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Bochi's smiles were all catalogued, now, and Raguel knew the feeling behind each one, and behind each of his movements. The mask-like 'plate' over his eyes, which never blinked or narrowed, was no longer a hindrance.

This was a mixed blessing. Understanding Bochi had been one of the most interesting, and emotionally difficult, experiences of Raguel's young life. There was a downside to this. While he was sat on the floor shaking his head to try to get out of the web Bochi spoke into it, he could very closely feel and hear Bochi's smugness at his submission. Raguel's internal reaction to that made him need to give into the voice more.

Which, if he'd done so, would have slowed his 'descent' into the stupor Bochi caused in him, but the act of resistance made Raguel feel competitive, which fed into more resistance, and if he could just "Stop, just rest, now. I win. How are you feeling, down there?"

Raguel sighed, and slept.

-

After they woke up, the next morning, Raguel had - indulgently - one more bath.

Bochi sat on the ceiling, above him, reading to himself, for once. After he was certain he was clean, Raguel spent a long moment just watching his host, and trying not to think about him.

-

Raguel was ready.

He knew where to go.

Bochi gave him a small, very finely printed book: the law of the spider-folk. It was half a Bible long.

"Be careful," Bochi said, his hands forming and unforming the claws. He was restless. "They're very organised, Raguel."

"Is that bad for me...?"

"If you break the rules, yes. They're not like the Order. Either of our Orders." Bochi took his hands, looked up at him - and, for perhaps the last time, climbed him again. He locked his ankles on the small of Raguel's back, and Raguel's arm found its way to the small of his own. This easy intimacy was going to be hard to leave. Raguel had not felt it with even his Brothers before. "There's a hierarchy of authority, but not of worth. That means that if you anger and kill one, you'll be subject to the exact same sentence you would be as though you killed Aran himself. Or me."

"I killed one, once," Raguel said, softly. "She had gone mad."

"Uthela, yes. They keep records of these things. She was possessed," Bochi said. "You'll have been formally pardoned, as would anyone that put her out of her misery. It's the only Order kill of a spider that we know of."

"How gracious," Raguel said, almost disappointed, "that they'd forgive me so quickly." How convenient, that there was already a law to forgive him with! "I have to go, now, Bochi."

He stared at the man, at his strange eyes, and tried not to think. He clutched, a little.

"Do you?"

Raguel tried to answer, but his own throat wasn't having it. The two stayed like this a long while. Bochi was strong, and a natural climber - he seemed to never lose stamina from holding onto Raguel. It was probably supernatural. It didn't matter much.

Their lips touched.

A long moment passed, and one of them pushed a fraction further, and was met equally.

-

Raguel travelled for four days before encountering the entrance to the spiders' cavern. The landscape was uninspiring, here. There were low hills, some fields with no visible farmsteads, some small woods. The odd pheasant, which was always too fast to be caught with the ankh.

Killing game seemed the only real use for the thing, anymore. There were no bandits. No demons. No mad spiders.

Bar a small bit of birdsong, Raguel's life was silent for this journey. It was overcast and humid most of the time, like a big cavern before the smaller one. There was no wind, no rain. He passed a blind summit, not having noticed the hill for the gentleness of its slope, and saw a deep valley, and the cavern's great mouth.

The cavern entrance was grand, though, and oddly beautiful. A great, grassy hill rose on the other side of the valley, and it was as if most of it had been sucked into a fangy mouth in the centre, or as if the whole mountain was hollow and collapsed inward.

As Raguel walked closer, he saw silver ropes and nets cast between the stalactites, and he passed by some of the spider-folk's famous sheep, their legs wrapped in dyed bands of silk. He could see no shepherds.

At the very entrance, the dirt road was paved again. Sounds came from the cave, and he ascended the hill to the entrance with a fear he had not felt for some time.

-

Inside at last, and perhaps a mile in, Raguel saw very little past a few feet in front of him. Despite this, the floors of the cave were very clean, and carved flat, in a path wide enough for people to walk single-file. Outside that path were the rolling lumps and spires of the cave floor. Silk strings and bands covered the walls of the cave that he could see, coloured differently... but, soon, there was almost no light at all.

