An Unwelcome Quest (Magic 2.0 Book 3)

by Scott Meyer

A bird whistled in the distance.

  A young boy ran across the street.

  The wind gust died away.

  Somewhere nearby, a cat hissed.

  The old lady ran back across the street to where she started. A seam ripped open in the ground, and a dark blur shot out, grabbing the woman by the leg and dragging her underground before the seam reclosed.

  They all looked at each other, then back at the empty patch of ground.

  “Do you think that was it?” Gary asked.

  The seam reopened, more slowly this time and with a terrible rumbling noise. From their point of view, the fissure in the ground looked like a black line that extended in opposite directions, curving away from the men and eventually reconnecting dozens of feet away. The broad, flat surface they had thought was solid ground lifted and tilted back. Beneath, supporting the road’s weight, there was some sort of dark, movable mass. For what seemed like a long time, but was probably less than five seconds, Phillip struggled to make sense of what he was seeing. It looked like two large, broken umbrellas were fighting. Soon, his brain figured out what he was looking at, and he could not unrecognize it, no matter how badly he wanted to.

  The spider was a little over ten feet tall and at least thirty feet across, with long, spindly legs and a body covered with thick black fur. It cast away the roof of its burrow as easily as a man in a sauna casts off his towel, and like the other men in the sauna, the wizards instantly wished it hadn’t.

  Phillip’s mind was paralyzed with fear. Jimmy and Gary seemed equally speechless. Tyler was suffering no such problem.

  “A giant spider?! Seriously?! Damn you, Todd, you idiot. Just when I think I couldn’t respect you less, you go and pull this!”

  The spider stopped moving, which would have been comforting if everything else, the villagers, the trees, the wind, everything, hadn’t stopped as well. Silently, Todd’s chat box blinked open in front of the spider, almost as if his unshaven face were the spider’s.

  Todd smirked down at them and said, “What’s the matter, Tyler? Don’t like spiders?”

  “I got no problem with spiders, but I hate a cliché! Giant spiders are in everything! They’ve been done to death. If this is the best you could do, you shouldn’t have bothered.”

  Todd looked genuinely confused and more than a little hurt. “But, it’s a trap-door spider. Every time you see a giant spider, it’s spinning a giant web. Nobody’s done a giant trap-door spider. That’s a new idea.”

  “Just because nobody’s done it doesn’t mean it’s a new idea. It might just mean that it’s a bad idea,” Tyler explained. “Think about it! The blacksmith said that the monster comes every two weeks. Well, if it’s a trap-door spider, that means it’s here, hiding down there in its hole all the time.”

  Todd frowned. “I didn’t think about that.”

  “You didn’t think at all. You needed a monster, your brain spit out the words ‘big honkin’ spider,’ and you called it good. You gave no thought to the fact that it came to you so quickly because you’ve seen it a thousand times.”

  “Well, it’s only been used so many times because it works so well,” Todd said.

  Tyler replied, “I’ve got two things to say about that. One: just because a giant spider might work in this case doesn’t mean that something original wouldn’t work as well or better. Two: a spider doesn’t work in this case. Not at all! Because spiders don’t have bones! We’re supposed to bring back the monster’s bones. You’ve given us a monster that has an exoskeleton! That’s a hard outer shell, which means no bones!”

  Todd smirked and shook his head. “What about octopuses? They don’t have hard shells.”

  Tyler asked, “So what? Octopuses aren’t spiders.”

  “Yeah, they are. They’re the spiders of the sea.”

  “No, they aren’t!”

  “Huh? What?” Todd sputtered. “How are octopuses not spiders?”

  “What do you mean, how are they not spiders? They’re not spiders in the same way you’re not a spider!” Tyler shrieked.

  “But they’ve got eight legs,” Todd explained. “ ‘Octo’ means eight. That’s why Doctor Octopus has eight robot arms.”

  Tyler shook his fists and sprayed saliva as he shouted, “No! Doctor Octopus did not have eight robot arms! He had his normal four human limbs and four robot limbs! That equaled eight, like an octopus!”

  “Or a spider,” Todd said, thinking.

