~Logic, unchecked by morals, loses all notion of empathy.~
The spiders struggled a little with their burden, his paralyzed limbs seeing fit to snag on every rock and vine as they pulled him around the first bend, shutting out the faint pre-dawn light and concealing the makeshift campfire. It was customary for them to simply bleed out their victims and leave it at that, but this being had stumbled upon their home and murdered four of their kin. Their queen would deal with him. She always liked it when they brought back feisty toys and this one was nothing if not lively. She inhabited the center of the hive, a massive being twenty times larger than her male drones sitting on a web from whence all the mountain's tunnels branched outward. Unlike the others, she had a taste for mammalian blood and relished seeing them struggle in her webbing. The drone spiders could not have known they had doomed themselves by not finishing the white drow back at the cave entrance.
A twitch from the load!
The three arachnids pulling the elf stopped suddenly, the other three who were following along did the same. The thing had moved, they’d all either seen or felt it. It was a convulsive motion, as if some inner pain they could not place tormented him. It was inconceivable. None of their victims moved for hours after a proper stinging, and certainly never mere seconds afterward. Yet, impossible as it was, the cloaked creature rose slowly to his feet from his hands and knees. His face was bloodied by the cave floor’s texture and the hole in his side was dripping profusely, but he seemed somehow unconcerned by these mundane details. The spiders were unsure what to do and began scurrying around this disturbing development, an odd arachnid ballet to the turn of events. They failed to realize they now faced a completely different and far more lethal threat.
Ah, the susceptibility of mortal beings, Arawn thought, looking at his hands and flexing fingers he had long been unable to control. The fool would have had us die a spider’s meal.
He was privy to all that had passed in Hikari’s reign. When the spiders had dragged their body beyond the firelight, Arawn had contested Hikari’s command and taken over with absurd ease, convulsing in the short struggle for power. Once on top, the vampire’s undead machinations kicked in, making the Adraeni venom useless and permitting him to stand. However, the wear and tear on his body was considerable, particularly the gash in his side. Unlike the mortal response of desiring rest to recover, Arawn always became ravenous when injured, knowing fresh blood would yield a speedy recovery. The taste of arachnids was not generally to his liking, but he wouldn’t be picky. Seeing that the creatures’ surprise would soon be replaced with aggression as they continued to scurry around him, Arawn struck first.
With inhuman quickness, he leapt at the eight-legged monster in front of him and grabbed its dual sets of legs, rolling with the inertia and standing to hold it up like a puppet from eight strings before its fellows. Each hand clasped four struggling limbs. Pulling them separate with a loud crack, they came off the main body and oozed a dark liquid from the stumps. Arawn dropped all but one, which he raised to his lips and drank deeply from. The thick blood sent bursts of energy all through the undead being, rejuvenating him. He could feel Hikari’s injuries begin to heal with the first sips. The remaining spiders wouldn’t stand for this. One jumped to stab him in the chest, but Arawn threw the pointed leg in his hand like a javelin that impaled the unfortunate beast and propelled it far from the vampire.
Too easy.
With the pressing darkness all around him, Arawn vanished from sight like a wisp of smoke blown away in a strong breeze. The four spiders left were at al loss; their prey had simply disappeared. It seemed impossibilities were its specialty. Invisible to the naked eye, Arawn’s hands moved ever so slowly to the dagger at his waist. Its twin had been dropped when Hikari was paralyzed. With small exploratory steps that clicked resoundingly, the spiders approached where the threat had been, forelimbs held high in expectation. Dagger in hand, Arawn stabbed the closest one in the center of its eye cluster, spraying foul-smelling liquid in every direction. The other three bounded at him simultaneously, but managed only to kill among themselves as they released venom wildly in the air and crashed into each other while the vampire ducked with his jab. One spider emerged alive from the flurry of scratching limbs and poison that tangled itself on the ground.
“You’ll do nicely,” Arawn hissed hungrily.
He dropped his dagger and simply reached out to grab its small, round body. Panicked, it stabbed the air at his approaching hand. The wounds that struck and should have paralyzed him were ineffective, as Arawn soon had it tightly clasped in one hand. Without a moment’s pause, he lifted it from the ground and bit down hard on what could be construed as its face, crunching through its exterior with elongated fangs. It stopped moving. All was silent in the tunnel, no more clicking. Tearing into the corpse, the vampire opened a hole in its anterior body and lapped at the liquid that oozed out, starved. His blood rushed with furvor, eager to be fed more. The smaller cuts and scratches on his white skin were healing themselves and vanishing in moments, and even the wound that had incapacitated Hikari was no longer bleeding badly.
It may taste dreadful, but it gets the job done.