Chapter 41 Bait.

“Before we get to that…” Isaac said bashfully. He pulled the ring of protection from divination out of his Inventory and put it on. Lenna looked at him with clear amusement on her face though she gracefully didn’t say anything about it. “Thank you.” Isaac told her after it was clear that she wasn’t going to comment on the slip up.

Lenna nodded and hummed in agreement as a way to say ‘Your welcome.’ “So?” She asked.

Isaac furrowed his brows in thought. “Let’s go with the stealthier approach for now.” He told her. He summoned a long rod of shadows that was dense enough to be used as a weapon. He grabbed it with one hand and let the other end fall to the ground. He started walking, pushing the one end across the ground as he went.

Lenna followed behind. “To search for webs?” She asked.

Isaac nodded. “And to trigger any traps at a hopefully safe distance.” He explained.

“What about those scrolls of Shroud that we picked up?” Lenna asked. If they were going to sneak there were plenty of ways to help that.

“I have a plan.” Isaac told her but did not elaborate. “For now, let’s just see how far we can get without her coming out to meet us.”

Lenna looked at Isaac sidelong. “Very well.” She replied and the pair continued in silence as they slowly got closer to the spider’s nest.

A few minutes later Isaac’s staff got stuck on seemingly nothing. Immediately after there was a snap and a light gust of wind. They couldn’t see what had made the sound but something had obviously moved extremely fast while being a little too close for comfort. Isaac swallowed. “That’s one trap…” He commented.

“New.” Lenna replied. “The ex-Coins would have destroyed almost all of them.”

Isaac nodded in agreement. “I’m sur… She’s coming.” Isaac focused and pulled as much raw mana out of himself as he could and held it in front of and to the sides of himself. He took a long deep breath. He shoved forwards with all of the mana at his disposal sending a veritable tsunami of power rolling down the tunnel. Much of the mana dissipated naturally as it went but some of it was forced into the drider silk that was lining the tunnel and set up in traps. The illusion of invisibility that was making the traps deadly was quickly squashed under the immense magical weight that Isaac had brought to bear. He staggered from the exertion.

Lenna caught his shoulder. “Now what?” She asked. If Shaeo was already on the way then they would soon be in for the fight of their lives.

“Shroud yourself.” He told her while trying to regain his balance. “Then wait for an opening and end her in one hit.” He explained.

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“What about you?” Lenna asked urgently. They were on a timer that Lenna herself couldn’t see and Isaac could only feel.

“I’ll be bait.” He replied with a grin that let her know that he was both serious and excited for it. Lenna opened her mouth to argue. “Do it now. She is almost here.” He ordered and drew his sword.

Lenna pulled out the scroll from her bottomless bag and opened it while infusing mana into the paper. The best part about scrolls was that all they were missing was mana to function so they would be cast nearly silently and they didn’t require the user to understand the spell nor know the spell chant for it. One of the downsides was if someone had a scroll for something like fireball it would have a preset distance and one would have to aim the back of the scroll itself at the target and hope that it went where the user wanted it to go. With a spell like Shroud it was easy because the spell was simply set to work on the user of the scroll.

Lenna vanished and took a few steps to the side, now careful not to step on any of the lines of silk that were strewn across the ground. She drew her sword and waited. She hoped that Isaac’s plan would work but Lenna knew how well plans liked to hold up against first contact. ‘He better not get himself killed from this.’ Lenna grumbled internally.

—

Eight legs moved silently down the tunnel. Something had just released a massive amount of power much too close to her nest for her liking. The power was dark and she felt drawn to it as if some being had just descended, or maybe even ascended, right next to her home. Whoever this was, either they were going to make her day or regret theirs. Nothing save for Father himself could enter her territory and leave unscathed. Not even a dragon. She was sure of that.

Soon she was drifting through the remnants of the wave of power. Her skin and exoskeleton tingled from the feeling. All of her webs were visible now which was unfortunate but in her defense she hadn’t expected an explosion of power at that magnitude to even be possible by anything that might live near her. She stopped abruptly, the webbing on the tips of her feet that made her steps silent prevented her from skidding. Standing in the middle of her tunnel was a… a “Human…” She purred. Nothing made any sense. There was no way that a human could have the kind of power that she felt. Maybe it was the human’s god’s power. Yes. Yes, that made sense. The human must have called upon its god to sweep away her illusion.

Her eyes were darting around. Something felt wrong. Her instincts never lied. Unfortunately her vision was going bad in her old age. The gray film over her retinas made picking out small details impossible. Her ears were sharp though and her legs even sharper. She shifted so she could place a leg onto each of eight different taut lines of silk. If there was something else there she would feel or hear it before it could make a move. The human spoke: “You’re supposed to offer me to step into your parlor.”

She tilted her head abruptly in confusion. Nonsense. It had to be nonsense. It showed little fear. Amusement. Excitement. Joy? Something was wrong. The human felt much too weak to be acting in such a way. She had not lived as long as she had by being stupid. She knew that she should have moved as soon as the humans had learned of her nest’s location. Her fingers flexed around the hilt of her dragon bone blade. Her shoulders shifted and with the movement she felt some of the plates of dragon bone wrapped in silk, that she had turned into her makeshift armor, shift. The air grew tense but neither side made a move.

She sniffed the air. The scents were too complex to be from just one person. She wanted to close her eyes to help focus her hearing but she was wary of doing so with a human only twenty feet in front of her. The fact that it hadn’t moved an inch only made her even more wary. “Why, are, you, here?” She asked slowly. Speech was a tool that she rarely used but this occasion seemed to warrant it.

“Someone is paying me a lot of money… well… a decent sum of money to remove you.” The human told her.

“Why?” She asked. She felt drawn to the being but also felt immense danger from it. The duality only made her even more wary. If it was willing to let her go she would move nests if it asked her to. It was always better to avoid fights that one was not certain that they would win.

“They don’t like how close you are to a trade route.” It smiled at her. “And the drow seem to revere you, so for them, that is a good enough reason.” It explained.

She thought about its words. “Why, haven’t, you, attacked?” She questioned. It could see all of her traps. She had only managed to get half a dozen of them back up and one was already triggered.

“Why haven’t you?” The human asked in return. Answering a question with a question was not something mortals should do to a higher being like herself. The fact that this human didn’t seem to understand that fact grated on her nerves but she simply lowered herself a little in preparation to lunge.

She finally understood what the feeling she felt meant. She locked eyes with the human and voiced the answer to its question: “You, are, bait.”