There’s a hole in the ground where Tyrus just stood, and we hear a long swoosh accompanied by a fading “Gahh!” before a quiet crashing sound somewhere below us. Then silence.
“Tyrus, Buddy, you okay?” I shout down the hole. It takes a couple heart beats but then he appears just underneath it, looking dusty and disheveled but moving. The lighting is low, but I can at least see him in gray scale thanks to my elven senses. At least, I assume it’s my elven senses. It could be my perception score or whatever kind of stat would be associated with it.
“It’s some kind of chamber,” Tyrus shouts back up. “I twisted my foot, but I’m okay. Looks like… aw shit.”
Something jumps at Tyrus just then. It’s hard to tell what it is at first given the low lighting, but then I count eight big, long, hairy legs, a segmented back end with a stinger on it, and a little head with large gnashing pincers.
“Why does it have to be spiders?” I mutter, grabbing the torch from Meg before she can protest and I drop it down the hole. It misses a rocky chute, which doesn’t look built but also doesn’t exactly look natural. The torch almost lands on the dwarf and startles the spider enough that it jumps back and skitters out of view for a moment. Then, there’s a blur as it springs forward again, knocking Tyrus onto his back.
Tyrus barely dodges the stinger with a shocked “Yah!” as he rolls out of the way and scrambles up to his feet, pulling out one of his daggers from behind his back and putting a hand out as if to stop the giant creature. He looks around for a place to escape but there’s nothing immediately around him.
“Hang on!” Jonas shouts down the hole before looking around at us. “How’re we going to help?”
“I have to get down there,” Meg says. “I’m not good at range.”
“Shit,” I mutter, pulling back my bow and trying to get a good sight on it, but it’s difficult from this angle. I move a little bit, anchoring an arrow back while I look for a good opportunity, then I let it fly, but it nicks a stalactite and barely makes contact, soliciting a single point of damage on the giant spider’s abdomen. It’s far more interested in Tyrus, who is back on his feet and backing away, and it shoots a web at him. It impacts the dwarf and sends him stumbling backward. It’s not quite the cartoonish stuck-to-the-wall I’d have expected in an actual videogame, but it does sprawl him back on the ground, tangled in thick webbing.
“I’m going in,” Meg says, sheathing her sword before stepping to the edge of what looks like the steepest slide ever. “Be great to have some help.”
“Yeah, okay,” I agree, nodding. “Jonas, you should stay up here though. We may need your magic hands afterward.”
He frowns. “You sure? I can help too.”
“She’s right. You are more use to us alive. We don’t know how many are down there,” Meg says. “Flynt, you have much area magic you can throw?”
“A little. You need to get them pretty clustered though.”
“Can you snipe them from up here?”
“I can try.”
“Okay. Elf Girl, you and me.” She eases herself down the hole, and I watch her slide down the chute and tumble out of the way. It looked fairly graceful, but it also had to have hurt.
“I really hate that nickname,” I tell Flynt, draw a deep breath, and slide down myself.
I have an easier landing than Tyrus or Meg did, leaping off the side of the chute before it can throw me off, and I land on my feet, skidding the rest of the momentum up to the edge of a crevasse along the far wall. My heart jumps as I stop just before it, and I quickly survey the room.
It’s a large, rounded chamber with the narrow crevasse behind me and a rocky wall about thirty feet in front of me that’s all but covered in gray-white webbing. There are bumps in some of the webs suggesting figures buried behind it. The chamber then runs probably another sixty feet long: twenty to my right and forty to my left. Tyrus struggles a few paces shy of that far wall, trying to cut himself out of the webbing while Meg stands between him and one spider. Another spider emerges from a heavy glittering web in the far-right corner.
I select one of my serrated tip arrows and draw it back, sighting on the emerging spider’s mouth, which I remember from my Weird Kid days as being called the chelicerae. I draw a deep breath and release, watching the arrow make its mark with an awful tearing noise (12 points of damage) that has the spider letting out a just horrible squeal before it turns its attention to me. I’m already pulling another arrow and stepping carefully to the left away from it as the creature backs up slightly, then charges me. I release the arrow too quickly in the resulting panic, and it skims the spider’s side (2) before hitting the wall and embedding in the web. The spider comes up fast, and I just manage to throw myself out of the way, rolling along the edge of the crevasse, thankful for my nimbleness score.
