Hari rushed over to the remains of the tent, cutting her foot as she stumbled into the circle of spikes, knocking a spear of black glass down and getting slices all over as she slid past. Corvayne was at the center, twitching and groaning in pain but still alive despite a circle of devastation about him. It was humbling to see him whimper, his poker face twisted in a grimace. Hari turned to The Spider, Growl-Whine, who was taping the black crystal, then took a little shard and put it in her mouth, her teeth moving like a buzzsaw.
A moment later, she shuffled over to help Mister I stand. As she was pulling the old apocathary to his feet, she spotted Lady Blood Claw running over, blazing hot fire sword lighting up a patch of dirt around her as she barked, “What did it do!?”
Hari stepped in front of the spider. “It saved Mister I. The burst came from Corvayne.”
The Spider, ignoring this drama, took another shard and ate it, then scrambled over to the firelight again, it's leg turning into a fin for a moment to sweep the ground clean, then started drawing.
First was a circle of spikes drawn outwards in a ring around a figure with spikes coming out of it, the now shared shorthand for Corvayne.
Second drawing, an orb with lines, no, a sun! The sun, cresting the horizon, then around the spikey figure were two circles of spikes, twice as big. It even drew a truck, with the spears nearly touching it.
A third drawing, with a sun at the zenith of an arc, three big circles of spikes, past the truck.
A fourth drawing added a line of spikes all the way between a shockingly accurate rending of the two nearby streams as the sun set.
Then a sixth drawing, showing the sun rising again, and she drew a source then a line of spikes around a tiny figure that might be... a mile or two all around given their distance. Hari was not shocked when the spider erased the little figure at the center.
Hari got the picture. “We have until the day after tomorrow morning at latest to do... something. And he's going to progressively explode out further.
The spider tapped her, and pointed at the ground at the noon drawing. It brushed the sun, and moved it a little forward. It erased it again, then drew it closer to the ground...
Hari didn't know how to tell it she understood but she tried to draw the same thing with the same spikey figure exploding. “It's telling us the spikes are variable... so treating him is going to be risky.”
More of the shards were crumbling, and Hari saw the spider picking it's way past the jagged formation to Corvayne, motioning for Hari to follow. Hari was less agile and this time was more careful to not walk into the razor sharp formations that spiraled out from where the tent had been. She had to turn sideways and still felt a cut form on her hand as she saw Corvayne laying on a mangled black crystalized stretcher. The Spider was very pointedly watching him.
Hari cut off asking a question that it wouldn't understand and looked at her wounded lover. Something was wrong with him, beyond the knives digging their way out of him. His skin had started to swim. Hari drew closer and saw Corvayne's arms were starting to puff up. A moment later she lept back in suprise as a line of fingers erupted from his hands and wrists, sort of like centipedes spiraling up his arm before fading back in, a few falling off and dissolving into black sludge. A line of lungs, some punctured, some whole, emerged from his chest and puffed up or popped in little wet splatters of blood before sinking back into him.
Hari felt her stomach heave and turned to the side, throwing up for the third time in as many days. She only realized Lady Blood Claw had been following her when the alien pressed a clean cloth from June's stash into her face. Hari just let her wipe her face off.
“Sorry Lady Blood. I've been doing a terrible job...”
“You've taken point with the weaver. And you are our link to this world's customs and laws and geography. You are holding up better than I... than I would if I was his lover. If anything I should have forced you to take a break sooner.”
Hari reached for her canteen and took a swig of water to rinse her mouth out. She had never seen another elf throw up or even imply they could. Then again, she wasn't any other elf, was she? “Okay. Then, I'm going to take some people and we're going to go with the spider and try to get translation powers in the dungeon. That or a mind meld skill that might fuse me to the spider.”
Lady Blood Claw put her hands on Hari's shoulder. “You are NOT to do that. Corvayne needs all of us. And we need you. Cut the bullshit. Start thinking like an investigator, and a woman who loves him.”
Hari flinched a little, but Lady Blood Claw wouldn't move until Hari nodded. The moment she was free she started towards the truck. As she was walking, Kirae, the local guide, came up to her.
“I still haven't been paid.”
Hari turned to the steppe dweller and nodded without stopping. “I know” She reached into her pouch and pulled out a handful of gold coins. “Can you settle for this? That or you have to learn to speak with the spider.”
“Even if I take that,” which she did, “...I have to get home too. You are the only person who can speak to me, the gnome they had was also hurt.”
It was just another distraction, but Hari tried to school herself to think like a leader. “I will get someone, say, Spears, to take you back, I'm sorry that there wasn't loot, just spiders.” Hari spoke while pulling open the conveyor ramp into the truck. In all honesty she wanted the local guide to just piss off. Instead, she followed Hari.
“I want out of town.”
Hari forced herself to turn and not start cursing her out in four languages. “With the gold, can you... no, I know you can get ride with the next trader who wanders by. My lover is going to die in two days. If you want to make it my problem... Give me something that even might help me fix it. If you keep bothering me otherwise I will get the awkward one to take you home.”
