«Why did he attack you anyway?» asked Taiven. «You seem nice enough to me.»
«Most places will kill sentient monsters as a matter of course, if they find them within their borders,» Grunt said. He and Mumble were both pretty quiet thus far, so it was a bit startling to hear him speak up all of the sudden. Taiven gave him a dirty look for his remark. «What? I’m just saying he didn’t need a reason. Their presence would be offense enough for some people.»
«It’s a little more complex than that,» the matriarch said. «Humans clash with other sentient races, that is true, but that’s because most of them are highly territorial, murderous, view humans as food or all three. On occasions where that wasn’t the case, humans have shown themselves willing to make exceptions and take a more… nuanced approach. There are several dragons that deal with humans in a peaceful manner, the lizardmen of Blantyrre have long been a trading partner for human nations, and many of the splinter states bordering the wilderness have made secret or not so secret pacts with various spirits and monster clans living within their nominal borders.»
«You’ve thought about this a lot,» Zorian remarked.
«Though not well known, we have been peacefully interacting with humanity for quite a long time now», the matriarch said. «The aranea have been living in the deeper levels of the dungeon for as long as this city has existed. When the foundations were being laid, several campaigns were launched into the local sections of the dungeon to clear out the threats lurking inside it. However, this power vacuum also allowed weaker races like aranea to move into the place. The dungeon around the Hole is prime real estate for magical creatures of all breeds, as you probably know, and the competition was fierce. Fortunately, while we aranea lacked the brute strength or destructive magical abilities of some of our competitors, we were far more willing to cooperate with humans to our mutual benefit. We contacted some of the humans that were willing to cooperate with us and gave them information about our mutual enemies — their strengths and weaknesses, where they lived, the timing of their attacks and movements… everything they needed to wipe them out, or at least weaken them to the point where we could finish the job. Information gathering has always been our specialty.»
Zorian found himself fascinated by the story, and more than a little surprised that the matriarch was willing to say all this in front of Taiven and her friends. Then again, Zorian never told them that aranea were mind readers, so their minds were completely unshielded — the matriarch probably had a pretty good picture of how likely they were to cause trouble for her. And they weren’t going to remember anything about this when this loop ended, either.
«Although giving information to humans helped us as well as them, we rarely did it for free — in return for our secrets, we demanded some of your own. Our human allies used the information we provided to make a name for themselves and further their careers, and in return they taught us some of your magic and helped us adapt it for our own use. Armed with our very own system of structured magic, the aranea grew in strength and versatility, solidifying their hold over this region and making the web that lived beneath Cyoria the most prestigious of aranean webs. The resulting prosperity caused their numbers to swell, and they sent a never-ending stream of colonists and breakaway webs to the surrounding region, where they proceeded to evict or subjugate every lesser aranean web they encountered. But although these aranea left Cyoria in search of their own destiny, no place had the prestige or opportunities that Cyoria offered, and thus viewed their mother web with envy and resentment. Soon, a number of these breakaways banded together and, armed with the experience of fighting the lesser webs for territory, drove the original web out of their homeland. It would not be the last time Cyoria changed hands. The conquerors were soon evicted by another group of invaders, and this group was evicted by another, and then they were evicted by us. We are the fifth web to hold this place and while our position is secure at the moment, any sort of weakness could cause the neighboring webs to get… restless.»
«Huh,» Zorian said. «So if you were, hypothetically speaking, absolutely decimated by someone and had your numbers severely reduced?»
«Our neighbors would launch a few probing raids at the very least,» the matriarch said. «But anyway, my point is that humans and aranea are not, nor have they ever been enemies. Well, barring some… isolated incidents. On both sides. In fact, it has been my explicit policy to encourage closer links between this web and humans living in Cyoria. I hope the day will come when aranea will be able to walk the street above in open daylight, just like any other citizen.»
«And I suppose you hope the humans will defend you from outside threats, like any other citizens,» Grunt said. «Like, say, from those rival ‘webs’ that want to take your territory?»
«I confess that possibility does factor rather heavily into my thinking,» the matriarch admitted. «The city authorities would be a lot less inclined to stand by and watch if we had an established, formal relationship with them.»
«So is this your recruiting pitch?» asked Taiven. «Are you trying to turn us into your agents?»
«More contacts is always good,» the matriarch said. «But no, I’m not trying to recruit you. I just sensed you were worried about Zorian’s association with us and wanted to assuage your fears somewhat. Anyway, Fang of Victory is coming back with the bauble so we’ll have to cut this short here. Talk to Zorian if you ever want to chat with us again.»
Sure enough, the matriarch honor guard soon returned with the watch. Zorian half-expected her to return with the watch gripped in her fangs, but it actually came back carrying some kind of leather harness full of pouches across its body, one of which held the watch. For a moment Zorian wondered how they made that, what with them lacking hands and all, but then realized he was being a bit foolish. The matriarch had already said they traded with humans for a lot of things — this must be one of them.
They quickly said good bye to the aranea and were on their way back to their employer, prize in hand.
«I don’t know what to think,» Taiven said when they put some distance between themselves and the aranea. «They seemed nice enough, but it’s a bit disquieting to find out we have an entire colony of these things living beneath the city, pulling their strings over gods know how many people.»
«Yeah,» agreed Mumble quietly. Zorian could definitely see why Taiven called him the way she did — he tended to talk really softly, making his speech very hard to understand sometimes. «Did you know Cyoria is kind of famous for its spider silk? The merchants who sell it are really cagy about where they get it in such quantities and have declared their source a trade secret. Most people think they have managed to create a spider species that can be farmed effectively and have a giant farm hidden somewhere, but I think it’s pretty obvious now where they get it…»
Zorian mostly kept out of the conversation, alternating between listening to their conversation (when they were saying something interesting) and studying the device they retrieved from the aranea (when they weren’t). It was, as the matriarch said, a magical item of some sort — shaped like a pocket watch, but not one. The hands didn’t move, and the screw that should have allowed a person to wind it was fused with the casing and seemed to be simply an ornamental bump put there to make the illusion superficially convincing. He tried to channel mana into it, but that didn’t result in anything substantial — the device probably required the user to channel mana in a very specific manner. Many complex magical items did.