The warehouse district wasn’t nearly as filthy as Andra had expected. The roads were nicely cobbled, and were as clean as the streets around the Guild. There weren’t swarms of beggars or thieves hiding in the alleyways. There was something eerie about the sprawling one-story buildings, but Andra didn’t find them particularly threatening, just unusual. The party stood before the doors of the warehouse they’d been hired to clear. They had picked up the key from the warehouse’s manager, a man with rat-like features who seemed entirely disinterested in the fate of his warehouse and who had elected not to supervise their work, saying that he hadn’t been hired to deal with spiders.

Andra unlocked the door, then looked to her allies.

“Ready?”

Kaylen nodded. “Should be an easy job. The perfect debut, to show off how amazing we are.”

“At the very least, I can’t imagine how we could screw it up,” Riven added.

Fiona made an uncertain noise. She had already drawn her sword and was holding it before her protectively. Curiously, she had chosen to wear chain mail, despite the fact that it would do little against dog-sized spiders who were most likely to attack the legs.

Slowly, carefully, Andra pushed open the door and was greeted by a musty, damp smell.

Shouting like she was facing down an army, Kaylen drew her flanged mace and charged through the door. Her howl stopped a moment after she was inside. The other three shared a confused glance, and followed her in.

Inside, the warehouse was lit from a row of windows high up on the wall. The shelves and stacks of crates, all labeled with letters and numbers, cast a web of shadows where it seemed anything could be hiding. The warehouse manager seemed to have a policy of “put it wherever it fits,” and instead of the easily navigable rows Andra had expected, the entire warehouse was laid out like a maze.

Kaylen was standing there, looking confused. “There aren’t any spiders here.”

“Yeah, they aren’t going to come charging out as soon as we walk in,” Riven explained. “They’re ordinary animals, not mindless killing machines.”

Andra laughed nervously. “Yeah, Kaylen. Geez, you really are a fool.” She, too, had expected the spiders to come pouring out.

Together, the group rounded a corner and found themselves in a long row of shelves with many branching paths.

“There.” Fiona pointed at a shelf. Before Andra could make out what Fiona was pointing at in the shelf’s shadow, she had taken a few running steps forward and stabbed her sword into it. When she pulled her sword back, something came tumbling down from the shelf, a huge spider, nearly the size of a dog.

There was a flash of light somewhere behind her. Andra spun and saw Riven firing a bolt of magical energy from her hand, hitting another spider approaching from behind. Kaylen was swinging her mace at another. More spiders were crawling off the shelves and out of crates all around them.

Andra looked back down at the spider Fiona had killed. It was laying on its back, a leg still twitching. Green-colored blood seeped from its wound. In that moment, Andra decided that she couldn’t lower herself to fight such disgusting creatures. That was fine, she determined; after all, wasn’t that why she had recruited these idiots? It was better to just let them take care of this mess while she supervised. And so her dagger stayed in its sheath.

Things got a little hectic. A spider came very near to leaping on Riven in between her incantations, but Kaylen saved her, crushing the monster in midair with her mace. Another spider came dangerously close to Andra, and she was unfortunately forced to dirty her boot by kicking it to Fiona, who sliced it in half.

Eventually, however, the team came through unharmed, and the spiders all lay dead. Andra estimated that they must have killed at least a dozen. She nodded with satisfaction.

“Alright, I’d say we did pretty good.”

Kaylen shot her an annoyed glare. “You mean the three of us did pretty good. You just stood there.”

“Exactly! You all did such a good job that I didn’t even need to step in. Small note, you did let one of them get a little close to me, Fiona, but otherwise great job.”

Fiona winced. “Oh, uh, sorry about that.”

“Don’t apologize to her!” Kaylen said sharply.

Riven, who until this point had been leaning against a shelf, trying to catch her breath, spoke up. “I think I’m almost out of magic.”

“In that case, let’s hope there aren’t many more. Lead the way, Fiona,” Andra said.

“Okay,” Fiona replied, looking down the pathway ahead of them, with its many intersections. “Um, which way should I go?”

