Jikon’s nose broke but goddamn he was strong: my vision flashed, too, and pain burst behind my eyes. Still, it didn’t hurt me so much as frighten and anger me. So I hacked at him with my remaining hatchet, despite my blurred vision and the ache pounding in my head.
I heard myself make a grunt of effort, then my blade sunk deep into his shoulder: my first serious blow of the fight.
Ha! Twice my level and I was going to beat his ass. I started to slam the haft of that hatchet with my other hand, to drive the blade deeper, to shear through his collarbone, but the pommel of his scimitar whipped at me out of nowhere, punching me in the armpit.
Which I’d never considered a sensitive spot before but goddamn. Goddamn. My entire arm fell numb and he followed through with a slash across my chest. I felt flames, tears, panic. I scrambled to block his next thrust, and that’s when he stopped playing around.
As blood oozed from his injured shoulder, he fought like a machine. Driven, unhesitating, and goddam precise. Surgically precise.
My surroundings faded away and I focused on staying alive. Jikon never stopped attacking, so I couldn’t spare a second from playing defense. I considered soaking a few hits to try to create an opening but I didn’t see any goddamn openings.
His scimitar and dagger both flashed. Blades whirled so fast that I felt like a frog in a blender. I blocked, I blocked, I dodged and blocked. My webtouched awareness kept me alive even though I wasn’t nearly fast enough. So I kept getting cut: never deeply, but over and over and over.
Health: 23/55
Health: 21/55
Health: 19/55
Health: 18/55
On the bright side, my mana had increased. On the far, far dimmer side, my mana had increased to one. And turning to smoke for a single second required two or three mana. So I fought for time, and I guess for pride. Maybe I couldn’t beat this guy, at level eleven, but I could make him work for it. I could make him bleed for it.
I did, too.
Sure, I was a shambling mess, more zombie than hatchetman, but his nose was broken and his shoulder was bleeding more than ever, from the second blow I’d landed there. And I’d smashed his side with the mace-end of my hatchet and broken a rib.
Health: 11/55
“Where did a human learn to fight like this?” he asked, wiping blood off his face.
“My mother,” I told him. “She fucking hates snowmen.”
I had no clue what that meant. I’d been trying to insult his bone-whiteness, and that’s what came out of my mouth. It didn’t make sense, but I was hurting so badly that I could barely string two thoughts together.
Princess murmured in my mind.
I laughed aloud.
For the first time, Jikon hesitated. “You’re like a rabid dog.”
“Rabid ape,” I told him, and lunged.
I caught him across the hip with a wild slash, then he slipped through my increasingly-sloppy defenses twice. But he wasn’t so machine-smooth anymore, and I blinked my hatchet into my domain, as my hand kept moving past his blade, then back out again. My slash carved line through his armor and across his chest, then he whipped a desperate blow at my head.
“Don’t kill him!” Miss Kathina called, from somewhere nearby. “He’s gemmed!”
The scimitar kept slicing at me, though, with murderous accuracy. I tried to turn to smoke, and failed, so I tilted my head, using my webtouch to calculate the angle at which the blade would chop through hair and scalp before being deflected by the curve of my skull and--
The world turned electric.
The air sparkled and lashed.
In front of me, Jikon dropped like he’d been tazed. His blade still managed to take a bite out of me, but I stayed swaying on my feet for a moment. I turned to the side and watched through dimming vision as Miss Kathina’s lightning shield sizzled around me.
I felt my own gem react inside, almost like it was trying to push back against her magic. Then everything turned black.
* * *
“We didn’t die!” Princess announced, smiling as she strolled across the lavish ballroom toward me.
And yes, I could tell that she was smiling even though she had arachnid mouthparts instead of a humanoid mouth.
Her eight-legged gait was elegant as she passed a wall of ornate tapestries to approach me. The golden sun poured through the open French doors that led onto a balcony, and a buffet table was heaped with food. Princess was almost exactly my height, and looked as gem-like and gorgeous as when she’d been tiny. Her eyes, four main ones that I could see, gleamed with a green translucence, and her ... I didn’t know what to call them. Her ‘mouth-legs’ were softly furred and shimmered with yellow and blue, depending on how the sunlight hit them. Her legs were the same, but less showy, and her abdomen swirled with purple and blue and orange, like a video of an unearthly planet.
“You’ve grown,” I said.
“Maybe you’ve shrunk, my sweet hominid!” she said, in her musical voice. “Well, except you haven’t. This is my ... where I sleep, and recover. You lost consciousness, so I wrapped you with my softest silken line and drew you closer, so we could meet properly.”