  “Yes!”

  “Because octopuses are part of the spider family.”

  “No, they aren’t, and this whole conversation is pointless anyway because octopuses don’t have bones either!”

  Todd said, “Eight legs, no bones, but you’re sure they aren’t spiders.”

  Jimmy cleared his throat, then said, “Actually, marine biologists will tell you that octopuses have two legs and six arms.”

  Tyler said, “Let me handle this, Jimmy,” without looking back.

  Todd pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes for a moment; then he said, “Look, okay, you have a point. Giant spiders have been done before, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to do something new with it.”

  “Like what?” Tyler asked.

  “Maybe it’ll attack you in a way you aren’t expecting.”

  “It’s a spider,” Tyler said, flatly. “I’m pretty sure it’ll involve webs and venom.”

  Todd smiled slyly and said, “Maybe.”

  “It’s a spider!” Tyler was yelling again. “What else can it do?! Did you teach it kung fu?!”

  Phillip leaned to Gary and said, “Ooh, a spider that knows kung fu. That’d actually be quite cool, wouldn’t it? I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of an eight-legged roundhouse kick.”

  Gary said, “Nah, man. Aren’t you listening? Spiders have two legs and six arms.”

  Jimmy said, “That’s octopuses.”

  Gary rolled his eyes. “And octopuses are the spiders of the sea. Come on, keep up, guys.”

  Jimmy was about to respond when he, Gary, and Phillip became aware that both Tyler and Todd were staring at them.

  “Sorry,” Jimmy said. “We’ll discuss this later. Please, continue bickering.”

  Todd struck a conciliatory tone. “Tyler, I know that you don’t think much of my quest. That’s fine. You’re entitled to your opinion. Complain all you want—just know that you’re going to be complaining while you’re completing the quest or dying in the process. No amount of whining will get you out of it. Right now, that means fighting my giant spider. And just to remind you, the spider can, and probably will, kill you. Remember, from here on in, as per your suggestion, everything can kill you.”

  Todd’s chat window disappeared. The wind resumed blowing. The trees resumed swaying. Strathisla the giant spider resumed its climb out of the massive crater it had been using as its trap.

  Tyler muttered, “How would it even dig such a large hole without the villagers noticing?”

  “Tyler? Focus,” Phillip said.

  Tyler said, “You’re right. Okay, guys. Don’t let it bite you. Watch out for webs. Try to attack its eyes if its head gets close; otherwise go for the leg joints. Those are its weak spots.”

  “How do you know?” Gary asked.

  “Because those are always the weak spots.”

  Phillip looked at the spider, and the spots where the leg segments met did seem thin and vulnerable. The eyes are universal weak spots no matter who or what you were fighting, so Tyler’s advice seemed sound.

  The spider was completely out in the open now. It slowly crept toward the wizards. They unsheathed their swords and readied themselves for action. As it loomed over them, Tyler said, “If it does kung fu, I’m going to be so pissed.”

  The spider planted all eight feet and leaned back, holding its body close to the ground as if
preparing to leap forward, then froze.

  The wizards held their ground, watching for the slightest movement.

  The spider didn’t seem to be in any hurry to move. The fur on its carapace ruffled and fluttered in the breeze. The thick black fur swayed, undulating like wheat in a field.

  That’s odd, Phillip thought, it’s not that windy. The breeze must be stronger over there.

  As they watched, the fur seemed to lengthen, growing spikier, like a time-lapse film in an ad for the Chia Pet; the fur seemed to spread up the spider’s immense legs. It streamed off the spider’s body, onto its legs. Only as the fur started to reach the ground did they see that it was never fur at all, just the legs of thousands of smaller spiders. They spread from the eight points where they made contact with the ground, swelling into a writhing black pool of horror.

  The smaller spiders looked tiny gathered around the feet of Strathisla, but each one was about the size of a kitten, which would have been fine if they had been kittens, but they weren’t. They were spiders, and as such, they had barely started advancing on the wizards before the wizards did the logical thing, which was to run in four separate directions, screaming four different random strings of curse words.