The spider’s momentum carries it across the crevasse and slams it against the wall on the other side (1) though doesn’t fall down it because, you know, spider. I back up quickly as it tries to find me, my arrow still sticking out of it. I fire a third arrow, the last of those serrated tips, just as the creature lunges toward me, the opposing momentum embedding the arrow deep into its cephalothorax (12). I’m not able to get away fast enough, and the spider’s body lands hard on top of me, its short spiky hairs pricking at my face. I grunt and gasp hard, the air knocked out of me. All I can see is spider body, but I hear Meg shouting now from my right and more skittering noises coming from where my new body pillow did.
“Meg! Coming your way!” I shout, though I’m sure my voice is as muffled to her as her voice is to me. I manage to wriggle myself into a ball, which allows me to push out with my arms and legs, rolling the spider body enough to the side that I can squeeze out. It’s not especially heavy, but it’s awkward and uncomfortable as the spiky hairs bite into my palms. The legs also curl up as I move it over, almost capturing me again.
The moment I extract myself I’m hit from behind with something gooey that almost makes me vomit right there from the texture and smell and just the sheer fact that I now have gigantic spiderweb all over me. To make matters worse, it’s cold. An iciness begins to take hold, making my muscles want to seize up.
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I force myself to roll to the side, my back again to the crevasse, and I take in the sight. The first spider facing off with Tyrus and Meg is on its last legs, literally, hobbling on one on each side of its body just as Meg stabs upward with her sword right into its cephalothorax (10), pulling out black ichor in the process. But then, two more spiders are on her, one slashing with its stinger the other gnashing with its fanged chelicerae. She dodges the first, but the second bites her in the shoulder, hanging on tight before Tyrus stabs down into its eye cluster (8) forcing it to release her. A third spider skitters cautiously toward me. It has iridescent blue markings on its otherwise brown body.
“Why is everything here icy,” I mutter, struggling to get an arrow out of my now sticky quiver, all while keeping an eye on Icy’s slow creep forward as I side-step toward the melee to my left, remembering Flynt’s instructions to get them clustered. The spider moves with me and shoots another web my way. I’m just able to dodge it, and it sploots on the floor, sending a barrage of ice crystals scattering over the stone. It’s then that I notice the floor isn’t natural stone: it’s the same polished and intentionally laid pavers as upstairs.
Weird. Figure it out later.
I manage to nock another arrow and fire, but the sticky substance all over me makes it difficult to fly true. It hits its target but gets measly damage (3). Given these things seem to have at least twenty, that’s not going to be enough. It rears up on its back legs and charges at me. It impacts me hard, like a bull, sending me flying backward, careening into Tyrus who grunts, and we tumble together into the wall, his dagger flying one direction and my bow clattering toward the crevasse— though thankfully not falling down it.
At that instance a red glow comes shooting down the chute and fiercely impacts with Icy, who is coming up on the other two. The impact sends red glittering sparks over all of them and the smell of burning meat and hair fills the space, making me gag as I untangle myself from Tyrus. I don’t see the damage points but can already tell it was a lot. That was a big spell, bigger than anything Flynt threw during the goblin fight.
Meg, who’s moving slowly, takes another swing at the one who bit her, dropping it, and Tyrus scrambles to his feet, throwing one of his daggers at the other one, embedding it in its cephalothorax with a heavy thuf. Both spiders drop, leaving just Icy, who rears up again about to come down hard on Meg when another blast comes thundering down the chute, impacting it so hard that we hear its limbs break (20).
It doesn’t get back up.
The cavern is silent, and I roll onto my back breathing heavily, feeling bruised.
“Looks like we’re clear!” Tyrus shouts up. “Could use some healing I think!”
Meg falls to her knees, dropping her sword to her side, touching at the gash in her shoulder. She is pale and worse for wear. Tyrus is disheveled but otherwise not too bad.
There’s a shoosh down the chute before Jonas hits the floor hard, just moving out of the way for Flynt to do the same. He manages to roll, kind of. They both survey the scene before Jonas makes a break for Meg. He has to climb through giant spider carcasses to get to her.
“Yikes,” is his well-worded response to her wounds, before helping her sit back against the far wall.
