The Elder and Bandit came running up to Nick while the other lemurs fell into formation, forming a curved line that hugged the face of the hillside.
A few squared off against a handful of stray komos that had followed behind the tribe. To his immense relief, most of the pride seemed content to remain in the valley while they recovered from their mad dash into the highlands, although he couldn’t count on the stalemate lasting for long. Knowing that every minute of preparation was precious, Nick showed the newly arrived lemurs the piles of supplies that he had arranged on the hillside.
Confident that the tribe could hold this position without his assistance, he turned and started climbing the hilltop, Bandit and the Elder at his side. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he crested the hill and then led the group over to the other side.
He looked down into the adjacent valley, where a fierce battle was underway. The valley floor was jam-packed with lizards, at least half as many as where the tribe was stationed, rendering Nick’s predictions even less reliable than he had thought. But his surprise did not stop with the sheer volume of komos that awaited his gaze. Engaging the vast host of carnivorous reptiles were dozens of giant spiders, each of the towering arachnids facing down several lizards each.
Nick immediately dropped onto his stomach. He gestured for the tribe to follow suit. Luckily, this time the lemurs got the message, hunching down to reduce their profiles as best they could. It was vital that they didn’t draw attention to themselves. Either of the forces warring in the valley below could effortlessly overwhelm his position. Fighting off even a fraction of the beasts down there would leave the tribe critically vulnerable to the komos arranged along the other side of the hill. He thanked his lucky stars that the creatures weren’t headed his way already.
Thankfully, the komos were aggressive and direct. They would likely continue battling the spiders until they received severe injuries. Unless, of course, they caught sight of an easier meal first. This cold-blooded army was comprised of the largest komo pride, and Nick caught sight of the massive Komo Alpha leading the charge, holding its own against two spider warriors at once.
As threatening as the battalion of reptiles was, he was even more worried about the spiders. False bravado aside, the giant spiders were straight-up terrifying. The last thing that he wanted was to fight them for the hilltop, although unlike the lizards, the highly perceptive arachnids had already noticed his arrival. Needing to understand what was happening so that he could predict what might happen next, Nick took out his spyglass and surveyed the valley, starting with the main contingent of the spiders’ forces.
He let out a long sigh in relief when he caught sight of an immense golden spider walking along the crest of the other hilltop, directing her forces in a two-way battle between the komos and whatever was lurking in the third valley that was obstructed by the mountain. This was the best news that he had received since the chaos had begun. The spiders were significantly less likely to attack the tribe if they were defending their queen while holding another position.
Under the guidance of the spider queen, a frenzy of activity was unfolding. While their warriors engaged the komos, a squadron of smaller arachnids was furiously weaving a wall from what appeared to be strands of silk wrapped around the trunks of trees. They must have felled the trees ahead of time and dragged them up into the highlands over the last few days. Nick shuddered. He hadn’t sensed even a trace of their presence, although the spiders must have already been up here while he was finalizing his own plans.
He was lucky that he hadn’t run into them, or more likely, that they had seen him and decided that he wasn’t worth the effort of hunting down. Regardless, their preparation was yet another detail revealing that the spiders were capable of a level of foresight and planning far beyond the other beasts on the island, except for maybe the lurk.
With more than enough to worry about in the opposite valley, Nick could only spare a few minutes to watch the fight, but what he witnessed during that time was fascinating. Instead of trying to score clean kills, the spiders looked like they wanted to inflict as much chaos and hesitation as possible, buying time until they finished erecting their barrier.
Rather than prolonged engagements with superior forces, the spiders darted in just long enough to inject their opponents with venom. They pushed the poisoned reptiles back into the lizards’ line as their bodies went rigid or began to convulse, snapping at the komos that clawed their way over their maddened kin. Instead of taking the lizards’ attacks head-on, the spiders caught their extended limbs in webbing and then anchored the lines to the hillside, tethering the lizards to the earth and turning them into mobile barriers.
Nick thought that the colony might manage to clear the entire valley without taking casualties, which he judged as deeply concerning but still a net positive, when the flow of battle shifted. The brutal Komo Alpha, who was nearly twice the size of the other lizards, began nipping and barking at the scattered members of the pride, bullying them into obeying its commands. Soon, the panic that the spiders had wrought was muted, and a large group of komos charged as one, swarming over a long strip of the spiders’ line before they could recover.
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The powerful arachnids’ discipline and ingenuity could not save them from being buried in a living avalanche of snapping fangs and rending claws. Ten of them were quickly torn to pieces. Under the alpha’s command, the komo swarm forced their way up the hillside, uncaring for their own losses as they ran toward the incomplete portion of the great web above.
