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xxdreamingxofxtokyoxx · 3 years

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Nesta, The Exiles, and the Spider

“So there’s a giant spider in the woods.”

Nesta frowned. She never liked arachnids. Perched on a low hanging branch, Vassa in her firebird form made a noise that sounded vaguely of disapproval.

“A fae creature?” she asked.

Lucien shook his head. “Not this time. Those spiders aren’t magical, just terrifyingly large. And they’ll eat anything.”

Me reading everybody's alternate endings for Nesta: omg,, so true bestie

Anyways fic time!

“So there’s a giant spider in the woods.”

Nesta frowned. She never liked arachnids. Perched on a low hanging branch, Vassa in her firebird form made a noise that sounded vaguely of disapproval.

“A fae creature?” she asked.

Lucien shook his head. “Not this time. Those spiders aren’t magical, just terrifyingly large. And they’ll eat anything.”

“How large, exactly?” She almost didn’t want to know.

“Bigger than any of us,” Jurian replied, relaying the information he’d gotten from the village they now stood on the outskirts of. Nesta’s stomach sank a little further. “The hunters said, oh, probably a small house? Give or take.”

“Cauldron, I sure hope it’s give.”

“You mean take.”

Vassa chirped in agreement with her second-in-command.

“Do we-” Nesta hesitated. “Do we have to fight that thing? Can we just have people avoid that general area?”

“Well, it’s already killed someone. And it seems to have moved in near a road, so.” Jurian pointed to a patch of forest on the other side of the town, where Nesta could see the sliver of a dirt path peeking through. “Down that way, further into the trees, of course. You’re welcome to stay behind.”

Like most bugs, spiders were gross and eerie creatures, but she didn’t have a phobia of them like some of the mortal ladies she’d known. And Nesta had faced worse. She’d faced the kelpie. More than that, it was killing people, sending the village into a fearful hush, fae or not. Nesta thought about the horror stories, rumors of a cousin of a cousin found dead with strange bite marks, the mercenaries in the marketplaces. And Tamlin, in his beast form, crashing through the door of their cottage, taking Feyre to what she’d thought was a grisly death. So Nesta gripped Ataraxia’s hilt tighter where it was strapped to her back and followed after Jurian.

It was probably why the others started doing this, she realized as they walked through the forest. Jurian had been face to face with faerie violence for all of both his lives. Vassa would also have known the stories, even on the continent, even as a queen. Everybody knew the stories. Now they traveled to human settlements all around Prythian and lent a hand (well, blade) to the people there struggling against malicious faeries. There’d been an uptick in attacks once the Wall came down, with a few old monsters that had lurked for years and years before.

That left Lucien, who was incomprehensible at worst and only a little less confusing at best. Vassa and Jurian easily welcomed him into the fold, though, and Nesta would have to be a fool to miss the look in his eyes when she tracked him down on one of his visits to Velaris, explaining in halting sentences that she just couldn’t stay here. With them. She’d unofficially moved into the manor since then, dividing her time between there and the House of Wind. Nesta ached on the days without Gwyn, Emerie, and the House, but the proximity with Feyre’s Inner Court was too much. Besides, it wasn’t like her sister and her shitty mate had a shopping list to hold over Nesta anymore.

Vassa swept by her, sparks trailing from her feathered wings. Nesta felt the flash of warmth at her side, then the mortal queen was ahead of her, pecking at Lucien’s head. It seemed like a firebird in a forest might be a fire hazard, but the flames never seemed to catch. Nesta still remembered how she’d burned the Hybernian army, so hot and bright that licks of blue and white had danced off her body. She had not been able to take in how beautiful it was in the midst of all the blood and carnage. In the warm light of dusk, Vassa was calmer and just as lovely. Nesta watched as Lucien sputtered and swore, waving his arms around his head as Vassa let out a kind of mirthful crowing. He hissed something at her and Vassa shrieked back. Something like banter.

“They said it was somewhere around here.” Jurian stopped, waving an arm at the trees around them. “Should we be looking for webs or something?”

Lucien batted Vassa away from his head, peering up at the treetops. “A spider of that size, I don’t think there’s enough space for it to make a web. And it’d be pretty obvious if it did.”

“Isn’t the point of a spiderweb to be hard to see?” Jurian turned a head toward Lucien, a smirk tugging at his lips.

“Right, yeah. But it’s probably not weaving a web.” Lucien’s face twisted in thought. “Shit, it’s not in a fucking burrow, is it?”