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“Said the spider to the fly.”
She sniffed loftily, despite not having a nose. “I am not going to justify that with a response, you horrible legless creature!”
“Hey! I’m not legless.”
“Close enough. How in all the webbed words do you stay balanced on those silly things?” She leaned closer and continued, confidingly: “I suspect, and I am only admitting this because we are so close and trusting and--“
“And because you can’t talk to anyone else?”
“--and intimate with each other, given that I reside largely within what I shall generously refer to as your ‘mind,’ that I suspect that bipedal creatures would be so much cleverer if they didn’t spend so much of their mental capacity on staying upright.”
“You brought me here to make fun of bipedal creatures?”
“Of course not! That’s simply a bonus.” She gestured toward the buffet. “Are you hungry?”
“I’m not even going to look at your spider-food.”
“This isn’t a real place, Alexoleander! Your mind will fill in the gaps, which means that whist I sadly cannot provide sustenance, the feast or banquet or repast will at least feel quite satisfying.”
“Let’s just, uh, walk instead.”
And then I offered her my arm like some kind of courtly idiot from medieval times. Which was dumb for any number of reasons, but mostly because she didn’t have arms. Still, she simply hooked the bottom segment of her second leg around my elbow with a delicate touch, and used her other legs to walk. She felt like silk wrapped around steel.
“Such a gentleman!” she teased.
“Oh, shut your mouthparts,” I grumbled, and checked myself we headed for the balcony.
Health: 17/55
“Huh,” I said. “Let’s talk more about how we’re not dead.”
“You rather impulsively decided to fight an elite guard, and--“
“I would’ve beaten him if I’d had any mana.”
“And I would fly if I had wings. At the end of the fight, the pinch-souled woman with the wonderful gowns subdued you with her gem. From what little I saw, she is able to create a rather impressive shield, but also to extend segments to stun her prey.”
“Yeah, but why aren’t we dead?”
“She wants to extract your gem. Which means, yes, to kill you. But the extraction is more likely to succeed in less chaotic circumstances.”
“Oh.” I looked from her big eyes to one of her smaller ones. “So, wait. Are you awake now?”
She laughed as we stepped onto the balcony. “Quite the opposite, my sweetest deliverer. You are dreaming with me.”
“Huh.” I looked from the balcony over a sweeping forest of orange and red and yellow trees, like a colorful Vermont autumn. “Huh.”
“Well-said! Huh, indeed.”
“You seem cheerful,” I said, scratching my beard.
“Perhaps because I very much approve of the hair on your face. Quite dashing!”
“Thank you. I like the hair on your, uh, mouth-legs.”
“My pedipalps, you barbarian! And I am cheerful. Shall I explain why? I shall! Because we lived. That is cause for celebration. But there is an even better reason to dance upon the webbing! Would you care to guess what that is?”
“A better reason than surviving? Uh ... does it have something to do with the power of friendship?”
She nudged me. “It rather does, my cynical human! You saved me. You saved those children. Without a thought for yourself.”
Smart as a ladle, I didn’t say.
“I am positively honored to find myself bound to you,” she told me. “I will serve as your companion with pride and to the best of my ability and I ... “ She looked briefly ashamed, except she didn’t actually look any different. I guess she just felt briefly ashamed. “I can only apologize for my somnolence.”
“Oh, there’s no reason to apologize for your colors.”
“My somnolence, you silly biped! My sleepiness.”
“Oh, I thought you meant because you’re so garish and gaudy.”
“You’re teasing me again,” she said.
“I’m glad we’re companions, too, Princess,” I said. “Now tell me. What the fu--funk is going on?”
She sighed and gazed over the forest. At least, I thought that’s where she was gazing. She had so many eyes, I couldn’t tell for sure. “You understand we were summoned by an extinct order of priests to save this land from disaster?”
“Yeah, but you got here too early, and I got here too late. The disaster already happened.”
“Indeed. The land sundered into islands. And powers arose. Merciless and malignant powers. Much more than that, I do not know.”
“So we’re supposed to fight malignant powers? I hope those priestly ash-holes have a better plan than than just throwing us at the problem.”
“Alex!” she said, because of ‘ash-holes.’
“They brought us here against our will. I’m allowed to say that they are holes full of ash.”
She sniffed disapprovingly. “In any case, they are, as I said, extinct. And when we left the temple compound, the last echo of their lives vanished. So we must divine our own purpose.”
“With the help of quests.”
She tilted her big head. “Ah.”
“What?”
