The hills west of the Nyr Dyv, the Flanaess's inland sea, glowed a lazy velvet-purple in the sun. Spring had brought dew-speckled mornings and dusty afternoons. It seemed a land blessed with eternal slumber, a place where lizards could bask and rabbits scratch themselves in peaceful shadows.
In an ancient ruin covered with dead, black vines, a crypt door creaked open. Blinking in pain at the unaccustomed light, a drow high priestess winced her way out of the door, turned blinded eyes about the ruins, and then bowed abjectly toward the dark.
"Here, Magnificence. This is the sole remaining tunnel mouth near the inland sea."
Lolth came forth, making a face as light ripped like needles into her eyes. With a wave of her hand, she invoked darkness all about her as the tunnel from the underdark disgorged her priests, spiders, and demonic bodyguards. Lolth's secretary slithered forth-a six-armed tanar'ri with a woman's upper body and the lower body of a snake, her hair black, short and efficient, and her serpentine lower body polished to perfection. She was laden with a drinking horn, a crystal ball, a shovel, and a collection of notebooks and pens.
Safe inside her pall of darkness, Lolth stretched her long, lithe body, and then wrinkled her nose.
"What is that ghastly stench?"
The high priestess kept her head bowed. "Open air, your Magnificence. A miasma made from grass, pollens, cow flatulence, and the nests of animals."
"Well, it's horrid. We should burn something to keep the smell away." Lolth turned, paused, then threw a spell at one of her slaves. The creature burst into flame. "There! That's so much nicer!"
The Spider Queen's secretary gave a weary sigh, disgusted at the extra work required to find replacement slaves. She took notes with all six arms. Ignoring her secretary's silent reprimand, Lolth gave another delicious stretch, and warmed herself by the fire as she gazed across the hills and valleys of Oerth.
Something whimpered in the weeds. Flitting forward, light as a dancer, Lolth pulled back a curtain of old ivy and found a cringing human in the shadows. The man had a lamb clutched to his chest. Lolth clapped her hands, delighted.
"Oh, look! A shepherd! How deliriously rustic!" She held out a hand, beckoning the fearful man out of hiding, "Come here! Come on! We shan't bite you!"
The secretary winced and looked away, her coils lashing. The man's screams seemed to go on forever, and blood spattered over the old stones and quiet weeds. The secretary tuned back again when all seemed still.
Coated in blood, panting in delicious release, Lolth looked up and said, "Oh, yes. We are going to enjoy ourselves here."
The ruins formed an archway filled with cobwebs and old, dried flowers. At one end of the colonnade, a faint haze of magic flickered. Lolth danced over to the arch and caught a fly in her fingertips, thoughtfully feeding it to a little spider hanging from the stones.
The troops were already moving. In the next hour, the tunnel mouth would flood with abyssal horrors, ready to invade the settlement Lolth had chosen as her first "larder." The demon queen cast an eye on her secretary.
"There! We're all done? Our little food-capturing expedition is ready?"
"Yes, Magnificence. Everything is ready." The secretary irritably lashed her coils, then duly made notes. "One town-convert populace to foodstuffs. Details to be made up as we go along…"
"But first, we have a few little, trivial tasks to do!" The Queen of the Demonweb Pits snapped a finger at her secretary. "Come! The rest of you, stay here and try not to do anything idiotic!"
The archway beckoned. Lolth pulled a pouch of black thorns from her belt and tossed a handful through the arch. Magic flashed, and a shimmering portal blazed into life. Shielding her eyes from the glare, Lolth stepped through the gate, beckoning her secretary in her wake.
"Come on! You're always such a dodderer!"
The magic gateway flashed, and Lolth and her secretary emerged from an archway made from pure black ivy deep inside a forest. Gigantic statues of long dead kings stood half-buried in old leaf mold, scowling at the demoness as she stood and spread her arms.
"One hundred and one days! A third of a year since the destruction of my underground kingdom." Black silk shimmered as Lolth's new demon body swirled like a girl. "Do you know what I have dwelt on every hour of all those hundred days?"
The secretary shot a droll glance at her mistress. "Affairs of state, Magnificence?"
"No, my dear dull darling. I have been contemplating revenge." Lolth sniffed and regarded her companion. "You're such a drab!"
"Yes, Magnificence."
Lolth walked amongst the trees. "There is a dreary proverb that revenge is a dish best savored cold." Lolth draped herself elegantly over a branch. "I believe revenge is a dish best savored alive and twitching."
