âMaâam, I really must insist that you pay for the room and board Iâve been giving you! Itâs been a week!â
âFine, fine,â I grumble. âI have a few options for payment: I could give you paper money, cheap gaudy jewelry, chocolate coins, spiders, some pretty seashells-â
âSpiders????â he repeats, baffled.
âSpiders it is, then,â I agree equitably, and with a wave of my hand the bed Iâve been sleeping in for the last week turns into a writhing mass of various spiders.
âStop right there! Youâre under arrest for fraud, destruction of property, and-!â
I yawn. âDidnât ask, donât care.â A few gestures, and the guardsâ swords are all transmuted into spiders, and then theyâre too busy to worry about little olâ me.
âYou have insulted my honor and humiliated me in front of my children! I demand satisfaction! I demand a wizardâs duel!â
Shrugging, I say, âSure, okay, whatever. Right here and now okay?â
The pompous wizard-noble blinks. âI- you donât want to prepare? Get your wizardâs staff or anything?â
âNah, Iâm pretty good with somatic gestures.â
âWell, if youâre sure⊠here and now then! Have at you!â He slams his staff down on the ground dramatically, a small shockwave of fire radiating out from the impact.
So of course, I turn his staff into spiders.
âAHHHH WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCKâ
âSo if youâre too busy screaming to cast spells, does that mean I win?â
âAUGH ONE OF THEM BIT MEâ
âIâm taking that as a yes.â
After that, they start coming at me in waves, with cheap wands and staves and swords and bows bought in bulk, hoping to exhaust my magical reserves so they can get close enough to put a magic inhibitor on me.
They did not expect my reserves to be as vast as they were, not did they expect me to be able to transmute the inhibitors themselves into spiders.
âDidnât you take Magic Basics in wizard college?â I yell at the panicking mages. âInhibitors arenât immune to magic until the moment they activate! Serious weak point in the design, tell your magitechnicians to fix that!â
So of course they try assassins next.
Poison fails, because I transmute any food and drink I get into spiders and then transmute them back. Pretty easy way to get rid of poison.
So then they try knives in dark alleys. The knives bruise through my full-body spider-silk outfit, but do not penetrate, and they only get one shot before they have bigger problems.
Next is killing me in my sleep. None live to report back that the human-shaped lump under the blankets is actually a mass of highly venomous spiders.
The kingdom throws everything it has at me, and I continue to walk away, heralded by the chittering of spiders and the screams of everyone else.
Finally, I stand before the king himself in his overly opulent throne room, and by now he is a broken shell of a man in the face of my unorthodox tactics.
âWhat do you want?â he practically sobs. âYouâve singlehandedly redirected the entire crownâs budget for the next three years into replacing every weapon youâve turned into spiders. Much more and weâll be invaded by our neighbors! We wouldnât be able to resist being annexed! So what can I give you to make you stop doing this?!â
I pause and pretend to consider, tapping a finger against my chin thoughtfully. âYou know, you sent my brother off to war a few years back. That conflict with the Yughs up north, I believe. He didnât want to go, so your guards forced him at spearpoint. I havenât seen him since.â
He seizes on that, as I expected. âYes, yes, Iâll have him returned right away! Tell me his name and Iâll honorably release him from duty and have him escorted safely home!â
âOh?â I raise one sardonic eyebrow. âAre you able to bring back the dead now, oh wise and glorious king?â
He pales, and itâs the most satisfying thing Iâve seen in years.
âYou have nothing I want,â I growl, letting the anger slip through for the first time in years. âYou cannot bring him back, you cannot make up for my loss with all the riches in your kingdom. The only thing I want is to take everything from you, the way you did to me. Your kingdom will bleed out of resources, one of the neighboring countries youâve been trying to conquer for decades now will take advantage and annex this place, and you will either be executed or forced to work for a living for the first time in your life.â
I glare at him, and he refuses to meet my eyes. âYou will lose everything you ever cared about in your life. One spider at a time.â
I transmute his throne and crown into spiders (non-deadly; he doesnât get to escape my wrath that easily), then turn and walk away, ignoring his screams and sobs.
And thatâs why, when the Yughs finally annexed the kingdom I grew up in, they preemptively made Transarachnomancy a forbidden magical art. Not sure how they intend to enforce that, mind, but Iâm not looking to challenge that. Iâve gotten what I wanted; if some other aspiring mage wants to try and follow in my footsteps, thatâs not my problem.
Besides, in terms of magical skill, Iâve always been an outlier anyway. Most mages would be lucky to turn just one knife into a spider at a time; I can turn ten thousand with a few gestures. I doubt anyone will outdo my legacy.
But hey, if you want to try and surpass Georgia of the Spiders? Feel free. Iâll welcome the competition.
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