The Orb of Restoration

"Brace for it!"

The great stone door rumbled and lifted open, massive hidden gears turning, the machinery creaking and straining as unseen monsters pulled it up and out of the way. I glanced up at Sandra, and she glanced back. I hoped she was as good an aim as we needed her to be.

A dark bluish figure a foot or two taller than me darted through the door's gap in the dim torch-light, but I could see it by its glowing green eyes, and by the glimmer of the dark, spiked club it swung in circles over its head. Another goblin followed behind it. I raised my sword and shield and prepared to dodge their attack.

There was a twang high overhead. The first goblin bobbled and fell in surprise, an arrow protruding from an eye. Another twang, and the goblin behind it fell.

I look up at Sandra again, but she was focused, her bow at the ready, another arrow nocked.

Two more fell, and then the onrushing goblins reached me.

I dodged the swing of the first, and the stupid monster's club landed squarely in the face of one of his compatriots. I rolled on the floor, barely missing the strike of another club into the ground, and another goblin fell, and another.

Suddenly, I realized that the goblins were thinning. Only a dozen or so were here, guarding the treasure. We had killed many on the way here, but surely a greater horde waited in the far cavern behind these. I couldn't fathom why so few were left — other than perhaps they had grown bored and wandered off to more-frequently-visited dungeons. Not that I was complaining.

Another fell, and another, one by my sword to its belly, another by an arrow to its eye. Sandra had always been a good shot, but I still marveled that hanging upside-down from the ceiling, she was managing to strike them. They didn't seem to know what was hitting them, and they were now wildly attacking the air above them. Clinging tightly to the webbing she'd strung between the stalactites, Sandra was far too high above for them to reach, and they were easy pickings.

The last one burst through the doorway, running in a blind rage, and Sandra's next arrow missed, lodging in its shoulder, and it dropped its club. I darted forward, and just as it swung at me, I drove my sword straight up its sternum and into its heart. I missed my timing, though, and the odious beast collapsed on top of me.

"Henry!" Sandra's voice echoed through the chamber as I fell under the goblin's weight. I landed with a thud on the stone floor, my hands bracing against the monster. It weighed maybe three hundred pounds — too heavy to move, but not enough to crush me when it fell slowly.

"Hold on, I'll get you!" she cried, and loosed some line, quickly descending to me.

"Ungh," I groaned, trying to keep the goblin from squishing me.

The spider girl landed beside me and raced over, skittering on her eight legs. "Don't worry, don't worry, I got this!" she said. She spun some more webbing and tied it to the dead goblin's arms and shoulders and back, then pulled once, twice, and with a heave, we rolled the thing over and off me.

I sat up, breathing hard.

"Are you alright?" she said.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," I said, brushing myself off and slowly standing up. "I should've dodged between its legs."

She nodded.

She turned toward the doorway. There was a mound of gold coins on the far side, lumped into a hill, and perched on its top, there was a small, glassy white orb, gently glowing in the darkness.

"Is — that it?" she said.

"It has to be," I said. "All the clues. The thousand stairs. The riddle lynx. The deepest chamber. The hordes of the night. What else could it be but the Orb of Restoration?"

Sandra looked back over her shoulder at the massive black spider body behind her. "Do you really think it could — lift this curse?"

"It has to. It can restore any damage, heal any wound, cure any illness."

She didn't look very sure, but we turned and stepped toward the open door.

I held out a hand as she took a step. "There are supposed to be booby-traps in the chamber," I said. "Let me go first."

"But I'm faster than you are," she said.

"You're also bigger," I replied.

She glared at me but fell silent.

I took a ginger step through the doorway, and another. The texts said there were two more traps, a falling magical axe at the portcullis, and poison spears launched from the walls. I wasn't much of a swordsman — but a thief? Those skills I knew.

Holding my torch aloft, I looked down and found a fine black string, running along the floor. I reached out with my sword, the blade flat, and tugged with its tip at the string. The great axe slammed down in front of me into a gap in the stone and lodged there. First trap avoided.

Passing beside it, I knelt to the ground. There wasn't anything obvious on the ground, but I could pick out holes in the wall. The spears were real, and they had to be driven by a mechanism nearby. I studied the stones in the floor. Yep. That flagstone, and that one. Step on either, and they'd surely trigger it.