“I don’t suppose either of you thought to tie a rope before coming down, did you?” I ask from where I lie on my back, not wanting to move. The chute wasn’t a straight shot down, curving a little toward the end there, and it was extremely slick. It didn’t seem especially climbable.
Flynt winces as he appears over me, holding my bow. “Suppose we should have listened to Nyssa. We were worried. It didn’t look or sound great from where we were.”
“Didn’t look or feel great from here,” I admit. “I was almost suffocated by a giant spider.” I cough and wince, pressing a hand lightly against my ribs. “It’s a death I’d never considered for myself.”
“Stuff of nightmares.” He looks back over his shoulder for a long moment, heaving a heavy sigh. “You okay to stand?”
He holds out one hand for me to grab and helps me to my feet. I wince as one of my ribs feels not quite right. I haven’t broken a rib since I was a kid and my horse freaked out at a paper bag, but it feels a lot like that. I hope Jonas is able to save a little bit of healing energy for me, though from the looks of it, Meg is pretty badly off.
I wander over to the bigger spider that almost froze me to death and examine it. The moment I touch it something appears in my vision.
> [Would you like to loot: Greater Ice Spider? Yes/No]
Um. Sure. Yes, please. What does that look like?
It doesn’t look like much. As far as I can tell, nothing happens, but then I see a little bag icon in the bottom right of my vision. The moment I think about it, it opens, and my [Inventory] appears:
> [Inventory]
>
> [1 Red Elixir of Healing, Basic]
>
> [1 Green Elixir of Stamina, Basic]
>
> [1 Blue Elixir of Essence, Basic]
>
> [1 Cloak of Dragon Scales, Legendary]
>
> [1 Deck Playing Cards, Mundane]
>
> [1 Pewter Mug, Mundane]
>
> [2 Lesser Enchanting Stones, Basic]
>
> [1 Leather Hair Thong, Mundane]
>
> [2 Used Breakfast Wrappers, Mundane]
>
> [1 Endless Journal, Basic]
>
> [1 Endless Ink Pen, Basic]
>
> [1 Key, Wide Sky Tavern and Inn, Mundane]
>
> [1 Waterskin, full, Mundane]
>
> [1 Toothbrush, Mundane]
>
> [1 Jar of Mouthsoap]
>
> [1 Medicine Kit, Mundane]
>
> [1 Medium Coin Pouch, Mundane]
>
> [10 Gold Pieces]
>
> [21 Silver Pieces]
>
> [3 Copper Pieces]
>
> [1 Medium Coin Pouch, Mundane]
>
> [100 Silver Pieces]
>
> [1 Vial Ice Spider Venom, Basic]
Interesting. The [Interface], whatever it actually is, isn’t making me go through the process of extracting the venom or even carry an empty vial. It does, however, look like if I want to harvest legs, fangs, or anything like that, I’ll have to do it myself— which, frankly, no thank you.
Also, I really need to throw away those wrappers.
I go around to each of the other spiders, but none of them seem to have any special items available. I salvage a couple of my arrows and call it done. Glancing around for Flynt, I find him and Tyrus at one of the bumps in the webbing carefully cutting whatever it is out. I move over to see if I can help, but it’s too crowded, so I watch as they dislodge the humanoid figure and gently lay it down on the ground.
It’s a human, probably in his late teens, dressed in worn trousers and a heavy, worn wool sweater. He looks like he’s been completely drained with fang-like tears in his abdomen. The six other bumps have similar findings; the last two closest to where the spiders emerged seem fresh— or, at least, not as drained— but are still lifeless. On three of the corpses Tyrus finds a tattoo signaling they’re part of the Kartesian crime family.
“Looks like we can answer where the missing people have disappeared to,” Tyrus says, then grins at Flynt. “Looks like you’re zero for two, my friend.”
“Ah, but we’re not in the sewers,” Flynt points out, “so I was correct. There was nothing in the sewers causing the disappearances.”
Tyrus narrows his eyes. “I’m going to give you that one but on a technicality. The jury is still out on your judgment.”
“That’s fair. I will admit to not knowing the city as well as I expected.”
There’s a retching sound over by where we left Jonas and Meg, and we turn around to find our healer leaning out over the crevasse and puking his guts out. Meg is seated against the wall, looking better, just shaking her head.