Viridian Gate Online: Books 1 - 3 (Cataclysm, Crimson Alliance, The Jade Lord)

by James Hunter

  The creature flexed its legs and stood, its terrible head affixed to a ginormous black thorax tattooed with looping swirls of neon red, which pulsed with uneasy light.

  As the massive [Spider Queen] finally emerged, the ceaseless rustling around us seemed to shift and strengthen as a flurry of brown forms appeared between the trees or rappelled from the canopy above on fat strands of silk.

  “Well done, my children,” the nightmarish uber-spider bellowed. Her voice was like the drone of an entire colony of wasps, though there was a decidedly feminine quality to it. “These two will make a fine hatchery for the new wave of young ones,” she buzzed. The Spiderkin encircling us broke into jubilant celebration at her declaration, many raising their front-most limbs high into the air, while others rubbed their rear legs together—the source of that terrible rustling. Like crickets, only way, way bigger, and way, way grosser. “Catch them,” the Queen buzzed. “String them up, but keep them alive—the younglings will need living flesh and hot blood to feast on when they hatch.”

  The spider jubilation continued for another moment, growing in fervent intensity, and then suddenly the first spider broke—charging us from the left with an inhuman and inarticulate screech. The rest followed, crashing toward us like a tsunami of legs and fangs and hair.

  TWENTY-SIX: Legs, Legs, Legs

  On instinct, I turned to retreat the way we’d come—any direction away from the massive Spider Queen—but the passage was already blocked with both strands of heavy webbing and fat spider bodies. There was no going back—these things had herded Cutter and me into this hollow with the express intention of sacrificing us as an offering to their disgusting matriarch. They certainly had no intention of letting us slip away now. Cutter seemed to come to the same realization, his normal cocky smile gone, his jaw tight, his eyes filled with a claustrophobic terror.

  “This way,” he shouted, bolting right, heading for a small, undefended gap in the tree line—

  A bloated spider, larger than a beefy Rottweiler, sensed Cutter’s trajectory and scuttled to intercept while more of its hairy-legged kin pushed in around us. Cutter—always one for dramatics—leapt into the air like an acrobat, twisting and turning in a graceful flip, before landing on top of the spider’s swollen thorax, sinking both of his daggers through chitinous flesh. Driving the blades down to the hilt. Green blood, sludgy and putrid, bubbled up as the spiderling reared back in pain, thrashing left and right in an attempt to throw the Thief.

  With its front legs up and waving manically in the air, its soft underbelly was temporarily exposed.

  An easy target I didn’t want to squander.

  I sprinted forward, canting my weapon to the side as I ran. I closed the distance in a few long strides and lashed out, driving the hammer face forward and up, battering into the spider’s sensitive underside like a wrecking ball of steel. The blow smashed through the creature’s brown flesh, sinking in with a spurt of green goo. The creature convulsed as I tore my weapon free; its belly ruptured under the sudden strain, a mass of glistening gray intestine spilling from the ugly wound and onto the ground.

  The [Spiderkin] let out a final shriek of rage and pain before collapsing, dead.

  Unfortunately, that creature was only the tip of a giant, horrific, many-legged iceberg.

  “Cutter, keep going,” I hollered, wheeling around to face the rest of the incoming Spiderkin. “Don’t worry about me,” I screamed as I lunged forward, thrusting my weapon upward at an angle, sinking the spiked top into an encroaching spider. “Just keep going.” I didn’t know if he was behind me or not, and I couldn’t spare even a single second to check, but I sure hoped he’d taken my words to heart. Obviously, I wasn’t too keen on experiencing death-by-spider—after all, spiders were well known for stringing their victims up before sucking them dry like a juice box—but, no matter how terrible the death, I would respawn.

  Cutter wouldn’t.

  I shuffled back a few paces and turned my mind fully back to the brawl as three more spiders converged on me. I shifted right and brought up my buckler as a spider lunged in, curved fangs flashing out. I bashed the creature in the mouth with the tiny shield, absorbing the damage, before stepping through, swinging my hammer into the side of the creature’s head. Its skull caved in, its eyes flashing momentarily before going dull and lifeless.

