The Art of Princess Maintenance Ch. 03

Fair warning: This chapter is squicky as hell. Don't read it if you're easily skeeved out by spiders, gnomes, feet, (tree)stumps, pregnancy, hugs, giant spiders, forests, caves, houses, baby spiders, fairies, "mud", princesses, mules, butt stuff, or references to Charlotte's Web.

Also, don't read it if the preceding list titillated you, you twisted freak.

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I'd been woken up that morning by a whuff of air from the nostrils of Puppy the mule, which had been sufficient to shove me off of my branch and squarely into a pile of mud (shut up shut up shut up it was mud). He'd nosed me out of it helpfully, and it was only after I'd taken a reluctant bath in a pool of stumpwater (don't drink water from a stump, children) that I realized that this was his Lassie act, and the princess was missing.

I sighed, staring at the laconic mule. "I suppose it's too much to hope she's just stuck down a well."

He blinked at me.

"Barn on fire?"

He lazily twitched one ear, then lowered his head to pluck up a mouthful of the local plant life and began to chew contentedly.

"Fuck." I fluttered up out of the stump and waited for the surface of the small pool to still. Concentrating briefly, I cast a simple scry, on the assumption that she couldn't have made it far yet. The picture firmed up at about the same time an adult female drider was putting the finishing touches on a cocoon around the princess, which means the first thing I saw was gross, disgusting spider ass squirting moist silk thread all over the perky tits of my charge. Ugh.

Drider are sort of distantly related to Winter fae like me, but when I say distant, I mean on the order of millenia. Supposedly one of the high ladies of the Winter Court got busy with one of the old world spider gods at some point (don't judge) and bam, new monster race.

Come to think of it, that's more or less how a lot of the races I'm familiar with came into being. Huh.

Anyway, drider are matriarchal. Extremely so. I don't think there's a way, really, to tell a male drider apart from a regular gross, disgusting spider. They're just oh-god-stomp-on-it-oh-shit-it-ran-under-the-couch sized. Only the females look like giant purple humans with gigantic, bloated spider bodies where their legs should be. And only the females are sensitive to magic. Like the one in my scrying pool, which had turned to face my point of view, and then skittered up close to it so fast I almost peed.

She peered back up through the surface of my spell for a second. Then she yelled "Deuces!", made a double peace sign and flashed a duck face. I had just enough time to say "Uh..." before she countered my spell and the scene vanished

"Shit."

Puppy the mule made no comment. He just continued chewing, not pausing even as he lifted his tail to add some more mud to the forest floor.

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The drider's cave hadn't been far, and it had been kind enough to drop its wards, if it had any (there aren't too many things a giant spider needs to be scared of, even in this forest). It still took us a half hour to get there, because while Puppy the mule seemed determined to follow me to the princess, he also seemed determined to do it at the pace of a doddering old man.

The spider-queen was perched above the entrance to its cave, playing cat's cradle with some glistening silk. I was sitting between Puppy's long ears, where we'd negotiated things such that I could guide him with a gentle touch to one ear or the other, followed by three minutes of screaming at him as loudly as I could.

It looked up when it heard the clop clop of our approach. "Sup, cuz. Nice ride."

It covered the twenty yards between us in a with a simple leap, landing better than a ton of spider and woman right next to us with barely a whisper. I won't say I didn't flinch, but Puppy didn't even twitch an ear. The drider did something complicated with the web in its hands, and then strung it up in the tree branched above Puppy's head. I fluttered up to look. It was a web with the words 'SOME PIG' spelled out in careful, shimmering threads.

"It would work better if he actually was a pig." I said.

"I think it's funnier this way. So what's up with the uninvited eyeball spell? Blondie yours?"

"Godmother duty."

"Oh, a princess. That's a bitch. Well, come on in."

Said the spider to the small thing with wings.

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The cave was actually pretty nice, all things considered. Bunch of non-drider type furniture, presumably for non-drider type guests. All of which was made with spidersilk, hardened by some sort of shellac I don't want to spend too much time thinking about.

"She's back here. Still asleep, I gave her a pretty big dose."

"She had a pretty late night, too. Thanks for not being a bitch about this."

"Meh, I almost didn't take her in the first place. I got a pretty good set of regulars."