Andra sighed in exasperation and pushed her aside. She led the party a short way down the row and around another corner, where they discovered a large, open area. It looked as if crates and shelves had been pushed aside to create this area. In the center of it, paper and packing material had been piled up to form a nest. And on that nest, there was an enormous spider, larger than a human, its back turned to the party.

Before anyone could react, the creature pushed itself up on its legs and spun to face the party. To the shock of everyone, it became clear in the dim light that it was not simply a spider. Rather it was a woman, or the head, arms, and upper torso of a woman attached to the body of a spider. The woman had long black hair and curves like a model, and she wore a black leather bra. Her eyes were bright red, and when she snarled she revealed sharply pointed teeth.

“An arachne,” Riven whispered, her voice full of wonder. “An actual demon.”

She waved to the creature and started to call out when Kaylen shouted “Die, demon!” and charged forward, brandishing her mace.

The arachne swung a leg, sending Kaylen flying into a pile of crates. The demon looked down at the rest of the party, her face full of fury, then pointed at Fiona and spoke an incantation. Riven leapt in front of Fiona just as a bolt of pink-colored magic shot from the arachne’s finger and hit Riven in the chest.

For a moment, everything seemed to freeze as the possible results of this spell ran through Andra’s mind. Riven wasn’t being blasted away, nor did she crumple to the ground, dead instantly. In fact, the spell didn’t appear to have any effect at all. Had the arachne messed it up?

When the moment passed, Riven began trotting forward. It wasn’t like Kaylen’s mad charge, more of an excited approach. When she reached the arachne she knelt before it.

“Beautiful and powerful mistress, please grant my life purpose by instructing me!”

Fiona stared at Riven, her face full of shock. “It’s a charm spell. She took a charm spell for me.”

The arachne spoke in a language Andra couldn’t understand.

“Yes. Thank you. At once,” Riven replied, bowing her head with each word. She stood and turned to face Andra and Fiona. Her eyes had a dreamy look in them, and there was a blissful smile on her face.

“Sorry, guys, it looks like I’m working for her now.” She gestured with a thumb, indicating the demon behind her. “And she wants the two of you dead, so I’m afraid that’s going to have to happen.”

Andra frantically turned to Fiona. “Quick! Attack!” she shouted.

“Right!” Fiona replied, but she didn’t move. “Uh, which one?”

Before Andra could respond, Riven raised her hand and whispered an incantation. A sigil appeared in the air before her hand and from that emerged a fireball. Andra leapt aside, but Fiona was too slow and the fireball hit her in the chest, exploding with a deafening crash. She flew backwards, crashing into the shelf behind her, which collapsed on top of her.

Andra drew her dagger and dashed forward, staying low in hopes of making herself a smaller target for Riven’s fireballs. Riven already had her hand pointed at Andra and was saying another incantation. Andra braced herself, ready for another explosion.

But no fireball came.

Riven looked up at the arachne, eyes filled with terror. “Mistress, I am so sorry, but it seems that in my eagerness to serve you I have depleted my--”

Her groveling cut off as Andra plunged her dagger into the arachne’s spider body. Andra, being the genius that she was, had had the foresight to study anatomy before joining the Guild. She knew that an arachne had two hearts, but that both were needed to survive. Stab one of them and the creature was dead.

She withdrew her dagger and took a few steps back as the creature collapsed. For a moment, the arachne held up her head and right arm, as if trying to reach for something, but then the life left those, too, and they went limp.

Riven blinked and frowned, looking first at the arachne and then at Andra. “Hey, why’d you kill her?”

“She was controlling you,” Andra explained. “But it’s okay. I saved us all.”

Riven sighed blissfully. “She was. Isn’t it wonderful? I was in heaven. Ah, but it ended so fast.”

“Wait, what?” Andra asked flatly. She recalled Riven leaping in front of the spell. Was that something other than a selfless act to protect a teammate? “Are you saying that you wanted her to control you?”

