by Hugo Huesca
He’s a poor sonofabitch exiled from his homeland, her father had said once. An Inquisitor who lost the Divine Bitch’s favor because he was a coward. We’re stuck with him as our Sheriff because Heiliges doesn’t want to risk losing anyone useful.
Ilena agreed with her dad. Gallio’s mace looked too big for him.
Along with the Sheriff and his aide was the mercenary, the woman from god-knew-where that was sharing a shed with Alvedhra, according to her mother, who would squint in disgust every time she mentioned it.
She wasn’t interesting. All skin and bones, and a face that was definitely non-human. Ilena wondered for a second what someone like Alvedhra saw in her, and then her attention drifted to the last four members of the party.
There was a young woman about Alvedhra’s age, with the pale skin and purple eyes that marked her as a Lotian. Could she be a Witch? She was aware that not all Lotians were Witches or Warlocks, but what else could this one be? She moved as if she had a personal vendetta against dirt and mud, and armed with a sad little dagger, and had ill-fitting leather braces as her only armor. The only way Ioan or Gallio would have let her go with them was if she had magic to bring to the table.
Next to her was a tall Heiligian armed with a sword that looked heavier than he could lift. He carried a long, wooden lute in his hands…that Ilena recognized as belonging to Governor Brett. So, he was a Bard? One who had to borrow an instrument, at that, so he couldn’t have been a very good Bard.
The last one…the last one was looking straight at her.
Ilena jumped a bit when their eyes made contact, and she felt a pang of surprise and panic at being discovered, even though she wasn’t technically doing anything wrong.
The man looked away, disinterested. He examined the dead tree where the other kids were hiding, squinted—perhaps he saw them too—and then looked away.
Ilena couldn’t place the man’s features. His skin tone could be Heiliges, perhaps mixed with Starevos…but he was shaped differently from both of them. That left Undercity. Perhaps Ioan had met him there, during one of his frequent trips?
Ilena was aware that Ivalis was bigger than Lotia, Starevos, and Heiliges, but it was a vague awareness. As far as she was concerned, her family’s farm was at the center of the world, Burrova at the outskirt, and Hoia Forest at the very edge. Anything else was part of a Bard’s tale, and Bards, nowadays, sang solely about Lotia and Heiliges and the war that was brewing.
Perhaps the man was a warrior from any of those far-away places, or an assassin. It was hard to see, though, because warriors like Ioan and Gallio were shaped differently than he. They had strong, lithe muscles, and powerful forearms that looked as if made of steel. This man wasn’t fat, but he lacked the definition of a fighter. He couldn’t be a noble, because then he wouldn’t be an adventurer.
Who was he, then? Another Wizard? Still made little sense. He was armed with a spear, a short sword, and had a couple knives strapped to a leather armor that barely covered his chest—said armor belonged to Burrova’s guards, Ilena reckoned. She just couldn’t place him.
That’s my stranger, Ilena decided. The man met all her requirements. He was mysterious, he was tall-ish, he could be handsome if he did something about that dirt-covered hair. And there was an element of danger to him, something unnerving about the way his eyes glinted in the sunlight, something that made her heart race and her head pulsate painfully…
Scratch scratch.
Ilena clutched her forehead and willed the migraine to go away. That couldn’t have been the man, since the pain had come and gone at random, a week ago at most. Since she had gone playing in the woods, perhaps, although the memory was faint in her mind.
She flashed her dark stranger a smile and hoped he would look back at her before leaving.
Notice me, she hoped. When he turned his back to her and stepped forward to the first line of the formation, in front of Ioan and Alvedhra, Ilena fought down disappointment with the usual nonchalance of a farmer’s daughter.
Come back alive, she thought, instead, as the eight adventurers—and the batblin—left the safety of Burrova’s walls and disappeared into the woods.
The village seemed smaller now without them. Ilena sighed and wondered if she should head back to the family stall. The migraine was making her hungry, but she knew her brothers would refuse to feed her until Mom came back. And lately she hadn’t been able to stomach the soup. The vegetables just weren’t cutting it for her. Was this how it felt to grow up?
