As the spiders on the ground moved toward Adon, he observed the way they were walking.
Two of the enemies advancing were completely uninjured. The other had a spine piercing through one side of its abdomen and out the other, but close to the outer edge of its body. And its movement didn’t seem to be affected by the injury. The spine probably hadn’t hit anything important.
But Adon still felt that he had the advantage. Despite being essentially unharmed, the spiders moved awkwardly on the ground, as compared with their grace in the web. Just like Goldie had.
Watching her awkward land legs had inspired the basic idea of Adon’s strategy. Force the spiders to fight him on the ground, while Goldie provided support from the web and killed from the back as much as she could. This plan had the dual strengths of not putting Goldie in too much danger and allowing her to fight on her web while Adon fought on the ground, where he was much nimbler.
If it’s just three still able to fight, I think I can take them. The three behind them were still trying to pick themselves up, but they didn’t seem like they would catch up to the ones in the lead.
He fired another handful of spines at the advancing attackers, but this time the spiders were ready. There was a distinct sound when the spines shot out, and they must have noticed it after either the first or second volley. Even if they couldn’t see Adon, the spiders could still dodge his attacks if they knew when to expect them.
They scattered to the sides as the projectiles fired, and the spines struck different targets. A couple of them hit the already badly hurt spiders on the ground, while most thudded harmlessly into the soil itself.
And the three spiders continued approaching.
As they drew close, Adon considered his options. The three of them would be able to do some damage before he killed them, even assuming that he won. He needed to end this as quickly as he could.
In the background, he noticed that one of the restrained spiders in Goldie’s web was breaking free. It had managed to chew through some of the webbing nearest its head. That head now peeked out and began furiously gnawing at the silk binding the rest of its body.
But behind it, Goldie appeared.
For the moment before he had to pull the focus back to his own fight, Adon saw what he imagined other insects saw when they ran into Goldie: a big, scary, ferocious creature. She sank her fangs deep into the web-chewing spider’s head. So deep that Adon didn’t think she needed to worry about injecting venom. That spider’s brain was surely toast from bite damage alone.
He saw Goldie moving on to the other webbed up spider before he returned his focus to the three spiders near him. They still didn’t know his exact location, but they were closing in. Triangulating with their bodies. They could narrow down exactly where he had to be this way, he was sure.
One spider was almost close enough to bump into Adon.
He made a snap decision and attacked the nearest one head on, maintaining Color Change as best he could even as he leapt on the silver spider.
He took it by surprise, penetrated into its bulbous abdomen with his mandibles, and injected acid.
“Eeeeeeee!” A screech of horrible pain filled the air.
The spider clenched its mouthparts on thin air with its dying movements, and Adon pushed its writhing, clenching body away. But not quickly enough to get any distance from the surviving spiders.
The other two spiders were upon him in an instant, grappling with their collective sixteen limbs. Adon tried to reach out to the Mana inside his body to enhance himself, but his mind was torn between too many things at once. He was still a bit stuck focusing on Color Change, and another part of his brain was dealing with the sudden proximity of the two spiders that were on him.
His body went almost limp for a moment as he nearly reached the core of Mana inside himself, but it was happening too slowly. In a split second, he gave up on Mana Manipulation to defend himself more actively with his body. He tried to wrestle with the spiders that had him restrained. He was stronger by far, he knew. But they began biting furiously before he could get loose. Injecting venom, over and over.
Adon struck back with his limbs. They were still short and stubby, unlike the dexterous spiders’ limbs, but since Adon had repeatedly consumed the flesh of superior life forms, they packed enough Strength to partially cave in an exoskeleton in one hit.
“Eeeeee!” One of the spiders cried out and flew through the air, back toward the web, as Adon’s second leg on his right side slammed into it.
He pivoted to face the other, and it turned and tried to run away!
In the back of Adon’s mind, he registered that as a kind of small victory in its own right. No uninjured enemy had ever tried to run from him before, except ants running for reinforcements. He was a tiny, unintimidating caterpillar. Right?
Then he leapt upon the unfortunate spider, pierced its exoskeleton with his mandibles, and injected more hot acid.
The creature squealed in pain and writhed on the end of Adon’s mandibles until it worked its way free, pulling itself off the spear-like jaws that impaled it. The spider managed to crawl a few inches forward from there until it stopped moving, apparently dead.
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At that point, Adon felt a distinct physical sensation of emptiness inside of him. And where there should have been a feeling of victory, he was instead possessed by a sense of caution.
Despite whatever adrenaline-like chemical that had been driving him, he suddenly knew he had reached some sort of limit. Probably more than one. He didn’t need to look at his Biomass number to know that it was touching empty.
All that silk production, acid production, the regeneration of venom spines, physical exertion, and the fact that his body was now fighting off the spiders’ venom as well. It was too much.
Adon decided to just do his best to remain standing. His Color Change had come undone during the heat of the fight, he dimly realized. Too much division of focus. If he fell now, the Kleptomaniac Dewdrop Spiders would recognize his sudden weakness and mob him again. As things stood, with the losses he’d inflicted, he looked intimidating.
