by Jake Bible
So, I could just make out the little ones converging on me when they stopped in their tracks. Apparently, in the undead spider hierarchy, Big Mama gets to feed first.
On she came, a massive, tiptoeing thing. Eight legs moved in perfect synchronicity. Undeath was good for spiders. They didn’t seem to lose any of their living faculties. Not that I encountered many alive giant spiders to compare to, but I knew the undead, and there was always at least some cognitive disintegration. This Big Mama looked as aware and active as any living thing.
Which wasn’t exactly comforting as I watched the thing come towards me, her twelve-inch fangs extended outward and pointed right for my chest. That was that, folks. I’d fought all those years back in the real world. I’d set up a secure sanctuary in my high-rise, built an army of maintenance bots, had a great dog for a friend, and all of it was for nothing because the one goddamn place that was supposed to be our final saving grace turned out to be an undead death trap worse than anything the real world could offer.
So, death by undead spider it was going to be.
Then, through the gauzy blur of the butt string, a light appeared. Fiery red and glowing bright, the light stopped Big Mama about two feet from me. The huge undead thing turned slowly to face the light then let out a panicked hiss and retreated a few steps. I struggled to turn my head so I could see what was going on, but the butt string held me tight.
“Get away from him,” Sandra snarled. “I swear to God I will cut you down the middle, you undead bitch!”
Big Mama hissed and Sandra must have swung the Dark Blade, all aflame now, at her because the light went all swishy for a second before burning bright again.
I’ll admit I was a little jealous that Sandra had gotten the flames to kick in. I had no idea how I did it before, so maybe it was an accident for her too. I don’t know.
Not that I was complaining. I wasn’t. She was saving my ass and I loved her even more for it.
Sandra came into my limited view, backing Big Mama across the ridge. The little undead spider babies followed their mother and kept as far away from the flaming sword as they could. Most undead things hated fire and it was as true in EverRealm as it was in the real world. Sandra knew that and was using that fact to her advantage.
She had the Dark Blade in both hands, but risked letting go with her right hand as she pulled her dagger from her belt, reached out blindly, and began to slash at the butt string holding me to the boulder. Again, not complaining, but her aim was slightly off and more than once she cut a hair deeper than I would have liked. But, being the chivalrous man I am, I did not cry out as the tip of her dagger cut inch deep gouges in my right thigh and right side.
Somehow, even while keeping her eyes on Big Mama and the undead little ones, Sandra was able to cut my right arm free. I jerked it away from the butt string and took the dagger from her so she could concentrate on keeping our undead attackers back.
Slashing with almost as much careless abandon as Sandra, I cut the butt string from me and stumbled away from the boulder, bleeding, bruised, and sticky as shit.
“Towards the river,” I said out of the side of my mouth.
Big Mama hissed and made a move to block us from the narrow path that I knew led to the head of the river that had cut the valley below. Just great. Giant spiders in EverRealm are sentient. Of course they are. And, apparently, undead giant spiders maintained some of that sentience and could understand what I was saying.
Sandra saw it as well and struck fast. She hacked two baby spiders to death and leapt back as Big Mama took a swipe at her, the hairy spider leg missing her by inches. But it gave Sandra an opening and she stabbed the Dark Blade into one of Big Mama’s other legs.
The leg came off at the second joint closest to the body. Thick, congealed undead spider blood spewed from the wound and coated half a dozen of the little fuckers. They screeched and hissed, running around blindly bumping into each other as their mother screeched even louder above them.
Then Sandra did something that made my own blood feel like it had congealed and gone cold. She put all of her strength into her legs and jumped high into the air, flipping the Dark Blade around so it was aimed in a downward angle. The flaming sword pierced Big Mama’s head right above the six dozen glittering undead eyes.
A hairy leg struck Sandra in the side and sent her flying several feet, the Dark Blade coming free of her grip, and I shouted as I sprinted towards her.