The secretary answered with a patient sigh. Six hands held a total of three notebooks and three pens.
"These beings, Magnificence, destroyed an entire city. Do not take them lightly."
"Oh?" The demon queen contemplated the silver black widow brooches that were the mainstay of her clothing. "And how, dear dunce, would you deal with them?"
"I would dispatch twenty demons to kill them in their sleep." The secretary stabbed her pen into a notebook. "I would grind the pieces to a powder and scatter them grain by grain into the deepest ocean."
"And that, my dear, is why I am queen of evil, and not you." Lolth gave the serpent-woman a sidewise glance. "I don't want their death! I want their despair! Shock, horror, false hope, total panic! I want harassment for day after day, week after week. I want them in tears of fright and shame!"
The secretary looked at her mistress through lowered lashes. "And then kill them?"
"Obviously kill them! Eaten alive by giant spiders, their living skulls used as my chamber pot, their souls made my screaming playthings." Lolth brushed it all away. "But the chase is the thing! We're talking of revenge quality, not quantity! What we need here is applied irony, with just a teeny dab of sheer injustice!" Lolth used the head of a statue as her perch. "I have given two names to my itch: Escalla and the Justicar." Lolth crossed her legs and clicked her fingers, accepting the crystal ball from her secretary. "The process is simple. All we need to ask ourselves is what would enrage our little friends more than anything in the entire world?"
The time was drawing near when the first troops would come through the tunnel gate. The secretary tapped a pen against her notepad, bringing Lolth to order.
"Shall we get on with business, Magnificence? Surely the day is wasting."
Annoyed, Lolth dusted off the crystal ball. "You try me at times."
The secretary froze, flicked open her notepad, and met Lolth eye to eye, awaiting orders.
It was a delicate game that the secretary played. Lolth had trapped her into slavery-and in return, the secretary had made herself indispensable. They both knew it was a delicate relationship based on mutual scorn and exasperation.
"Escalla the faerie." With a snort, Lolth grabbed the crystal ball as Escalla's image glowed to life. "Vain, egotistical, and with a dress sense that could cause a riot at a succubus orgy-although I must admit, I do like the gloves." Lolth regarded her little victim with glee. "A prodigal child, much loved by her father-a fact that enraged Escalla's sister, Tielle. We were grooming Tielle to betray the Seelie Court into our hands. Too bad it failed."
Lolth tossed the crystal ball aside. Her secretary dived and saved the ball an instant before it smashed.
"In any case, here we are to set our first little wheels in motion!"
The rattle on the secretary's serpent tail gave a weary flick. "And where is here, Magnificence?"
"Here is the place where we get things moving!" Lolth looked annoyed. "Really, you're so dull. What was your name again?"
"Morag, Magnificence."
"Morag?" Lolth recoiled. "Erch! I should have guessed! How horribly appropriate. All right, I'll have one snake scale if you please."
Morag thought about arguing, then decided it was hardly worth the effort. She winced, plucked a single scale from her tail, then handed it to her queen. Lolth inspected the scale, sniffed at its scent of brimstone and perfume, and leaped from her perch. She wandered over to an arch made from two statues that had tilted over head-to-head.
The portal flashed as the demon's scale touched its surface. The gateway transported the pair to a deep, echoing underground chamber-a place lit by sickly blue stalactites and filled by a vile quicksilver pool.
Lolth twiddled her fingers. The scale had disappeared, consumed by the gate.
"A terribly convenient way to travel. The portals run all through this little chunk of the Flanaess. They're known only to the faeries! How convenient we had one on our team." The demon queen walked idly beside the great shallow pool. "Of course, the faeries don't know where most of them go. We found this little haven by accident. Isn't it delicious?"
The demon queen found herself a seat and relaxed. Left to her own devices, Morag the secretary bunched and flowed her body over to the silvery pool. It shimmered sluggishly, as though driven by a slow, living pulse. Setting her ball, her horn, and her notes aside, the secretary leaned over the pool and looked down at her own reflection. She frowned in puzzlement.
From behind her, Lolth's multi-tiered voice chorused, "It's called the vampire pool. I wouldn't touch it." Lolth inspected her nails. "It likes its blood very good or very evil, and it can't have yours. Not yet anyway."
Minutes later, a flash announced the opening of the magical gate. Lolth stood, her face radiant with smiles.
"Ah! At last we are all here!"