Hopefully Goldie could take things from here.
He took a moment to look in front of him, in part simply trying to distract himself. The four remaining spiders—all injured to some degree at this point—were moving in a defensive pattern. The one Adon had punted had managed to regroup with the others. He could tell which one it was, because there was a visible dent in its abdomen with a crack running through it.
Two of the spiders, including the one with the dented skeleton, stood warily in front of the other two survivors, clearly trying to block any possible frontal attack by Adon. The two in the back were trying to hop back onto the web and escape this monstrous caterpillar, though their injuries made their jumps just a little too feeble.
That’s some admirable loyalty in the group, he thought. Protecting each other when a group of humans would probably be running for their lives in a similar situation—unless they were soldiers or something.
For the first time, he had the chance to really take the Kleptomaniac Dewdrop Spiders in and examine how they interacted with each other without the pressure to try and inflict injuries or avoid lethal harm to himself. The spiders in the back, retreating, were actually larger than the two protecting them.
What was that about? The weak ones protecting the strong ones? Some kind of decision to protect the ones with the best genes?
He used Identify on each spider in turn. It revealed that the larger ones were female, while the smaller ones protecting them were male. That revealed a different decision-making calculus than he’d been aware of. One that reminded him disturbingly of Goldie and her mate.
For all that these spiders were a thorn in Goldie’s side, and a potential predator for her and her young ones, they were also simple natural creatures just like her and Adon. They were just following their instincts to find food and protect themselves and their famil—Ugh.
A sudden sharp twinge of pain scattered Adon’s thoughts. He clutched his side with one of his limbs and used all his willpower as he resisted the urge to double over.
No, hold it in! he told himself. You can’t show it now…
He’d tried to ignore the growing pains in his sides. Tried to distract himself with his attempts to understand these creatures. Now that he was no longer in the heat of battle, it was harder. And unfortunately, the throbbing of his bite wounds kept increasing its severity.
Even with Toxin Resistance I and II—Adaptations that were more expensive than either Poison Resistance or Venom Resistance, but promised more complete protection—he could tell that he was going to need to spend some time recovering from the bites he’d suffered in this fight.
But all he needed to do right now was maintain a front. Continue to look strong.
Recovery can wait—don’t you dare pass out!
The two female spiders managed to get onto the web, and the two males took the opportunity to turn and follow after them. Adon felt the satisfaction of his plan working to a tee. Goldie would take care of the rest. He only had to pretend to be intimidating for a few more seconds, and they would run right up to her.
He heard the screeching as Goldie tore into the first two spiders. Injured and reduced in numbers, they were no match for the larger Golden Silk Orb Weaver. He dimly heard the death scream of another spider shortly after that. That was three of that last group of spiders down, only one to go.
Yay! She’s winning…
But every sound seemed to be coming to him from a great distance. The whole world, in fact, was somehow getting further away by the second. Darkness clawed at the edges of his vision, and what was left in the center swayed like he was looking at it from underwater.
Glad you won, Goldie, he sent with Telepathy. I mean, glad we won. I’m not feeling so hot just now. Think I might lie down unless you need me. You don’t need me, right?
Adon didn’t wait for an answer. He’d meant the message as a sort of courtesy, but the truth was, he felt like a truck had just run over him. His legs collapsed out from under him, and he curled up into a funky ‘U’ shape on the ground. Almost an ‘O’ shape, but his body was twitching too much to make that stick.
Adon! Goldie was thinking back at him now, but the sound of her thoughts seemed to be coming from another galaxy.
See you in the stars, Goldie, he thought. He wasn’t sure if that thought left his brain, burrowed into his subconscious, or sailed off into the ether somewhere. The world was strangely beautiful and relaxing right now. It felt like night had come during the day. A black sky filled with tiny white stars. If only he wasn’t so weak and so hungry, he’d really enjoy the sights.
Rushing in and disrupting the beautiful darkness, a silver shape rushed in and collided with him. Adon felt another bite in his side.
Damn, these things really don’t like me, he thought. What did I do to them?
He dimly remembered some kind of conflict, but he was too sleepy to grasp the thought firmly. He tried to swing his limbs at the figure biting him, but his uncoordinated strikes hit empty air and the ground respectively.
I was so strong just a minute ago, wasn’t I?
Then a gently glowing shape that he recognized as Goldie charged in and tackled the silver shape. It rolled off of him, and she threw herself after it. Adon turned his body around as best he could to see what happened to his friend.
In the second or two he hadn’t been able to see, she had won the wrestling match, it seemed. She stood atop the silver shape. Grabbed it by what looked to be the space behind its head with her mouth parts and gripped the rest of the body with her legs. Then she pulled with incredible force.
Adon saw the silver shape’s head pop free like a cork. Then Goldie was on him, her big, intense, shiny eyes filling his field of vision.
Adon! Are you alright? Adon?! The voice was the last thing he heard before the world spiraled into darkness.