Hari dunked the purifier tube into the river and watched the clear snake-like trinket fill the bucket in agonizing slowness. The fellowship had been boiling water and washing rags and trying to stay on top of keeping Corvayne alive, plugging holes in him made by shards of black glass that popped up like a crop of worms in summer rain. She had taken her bucket far behind the truck, a few hundred paces away as directed from Lady Blood Claw. They had a bounty of water from the closer of the two crystal clear streams, yet it had taken Hari a full trip before she realized this activity was a distraction. It was a break from watching her lover slowly dying in agony. In theory it would be a perfect time for her to step up, investigate, and figure out the problem so they could try to come up with a solution.
Her spells had no traction on whatever was happening to Corvayne. Her book had no clue what the ailment was.
She hadn't been able to help Corvayne with the spider, tripping him up rather than backing him up. She hadn't helped with the battle either, catching the end from the high bluff near The Source. She hadn't been there to catch him.
Wick had reacted first, and Hari saw her pushing up the hill with Corvayne trying to drag him with her, snapping at everyone present to keep him alive, running to find Mister I, whipping out orders for everyone to drop pretty much everything and aid Mister I, yanking off Corvayne's ring to get as many healing potions as she could muster. Good moves, all while Hari was still reeling from trying to process what was happening and her own value as a team mate. The moment she snapped back to attention and offered help to Wick, her other lover retreated to her room to see if there was something in the copied summoning book that might be able to fix Corvayne. Later, going back to her room to change clothes her ears caught Wick's frustrated sobs and so took it that Wick knew what she was doing was an arrow into the dark.
Lady Blood Claw, whom Hari thought of as the third leader, had been rolling through a thousand colors, ones that to Hari suggested she had her own regrets. The big alien had taken over from Wick getting people organized over the last four hours, and had been the one who pried Hari away from Corvayne's side to send her on a chore away from camp. Down by the far stream bank, there wasn't the noise and chaos of Mister I trying to deal with both Corvayne's injury and Mosh getting burned nearly to death defending the truck. There was no lingering scent of rot and ash when the winds shifted. In theory her mind should be fertile cleared of all the stumps and rocks. Instead it was worse as the sandy stream offered no distractions for her to latch onto.
All Hari had to do was look in the bucket at the water and she could see her face. She had never like how rounded and human her face looked, as much as she found it fetching in others. She hated her face even more with red puffy eyes, shifting slightly when she looked down into the slowly rising purified water.
She was fixated though on the bucket, the slow and inevitably filling of water, knowing that it would on it's own keep going until it overflowed. She tried to look up at the dimming evening sky, or back at the lights coming on outside the truck. Or up at the two moons she could see, one probably a rocky, barren world with no air, the other a diamond that glittered, reflecting sunlight which came from the star they were pinned to by gravity. All tremendous secrets sages had hinted at, secrets she knew now that felt empty and pointless. She looked back at the bucket, how it slowly filled on it's own.
Looking at the bucket, and herself looking at it, the words danced into her mind: Inevitable. Overflowing. Failure. She pulled out a little pocket trinket that was a Cascadia thesaurus and tried to turn her obsession with the word into something productive. She was good with languages! Corvayne might have a trick for it, but she knew Elvish, Common, Imperial, Dwarven, a little Gnomish, and now Cascadian, which had some other lich-sounding name that she discarded. Cascadian was a terrible language with a bloated vocabulary, right down there with trying to learn Gnomish. If she mastered it, she knew there were other more sonorous languages used on some world that were bilingual, and... that made her see herself alone on a bench in a train station, learning from a book. She had a vision of endlessly trying to fill more buckets, and getting to the top and emptying it to start another, without end, all trying to not look at herself.
What got her out of her head was that the real bucket in her hands was almost full of water and Corvayne was dying. Undine had told her about times where people she knew would take sick or become injured in a way that was like a boat taking on water. The thought kept kicking up in her mind, or sliding back to let her recall Corvayne dive for Wick as the monster charged them. Not her. It wasn't her. Wick... wouldn't dive for her either. She'd dive for Corvayne.
Hari pulled the hose from her bucket and ran back to the camp anyway, back to the commotion of the medical tent. Back to where she was trying not to think it might be the last. Perhaps time would rewind, and they'd be on Cascadia and laugh about mistakes they mad and everything would be fine.
Mister I had been pulling those shards out for at least a few weeks. Lady Blood Claw had seen things like it, feedback from bad power combinations. Corvayne might never live beyond this day, no matter how many times they went back. Would this sequence of trying to keep him alive be a loop, a nettle strung little circular path around a tree, one that would bleed her dry?