I tossed my shield onto one of them.

Wind whistled past my ears, as two dozen spears shot from the holes and embedded themselves in the far walls. One narrowly missed the axe, whizzing past to the great chamber beyond, and past a nervous Sandra.

"Are you okay in there?"

"I'm fine, don't worry," I said. "These traps were easy. There are good parts about dating a thief."

"Like how my purse always seems to be missing a coin or two and I'm always worried about you?" she retorted.

I climbed up the small golden hill. The Orb was neatly perched at the top. A faint white light glowed inside. I reached out, breathed, and picked it up.

Nothing happened. I breathed a sigh of relief.

I turned and came back out, slipping past the fallen axe.

I held it up in front of her. "Well, this is it."

"Do you think it will work?" she said, biting her lip.

"If the stories are right, it has to," I said. "Go ahead. Take it. This is what we've been searching for."

She nodded, but before she took it, she reached into her side-pack and withdrew a long red cloth.

"What's that for?"

She tied it around her waist. "For not being half-naked when I change back," she said. "If this works, I'm not walking out of here without a skirt."

I nodded and took out the small book hidden in my pack. I flipped through the pages. "Here," I said, pointing. "The incantation. Hold the Orb tightly, in both hands, and say these words."

She peered into the book, reading carefully. She nodded. Then she took a few steps back.

"Here — goes nothing," she said.

She held up the Orb and spoke loudly and clearly — "Colaisa — edramos!"

A white light burst from the Orb, surrounding her, a swirling brilliant wind like a thousand strips of glowing cloth, wrapping tightly around her body, and suddenly there was a great flash of light. I shielded my eyes, looking away.

The light faded, leaving only my torch. I looked back.

Sandra was standing there, a little blinded by the light.

"What —?" I said.

"Did it work?" she said. "Am I — am I really human again!?"

"It — you — your wounds are healed — "

"It worked!?" she said.

" — but — but you — the curse — you're still — you're still half spider!"

"What?"

I ran back over to her, taking the Orb. "It healed you. It's the Orb of Restoration. Why didn't it lift the curse?"

"What — does the book say about it?" she said.

I opened the book back to the page. "Orb of Restoration. Plus one hundred magic. Heals all wounds, cures all ailments."

"Henry — does it say curses?"

"All ailments!"

"Does it say curses?" she said.

I sank down to the floor. "But — "

"This is a curse, Henry," she said softly. "Not an illness. Not a wound. Not an injury. A curse."

"But — "

"There's a difference. Curses are red magic. The kind I deal in now. The kind the paladin I used to be shouldn't know. White magic like that Orb probably can't do anything for this."

I stared at the floor. "We came all this way."

"It can still heal your wounds," she said. "It's powerful."

"But it can't change you back."

"No, it can't."

* * *

We climbed the thousand stairs in silence. There was nothing left here to hurt us; we'd dispatched all the monsters on the way in. The long, brown stone chamber at the entrance had been exciting, dangerous, but exciting, the beginnings of a chance to finally cure Sandra's nightmare. Now it was simply a dusty slog back to the exit.

The sunlight outside hadn't changed much, although it was now coming from late-afternoon angles instead of yesterday's early-morning ones. The shadows in the overgrown trees surrounding the temple stretched long on the green grass. The birds were gone, and the air was still.

I stopped outside and began to gather up some wood.

"What are you doing?" said Sandra, not far behind me.

"Making camp," I said. "It's too late to travel any farther tonight."

She nodded.

"Henry, we can — "

"Look, I'm sorry," I said. "I know we came all this way, and it's my fault you're still not human."

"It's not your fault. Listen, I'm the one who investigated a back alley a paladin had no right being in. I'm the one who went into the witch's shop for a black tincture. I'm the one who accidentally set her cauldron and her shop on fire. And I'm the one she cursed, all by myself. You didn't do this to me. You didn't even know me then."

I gathered the sticks in silence, irritated, stacking them up in an old stone ring that someone else had once used as a fire pit. I set upon them with the tinder-box, and then slumped down beside my little fire.

She walked over and leaned toward me, her long brown hair surrounding my face. "Henry, you tried. You cared, when no-one else did, about a girl who'd turned into a monster. Thank you for that much." She kissed my forehead, and then backed away.

