It's three day's travel on foot from town up to the drider's den, which is somewhere in the mountains. It's a singular drider that lives alone, according to the people in town, and that means he's separate to the nearest drider colony, who must be a few hundred miles to the west, in the sprawling forest that spans those valleys.
When he'd come through and looked at the quest board outside of the inn, there'd been a few jobs he was equipped to help with -- an inn had had a giant rat problem in their basement that he'd taken care of, and after culling back the colony and selling the pelts to the apothecary, he'd taken up the note about the drider.
Every five years, he enters a sort of rut, and apparently the last time he'd entered into it he'd wreaked destruction on the nearest settlements, burning huts and houses down and raping several locals to bulging, eggs rounding out their stomachs and their cunts.
"You want him becalmed," Amaethon had said to the village elder who'd put the notice on the board. "I can make it happen."
"We want him
dead
," said the old woman, her lip curled.
"I will kill him if I can," lied Amaethon, having no such intention. "But no matter what, I will ensure his rut does not bring him out from his den."
"You're a poison-maker, I suppose," she said, looking at him consideringly, her eyes narrowed as she looked him up and down. "You look to be a stealthy one."
"I can be very stealthy," he'd agreed, and smiled. "What reward will you give me, for ensuring his rut does not occur?"
"500 for his head," she said. "350 simply to stopper his lust. You won't go alone?"
"I will," he'd told her, and put the cloth the notice was written on in his pocket.
The innkeeper had been confused, if not horrified, when he'd asked that she would board his horse, Caws, in her stable whilst he tended to the drider. She'd asked if Amaethon didn't expect to come back, which he most certainly did, but he didn't know how many days he'd be encumbered, so to speak, and he didn't want Caws to be left to wander the mountains alone in the meantime.
They'd drawn him a map to the drider's den -- from what Amaethon had heard, various village people had attempted to descend upon him for, eager to take his head, and had lost their lives for their trouble, had fallen into ravines or down into crevasses. Only one or two had actually managed to reach the drider's den proper, and these, Amaethon had been informed, had never returned.
He smiles when he sees the cavern that had been described to him, and he's careful about stepping inside, dipping his head down so as not to catch himself on overhanging pieces of web, moving further into the cavern.
It's lit by hanging crystals instead of lantern fire, and he's aware of the ringing, unnatural silence within, interrupted only by the taps of his feet against the stone floor.
It's extraordinarily clean and tidy -- there's webbing all about the edges, crossing over the passageway in different layers he has to carefully pick his way through, but there are no scattered corpses or bones.
It's only when he enters into the central cavern, where a great many tunnels feed into the cone-shaped room, that he sees the huge central web that spans the whole of the room, a few parcels neatly wrapped in webbing and hanging from the ceiling high up.
"Hello!" he calls out, and his voice echoes in the cavern, no doubt falling down each of the tunnels, the separate passageways, and he waits, listens carefully for the quiet click-click-click of the drider's feet on the stone.
He swallows when he comes out from a hole in the stone closer by than he was expecting, stumbling back -- he's
huge
, his great abdomen and his eight huge legs large enough to easily dwarf or a horse or a cow, so it's no wonder that the parcels hanging from the ceiling are easily sized in line with such animals as well as smaller ones like goats. The man-shaped part of his body sprouts from his abdomen, and he's got a rounded belly, hairy tits, strong shoulders, big arms.
He's staring down at Amaethon with his many eyes focused on him, his gaze hungry, and Amaethon swallows as he looks at his slick lips, his sharp, sharp teeth shimmering with --
Saliva?
Venom
?
"I don't know your name," says Amaethon. "The village sent me."
"Did they indeed?" asks the drider, and his voice is resonant and fills the chamber, chittering and layered as it comes from his throat, and he takes a step forward.
Amaethon reaches up for the brooch holding his cloak closed and pulls it free: the cloak slips from his shoulders and drops to the floor with his knapsack, leaving him entirely naked except for his boots, and the drider stops in his tracks, staring down at him.
If his gaze was hungry before, it's ravenous now, roving over the rounded edges of his small tits, over his flat belly, down to his cunt which is already wet, his cock sticking out from the light dusting of white hair around it.
"Your rut is coming," says Amaethon. "If you're not on the verge, it's here already."
"Those...
people
," says the drider, and the underside of his face opens outward, showing separate mandibles that move and shift in place of a fused lower jaw: it's like he's tasting the air, and Amaethon realises he's holding his breath, "they sent you to me?"
"I came on their behalf," says Amaethon. "You can fuck me, lay your eggs in me. I can take them."
