Page 10 of The Pastel Prince

Oh. Odd. The tiny nighttime animals had all fallen silent. I took another step, reaching for the dagger in the back of my trousers when the silken strands of a spiderweb covered my face. I startled and swiped at them, nearly cutting off my nose, before chuckling at my foolishness. Another flash lit up the sky, and the leaves on the trees began to sway slightly as the winds picked up. Above my head was a huge web, easily spanning forty feet or so, and filled with cocoons. In the middle of the webbing was a pixie wearing a silver breastplate, boots, and bracers over leggings of some sort. Ten or so feet from the tangled pixie was a spider the size of my hand. Large yes, but nothing that terrifying unless you were the size of a pixie.

“Free me! Holy shit, free me, and I will pledge myself to your service and protection for all my days!” the tiny thing shrieked, her wings vibrating but unable to break free.

“Let me see what I can do,” I shouted to be heard over the wind, now shaking the boughs. I’d always been adept at climbing trees. It helped when the things you were scaling aided you as best they could. It was a most handy gift when one was trying to get away from a herd of older brothers carrying stink cloud pods with your name literally written on them. “Stop fighting. It will only enweb you more tightly.”

“Suck my bouncing titties!” I felt my face flush even with the spritz of rain now on the howling winds. “When you’re looking at certain death, I’ll be sure to tell you to lie still and let it sink its fangs into you!”

What a sour tart this pixie was. Still, I climbed up to the first thick branch and easily cut the webs. The spider and the pixie sailed downward, the spider hitting a cragged oak with a thud that sounded unpleasant while the pixie screamed so loud my ears rang.

Shimmying down, I jogged to the pixie now hanging upside down. The skies lit up. Rain began to fall in sheets. It was a messy job. Sticky web clung to my face, fingers, and the pixie, but I got her freed just as a bolt of lightning struck across the road.

“Fucking hells a fire!” the tiny thing in my hand yelled, her delicate wings still bound with fine strands. “Get moving, asshole!”

I threw her a glower. My sight darted from the wet pixie to the severely mangled spider hanging limply from a gossamer thread. Water pelted us. The trees groaned in fright.

“I think I killed it,” I yelled as rainwater soaked me through in seconds. That saddened me. While I had no skills in picking up the emotions of insects, I still wished them no harm. All served a purpose.

“Good. Now get moving before it’s—”

I turned from the wind and rain. Then, within a foot of me, a mammoth spider emerged from the thickening underbrush. It stood as tall as a plow horse and three times as wide. Eight legs held it up from the ground. Its eight eyes blinked in unison as water coursed over its head.

“—mother finds its corpse. Well, shit,” the pixie said as I stuffed her into my trousers and took off into the woods at a sprint.

I dashed away from camp, leading the spider deeper into the outskirts of the Verboten wilds so not to endanger Beirach or the horses. The wind howled. The night sky flashed to life as jagged bolts danced through the storm clouds. The trees moaned in fright.

“Oh great gods, there is a giant cock in my face!” the pixie shouted. “It’s huge. Ouch! It slapped me in the face. Why do all cocks have to be so fucking pushy!?”

I had just cleared a tree when my tiny passenger grabbed hold of my prick, her small nails digging in deeply. I cried out at the pain and then jammed my hand into my trousers to pluck off the little groper. My left foot found the burrow of a ground squirrel and down I went in a heap, my hand in my pants, shouting into the stormy night.

“Let go of my prick!” I roared as my fingers closed around the pixie. She let go. I tugged her out into the rain, my cock tender from her sharp little nails, and rolled to my back in time to see the spider leap into the air. It landed above us, four legs on either side of me, long pincers clacking.

I picked up nothing from the huge insect other than the obvious assumption that she was upset with me for inadvertently killing her offspring. Frantically searching my mind for mention of spiders of this size in my early days of schooling, I came up with only one reference. A wandering archdruid, a woman who was so old she appeared to be nothingbut skin drawn tight over creaking bones, had told us that giant tree spiders captured and sucked the insides out of small elves who wandered into the woods alone.

I’d scoffed even though my parents had nodded at her sage advice. This is why one should never make light of what an archdruid tells you. They were all aged and decrepit, yes, but they knew all.

Knowing this was incredibly bad, I slapped my free hand down onto the soggy soil and focused on calling down the grape vines that knitted the canopy together. The plants responded, snaking down the trees, their tendrils creeping closer. I could feel the energy of the wilds in me stronger than it had ever been. My fingers tingled. Soft emerald light glowed from the vines as they slithered like asps around all eight legs, entangling the spider neatly.

Now we could make an escape without harming—

“Let go of me, Minty Fresh,” the pixie yelled, nipping my finger with pointed teeth. I yelped again, shook my hand, and the pixie took to wing. “This bitch is on my last nerve and your plants aren’t going to do farking shit!”

Her body radiated bright purple light, giving a warm spring glow to the underbelly of the spider’s hairy abdomen. Then the pixie screamed at the top of her lungs, the sound so shrill my ears throbbed in time with my sore cock. In a flash of lilac, the pixie freed her war picks from her sides and then flew at the belly of the spider. Her weapons struck true, opening the spider from thorax to spinnerets.

“No, don’t kill her!” I shouted but to no avail. Hot, thick viscera burst forth, dousing the pixie and me in slippery entrails, reproductive organs, venom glands, silk sacs, and blood. The spider never made a sound, she just collapsed in a heap, her legs folding. Her weight hit us squarely as I spit out fluids that I did not wish to identify.

A victory cry from the pixie pinned between me and the dead spider rent the air, vying with the rumbles of thunder shaking the ground.

“Ugh, that is…” I spat and coughed while wiggling out from under the corpse. The pixie began singing a song only her people would understand as we rolled free. Into the air she went, a brilliant purple orb of light, caterwauling as she flew in mad circles.

I sat up, rain rolling down me in sheets which, given the state that I was in, was a blessing from Danubia, for it was washing me clean.

“Ha! Did you see that, Minty Fresh?! Did you see me slay that monster?! Did you see how I single-handedly slew that fearsome beast?!” She darted down to hover in front of my face. Water coursed down my cheeks. My tongue still held the taste of spider fluids, and my prick was sore. “You may thank me at your earliest convenience.”

I swiped at my brow, removing chunks of arachnid, and glared at her. “Did you have to kill her? She was a part of nature, a living contributor to the—”

“Blah, blah, blah,” she teased. “If I had known you were a druid, I would have left you to your fate as spider food.”

I gasped. “What?! I…what…how could you even say…what kind of pixieareyou?” I asked, stunned at her audacity. I’d met quite a few pixies in my youth, and they were thick as bog flies in the Verboten woods. Most adored druids, for they worked to ensure that the wilds thrived. My father, a famed wild warden, claimed King Tawnyrose, the monarch of the western pixies, as his best friend. The king and his family were always the models of decorum and understated grace.

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