Hari blinked as she realized she had arrived at her destination, one of the many sets of fires going on the flat stretch of ground the truck was parked at. June, having been a washerwoman possibly for ages, had some sort of skill that helped her clean bandages faster than anyone else, and she was sitting near a raging fire heating kettles of water. June was sweating like a summer hog despite the cold breeze of the oncoming night. Hari delivered her the water and took the pail and purifier back as June dumped it into a fresh pot she used a power to flare her fire up. She had been working nonstop to meet the endless demand for more gauze. Hari retreated with her empty pail after they had nodded at each other, both from lack of anything to say, and that they were both exhausted, and the scent of whatever bleaching agent they used was like hooks in Hari's nose.
Cut loose of her duty a moment, she was drawn like a fly to the lit tent where Corvayne was. Hari saw Ears-Of-Steel was using a broom to push the black crystal fragments out the flap. The dirt leading out of the tent was covered in bits of blood and black crystal, and the normally rebellious woman seemed solemn as she held the flap for Hari. A hint of pity that only hurt her more.
The inside of the tent was white and the pale light reminded her of a sort of temple, built around her warrior as he lay twitching on the table. As she watched, another blindingly white bandage started to grow red spots which flowered as the gleaming black tip of a blood soaked shard pushed it's way out of him, trailing a little bit of flesh and something vile smelling that Mister I furiously mopped up and dabbed with healing potion. Off to the side of the tent there was a little workstation where glass jars were bubbling with weak healing reagents. From what Hari understood, the resulting potions were not nearly as important as the crafting, as that's what would help fuel Mister I's attempts to keep Corvayne alive.
“Is he awake?” Hari asked, then shook her head and repeated the question in Cascadian.
Mister I tossed the newest knife sized shard onto the ground and hastily filled the hole it left with a wad of gauze. “The good news is no, he is out. The bad news, not for long. He bleeds the medicine out with the knives. I cannot say, with what is happening, if his great constitution is a blessing from heaven or a curse from the darkest hell. When he wakes, he is aware of pain we cannot imagine. You will know because he screams for a few minutes before he passes out.”
Corvayne arched his back a little and coughed, spitting out blood and another shard. Mister I looked over at Hari “Since you are here, pass me the stitches then... tell me a story... no better yet... sing or hum something.”
Hari looked a little confused. “Hum? Like, sing?” She shook her head and picked through the tray, finding the twine and needle. “Are you sure? I was forbidden from singing when I was younger by other elves.”
Mister I started working. “I have not had a drink, or cigarette, or a good, ahem, anything for eight hours! Just give me a rhythm. That or return with a music player.”
Hari cleared her throat and tried to start singing the song of spring, even as she kept seeing an iced over lake. Pale with snow. She sang and thought about the seasons changing. Mister I didn't seem to notice that her elvish tune slipped into winter, the season of death and silence, until she stopped, her throat parched.
Mister I laughed, probably for the first time since Corvayne had fell after the fight, setting his tools down to turn back to his potion table. “That was terrible! And just what we needed! Go get yourself some water, eat something, come back and sing again. I'll be here.”
She started to turn and walk out of the tent, trying to figure out why he had asked her to sing, and nearly ran into the thing who she had assigned the blame to for the whole incident.
The spider was in it's normal form, maybe a bit bulkier as it seemed to grow and shrink even in the same configuration. In bright light it was easier to see purples and reds and blues, as well as parts with fur that shivered in odd patterns. This was the second time it had come into the tent, and was hissing and clicking and moving about and stamping it's feet, perhaps at Mister I or maybe at Corvayne. It had intruded into the camp and stopped short of going into the truck, but since they couldn't catch it or stop it even if they wanted to, everyone but Grunt had ignored it.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
The big man had been following the spider around, but not once reached for his bundle of clubs to try to swat the thing. Instead there was a weird... awe.... about him. The Spider, in turn, ignored him entirely.
The insect pushed itself up to look over the table, then dropped and started hissing and stamping and flapping it's wings even more vehemently. Seru used the term 'Pissy' and Hari liked the Cascadian word, implying someone just walking around peeing on everything. It fit the bugs mini tantrum that Mister I was trying to ignore was he patted his blood stained apron for a tool. No, a package of cigarettes.
The bug put a foot on his foot and kept pointing up at Corvayne on the table, then moving it's hand in a triangle.
Mister I turned to it and waved it away. “Bah! The little moths getting in was bad enough! Hari take this pest out of here, if you can. Try a light spell or flashlight.”