I looked up at her, as she turned, her dark spider legs carrying her away.

She saw me looking and paused. "I'm going to spin a web, and if you don't mind, spend the night up in the trees. I need some alone time."

"It's okay," I said. "I understand."

She nodded. She placed a few legs on a nearby tree-trunk, and with a fleetness that never ceased to amaze me, she zipped up into the foliage and disappeared.

For a moment, I watched the spot where she vanished, then looked back down. I shook my head. There had to be a way to lift the curse. There had to be a way for her —

I focused my thoughts. Not for her. For — me. I wanted her to be human again, but for selfish reasons. I knew it, and I hated myself for it.

A thief would never have a chance at a paladin, never in a thousand years. Before she had changed, she would have walked past me on the street, marching with her comrades off to glorious battle. She would have been a woman I'd dream of, but paladins had strict codes of conduct. I was a thief, a mildly successful one, and not a dark-aligned one, but still a thief, making my living stealing gear and gold and gems from true monsters. She never would have said hello to me the day I found a poor warped girl, barely breathing, lying in the back-alley behind an empty, burned apothecary, and carried her back to my tiny room. She never would have smiled at me, the way she did all those days that I nursed her strange, mutated body back to health. She never would have talked to me or gotten near me, much less agreed to begin questing with me in search of a cure.

I rolled onto my side and bunched up my pack under my head as a pillow. No, I was angry at myself about this mistake more than I was anything else. She could have been human. A year's worth of awful existence erased. And I could have been responsible. And she would love me for what I had done, and maybe I would be able to tell her how I felt — and maybe I could even court her — and maybe, just maybe, even more.

* * *

"Henry, wake up." The voice was quiet but insistent.

I'd had dreams, weird dreams, dreams about Sandra, dreams that she was gone, gone forever, turned into a tiny spider and disappeared, lost forever through a crack in the floor.

I blinked. Sandra was standing over me.

The fire had gone low, down to just reddish coals, but the coals and the half-moon together were bright enough to dimly illuminate her.

"What's the matter?" I said, startling.

"Relax, nothing's wrong," she said, dropping slowly to the ground beside me. She was still upright, but her long, black legs were bent so her lower spider body rested beside mine.

"Then — "

"I just — was cold up there," she said. "Do you mind if I get closer?"

"Sure —?"

She leaned forward, and suddenly she was resting beside me, her head on my shoulder, her arm wrapped around my chest.

"You're warm," she said. "Why didn't you tell me you're so warm? I could have been sleeping here every night instead of in a cold web."

I swallowed hard. "Uh, I didn't know I was so warm."

"Part of me is cold-blooded. The warmth makes a difference."

She lay quietly for a while, and I wasn't sure what to say, but then she looked up at me. "Henry, I know you're disappointed that we didn't find a cure. But — it's not so bad. I've been a spider for a year. I can be a spider a little longer."

I felt her spider legs start to wrap around my legs. She was far larger than I was — each of her legs was five feet long. She managed to wrap several of them around me, and then her head was off my shoulder, her body spiraling around mine until her human torso was hovering over me, her legs surrounding me like a cage, her hands bracing on my chest as she looked down, smiling.

"What — are you doing?" I said.

"Thinking," she replied.

"A — about?"

"About how I haven't said thank you for how much work you put into this," she said.

"We haven't found the cure."

"But the Orb of Restoration! That's likely worth a lot to the right buyers. There are white mages in Angolia that would pay handsomely for it. It could finance a lot of dungeon exploration."

"I suppose."

"It's funny, being red-aligned," she said, running a hand through her brown hair. "When I was white-aligned, I didn't think about anything other than my mission. Glory for the King! Glory for the Kingdom. Glory, honor, everything was a singular focus. I was good when I was following orders, good whenever I did anything in the name of the King. I never thought about anything else: Follow orders, rank up, eventually become the Queen's lead private Knight — and die a glorious death protecting her.

"So much changed when I got cursed. Not just getting turned into a giant spider. But I've thought about so much I never thought about before. What's my place in the world? What am I really supposed to be?"

"You're not supposed to be a spider," I said. "That much I know."

"Is that really so?" she said, loosing a few legs from around me and bracing them on the dirt beside us. "Do you think the gods of Arcadia let this just happen to me? Maybe all along — maybe I was supposed to become —this. Maybe I wasn't supposed to be a paladin at all."

