Man of Bel'Tasq, Part 2

The spiders lifted him up, and carried him away.  He heard their limbs and sinews pop and crack as they moved. They jostled the other occupants of the webs as they went along.  It was not long before he felt them deposit him in some other part of the webs.  He felt the webs across his face ripped from his skin, and he gasped from the pain.  Blood poured into his eyes.  He still couldn’t see.

He felt something soft and fuzzy press against his face, mopping up his blood.  His blood continued to drip, yet the clothe was persistent, wiping his eyes until he stopped bleeding. He heard a purring murmur near him, and when his eyes cleared he saw that it came for a giant spider that stood over him.  It held a strand of his cocoon in its front legs, and offered it up to him, its mandibles clicking as it spoke.

“Do you know what this says?” it asked.

He frowned, the scabs pulling at his taunt skin.  He stared at the sharp lines and squiggles written into the webbing that cocooned him.  He stared for a long, long time.

“It says ‘Bel’Tasq’,” purred the spider.

The man remembered.  The smell of dust and sweat.  Oil and leather.  Days spent training in the sun.  The man’s chapped lips parted as he spoke, the first words he had spoken in centuries.

“My father,” he said.

“Yes, yes,” said the spider, “And his father and his father before him, and your brother and sisters and cousins as well.”

His father told him to not leave the Revlin boy, to protect him from harm, as the Bel’Tasq had done centuries before.  He left anyway, for glory and battle. When he came back that morning, flushed and full of success, he found his charge slain, and his father deeply, deeply, angered.

“I failed,” said the man, finding fresh tears to shed.  The spider let him cry for awhile, before it spoke again.

“Hmmm…” it purred, “Not quite yet.”  The spider began to undo his cocoon.  The man gasped as the threads were ripped away from his bare skin.

“The last of the Revlin is in danger, and The Weaver of Fate has decided that it is not her time to die,” said the spider. The man was free, and the giant spider held him aloft as it tore at the webbings below him.

“The Weaver of Fate remembers your name, and if you are clever enough, if you are brave enough, it will be returned to you.”  The spider dropped him, and the man spun and twisted in the plummeting blackness.

“Find Illannis Revlin,” called the spider, “Who goes by the name Banbrig, in the Grishell Mountains, north of the River Celes!”

And with that, the man fell and fell, until he landed, hard.