Empirical Gnollage: Installment 88 [https://squirrel.dogphilosophy.net/Installment088.png]
Dusty patches of dry mold speckled the giant spider's shriveled, leathery body. Five of the eight eyes in its head were decayed or missing but a pinpoint of violet light shone in each one. It turned almost silently on its eight legs to face Bote and raised its forelegs threateningly. If it made any sound, Al couldn't hear it over the agonized groaning of the zombie in the corner of the room, cowering away from the horror of its own existence.
Another shape fell into view from somewhere above, behind the spider. A second once-humanish body thudded to the floor. Its own fearful moan joined the other's as it staggered to join its dead companion in the corner.
Gruntle charged into the room before Al could say anything, but he was relieved to see that the gnoll had heeded Al's request, dodging underneath one of the upraised forelegs to smash his flail into the leg behind it. The rotted chitin of the spider's leg cracked and bent, leaking glowing violet ichor as the gnoll gave subdued bark-laughter at the joy of violence.
Al saw Wikwocket's shiny dagger stab out through the webbing she was trapped under as she began to saw herself loose, so he left her to join the fight. He raised Purgatio in one hand, leaving his left free so as to have another hand for defensive magic if he needed it. Emulating Gruntle, he ran under the other raised foreleg and chopped at the leg behind it on his side. Purgatio connected with a flicker of silvery light as it bit into the exoskeleton and cleaved through, cutting away the lower half of the leg. The wounded arachnid ignored its attackers and charged past them towards the doorway. It stumbled awkwardly as it tried to use its broken and missing legs but was unrelenting as it bore down on Bote with its remaining six.
The dwarf called upon the divine for the guidance and protection of them all as the spider charged in, lunging to bite. Bote raised their hammer defensively but the horse-sized spider pushed it aside with a foreleg. Bote bellowed angrily as the spider's fangs punched through the corroded metal of the breastplate and stabbed into Bote's chest. Bote managed to pull free of the fangs. They dripped the same unnatural fluid that leaked from its injuries onto the floor. Al and Gruntle were both turning to chase after the spider when something hit the floor behind them. Al's hastily conjured protective magic manifested just in time to stop the wild swing of the angry dead man before a fist like hardened leather would have smashed into his face. The light of Al's torch carried into the room by the heedless invisible spirit showed him the face of a long-dead man, withered and dessicated and contorted in mindless rage. His assailant wore tatters of spider-silk draped over what had probably once been a well-tailored set of clothing. Like the others, the pale violet glow in its eyes was there watching him.
Al was not happy when motion in his peripheral vision drew his attention to at least one more human-sized pale squirming shape in the webs on the ceiling, but he had no time to look any closer. Gruntle's flail swung out and smashed into the side of the zombie's head with a loud crunch and a spray of teeth. Al took advantage of the distraction to shove the point of Purgatio between the zombie's ribs - just below a pair of punctures through the dead man's jacket, Al noticed. The sword slid in with another silvery flicker of light and a slight sizzling sound, and the zombie sagged and groaned angrily in its suffering.
Wikwocket pulled herself free of the cut webbing. The massive undead spider stood over her fighting Bote, so she aimed a stab with BiteySue up at where one of the forelegs attached to the unnatural thing. Spider-marked blade bit deftly into the death-marked spider. Pale violet dripped from the joint as the rapier was levered out when Wikwocket leapt upwards to stab at the joint of the other foreleg with her dagger, driving into the chitinous shell and cutting into whatever may have been left of its flesh. With its four front legs broken and disabled, the front end of the restless-dead spider dropped towards Wikwocket, who barely avoided being impaled by the spider's fangs as she dove and rolled out to stand next to Bote. With a short prayer of thanks for the favorable attention of divinity, Bote rushed beside the crippled spider to smash their hammer down on one of its intact legs which scrabbled ineffectually as the spider tried to move to face him. The chitin cracked open like a cooked crab-leg as it was crushed between hammer and floor.
Al was too busy fighting an angry corpse to see any of that happening. Purgatio had plunged flashing with divine light between the ribs and into where a heart should be, so he was unpleasantly surprised by the fist that slammed into the side of his head. Through the sparkling starbursts of pain in his vision as he rocked back, Al saw Gruntle's flail swing over him and down, smashing hard through the zombie's decaying ribs and hard enough to snap the backbones behind them. The dead man folded unnaturally to the ground as Gruntle rebounded from the strike to dash back to the spider and sink his teeth into one of the still-struggling legs. Al spared a brief glance at the noisily lamenting zombies hiding in the corner and the still-writhing shape in webs on the ceiling. The two in the corner were still turned away, mindlessly pressing themselves against the wall as if they desperately hoped to flee through it. The thing on the ceiling, Al finally saw, was wrapped in a dense coccoon of silk and seemed to be having trouble breaking out of it. Satisfied that it wouldn't be an immediate threat, Al turned to help the others with the spider but felt something smash painfully into his back. Al grasped Purgatio with both hands in a flash of anger and turned back to see the smashed and broken-backed zombie still refusing to die. Its upper body wobbled crazily as it stood and spun to swing its fists at him.
