Day 54

'That's enough! Don't even move!'  Damien roared into the minds of his minions.

Nearly all of his creatures came to a jarring halt, mid battle or mid stride they froze in their tracks. Some halted almost comically mid-air, crashing to the ground after their wings stopped beating or their legs failed to adjust at the end of their leap. Some of the largest insects and spiders resisted, and they slowly came down from the frenzied high of battle and unprecedented growth spurts, but they all began to relax, and eventually came to a stop as well. Everything was coming to a halt, except for two creatures. Rex and Ajax were almost completely unaffected. 

Rex paused in the middle of his lunge as the command echoed throughout the battlefield, and his back legs failed to provide the strength to leave the ground and clear the gap between him and the crippled spider. He stumbled over his front feet, and crashed down into the bloody, trampled, grass of the once magnificent throne room. As quickly as he had frozen under Damien's command, he righted himself, trembling in a murderous, embarrassed rage and Ajax scrambled frantically away with half of his legs, desperate to widen the gap before the great lizard leapt once more.

'Stop! No! Stand down!'  Damien furiously threw his entire telepathic weight onto the defiant lizard, and it paused, ever so briefly with each magic-infused command. However each time Rex was forced to halt, it didn't hold him down as firmly, or as long. Each time Damien's authority grew weaker. The beaten spider crawled as fast as he could, with his right side dragging on the ground behind his grasping and pulling legs. Rex stomped slowly, but steadily after the pathetically broken spider, furiously shrugging off Damien's frantic demands. 

Damien was stunned, this had never once happened since he had been reborn. As soon as he had dominated a creature with his mana, they obeyed his every whim faithfully until they died. It was as if he could no longer reach him, as if another power was pushing him out of Rex's mind. 'Wait...'  he pondered, 'Another power?'  He looked at the energy radiating from his bloodthirsty reptile, and it was almost entirely blue. He had devoured far too much raw mana from the sapphire shards scattered around the room, and as Damien checked, Ajax, the spiderlings, the ants, the beetles, and every other creature that had consumed the shards held some of the foreign blue mana within them. 

It varied, depending on how strong they were before, and how much they had consumed, but each and every one had been touched by the enemy influence. For most, they simply distanced themselves from him, others resisted, but Rex had been driven completely mad by the power. As Damien watched helplessly as his corrupted champion pursued his hemorrhaging spider, he noticed that all the rest of his minions were frozen, still obeying his previous order.  

'Don't just stand there! Stop him!' 

As Damien's new command echoed around the chamber, the peace exploded into a frenzied charge. The flies were on him first, swarming over his unnaturally huge body. They crawled over and bit every inch of his armored body, yet even the largest, five inch flies couldn't break through his scaled hide. They swarmed over his eyes, biting until he was forced to shut them, but he charged after the last place he had seen the spider. He followed his memory, his nose, and his hearing. 

Then the spiderlings were upon him. Their long, powerful legs carried the young spiders swiftly to the frenzied beast chasing after their father, but Damien had already known they wouldn't succeed in breaking through his hide where the great Ajax had failed. Instead of biting fruitlessly, they drew out their silken thread, and began to bind his legs.

Despite losing himself to the wild mana of the shattered enemy, Rex still retained his cunning and his wits. Even if he couldn't see it, he knew what spider silk felt like. He had been bound before, and he remembered it well. With a flick of his head, he flung the unsuspecting flies from their perches on his face. Before they could return to their post, he flicked his head around, gazing at each of the twenty-one spiderlings in turn, and then he was blinded once more. He stepped once, and twice more as he continued his stride after his fleeing foe, but then he skidded to a halt, and threw himself to his right. The spiderlings who had been binding his right legs tried to scatter, but wicked claws slammed down atop them. Rex stomped, crushed, bit, and slammed the offending spiderlings with his tail. Four precious lives were snuffed out in an instant, and two were left crippled. The great lizard resumed his blind charge.

The ambusher ants raced to catch up and take hold of one of his legs, and a precious few managed to clamber onto the great beast mid-stride. They advanced, unseen, unfelt, and unheard until they reach his ears, and they began to chew through his outer membrane. It was absolutely excruciating for the great beast, however with so few their progress was slow. He charged on, but his hearing was slowly fading away. 

Blind, struggling to hear, and trailing countless silken threads, Rex stubbornly charged on. The efforts of all Damien's creatures and his own telepathic bombardment was just barely enough to keep Ajax out of the berserk lizard's reach. The spiders drew out more and more silk, and covered the beast as best they could. He was beginning to struggle in his advance, but he repeated his brutal assault. He cleared the flies, glanced to his left, and threw himself among them, and six spiders had their lives snuffed out. Half of the spiderlings that had been strong enough to come to Ajax's aid lay dead. But some ambusher ants had been waiting for this moment, and in the split second his eyes were open, they threw themselves onto the exposed eyes and began to chew and claw their way in.