Hari didn't care at this point if she died, again. She tapped the monster on it's wing covers and as it spun she firmly took one of it's hands and started walking it out. The Spider snatched it's hand back, scurried to the table, then teleported back to her with a bloody shard she hadn't seen it pick up, waving it in Hari's face. It reminded her of when Undine had been drinking and the old witch would start harping on some minor thing. Saying, 'Look you fool! This right here! How could you miss it?'
She started to move around it and it moved to block her, practically pushing the bloody crystal in her face.
Hari snatched the shard then threw it on the ground. “We KNOW. We know it's killing him! We're not stupid! We can't DO anything! For all we know, you did it!”
Shouting at it only made it block for a moment, then it lowered its arms and stared at her.
Hari sighed, and waved it way. “Whatever. It's useless.”
The spider saw she had calmed down or was just doing whatever it wanted as it grabbed Hari's arm. The grip was firm and the hand pads felt like new leather, more supple than she had expected. It also was warmer than she thought it would be. The Spider started to tug her out of the tent, hitting her in the face with the flap as it hadn't bothered to open it all the way. It had the shard in it's hand, and stopped by the campfire where Reaper-Of-Fish was sitting guard.
He glanced up from staring at the fire. “Oh hey Elfie, is Corvayne better? Oh shit lady! You got the big-ass spider on ya.”
“I know and Corvayne is...”
The spider tugged her arm, pointing at a triangle it drew into the ground with the shard. It moved fast to one point, then shifted into a sturdy looking form and walked to another point, then shifted into it's two legged form, then pointed at the triangle, then at the tent, waving the dark crystal around. It made the marks barbed then tapped one for running in a circle fast, one for sturdy (even hitting it's own shell with a now club-like armored fist), then in it's bipedal form flipped into handstand and started using it's arms to push itself up and down.
She got that the barbed lines suggested an order to it. She stared at the drawings. Perhaps the problem was the spider thought just swapping his form would work. Being exposed to a totally alien high tech low magic world had given her some hands on experience with being on both sides of an assumption.
Hari folded her arms, then took the shard and drew a poor figure on the ground with little spikes coming out, and a little tent. Corvayne wasn't part of a triangle. She even drew a barbed line to another spiked figure.
“Corvayne. Is. Dying. He can't shift his body around like you.” Hari drew her own triangle off the first two impaled Corvayne stick figures, and moved her staff in a triangle to tap all three Corvaynes she had drawn with spikes coming out.
The Spider actually started cleaning it's legs, following the triangle, but it was looking at it then Hari over and over in a way that meant it clearly didn't understand, and it went back to it's triangle and pointed at it.
“We don't know what's wrong with him. If I understood how to play Dee and Dee, I'd be in the Truck helping Seru.” Or drinking with Seru. If she got really drunk, it would happen, and they would sob, and maybe Mister I could mend her so she got over it fast, like when her friends were eaten.
She was so stupid. Everything from the moment she had left home had been her stumbling from one disaster to another. Even a bug could cast [Blink Strike] better then she did and did it without a single word of chanting, just effortlessly popping behind her as she walked down into a shadowed river bed and started filling up the pail she had been still holding onto. They had a hose they could just run down to the river. Even she could have done that.
She heard stamping and clicking and a whistle and turned to glare at the stupid spider. If it had done something to him... They could kill it if she bound it. There were spells to anchor something to the ground. Even for powerful adventuers, getting pinned and dog-piled in a sneak attack...
It wouldn't save Corvayne. She took a deep breath in. Killing wouldn't save her relationship with him. She exhaled. She could push for more, but he'd never push back. He dove for Wick. Not her. The spider had exposed things that had always existed. It wasn't the spider's fault.
The spider extruded something from it's spinner, a bowl, and dipped it into the water, then turned and vanished. Hari, despite herself, turned and looked at it appearing as a black shadow against the bright light of the fire. It scurried up to June and presented it's gift of water. The Tower-Folk didn't react aside to bow and accept the water. Hari sat down on a stone by the bank of the stream as the Spider started to eat the bowl it had ferried the water with.
It probably was frustrated too. It might be trying to save Corvayne too, and annoyed that it couldn't get them to do something. Hari looked at the stream, it's running water distorting the shimmering moon that was hovering above everything. The Interloper, silently watching their struggles like a glittering eye. Did it judge them?
She hadn't realized that she was just sitting and crying until the bug reached out and put a hand on her back. It was tentative, and it gave her shoulder blade a little squeeze. It was next to her, fanning itself and growling then whining. Hari pointed at herself.
“Hari.”
The spider made a hacking cough then clicked. Was it an attempt to make the same sound she did? It then tried to do the same gesture she had made, except over it's own head rather than at itself. But it then growled and whined.
“Hi Growl-Whine. Nice to meet you. I'm a useless elf, novice investigator, and third wheel.”
