As Grimsby and the villagers started the fire, Gideon sorted through what Grimsby had taken from the castle. There were potions of healing and anti-venom, as well as a potion that would supposedly mask his scent.
While digging through Grimsby’s satchel, Gideon realized it was bigger on the inside than the outside. Though he’d heard of such artifacts, he’d never actually seen one. It must have been enchanted with spatial magic. In Prospera, it would have been obscenely expensive. To Kelvan, it was probably run of the mill. It was made of brown leather and had a green stain on the bottom.
“Did you take this from Uncle Kelvan?” Gideon asked.
Grimsby looked over from where he was throwing more kindling onto the flames and cackled. A group of villagers had gone into the forest to collect wood. Others had brought piles of dried logs with them from Emberly.
“Oh, that?” the skeleton said. “I promise I’ll return it.”
“I wasn’t getting on your case,” Gideon said and laughed. “I didn’t realize he had something like this. That’s all.”
“He’s got a lot of things if you know where to look.” Grimsby sauntered over.
Gideon drank the scent-masking potion, which would be good for a few hours, then transferred a few anti-venom and healing potions to his backpack. As he did so, he noticed something that smelled like meat wrapped in brown paper, buried next to a fold-up metal grill.
“Smells good,” he said, then shrugged and handed the bag back to Grimsby. “You should keep the rest for anyone out here who gets bitten. I grabbed enough for me, Marcus, and Filibin.”
Grimsby took a small spray bottle and pressed it into Gideon’s hand. “More of the web dissolver,” he said. “You’ll need that.”
Grimsby had given his back-mounted tank and sprayer to Simeon, who was now walking excitedly around the campfire with the gadget, his spade forgotten in the dirt.
Now that Gideon looked closely, he was sure that the sprayer was the kitchen sink faucet, torn off and reattached to a rubber hose. The runes used to pump water had been chiseled from the wall and crudely attached to the device.
“Thanks,” Gideon said and hooked the spray bottle onto the belt of his robes. “I guess we’re almost ready.” He watched as a group of villagers emerged from the forest with armfuls of logs and added them to the fire.
Gideon looked around. There was a feeling of warmth in the air like everyone had decided to have an impromptu cookout in the middle of the night.
The only one who didn’t seem happy was Melissa, still in her bear form, seated facing away from the fire, staring towards the tunnel entrances on the mountainside. Since the villagers had arrived, she’d barely said anything.
“Are you all right?” Gideon asked her.
“Can’t be helped,” Melissa said, shrugging her shoulders. “I wanna go.” She flexed her paw, and her claws glinted in the firelight.
“I know,” Gideon said. “But they need your help out here.”
She didn’t say anything, only sighed.
Hopefully, she would feel better after Grimsby fulfilled his side of their bargain. Or after she got to eat some spiders. Gideon shuddered at the thought.
Gideon placed the crystal of his staff against the ground and cast [Geosense]. Though the mountain tunnels extended beyond the spell’s range, four entrances were nearby. At one point or another, he’d seen spiders come out of each of them, and with [Geosense], he could confirm that, eventually, they all connected to what he assumed to be the central cave system.
Motioning to Aurora, he pointed towards each of the entrances in turn. In the darkness, they could barely be seen. “Aurora, can you blow smoke into those three? And leave that last one alone. I’ll go in that way.”
“Aye, I can do it. If you’re sure about this.” She looked at him long and hard. “Don’t do anything foolish.”
Gideon chuckled. “This whole night has been pretty foolish on all our parts. But you all showed up anyway. I have three people to rescue. I can’t leave them in there.”
“If you die, can I have your staff?” Aurora asked. She eyed its gleaming crystal. “Quite the artifact you got there.” When she caught sight of Gideon’s serious expression, she laughed. “I’m kidding.”
Gideon smiled. “If you can retrieve it from the broodmother, why not? Just don’t tell my uncle.” He turned back towards the fire in time to see Grimsby setting up his metal grill over the flames.
“Ready?” Gideon asked.
Grimsby reached into his bag and unwrapped the paper bundle. Inside was a thick-cut slab of boar meat, which he threw onto the grill.
“So, are we trying to smoke them out or entice them with a meal?” Aurora asked.
“Both,” Grimsby said, rubbing his hands together. He walked over and clapped his hand on Gideon’s shoulder. “You sure about this, bub?”