"But — you're a — "

" — spider, yes, I know," she said. "But if I hadn't met that witch? If I hadn't been cursed? Would I have met you?"

I fell silent.

She leaned in closer, her hands still on my chest. "If I hadn't made a mistake, I'd never have met you. I used to be so lonely. I didn't even know it was lonely. But I was lonely. Everything was about swords and archery and the King, and every night I went to bed alone, and every morning I woke up alone. Having your own room at the palace isn't an honor, it's a real curse. Every night for a year, I go to sleep, and you're near me. And every morning, I wake up, and you're there. Making breakfast. Planning. Helping me. Supporting me. Anyone would have run from this monster, but not you."

I breathed shallow, hard breaths, my heart pumping in my chest. She leaned in closer, and her lips touched mine. Gently, softly, gingerly, as if she didn't dare touch me. For my part, I laid still, wanting so much more, but not daring to touch her in return, savoring the subtle smell of strawberries on her lips.

She retreated an inch. "I hope — you don't think that presumptuous," she said, biting her lip.

"No — no — not at all."

She smiled.

"I — I wanted to tell you I like you — "

"Ssh," she said, putting a finger on my lips. "I know you do. Everyone knows. At the last inn, the bartender girl thought it was so cute how you tended to me."

She stood back upright. "I feel so red tonight," she said, and ran her hands through her hair again. "I hope — you will not think less of me for that."

"Red?"

She leaned in again, hovering so close to my chest that I could feel her warmth. "A white paladin does not think thoughts. A white paladin does not engage. A white paladin is above the fray. A red mage engages. A red mage dares to explore. A red mage — thinks thoughts."

"Thoughts?"

She tugged at the string tying her bodice and began to unlace it.

"Thoughts," she said, her eyes never leaving mine.

"What — thoughts?"

"Like whether — a man can be with a spider," she said.

"Be — with?"

She grinned, loosing more of her bright red bodice. "Come on now, Henry. With. I was thinking you might enjoy — having me get you off. — if you'll let me." She reached down, and put one of her hands on my trousers, right over the very stiff triangle in the middle. She slid her hand up, and then down.

"Mmm," I mumbled, the noise falling out of my mouth.

"I — I don't know if you can feel about me — the way I feel about you," she said, "but I've wanted to get closer to you for a long time. You saved me. And you treat me so well. Like a gentleman. You never saw me as a monster, but you never saw me as a ruined lady paladin, either. You just saw me as a friend, someone who needed help, and you gave it, and never asked for more. I was willing to wait until the Orb cured me, but now since it won't — I'm done with waiting. I want more."

She finished the lace of her bodice, and her breasts fell loose, free, her gorgeous globes hanging over me and glinting in the moonlight, and she grinned widely as she tossed the bodice aside with a red-gloved hand.

"What do you — think?" she said.

"You're beautiful," I breathed.

She leaned down and pressed her human torso into me. "I haven't heard that in so long, and I don't even know if anyone really meant it when I was human. Thank you for that."

"You're gorgeous," I said. "The most beautiful girl I've ever seen. I can't believe you're showing me — " I trailed off.

She leaned back up, bracing her left hand on my chest. "These?" she said, cupping one of her breasts with her right.

I nodded stupidly, my jaw hanging open.

"You can touch them," she said. "Please — by the gods of Arcadia, touch them, touch me, touch me like I've wanted you to touch me." She took my hand in hers and pulled it up until it was pressed against her breast. "Mmm, your hand, I've imagined for so long," she said, trailing off.

I held her dangling melon in my hand, delighting in its touch. I couldn't believe I was holding her breast, her perfect, pale breast, whose pink nipple was pointed right at my face.

She looked down at me. "Don't just lay there," she said. "You can't break it. Give it a squeeze. Do something with it." She put her hand over mine and made me squeeze. "That's it, like that."

I squeezed again, and her eyes rolled back in her head as she chewed on her bottom lip.

"Yes. — and let me show you something."

She pushed my hand down and cupped her breast with her own hand. She squeezed the nipple gently with two fingers and her thumb, and then a little harder, tugging at it, and a little droplet of white formed on the tip, and then suddenly it squirted a little, spraying my vest.