Raguel drew the ankh from his side, and shook it to release a small, pulsing glow. When he fought at night, Raguel needed no torches, or the moon. He would just lash a rope of magic out with the ankh and memorise the scene he saw, where the enemies were, where they were going. This was different, though, and he needed caution. Anyone could be anywhere around him, between the stalagmites, and the noise from further into the cave - a thin, iron whoosh - meant his ears could miss any footprints behind or in front of him.

Spider-folk, too, made no sound when they walked and climbed.

At some point between the cave's gargantuan entrance, and wherever he was now, Raguel had entered some sort of natural corridor. Some light passed down from holes in the roof of the cave, far, far above him. The walls were far closer than they were, and he could see tapestries hung on them, delicate and rich. Some showed fanciful pastoral scenes, with unicorns herding sheep with crook-shaped horns. Some depicted the spider-folk themselves. They were very like Uthela was, with their ten limbs (which was still annoying) and round tails, but the details differed - this one was green and slender, that one fat and red.

Other tapestries were simply arrangements of shapes and colours.

Somehow, each of the silk sheets fit next to their neighbour perfectly, in taste, colour, and shape. Raguel felt like he was being told a story, despite no story being told, and no real relation between each part and the next.

How would a unicorn even shear a sheep?

A day into the cave, Raguel saw a new light in the distance, near the roof of the cave, like a patch of the night sky. Colonies of yellow and red dots. These lights flickered, now and then, and were probably candlelit windows.

He was exhausted. Without the sun and the real stars to navigate with, all he had done was walk forward, never resting. Now, he did not have any other option than to rest. Bochi had given him some miraculous fruit that refused to rot, and he was nowhere near to running out, but timing it all was confusing, even going by tiredness and hunger. Raguel knew his own body, but outside of battle, he usually ignored it. Now, he had to pay attention to the difference between hunger and need, sleep and the need for it, footsteps and time.

Raguel saw an alcove in the cave wall, the height of maybe five men above the road, with a silk net hanging down from it. He tested the silk - strong, as all the webs here doubtless were - and he lay down to rest. He remembered Bochi's voice, and thought about it, and it made him go to sleep very quickly.

-

A shout woke him up. He heard screaming, just a bit above him, which stopped very quickly, almost as soon exactly before he opened his eyes. Raguel was almost certain it was a dream, except he looked up, and saw - against the silvery light from the cave roof, which probably meant it was daytime on the surface - a figure wriggling in mid-air. He saw what could have been the colour of human skin, and an odd red, and a worse green. Something about the sight made Raguel feel uncomfortable, almost sick.

He squinted and stared, but could not see much more than the colours and the struggling figure. It was clearly human, or human-like, and from where he was, Raguel knew he must have fallen from above onto a web of the spider-folk. He knew, too, as Bochi had said, that his struggles only made the web bind him tighter

"Stay there!" Raguel shouted, one of the most unwise things he had ever said. "I'll get you down."

"Get away!" he heard the figure shriek - high, but with indignation. The struggler was a man. "Get AWAY!"

Raguel climbed the rough, spiky wall for a few minutes, before coming to a flat, floor-like area. A quick whip of the ankh showed that there was a sickle-shaped path of lime from where he stood to just below the figure, or near enough. He just had to cut him down.

"I wouldn't have thought the pair of you would have much in common," a voice said, behind Raguel. Raguel turned, but while his hand was on his ankh, he was not preparing for a fight. "You're not together, are you? I'm above you, look here, lad."

Raguel looked up, where, of course, there was a face. It was covered in hazel fur, with two smooth black eyes where men's normally were. A couple more eyes dotted its temples, like small black pearls. That dog-like fur covered his torso, and the ends of his arms and legs, while his many hindarms and thighs were a smooth mauve. Raguel, who was brave in the face of such things, said hello.