  Gary reached the front door of the nearest hovel. He pushed, then pulled on the door with all of his strength, but it didn’t budge. He turned around, pressing his back to the immovable door, and saw that the mass of smaller spiders had broken into four streams, each one chasing a wizard. Phillip had tried the door of a cottage across the street, with the same amount of success as Gary. Jimmy was climbing a tree. Tyler had run halfway back to the blacksmith shop before stopping and turning to survey the situation.

  Gary called out, “Tyler! Does this always happen?”

  Todd’s voice filled the air. “Yeah, Tyler, does it?”

  “Shut up,” Tyler said. “Both of you.”

  Tyler instantly realized both that stopping was a mistake and that it was too late to undo the damage. The spiders were faster than he was and had nearly reached him by the time he’d stopped. He lurched to the left and then to the right, but the skittering mass swelled in whatever direction he moved, trying to flank him, and then advancing when he moved away from them. In trying unsuccessfully to pursue him, the spiders had managed to block him in on three sides. He ran a few more steps away from the mass, but looking at the ground as he ran, he could see that the spiders were advancing as a group, outpacing him on each side. Within a few more steps they had surrounded him. Tyler had no choice but to stop. He cast a desperate glance at the others, hoping they were in a position to help.

  Gary had climbed the façade of the hut he’d tried to enter and was now standing on its roof, which would have been a brilliant move if spiders were bad at climbing walls. That not being the case, the spiders were advancing up the walls of the hut.

  Phillip, uncharacteristically, was taking Gary’s lead and had just made it to the roof of a hovel across the street. He stood up, looked down at the spiders climbing the wall behind him, and said, “Of course.”

  Jimmy had climbed a tree, which had worked out better in some ways, worse in others. The single, narrow tree trunk had limited how many spiders could chase him up the tree at once. It had also limited his obvious means of escape to one, the same narrow tree trunk that was now bulging with angry spiders. Jimmy had moved out to a thick lower limb. The central mass of the tree was alive with spiders, as if the tree were covered with thick, black, wriggling foliage. The spiders ventured out onto Jimmy’s limb but stopped three feet short of his location.

  Jimmy looked down at the closest spider, confused. He looked toward Phillip, stranded on his rooftop. Tyler looked to Phillip’s location as well and saw that Phillip was standing in the center of a circle about six feet wide, a circle delineated by an ever-thickening mass of spiders. Tyler looked at Gary and found that he, too, was surrounded but unharmed.

  Tyler realized that he probably should have been swarmed and devoured by now. He looked down. He was also standing in a clear circle. The fact that he was still alive didn’t feel so much like a reprieve as a delay. He had no doubt that this was just a brief pause to let them be terrified before they were killed.

  Tyler drew his sword.

  Oh well, he thought. At least the spiders aren’t doing kung fu.

  Tyler heard a strange, low chittering sound come from the tangle of spiders at his feet. He looked down just in time to see a single spider spring free from the rest and fly directly toward his face. He killed it in midair with a single chop of his sword and readied himself to feel the other spiders cover him.

  It did not happen.

  Tyler looked down at the spiders and again heard the queer, low chattering, this time to his right. He spun, looked down, and saw a single spider in the group pressed down as if ready to leap. It sprang for Tyler’s face. He dispatched it as he had the first. Scowling, Tyler scanned the spiders, listening for the sound again. It was difficult over the sound of the other guys’ yelling, but Tyler focused on the spiders. He heard the sound, spun 180 degrees, and saw what he had both hoped and feared he would see: a single spider, surrounded by hundreds of its seemingly passive brethren, hunched down, preparing to strike alone.

  He dispatched it easily, then shouted to the others, “Relax. The hack used the same stupid AI as he did for the wolves.”

  “We know!” Phillip shrieked. “Behind you! Now!”

  Tyler had made it three-quarters of the way to the blacksmith shop before stopping and getting surrounded. He had pivoted and was standing with his left side toward the shop and his right toward the others. He glanced back to his right and saw Phillip, Gary, and Jimmy, all stuck in high places, surrounded by kitten-sized spiders on an otherwise empty street. He spun 180 degrees just in time to see Strathisla, the building-sized spider, shooting a web his way.