“It’s more likely than a web,” said Jurian.

“Or just curling up somewhere in the open,” Nesta added, tapping thoughtfully on Ataraxia’s hilt. The sword, though sheathed, hummed at her touch, a comforting whisper in a language she did not understand. “Spiders don’t do that, right?”

“I.. don’t think so? I hunted deer and wolves and the like, not bugs.” Lucien hopped over a root, examining the ground, the trees. “Though we did have a giant fae spider in the Autumn Court. He was benevolent, though, and lived in the woods.” The High Fae smiled at the memory. “We used to play with him, as kids. He had a name in the old language, but we just called him Daddy Longlegs.”

Jurian snorted at the name, and Nesta found herself unable to stop the laugh that bubbled out of her as well. “What could’ve possibly earned him that name?” Jurian asked, voice light.

Lucien shook his head, but his smile grew wider. “Hey, if you saw him it’d make sense. And he was more of a father to us than our actual one, so-”

He froze at the sound of skittering, too loud and too sharp to be a rodent. Grass and bushes shook slightly as something shifted. Jurian and Vassa hadn’t flinched, Nesta realized. They hadn’t noticed the change without faerie senses, but a glance at Lucien’s expression had them both on the high alert.

“What is it?” Jurian’s voice was quiet, meant for Lucien and his heightened hearing. it would be so much harder to pick up with mortal ears.

“I just felt something, it was moving, I-” He took a step, slowly and carefully. Nothing. He made to move again, and almost like magic, the earth rose up behind him.

The spider was quicker than she expected, a blur of glinting black legs that popped out of the ground. It was faster than Jurian’s shout and Vassa’s wings, faster than Nesta. Lucien was gone, clutched between its massive pincers, by the time Ataraxia was out of its scabbard. The raised earth swung shut.

Jurian swore, running up to where the trapdoor had closed. Nesta was already there, feeling for a place to lift up the damn thing. Vassa swooped in a moment later, her fire flaring up. Nesta stepped back as she burned a hole through the lid and disappeared into the dark. Nesta caught Jurian’s eye, who shrugged, and they followed in after.

Nesta fell, tumbling through open air, Ataraxia flashing in one hand and the other trying frantically to grasp on to something. She hit the inclined side of the hole before she could, sending a shockwave of pain up her back. The surface was softer than she expected. Nesta jumped up, whatever injury she’d suffered from the impact already fading. Ataraxia pulsed in the dark, filling in whatever pockets of shadow that Vassa’s burning form had not already illuminated. Jurian slid down beside her, tearing up the silk lining with the sword he’d jammed into the wall to slow his fall.

“Fucking hell, how deep is this?”

Even with Vassa lighting up like a beacon, the end of the tunnel was hidden in darkness. Only that horrible skittering noise and Lucien’s panicked shouts gave away that something was in there. Nesta ran towards those sounds, struggling not to trip over herself on the steep slope. Light flashed, briefly, and she smelled smoke curling from below.

Lucien’s fire magic had not freed him from the clutches of the spider, Nesta saw when they caught up. He’d opted, instead, to try and free his arms from where they were pinned. Nesta gripped her sword with both hands, ready to cleave away at the legs. One of the appendages slammed down, forcing her to jump to the side or be impaled. She swiped again, barely missing the cluster of rapidly moving limbs. If the spider was bothered by a Made weapon imbued with the essence of death itself, Nesta couldn’t tell.

As she hefted Ataraxia for another strike, she saw that Jurian had latched on to one of the legs and seemed to be trying to pull himself up. Vassa, flying as best she could in a narrow tunnel, continued her onslaught on the spider’s eyes. Nesta hit the spider again, cutting into one of its legs but not quite severing it, as the spider shook Jurian off and sent him flying to the ground.

“Jurian!” Nesta shouted, moving between him and the spider. She moved her left hand up to grip Ataraxia’s blade and prayed this half-formed idea in her head would work. “Run and jump!”

Jurian, thankfully, seemed to understand what she meant. Well enough, at least, that he nodded and pushed himself up, sprinting towards her. Nesta had practiced throwing an ally up into the air before, with Emerie and Gwyn. Granted, they had used shields rather than greatswords. Jurian leapt, and Nesta’s heart flooded with relief when she felt his feet meet the flat blade of Ataraxia.

