...the Matron comes

“That was it,” Teysa finished. “Tivya and the others are still here. For now. I don’t know how much longer they’ll last, but the warren needs them. If we can’t get more broodmothers… I don’t know what will happen.”

El’keth’s mouth was hanging open. She shut it and stammered for words. “All of that… I never knew, my mother never said…”

“It wasn’t your business,” Aliara put in. “It was ours. We dealt with it. But you know, things don’t improve overnight. Even with the best will in the world, sometimes things are just so broken you can’t put them back together. The best you can do is the best you can do, and that’s it.” She stood up. “You’ll be in charge of the broodmothers someday. Whatever remains of this lot, and the next generation. Remember that they’re people. When you don’t treat them like people… you get this.” She gestured at Tivya's cave. “Your people got a second chance. They’re lucky. Most people don’t. She didn’t.”

El’keth nodded grimly. “I understand, Aliara. I see why it was important for me to come down here. I will come back to see her.” She hesitated. "Will I scare her? Because of... of what I am?"

"I think she's a little beyond fear, El'keth," Teysa replied. "Just remember that she is a person. She deserves dignity, what little of it is left to her."

A heavy tread broke her concentration. She turned towards the entrance tunnel in time to see the Matron stoop under the overhanging roof and slide her massive abdomen into the cave. She loomed over them, looking from face to face. Seeing her next to El'keth only underlined her imposing presence. In the presence of her mother, a subtle change came over El'keth. Her back straightened, her features set themselves in a determined expression. The air of youthful naivete lifted off her. She looked like a squire in the presence of her knight-- one determined to prove herself worthy. Teysa remembered that expression well. She'd worn it enough herself while squiring in her Abbey days.

"How are they, Teyssssssssa?" the Matron asked. "My time is close. Are they all ready?"

Teysa hesitated, then nodded. "They are, Matron."

"Who will bear my brood?"

"Rhuti." Teysa made the decision instantly and without regret. Rhuti was a dwarf with bushy red hair and tawny skin splotched with dark brown freckles. She spent most of her days lying motionless on her bed, but occasionally when Teysa arrived to feed her she would find pebbles piled up into pyramids throughout her cave. She left these alone, but Rhuti herself would demolish and move them from time to time, operating on some internal logic in the lightless cave of her mind.

She was hale and hearty, though, even after bringing forth brood after brood for nearly a century. She seemed to know what was expected of her. The Matron nodded as though she had expected this choice. "Will hyou bring her to me?" she asked. "I will not violate her sssssssanctuary."

Teysa nodded and beckoned Aliara to follow her. The two of them ducked into Rhuti's room. The dwarf was seated with her back against a wall, dragging her fingers back and forth across the floor of her cave. She did not react when Teysa and Aliara flanked her, looped their arms under her shoulders, and lifted her to her feet. She could walk after a fashion, if she was led, and her bare feet thumped across the floor. She wore a silk robe much like Teysa's; at some point it had come uncinched, and the belt trailed across the floor. Teysa averted her eyes from the dwarf's swaying breasts and the thatch of reddish fur between her legs. Even if Rhuti was beyond caring about such things, Teysa wasn't.

The Matron and El'keth both watched carefully as Rhuti was marched across the floor. Teysa laid her down in the center of the cavern, in a little divot where her body could rest comfortably. Aliara pulled the robe off Rhuti's shoulders and folded it under her head as a makeshift pillow.

Rhuti's thighs fell open. She began to breathe faster, her tongue hanging out of one corner of her mouth. It was just a learned reaction, Teysa knew, just a conditioned response from a mind too damaged to heal. Still, it stung her to see such a lewd and wanton expression on the dwarf's face. She wondered who Rhuti had been before the Matron had stolen her-- what she had been doing, where she had lived. What she had meant to people and who had meant something to her. Perhaps they were still out there-- dwarves were notoriously long-lived. Did they wonder what became of their sister, their daughter, their mother, their wife? Did they think she was dead? If so, they were right, in a way.

I'm sorry, Rhuti. I'm sorry I was too late.

The Matron reared up overhead on four spindly limbs. She held her arms above her head and twisted them back and forth. Her hair was bound up in two curved horns, and as she tossed her head to and fro they jabbed and twisted at the air. The whole rite felt uncomfortably primal to Teysa; it reminded her of the unwholesome communion of demon-worshippers, the orgiastic rites of blood and sacrifice that she had been called upon to smite so many times.

"Lolth!" the Matron chanted. "Lolth, Mother of Spiderssssss! She Who Spinssss Below! World-Weaver! Look now on hYour faithful ssssssservant!" She clasped her hands and closed her eyes. "Blesssssss my union with hYour child Rhuti! May her womb bear fruit! And honor her ssssssacrifice, that new life be brought forth!"

A slit formed in the drider's abdomen. The chitin around it peeled back to reveal a dripping, muscular length of flesh. Her ovipositor was dark purple and ridged with veins. Thick, greenish goo pulsed slowly from the tip and dripped onto the floor. Compared to Rhuti's short, compact body, it looked colossal; Teysa wondered how the dwarf would possibly survive being impaled that deeply by something that thick. Clearly, she had done it many times before, but it looked as though the tip of the ovipositor would burst out of her mouth.

The Matron reached down to part Rhuti's nether lips with two fingers, and the dwarf let out a gurgling moan. El'keth could not tear her eyes away. The expression on the young drider's face was halfway between horror and a strange avidity that made Teysa uncomfortable. She tried to tell herself that it was natural, that El'keth was just curious, and that her commitment to peace and respectful coexistence was stronger than her baser instincts. It was hard to imagine the sweet, slightly naive young drider as a merciless predator. Looking at her now, though... sometimes, it was so easy to see only the human half and ignore the vast spider abdomen, the eight segmented legs, even her glossy black eyes and the way her fingertips came to sharp points.