Kirae nodded. “There's a place where most of the village's real treasures came from. The ones we keep and still use to this day. But you need to fly to get to it.” Kirae looked hopeful. Hari turned to go into the truck.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“There's a portal in basement too.” Hari didn't mention the spider's drawings.
“You will never come back if you go down. Or if you do, you will lose other people. There's two holes down we know of, and only a handful of explorers who went into them came back. I know where we send the strongest boy in our village every generation.”
Hari stopped. “You are willing to betray your village for just a... ride with us?”
“The world is ending.” Kirae shrugged.
Hari stopped. “I doubt it. And there's more than one world.”
“I don't know what far off lands you came from, but The Empire is collapsing. The Shield of Light is failing, and both the remaining princes died in the last two weeks. These plains will be overrun by invaders in a month, two or three if the army stops bleeding deserters into our land and puts up a good fight.”
It wasn't totally news to her. The number of soldiers going rogue had been going up for years. Same with the rumors that the Emperor was sick, and that the families ability to use their tools was sputtering out. So she thought about it. Sooner or later the other human empires would realize The Empire could no longer vaporize them, and the ensuing chaos would be bad news for even her enclave and Undine. Undine might listen to reason, but her family? They scoffed at everything outside the wood wall. Her first party, should they have come back to Nel'Ferral, were the ones she could most easily convince to 'hit da bricks' as they said in Cascadia.
Distractions, Hari decided. She needed to focus.
“Fine. I'll give you my spot if anyone complains.... actually you need to learn the language we're all speaking, right? How about this... we are gunning for a power to understand that spider. That or something that can fix Corvayne. But the spider knows what's wrong with him, and it's more than we got.”
Kirae folded her arms. “I have no powers.”
“There's a method for getting them. If you can learn a language power, we'll take you. Either way, you'll be better equipped for whatever happens. Show my pals the other treasure cave. If it's a power try to get a language power or find something to keep him alive or stall whatever's happening.”
Hari went over to the lounge, Kirae following, and pulled the curtain they had put up aside.
Seru was in the middle of the weird play-acting adventurer training she said was part of appeasing her god. She had put a cloak on, and her arms were wide as she announced. “An ogre barrels through the bar door, splinters flying as he roars a challenge... now roll initiative!”
She had Horton, Brines, Spears-Like-Water, and Nyx sitting at the table. Horton looked attentive at the little tactical map, Brines looked like he was about to have a nervous breakdown, Spears-Like-Water kept wiping her face but also rolling the dice, sniffling as she called out. “I rolled 8.”
Nyx might have been asleep. He had his captain's hat covering his face and his feet up on the table. Hari was very tempted to kick his chair, but she had bigger fish to catch than the puffed up human noble. Her eyes did linger on the chair leg an extra second before she looked back up at the proceedings.
Looking again she realized she almost missed that the girl Corvayne had rescued from the spider was there. The villager was sitting in the booth between Horton and Spears, watching the table and adjusting a female archer game piece that had a long pony tail like hers. Her clothes had been in poor shape, so someone had given her a 'DEATH IS CERTAIN' T-shirt five sizes too large that she was wearing like a baggy dress. She looked a little... placid... which meant someone had spared her a mend.
“Do you know what Seru is saying?” Hari asked.
The villager girl shrugged. “The water girl tells me when she's not crying.” She replied without looking away from the map on a mat where Spears-Like-Water was moving her own statue. “Everyone else forgot about me.”
Hari supposed she had too, and considered asking Grunt or Spears to take her back to her village. Her own small ounce of jealousy towards Spears had evaporated when she saw how lost the girl looked. Maybe it was why Wick took Corvayne in. Wick was prickly sometimes if Hari tried to talk about Corvayne, and Grunt... Grunt couldn't always emote the more complicated things in a way that Hari got.
She could worry about the burnt mushroom stew that was her lover triad was later. Focus. Hari turned and put a hand on Seru's shoulder. “That's enough. The spider knows what's wrong with Corvayne, apparently. If we can help him, her, it with some sort of understanding power...”
Seru made a sour face and got a little bit of whine in her voice. “Like, That's why we are doing this! So we know what's going on with Corvayne if the spider doesn't know, or actually did it... You do you Hari, but I'm going to bet on Gygax.”
Hari nodded. “Okay.”
Seru apparently saw something in her face because she sighed and stood up. A moment later Hari felt warm arms wrap around her. Seru gave her a determined look. “It's okay sister. We'll pull through. Compared to Argyle, what's a few crystal explosions?”
She decided not to remind Seru that Argyle actually DID kill her, and dying was very painful.
“I was going to ask you and Brines to come with me... but instead keep trying your ritual, we can ask Lady Blood Claw to head a group and see if their treasure stash is a tower.”
Hari left the Truck, spotting the woman who was Mosh's bodyguard rushing the other way with a bundle of clean cloth. Varia looked troubled, clearly out of sorts since Mosh had been hurt. Usually she was extremely cheerful when Hari had spoken with her. Hari wished she had time to help the girl.