  Unfortunately, the maneuver opened me up on the right, leaving my back partially exposed and vulnerable. Another of the Spiderkin seized the opportunity, charging me in an eyeblink. A heavy body slammed into my side, knocking me sideways as a pair of fangs, like butcher knives, sank into my chest. I screamed and thrashed, bringing a knee up into the Spiderkin’s jaw, knocking it back a step as I twirled my warhammer, bringing it down on top of the spider’s skull—using it like a sledgehammer to drive a stake into the ground.

  I unleashed Savage Blow, and the spider’s head exploded like a rotten pumpkin; shards of bone, strings of gristle, and gelatinous green blood splattered everywhere. I grimaced and backpedaled, clutching at the puncture wounds in my chest, which were making it terribly difficult to breathe. A combat notice flashed in my peripheral vision:

  <<<>>>

  Debuffs Added

  Punctured Lung: You have suffered a punctured lung; Stamina Regeneration reduced by 15% for 5 minutes.

  Orbweaver Poison: You have been poisoned: 1 HP/sec; duration, 10 minutes or until cured.

  <<<>>>

  Crap, that wasn’t good. The DPS on the poison was relatively low—60 points a minute—but over ten minutes, that’d cost me 600 HP. Far more than I had even at full health, and I wasn’t anywhere close to full health.

  I stole a glance over my shoulder—the narrow opening in the trees was still clear, though Cutter was nowhere to be seen—and backtracked in a slow retreat, still clenching at the puncture wounds, feeling my life and strength leak away one ragged breath at a time. I wasn’t optimistic about my chances. These Spiderkin were tough and vicious, and the few I’d managed to put down were hardly a drop in the bucket. I caught sudden movement on my left and wheeled just in time to get blasted with a stream of sticky webbing. Yet another debuff:

  <<<>>>

  Debuff Added

  Snared: You have been snared by Web Vomit, slowing your movement by 50%; duration, 3 minutes.

  <<<>>>

  I fought at the gossamer material binding my legs and clinging to my arms, working to tear my way free of the stuff even as I shuffled toward the tree line at a snail’s pace. A loose ring of the Spiderkin were now arrayed before me in a horseshoe, but instead of charging me, they bided their time, waiting for something. A moment later, I found out what: one of the shifty, long-legged jerks had strung a trip line of spider silk directly behind me. My already tangled feet caught on the taut line and suddenly I was falling, arms flailing as I fought to keep upright.

  A useless effort.

  I hit with an umphf of expelled air, landing near the stinking corpse of the first spider Cutter and I had managed to take down. The horde of Spiderkin didn’t waste a heartbeat, rushing in, jostling each other in order to get first crack at me. A particularly beefy sucker won the battle and scampered over me. I expected it to strike in an instant and send me for respawn, but instead, it repositioned its bloated belly and began to blast my feet with a thick stream of webbing. I began to panic, recalling the words of the Spider Queen: “Catch them … string them up … keep them alive—the younglings will need living flesh and hot blood to feast on when they hatch.”

  It was cocooning me, preparing me for later consumption. Oh my god, this game was awful. Osmark Technologies was lucky players were stuck in V.G.O. permanently, or they would’ve had a slew of lawsuits on their hands—filed by traumatized players who would never have a peaceful night’s sleep again.

  The creature’s abdomen continued to pulse, swelling and contracting as it spewed ever more webbing onto my body, working its way up my legs. At this point, I was thinking the poison coursing through my veins was
actually a blessing—if I didn’t do anything to stop it, the poison would kill me, which was the best option.

  Still, I couldn’t just lie there, waiting to die, so I raised my hammer, preparing for a last-ditch assault.

  Before I could strike out, however, the fat Spiderkin hovering above me reared back, issuing a horrendous shriek of angry disapproval. I glanced at my warhammer, trying to figure out what I’d just done and how, but then Cutter’s face flashed in front of mine.

  “Hang in there, Grim Jack,” he said, prying his hands into my armpits and dragging me away from the howling spider and into the relative safety of the trees. He lifted my bulk with a grunt and gracelessly tossed me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes so my torso dangled down his back. “I think we’ve overstayed our welcome,” he yelled as he broke into a lurching run. The ride was far from pleasant—each step sent a lancing pain up through my stomach and into my punctured lung.