"I'm the guard," said the creature, matter-of-factly. He spoke with a heavy inflection in his voice, not like he was foreign to the area, but like he was used to an uncommon dialect. "You're a priest, aren't you? Parthos sort. And he's a demon. I reckon you couldn't see that, yet, from where you were. Don't worry. Stay here. I'll have him down in a moment - and I'll keep the lights up, while I'm at it, won't I?"

Raguel nodded. That explained the ill feeling he felt looking at the captured man. The captured thing. All demons gave an uneasy feeling to those with any psychic sensitivity, the Order had explained back when he was being prepared to face them in the field.

The only kinds of demons Hell afforded a physical body were the archdevils - fallen angels, with lost grace and all of their former power - and Hell's broodstock, the incubuses and succubuses, which were more common. Cambions were a sort of exception, but while they heard and often heeded Hell's instruction, they were not quite beholden to it, having some human will.

The guard whistled a pair of low notes, and there were lights - a previously-invisible network of thick strings above Raguel became illuminated by shining beads along them, revealing an impossibly complicated tangle. Raguel was surprised he'd not run into and become tangled in them, himself.

"Come along, then. Along the path. That's it, boyo. Watch me." The guard-spider's teardrop-shaped tail bobbed up and down on his back, as his many palms and many fingers clambered along the web to the demon. Its ankles were wrapped to its thighs, its hands to one another. Raguel saw that the red and green colours he'd seen seen were ribbons wrapped around and hanging from the creature. From a distance, it had looked like a near-naked boy of the sort of age at which one becomes a father, but as Raguel got closer, he saw that its hands and feet were red and green and spiny and wrong.

An incubus.

"Watch me," the guard said again, but gentler, softer, addressing the prey.

It meekly turned its orange eyes up to the spider, and Raguel began to feel pity.

"Do it," the incubus said. He wasn't shouting anymore, but panting. His voice conjured sensation, or the promise of it, and Raguel almost fattened on hearing him. Contrary to the stories, incubuses - and demons in general - used temptation rather than force, even when making cambions. Treason required free will, and coerced heathenry was less valuable to the Devil than a soul honestly seduced.

It was all very rigidly defined, almost like the spiders and their love of ritual.

"Do it, please. I can't."

Raguel took a moment to realise that he seemed to be begging to die. This was confusing - such things always were, to Raguel - so he had no idea how to help.

Only, an incubus wasn't immortal. There were easier places to haunt to be exorcised. He couldn't have meant 'I can't die'.

That a demon might want to die was strange, to Raguel. Maybe he meant conversion. Maybe he was afraid.

"Now, now, now, now," the spider said with his odd accent, shushing the incubus, one of ten furry hands settling on his captive's chest. For the first time, Raguel realised the many-limbed creature's enormity. "None of that. You won't die, here. Tell me your name."

"Nub. You know I have to." The incubus' claws picked at his bonds, long, wrong digits stretching and curling. Under the demon's skin, non-human muscle and vasculature pulsed. It was still strangely thrilling to see, though Raguel knew the feelings were being transmitted to him, promises from outside rather than desires. "You have to do it. He will, that one, if you don't."

"I have no jurisdiction here," Raguel said, feeling a fool. Suited mostly to war, he'd never handled confession, or counselled any sinner, let alone an actual denizen of Hell.

"Shut up," said the demon, making Raguel wince, "and just - please. I hate this. I hate everything about this."

Very definitely suicidal, then. Raguel tried to think of something to say - anything. The only thing he could think of was to ask why - but this wasn't the time.

"You won't be hurt," Raguel said. The thing hissed before he could finish.

The spider gripped the demon's long red hair, gingerly, and moved his head around a little, meeting no resistance.

"Tell me your name again, boyo," he whispered. "So I have the power to work with you."

The demon looked down at Raguel. The knight's face shook, and he had no way of promising the demon anything, not in a way he'd believe.

"Nub," the trapped creature said, not losing eye contact with Raguel.

"I'm going to bite you, Nub," the spider-guard said, "and it's not going to hurt. Do you understand?"