Rex released an agonized, screeching roar and charged on after the spider. They were nearing a wall, and Ajax had nowhere left to go. The carrion beetles stood as the final barrier between Ajax and Rex, gathered in a crescent around the cornered spider. The beetles lucky enough to gather shards were over a 14 inches long, They deployed their wing covers, the elytra, into a shield wall towering in the air above them. 

Rex couldn't see them, but he could still smell them. He smelled their terror in the pheromones they were leaking in their panic. And he smelled the precious spider ichor pooling against the wall. He charged straight through the unseen elytra and carapace barricade, tumbling into a heap amongst the beetles. He forced his bleeding eyes open as he stood, and nothing remained between him and the spider. Ajax had too few legs to climb the wall, and was too weak to run away anymore. Rex savored his victory, and opened his maw wide. A sickening crunch echoed throughout the cavern, and Rex screamed in agony.

A five foot wide russet and red spider had landed atop his spine covered back, and bit through both scale and hide to dump a wicked venom into his neck. He convulsed as the venom coursed through his body, and the spider leapt from his back. The spider landed elegantly, and watched happily as he writhed in pain, waiting for his suffering to reach its peak before she gave him a second dose.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shae had rushed to action when Damien called them to save Ajax, however she did not charge ahead blindly with her siblings. She returned to the place where Rex had confronted her, and Ajax saved her. Nestled in the dirt, blood, and grass was a shining hunk of sapphire far too large to be called a shard. While everyone else was rushing to slow him down, she bit off the largest chunks she could from the fragile gem and gulped them down. Her body bulged and swelled as she was eating, and as she grew she took larger and larger bites. In a furious feast she devoured the entire hunk in the few seconds it took for her siblings to reach the beast, attack him, and get slaughtered.

Her carapace burst, unable to contain her girth, and her legs split open only to reveal an impossibly larger unbroken carapace. But that shell soon burst too, and she began to run as she molted over and over again while her body absorbed the incredible power of the large hunk. Soon her master's frantic cries faded away, but she knew her mission. Save Ajax. Kill Rex. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

'Fuck.'  Damien cried, 'Not her too!'

Shae's explosive growth had saved Ajax, but now Rex was writhing in agony, with what was most likely a lethal dose of venom, and now Shae was beyond his control. She was even more shut off to him than Rex had been, she had consumed far more than he had. Even if it was from a single chunk, it was huge. 

'Please Shae. Please stop.'  He begged.

It was beneath him, but Rex was even more important than Ajax. He was desperate. He knew Shae was beyond his reach. His power couldn't compel her, and there was no chance she would just happen to change her mind. But his desperation drew out the words. He had let this go too far. He was too greedy for his creatures to evolve, he didn't consider that his only control over his creatures came from his own power being the dominant force inside them. However, Shae paused and looked up when his pleas reached her mind.

'St-op?' 

One single, broken thought came back to him.

'What?!'  Damien shouted, disbelief taking hold of him.

'Stop it?'  And once more a now quivering, timid mind reached Damien.

'Yes, please. Stop it.' 

'Yes, stop it.'  The mind no longer quivered, instead it was soft, happy, and... loving?

Shae crouched, mandibles quivering with anticipation. Just as she was about to leap at the beast that had offender her master-

'No! What are you doing?'  Damien shouted.

She flinched, and hunkered down, paralyzed with fear. 'I stop it. I end it.'  

Christ. Damien groaned to himself. He was so shocked that she had answered him, he had forgotten that she was less than two weeks old, and a spider communicating for the first time. He was so used to his thoughts carrying a magical, binding weight that carried out his will, and not his words. He didn't even have to give "voice" to his thoughts. He could effortlessly direct them, but using words in his mind felt more natural. It was obvious this spider wanted to please him, unlike that ungrateful beast Rex, he just needed the right words. He would deal with the reality that his spider could talk later.

'Stop hurting the lizard.'

'Lizard?'  she asked, unable to process the thought of a name.

Damien responded by projecting an image of the still writhing bearded dragon, focusing all of his thoughts into conveying what it was, rather than what he called it.

'Yes! I stop!'  she cried out her comprehension and stood happily at attention.

'Back away.'  Damien ordered, still not trusting the delightful creature who he could not control.

'Yes!'  She answered, as she scurried all the way to the doorway of the room. But she stopped and looked up expectantly.

She hadn't said anything, but her eager expectation reminded him of a dog waiting for its owner's approval.

'....'

'Good girl...'  Damien sighed.

'Yes!'  She cried delightfully, and scurried back to her nest near Damien's core. 

After the strange distraction, Damien turned his focus to the agonized Rex and Ajax, and he allowed himself a quiet groan at the mess his blind greed had made.