The webs reverberated with the weight of a thousand spiders erupting from crevices and shadows and diffusing across the webs like a rapidly spreading blight. Several adventurers fell in the first second of the Ambush, collapsing with fangs sunk into their necks or spider legs impaling their chests. The fire line at the front quickly shifted targets and spread fire to the webs on either flank of the formation. The defensive perimeter closed in tight around the inner core, pushed back by the black sea of spiders scurrying towards them while the ranged attackers behind them released an endless volley of arrows and spells at the spiders overhead.
Titus flashed his translucent magic shield to block a pouncing spider, then punched it down out of the air with a sparkling fist of flickering white magic. The spider swelled rapidly, popping when it smacked the ground. Titus didn't watch, instead looking up to conjure and throw a lightning spear into the oncoming horde. Autumn still wore her wooden armor, now further reinforced and nearly completed. A spider leapt at her and sank its fangs into her vambrace, sticking snugly long before reaching flesh.
"Heads up!" She shouted to the adventurer beside her, who wielded a large metal tower shield. He angled the shield towards her, and she swung her arm to crush and splatter the spider against it.
Behind them, Iris stood frozen. She clenched the hilt of her sword, the oversized blade outstretched ahead and quivering before her. Her thoughts couldn't find purchase in her mind, she failed to discern a single enemy from the horde, and the sounds of battle were muffled as if water plugged her ears. She noticed her ragged breathing and slowly brought it to heel in slow, deliberate breaths. Her balance swayed, then settled. Her darting eyes found targets on which to briefly linger, she watched as Titus's energy beam cut through the horde, saw black smoke drifting overhead, and witnessed a glowing white arrow zig and zag mid-flight to pierce several spiders. It was time to fight.
With a large breath, Iris blipped. She landed beyond the formation's perimeter, amongst the horde and atop the back of a charging spider. She kicked off, swinging the sword in a downward arc to strike below her. She felt the blade slice into her target, then blipped again as she twisted in the air. She landed with both feet on the side of a spider's abdomen, holding the blade low to her side with an upwards swing to cleave off the spider's head as her momentum carried her past it. She leap to the next spider without blipping, quickly puncturing its abdomen before yanking the blade free and blipping away.
She conserved mana by keeping her blips short and tap dancing across the spiders where there was room to do so instead of blipping. The spiders rarely stood a chance to notice her before she struck, and those that did bit into only air as she blipped away. The larger threat was from the attacks of her allies, who hurled knives, arrows, spells and bombs into the horde with reckless desperation. After nearly catching a magic spectral throwing hammer to the head, she blipped along until she found several melee defenders fighting together in a row. Amongst them were the hammer guy who'd hunted the elk for dinner, and a huge, cow-like creature with a comically large horn erupting from the front of its face, which Iris assumed to be a transformed Whirl.
She found her niche in the battlefield several yards ahead of the melee fighters, comfortably beyond reach of the hammer guy's explosive strikes but still within blipping distance of the front line. Even as her heart beat ferociously in her chest, and her feet dangled within inches of death between blips, she found herself laughing. It was incredulous laughter as she struggled to believe what she was doing, but there was joy within it as well. She whipped and whirled the blade, experimenting with the momentum of her blips and strikes beyond the rigid moves she had practiced with Titus.
Victoria stood near the very center of the formation, eyes glazed over grey and arms limp at her sides and she swayed and shuffled with the movements of the crowd. She watched the battlefield from overhead with disembodied auravision, zooming in close to inspect different portions of the battle. A smile cracked across her face as she zoomed in on Iris, cackling like a madwoman as she blipped back and forth across the horde chaotically twirling a giant blade slick with spider guts. Victoria lifted a hand and conjured a floating card -- The Magician -- which depicted a man in a white tunic and red shawl wielding a wand above a table of arcane artifacts. This card granted self-confidence, dexterity, will-power and skill, which she bestowed onto Iris before zooming out.