"Uh, regulars?"

"Mhmm. I'll show you."

She led me to a connected cavern, much larger than her actual living quarters. This was pretty much just pure cave, stalagmites, stalactites, damp dripping sounds, the whole bit. A few meters above our heads, suspended among some of the rocky teeth growing from the ceiling were perhaps two dozen cocoons. All of them except the princess were finished, hiding their occupants completely. Her head was still uncovered, the spider having apparently paused in her work when she detected my spell, and her feet stuck out the other end of the webbing. She was hanging in the same position I'd scryed in the stumpwater.

"It is good you showed up when you did, though. I got a pretty full load right now, and she's kinda hot." said the drider, rubbing the area where her lower belly shifted into the smooth chitin of her spider half. I shuddered as she turned away from me.

She skittered up the wall to the princess, detached her, and brought her back down to where I was hovering above the cavern floor. She laid the girl down carefully. "I'll help you load her onto the mule in a bit. You're gonna want to let the web cure for a day or so, if we try to get her out now it will take some of her clothes and skin with it."

"Fair enough. So, uh," I said, gesturing to the ceiling, "regulars?"

"Yup." She got an evil grin on her face. "Wanna watch me with one? It kinda gets me off when someone watches."

Now, you probably don't know this, due to my fair and balanced narration, but spiders skeeve me the fuck out. Nothing needs that many legs, and this bitch was fucking big. Like, okay, if you took her from the waist up, right, the human-looking part? If she had human legs to match that she'd be eight fucking feet tall. Well, with her spider body, she's twelve, easy.

That said, she was pretty cool about things, vis-a-vis Fairy Godmother duties, and I'm not sure I would have been able to take her without using up my boon, if she'd decided to be a bitch. Also, you know, I kinda feel like if I can help a sista get her rocks off, it's kinda my moral duty to do so.

"Fuck it, why not."

She lit up with a terrifying, bladder-loosening smile. "Great! Hang out one second, I gotta figure out which one has been here longest, to be fair."

She made a standing leap straight up into the air. She caught a stalactite with one of her human hands and allowed her grip and the momentum of her jump to pivot her spider-body around to put her feet to the ceiling. There were apparently no grip issues, because she started skittering around up there upside down just as fast as she had been on the ground. She began communing with each of the cocoons, some of which moved slightly at her touch, a couple of which struggled fairly violently. Whatever was in them was alive, but I have no idea how they were getting air.

She finally settled next to one that was squirming pretty energetically and plucked it free of its moorings. Her legs released their grip on the roof of the cave and she fell, spinning, to lightly land on her feet a few yards away from us. She walked with the cocoon over to two large stalagmites (didn't think I knew which was which, did you?) sticking up out of the floor. With efficiency borne of centuries of practice, she suspended the cocoon between upright them, suspended a couple of feet above the floor. The tall stone spikes wore webbing residue that indicated she'd used them for this purpose many, many times before.

She stepped in front of the cocoon and built a tiny web between two much smaller stone columns, a few feet away. "Here you go, cuz, best seat in the house."

I obligingly flew to settle in the little hammock she'd made for me, which was not at all sticky. It was actually kinda pimp, she'd left a cutout for my wings, so I could kick back, Caesar style. She'd moved back behind the cocoon, which was roughly the size and shape of your average humanoid. Even suspended as it was, she towered over it. She lowered her head to it and inhaled, closing her eyes as she ran her hands over its contours in a proprietary fashion. She smiled at me over the what I assumed was the shoulder of her victim, and said, "Time to get the party started."

She moved her face level with the lump of silk I assume was the head of the cocoon's occupant. She began murmuring, and the figure began to struggle again. She ran her hands over its curves again, which, once I really paid attention, were pretty obviously those of a female. Or at least obviously those of something with half-decent tits. One of her hands paused over the crotch, and I noticed that while they were joined together at the bottom, the victim's thighs were individually bound, allowing the spider-woman to slip her hand between them.

