Chapter 47 - Utterly Soundless

Kara was an interesting traveling companion. She was interested in the undead, at first, but once she understood how they moved and fought, our conversations quickly moved on to other things. She was practical in a manner that most people lacked, and I truly appreciated that. Too many of Alfred’s little group were sitting around like they thought someone was going to save them—which, technically, was what the two of us were trying to do with this mission.

That didn’t make it okay. I felt in my gut that this world simply wasn’t going to tolerate that sort of attitude anymore.

Interestingly, Kara concurred. “I think he’s taking too light a hand. I know he only just got tossed command of that mess, and he’s worried if he’s too hard people will rebel or something. But he’s not doing anyone favors by allowing them to sit there idle.”

“Exactly!” I said. “Unfortunately, we’ve got a lot of scared people who are, I don’t know, in ‘freeze’ mode, I think? I looked at some of them, and they need help. Counselors, therapists, something…because they’re going to die, if they don’t get back out into the world and start carving a piece of it for themselves. Sooner or later some monster is going to kill them.”

Or some person, I thought to myself. Alfred knew that, too. He told me he’d had to kill a man, out there on one of his scouting runs. When he touched the body after, he’d gotten the tier two Stamina crystal the man had embedded. I knew it because I’d managed to loot crystals from Tom and Brad. But it was information both of us preferred be kept quiet, at least for the time being. There was no sense spreading word that anyone with crystals was a walking piggy bank, waiting to be raided.

Not that I thought Alfred and I couldn’t handle ourselves. We absolutely could. But who wanted to live like that?

We’d worked our way down Beaumont Avenue to Main Street, which wasn’t really a street anymore at that section—it was more like a small highway, three lanes full of stopped cars moving in each direction. We were avoiding the forest altogether, since there was a known enemy occupying that area. That left us open to new threats, though, so we kept our eyes open as we moved.

There was movement out in the road. It had already grown dim enough, the sunlight starting to fade, that I couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but we quietly shifted direction, moving into a large stand of trees off on the side of the road instead. It would be better to remain undetected, and there was a nice path between the trees that allowed easy enough movement.

Right up until the lead skeletons in my brigade smacked into something and came to a halt, unable to continue. I ordered the rest of my undead to be on their guard, and advanced to check it out.

“Kara, I don’t see anything here. Maybe some sort of magical force field?” I called out.

“Then order the skeletons back, and we can go around,” she replied.

I did so, and they tried to move toward me—but they were stuck. That’s when I finally realized what had halted them. As they strained to come toward me, I saw thin strands of silvery thread floating in the air.

Webs.

A quick glance to the right and left of me confirmed my worst fears. There was a wall of webbing across the path, and it extended into the trees on either side as well. We’d walked right into a web cul-de-sac. “Shit! Kara, spiders! It’s web! Watch for spiders!”

I made the snap decision to abandon the skeletons who’d been stuck. This trap was well-made, carefully considered. I didn’t want to fight whatever creature or creatures made it. I retreated back into the middle of my still mobile undead, and we began backtracking out of the trap.

A leaf landed on my shoulder, and that happened to make me look up.

It was utterly soundless as it dropped, this monstrous black thing the size of a pony. It made not a whisper of noise. If I hadn’t felt the leaf land; if I hadn’t looked up right away; if I had slotted anything other than the tier three Agility stone? I probably wouldn’t still be here.

But I saw the thing as it fell toward us. Without thinking about it I dove into Kara, slamming both of us out of the way with all the force I could muster. She swore with a startled yell as we both dropped clear. I pushed us so hard we almost both ended up in the webbing off on the side. I’d knocked over one of my skeleton warriors, too.

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The spider slammed down into the path just a second after we were clear. Its legs caught it easily as it went grasping for prey that was suddenly a fast moving target. One of the legs slammed my ankle with bruising force as we dodged.

It whirled toward us, but I was already taking action. I still had my shield, which I planted firmly between us and the creature. Then I slammed down Curse followed immediately by Drain Life. The healing energy knitted my injured ankle back together, allowing me to easily rise back to my feet.

The spider rushed me, and I bashed it in the face with my shield, screaming. The impact tossed me back a few feet to land on my butt. Kara was there, nocking an arrow to her bow, but she wasn’t going to be quick enough. This thing moved like lightning.

It had attacked me, though, and my undead were all still in ‘guard’ mode. They weren’t as fast as the spider, not even the goblin zombie warriors. But there were a lot of them, and collectively all of my undead pounced on the thing. Spears stabbed, blades flashed, and the spider, large as it was, seemed to decide that discretion was the better part of valor. It jumped!

