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A Sky Full of Tropes: Aether Engineer
Chapter 53: Trigger Warning for Arachnophobia

Chapter 53: Trigger Warning for Arachnophobia

Mid August sees the sky turn orange, and we’re making a trip to the Spooky Grove. And by we, I mean me, Rowan, Anise, Meadow, and Burdock (plus Mipsy of course, who has gotten even bigger with Burdock’s rank-up). It’s a pity we can’t actually come out here on Halloween, with the monster swarms being out.

“I have some new spells I’m eager to try out in an actual dungeon,” Burdock says.

“We’ll be going into a section of the Spooky Grove we haven’t been in before,” Anise says. “There will be actual combat here, but nothing especially dangerous. The giant spiders in the Spooky House will just poison you and string you up in cocoons until you’re rescued or they feel like letting you go. They won’t actually kill you or seriously injure you.”

“Somehow this is still not reassuring,” Rowan says.

The Spooky Grove is not that far from Corwen, but we take it slow to give people (like me) a chance to work on herb gathering skills. I want to spend some time learning Crafting (Potions) over the fall, but I need practice gathering my own herbs, not to mention stocking up the storerooms on low level potion ingredients.

Skills increased: Survival (Hiking), Search (Herbalism), Enhanced Feet (Mapping Step), Survival (Sense of Direction)

I do enjoy the skill gains for simply walking to the closest dungeon while making use of my various skills along the way. Plus I now have a pack full of things that might or might not be useful to stick in a brew. (If nothing else, the useless ones should still be worth some experience to experiment with, I’m sure.)

We make camp, and I still don’t manage to unlock Survival (Fire Making), nor does Rowan.

“Can I try now?” Burdock asks.

“By all means,” I say. “I thought you already had [Fire Making], though.”

“Watch this!” Burdock says, and snaps his fingers.

The firepit is unimpressed by Burdock’s attempt at making magic.

“Ah man,” Burdock says. “I totally got Thaumaturgy (Fingersnap) to work on a candle at least once!”

He snaps his fingers again. The dried twigs sparkle but still don’t ignite.

“Does that skill always do fire?” I ask.

“No,” Burdock says. “You’ve gotta visualize what you’re trying to do. I’m… not very good at visualizing.”

Burdock snaps his fingers again, successfully making the sticks in the firepit turn red and orange but still not making them burn.

“Magic is hard…” Burdock says with a sigh.

“You’ve only just started,” Rowan says. “I’m sure you’ll get better with practice.”

Meadow finally takes pity on us and comes over to light the campfire. While we’re here, I try and brew up a potion to cure spider venom.

Congratulations! You have crafted a Poor quality potion. Skill acquired: Crafting (Brewing) Description: The ability to brew beverages that require heating, steeping, distilling, or fermenting ingredients.

“I have so many skills…” I mutter. “My status screen goes on for pages.”

“You know, most people don’t try to learn every skill in existence,” Rowan points out. “You really have only yourself to blame for that.”

“I know, I know.”

“How many skills do you have now?” Burdock wonders.

“Uhh…” I bring up a summary with a total. “91 now, with [Brewing].”

“Seriously?” Burdock exclaims. “I… don’t have nearly that many, even including the magic skills I just learned and Striking (Polearm Proficiency) that I had to unlock to use my spade better.”

“You probably have your skills higher than mine, too,” I say. “I only have 7 skills over level 5, and most of those are in Clairvoyance.”

Come morning, we head through the old wrought iron fence and into the creepy forest, eyes in the shadows watching us the whole time.

“I didn’t see a house last time we were here,” I say.

“I didn’t take us toward the house and you won’t find it unless the dungeon lets you,” Anise says. “It should be off to the right. Let’s explore and see if we can find a path through the undergrowth.”

After some searching, we come upon a side path covered in overgrown cobblestones. It comes to a dead end after several meters where the path is blocked off by briars, but I think I can see the roof of a house beyond the trees.

“Alright, let me try this one,” Burdock says. “This one is Thaumaturgy (Parting Hands). Doesn’t need much visualization!”