The drider took its other hand and delicately ran a wickedly sharp fingernail up the centerline of her victim's face, neatly splitting the web cocooning it. The features thus revealed were clearly those of a dryad, a wood sprite bound to a particular tree. The skin was nut-brown and patterned with lines like wood rings, and the hair was a pageboy cap of green hair cut into layered, fluttering leaves. The drider pulled back enough of the concealing web to free the dryad's head, which leaned back and moaned in something that did not sound at all like distress.

"This little lovely is named Holly. She's part of a grove that enjoys the protection my little boys provide from tree pests. Aren't you, Holly?"

Holly didn't seem capable of rational response at the moment. A little dribble of drool escaped the corner of her open mouth.

"Holly's grove likes my little boys so much that they take turns volunteering to bring a new batch home every year. And this year is Holly's turn, isn't it, sweetling."

Holly didn't reply, but she did immediately begin sucking on the finger the drider brushed across her plump lips.

"I don't think she'd admit it to the others, but Holly quite likes my venom." The drider moves her other hand across the part of the cocoon covering Holly's flat belly. "I also think she likes carrying my little boys."

She pressed on the dryad's stomach, and in addition to moaning a little more loudly, Holly's hips begin to thrust as best they could within the confines of the tight webbing.

"This isn't her first time here. In fact, I wish I'd kept track, because I think Holly may be volunteering a little more often than the others."

The spider's human hand moves from the dryad's belly, slipping over her hip and behind her, a single long finger reappearing as it slides between the wood sprite's cocooned thighs from behind. The finger curls up to lay snugly atop the tree spirit's concealed snatch. I caught myself breathing fast as I watches the drider's sharp fingernail begin to cut open a slit, drawing down and back, unzipping the web to expose the mossy thatch of the dryad's pussy.

Holly, for her part, had turned her face up to her captor, and was currently on the receiving end of a very invasive kiss. The drider's human arms moved away from her prey, stretching out to either side to grasp the very tips of the stalagmites she'd strung the cocoon in between. She hauled herself up, never breaking the kiss, until all of her spider legs were braced on the stone to either side of her captive. From my viewpoint she framed the framing the small sprite like a giant arachnid shadow.

Her enormous abdomen drew up, and from the end, where you might expect a wasp to keep its stinger, a glistening, translucent phallus began to extrude, dripping lewdly as more of its length pulsed into view. The tip curled up and disappeared behind the dryad, still trapped in an endless kiss with her predator, only to reappear as it insinuated itself between her thighs. It paused a moment just below the furry mound of her pussy, barely brushing her lower lips. Holly's hips began to jerk with renewed fervor, and with no further ceremony the invader began to slip inside, seeking the womb of the helpless 'victim'.

I could hear Holly's vocalizations, despite the fact that her lips were still trapped beneath the hungry mouth of the drider. Somewhere deep in her sex, the tip of the spider's ovipositor found the opening of the sprite's womb, and insinuated itself inside, creating a clean, tight seal between the two creatures.

The spider woman finally broke off the kiss, leaving the dryad's head to hang limply, moaning at the violation. The drider turned her face to the ceiling, closed her eyes, and concentrated on her own sensations as I watched the first bundle pulse its way up the semi-transparent sheath of her egg-laying organ. The width of the package bumped up against the narrower confines of the dryad's pussy, and spider and sprite both gasped as it began to force its way inside, followed closely by many, many more.

For the next few minutes, the only steady movement were the bulges of egg sacs being pumped into the helpless wood sprite. Occasionally she or her captor would moan or grunt as the impregnation proceeded. Eventually the burgeoning swell caused by the dense crowding in her womb forced the slit in the cocoon wider, until her slowly growing belly pushed its way free, hanging gravid before her.

I'd long given up on any pretense of dignity, and I was far too turned on by the obscene violation for a little thing like the inherent repulsiveness of the process to bother me anymore. I lay in my little hammock, skirt drawn up over my fat hips, flicking the bean for all I was worth. The dryad's formerly taut stomach approached goblin-cum levels of distortion as she was filled to bursting with tens of thousands of the drider's offspring.

Finally, finally, the spider released a gusting sigh, and her slick phallus slipped out of her prey, falling to the cavern floor with a wet slap, looking as spent as the overfilled, groaning wood-sprite. She climbed down from her perch behind the pillars and moved around them to come sit on the rough stone beside me. Looking down at me, she watched me play with myself until I began to shudder with my own release. Then she grinned and said, "So, was it good for you?"

