I cannot come! they heard her cry. I was born earth's daughter.

He didn’t entirely know how he’d gotten himself into this situation, but to be fair, that was frighteningly regular for him.  It was just that he knew, from the rather embarrassing discussions they’d had about trying things, that Firiel wasn’t keen on the tying-up sorts, that she was too Dalish to find any kind of restraint like that erotic, but maybe that really only applied to her and why was his throat dry?

And why was he getting cold?

Well, because he was outside, obviously, tied to a tree hammock, but he was also naked, and how, how had he not noticed that earlier?  Carefully, he wiggled his toes, just to confirm that he hadn’t even been sensible enough to wear his favorite socks, and that was how he realized he was tied at the ankles, too, with the same thick silk ropes binding his arms above him, his legs locked out at an angle just wide enough to stretch his thighs.

He turned his head and realized he’d seen this rope, or a thinner version of it, before, in ruins underground, in the Deep Roads, in the deepest shadows of the Brecilian Forest...

It was spider silk.

And he was bound, flat on his back, in a web of it.

The branches above him rustled.

Wetting his lips, Alistair stilled his racing thoughts and forced himself to make a list of the ways he could escape.

The spider’s weight would cause the web to bulge; surely he could use that to twist out of the way and buy himself some time, if not flip the whole thing on its side and fling the spider off; or, if a claw got too close to his hands he could snap it off, and free himself; and then he’d hide, but not too far away, just somewhere a little more defensible, because Firiel said she’d come back for him (hopefully with some pants), so he had to remain...

Why had he agreed to this in the first place?  It had to have been for a good reason, but he couldn’t think--

The rustling intensified, because of course, it would, and he scanned the treetop for movement so he’d at least be warned.

Warning, as it turned out, didn’t do him the least bit of good.  He gazed upwards as the bough above him transformed into a living, wriggling thing, spiders swarming onto its surface.  Not even big spiders, either--the biggest were no larger than his fist, and they were far outnumbered by the hundreds (thousands?) the size of a copper or smaller.  But they moved with one mind, or at least that’s what it felt like, utterly silent as they massed above him.

It’d almost be better if they made noise, Alistair thought desperately, some sort of chittering sound, and maybe they were, and he just couldn’t hear it, because his heart was pounding in ears, his breath coming out in pants as, one by one, the spiders began to crawl down the ropes holding his web...

He couldn’t look.  It was too much.  He had to do something--anything!--but the ropes were too tight, and this was important, and he’d agreed to it, anyway; it was his decision...

With all the will he could muster, Alistair got his breathing under control, and held it, waiting, until the first tickle of spider legs skittered over his palms, the soles of his feet--

(He tried not to giggle.  It wasn’t his fault his feet were so sensitive.)

--and pain lanced through his middle finger as one of the spiders sank its jaws in.

He yelped, but more out of shock than anything, because it didn’t last long, oh, no, because next came the liquid fire that spread from the wound down, wrapping half his hand in a snug heat, but it hardly burned him.  At first he thought whatever he’d been hit with dulled his nerves, and that’s why it didn’t hurt, but the more he mulled it over, the more alive they felt, all warm and tingly, like sticking his hand in the bath, if baths could tingle.

(Firiel had to have bought something like that, in that little shop she and Zevran had visited, if she couldn’t already make it herself.  Maker, he hated that he wanted to try it.)

It shouldn’t have felt so pleasant.

And the sensation was growing, climbing down his arms and up his legs, as more spiders began to bite, and with each one he could feel the next spider’s progress more keenly.  One of the bigger ones made its way up his calf and bit deep, penetrating his muscle, and he tried not to groan.

He should be fighting back, he knew, or at least trying, or if that failed, he should be trying to escape; but he wasn’t, even though he knew that all this was wrong.  Why wasn’t he?  His bonds felt looser, or at least he thought he might be able to shift them a little, if he could just get himself to move his muscles.

They didn’t want to obey him.

In fact, when he tried, he didn’t think they wanted to do anything at all, at least not where he’d been bitten, because he couldn’t so much as wiggle a pinky finger.  He couldn’t--

Maker, it all moved too easily, and there were spiders crawling onto his shoulders and two of them bit him right in the pits of his elbows.

Alistair craned his neck back and watched as one of his hands slid within Firiel’s expert binding, warm and soft and utterly boneless.

It wasn’t that his muscles didn’t want to obey him.  There just weren’t any of them left, much less anything for them to attach to.

Alistair opened his mouth to scream--

--and a furry-legged spider crawled inside and bit him square on the tongue.

He gasped, gagged, and possibly even gargled as it dissolved, forced to swallow as his tongue poured hot and sticky down his throat and settled somewhere in his stomach like treacle.

And the leg spiders had reached his thighs.

Not much use in anything but surrender at this point, he realized, much as the thought went against everything he wanted, everything he stood for, but what else could he do?  Even if he managed to fall from the web, the spiders would come with him, and they wouldn’t stop biting, again and again and again, and as far as ways to go, this one at least was relatively painless...

He wondered idly whether they’d get to his heart first, or his loins.

By now his fingers and toes felt so alive (and so dead within) that he didn’t have to look to see what was happening as the first of the swarm sank their jaws into his flesh once more.  It was a strange sensation, feeling yourself get sucked out through your toes, all the blood and gristle and bone that used to be you surging down, through your legs, rushing past electrified skin, till at last it left you, never to return.

Maybe, Alistair thought, as the last spider plunged into his navel, when Firiel came back for him, she’d take him with her and keep him in the cloak room, take him out from time to time and lay him flat on the bed, touch his cheek with her hand and care for him as if there were still a man inside...

Alistair bolts upright in bed with the gasp of the drowning.  His tongue brushes the edge of his teeth, but it doesn’t register, and he breathes for a solid minute before he realizes it’s supposed to be gone.  With a start, he raises his arms and checks, patting himself down to his toes, but yes--all bones are, in fact, present and accounted for, plus--

Oh, for the love of Andraste’s pet dog.

He sucks an icy breath through his teeth.  It doesn’t mean anything.

It doesn’t mean anything, and it doesn’t have to mean anything, and even if it did mean anything at all it wouldn’t matter because it’s an entirely natural reaction, one he’s had for years, long before he ever had a woman, and it has absolutely nothing to do with his dreams.

But even if it did, it wouldn’t mean anything.

Wincing, he swings his feet over the side of the bed, and is grateful for the cold stone floor that greets them.  He looks back, and finds Firiel sound asleep, utterly oblivious to him.  Which is exactly what he wants.

Weisshaupt is chilly at night, it seems, just like the rest of the Anderfels, and it’s a welcome balm to the sweat on his brow.  But of course, remembering where he is brings on a host of other worries, about tomorrow, and questions, and Firiel herself...

They’re welcome, he decides, as he dunks his head in the washbasin.  If he focuses on them, it’ll be that much easier to pretend that this never happened.

He’s gotten very good at that.

Author’s Note: the title for this piece is taken from one of the possible readings of the opening lines of Hamlet’s first monologue: