Adon swung down toward the mantis, webbing firmly clutched between his front legs, and the mantis’s head turned.
But as Adon lunged toward the mantis, she clearly looked and saw the web moving right toward her face, and she ducked. It wasn’t enough to completely avoid the net, but only a corner touched her. It stuck over one eye, and as the mantis stepped backward, the whole net came with her, pulling free from Adon’s front legs and trailing behind her like a bridal veil.
Well, at least I blinded her in one eye, he thought.
Then Adon ducked. The mantis was swinging at him now, throwing her long arms wildly at the invisible menace somewhere in front of her. But she didn’t know where he was. Couldn’t see him. Couldn’t hit him.
Another swipe of those hooked claws almost grabbed him, and Adon threw himself forward, leaping from the plant. As he fell, he extended a few of his spines and fired them in the direction of the mantis’s head. All but one missed the creature. Adon hadn’t taken the time to aim properly, and he was still falling through the air. The one that hit planted itself into the joint that joined the right forelimb to the body.
There was a satisfying hiss of annoyance from the creature as the spine embedded itself. Adon saw the mantis raise her left forelimb and swing it down, aiming at the spine. Then he struck the ground, and he was rolling, trying to stop himself, attempting unsuccessfully to maintain Color Change as the scenery around him quickly shifted.
The mantis let loose another hiss and charged at him as Adon finally hit a rock and stopped rolling.
Crap, invisibility’s down!
He focused as best he could on changing his color to match the surroundings while stepping up on top of the rock he had crashed into. The mantis seemed to have eyes on him one moment. But as he made it to the top of the rock and completed Color Change, she charged up to him, stepped on him, and ran past him. She stopped a few inches ahead of where Adon stood. Her head darted around side to side as she tried to take in where the caterpillar had gone with her uncovered eye.
Adon took this opportunity to properly aim his spines. When the mantis turned back and faced his direction, Adon found the perfect moment to fire a half dozen of his spines right at her head.
One spine penetrated the side of her triangular face. Adon thought that was a shallow wound, though the venom would undoubtedly begin slowing her down, especially as she took more of these attacks close to her brain. Two more spines grazed the mantis’s neck, with only one of them actually embedding itself. It punched so deep that he could see it poking out on the other side of the neck. Two spines glanced off of the central part of the triangle, though one of those two tweaked the mantis’s antennae as it went spiraling off into the air. And the final spine embedded itself in her remaining uncovered eye.
Thank goodness! She can’t see me now, I can—
“Creeeee!!!” The mantis let loose a piercing hissing shriek that shattered Adon’s train of thought and almost broke his focus on Color Change. She flailed her forelimbs violently, blindly, swiping through the air. Adon noticed the right forelimb wasn’t flailing with the same range as the left. He realized she still had a venom spine sticking out of the shoulder region there. It looked like the mantis had broken off the end of it, but she might have driven the rest in deeper.
“Creeeee!” The mantis seemed to understand that its target wasn’t as close as it had imagined, and to have given up on hitting anything, but she continued to keep her arms raised defensively and to move them slowly in loops in front of her head. A bit like a boxer. She also opened up the back segment of her body to reveal a small, short pair of wings, which she fluttered. They looked hardly big enough to lift such a heavy body.
But she’s not trying to fly, Adon thought. She’s trying to make herself look bigger. To intimidate me and make me run away.
Which meant she no longer believed she could win the fight.
She was slowing down, he noticed. Moving like she was tired. It was probably partly the venom circulating through her body. She was weakening, but not down yet. Still deadly.
The question now was how Adon could get close enough to land the killing blow without potentially falling into her claws. Those front limbs were so long and hook-like, with so many spikes lining them. She didn’t actually need to see Adon to kill him.
If he landed in her claws, she would grab hold of him and pin him to the ground. Then those mandibles would chomp right through his midsection. He wouldn’t be able to turn his head enough to launch his own attacks. And his spines probably wouldn’t keep her from chewing him to death. Game over.
But he already had an idea.
Adon looked around at the terrain. He pointed his spines and aimed carefully. And he shot two spines at a rock behind the mantis. There was a quiet but distinct sound of movement from that space. Like the sound of twigs breaking.
The mantis predictably pivoted to face that direction and began swinging her arms at the menace that had seemingly just revealed its location.
And Adon pounced. He leaped from the rock onto the mantis’s back. She started to swing her arms back at him, but her right arm couldn’t reach far enough to grab him, and he could avoid her left. Before she could do anything clever to throw him off, he reared back and slammed his face forward, driving his mandibles into her center of mass.
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He saw and heard as the tips of his mandibles penetrated the exoskeleton, pressing his face up close against her body.
Then Adon felt the movement of liquid through his mandibles, as he injected acid into the gap he’d just created.
“Creeeeeeeeeeee!!!” The mantis began shrieking and flailing so wildly that Adon lost his purchase and fell to the ground below.
It was just as well. She swung like a drunken boxer in all directions, at the enemies she could only see in her own mind. Adon was out of range of her volatile swipes lying on the ground as he was.