  The sensation was like having someone dump a cooler full of Gatorade on you, only instead of being cold, it’s sticky, and instead of meaning that you’ve won a game, it means that you’re about to be eaten.

  In an instant Tyler’s legs were glued together, his left arm was cemented across his belly, and his right arm, which he’d used to shield his face, was now stuck immovably to his forehead. He wriggled, hopped, then fell over backward. The smaller spiders scattered to get out of his way, maintaining their respectful distance. None of them made the sound that signaled an imminent attack. It seemed that Strathisla had licked him, and as such, had claimed him.

  The others watched Tyler squirming helplessly in the dirt and Strathisla slowly advancing in on him. Jimmy looked back to the central mass of the tree just in time to swat down an attacking spider. The tree, save for the branch on which he was stranded, was a living mass of arachnids. There was no way to crawl through them, and even if he could, Tyler would be dead before he even made it to the trunk of the tree, let alone the ground. Another spider chittered and sprang for Jimmy’s face. He cut it in half with his sword and watched as the parts fell to the ground.

  The empty ground, about ten feet beneath him.

  Jimmy, he chastised himself, I thought you were supposed to be smart.

  Jimmy hung from the branch by one arm, bringing himself a few feet from the ground. He let go of the tree and hit the ground running. If he’d looked back, he’d have seen the spiders cascading out of the tree like a black, hairy waterfall, but he didn’t look back.

  Tyler’s vision was severely limited, blocked mostly by his own right arm. His field of view had been reduced to an irregular peephole formed by the crook of his elbow and the right side of his nose. He could see his body, covered with webbing, his feet gummed together beyond that, and beyond his feet, Strathisla advancing toward him. The smaller spiders parted, clearing a path to Tyler. He struggled, attempting to propel himself away from the immense spider, but squirming with all his might he only managed to move a few inches. He chose not to giv
e Todd the satisfaction.

  He thought, So this is it. The end.

  He saw the spider slowly closing on him. He couldn’t tell if it was being cautious or savoring the moment, but he didn’t really think it mattered.

  Killed fighting against a tired cliché. I guess there’s some satisfaction in that for a writer. Not as much as there’d be in defeating the cliché, but you can’t have everything.

  Strathisla was close now; all he could see was the underside of its abdomen as it loomed over him. Tyler felt the spider lift him from the ground. His view of the world became a blur of blue and brown as it spun him, wrapping him with webbing. He felt nauseated. He pressed his eyes shut and braced himself. He knew in a second his vision would be completely blocked by webbing. After that, he didn’t know what would come next, but he knew it wouldn’t be pleasant. Would he get bitten and killed by venom? Would he suffocate, trapped like a mummy in the spider’s web? Would he be left helpless to die of thirst, unable to free himself? Maybe Strathisla and the smaller spiders would simply devour him alive.

  What happened was that he fell to the ground, landing square on his back.

  Tyler opened his eyes. His field of view was even smaller, the bottom half being occluded by webbing. At first he saw a blurred, spinning field of black, but Strathisla took an awkward step back, allowing Tyler to see that the spider was missing a leg and had abandoned him to instead fight off the person who had removed that leg: Jimmy.

  Jimmy yelled and cursed and whooped at the giant spider, obviously attempting to draw its attention. One would have thought that Strathisla’s severed leg lying at Jimmy’s feet would be enough, but Jimmy wasn’t taking any chances.

  Jimmy poked toward Strathisla’s face with his sword while lunging backward like a man in his sixties imitating an Olympic fencer, which is exactly who Jimmy was and what he was doing. The smaller spiders that had chased him up the tree were now streaming in to surround him. Jimmy suspected they wouldn’t attack him now that he had Strathisla’s attention. Strathisla seemed to take precedence. Jimmy saw the spiders closing in around him, took one last mad swipe at Strathisla, damaging the lowest joint on its front-right leg, and took off sprinting in the one direction that wasn’t quite closed off by arachnids. He had almost waited too long. As it was, he had to leap between a few blank patches of ground like a child on a patterned carpet trying to avoid stepping in the red-hot lava.