“I am not able to, erm, comprehend or experience those notifications, as you call them, directly, though I sense them through your thoughts. They are extremely odd and otherworldly.”
“And annoying.”
“Yet helpful. You gain knowledge and abilities in an instant. That’s a tremendously powerful capability. Not to mention the frankly-shocking powers such as your domain and your ability to ... to transport or shift ‘loot’ from within creatures. Spacial magic is, if I remember correctly, extremely rare. Much of this mirrors the powers of the gemmed, yet your potential seems to exceeds that by a fair margin. Perhaps by an overwhelming margin.”
“That pasty-assed infenti stepped on me pretty easily.”
“You are five times stronger today as you were two months ago. How strong will you become in another two months?”
“If we make it that long.” I thought for a second. “You’re an anomaly, too.”
“Apparently so, though I prefer to think of myself as unique, singular, or perhaps even incomparable.”
I snorted a laugh. “Are you an archmage?”
“Not that I know.”
“What is an archmage?”
“Well, goodness! My guess--and this is merely a supposition--is that an archmage is a mage of extraordinary ability.”
“Gee, thanks for your insight. So far, being one hasn’t helped.”
“Other than surviving a hundred thorn spiders, the three creatures in the tombyard, scaring off dire pumas, and fighting an elite soldier to a standstill?”
“Hardly a standstill. I’m currently unconscious. He could slit my throat if he wanted. Anyone could.”
“What a foolish and absolutely correct thing to say!” She nudged me with her side, like a Labrador leaning against you for comfort. “Survival is important, as I believe I’ve mentioned, but Alexitran? It is far more important to become the man you wish to be. Death is inevitable, but self-betrayal is a choice.” She paused for a moment, then blurted, “Oh, my very goodness!”
I tensed. “What?”
“I’m being wise again. And about death and betrayal, too! Perhaps I shall become famous for my sagacity.”
“Your sagacious somnolence,” I said.
Her laugh echoed in the room. “Well, speaking of my acumen and insight, would you like my advice?”
“Sure,” I said. “Um, about what?”
“Your points. Your skills, your attributes and boons and your ... goal of remaking yourself as a power in this world.”
“Is that my goal?”
“That is our goal,” she corrected me. “We are here to protect people. I suspect the summoning chose us because we are rather inclined in that direction.”
“Or we were too dumb to dodge an SUV.”
“Oh, hush,” she said. “You know what you are. And you know, we both know, that in this world, power is the key to freedom and survival. So. Instead of balancing there like some sort of--“
“I’m not balancing! I’m standing.”
“You’re standing there balancing,” she said. “Instead of doing that, why not use this opportunity to practice?”’
“Practice what?”
“Your gem.” She turned to face me, in a scuttling of limbs and a glimmering of colors. “You don’t need mana to practice, not here in our dream.”
“Oh! Neat.”
“What is neat about that. Neat as in tidy?”
“No, neat as in cool.”
Despite her immobile spidery eyes, she managed to give the impression that she was rolling them at me. “How in all the webs is this cool?”
“I meant that it’s ... good.”
“Ah. Spoken languages are so silly! All those words!”
“Your people don’t speak in words?“
She reared up on her back three sets of legs, and stood four feet taller than me. Her front two legs pointed at me like arms. “Turn to smoke where I touch you. Ready?”
“Sure, I--“
Her leg darted at my shoulder, and I spun away.
“Don’t dodge, Alex! Vaporize!”
She jabbed at me again, and that time I turned my body to smoke for a moment, before resolidifying.
“Goodness, no,” she said, clicking her mouthparts. “Not all of you. That is indeed useful, but what we wish to determine at the moment is, can you transform smaller portions of yourself? That will prove quite useful, even if it requires more, instead of less, mana.”
“I’ve been trying,” I told her. “Every night, but no luck yet.”
“Yes, I know. Your attempts are what inspired this exercise. You need proper motivation. No dodging!”
She jabbed at me six or seven times before I ... well, started dodging. It was too hard to just stand there and get spider-punched. So she leaped and scampered after me, having a grand old time, laughing and jabbing as I ducked and spun and fled. Then she started humming a tune like we were dancing, because she was an absolute goofy fruitbasket of a spider monster.
Anyway.
I figured that I might as well practice my unarmed blocking, so I faced her and she raised onto her rear two sets of legs so she could jab at me with her forward four. She threw hooks and uppercuts and backhands at me, and I slapped them away--most of them, but she had twice as many hands or, um, hand-type things, as I did, and spiders were goddamn fast.
Still, after a time we fell into a rhythm. And then instead of blocking a chop, I turned my forearm into smoke.