Big Mama collapsed on the ground. No death sigh, nothing. Undead one second then dead dead the next with goo oozing from the gaping wound in her head. The little undead bastards wailed in anguish and turned to face us.
I helped Sandra onto her feet then retrieved the Dark Blade. The flames had gone out, but it still glowed a bright blue. We didn’t need the warning light, but again, not complaining.
It was a standoff for a few moments. The undead babies watched us and we watched them. Then, to our utter surprise, they backed away, each slipping into cracks and crevices in the ridgeline without a sound.
“Am I being ungrateful when I say that this doesn’t feel like a good thing?” I asked.
“No,” Sandra said, taking her dagger back from me. “We need to go. Now.”
We skirted the corpse of Big Mama and headed for where the river began. We needed to get down off the ridge as fast as possible and following the river was going to be the easiest way in the dark. Yes, the Galac moons were overhead, but there were too many rock outcroppings that cast long, dark shadows across the trail. Long, dark shadows were bad when you were escaping a bunch of undead spiders that had just disappeared into the rocks.
We moved as fast as my wounded leg would allow. Sandra slapped some herbal paste on the wound to help me, but I was still limping badly. We’d gotten almost to the river when I had to stop and take a break.
Every click and crack made us jump as we waited for the next attack. We knew it was coming. Years of being under constant siege had honed those instincts. We could sense bad luck and trouble a hundred miles off.
Which was why, when we did finally reach the river, we were not surprised to hear the distinct sound of many, many legs on the gravel and grit behind us.
We turned around and that’s when the surprise did kick in. Standing there, towering above us, was an undead spider of Godzilla proportions. Well, maybe not kaiju size exactly, but the thing had to be fifteen feet tall, at the very least.
“Oh, shit,” I whispered.
I held the Dark Blade out and shook it. No flames.
“This way,” Sandra said, tugging at my sleeve. “Keep going.”
I let her lead me along the side of the river’s head, the Dark Blade held impatiently between us and Big Daddy. I had no idea if the behemoth was male or not, but I was gonna call it Big Daddy.
I stumbled a lot, but kept my footing even as I backed up with only Sandra leading us along the treacherous edge of the river by the light of the Galac moons. The behemoth followed us, but didn’t attack. Its eyes glittered in the moonlight, and I shivered as drop after drop of undead venom dripped from its three-foot-long fangs. Three feet. Three, goddamn feet. I was lucky I didn’t shit my breeches right then and there.
Undead gorillas and undead crocodiles didn’t seem so bad at that moment and I kind of missed home.
“There,” Sandra said, sounding almost triumphant. “I knew it. I knew it!”
Her joy was too inviting, and I made a huge mistake by glancing over my shoulder at what she was so happy about.
The river split in two. The actual head of it was far above us, winding its way up the ridge further. What we’d been following was a branch. The branch that flowed down into the valley we’d left.
Going in the opposite direction was a different branch. That branch flowed into another valley, but a valley filled with nothing but that thick forest we saw. The forest was so huge that it filled the valley and then kept going up the other side for as far as the eye could see.
But, screw the for
est, we had a different river to follow.
Except, following the river was not in the cards.
Big Daddy came at us the second my head turned. I heard him coming and whipped back to face him, but all I saw was a huge leg swinging at me and then I was flying off my feet and out over the river. My legs clipped Sandra in the back of the head and she tumbled into the rapids, lost from sight as I seemed to almost float in the air for half a second.
“Sandra!” I shouted as my back hit water and rocks.
The air was forced from my lungs and I went under, my right shoulder slamming into a submerged boulder. I almost lost my grip on the Dark Blade, but somehow managed to hang on. As I came up sputtering and coughing, a heavy strand of butt string hit me in the side of the face. My already shredded cheeks became even more shredded as the force of the undead spider’s butt string met the force of the river’s incredibly powerful rapids.
Then the inevitable happened.