A male faerie hovered in the air-a sly, dark creature in the dress of the Seelie court. Black leathers and a mask hid the little creature's identity. Behind him, hovering in mid air, there was a large and heavy bucket full of weird pink goo. The faerie saw Lolth standing cool and glorious before him, her long silver hair falling in a cascade to the floor. He bowed softly and elegantly, averting his eyes.
"Magnificence. You do me too much honor."
"Yes." Lolth walked silkily between the eerie stalagmites, giving a coy glance toward the little faerie lord. "And have you brought me a gift?"
"Magnificence, I have brought you the present we discussed."
"Ah. Excellent." Lolth gave a droll wave of her fingers at the puking silver pool behind her "And here is your reward. Within this pool is the power to wreak your havoc. If you wish to carve an empire out of the bodies of your enemies, then here you are."
The faerie walked over to the pool and stared in fascination at the ebb and flow of patterns in the silver lake. Sleek and beautiful, Lolth tiptoed over beside him and smiled down into her own reflection.
"So much power! For evil blood, it gives the ability to sear your enemies to death!"
The faerie looked up at Lolth in raw greed and wonder. "Do I scoop it out? Bathe in it?"
"Why don't you try touching it?"
The faerie grinned, then plunged his hand into the water.
And died. One moment, he was standing there, one finger extended into the pool, and in the next, he was a desiccated husk, drained of all blood.
Lolth's secretary sniffed in disapproval. Standing by the edge of the pool, Lolth kicked the dried, empty husk into the pool. The corpse disappeared with a splash that left a new tide line of ripples. The liquid glowed red with energy, and Lolth looked over at Morag's irritated glare.
Lolth shrugged. "I'm a demon queen. Why would anyone take one of my suggestions?" She traipsed over to the bucket left beside the magic gate. "Now, to business."
The bucket was unceremoniously upended. Flowing sullenly out of the container came a pink puddle adorned with two eyes and occasional patches of hair. The eyes blinked up at Lolth, and turned wide with shock. Lolth twiddled her fingers, drifted a little shower of magic down onto the blob, and hummed a little tune as she worked, happy as a child.
"Up we come! Arise! Arise!"
Nothing happened. The blob blinked, Lolth frowned, and Morag sighed.
"You will need to expend actual power. The original spell was cast by the faerie Escalla."
"I am aware of that!" Lolth did it properly this time. Standing above the pink blob, she opened her hands, power arcing brilliantly between her palms. With a cry, Lolth brought her hands together in a clap. "Arise!"
Below her, the pink blob flexed and shifted.
It had been a savagely cunning combination of spells: flesh-to-stone, then stone-to-mud, and then the flesh-to-stone spell had been revoked. Tielle, Escalla's sister-murderess, schemer, and traitor to faerie-had been turned into a still-living puddle of flesh. The blob had been sealed in the dungeons of the Seelie court, awaiting the Erlking's pleasure. The goddess Lolth now sheared through Escalla's magic. There was a gasp, and Tielle lay in a ball on the ice-cold stone, her long blonde hair flowing all about her in a stream.
The faerie jerked upright-frightened, shocked, but alive. She threw out her arms in joy, staring at her reformed flesh, and then looked up at Lolth in abject wonder. She prostrated herself, only to be raised up and caressed.
Lolth stood with her head tilted impishly to one side. She gestured to Morag, who handed her a dainty drinking horn.
"Dear Tielle! The pool, I give to you. It's holy water-or reverse holy water, depending on the ingredients you add." Lolth dipped into it with the drinking horn, and the horn sucked in gallon after gallon of the water, tinging itself silver-red with the power of the pool. "Blood drives it. When you put in the life-blood of something evil, the water then burns the good! When you put in good blood, it burns the evil! The horn will allow you to carry a useful amount of the fluid-do you see? All you need to do to burn your enemies is sacrifice some worthless evil thing into the pool!"
Tielle stared at the pool, lost in shock, then looked wide-eyed at Lolth. The demon queen curled a finger sympathetically through Tielle's long, soft hair.
"Poor Tielle. Outsmarted by your sister. Chased, hounded, humiliated. Brought down before all your friends and family by Escalla. Total degradation!"
Lolth tossed Tielle the crystal ball. In it, there shone the tiny image of Escalla winging happily upon her daily chores.
"You have a pool, a horn, and a crystal ball." Lolth coiled silkily around the little faerie, resting her face to whisper in Tielle's attentive ear.
"Now, whatever will we find to talk about?"