Queen in the Mud: Book 2, Chapter 6

// Author's Note: Using this post to give a little information about some changes that this patreon account will be going through. I'm going to be adding tiers soon for people who pledge specific amounts. This is actually because I plan on starting an ongoing web serial in addition to working on Queen in the Mud and both projects will be linked to this patreon account.

As a gesture of appreciation for my current supporters (you lovely folks), I'm going to make all the chapters of Queen in the Mud book two available regardless of what tier you're in (so you can pledge $1 and still see all Queen content).

I've found that splitting my focus between two projects allows me to be more productive overall in my writing, as opposed to focusing exclusively on one. Rest assured that Queen in the Mud, book two will remain my primary focus. To that effect, I'm going to be releasing chapters of my new web serial, Rivers of Rogue, here on patreon within short order. I hope that if you've enjoyed Queen, you might give this new series a shot too. Thanks! -Maari \\

Chapter 6

“I’m. So. BORED!” Two weeks of nothing but bumpy wagon rides had finally gotten to me and I loudly made my dissatisfaction known to Thaddius, who sat at my side. A stone hovered unsteadily in the air just over the palm of his hand.

“Queen, this practice requires a great deal of focus.” Thaddius’ voice was strained and a bead of sweat ran down his temple. “I would ask that… Hhhrgh… that you keep your voice down.” His brows were knitted together and he glared at the floating stone as though he had a deep-seated hatred for geology and the strength of his animosity alone was what kept it in the air.

I raised a claw and poked at the rock. It wobbled above his hand. “Keep that up and you’ll burst a blood vessel. You’re trying too hard, forcing it when you should just let it flow naturally.”

“I’ve no idea…” Thaddius grunted, his hand shaking as he grit his teeth, “what that means.” He let out a deep breath and the stone fell into his hand. The warrior sighed and shook his head.

After months of practice, Thaddius still hadn’t gotten past the telekinesis stage of magic training. That had taken me, what, a week? Luna had taken a little longer to move on to element magic than I had, but it certainly hadn’t taken her months. Magic training wasn’t going so well with him, and worse, my guidance didn’t seem to be helping.

I leaned back and stared up at the forest canopy above. It was an overcast day, just the same as all the days since we had started our trip south. Cloudy days like this one were actually the most fun to go mana vaulting through the sky, weaving and diving through clouds. “Maybe I’ll go mana vault around. My poor bruised butt can’t take any more of this bumpy wagon.”

“You remember what happened last time. We had to stop the entire caravan to build a signal fire so you could find your way back to us.”

I blew a raspberry at him. “That was just the one time!”

“A full hour of daylight lost.” Thaddius shook his head, disappointed.

“Yeah, about that. You guys really suck at building fires if it took that long.” I glanced at the swordsman at my side, grinning. He just looked away, evidently embarrassed, and grumbled something about the firewood being wet.

It had taken a while, but the young warrior finally seemed to be loosening up around me. The first few weeks after he had pledged his loyalty to me had been a little awkward, with him being more than a little stiff around me. Evidently he’d realized I wasn’t going to bite his head off if he didn’t click his heels and stand at attention every time I walked by. That part of him must have come from his military background, considering that the noble house he had been raised in prioritized martial education and had a long history of military service.

Still, there was such a big difference in his personality now compared to the much older, much more crotchety version of himself that occupied a certain magical book. Well, in any event, I was just glad that he was starting to open up to me and speak a little more casually.

I leisurely sat upright and stretched out my arms. Then, blinking, I leaned forward and pointed a finger into the woods. “Thaddius, what the heck is that?”

Thaddius leaned forward as well, his voice low and full of bewilderment. “...I’ve no idea.”

There was some kind of strange pile of wood some ways away, a huge mound of it. Rather than a pile of sticks or fallen trees, the wood had been rendered into planks, meaning that this wooden… thing was most definitely not natural. It looked like some sort of construction, as though its creator had only the barest notion of what a structure should look like and had haphazardly slapped boards of wood together until it somehow managed to stand on its own.

Both of us shared a look and called a halt for the caravan, dropping down from the wagon to investigate the bizarre object. We approached cautiously, Thaddius with his hand resting on the hilt of his sword and myself with my staff at the ready.

It was some sort of hovel, though it was fairly large - easily big enough to accommodate a dozen people within. A wooden door, sturdy and surprisingly well made considering the mess that was the structure itself, sat under a scratched wooden sign that read, “Pig’s Shawp.”

Apparently the owner of this ‘shawp’ had as limited an understanding of the concept of spelling as they did construction.

Thaddius, baffled, stared up at the sign. “A… shop? In the middle of the unclaimed lands? But that’s…” He scratched at his head and folded his arms over his chest, face a mask of confusion. “We’re still at least two weeks out from the closest human city.”

I raised a hand and knocked on the door.

“Queen, what are you doing?” Thaddius said warningly.

“Seeing if anyone’s home!” I flashed him a toothy grin. “It’s a shop, right? Well, let’s check it out!”

Thaddius, looking increasingly more agitated, warily eyed the surroundings.

