could. An iron door awaited her. It moaned as she pried it open and wailed in protest as she pulled it shut behind herself, sealing herself in a vast emptiness.
The new room was impossibly dark. She couldn't make out the vague phantoms of shapes in the gloom. When her vision didn't adjust, she retrieved her torch. Her fingers fidgeted wildly, uncontrollably, nearly dropping the flint as she tried to reignite her light. "Get it together," she snarled to herself. Finally she managed the spark she needed. She put the flint and steel back into her bag as the sleepy embers spread across the torch's head. Light slowly began to fill the room. As it did, Aconite found herself wishing she hadn't succeeded.
She stood in a narrow corridor decorated with spider webs, carpeting the floor and climbing up the walls in thick curtains. She held the torch as high as she could, but couldn't find the ceiling. How had she already wandered so deep that the sun's light couldn't find her? She shivered. She suddenly had the most horrible feeling she was being watched. She forced her gaze forward and marched ahead, weaving through beams of silk.
Most of the webs were old and dusty, speckled with the husks of dead insects. She looked for signs of movement, but every web was still. She took another step forward, but her free arm remained in place at her side. She paused and slowly turned to see what had happened. Her wrist was caught in a tangle of fresh webs.
She swallowed hard.
Fresh webs.
Aconite passed the torch to her trapped hand, pulled the spare knife from her boot, and slashed the webs. The threads snapped and she pulled her wrist free. She hurried forward-
-right into another web.
"Shit!"
She hacked at the threads, this time holding her by the elbow. As she worked, a shimmering silver streak dropped from the unseen ceiling and onto her free wrist. She barely noticed it, dismissing it as a web she had just cut. Then, it jerked sideways, pulling her arm aside like a puppet on a string. She nearly dropped her knife.
"What!"
Another thread followed, then another, and then another, raining down on her arms and jerking them aside, reinforcing their predecessors, binding her with the strength of iron chains. Aconite struggled against them, snapping a few just in time for more to fall and take their place. Her run-in with the draugaur left her tired to begin with, and it didn't take long for the supernatural strength of the silk to overwhelm her. The threads held her arms wide, hoisting them over her head as if she had been frozen mid-wave. The torch slipped from her hand, falling and rolling a step or two away, the flame casting the webs in a jasper glow.
She was trapped.
For a moment, all was still and quiet, save for her own terrified, heaving breaths. Then, a thread of silk no thicker than a lock of hair dropped to the floor just a few paces in front of her. She looked up. An enormous shape emerged from the hovering gloom, climbing along the thin rope. A pale pair of rail-thin arms with long, stick-like fingers appeared first, followed by long, silky black hair, a gaunt torso, and eight long, bristly legs. The figure dropped to the floor, its enormous body hitting the bricks with barely a whisper of a thump. It stood tall, towering over Aconite and staring her down.
From the waist up, the creature had the body of a woman, with skin like porcelain and her face like a doll's, hair tumbling down to her hips. Six black orbs lined her brow, blinking in unison with her onyx eyes. She had four arms, one pair hovering at her sides, the other folded over her ample breast. From the waist down, she was all monster. Her gigantic glossy black abdomen and spindly legs filled the corridor's width, making her look uncomfortably cramped. An inhumanely wide smile crept across her thin lips.
She was a jorōrogumo.
"It's been so long since someone has made it this deep in the tomb," the jorōrogumo said, her voice a husky whisper, ghost-like and seductive. She took a few steps towards Aconite, her feet barely tapping the ground. She sniffed the air, her small, point nose flaring. "Mmm, it smells like the draugar got to you."
Aconite hesitated, then nodded, the phantom sensation of roots creeping through her skin returning.
The jorōrogumo licked her lips with a long, pointed tongue. The muscle was black at the tip and red near the base. "Those who make it this far either best the draugar or scurry past them like rats. Those who are overtaken prefer to leave or join that commune in the second room."
"Bested?" Aconite echoed. "How are they revived?" She thought to the five she thought she had slain, flat on their backs as if sleeping until she took their cocks.
"The flowers," the jorōrogumo said. "They can be stunned and appear defeated, but the flowers allow them to rise and roam again. The plant is powerful, and its nectar..." her voice trailed off. She licked her lips again and slurped. "Its nectar is something else entirely."
Aconite swallowed hard.
"I usually eat the intruders I ensnare, but..." she steepled the fingers on her free hands and leaned in so close Aconite could see her reflection in all eight of the woman's glossy eyes. "I prefer the taste of nectar. It's such a sweet treat and I so rarely get to indulge." She ran her tongue across Aconite's lips, eliciting a wince. "And you have so much of it."
"I don't want it," Aconite said, chest heaving as she wondered how the jorōrogumo would try and collect it. Would she rip her open and slurp it from her guts? Or would she do... something else?
The jorōrogumo towered over Aconite once more. "Then allow me to harvest it." Her smile widened, allowing her tongue to drop from her mouth. It was at least six inches in length and had the girth of a dainty wrist. She rushed forward again, her face stopping just inches from Aconite's, and grabbed her by the trousers. "It won't hurt a bit."