  Another round of terrible spidery yowls brought my head up. We were being pursued, a small pack of the creatures scuttling through the foliage, leaping from tree to tree, closing the distance in a hurry. My health was still dropping by the second, but I hesitated to down one of the Health Regen potions at my belt. Quick as Cutter was moving, those things would overtake us in no time, unless I could find a way to slow them down …

  “Faster, Cutter!” I hollered as I flopped up and down, gritting my teeth as his shoulder dug into my gut.

  My health bar began flashing an angry, infected red as it dropped to 15%, but a sweet flood of arctic cold filled my limbs in an instant. With my life hanging in the balance, I had access to my otherwise restricted Umbra Bolt ability. I lifted my right hand, envisioning a burning ball of shadow forming in my palm. Something inside me moved, shifted, and suddenly the cold congregated to my outstretched limb, seeping from my skin, wreathing my hand in flickering shadow.

  I grinned and willed the Umbra Bolt out.

  Light erupted, streaking away, slamming into one of the pursuing arachnoids. The creature exploded in a ball of violet shadow, hissing and stumbling, both hurt and temporarily blinded. I pumped fistful after fistful of shadow power at the Spiderkin, keeping one eye on my health bar as I worked. This was a fine balance—I could only access the Umbra power with my health below 15%, but I didn’t want to die either.

  I clipped one of the creatures in mid-leap, swatting it from the air and amputating the majority of its legs in the process. Another went down for good as I scored a critical hit in its horrifying face, turning its eye-studded head into a disgusting spray of green mist. At 75 Spirit per shot, the barrage of Umbra Bolts quickly ate through my Spirit supply, but thankfully a purple potion at my belt restored me to 50%, giving me another four or five blasts. My health was still plummeting, but I didn’t want to waste my limited opportunity to use Umbra Bolt.

  I sent out a few sporadic shots, kicking up dirt, and felling a palm tree, hoping to slow our pursuers down. One particularly well-placed shot—by which I mean lucky—knocked a scurrying Spiderkin from the side of a tree; the creature fell directly into the path of several other arachnoids, tripping up one while being trampled by the other. With my Spirit once more low and my health hovering at around 5%, I finally pulled a health potion from one of my belt slots and downed the thing in a single pull, the taste of cherry-flavored medicine burning across my tongue and down my throat.

  About as pleasant as real-world medicine, but it worked much, much faster. My health bar almost immediately jumped to 25%, saving my skin, but robbing me of my death-dealing Umbra Bolt spell, which was problematic—especially since even more spiders were scuttling out of the woodwork, joining the hunt. And they were close now, ten or fifteen feet away.

  “Faster, Cutter, faster!”

  “I’m moving as quick as I can go, fatty—you weigh a lot more than you look!” he shouted, huffing and puffing. We rounded a bend, slipping between several trees, and then we were temporarily airborne as Cutter leapt over a meandering stream three or four feet wide, landing on a narrow dirt trail on the other side. We didn’t come down easy—the pain redoubled in my middle—and worse, the rough landing also cost us precious seconds. When I glanced back up, though, I could only stare in slack-jawed amazement; the spiders had stopped.

  Just stopped.

  They were lined up along the edge of the stream, staring at us with malicious, greedy eyes. But they made no move to cross the slow-moving water.

  Why in the world would these things stop? They couldn’t be scared of a shallow stream, could they?

  That’s when I caught sight of the totem. A crudely carved log jutted from the ground near the path. The wooden post was covered in harsh, angular script and topped by the yellowing skull of a spider, decorated in swirls of red paint. We must’ve entered some kind of safe zone, though a small part of me wondered what a horde of Spiderkin had to fear. That thought fled, however, as the ground gave out below Cutter and me, and we plummeted into a gaping hole, the bottom lined with jagged wooden spikes.

  We’d carelessly run into a trap.

  I flipped forward, head over tail, screaming as I braced for the impact to come. As I prepared to be impaled through the chest, stomach, neck, or face. That was a bad way to go, but still probably better than being cocooned alive as a late-night snack for a bunch of hungry spider babies. I smashed hard into the ground, landing on one shoulder; an assortment of dirt, twigs, leaves, and gravel chewed at my skin like sandpaper as I flipped and rolled.