My left cheek tore from my face, half of the flesh coming off as the river won and the butt string lost. I screamed at the top of my lungs then slammed into another submerged rock. That spun me about and my wide-open mouth was filled with water, my head smacked against yet another rock, and the world of undead spiders and Galac moons went bye bye.
Twenty-Nine
I came to coughing and puking up river water as I felt hands shoving so hard on my chest that I was afraid my ribs would crack. Then the pain set in and I realized, whether from the chest compressions or my constant collisions with large river rocks, that I actually did have a few cracked ribs.
“Stop,” I croaked as I vomited the last of the river water. “Please. Stop.”
“Oh, God, Steve,” Sandra cried. She was crying. I could feel the hot tears dropping onto my face that was missing most of its skin as she leaned down and kissed me again and again. “Oh, God, I thought you were dead.”
“Close, but no cigar,” I said and laughed.
Then I whimpered as the left side of my face lost some of that cold numbness from the ride down the river. Life and feeling was coming back into my body and I wished it wouldn’t. I was a wreck. There were layers of pain on top of my layers of pain.
“Fuck,” was all I could say as I slowly opened my eyes to stare into Sandra’s frightened ones that were only an inch from my face. “Hey. You good?”
“I’m good, I’m good,” she said and the kissing started all over again. I endured it, but just barely. I didn’t really have any skin on my lips either.
“Where…? Where are we?” I asked and struggled to sit up. Sandra was having none of that and held me in place with one hand on my shoulder. She didn’t have to use much strength to do that. I was total shit. “Okay. I’ll stay put.”
I brought up my display.
Character class: Ranger
Character alignment: Chaotic Good
Character level: 17
Health: 13%
Strength: 20%
Agility: 29%
Magic: 30%
Armor: leather, no bonus
Coin: 0 gold pieces, 0 silver pieces, 0 copper pieces
Inventory: 1 long sword of Breaking (Level 16). 1 tunic. 1 pair of breeches. 1 hooded cloak.
What the fuck?
I’d lost almost everything. All I had to my name was my long sword of Breaking and the clothes on my body. Ice filled my belly.
“The Dark Blade?” I asked and tried to focus on Sandra’s face. It was too dark to see her features, but I could tell by the way her body stiffened that the news was not good.
“I don’t know,” she said. “We barely made it down here alive, Steve. I have my dagger and one pouch of herbs left. That’s it. I lost my pack and you lost your satchel.”
“Damn,” I said and sighed. “Aren’t we a pair of amazing adventurers.”
She let loose with a short, sad laugh. “We are, actually.”
“How?” I asked.
“You have no idea what we lived through,” Sandra said. “You’d forget all about our stuff and the Dark Blade if you could see it.”
“Then help me sit up,” I said.
“No, you’re too…damaged,” she said, her voice quivering with the start of a serious cry.
“I’m alive and you’re here,” I said. “I’m good. Help me sit up. Please?”
She nodded and gently, slowly, helped me get into a semi-sitting position. The suns were just cresting the horizon and light was beginning to fill the forested valley we were in. It took me a minute to get my eyes to focus past my flayed-open nose. But there it was. The river we’d come down.
River was being kind. It was more like one long, never-ending waterfall. Just looking at the rocks and all the drops off of them made my insides churn.
I slowly turned my head to look at Sandra, and as the suns continued to rise, I saw what toll the journey had wrought on her body. Her dress was a shredded rag hanging off her. All that was keeping it together was the thickly woven collar around her neck and her broad belt which held her dagger and the last of her healing pouches.
Her face. Oh, man, it was black, blue, purple, and colors that I didn’t know existed. Both eyes were raccooned and her nose was a flat pulp against her cheeks. One of her ears looked to be hanging by a thread and blood was trickling down her forehead from a gash on her head that I was only able to see because she was missing a good-sized patch of hair.
I was really glad I’d turned off damage notifications.