She gritted her teeth and pushed up, the edge of the blade cutting into her fingers. Perhaps a trickle of blood ran down her arm, but those cuts would heal in no time. Jurian flew through the air and landed on the spider, stabbing into a joint. It didn’t kill the arachnid, but its pincers opened and Lucien dropped from its grasp. The spider shook, forcing Jurian to delay his second attack so he could stay on instead.

Nesta ran back, pulling on the churning sea of power within her, letting a trickle of it run up Ataraxia. It shook in her hand as the silver flame enveloped it and Nesta could swear it seemed happy. Complete. That seemed to get the spider’s attention and it stopped trying to bite at Vassa, all of its beady eyes swiveling to focus on Nesta instead.

Such an action might’ve unnerved her if she hadn’t shared in Ataraxia’s delight, whatever quicksilver running through her blood sparking to life. She swung twice, hitting nothing on the first arc. The second arc, however, cleaved straight through two of its front legs. Ataraxia rang out in triumph and the feeling in Nesta’s chest rose to match it. The two stumps, where her power had touched it, began to turn silver and red. It would spread up the leg, Nesta knew. Maybe even take a chunk of the body, before all of that crumbled away.

The spider, having lost two legs and gained a few more arrows in its underbelly (courtesy of Lucien), was looking quite worn down. As she readied another attack, the shining spot that was Vassa went out. Nesta, surprised, looked up in time to see Vassa’s human form tumble onto the spider’s head. For half a second the spider just blinked up at the queen, then Vassa grabbed her knife and plunged it into an eye. The spider hissed and everything shifted back into motion.

Nesta went after its other legs, taking a few hits and scoring a few more. Finally, one of Lucien’s arrows hit a second eye, sinking up to the fletching. With a grating hiss, the spider shuddered and collapsed, twitching and curling in on itself. Jurian and Vassa slid down, backing away from the still-moving corpse. There was a beat where nobody said anything, then Jurian let out a whoop. The other two joined him in celebration, and Nesta felt a smile stretch across her face.

“Ew, my arm’s covered in that thing’s guts,” Vassa said, wiping her palm on her sleeve. She circled the spider, taking note of the burrow walls and the carapace.

“What are you looking for?” asked Nesta. She flicked away some bits of plasma from herself, too. Her silver fire, as powerful as it was, did not burn things away.

Vassa moved to the other side of the spider, her lilting accent rising over the hairy black body. “Looking for any eggs. It happened back home, once. A servant accidentally crushed a spider and the babies went everywhere.”

Nesta heard the shudder in her voice.

“I don’t think this spider has eggs,” Lucien piped up. He was pressing a hand to his torso, grimacing.

“What, or you’d scent them?” Jurian scoffed. “Can you smell it’s mate too?”

Nesta chuckled at his mocking tone, because that was the word Cassian had used when he’d insisted they belonged together. As if it held any weight for her, was any more convincing than all the other shit he said. Instead she turned him down and used her favor to make him never make any romantic or sexual propositions toward her again. It was not a choice she regretted.

Lucien laughed too, then answered, “Sort of, actually. I can’t sense anything else in this hole, but we could always burn it just to make sure.”

Vassa popped up from the tangle of legs, brushing aside a lock of vibrant red hair. “That’d be good. Now.” She peered up at the curved tunnel. “How are we going to get out of here?”

-line break-

They got out, in the end, by letting Nesta scale the sides of the burrow with a rope. After everyone had been pulled out through the initial hole, Lucien sent a fireball down into it and they watched the light slowly die down under the trapdoor as they rested. Now they were walking back to the village where they could inform the residents that the danger had been dealt with. Lucien could glamour Nesta and himself when they entered the village, then find a tavern to drink in. Sleep would come later in the strange, half-nocturnal cycle the Band of Exiles had built around Vassa’s curse. Ataraxia thrummed as Nesta tilted her head to rest on the hilt. She smiled, the prospect of hearing human music warming her more than alcohol ever could.

“Hey, Nesta!” Jurian called to her from whatever argument he’d been having with Vassa. “What would you rather fight, another giant spider or a fae monster?”

“Fae,” she replied, catching up with the rest of the group. “At least they’re scared of me.”

Jurian shot Vassa a smug look, and the argument picked up again.

Lucien piped up, “For what it’s worth, I didn’t like that spider very much either.”

Vassa gasped, too exaggerated to be serious. “You’re supposed to be on my side!”

When Nesta laughed, Ataraxia seemed to echo the sound. Yes, Nesta supposed. She could get used to this.

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