“As sure as I can be.” Gideon smiled, trying to project a sense of confidence he didn’t quite feel.
A memory resurfaced as he looked at the mountain, one he hadn’t thought of in years. He was a kid again, sitting on his father’s knee as he read to him.
The Earth and Us: Geomancy for Beginners. That had been the title. The cover had shown a picture of a mountain not so different from the one that now stood before them. But the image had been cracked and faded with age.
It had been a skill book once, but by the time it was in the possession of the Moody family, all the mana had dried up. There were only text and pictures, no actual magic or skill practice.
But there had been a chapter on caves—how they were formed, and how they fell apart. In the end, they always fell apart, especially if you helped them along.
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Gideon took up a position by the cliffside, hiding in the bushes near one of the tunnels that led into the mountain. He’d placed lanterns next to the other tunnel entrances to mark them for Aurora.
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He watched as Aurora stood on the far side of the bonfire and took out her wand. With a swish of her wrist, three ribbons of smoke began to flow from the fire toward the mountain.
Soon, even out of the direct path, Gideon could smell the meat from Grimsby’s barbecue on the wind. Placing his staff against the ground, he cast [Geosense] again and waited.
The network of tunnels extended both above and below them, so he needed to wait to see which direction the spiders came from.
It only took a few minutes until he felt the presence of the arachnids, first a small group of them, skittering up from the depths.
He gave a last look at the villagers, who had formed up behind the fire with their weapons. Simeon stood among them, Grimsby’s improvised sprayer in one hand and his spade in the other. Melissa paced back and forth at the edge of the group, looking anxious for a fight.
Turning his attention back to his spell, he felt the presence of more spiders emerging. All of them were coming up one particular tunnel that angled more sharply downward than the others.
He waited until they had almost reached the surface before taking a deep breath and entering the tunnel he’d chosen.
He had to believe they’d be fine up here. He had his own job to do, after all.
As he entered the cave, moonlight turned to true darkness, and he began to navigate purely by [Geosense]. Though bringing a lantern would have been helpful, he hadn’t wanted to risk the spiders noticing the light.
He stepped carefully along the uneven stone floor, with his staff pressed against one wall and his free hand against the other. He could detect the first wave of spiders pass out of one of the nearby tunnels and emerge onto the surface.
Soon, the battle would begin.
He continued, watching as another group of spiders rose up from below. Off in the distance, he could hear their skittering feet as they passed the junction where the tunnels connected. As his path gently curved, he saw the intersection come into view before him.
He paused momentarily, kneeling in the dark to see if more spiders would take Grimsby’s bait. He had never expected all of them to come out—no doubt some of the broodmother’s children would stay with her. He felt two last spiders, stragglers, pass by. Then all was silent.
Gideon ran forward and turned left, tracing the spiders’ path. The tunnel grew steeper, and he moved more carefully as he descended. He pushed his [Geosense] to the limit and felt something down at the bottom of the spiraling tunnel—a place where the rock opened up into a great cavern.
There was something else, too, a presence he had once felt in the chamber beneath Kelvan’s lab. The Moonstone extended much deeper into the mountain than he had realized. The part of it that Gideon had seen in the castle had only been the surface—the Keystone, his Uncle had called it.
When his [Geosense] grew close to the Moonstone, Gideon felt a strange sensation in his mind, as if he was looking down an impossibly deep chasm, and the Moonstone was looking back.
Come to me, child.
He closed his mind and pulled his awareness back to his own senses, letting the spell fade, and took a deep, calming breath. Somehow, he had traveled most of the way in a daze. As he blinked and his eyes adjusted, he saw a faint, purple glow ahead.
The tunnel was covered in webs. He realized Grimsby’s spray bottle was in his hand, and he’d been using it to clear a path in front of him as he walked. When the mixture hit the webbing, it sizzled and made the air smell like lemons. With that, the webs frayed and tore apart easily.
He gripped his staff tightly as he looked ahead, catching his first glimpse inside the cavern. Sure enough, a glowing gemstone pillar was producing the purple light he’d seen.
The tunnel gradually widened out into the cavern. He wondered how far he could go without being noticed.
The broodmother was curled up with the stump of one leg pressed up against the gemstone. As Gideon looked closely, he saw that the leg appeared to be regrowing. Kelvan’s beam had lanced it clean off, but a small stub had emerged.
