In the Drider's arms

Teysa gradually regained consciousness. The first thing she was aware of was motion. She was swaying back and forth. The next was the smell. It was musty and ancient, not exactly bad but very alien. Then memory rushed back all at once. She tried to reach her forehead to feel it and realized she could not move. Darkness was all around her, but she felt something warm and slightly wet pressing her from all angles. She struggled frantically, but to no avail. Suddenly, a pinprick of light welled up in the distance-- a pinprick that rapidly grew until she could see around her in a dim haze. She tried to take stock.

Her forehead ached, but besides that she appeared to be unwounded. There was no sign of her companions, so she supposed they must be dead. Odd, to have that thought with so little emotion; the rational part of her brain suggested she might be in shock. Where was she, and why couldn't she move? She looked up and almost screamed. Directly above her was the bottom of the spider-woman's face. She had Teysa wrapped up in her arms like a baby. The woman's enormous breasts were pinning her from above, and Teysa felt suddenly absurd.

This close, she could get a sense of the spider-woman's proportions. She was much larger than Teysa, but not as big as she had appeared earlier. Each of her breasts was the size of a watermelon, but perfectly proportioned. The woman's skin was as grey as granite but as smooth and supple as if she had never worked a day in her life. She did not look down, but continued moving steadily towards the light. Teysa swiveled her neck as far as she could and a powerful sense of vertigo gripped her. Below the waist, the woman met the spider and interfaced as cleanly as if she were simply wearing a bizarre pair of pants. The legs pumped along steadily in a way that made Teysa seasick if she looked at it too long.

Before long, the spider-woman slowed and stopped. She relaxed her grip, and Teysa looked around. She was in a lair of sorts, that much was clear. Baubles and treasures hung from the walls and ceiling on thick ropes of spiderweb. The cave recessed much further than it appeared at first, but from floor to ceiling gigantic webs stretched and billowed gently. Some kind of breeze was stirring them from further within. The woman laid Teysa down on the floor gently, pinning her there with two of her foremost spider legs. The weight was immense, but she was clearly holding back, pressing down only as much as she needed to keep her captive pinned. The woman appeared to be analyzing Teysa, lost in thought. "Please-" the paladin began, but she got no further.

With the same sudden speed she had displayed earlier, the spider-woman got to work. She began pulling off Teysa's armor plating. Her fingers ended in sharp talonlike hooks, and she parted the leather straps like cheesecloth. As she pulled a piece of armor off, she discarded it in the corner of the cave, and soon a small pile had built up. She had clearly done this before. Teysa tried to fight her off, but her motions were still weak and groggy, and the spider-woman deployed another pair of legs to pin her wrists. They were unpleasantly furry and the chitin below felt as hard as steel. The woman finished removing her armor, leaving Teysa just a few scraps of metal and her cotton undergarments. She lazily ran one of her hooks down Teysa's front, parting the fabric up the middle. Her control was immense-- Teysa felt the razor-sharp claw caress her, but it never so much as parted the skin. Like peeling an orange, the spider-woman divested her of the last of her clothing and tossed it aside.

Suddenly, Teysa became uncomfortably aware of how cold the cave was. Her nipples stood on end, and bizarrely she felt embarrassed-- even here, in mortal peril in the lair of a monster. How ridiculous! She had devoted her life to her God, and that had left little time for the pleasures of the flesh. She was a virgin, though she had occasionally watched her cohorts wooing this or that prince or tavern wench and wondered a bit. Bitterly, Teysa figured she would never find out the answers to her questions now.

The spider woman picked her up, holding both wrists behind her back with one hand and pinning both ankles together with the other. She held Teysa near the ground, and the paladin had time to wonder what was happening before the spider-abdomen swung towards her. She saw the spinnerets coming, but was unprepared for the sudden spray of webbing. Rotating her captive like a kebab, the spider-woman deftly secured Teysa's wrists and ankles, then began binding her tightly. She bound her legs together from the knees down, and then from the navel upward bound her arms to her torso. She paused at the nose to allow a breathing hole, but wrapped everything from the nose up.

Teysa suddenly panicked as the webbing blindfolded her and tried to scream, but the thick webbing filled her mouth as soon as she opened it and her scream collapsed into gurgling coughs. It didn't appear likely to suffocate her, but she could neither see nor speak. The drider paused, then Teysa felt herself being hoisted. The sound of webbing began again, and soon the spider woman let her go. She was suspended from the ceiling somehow, face downwards. The scuttling sound of feet receded, and Teysa was alone again. Only then did the tears come. She wept in terror, for her lost friends, for herself. She cried herself to sleep.