It pointed at her. Hack and cough. It pointed at itself. Growl and a whine.
Hari pointed to her mouth, then her ear. “If we could talk, you'd hear about how I've failed everything I've really tried to do, and you are some sort of apex magical predator.”
The spider tapped her, and popped up to it's feet, starting to pull her away from the overfilling bucket.
“What... what do you want now?” Hari tried not to groan as the pushy bug started dragging her back to the fire.
The spider ran to the triangle it had drawn and started tapping it, drawing a sort of blob with little spikes, and putting symbols that looked like dashes and dots in. Hari was trying to follow what the point was, when the spider went over to her own triangle and drew same dashes and dots then moved between them. Hari watched and thought, trying to follow where the thing was looking. It was trying to tell her something, and Hari felt some of her winter mood thaw.
“We need to figure out at least what you're going for...”
Hari drew a basic math problem with adding 4 dots to 4, then the solution 8. Then she did that with a different number of dots but same symbol. The spider added 2 + 3 then drew the symbols slightly off kilter and curved, but with five dots to five dots. Hari drew ten dots.
It then drew the same problem but with triangles around the dots, then a square around the answer.
The spider clicked and tapped it's head, then tapped Hari's.
It started moving around the triangle it had drawn in the dirt, doing the same mimed actions as it moved around it, then drew littler triangles around the spiked forms, and drew a person in a box. It didn't add spikes.
“Okay. You think that if we do what you want, he'll be okay? Fuck it, I'm going to try to use my magic to figure out what you're saying and...”
Of course, trying to ask The Voice of the World about the spider was met with silence. She spent twenty minutes making a little pyramid of clay, but the spell she was trying didn't work. It might be as simple as level difference: It was likely at least as strong as the staff-wielding monk had been, then.
While she had been trying to cast [Understand Language], the spider drew five webs, and a crude figure with sharp ears that might be her and a spider at the bottom, then drew a big horned monster at the top of the five webs, then drew her and the spider at the top of all that but merged into each other, with heads together and overlaping. She guessed it was her, the figure had pointed ears. A chill passed through Hari. It knew about the Tower unless something else had five sets of problems or areas, then a monster.
Hari drew her own doodle of Th Tower, just a 5 lines in the dirt with stairs connecting them. At the top she drew a pointy ear figure, then the triangle, then a bunch of other stick figures including a spiked one. To say: we climbed them too. We know.
The spider started to pat the ground and chirp and flick it's wings while dancing back and forth. Either happy or thinking?
The spider tentatively pointed at her, then put a hand over it's head, then put a hand over the drawing of the webs. It was saying, they needed to do a Tower run.
Hari felt something building. “Okay, but...”
Hari did two things, first trying to add four more figures, but the spider wiped it down to three people and the spider at the bottom of the webs, then two people and the merged figure at the top.
Hari would do it. Whatever it took. “Fine! However...”
She pointed to the webs and circled it. “Where is this?” She mimed looking around. Hari drew the source as best she could, which took two minutes of dragging her staff around, but circled it, then pointed at the black mountain blocking the starry sky. She drew a truck, circled it, then pointed at it. She then circled the webs.
The spider pointed at the source then. No, just a little way off from it.
Hari got up, kicking the bucket she had been filling but not caring that it spilled water. “Shit! Let me get Seru and... whoever isn't doing anything useful!”
The spider took her hand, then pointed at the diagram it made. The spider and the person with a head together. Hari looked it in the eyes and kept it's gaze for a second.
It clicked, and Hari nodded, and drew the merged head with pointed ears, then pointed at her own pair. “If we can't do anything else to understand you, then yes.” She drew herself near the spike figure. Touching hands.
The spider tapped the side of it's head... then turned, flipping and snapping it's mouth together as it expanded and hissed like an enraged serpent. The aggressive display made Hari back up, for a moment lamenting that whatever progress she was making might end if it decided to attack someone.
It blinked, and she hurried after it as the thing teleported into the medical tent. A moment later it popped out of it, carrying Mister I. It would have been funny to see him flailing above two stick arms if she didn't know how dangerous The Spider could be.
“Put me down! Aid me Hari! The bug has gone mad! Get a big shoe!”
Hari tried to approach the spider, asking “What are you doing? Corvayne needs him to-”
It tackled her, sending Hari sprawling along with Mister I. She started preparing a spell to bind the monster but at that moment the tent exploded with the sound of glass shattering as black spikes erupted from it, shredding it to tatters as they expanded and shattered, raining knives on them and creating a black crystal wall of spears, centered on where Corvayne had been.
Hari didn't wait this time, and started running at the wall of dark crystal.