"Not all of them."
"All of them," says Amaethon, and the drider's many eyes blink out of sync with one another, the blink rippling across his eight eyes like a wave. He looks sceptically down at Amaethon, at his slim form, the flatness of his stomach. "I stretch, sir. I'm trained for this."
The drider actually scoffs, his mandibles jumping as he does so. "
Trained
?" he repeats, raising thick eyebrows, and he reaches out with a lower one of his four arms, catching Amaethon by the hair and pulling him closer.
"Trained," Amaethon repeats, "and my skin is treated, too."
"You would burst with all my clutch in you."
"I won't," says Amaethon, and gasps as the drider reaches under his arms, lifting him up higher and tossing him physically across the cavern. He cries out, moving to struggle in the air, but he lands in the middle of the central web, the stickiness of fibres clinging to his skin. He tries to rise, but with the webbing underneath him, he can't move, stuck on his back as the drider follows another thread and uses it as a bridge to come onto the web proper. He's throwing out webs from the base of his abdomen and throwing them with his arms as though using a lasso, making a sort of platform, or -- or
harness
at the correct height for him.
Sprawled out underneath him, angled in such a way that he's looking at him from beneath, Amaethon can see a sheath opening, and although his ovipositor isn't fully extended, he can see its tip, thick even though its tapered at its end.
"Call me Thorn," says the drider.
"Thorn," repeats Amaethon, and he tries to move both of his arms, but succeeds only in tugging one of them free, managing to reach between his legs and touch his cock, dancing over the tip of it before he presses his fingers lower and sinks them inside himself, shuddering as he rocks his hips down onto them.
"This past rut I divided this clutch amongst nine men and women."
"I'm worth nine men and women, then," says Amaethon, and the drider laughs, braiding and twisting webbing between his hands, building up the little sex swing
speedily
, two strips of webbing formed with a gap in between them. "Aren't you excited?"
"There's certainly a convenience to it," says Thorn, and steps across to him, and fuck, it's not as if Amaethon had expected a long, drawn-out conversation beforehand, but it's exciting that it should be happening so instantaneously, so fucking
immediately
. "If you burst, that's a meal before I go out."
"You won't need to go out, and I won't burst," says Amaethon, but even he doubts it for a second as Thorn's ovipositor slides fully out of its sheath, extendin"Weg. It's fucking huge, very thick at its base, and there's a sort of green fluid sliding down the length of its shaft, glistening and thick. "Do you excrete an aphrodisiac?"
"Do you?" retorts Thorn, and cuts around him with rapid movements of taloned fingers, dragging him up and tossing him over the harness he's just thrown together: it bands across Amaethon's tits and his hips, leaving his belly free in between, and Amaethon comes to a sudden understanding that makes his head spin.
He's left Amaethon's belly free, so that when it does bulge, it can bulge unencumbered.
"Have you ever put your whole clutch in an elf or a human before?" asks Amaethon.
"Not one that survived," says Thorn, and then laughs. "That made your cunt clench, boy."
"Well, this line of work," Amaethon says, aware that the words come out almost in a babble, "you get to be a little odd."
Thorn's taloned hands are very gentle as he lays two of them on each of Amaethon's arse cheeks, pushing his thighs apart; a third hand rests between his shoulders and pushes him down so that his whole back half tilts upwards. Perfectly suspended in the air like this, the supports across his breast and hips, Amaethon feels strangely weightless, and he lets out a little noise as one of Thorn's thumb tips comes to tug at the side of his outer lips, pulling him apart so he can look inside.
"Very pink," remarks the drider, stroking a featherlight touch down one of his inner lips, where the tissue is thin and already growing wet, and Amaethon's breath hitches at the tease of it, not quite a full sensation. "And glistening. This prospect excites you."
"Why wouldn't it?" Amaethon says, but his words twist into a moan as Thorn moves to tug and play with his cock instead, just experimentally pushing it from side to side, then pushing it a bit harder as if to watch it wobble. Amaethon is clenching on air, feeling just a little bit empty, a little
hungry
for it, and he knows he won't be hungry for long.
"You've taken eggs before?"
"Yeah, yeah," Amaethon groans as Thorn presses at the opening of his cunt with two fingers -- he's bent them so that he's not pressing in with his talons, but is just nudging at his hole with two knuckles instead, pushing them slowly in and just stroking agonisingly around the edge of the hole, tugging gently on the muscle and flesh there and making Amaethon squirm. "Not -- not a drider's eggs, but I've taken different,