“I love charm spells. There’s nothing more wonderful than the feeling of someone twisting my mind, molding it into whatever shape they want.” Riven sighed again, quivering slightly. “That was a simple one, just designed to make the target loyal, but sometimes the basics are the best.”

She looked around, blinking. “Wait, I shot a fireball, didn’t I? We should get out of here.”

Andra followed Riven’s gaze and saw that there was indeed a rapidly-growing fire engulfing the area where the fireball had exploded. The collapsed shelf started to move unexpectedly, and suddenly surged upward, debris showering around a surprisingly-unharmed Fiona.

“Fiona, grab the demon,” Andra ordered. “Alchemists will pay a ton for its parts.”

Fiona looked around, quickly noticing the spreading flames around her. Frightened, she half-limped, half-ran to Andra and Riven.

“Wait, wait, but who’s going to carry Kaylen?” she asked

Andra sighed. That was right, Kaylen was still lying unconscious by the crates. “Fine, carry her. Raven, grab a box or something. If this stuff’s all going to burn anyway we might as well take some of it.”

Andra returned to the corpse of the demon while the others carried out their tasks. She selected a leg, and lifting it with one arm, she chopped it off with her dagger. Maybe it’d be worth something. Together the group quickly made their way back through the maze of shelves and out of the rapidly-heating building.

Once they were outside and clear of the building, Kaylen stirred in Fiona’s arms and moaned quietly. “What happened?”

“We fought a demon. You got knocked out,” Fiona explained. 

“Yeah, why did you just charge at her instead of using your…divine powers or whatever it is that being a priestess gives you?” Andra asked.

Kaylen looked around, still regaining her consciousness. “I was saving my power,” she explained.

Andra was unable to keep the frustration out of her voice. “Saving it? Saving it for what? We were fighting a demon! That’s the situation you should be saving your power for!”

“A-anyway, at least we were able to defeat her,” Fiona said, looking at Riven with eyes full of gratitude. “She tried to cast a charm spell on me, but Riven protected me.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Riven added, grinning. “I’m pretty much a hero.”

“Liar!” shouted Andra, stamping her foot in frustration. “You just wanted to be hit with that spell because you’re a pervert with a mind control kink.”

She looked Riven up and down. Something was missing. “Wait, I told you to grab a box.”

Riven shrugged. “They all looked really heavy, and I’m exhausted. Otherwise I would have just used a spell to put out the fire.”

As one, the group looked back up at the warehouse. The flames were already visible through the windows.

“Wait, I’m confused,” said Kaylen as Fiona set her down and helped steady her on her feet. “Are you saying Riven only joined the Guild in hopes of being hit with charm spells and other types of mind control and that’s why she has a reputation for being a traitor?”

“You don’t understand,” Riven replied passionately. “Charm spells are super illegal, even more illegal than transformation spells. No one will use them, even on a willing participant, because they don’t want to risk execution. So the only way to get hit with one is to work as an adventurer and hope you run into a demon or witch or something who uses them.”

“But…why do you even want that?” asked Kaylen.

“Because it’s amazing.” Riven was nearly shouting now. “Having someone take such complete and utter control over you. Having your very mind become hers to play with. Thinking only what she wants you to think, knowing only what she wants you to know. It’s absolute ecstasy!”

She moaned with excitement.

Andra rolled her eyes. At the very least, she now knew what led to Riven constantly betraying her teams. As long as she was kept far away from charm spells she could be kept under control.

“I think the more important question is why a demon would be in the city,” Andra said.

Riven suddenly turned serious. “Yeah, that is weird. I mean, demons show up in human countries all the time, but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of one being found in the capital. I wonder if she was a spy.”

Kaylen thoughtfully touched a finger to her lips. “Those are all good questions. And another mystery is those other spiders. I mean, were they her babies or what?”

Riven gaped at Kaylen. “What? No, they weren’t her babies. They’re just regular animals. She probably just knew how to command them.”

Suddenly Fiona groaned loudly. “Oh no, I left my sword inside!”

At that moment, part of the warehouse’s roof collapsed.