Scratch scratch.
She was so hungry, and her head hurt so badly…Mom was still angry about the chicken, but no one suspected Little Ilena. It was a long way back to the farm, but the girl knew there were a lot of stray cats and dogs roaming around the alleys of Burrova.
To think of vegetables and porridge made her stomach churn with nausea, but the memory of the bloody, tender, warm, and delicious chicken meat—oh, still twitching!—she had eaten the night before made her ravenous with desire.
Strays would have to do. Ilena was growing up. She needed meat.
Scratch scratch.
The way to the heart of Hoia Forest took the group close to Ed’s cave, but not close enough to make him fear discovery. Along the way, their formation had changed, since combat was approaching and they needed the Rangers’ knowledge of the terrain to lead them.
Ioan walked next to Ed, easily navigating the roots and rocks that were, to Ed, invisible obstacles that made him lose his footing every other step.
“Have you fought spiders before?” Ioan asked Ed and his three companions.
“Only the smaller ones,” Ed answered truthfully. “The spiderlings.”
Ioan nodded. “Those can be as dangerous as the spider-warriors if you’re not ready for them. The cluster we’re up against is a newer one, forced into proximity to Burrova by the other clusters, away from Hoia’s middle. Alvedhra and I estimate they have about a dozen fully grown warriors, two princesses, and Amphiris, the queen. The spiderlings are the bulk of the coven, as usual, with half-a-thousand active across all the cluster’s territory.”
“That’s a lot of spiders,” said Alder, just a couple steps behind Ed. The Bard looked up at the trees and the bushes while clutching at the hilt of his crude, iron sword.
“Usually, they aren’t clumped up,” said Alvedhra, who had fallen behind to chat with Kes. “And the queens won’t send all their spiderlings into combat, since that would be wasteful even for them. I’d say we’ll face two hundred, at most, before we have to deal with the warriors and the Queen.”
Lucky us, we have already thinned their numbers, thought Ed.
“If Lady Lavina here does her job, the spiderlings won’t be anything to worry about,” said Kes. The sarcasm of her voice was apparent, since Lavy was having more trouble with the unmarked road than Ed. He saw how Lavy struggled against a root that caught her feet, cursed at Kes and some gods whose names Ed hadn’t heard before, spat on the ground, and rushed back into the middle of the group, her pale face red with anger and covered in dirt and sweat.
“You saw her stats,” Gallio said from the back. “She has combat casting, which is better suited for the fireball rune than your own talents, Kes.”
Just before the group had left for the forest, Ioan and Gallio had returned with a small, metallic chest rusted along its edges. It was one of Burrova’s emergency defenses, Gallio had told them, sent from Heiliges by caravan each year along with other supplies. This chest contained a small bag with white rocks on them, engraved with silver filigrees.
“These are fireball runes,” Gallio had explained as he selected a group of stones and handed them over to Lavy and Ioan. “They were crafted by a powerful Wizard from the Church. We won’t take all of them, since that would risk leaving Burrova defenseless, but four of them should be more than enough. Your friend, Lavina, will carry one, Ioan another, and I’ll carry the rest.”
The plan was to use one or two fireballs to get rid of the attacking sp
iderlings. With the firepower of the remaining ones, and the expertise of the Rangers, dealing with the adult members of the spider-cluster should be easy as pie.
Keyword here being should.
Ed wasn’t so sure. The Rangers and the Sheriff were banking on the idea that the spider Queen would sent the spiderlings as a group, followed by the warriors, and she herself would remain away from combat, protected by the pair of princesses.
That…wasn’t how Ed would do it, had he been in Amphiris’ place.
He looked up, the same way Alder was looking.
Had he been in her stead, he would fill the trees with spiderlings and rain them down over the group. Their bite was paralyzing, right? Even if it was a weak effect, surely ten bites would slow even Ioan down, and it would negate the use of the runes due to friendly fire.