He rolled himself over and got his legs back under him, then backed away, out of her range. Watched her as the fight went out of the mantis’s body. As her final burst of energy turned to a resigned exhaustion. Her windmill arms slowly lost power. She collapsed to the ground face down, still wriggling, but without strength.
Adon leaped onto the top of her back, leaned in, and chomped through the back of the mantis’s neck. The body spasmed once more and then was still.
I can’t believe it, Adon thought. I won. I didn’t even get injured this time!
He had been prepared to lose limbs in this fight. He knew he’d been lucky. And his invisibility had played a decisive role. He wanted to think about how the fight had gone, but he was just so hungry.
The mantis looked delicious now rather than scary.
Adon started eating with the head first. It tasted a bit like shrimp, he thought. A pleasant flavor.
Then he went into a feeding trance. Munch munch. Chomp chomp. Gobble gobble. Gulp.
When it was done, he felt stronger, as he had after he had eaten half of the bat.
He was only able to eat about half of the mantis’s body at first. He wrapped most of the rest in silk, which burned some of his reserves, built up a little more of an appetite, and allowed him to consume one of the wings.
Then he felt bloated and slightly sluggish, but immensely satisfied with himself.
The mantis was the biggest single creature he had ever defeated, if you didn’t count the Little Brown Bat’s wingspan in considering its size. Although this fight had really been less of a challenge than that one, for a few reasons.
The bat was a bad matchup for me, Adon assessed. My Color Change didn’t fool it at all, because it had echolocation. That also doubled as a ranged attack, which was more effective and accurate at first than my Spine Shot. And, of course, the bat could fly. On the other hand, the mantis was a lot scarier, but I got lucky that she broke stealth to attack the lizard. Then I knew where she was, but she couldn’t see me. From there, I successfully blinded her and damaged one of her limbs, as well as injecting some of my venom. I robbed her of several of her big advantages leading up to being able to finish her off.
It wasn’t just an academic rehash of the two fights. Adon was thinking about what sorts of opponents he should look for in the future. He knew without looking that the mantis fight would already have given him a big burst of Evolution Points. He had some thoughts about how he would spend those.
But the fact that he could defeat a female Thorny Leafy Mantis without building upon his preexisting abilities any further was heartening. And it would seem to offer lessons for the future. Maybe I should go after ambush predators, he thought, but wait until they’ve broken stealth. There would surely be ambushes happening all around this garden all the time.
If he wanted to better focus on that strategy, he needed to invest more in his Perception. His vision and other senses had improved by leaps and bounds over the last few days, especially as he had invested further in his eyesight in particular. But the mantis had remained hidden from him successfully, right up until the moment when she moved.
That can’t keep happening, he thought. If it does, I’m eventually going to wind up on the wrong end of one of those surprises, when I go to attack something, and another creature attacks me. Live by the ambush, die by the ambush.
Remaining hidden was one thing, and clearly an important strategy. But breaking other species’ cover with his senses was clearly going to be important. Mantises, the Leafy Bush Cricket, and yes, even some species of spider were stealth predators. It would be important for Adon to be able to go after them. Even if it would feel weird to kill something that looked even a little bit like Goldie.
As he was considering his future hunting options, Adon was taking down the Mantis Egg Ootheca that was wrapped around the plant he’d ambushed the mantis from. He did this by first chopping the plant down with his mandibles and then lifting the Ootheca from the stump. He wrapped up the whole thing in silk just like the remaining chunks of mantis so that it wouldn’t smell too strongly of food to other predators.
Finally, Adon hoisted the fruits of his labors onto his back and started walking. He deactivated Color Change, because even if he was invisible, anything that looked in his direction would see that he was carrying two silk bundles on his back. Even if potential enemies couldn’t see him, if they could see the items on his back, he would be just as big of a target.
And with Color Change deactivated, Adon had more focus free to look around and try to spot threats coming.
He was taking a bit of a risk transporting these two bundles of Biomass around with him. He needed to keep his wits about him. But he thought it might be worth it.
Bringing home a half mantis corpse would show Goldie that he wasn’t endangering himself too much by going out and hunting prey rather than just taking from her stores. Any caterpillar that could bring down something so big was clearly a very capable hunter.
If she was hungry, the bundles of food could also function as a sort of peace offering.
Hopefully it will cheer Goldie up, eating something she’s probably never had before. Mantises don’t usually wind up getting killed by spiders, I don’t think. They’re pretty near top of the garden food chain, as far as bugs are concerned, at least.
Even if her love language wasn’t gifts, Goldie would know that Adon’s heart was in the right place.
She had already generously shared from her own stock of food whenever he’d asked. Finally, he could take care of her a little. Pay her back just a bit. Start to reduce this feeling of indebtedness. A feeling that he only dimly realized he’d never really felt in his last life. Strange.
And maybe Goldie would start to believe Adon could help her with her Kleptomaniac Dewdrop Spider problem.