He holds up his hands together and slowly moves them apart. The thorny vines obligingly start to withdraw from the path, but they don’t even get half a meter back before Burdock lowers his hands with a groan.

“Out of Inspiration and I barely made a dent,” Burdock grouses.

“Don’t beat yourself up over it,” Rowan says. “That was a good effort.”

Rowan clearly has enough levels in Tending (Encouragement) to mollify Burdock for the moment. Anise lifts flaming fingers toward the briars, but Meadow sighs and puts a hand on Anise’s arm.

“Can we please not set the forest on fire?” Meadow says.

“Oh, fine,” Anise says.

Anise draws her sword and starts hacking through the underbrush like a machete, and Burdock helps with his spade and [Parting Hands] whenever he gets some Inspiration back.

We make it past the briars and reach the end of the path. Before us looms an old, dilapidated two-story building. A placard with the words The Sleepy Raven sways gently in the wind, its rusted chains creaking. In the upper floor window, a light silhouettes a partially transparent figure. The wind tugs at her long hair and rustles the curtains, and she disappears inside before I can try to identify her.

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The sound of singing echoes through the forest, but it seems more in my mind than in my ears, reminding me of a skill I only ever managed to raise in this dungeon. I can’t understand the words, but it sounds like… French, of all things.

Skills increased: Clairvoyance (Spirit Hearing), Discipline (Fear Resistance)

Oh, come on. The French language isn’t even scary. And it’s just a ghost. It’s not like this is a fire-breathing devil-goat or anything.

Anise casts a spell that summons a small flame above her head to light the way, and we step inside. The front room is large and full of round tables with chairs around them, many of them broken or overturned. A cobwebbed bar stands in one corner of the room with bar stools and a number of broken bottles. It more closely resembles a tavern than a Hearth like all the guest houses I’ve seen so far (aside from the one I built). Hearths have their fireplace in the middle of one large room and don’t have separate rooms for cooking.

At the back of the common room, swinging door leads into a kitchen area covered with spiderwebs, and a low chittering sound can be heard from somewhere.

This is likely going to be a good opportunity to try to unlock a useful skill I read about, Enhanced Feet (Freedom of Movement). I don’t know if the others have unlocked it yet, but it’s really something we should all have.

Movement in the shadows, and webs fly toward me. I manage to tumble out of the way and duck behind a table that’s laying on its side.

Rowan was not quick enough to get out of the way and his Mock Turtle shield is now covered with sticky webbing. His attempts at removing them with his wooden sword only make things worse.

Burdock snaps his fingers and even conjures a nice little candle flame that would totally set these webs on fire if they were flammable. As it is, it just immediately burns out with no effect.

Three large spiders can be seen, and I have no doubt there are more just out of sight. Mipsy pounces on one, quickly ripping it apart with her claws and teeth. Another spider leaps at Rowan, who gets his shield up enough to block the attack despite the webs covering it.

Rowan says some words that are probably swearing, but my subtitles don’t bother translating it. Just what I need, censorship in my own system interface. He manages to rip through the webs and kill one of the spiders with his wooden sword. Sometimes I forget that everyone over 7 has superpowers. Rowan doesn’t have as many skills as me, but he’s much stronger than me.

Another spider has circled around the room and is now on my side of the table ready to leap at me. I grab a broken table leg from the floor and beat the Basic-rank monster off with a stick. I take a bite on the arm in the process, but fend it off long enough for Rowan to come to my rescue.

Congratulations! Your party has slain 3 Basic rank monsters. Skills increased: Discipline (Battle Trance), Striking (Bashing), Athletics (Dodging) Skill acquired: Blocking (Cover) Description: The ability to protect yourself by using the environment to your advantage. Furniture, trees, and convenient waist-high fences are your shields.

“Thanks,” I say. “Time to see if my crappy potions actually work.”

I pop one out of my inventory and drink down the slimy pink liquid. It tastes like a horrible cocktail of watermelon candy and earwax and I almost gag, but it eases the oncoming wooziness from the monster poison.

“Good job, everyone!” Anise says. “Once we’ve rested up a moment, we can clear the kitchen. And by we, I mean you. I’ll be here cheering you on and step in if you bite off more than you can chew. There’s probably an Elite boss on this floor somewhere.”