“You look worse,” Sandra said and smiled. She was missing two teeth. “Trust me.”
“What?” I replied. “You’re fine. A couple scratches here and there, but nothing a Band-Aid and some Neosporin won’t clear up in a couple of days.”
She laughed, she cried, laughed some more, then rested her head against my one shoulder that didn’t feel like it was going to revolt and secede from my body.
I laughed, I cried, I laughed some more, and I eased my body against hers.
The suns came up and I could see that we’d ended up on a sandbar in the middle of the river. The part we were in was fast moving with several good-sized rapids, but compared to the roller coaster of death decent we’d made, it looked tame as shit.
Now, how the hell we’d get off that sandbar was another thing. If we lived long enough to get off the sandbar at all. 13% Health did not exactly foreshadow a long future, and I had no idea how bad Sandra’s Health was. For all I knew, we were spending our last few moments together right then and there as the suns rose higher and higher in the sky.
I think we fell asleep together, using the other’s body to prop each other up. I don’t know if we did sleep or if consciousness was sort of a theoretical concept or what, but I do remember coming fully alert as someone cleared his throat.
To be more exact, it was more of a something.
“Hello, Ranger pussy,” a deep growl called from behind us. “You back. Too bad you.”
Sandra and I stiffened, which was extremely painful to do as muscles that were severely wounded tensed.
I knew that voice. It was fitting that as I sat dying with the woman I cared for the most pressed against me, the last voice I should hear in EverRealm was the first voice I had heard when I came falling into this goddamn Domain.
“Steve,” Sandra said. “Don’t look. Let’s watch the suns rise and only let this moment be what our souls hang onto when we greet the afterlife.”
That was a romantic, and highly optimistic view of things, and I loved her for saying it, but there was no way I wasn’t going to look.
I turned my head, whimpered at the agony it caused, and stared at the group of river trolls that stood on the bank a few yards away from us. The one in front, the really big guy that had greeted me when I’d escaped the Center and come headlong into EverRealm against my wishes, waved.
The huge son of a bitch actually waved.
“Why did you look?” Sandra asked and that mousy voice of hers from the real world was back.
“I’d rather s
ee it coming,” I said.
And it came.
The river troll pointed at us and two of his clan waded across the river, the water only coming up mid-thigh on their large bodies. They didn’t hurry. No need. We weren’t going anywhere.
Neither of them was armed, not even with the ubiquitous clubs that trolls liked to carry, but then they didn’t need to be armed. Fighting was not in our future. Only dying was.
“Hey there,” I said as the two trolls reached our sandbar. “Can you make it quick, please?”
They made it to us in one large stride then stopped, their heads cocked like puzzled dogs.
“What he say?” the lead troll shouted from the riverbank.
“Make quick!” one of the trolls sent to kill us replied.
“Make what quick?” the lead troll asked.
“Make what quick?” the other killer troll asked me.
“Uh, our deaths,” I said. “We’re screwed here, guys. Just snap our necks and get done with it, okay?”
“What he say?” the lead troll yelled.
“Snap necks!” the first killer troll responded.
“Who necks?” lead troll asked.
“Who necks?” killer troll asked me.
“Our necks,” I said, really, really confused by that point. “You’re going to kill us, but I’m asking you to do it fast.”
“He say they necks!” killer troll yelled back.
“They want die?” lead troll asked.
“You want die?” killer troll asked.
“No, we don’t want to die,” I said.
“No! They no want die!”
“Why ask break necks?”
“Why ask break necks?”
Sandra started to stir from her fatalistic trance and turned to look up at the trolls.
“You aren’t going to kill us?” she asked.
The two killer trolls glanced at each other and shrugged.
“We sent get, not kill,” one said.
“Not kill,” the other said.
“Oh, well, shit,” I said. “But you’re going to kill us later then eat us, right? I just want to be prepared.”
“He want eat them!”