  I finally came to a jerky stop on my back, hurt, but surprisingly free of spikes. I pushed myself up onto my elbows and stole a look around. I’d landed on the edge of the pit—one of the only areas devoid of the angled wooden spears sticking up from the ground like rusty nails. Cutter hadn’t fared so well. He lay just a few feet to my right, whimpering softly as he stared at a bloody spike piercing one thigh clean through. He slipped trembling fingers into a pouch at his belt and pulled free a health vial, uncorking it with his teeth, then taking a long gulp.

  “Bollocks,” he grunted at me through gritted teeth, his brow coated with sweat, his face stained with dirt. “This wazzock arsebadger right here”—he slapped at the gore-tipped spear in his leg—“is preventing me from recovering. It’s gonna keep on sapping my health until I can get it out.”

  I pushed myself upright with a groan, downed another health potion myself—I wouldn’t do Cutter any good dead—then wobbled over, took a knee, and began examining the wound with gentle fingers. The shaft was really lodged in there, and I couldn’t see an easy way to get him free, which was probably the whole point of the trap: someone falls in and slowly bleeds to death no matter how many health potions they have in their inventory. There was only one thing I could do—I needed to break the shaft.

  “This might hurt a little,” I warned as I stood and spread my feet, hammer raised.

  Cutter grimaced and nodded. “Do it.”

  He flinched as I laid into the crude spear. My hammer thudded into the wood a few inches above his leg, and he cried out in protest. All that vibration couldn’t feel good, but this was the only way. Again and again I smashed at the wood, chips and chunks flying away as Cutter screamed. After a few minutes, the spike finally broke in two, which allowed me to wiggle his leg out, revealing a ragged hole the size of my fist running clean through his upper leg.

  It was bad and graphic, but I’d seen worse IRL. Though not often.

  With that done, I dragged him over to the side of the pit, away from the death spikes, wadded up an extra shirt from my pack, and applied pressure to the wound on instinct. Not sure if it made any difference—probably not—but between that and a few more health potions, Cutter was more or less back to normal in a few minutes. By that time, both of my spider-induced debuffs had also faded, meaning we were in the clear, healthwise. The only problem was, we were now stuck in a hole twenty-five feet deep, without a foreseeable way up, while the already gloomy forest was moving toward genuine night.

  Far fro
m an ideal situation.

  I scooted back and flopped down, leaning against the sheer earthen wall behind me, sudden exhaustion starting to set in. I wasn’t quite sure how the “Tired” debuff worked in V.G.O.—was it related simply to the sleep versus wake ratio, or were there other factors to consider, such as physical effort and injuries? I didn’t have an answer, but I was tired and also hungry. I opened my pack, removed the campfire kit I’d picked up at Trajan’s, and coaxed a little flame to life using some kindling and the split spear end I’d smashed to pieces.

  Cutter watched me in silence.

  Next, I dug into my pack and removed some of the food I’d picked up for this expedition—bread, cheese, mutton. The food appeared in my hands—the bread a little too hard, the mutton cold—but a few minutes over the fire warmed the meat right up. I distributed the meat once it was done, dripping hot grease to the ground.

  “Don’t suppose I ever told you how much I hate spiders, did I?” Cutter said around a mouthful of mutton, eyes watching the fire as the night grew damp and a smidge chilly.

  I shook my head and tore off a chunk of pungent cheese.

  “Well, then let me go on the record and say it. I royally hate spiders. Miserable bastards, the whole lot of them. They always turn up in the worst situations, too. One time—several years back this was—I’d fallen into a bit of a tough financial bind, so I agreed to clear a dungeon as part of a merc team. Picking up a little extra coin on the side to repay some outstanding debts I owed to an unfriendly fellow with a penchant for leg-breaking.

  “At any rate”—he waved a hand through the air, the gesture saying the backstory wasn’t important—“while scouting out traps, I stumbled into a room filled with the leggy buggers. Not quite so aggressive or large as these, but very unfriendly. They swarmed me in a blink and had me strung up before I knew what hit me. My team rescued me before the creepy-crawlies could turn me into a meal, but I haven’t been able to stomach the sight of ’em since.” He shivered at the memory.