Once our Stamina and Inspiration meters are full, we press on. We get into a rhythm and start to get used to the monsters’ tactics. There’s a total of five spiders hiding in the inn’s large kitchen and with being able to see their auras, I point out their locations to my party before they can ambush us this time.

We find a locked door leading down into a cellar. I try and put my much-neglected [Lockpicking] skill to good use, but don’t get the door open in a reasonable amount of time with four people (and a cat) staring at me intently. Rowan finally gets tired of it and bashes the door open.

“That works too,” I say.

Meadow goes first down the stairs, and it’s a good thing, too. “Boss fight.”

A larger spider flanked by two smaller spiders sits at the end of the cellar, politely waiting for us to approach.

“Burdock, you take on the boss,” Meadow says. “Rowan, Drake, you get the adds then help Burdock.”

Burdock is nervous about tackling an Elite giant spider by himself, even if he’s Elite himself along with an Elite familiar. People are supposed to be able to go toe-to-toe with beings of equal rank, but he only just reached Elite. The battle goes smoothly, though, and the three spiders are down in short order.

Congratulations! Your party has defeated an Elite rank monster. Your Strength has increased to 9. Skills increased: Athletics (Take a Breather) Skill acquired: Enhanced Feet (Freedom of Movement) Description: The ability to resist and break out of crowd control abilities such as webbing, vines, and paralysis.

Meadow starts harvesting monster parts from the boss spider once it’s dead, though she hasn’t bothered with the Basic monsters.

“Chest!” Rowan exclaims, running over to the chest behind the boss corpse. “Please be a sword, please be a sword, please be a sword…”

“Don’t forget to check for traps first!” Anise reminds him.

“It’s clear, so far as I can tell,” Burdock says.

“I’m not detecting anything bad either,” I add.

Rowan opens the chest and pulls out a glistening green short sword and is too busy staring at it to remember to loot the coins, which Burdock grabs.

“It’s a sword,” Rowan says. “I think. But why is it green?”

“Probably magic,” Anise says. “Congratulations!”

Rowan holds it out to me. “Drake, please identify my sword.”

“Right.”

Category Artifact Type Weapon Quality Good Rank Basic Aspect Poison

“Aspect of poison,” I say. “Try not to nick yourself with it. I only made so many potions.”

“I guess that was probably obvious,” Rowan says. “Too bad it didn’t come with a sheath. Here, you can use my wooden sword. It’ll probably work better than that table leg. Why aren’t you using your dagger?”

“Not enough reach for this,” I say.

I take the offered wooden sword. It’s heavier than I’m used to, but I’ll live, especially with my newly increased Strength attribute. We return to the ground floor and move on to the hallway.

The broad corridor stretches a good distance, and is wide enough to be a room in and of itself. The door at the west end opens into the building’s entry room. At the east end, a frosted window lets in just enough light to see by but not enough to dispel the heavy shadows that cling to every corner. The wooden floor creaks ominously in several places, and there are gaps here and there where one can see the darkness of the cellar below.

Each private room contains zero to three giant spiders. My Poor quality potions work, albeit poorly, and I run out of them long before we run out of spiders. So many spiders. Rowan is starting to regret asking for combat practice.

“I’m really starting to hate spiders…” Rowan mutters, then amends, “I’m really starting to hate fighting spiders. The ones that talk and wear dresses are okay.”

“Don’t worry,” Anise says. “We only have five more rooms to go on this floor!”

“At least there have been plenty of coins,” I say, holding up the latest handful from a purse in a dresser.

The coins from each dungeon look different, but all have the same denominations. I guess dungeons universally agreed upon a currency system (copper, silver, and gold) but each of them can put their own markings on otherwise identical coins. The ones from here have an embossed spider on one side and this house on the other.

“I know I saw a second floor from outside, but where are the stairs?” Burdock says once we’ve cleared the rest of the guest rooms on the ground floor.

“You’d think they’d be in or next to the common room,” I say.

“They might’ve been before this became a dungeon,” Anise says.

“Let’s go back and check,” I say. “There might have just been a door that was so webbed up we didn’t see it.”