I braced myself, holding my shield out, because I thought it first it was coming at me. But it had jumped clear, sailing to the side of a large tree. From there it started to scuttle away—but not before Kara nailed it with an arrow.

“Nice shot!” I called out. The arrow staggered the already wounded monster, and gave me time to cast Drain again. The black fire blazed a trail from my hand and struck the beast, which shuddered where it stood before dropping to the ground.

I went to its side. Whether it was alive or not when it dropped, I wasn’t sure, but the landing had certainly finished the job if my spell hadn’t. I tapped the creature, and a very large crystal fell into my hand. I’d hoped for a tier two stone from the thing, but what I got was something much better!

The stone in my hand was tier three, and clear. Best of all, it was for Agility. It immediately sank into my palm and merged with my other tier three Agility stone. I sighed as I felt them consolidate into a tier four stone. Fast as I’d been a moment before, I moved stronger, faster, and better now. I couldn’t believe how fluid my body felt, like I could have run up the tree trunk just like the spider.

Pretty cool. But I’d accidentally eaten the loot. I frowned at that. Not fair to Kara. I turned to her, and she cocked her head sideways.

“The stone merged with one I already had socketed as soon as I touched it,” I said. “It was a tier three Agility. Sorry.”

She waved it off. “It’s okay. You and your undead did the majority of the work anyway.”

“Yeah, but still not cool. We need to be splitting big prizes. Or alternating, or something.” I dug into my pocket. “I’ve got two tier three stones here, either of which might be useful for you. One is Nightvision, the other Strength. You want one?”

“You serious?” Kara asked. “I won’t say no, but we can just hand me the next bunch of crystals instead.”

“I’m serious. I don’t want you thinking I’m just out here picking up everything myself. If people are going to survive this mess, we’re going to need to find ways to work well together.”

“Agreed. Okay, then—I’ll take the Nightvision. I can’t believe you don’t have that slotted already, but if you’re offering, I’ll take it. We could use that right now, don’t you think?” Kara asked.

I fished the stone out. I looked at it, hoping I wasn’t going to find myself needing this spell at some point down the road. Now that I knew there were a lot more than five slots available, there were a lot of spells I thought might be more useful, even if they were situational like Nightvision.

I peeked at the new layout of my crystals:

Magical Stones

Point 1: Black Stone (Tier 5) - Control Undead

Point 1, Outer Ring: Black Stone (Tier 2) - Curse

Point 2: Black Stone (Tier 5) - Animate Dead

Point 2, Outer Ring: Black Stone (Tier 2) - Contagion

Point 3: Black Stone (Tier 4) - Drain Life

Point 4: Clear Stone (Tier 3) - Will

Point 5: Clear Stone (Tier 4) - Agility

Spare Stones

Black: Animate Dead (Tier 2), Augment Undead (Tier 3), Augment Undead, Control Undead (Tier 2), Darkness (Tier 3), Darkness (Tier 2), Drain Life (Tier 2), Harm (Tier 2), Harm, Health to Mana, Heal Undead (Tier 3), Heal Undead, Nightvision (Tier 3), Nightvision, Protection from Undead, Shadow Walk (Tier 2), Shadow Walk

Green: Entangle (Tier 2), Entangle

Clear: Strength (Tier 3), Strength (x2), Agility (Tier 2), Stamina (Tier 2), Stamina, Intellect (Tier 3), Charisma (Tier 2), Charisma, Will (Tier 2), Will

Brown: Weapon Making, Armor Making, Tracking

But I passed it over to her, and it slid easily into her hand the moment she held it. Kara looked at her palm, then at me. “Wow! This is incredible. Not only can I see like its broad daylight, I think I have more clear vision than before, too. I can pick out individual leaves on trees from way further away. Thanks, Selena. I appreciate it.”

“No worries,” I replied, flashing her a smile. “We should get moving, though. No telling if there are more spiders in these trees.”

“Oh, good point. What about your skeletons, though?”

“They’re stuck in the web.”

“Which is probably flammable,” Kara pointed out, holding up a lighter.

“Oh!” Yeah, that made sense it would still work. My watch worked, so a lighter would as well. It was just pressure and a spark, after all. “But, um—there’s a lot of web in the trees around us. Are you sure…?”

Kara was already off, chuckling as she approached the wall of web where my skeletons were stuck. She held the lighter near the web, then laughed. “Let’s find out, eh? Be ready to run.”

Then she flicked the Bic and lowered it into the webbing.