Focusing back on her task, Hari stepped away from the truck. Bright non-magic lights had been set up to illuminate the dirt outside of the truck. There was some organizing going on, with Mister I trying to set up a windbreak from where Corvayne was laying on his crystal altar, still twitching as knives erupted from him and prompted new organs to surface and move about. Hari moved over to Kirae and explained getting drafted to lead Lady Blood Claw's team to the treasure. Then Hari called Brines over before looking for her last team member. She had hoped to get Grunt, but spider made a crossed arms gesture.
Instead, they got Bearer-Of-Burdens, dressed in her brown delivery outfit with a few modifications so she had some padding on her elbows and legs. The icy knuckles she used as a weapon distracted Hari for a moment. It was absurd this group's luck with items, almost as bad as their luck with nearly dying had been. Scratch that, they had all actually died.
Hari addressed her two fellow party members. “I don't know what the Spider's plan is, but we're trying to get a power to either understand it or to perform some sort of telepathy with her-” She stopped herself. There was no evidence the spider was a woman. “Telepathy with it to get Corvayne to do something. I suspect it knows exactly what's happening, and how to stop it.”
Bearer raised a hand. “I am not going to mind meld a spider.”
Brines started to walk away and Hari had to blink to him and pull him back by his stretchy shirt. “You can go for translation too. I think it wants you for the aura you had though.”
“Hari! I'm one of the backers of this excursion, we need a vote!”
Hari shrugged. “All in favor of dragging Brines along?” She raised a hand, saw Bearer raise hers, and the Spider watched them and tried miming them by lifting a leg.
“Sorry Brines. You are in with us.”
Lady Blood Claw had pulled Reaper, Ears, and Gary with Kirae. The alien woman was wearing the Jam-Jammies but seemed to be focused on the mission enough to ignore the the jelly oozing strawberry pants. It was fixing the holes the daggers had pounded into it, but it left globs of strawberry goop everywhere. They had given Bearer-Of-Burdens the running boots. The only piece of gear they left of Corvayne's was his spear in their shared room.
“Can you handle flying somehow?” Hari asked LBC.
“I have a potion of flight tucked away that I was saving for...” Hari saw Lady Blood Claw turn from gray to pale-green gray. It was curious that [Investigate] couldn't tell her what the skin colors meant. Corvayne offhandedly had said he had cracked most of them. Clearly he wasn't paying a tenderfoots pinky toe of attention to her face and body language or he'd have had a lot more to say about Lady Blood Claw, but that was between her and him.
Still, she knew that LBC hated heights and Hari wrapped the woman in a hug. “Thank you! I know what it means to use a trump card like that.”
The tall woman gave her an awkward squeeze back, hastily pushing her back and stuttering out “I-It's n-nothing! I just don't want to lose my sparring partner is all!”
Ah. She was, as the elves say, a Stormy-Sunny Maiden.
She was about ready to prod The Spider to lead the way when she heard someone coming up behind her and turned to see Wick, eyes red, holding the Airfoil Rapier out.
“Save his dumb ass. Please.”
Hari went to hug her but Wick backstepped. “Stop! It's really weird!”
Hari paused. “You never minded before.... not with me, just with Corvayne?”
Wick put a hand over her glasses. “You stay safe too. Don't do any stupid shit to try to be a hero.”
Hari felt herself smile, warmth blossoming in her chest. “Rejected! I will do whatever my heart tells me to do for love, and if I am a fool, it's only because I tell you the same, don't do anything stupid!”
Wick snapped her gaze upwards. “Fuck that!”
Hari nodded. “Then we agree, my lovely Wick.” She blew her a kiss rather set Wick out of sorts.
Armed with the blade, Hari strolled back to where The Spider was pacing, and once it saw they had formed a clump of three it tapped each of them on the leg, then Hari felt a party form. It had never been so forceful that she noticed the connection, it was a Cold-Day-Blanket-Shock, another word to find in Cascadian. She felt the spider putting threads of magic to them as well, reedy feeling bands that demonstrated casual mastery of whatever she... it... she. Something about the spider was... maybe a little bitchy? Seru probably wouldn't like to hear that the monster reminded Hari of her when she was was doing whatever she wanted.
The spider seemed to tie off the mana with some sort of horrible dangling construct that broke a dozen rules but Hari had only a moment to puzzle out what it was doing when, with a magical yank, they flew off to the moon-lit spire of the Source, cold air whooshing for a moment then stilling then whooshing as displaced air kept blowing back at them, a hint of the momentum involved with Blinking that nearly winding her. If she hadn't thrown up earlier, the lurching speed of popping in and out of oddly structured Blink casts that somehow worked on the entire group would have done it. Their path went up The Source, her view of the moon lit streams lifting as they popped higher, eventually swapping to near total darkness.
Her eyes adjusted as the Spider set them down before a stairway covered in orange glowing glyphs. The same type she'd seen before. Brines and Bearer took a moment to throw up, but she strode up the stairs with the Spider to enter The Tower and hopefully find a way to save Corvayne.