They are trying to assassinate the spider queen before her web-fort is finished. To contain the breach, more spiders came running down the slope, crossing around from the far side of the hill. Their numbers were sufficient to bring the pride to a momentary standstill, although the spiders’ line was buckling like an overburdened mule.
Just before the lizards broke through to threaten the queen, the second-largest spider that Nick had ever seen, the one that he had spotted from the top of the massive tree, leapt over the bodies of its fallen kin and barreled into the thickest part of the pride’s advance. The eight-legged warrior rushed to where Komo Alpha was in the middle of ripping a lesser spider to shreds in a spray of ichor and shorn chitin. The powerful arachnid tore into the lesser lizards like a force of nature before turning to challenge the might of Komo Alpha.
In as many heartbeats, the immense spider warrior impaled four of the smaller lizards in succession, striking out with what appeared to be its unadorned legs. It took enough pressure off the spiders’ line to let reinforcements arrive and plug the gaps, holding off another half-dozen komos in the process.
The lizards scrambled back in terror, shocked by the fury of the great spider’s onslaught, not that Nick could blame them. All except Komo Alpha, who screamed out a challenge and charged. The martial prowess of the elite spider that he had decided to call the Bulwark was one of the most impressive displays of skill that Nick had ever witnessed. It was also utterly horrifying. An even contender with the lurk to take center stage in his nightmares to come.
The fight between the Bulwark and Komo Alpha was shockingly savage. The alpha used its teeth and all four sets of claws, attacking in a furious frenzy of blows. Nick saw the beast use its tail as a whip, diverting one of the spider’s legs that was streaking for its throat. The elite lizard was strong, fearless, and nimble. Komo Alpha displayed a lifetime of combat experience as it faced down the larger predator through sheer ferocity and grit. The alpha was unwilling to yield an inch, not when victory would collapse the spiders’ formation and leave their leader critically exposed.
But the Bulwark quickly proved itself to be the alpha’s match in both power and agility. And while the alpha had six natural weapons by Nick’s count, the spider had ten. Each of its eight legs, plus its spinneret and venomous bite. However, the true tiebreaker was the spider’s intelligence, as the Bulwark was capable of using misdirection and superior tactical reasoning. It held the alpha back, who hissed in fury, trying to rouse the other lizards to its side. But while the komos were willing to face down the rest of the spider colony, only the alpha dared to meet the Bulwark on the field of battle.
Even still, the fight was far from one-sided. Even with its advantages, the Bulwark took damage while evading and deflecting the alpha’s furious barrage. Within a minute of the beginning of their duel, bitemarks marred the surface of the spider warrior’s body. Chunks were torn free from its chitin armor, wounds oozing viscous ichor.
But for every blow it received, the elite spider exacted a toll in blood, piercing the komo’s hide with its limbs time and time again. Nick watched on in awe as the Bulwark avoided a fatal bite, then attached a band of immobilizing webbing to the alpha’s tail. The immense spider traded a series of blows, then darted in to score a hit with its toxic bite once, then a second time.
Watching the two ferocious creatures battle to the death was shockingly intense. It was clear that Nick wouldn’t have stood a chance against either of the battle-hardened beasts. For a breathless minute, he thought that the alpha was either immune to the spider’s venom or had enough raw Toughness to mitigate its effect. But then one of the alpha’s legs collapsed out from under it, and he saw that its movements had become sluggish and were poorly coordinated. A heartbeat after Komo Alpha faltered, the spider warrior pounced, forelimbs poised to land a finishing blow.
The Bulwark pulled its front legs back to gather its strength and then drove them straight through the alpha’s flank, piercing its heart and lungs before erupting out the other side in a spectacular plume of gore. Before the other lizards could recover from the shock of watching their leader and strongest fighter fall in battle, the Bulwark leapt back, turned around, and then climbed over the top of the web-barricade, which its companions had completed only seconds earlier.
The komos had lost at least fifty members of the pride. The survivors seemed stunned by the death of the alpha. The spiders had suffered less than a third of those losses and had established a superior position to withstand the battle to come. Nick wished that his own defenses were even half as well fortified.
Demoralized by their defeat, the tide of komos hesitated. Their line faltered, then collapsed into a confused rout. A few lizards were undeterred and tried forcing their way through the webbing, where they were picked off by the spiders manning the barricade. The survivors from both sides started snatching up the nearby corpses, then began feasting on the bodies of the fallen, including their own kind in the komos’ case. After dragging their share of the carcasses to the valley floor, the remaining lizards settled down to recuperate from their defeat.
Nick sat down in the grass, taking in this fleeting moment of respite.