I’d set out on this expedition under the wobbly pretense for a trade route, but the truth of it was I just wanted to go out and explore. This was a weird and bizarre world full of things I’d never seen before, I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life sequestered away in Enzirus. I wanted to go on a real and genuine adventure, and this weird shop in the middle of nowhere, owned by some guy named Pig? Yeah, that smelled of adventure. Absolutely stank of it.

I waited at the door after knocking, but no one called out. I knocked again. Nothing. I reached for the door handle and Thaddius protested, but I waved him off. This was the first interesting thing to happen in weeks and I wasn’t about to leave without having a look inside. The door creaked open to reveal a shadowy, windowless room.

I guardedly stepped inside, Thaddius following behind me. Little specks of sunlight filtered through gaps in the structure, providing some illumination to the otherwise dark interior. A large counter divided the room, the far side wall covered in a collection of shelves cluttered with various objects.

There was a sharp gasp from Thaddius and he turned pale as a ghost, all of the color draining out of his face. I followed his eyes to find a black spider, roughly the size of a dog, perched on a stool behind the counter. The large, front-facing eyes of a jumping spider studied us, and in the jittery movement of an insect, it raised a single leg in greeting.

Thaddius turned woodenly to face me, though his eyes never left the spider. “Queeeeeen!” He hissed through grit teeth, knuckles white against the grip of his sword. His hand shook, quietly rattling the metal in its scabbard. “We need to leave! Gods above, it’s horrifying!”

“Horrifying? I think he’s kind of cute. See him waving at us?”

The pale-faced warrior gave me an open-mouthed look of astonishment as though I’d just grown a second head. “It’s a giant spider!”

“Yeah. So? I’m a giant lizard.” I blinked. “Uh, salamander. Look, if you’re too scared, go wait outside. I’ll be fine. Probably.”

Thaddius nervously eyed the door, then looked back to me. He seemed to consider it for a moment, then shook his head. I shrugged and stepped up to the counter. The spider looked up at me with his big eyes.

“Hi there!” I gave the spider my friendliest smile. “I saw your sign. Are you Pig?”

The spider didn’t respond. Not that I would expect a spider to just up and start speaking, anyway, but I might have expected at least some response. Instead, it just stared at me. Well, that was awkward.

I glanced back at Thaddius, who had squared his shoulders and was stone-facedly staring at the spider, though he was still clearly terrified. Well, everyone has their weaknesses, I thought to myself, and apparently Thaddius is deathly fearful of spiders.

“Right. Um.” Somewhat awkwardly, and deciding I would rather not engage in a staring contest with a creature that didn’t actually have eyelids, I started walking around the store, examining the multitude of items on display.

Little cards of wood with numbers scratched into them denoted the price, though they only listed a number without denomination.  With no mention of silver or gold or iron, I had no idea how much any of this stuff actually cost.

The spider - Pig, I assumed, based on the sign out front - simply watched as I paced around the store, its entire body swiveling as its eyes tracked me. It completely ignored Thaddius, who stood petrified at the door.

I passed a pair of rusty, uselessly dull metal scissors priced at (2), a linen bag with a large hole at the bottom (4), a couple shiny polished rocks (1) and an old carpenter’s axe with a crack in the metal (5). Just about everything was damaged or otherwise useless. Then there were the objects that I struggled to identify, and instead designated them as ‘weird spider art.’

There was a pile of dead flies sitting on the counter and the accompanying wooden card had a series of numbers, each one having been scratched out and priced higher and higher until a proud (17) had been scratched down as the final sum cost. Pig’s pedipalps twitched as his big eyes stared with a mute longing at the dead flies on his countertop.

Hung up on the wall in a prominent position behind the spider shopkeep was a bow, strung with a curious white bowstring. I pointed at the weapon and spoke. “Could I see that?”

Pig turned around, inclining his entire body to look up at the bow I’d indicated, then pulled it down with his hairy spider legs, setting it on the counter in front of me.

Like everything else in the store, the bow itself couldn’t be considered anything more than garbage. It was shoddily made from poor quality wood, unevenly crafted and it looked like someone had even chewed on it a little bit.

The bowstring, however, was gorgeous. It was a thick white string of what I suspected was spider silk, and it caught the light in glistening rainbow shades. Reflexively, I plucked at the string, momentarily forgetting that my fingers were tipped with deadly sharp claws. Rather than snapping, however, it sounded with an elastic thrum, vibrating like a guitar string for a moment before returning to its original place between the two ends of the bow, undamaged by my clawed fingers.

Plucking the string at different places along its length produced varying musical notes, like an instrument. A musical bow.

[Examine attempt successful.

Item Name: Singing Bow   Item Type: Bow   Item Classification: Basic

Durability: 3 / 3   Average Attack Damage: 1.3

Effects:   Musical: This object may be used to perform musical compositions and may benefit from any related skills thereof.

Description: A bow carefully and meticulously crafted by an aspiring tradespider to poor effect. Though the bowstring itself is a work of art, the abysmal woodworking skills of its creator have resulted in a weapon of remarkably low quality.]