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From the shadows on all sides, a new variant of spider emerged. Each with a abdomen larger than a carriage and with sharp, rigid plates along the length of each leg below the last joint. Their bodies were a dark shade of brown instead of black, and in place of the purple ink splotch marking was a streak of red like a jagged wound. The Dreamweaver recognized them as mutated versions of the males of the dreamweaver species.
The male spiders tore through the ranks of the formation, all but two charged straight through the defensive lines and wreaked havoc amongst the less armored adventurers at the center. Legs pierced adventurers from above and pinned them to the ground, fangs punctured armor and sunk deep into torsos. The new spiders viciously hissed and spat between attacks, adding a new layer of horrific ambiance to the battlefield.
Iris watched in horror as one of the males stuck two legs deep into the horned beast. She dashed forward, stepping atop a spider from behind and leaping off of it with a spin into a blip. She reappeared beneath the giant creature's dripping fangs, flying forward in a spinning attack aimed just above the rigid plate on leg buried in the horned beast's flank. The exoskeleton crunched under the force of her attack, but didn't slice through. Her momentum carried her forward, scrunching her outstretched arms close to her chest as the blade stopped in place. She hooked her feet backwards to kick off the spider's leg as she shoved her arms forward with a breathy grunt, forcing the blade through the crumpled exoskeleton and into the soft goo beneath.
The leg folded and her sword slid free, dropping her to the ground as the spider hissed and awkwardly lunged for her, held back by its leg still stuck in front hip of the horned beast. The beast twisted and ducked its head, hooking its horn under the spider's leg and yanking forward with a sharp, torqueing motion. The spider's leg violently ruptured free from the beast, and for an instant the now seven-legged monstrosity stumbled from the awkward, opposing motions.
The hammer guy took this opportunity to come down on one of the spider's middle legs with an explosive blow that sent shatters of the hardened leg plate shooting into the ground like shrapnel. The spider teetered left to right, dancing between its six remaining legs to regain its footing and balance even as its fangs rushed towards Iris. She blipped, and the fangs closed around an empty space just above the ground where she had stood. The horned beast charged forward, driving its long horn into the spider's abdomen while it was low to the ground. The beast continued its charge, pushing a long gash through the spider that spilled purple guts across the ground. For good measure, Iris appeared from above and drove a downward stab into the spider's head, pinning it to the ground as the last hiss escaped between its fangs.
She wasted no time in yanking the sword free and blipping again, slicing a smaller spider that clung to the side of the horned beast. She landed in the purple guts and slipped, awkwardly flailing and twisting for a moment before crashing chest first into the ground. The horned beast stomped as it turned around to face her, huffing a gust of warm air from its nose that Iris interpreted as laughter. She groaned in embarrassment and climbed to her feet, blipped a short distance to the left to dodge an incoming pounce from a spider.
Elsewhere, Titus cut a long scar along the length of a male spider's abdomen with his energy beam, while Autumn and two other adventurers leapt onto its back to drive spikes and swords into its abdomen. Nearby, Eli contributed to a barrage of spell attacks against a third male, which writhed and twisted amongst the flames that licked its belly.
The formation had scattered in the chaos, and the horde picked off isolated adventurers while the males trampled and hissed across the battlefield. Spiders began to drip from the webs above, dropping down into the fray like a hideous black rain. A divide formed, separating the expedition into two distinct groups that were driven apart by the growing horde amongst them. Six more males arrived, charging from the depths of the web into the heat of battle without hesitation and further dividing and scattering adventurers.
"Fall back!" the hammer guy shouted to those around him.
The horned beast galloped past him, and several nearby adventurers followed suit. Iris glanced back at the chaos, the black rift of the spider horde growing wider as the males towered over the battle as harbingers of death. Adventurers succumbed to the horde before her as it encroached ever closer. She searched desperately for her friends, but only a glimpse of what might have been Titus's beam in the distance. She clenched her eyes shut and tore herself away from the battle, blipping after the horned beast.