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True to her word, she carried the princess out to where Puppy was chilling under his web, which he was oddly reluctant to move out from underneath. Eventually Gertrude (look, not everything magical has to have a name with thirty vowels and an apostrophe) pulled down the web and spit on it, running her human hands and the tips of her spider forelegs along its delicate lines while Puppy looked on with mulish consternation. After a few moments of this, she took the glistening result of her work and gently draped it around his neck. So now Puppy had a fancy, sparkly bib with 'SOME PIG' spelled out on it, and he wore a beatific expression as we draped the cocooned form of the princess across his back.

"It's not fireproof or anything, but he can't hurt it by getting it wet, now. I can always make him another one." said Gertrude.

"I'm pretty sure all three of us will be eaten by something long before it becomes an issue. How long is the princess gonna be knocked out like that?"

"You should have time to get her out of the web first. Another day at least. She'll be suuuper horny when she wakes up, but that wears off in another few hours."

I sigh. "If you knew anything at all about her you would understand just how terrifying that is."

"Nobody says you have to let her out of the web. I usually don't until they're so full of eggs they can barely walk."

This statement was underscored by a small gaggle of newly arrived dryads helping their recently impregnated sister out of the cave, and into the sunlight. This process was not sped by the fact that Holly wasn't all that interested in walking anywhere, but was extremely interested in making out with anything she could reach.

Gertrude waved to them and shouted, "Hey, Juniper! Is it your turn next season? I know where you like it!"

Most of the tree sprites laughed uproariously at this, and one of them let go of the pregnant dryad long enough to make a rude gesture to the spider queen. She paid for it when Holly used her free arm to make a grab for Juniper's crotch.

Gertrude laughed and turned back to me. "She didn't want to do her bit for the grove a few seasons ago, so her sisters tied her up and brought her to me themselves. Let's just say I don't actually have to use a pussy for what I do, I just need a warm hole. Gave them a pretty big clutch that year, too. Rumor is that ever since then Juniper's developed a bit of a kink for, uh, non-traditional sex."

"Gertrude, no offense, but I don't think it gets much more non-traditional than you."

"Whatever, tubby. You got your rocks off too."

I grinned up at the purple bitch. "You know, for a gross, disgusting spider, you're a pretty cool slut."

"Likewise, lardass. If you survive your princess, swing back by sometime."

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Puppy the mule made his plodding way down the trail I picked, the princess gently bobbing where Gertrude laid her over his back. Unfortunately the trail devolved into something more closely resembling a game path after a few hundred yards, which slowed puppy down to a pace that took our forward motion into nearly theoretical territory. With darkness approaching, I needed to start thinking about where I was going to park us for the night.

Soon it was dark enough that I couldn't see more than ten or fifteen feet past the mule's nose. With a couple of gentle nudges and a stream of profane screams into one of his ears, I guided him off the trail toward something that vaguely hinted at being a clearing.

It was, in a sense. It became obvious, though, when I heard a crunch beneath one of Puppy's hooves followed by a high, pitched, grating voice yelling "AH-HAH!" that said clearing was already occupied. Dozens of mushrooms on the trees around began to glow with bio-luminescent light, making it easy to see what we'd stumbled into.

Sighing, and already knowing what I was going to see, I turned toward the source of the voice. Standing in a doorway inset into the wide base of one of the trees was a goddamned forest gnome. Wearing a nightgown and sleeping cap, clutching a lit candle in a little dish, and pointing an accusing finger at Puppy, he shrieked, "My garden! My garden! You crushed my beautiful garden!"

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One thing every gnome I've ever met shares is a massive persecution complex, which makes them an almost completely universal pain in the ass to deal with. That's not to say they that they aren't persecuted. Gnomes have a pretty shitty time of it. Like humans, they aren't bound to a particular school of magic, but unlike humans, they don't have much capacity for it. Between that, their diminutive size, homeliness, and the fact that they only seem to come with one personality type (irritating), they're probably the most bullied magical creatures on this plane. It took me half an hour to convince this one that Puppy hadn't intentionally destroyed his front yard, that it was an honest mistake, and that we were lost.