A tradespider, then? I felt a little bad for Pig, who stared at me with wide-eyed avarice, considering that he must have worked very hard on this weapon and yet it still turned out to only have a whopping three durability points. It could probably be fired once, maybe twice before the wood cracked in half.

Still, I was strangely fond of the bow in my hands, and plucked a couple more notes on its musical bowstring. Also, it was possible I could carve a new bow on my own and reuse the string. I looked up at the spider, still standing on his stool. “How much for this?”

Pig raised a leg up and scratched his head in a gesture that seemed to say ‘I’m thinking,’ then raised up three legs.

“Three? Okay, hold on.” I fished out my coin purse and dropped a collection of half iron, iron and silver coins on the counter.

The spider reached over and pulled three half iron coins towards himself. Half iron coins, which looked like full iron coins but with a hole cut through the center, were the lowest denomination of currency. That meant that this bow was ridiculously cheap.

I plucked at the string a couple more times, then looked towards Pig. “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have more of this spider thread, would you? I’d love to buy a couple spools of it.”

Pig stared at me for a second, then jumped off his stool. He returned a moment later with a wooden spool for thread and started pulling spider silk out of his butt. The process made me feel a little uncomfortable, because he continued to stare at me while he spun thread around the spool. A minute later, he plopped freshly spun white thread onto the counter in front of me. Then he held up one leg.

It was only one coin for this much spider thread? Considering how resistant the bowstring had been to my claws, this material seemed to be exceptionally strong and durable. I was already wondering what that weaver girl back home in Enzirus might be able to do with such high quality thread.

I pointed down at the spool of spider silk. “I’ll take ten.”

Ultimately, Pig was only able to provide a total of eight spools of spider silk before he tapped a leg on his abdomen and lifted his two front legs into a shrug as if to say, ‘the tank’s empty.’ That was still a considerable amount of spider thread, though.

After ponying up eight half-iron coins, I said my goodbyes to Pig as I went to leave, promising to visit his shop again one day. He waved a hairy leg at me from his position behind the counter as I pulled the still trembling Thaddius out the door with me.

We got the caravan moving again in short order. The rest of the day was uneventful, but when it had grown dark and we stopped the wagons to set up camp, I noticed that the overcast skies had cleared. My jaw dropped when I finally saw the moon.

It was huge.

No, the word huge wasn’t sufficient to describe it; it was enormous, massive, colossal. It took up the huge majority of the sky, an astronomical monster of a moon. I felt like I could reach up and touch it. Peeling off the western edges of the pale gray thing was a veritable comet trail of ghastly blue fire.

I could only stare up into the sky in open-mouthed awe and no small amount of fear. It was because of my upbringing on Earth that I could recognize why the moon was on fire.

Those were re-entry effects. The moon was so close to the planet we were on, that it was skirting the atmosphere and burning from its sheer velocity. Chunks of the moon were breaking off into shooting stars that dashed across the skyline in a hail of fire.

“Queen?” Thaddius came up to my side, looking worried. He followed my gaze to look up at the smoldering moon, then back to me. “Oh, you haven’t seen the moon do that? It happens every four or five years.”

I slowly turned to look at him. He had no idea. How could he? These people were all at a medieval level of technology, they couldn’t know anything about the orbits of natural satellites, the physics of atmospheric re-entry or the potential danger of any one of those chunks of moon that kept plummeting into the planet’s atmosphere.

It only took one good sized asteroid to turn the dinosaurs into dinosaur nuggets. Any one of those moon chunks could pull off the same feat.

Honestly, given how deadly close the moon was, I was astonished that we weren’t already dead from continent-crushing tsunamis or the atmosphere igniting into a ball of fire or something.

Thaddius laughed beside me. “Look, at least it makes sense to be afraid of spiders, alright? You’re afraid of the moon.” He laughed again.

I glared at him.

“Alright, alright. Sure, the Shattered Chasm is probably a death zone right about now, but everywhere else is fine.”

I slowly pointed a claw up at the sky, still glaring at the bearded warrior who was enjoying this a little too much. “Parts of the moon are breaking off and falling down. They’ll blow up when they hit the planet.”

Thaddius nodded, trying to put on a serious face. A couple irritating giggles still leaked out. “Right, and they all hit the Shattered Chasm. Something about the place attracts all the moonfire into it.”

Looking back up at the burning moon, then back to Thaddius, I dumbly parroted his words, still in shock at the sight. “...The Shattered Chasm?”

“Yeah. It divides the Elsian continent in two. It’s actually an important trade route and has to close down completely while moonfire is falling. It’ll be another two months before it opens back up.” He paused for a moment before quickly adding, “Oh, don’t worry, we’re not going that far south. Our trade route won’t be affected.”

I hadn’t even been thinking about that. I was just so absorbed in the complete lunacy of the moon burning in the sky above us that I hadn’t even considered it.

Once the tents were set up and the Shadowlurker-repelling campfires were burning, I opted to pull my sleeping bag out from under the tent and sleep under the massive moon. I stared at it long into the night, watching the shooting stars slash across the sky like machine gun fire.

When I finally fell asleep, I dreamt of falling moons, clock towers and ocarinas.