Many of the broodmother’s children were huddled around her, and a few more were hanging from webs on the roof above. Many of the webs contained the remains of cocoons or animals in various stages of decay.
As he continued to creep forward, another web came into view with three inhabitants—a large bundle of webs the size of a suit of armor and two smaller ones that must have contained Marcus and Filibin. It was off to one side, halfway between the broodmother and Gideon, but still far from the entrance.
Gideon took a deep breath and slowly crawled towards them, hoping against hope that none of the spiders would notice.
They noticed.
One of the spiders hissed at him from above, then began to descend on a strand of webbing.
Deciding to abandon his attempt at stealth, Gideon dashed forward, charging towards Clonk and the other captives, spray bottle in one hand, staff in the other. He fired a [Hail of Stone] at the descending spider, piercing it in the head. It wailed in pain, twitching as it spun on its web.
The sound was enough to bring the other spiders to action. Though the Moonstone produced some light, the edges of the cavern were still dark, and Gideon reached out with his [Geosense] to take in his surroundings. He counted at least nine spiders moving towards him.
The broodmother had begun to turn in his direction as well. Her voice echoed in his mind again.
My, my. How convenient for my food to deliver itself to me.
Gideon closed his eyes, making sure not to look at the broodmother directly. He had [Geosense] for that. The mistake he’d made before was looking her in the eyes and falling under her spell in the process.
He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
Gideon had hoped to make it farther into the cave before having to resort to his main plan. But he was running out of time. The broodmother had begun to advance across the cavern towards him, graceful despite her missing limb.
Gideon placed his staff against the stone ground, and with [Geosense], he looked for weaknesses in the roof of the cavern above. For a moment, he felt time slow down as adrenaline coursed through him. He watched his enemies move in the darkness, and it was as if he was within the earth, looking down on them from above. There were striations in the rock, he saw, places begging to be cleaved free.
He cast [Quake], and the earth blew apart.
It was nothing like the previous times he had cast the spell. Here, with earth all around them, each crack and tremor sent boulders of stone crashing to the ground.
A stalactite crumbled, twirling in the air as it fell, impaling the broodmother through her abdomen as she shrieked in agony. Rocks tumbled and landed on her and her children, smashing them into pulp. Some of the spiders began to run, heading for the edges of the cavern rather than the collapsing middle.
Nothing fell near Gideon or on the web containing his friends. In those places, his mana strengthened the earth rather than split it apart. He could do that too, he had realized. By using [Enhancement] in some areas, and [Quake] in others, the earth could be reinforced or shattered as he saw fit. For a moment, he thought he felt something, a hint of new potential, his [Spiritweft] leading him towards a new variation on those spells.
But then he shook his head and brought his mind back to the matter at hand. There was no time for a journey of self-discovery. He ran towards the web and began spraying.
“Are you okay?” he shouted.
“Praise be, you crazy bastard,” Marcus said. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
The other one, Filibin, spoke no words but seemed to mumble appreciatively as Gideon took one of the anti-venom potions and poured it into his mouth, followed by a healing potion, then handed one of each to Marcus as well.
As the web dissolved, each of them began to tear themselves free. Clonk burst out of the cocoon he’d been wrapped in, then stumbled forward and tore his legs free of the rest of the webbing, landing on the ground with a crash of steel.
“Gideon!” he shouted. “Well met!”
Gideon couldn’t help but smile. “Well met,” he replied. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Just dandy,” he said. “So, what’s the plan?”
“The plan?” Gideon said, puzzled. “You just saw it.”
“Oh,” Clonk said hesitantly. “I see.”
Gideon felt a strange sensation from behind him, and he shivered. “Oh, no,” he said as he turned to face the broodmother. Somehow, though she’d been stabbed by a stalactite and her head had been partly crushed by a boulder, she’d managed to climb out of the rubble and now stood at the center of the cavern, her glowing eyes boring into them. An eerie purple beam connected her to the Moonstone, and her body glowed with its energy, as if she were a conduit for its light.
“Oh, look,” Clonk said. “She figured out how to channel the Moonstone after all. I didn’t think she’d be able to do that.” He sounded almost impressed. “Cherish this moment, gentlemen. Mere seconds before your imminent demise, you are witnessing history.”
“Gee, thanks,” Gideon said, as the broodmother dashed towards them. But if nothing else, he had learned one lesson—this time, he kept his damned eyes closed.
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