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"Die already!" Al screamed at it, swinging Purgatio as hard has he could and chopping deeply down between the zombie's neck and shoulder. The sword flickered again with divine light and the corpse collapsed to the floor. "Die! Die! Die!" Al shouted at it as he chopped a few more times into the body. Cheering from two of his companions behind him, and a bestial gagging and coughing noise from the gnoll, snapped Al out of his moment of rage. He backed away from the seemingly actually-dead zombie, watching the remaining two in the corner and the thing on the ceiling carefully.
The giant undead spider still twitched. Its fangs flexed uselessly and the upper joints of its broken legs spasmed fitfully as it continued trying to move. Gruntle gagged and coughed an unpleasant wad of saliva, mucus, and slightly glowing violet ichor onto the floor.
"Tathtes bad," he declared, tongue lolling from his mouth, streaked with the faint violet glow. "Mouth ith numb. Kill thoth?"
Gruntle pointed at the two zombies still avoiding them at the far end of the room.
"We will probably need to," Bote replied quickly, "they will not remain afraid of us indefinitely. Are you still good to fight?"
Gruntle grunted, brow furrowed in confusion. Why wouldn't I be?, Al interpreted to himself.
"Watch out above, there's still something bound up in webs there on the ceiling," Al said, pointing. "And be careful, they refuse to die properly. How shall we do this? Focus on making sure one of them is properly dead before dealing with the other one, or try to do both at the same time?"
Having a few moments to breathe, Al finally had a chance to take stock of the room. The arched ceiling was completely covered with thick webs, but not so much at floor level. There was an old dusty cot in one corner, a wardrobe against the middle of the far wall, and in between the two was a broom, some buckets, and a moldy cloth mop.
"I imagine it would be best to avoid engulfing the room in flames, yes?" Bote suggested. Al had to agree.
"Yeah, probably. Okay, let's start with one of them and see how it reacts. Darius' sword seems not to like the restless dead, so I'll use that."
"No," Wikwocket corrected insistently, "it's your sword now, Magical Sword Hero Al!"
Al couldn't help jokingly pleading with the ceiling for mercy, but that only reminded him that there was probably another of the angry dead people inside the cocoon up there. He gripped Purgatio and returned his attention to the zombies that were free. The others lined up with him.
"I shall denounce the one there with the leather jacket for its violation of the natural order. I am not certain if this will frighten it further or make it angry, so be ready," Bote suggested. Everyone nodded - except for Gruntle who grunted and grinned. Bote recited a brief malediction, and holy light stabbed down from above to burn the flesh of the zombie. It bellowed angrily and turned on them, its horror forgotten. On cue, the rest of the party moved to intercept it. Gruntle's flail smashed solidly into its face, snapping its head back and probably its neck with it. As the head rebounded forward, Wikwocket's dodge out from behind the gnoll and a leap to attack sent the point of BiteySue straight into an eye-socket, and her momentum carried her forward to jab her dagger into its neck.
Those two are dangerous together, Al thought to himself. He noticed the glow in the zombie's remaining eye flicker out then rekindle as it collapsed, so he lunged forward and drove Purgatio into its torso. Divine light flickered along the blade and the glow in the zombie's eye went out again. Al checked the ceiling again, reassuring himself that the one up there was still trapped. The last free zombie's groans were beginning to get less desperate.
"Once more?" Bote asked.
They lined themselves back up and dealt with the last one in much the same way, cut down before it could strike anyone. For a short time, they paused to catch their breath and watch the remaining dangers in the room struggle helplessly. The massive spider's broken legs twitched endlessly in a futile attempt to move, and whatever was encased in the cocoon on the ceiling seemed hopelessly imprisoned, and no longer struggled. With time to examine more closely, Al could see three more places where dense wads of spiderweb had been torn open.
"I can't say I really want to touch this thing, but maybe we should try to move it back a bit so it's not taking up so much of the doorway," Al suggested. With Gruntle's help, they dragged it back a few feet into the room by its disabled hindmost legs. The feel of them spasming as the stubbornly undead spider tried to react was disquieting for Al, but he managed.
Its fangs reached for Al when he walked around to the front of the thing to look. The three remaining eyes and the five partially or completely empty sockets all held the same glowing violet point as the zombie's eyes. Al had expected the thing to make some sort of noise, perhaps a screeching or chittering sound, but it was completely silent except for the weak scuffling from the twitching of its destroyed legs.
"This thing is both horrifying and fascinating," Al said, "I have no idea how you create something like this, and I really have no idea why." He looked back up at the ceiling again. "Also...what are we going to do about that one?"