Then, while the spiderlings were still raining down, he would send the warriors rushing in from all directions. The forest was deep and dark—it would be easy to surround the group without being seen.
After that, once was sure the adventurers didn’t have an ace up their sleeve, he would rush in himself, guarded by the two princesses, to take down the strongest member of the group—that would be Ioan. The battle would end then, with everyone surrounded by warriors and weakened by the bites of the spiderlings.
Capture the survivors, paralyze them, cover them in webs, and use them to replenish my lost spiderlings, he finished. That’s what he would do, in place of Amphiris. He had fought against hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of bosses across different games and settings. It wasn’t that hard to put himself in their shoes.
But Ioan didn’t look worried. He wasn’t even glancing at the trees, and the man had fought spiders before.
That’s the problem with me, Ed thought. There’s too much I don’t know. Information is more valuable than a thousand experience points.
The spiders, perhaps, weren’t as smart as he thought. Perhaps they lacked organization, or were limited in other ways. Perhaps Ioan and Alvedhra had hidden powers that Ed hadn’t taken into account. He couldn’t see their stats without his Evil Eye, after all.
A signal of Ioan brought him back to reality. The Ranger was still moving at the same brisk pace from earlier, but now his gaze was fixed upon a distant spot that looked as dense with foliage as anywhere else.
“They know we’re here,” said Ioan.
Ed’s pulse accelerated while he tried to see whatever had triggered the Ranger’s alarm, but he caught nothing other than the movement of the wind and the singing of distant birds.
“What do we do?” he asked the Ranger.
“Keep moving, act normal,” Ioan said. “Lavina, Gallio, be at the ready with those runes. It won’t be long now.”
The group was deep into the forest, well beyond the distance that Ed and his companions had covered to reach Burrova. The trees were close together, and their crowns covered the forest in shadows. Now and then, Alvedhra stopped to glance at a dead branch, or to examine the foliage-covered soil.
“Some batblins were killed here,” she said at one point while passing a gloved hand through the shrubbery. “Wolves, I think.”
Ed saw Klek tremble at the mention of wolves.
“Yes,” whispered the batblin, too low for anyone but Ed to hear, “wolves. Hungry, nasty wolves. Worse than spiders, sometimes.”
Ed clutched his spear and took a deep breath. It would be no use to lose his nerve now.
Ioan led them to a small glade where the terrain was more or less flat, and they could see decently across the understory.
This is where we wait for them, Ed thought, and Ioan confirmed it when they reached the center.
“Get ready,” the Ranger said. “They’re coming.”
Ioan and Alvedhra grabbed a handful of arrows from their quivers and stabbed them into the grass. Kes sighed grimly and drew a crude, nicked longsword made of iron. Ed and Lavy exchanged glances while Alder clasped at his lute with both hands. Gallio whispered a soft prayer that Ed couldn’t hear, and Vasil spat on the ground and drew his sword.
“Stay in the center,” Ed told Klek. “If things look grim, run away.”
“Sure,” answered Alder, instead, “that’s what I was going to do, anyway.”
Lavy sighed and said, “Just get this over with already.”
She didn’t need to wait long. At the edge of the glade, opposite from where they had come, the foliage started to tremble.
The spiderlings flowed out of the vegetation like wine from a barrel. Under daylight, they seemed even worse than they had in the cover of the darkness where Ed had first met them, since now he knew what they looked like.
Each was the size of a fist, black and hairy with chattering mandibles and glinting black eyes. Ed’s ears were full of their snapping, and the sight of those saliva-covered mandibles made his body twitch with anticipation and fear barely kept at bay.
“You are going to burn!” Lavy exclaimed, stepping forward, her arm raised with the white rune held high.
“Not yet!” exclaimed Ioan. He caught the Witch’s forearm and pushed it down. Ed, for an instant, thought they were about to die from a friendly fireball, but Lavy clasped her jaw and looked at Ioan with wild eyes while the spiders closed the distance to them.
“They’re not clumped up enough!” Alvedhra explained.
