Arc IIII- Chapter 9: Old Woman

The woman did not move closer.

She did not need to.

The tunnels themselves seemed to lean toward her, shadows pooling at her feet as if gravity had decided to favor her alone. The bioluminescent fungus dimmed not extinguished, just… respectful. Like eyes lowering.

Vris’s claws flexed once, slow and controlled.

“You’re not Ravha,” he said.

The words were not a question.

The woman chuckled softly, a sound like dry leaves brushing stone. “No, no. Ravha dreams loud. All legs and hunger. Useful, that one. But not me.”

She peered at him from beneath her hood, head cocked. “You followed the pull anyway.”

Vris’s shadow-red eyes narrowed. “I don’t follow things I don’t understand.”

“Mm.” She smiled wider. “That’s new.”

The ring hummed faintly, shadow still clinging to him, though he had not dismissed it. Instinct screamed that invisibility here was… impolite. Like lying in someone else’s house.

“State your purpose,” Vris said.

The woman’s smile faltered not offended, but intrigued.

“Purpose,” she repeated, tasting the word. “Still clinging to tidy things. You were always like that.”

That did it.

Vris stepped forward, shadow rippling across his runes like stirred ink. The stone beneath his feet creaked not cracking, but listening.

He gripped Ruin though keeping the blade in its sheath he felt the hunger it held ache in his core.

“I don’t know you,” he growled. “And I don’t like being watched in my sleep.”

The woman’s eyes softened.

“Oh, love,” she said gently. “I watched you die.”

Silence fell hard enough to bruise.

Vris did not flinch. Did not gasp. But something old and buried shifted in his chest, like a bone remembering the shape of a wound.

“…You’d best choose your next words carefully,” he said.

She nodded, once. Respectful.

“Fair,” she allowed. “Then let’s start proper.”

She reached up and pulled back her hood.

Not fully.

Never fully.

What showed beneath was not a face so much as the suggestion of one creases where time had folded itself too many times, eyes impossibly deep, as if shadow itself had learned how to look back.

“You may call me Old Woman,” she said.

Vris exhaled slowly through his nose.

Of course.

Names were chains. He knew that now. He had learned it the hard way.

“And why,” he asked, “is an Old Woman crawling through the deeps instead of staying in whatever nightmare hole that spawned her?”

She laughed outright at that, delighted.

“Oh, I like you better like this,” she said. “So much bite.”

Her gaze drifted past him, deeper into the tunnels, where the mountain groaned faintly under its own weight. “You’re walking places that still remember when the world was soft. When shadow and stone hadn’t decided what they were yet.”

Her eyes snapped back to him.

“And things are waking.”

Vris felt it then not fear, but pressure. Like the Deeps themselves were pressing an ear to the conversation.

“Ravha dreams,” the Old Woman continued. “The spider always does when something older than hunger shifts. She felt it before you did.”

“I felt it,” Vris said flatly.

“Oh, I know.” She smiled again. “You followed instead of fleeing. That’s why I came myself.”

She took one step closer.

The shadows surged eagerly, but she did not command them. They obeyed her because they remembered her.

“You are becoming a hinge,” she said softly. “Between what was allowed to sleep and what must now choose whether to wake angry.”

Vris bared his teeth not in threat, but in grim understanding.

“And you’re here to tell me which door not to open.”

The Old Woman’s smile turned thin.

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“No,” she said. “I’m here to make sure you understand that not opening it is also a choice.”

The stone around them creaked again.

Somewhere deep below, something shifted in its rest.

Vris straightened, shoulders squaring beneath crawling runes.

“Then speak,” he said. “Before whatever’s listening decides for us.”

The Old Woman’s eyes gleamed.

“Oh,” she whispered. “It already has.”

And far above, in a camp without fire, shadows lengthened just a little too far from their owners.

The Old Woman watched him for a long moment after the stone’s last breath shuddered through the tunnel.

Then she sighed.

“Oh, don’t make that face,” she said lightly. “You’ve already guessed the worst parts.”

Vris didn’t move. The living carapace along his shoulders had thickened without his conscious command, blackstone patterns sliding like slow tectonic plates beneath ash-gray skin.

“Hollowborn,” he said. “You didn’t warn me away from them.”

Her smile sharpened.

“Why would I?” she replied. “They’re mine.”

The word mine did not echo.

It settled.

The Deeps responded to it the way flesh responds to a familiar ache.

Vris’s eyes narrowed. “Owned?”