The ovipositor slid inside with a wet slurp. As badly as Teysa wanted to look away, she **** herself not to. She owed Rhuti this much, at least. Her hand crept out and took the dwarf's. Rhuti's grip was limp, but as another inch of the Matron slid inside her, she gave a faint squeeze.

The Matron paused, bent at the waist, and held Rhuti by the shoulders. She thrust her abdomen forward and sank another inch or two of ovipositor into the dwarf's quim. The telltale bulge was starting to form. It tented out the dwarf's flesh, humping up by several inches or more. Rhuti's bright-pink labia stretched tightly around the massive width of the ovipositor. Her eyes rolled wildly in her head. Teysa tensed up. Was Rhuti in pain? Was something going wrong?

The dwarf took a deep breath, then let out a low, ululating moan. Teysa looked away with her cheeks burning. There was no way to mistake that noise for anything other than a moan of pleasure. She thought back to her own first time, pinned to the cold floor of the breeding cave, and how her body had reacted. Perhaps it was just a form of self-defense. She could not begrudge that to the dwarf.

The Matron fell into a regular rhythm now. She would pull almost entirely out, then thrust back slightly deeper. Her thrusts lifted Rhuti's hips off the floor. Teysa watched her expression carefully. She had not been in a position to pay close attention the first time she had been bred, and when Aliara had willingly taken a clutch she had been more concerned for her partner than their captor. But now... she stared at the Matron's face. It was hard to read those blank features, but insofar as the Matron had an expression, it was one of intense concentration. Was that all? Was she simply making sure that the difficult and dangerous breeding process went off without a hitch? Or was there more going on? Was that a tremor of pleasure? A flutter of the eyelid? A hitch of indrawn breath?

The warren had to continue. Until a steady supply of willing broodmothers could be found, the use of these poor broken specimens was a necessary evil. But survival was one thing. If the Matron was... was getting off on this...

Teysa's own body had betrayed her. She remembered all to well the pleasure of breeding, the delicious full feeling of the eggs sliding one by one into her bloated womb. Perhaps this was just biology. No good come could of picking a fight with the Matron over this-- the drider had already given plenty of ground and put the survival of her people at risk. Still, it rankled. To distract herself, Teysa looked to El'keth.

She regretted it at once. The younger drider seemed hypnotized. Her eyes followed the bulge as it traveled up and down the dwarf's midsection. Her lips were hanging slightly open; as Teysa watched, a thin black tongue slid out and danced along their circumference. El'keth swayed back and forth as she stared. All in all, she was the perfect picture of a hormonal youth in the throes of arousal.

"El'keth!" Teysa said, a little more sharply than she'd intended. El'keth shook her head and seemed to return from whatever personal world she'd been inhabiting. Her hands fluttered nervously against each other.

"Yes, Teysa?"

"Just... nothing, sorry." Teysa gave the young drider a keen look. "Just wanted to make sure you were paying attention."

The Matron took a deep breath, then pressed her abdomen forward and down in a long, inexorable stroke. Rhuti's expression changed rapidly from bliss to discomfort and then to a sort of wanton ecstasy. The drider stopped thrusting, and Teysa knew that she had lodged herself in Rhuti's womb. A fist-sized bulge pressed up just below the dwarf's navel. The matron hissed, shuddered, and the laying began.

Each egg was clearly visible as it slid down the tube. They stretched Rhuti out even further. Thin trickles of green fluid spurted out from the tight seal of her pussy and coated the floor below her. As the eggs pumped in, Rhuti's belly rose-- first slightly, as though she'd eaten a good meal, then more and more and more. Its surface was roughly pebbled so that each egg was visible, but another eruption of goo blew it up still further and smoothed out the crevices. Rhuti's moans ceased halfway through this process. She was reduced to incoherent cooing and burbling. Occasionally, she would kick a leg or a spasm would wrack her upper body, but mostly she just lay there as her stomach bloated up. By the time the Matron withdrew, the dwarf's belly was swollen far beyond that of a pregnant woman. She looked nearly spherical. Her cunt gaped open as the ovipositor slid out, and a thick stream of greenish goop glugged out and pooled under her buttocks.

The Matron wiped her forehead and settled back onto her legs. Her ovipositor, still drooling semi-translucent fluid, wilted and withdrew into her abdomen. "El'keth," she said, "return thisssss one to her chamberssss." She placed her palms together as though praying, closed her eyes, and bowed her head. "Rhuti, thank hyou for hyour sssssservice. May the warren prosssssssper through hyour sssssacrifice."

"Me?" El'keth asked. She looked taken aback. "Why... I mean, should I..."

"Do hyou question me?" The Matron planted her hands on her hips and glared down at her daughter. "Duty demandssss that hyou obey. I am ssssstill Matron, hyoung one." Her expression softened. "I cannot enter their roomssssss," she explained. "They are made too sssssmall. Thesssssse roomsssss are a sssssanctuary. I would not violate that."

El'keth nodded and lifted the **** dwarf. Before she could return her, though, footsteps echoed down the entrance tunnel. These weren't the clicking taps of a drider's legs-- they were the slap of sandals on stone. One of the drow trainees burst into the cave and skidded to a stop. She leaned over and fought for breath. Her eyes went from Teysa to the Matron and back again. "There's..." she began, wheezing. "There's..."

"Calm down, Fen'li," Teysa said. "What's going on?"

"An attack!" Fen'li croaked, and drew in a deep breath. "The warren is under attack!"