Shadows Laid Before the Sun by Idrils Scribe

Chapter 6

Inside the funnel the darkness seemed absolute, noxious like poison, a malicious will that pressed its weight upon them. Carnistir had seen this before: the belched-out remnants of eaten light. 

He shuddered as he recalled that same blackness curling like smoke around the twisted gates of Formenos. When at last they found Finwë’s body he was wide-eyed, his face a snarl of horror, and Carnistir had wept at the knowledge that his grandfather died smothered in Shadow.

Beside him, Maitimo did not flinch. His hand moved towards his belt and he opened the shutter on the lamp he carried there. The Fëanorian lantern sent forth a clear blue light from its flame imprisoned in white crystal. 

Now they could see the funnel running further into darkness, the webbing’s silken threads breaking the light with alien rainbows that played along the walls like apparitions from a fever-dream. At its very end the passage seemed to open into a larger chamber. 

“Come, Carnstir,” Maitimo said, his voice gentle as if he sensed Carnistir’s terror. “If it is her indeed, we shall avenge our grandfather.”

“If it is her , we will only give her more Finwions to feast on.” He shuddered. “How can two Elves hope to stand against Ungolianth? Feel how she calls us to her even now? She would not do so if we were a threat.”

“She is desperate indeed if she is calling the Sons of Fëanáro to her! Let her try and bite me. I will stick in her throat so deep I pierce her heart!” Maitimo’s face was pale and strange in the blue light, but there was fire in his eyes.

They advanced through the tunnel with swords aloft, a blue gleam playing along the metal. Past the narrowest point the silken walls opened into a vast hall, a nightmarish cavern of webbing. 

Strange shapes filled it, dark against the sickly white of the webbed walls. Some had been spun into the walls, others hung from the ceiling by silken threads, most lay scattered upon the floor. At first Carnistir knew not what to make of them: they were grey, bulbous and irregular, some rounded, some with strangely shaped protrusions jutting from the main bulk.

Carnistir stepped towards the foremost one. It seemed to be a man-sized spider corpse, half-spun into the tangle of webbing that was the room’s floor, as if it had been trying to claw its way out. He poked it with the tip of his blade, unwilling to step closer in case the thing would prove undead and might somehow still leap at him. The stench of decay was overwhelming, making the back of his throat contracted as he dug into the corpse. 

Then he saw the hair.

A full head of Elvish hair covered the dead spider’s cranium. In the blue light it shone silver, bright as a fallen shard of Tilion. The braids were still in it, fastened with star-shaped beads of green jade like the Iathrim would wear.

Carnistir pushed the hair aside to reveal the creature’s front. 

Eight eyes gleamed dull and dead in an Elvish face. 

A moan of horror bubbled from his lips. 

“Hush, Moryo.” Maitimo laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. A mere day ago Carnistir would have wept with relief at such kindness from his brother, but now all he could do was whimper at the nightmare that surrounded them. 

This chamber was a charnel house, filled with corpses of Elves and Orcs, doubtlessly lured here by that terrible call. All had been mutilated into hideous spider-like shapes. Eight-eyed faces, insectoid legs sprouting from back and belly, lips distorted into grotesque fang-like mouthparts. 

The only mercy was that all were dead, lying scattered about the cavern like some mad dollmaker’s refuse.

Something moved in the shadows in the back of the room, the motion jerking and unnaturally quick.

“Who goes there!?” Maedhros’ left hand raised his lamp, the stump of his right lingered by his pommel as if he could still draw the blade with it.

With a chitinous clicking the creature moved into the light, and Carnistir could not hold a cry of pure dread. 

Eight monstrous limbs supported its body - a vast bloated bag, swaying and sagging between the dreadful corona of its legs. Its great bulk was black, blotched with livid marks, but the belly underneath was pale and luminous and gave forth a stench that strangled Carnistir’s breath. The legs were bent, with great knobbed joints high above the back and hairs that stuck out like steel spines, and at each leg's end there was a claw hooked into the webbed wall, so the creature walked upon it as if on solid ground. 

But that was not why Carnistir wept, and faltered, and called upon Varda Elentári in his foolish despair. 

The creature’s chest and head were Elvish. 

Both Elven hands and hooked spider-legs restrained the struggling body of a tiny, grey-faced Orc, spinning it around and around in a monstrous grip with dreadful coordination, close to the monstrous belly with its spinnerets from which silk threads emerged to wrap the Orc into a deadly cocoon. The Orc wept and writhed in the monster’s grip, but slowly and surely it was tied. The monster’s Elven face had spider-fangs, and they clicked with mad, trembling hunger as it spun its prey.

Carnistir could not bear to watch the Orc’s torment for a moment longer. In a heartbeat his bow was in his hand, and the string sang as he sped an arrow at the Orc’s eye. It buried itself to the fletching with a wet, definitive sound. The Orc sagged. 

At once Carnistir nocked a second arrow and aimed for the monster’s head, but Elvish eyes caught his own, and he could not bring himself to loosen upon them.   

“Hail and well met, Maedhros and Caranthir, sons of Fëanor!'' The thing had an Elvish voice, though its mouthparts should not be suitable for speech, with blade-like jaws instead of a tongue. Nonetheless Carnistir understood its Sindarin well enough.

“What are you?” he demanded.

“We are Many. You are most welcome here.”

Chapter End Notes

Hi everyone,
Tonight I proudly present the monster we've all been waiting for!
Of course I'm dying to hear what you guys think of it, so I'd be a very happy scribe indeed if you could leave a comment.
How will Maitimo and Carnistir dig themselves out of this?
See you tomorrow!
IS