The tunnels breathed.
Vris had learned that sound meant life in the Burrows the rasp of shifting silk, the steady pulse of air through unseen caverns, the faint clack of chitin somewhere far below. The goblins spoke of those noises in hushed voices, as if the earth itself whispered to them.
But deeper still, beyond the reach of their torches and courage, there was a silence thicker than blood.
And in that silence… something waited.
He came alone. The Fanglord of the Southern Fang barely more than a creature himself then carrying only his ruin-knife and the taste of victory on his lips.
The silk grew denser as he descended, strands as thick as ropes catching on his armor and brushing his skin with cold static. When one trembled, he felt the vibration echo in his bones like the mountain itself was plucking the thread of his soul.
Then the air changed.
A smell of wet stone and decay.
And eyes a dozen pinpricks of reflected green flame opened in the dark.
Ravha moved slowly, impossibly vast the scrape of her limbs sounded like knives drawn from scabbards. Her body was night incarnate: black obsidian chitin lined with veins of faint crimson bioluminescence. Her mandibles clacked once, soft as a whisper.
Vris froze. For the first time since becoming Fanglord, fear made him small again.
Then a sound like a song hummed through the webbing low, thrumming vibrations that seemed to bypass his ears entirely, resonating in his chest.
“Hatchling.”
The word wasn’t spoken. It simply arrived inside him part sound, part warmth, part command.
Vris knelt before he realized he’d done it. “I am no hatchling,” he rasped. “I am Fanglord of the Southern Fang.”
A ripple of vibration rolled through the web, like laughter through a cathedral.
“All fangs begin in eggs, little one.”
The shadow shifted. She moved closer slow enough that each step sounded like a heartbeat. When she finally lowered herself, the cavern dimmed further as her fangs glistened with dew and her eyes reflected his own feral golden hued orbs.
One great limb brushed against his shoulder. He expected venom. Instead, it was… gentle. The faint scrape of chitin tracing the outline of his collar, like a mother checking the shell of her child.
“You smell of fear and hunger. Good.”
“Fear makes silk strong. Hunger weaves kings.”
He exhaled shakily. “You knew I was coming.”
“The web knew. It always does.”
“When you tore the old Fang from his nest, your pulse joined mine. I felt the thread change color.”
Vris swallowed. “So you see everything?”
“Not see. Feel. The stone has a heartbeat. The dark has memories. I taste them through the web.”
Her mandibles clicked again, and a smaller spider no bigger than a wolf scuttled down beside her. It chirped softly, weaving new silk around her limb.
“These are mine, as you are,” Ravha said. “You will walk above. I will weave below. The tribe will feed, grow, molt, shed its weakness. Such is the nature of my children.”
Something strange twisted in his chest. Respect, fear, perhaps even belonging.
It had been so long since anything had looked at him without disgust.
“I am no child,” he whispered, though softer this time. “I have killed to survive.”
“Then you have earned your shell.”
Her voice was a vibration through his skull, soothing and absolute.
“You will build the Fang into a web that touches sky and bone alike. I will watch your threads.”
“And when they tremble, I will come.”
Her enormous head lowered until one beady eye hovered inches from his face. In its glossy black surface, he saw his reflection a thin, green-skinned creature clutching a blood-dark blade, but with something softer beneath the feral snarl.
“Grow, hatchling. Eat, but remember the thread that binds.”
“Even kings need mothers.”
The mandibles brushed his forehead in a parody of a kiss, leaving a faint trace of silk that shimmered like a sigil.
When he finally emerged from the depths, the goblins waiting above fell to their knees. The silk on his brow gleamed faintly in the torchlight, a mark that smelled of venom and reverence.
They whispered her name Ravha.
Vris said nothing. But when he reached the surface again, he realized that the constant trembling of the tunnels the sound that had always unnerved him now soothed him.
It was the heartbeat of his Matron.
And in that pulse, he no longer felt alone. Vris felt memories of Toru surface in that instance he found his heart clench. Would he ever see his sister again? Or know the embrace of his mother's arms as she whisked him off to school?
Vris looked at his own hands expecting to see Toru's once more but only the clawed goblinoid hands that greeted him. He shook his head findine one of the darker holes in the burrow to crawl into. Alone he felt the tears stinging his eyes and rolling down his cheeks. "This isn't fair.." He whispered as he pressed the ring feeling the magic within envelope his body turning him invisible again.
That felt better at least none of the wandering goblins could see him in such a state. So Vris watched them the interactions with the goblins and the new warg members. They would need to be prepared for what came next.