“Belonged,” she corrected. “There’s a difference. I didn’t make them. I didn’t raise them. I simply… allowed them to keep existing when other things were culled.”

She leaned on a gnarled staff that had not been there a moment ago. It looked like old rootwood, but it pressed into stone as though the mountain were soil.

“They’re failed shadows,” she went on conversationally. “Things that learned to multiply before they learned to end. Nasty habit.”

Vris’s lip curled faintly. “Then why let them persist?”

Her eyes gleamed.

“Because I wanted to see what would happen when something interesting ran into them.”

She looked him over really looked. Crimson eyes. Crawling blackstone runes. A goblin who stood like a king and listened like a historian.

“If you reap them,” she said softly, “By chance sow their ending into something that benefits the Red Maw…”

Her smile widened.

“…I would find that outcome delightful.”

Vris exhaled slowly. “There’s a catch.”

“Oh, always.”

She raised one finger.

“The Hollowborn Queen.”

“She is not like the others,” the Old Woman continued. “She is vast. Old. Monstrous in the way mountains are monstrous. Her body is riddled with egg-sacs dozens, perhaps hundreds. Kill her poorly, and you will drown in what she leaves behind.”

Vris’s grip tightened on Heartfang.

“And her poison?” he asked.

The Old Woman’s smile thinned.

Not vanished.

Not softened.

Focused.

“Ah,” she said. “There it is.”

She tapped the rootwood staff once against the stone.

The Deeps flinched.

“Her poison is not a courtesy venom,” she went on. “Not something meant to paralyze prey so it can be eaten neatly. It is old shadow, condensed and taught how to hate.”

Vris did not interrupt.

“It will rot your blood as it moves,” she continued calmly. “It will convince your flesh that dying is the kinder option. Even your little tricks.” her gaze flicked briefly to the crawling blackstone patterns along his shoulders, “Won’t save you if you take too much of it.”

She leaned closer, voice dropping.

“One good dose could fell you before your heart has time to be brave.”

Silence stretched again.

Vris nodded once. Acknowledged the danger the way a commander acknowledges siege engines: not with fear, but with recalculation.

“I won’t meet her blade to blade,” he said. “Or fang to fang.”

The Old Woman’s eyes gleamed.

“Oh, I should hope not. You’d last minutes.”

He bared his teeth not offended. Amused.

“I don’t intend to fight her,” he said. “I intend to end her.”

That earned him a quiet, approving hum.

“Good,” she murmured. “Now about your friends of stone and oath.”

Vris’s gaze sharpened immediately.

“The Ethrani have remained loyal,” he said. “They’ve bled alongside us. They stand with the Red Maw.”

The Old Woman sighed, long and theatrical, and shook her head.

“Oh, love. You still think loyalty and alignment are the same thing.”

She circled him slowly as she spoke, staff dragging faint lines in the stone that faded almost as soon as they appeared.

“They are loyal to the outcome you’re creating,” she said. “Stability. Trade. A frontier pacified by your teeth instead of theirs.”

She stopped in front of him.

“They are aligned with your success,” she said softly.

“And they benefit greatly from your death.”

The words were gentle.

That made them worse.

Vris’s jaw tightened. “Explain.”

“They will arm you,” she said. “Advise you. March with you. Sing your name if you fall.”

Her eyes met his.

“But understand this: they do not expect you to survive the Hollowborn Queen.”

The Deeps seemed to lean in again.

“If you die,” she continued, “the Ethrani inherit a stabilized dominion ruled by customs you forged and fear you trained. If you live…”

She smiled.

“…then you become an uncontrollable variable with a growing myth and a habit of rewriting old balances.”

Vris was quiet for a long moment.

Then he said, evenly, “And you?”

The Old Woman tilted her head. “Me?”

“What do you gain if I live?”

Her smile returned in full wide, delighted, dangerous.

“Oh,” she said. “Problems.”

She stepped back, already beginning to blur at the edges.

“And those,” she added fondly, “Are my favorite kind of outcome.”

Her voice lingered as she faded into the Deeps.

“Remember, boy...

They expect you to die.

Plan accordingly.”

The shadows relaxed.

The stone exhaled.

Vris stood alone once more, Heartfang steady at his side, Ruin whispering hunger from its sheath, blackstone runes crawling with slow intent.

Above him, the Red Maw waited.

Ahead of him, the Hollow Queen dreamed vast, gravid, venomous.

And for the first time, Vris allowed himself a thin, feral smile.

“Then let’s disappoint them.”