Relagatra
| Classification | Giant spider |
|---|---|
| Habitat | The halls of Morgaedion |
| Size | About ten times Barnaby Britto's size |
| Notable traits | Eight pale eyes, barbed legs, a hoarding web slung across a ceiling |
| First appearance | Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened |
Relagatra is the giant spider that lives in the prison of Morgaedion. Feeding her was the Sacred Guard's duty, and Alpin Loomin says both that nearly every Eslurian knows not to mess with her and that "The beast only listens to Remidigon".[1] Left unfed after the Nelazgian raid emptied the island, she took the one Olphin who still went out into the halls for supplies, and Barnaby Britto went after her to bring him back.[1][2]
Appearance
Relagatra is about ten times Barnaby's size, big enough to fill a doorway and to span a room. Her legs are like curved spears and reach from wall to wall, each one ending in a hooked barb that digs into the stone, and her body is a swollen mass of hair that pulses while she waits. Eight pale eyes sit at the centre of it, unblinking, "wide and milky with hunger", and glossy enough that Barnaby saw his own frozen face in them.[2]
She clicks her fangs together when she is close to a meal, her mouth salivates, and her breath curls around a captive like rotting fish.[2] Struck, she shrieks a high-pitched cry like metal dragging across metal.[2]
The web
Relagatra hoards. Her web is slung across the ceiling of a large room in the prison, where the floors above have been burst open into a single gaping shaft, and it holds golden chalices, shoes, bread loaves, shovels and books, nearly every kind of object Barnaby could think of, all sewn in together. Prey goes up among the collection: the Olphin Monagan hung there cocooned with his head limp on his chest, and the dragon Egras was wrapped and her mouth sealed within moments of Relagatra arriving in the room.[2]
Keeping
The prison fed her. An Olphin of the prison population says plainly that it was the Sacred Guards' duty to appease the beast, and that Relagatra had never eaten anyone before, not as long as she was fed.[1] The Guard has been gone since the Nelazgians first raided the island, and nobody has fed her since. One of the Olphins reckons she is not used to the emptiness of the place and is starving, and the Olphins hiding behind the walls can hear her crawling the hallways outside while they wait up at night.[1]
Whatever discipline she is under runs through one person. Alpin says the beast listens to Remidigon Otsby alone, and by the time the Olphins need that to be true Remidigon is long gone from the island.[1]
Barnaby Britto's fight
Monagan was the only Olphin who left the walls to forage, and when he failed to come back after two sleeps the others concluded Relagatra had taken him. Barnaby volunteered to go, refused company, took a spear from one of the elders and went out with Egras.[1]
He found the web by torchlight in the last room on the block and was talking Monagan down when Relagatra appeared in the doorway behind him, dozens of feet moving in unison. She struck the torch and the dragon out from under him at once and left him in the dark.[2]
Barnaby fought her blind, listening for her footfalls the way he had learned to track Pemadee through an unlit bookshop by the creak of his chair. He dodged a leg that fractured the stone where he had been standing, cut her once, and was then caught from above: her limbs closed round his torso and tightened until his vision went to stars, and she tore the spear out of his hands and flung it into the web. He kicked off her, stretched until his fingers closed on the shaft, wrenched it free and drove it down into her head.[2]
She shrieked and dropped him. While she flailed against the spear he freed Egras from the webbing, flew up to the ceiling, sawed Monagan loose and rode out of the door, leaving Relagatra behind still battling her new piercing.[2] She is not mentioned again, and what became of her afterwards is not recorded.
Behind the scenes
The pronunciation guide at the back of Sacred 2: Flames of the Awakened gives the name as Rel-uh-gah-truh and puts it in the opening run of named cast rather than under the SPECIES heading, between Monagan and Demise's hounds Mayna and Ariz. Book 1's guide does not carry the name.[3] The Olphins of Morgaedion call her she; the narration, following Barnaby, uses the neuter throughout the fight.[1][2]
The interior illustration to Book 2, Ch. 24 shows her reared over Barnaby where he has fallen on the stone, her body a smooth bulb, her legs long and tapering to points, and a row of small eyes low on the front of the body. The chapter that goes with it is fought in total darkness.[2]
Relagatra is the only spider of her size in the books, and nothing is said about where she came from, how long she has been at Morgaedion, or whether more of her kind exist.[1]