Ed immediately caught her meaning. If they used a rune on each of the three clusters of spiderlings, they’d have only one left for Amphiris later on, not even counting the warriors and the princesses.
But if they push us back into the woods, we’ll get ambushed for sure, he thought.
There was a simple solution. Without stopping to think, he rushed to meet the three waves of spiderlings, his spear at the ready, a scream frozen in his throat.
“Edward!” Lavy screamed. “What are you doing?”
“Let him!” Gallio yelled behind Ed, “he’s got the right idea!”
That’s encouraging, thought Ed as his spear got in range of the first spider of the middle wave. He stabbed at it, and the iron tip pinned the critter to the ground and crushed it into a pale blue mess with a gluey crunch.
He felt a vague, metaphysical awareness that he had just gained a single experience point. Perhaps he would live to earn a couple more.
The spiderlings were fast, but they weren’t agile, and they couldn’t avoid even his clumsy, untrained attacks. It would’ve been a winning maneuver if there had been two spiderlings instead of a couple hundred.
Ed retreated without turning his back on the spiders, stabbing all the while, missing more than he hit, stealing glances to his sides, trying to remain a step farther ahead than the advancing tides at his flanks without letting himself get surrounded.
Don’t think about what they do to prisoners, don’t think about what they do to prisoners…
He needed them to bunch up. If the monsters had even an ounce of strategic thinking, they would simply scatter around him without breaking their formation.
From what Ed could see, they were doing exactly that.
“Ed!” Alder called out in warning.
Ed’s gaze returned to the front just in time to see a spiderling jump at his face with its eight legs spread out like a hairy, venom-filled hand. It screamed at him as it surged through the air—
Ed’s blood turned to ice as terror drowned whatever reason he still had. He let go of his spear with one hand and swatted at the spider-projectile without stopping his backward run.
The spiderling went flying sideways with a dull thud and its scream died mid-flight, but Ed’s hand erupted in scorching pain as if it was on fire. Ed screamed and almost stumbled on his own feet, only catching himself in time to see three more spiderlings jump his way—
He ducked, turned back to his companions, and ran. A small weight hit his back while he took his first step, and Ed felt tiny, hairy feet try to find a hold on his body—then a piercing, stabbing pain near his right shoulder-blade.
The young
Dungeon Lord shook himself while he ran, and the spiderling lost its footing, stumbling away from him.
Ed realized he was screaming a brave battlecry. It sounded like, “Oh, shiiiiii—”
The rest of the team was yelling something at him, but he barely paid them any mind. Numbness was starting to spread over his back and his hand…
You have to clump them up, he reminded himself. Risking a glance to his left and right, he realized the other two waves weren’t chasing him, but more like running along with him—straight at the other adventurers.
One-handed, he reached with his spear and swatted at the wave of spiderlings to his left. Blue blood splattered on the green grass…And caught the attention of the spiderlings around their pierced companions. Spiderlings broke formation to reach Ed, and that caught the attention of others, in such a way that the wave was soon flooding at him instead of with him—
“Edward,” Lavy wasn’t screaming anymore—she was calmly walking toward him, just a few yards away, side by side with Kes and Ioan. “Move away.”
Then she raised her rune. Next to her, Ioan did the same, while Kes rushed straight at Ed with her sword drawn—
Ed jumped—or finally lost his footing—and propelled himself through the air just as a nasty number of legs crawled all over his back and his legs.
The rune in Lavy’s hands glowed a neon blue, so close to Ed that he could see the strange symbol engraved in the stone flash with arcane energy, shift, and turn in the air like it was liquid light—
The fireball boomed past Ed’s head with a deafening roar, and all the bones in his body shook as it passed. There was no heat, though. Only an explosion of force half-a-second afterward, somewhere behind him. The impact caught Ed, drew the air out of his lungs like an NBA linebacker tackling a baby, and pushed the Dungeon Lord to the ground, sending him rolling in a stunned heap.
Ed bit his tongue as he rolled over, and his mind blanked for a second. He was vaguely aware there was a second explosion following the first one, and that smoking pieces of meat were raining all around him.