"No." Nub moved his head to one side to expose his neck. "Do it anyway."

The spider-folk's faces were bizarre things. They were human-shaped down to where the top lip should be, but instead of a lower lip and lower jaw, they had two round knuckles, upon which – curled within their mouths – were the fangs. Normally these were curved back, keeping those fangs crossed in a hollow in their neck. When they were about to envenom something, or threatening to do so, those fingers spread out and showed off the two teeth.

The spider-guard's mouthparts opened, slowly, uncrossing and spreading the deadly spikes.

The guard's many hand-feet silently clasped and unclasped around glowing strings and then on the incubus' body to climb down, and he lowered his face to frame Nub's neck with his fangs, pressing into the very centre, like a kiss. Nub breathed out.

Then, he groaned. Then, he squealed, involuntarily, and his bound body twisted one way, then the other, and Raguel saw the strange anatomy under his skin pulse ever more oddly - he could almost see where his muscles weren't right - and Raguel, against his better judgement, became entirely fat from the sound.

He felt less so, a moment later.

Even less, after another moment. His breath evened, though he hadn't noticed he was breathing faster before. He saw that the boy - the demon - Nub was unbound, now, his ankles and wrists gripped by brown-furred hands and stretched out just as far as he'd stretch. The ribbons streaming down from his back twisted and twirled, and the strange near-glowing aspect they had before slowly faded away.

The spider's six eyes flickered an unpleasant orange, then blue, then faded back to their natural pitch.

"Yes," Nub sighed, smiling very widely, now. There was nothing magical in what he said, in the sound of it, and Raguel's reaction to this lovely voice was just what anyone’s would be, now. "Yes, thank you."

Raguel was confused, and he thought about what he saw, and the conclusion was fairly damning for his teachers. This guard seemed to drain the power from the demon - not just his power, but something about his nature. There was nothing Hellish he could sense about Nub now.

"So, you didn't need to die, after all," said the spider-guard. Nub looked up at him, sheepishly.

"I suppose I didn't," he said. "I owe you my life. Can I get back down?"

"Be my guest." The four long limbs holding Nub lowered him to the ground, and Raguel stood in, helping him get to his feet. Nub glanced sharply back at him, but the feeling seemed to melt away quickly, and he stood. The guard turned to Raguel. "Your turn, boyo."

Nub turned around, grabbed Raguel by his shirt, and tossed him up into the sticky network above them.

"Now," the spider-guard said, his hands poking and nudging Raguel all over his sides, "don’t wiggle."

"Stop that," said Raguel, without any conviction at all. It was important that they trust him than that he keep his dignity. "I'm not here to exorcise anyone. I thought they sent word ahead. My name is Raguel."

"They did, lad, but you could still be beholden to someone. Sit still." Raguel forced himself to frown, and obeyed. "Hmm. Nub?"

"I don't smell anything either," said Nub, arms folded. He looked like he considered lying for a second. "He’s not got any Parthos-blessing on him, no géas. If he's a cunt, it's his own fault."

"Righty-righty. I'll tell you now what you'll do." The spider picked Nub up with one inexplicably sticky palm, and Raguel with another, and he scuttled downwards to the ground-level path Raguel had been following. His instructions were clear, but his voice was gentle, still. Whatever he had tested about them, both were fine to go, now. "You two'll go North-East from here to the Castle. The lights get bluer. No fighting each other. No killing. Don't take any of the tapestries, but the food's there for your sake."

"Thank you," Nub and Raguel said in unison, before shooting each other a look. The guard ambled away up the wall.

Raguel looked at his companion, who looked back at him. The beads of glowing glue on the strings right about their path now glowed blue, but only the ones directly above them. The knight shuffled through his sack, pulled out a cloak, and held it out to Nub.

The incubus - or possibly former incubus - gingerly reached out with his off-colour hand, and once he found the touch didn't burn him, wrapped the garment around himself.

"You're still wearing Parthos' colours," Nub said.

"So are you, now," Raguel said, shuffling further into the bag for - there it was, the wine. "But I'll protect you. You need a drink."