Adon tried to run, though his body was still worn down from the fight with the Queen and the bulk of the Red Slayer Spider Wasp colony, and the burden of the silk-wrapped wasps slowed him down.
He quickly used his silk cutters to cut the royal guards’ corpses away from him and marginally increase his speed.
As he raced across the distance that separated him from Goldie’s web, Adon’s mind went over everything he had done that day. Was there some way he could have prevented this attack?
Could I have avoided the fight with the wasps? No, I don’t think so. The Queen was going to come after us no matter what. Maybe if I’d found a way to incapacitate all the wasps with that magic attack right at the beginning, but I didn’t even know if it was going to be effective or not. Maybe I should have spared Regina after all. She might have come after us later anyway. Or I could have given in to her. Would she really have bothered to go after Goldie and Red if I was helping her, giving her exactly what she wanted? I didn’t experience any goodwill from her, but it’s hard to believe any life form is completely cruel.
Maybe if I hadn’t eaten the Queen—well, no, that only took a couple of minutes, as compared with the much longer time I spent walking home with food for Goldie and Red. And I was so weak after the fight… If I didn’t eat, I might have collapsed on the way. Maybe I should have left all the other dead wasps behind. They definitely slowed me down a little. I took at least as much time wrapping them up as I did eating. But I didn’t know—I hoped she might be saying she had already sent her children away, that she was still begging for her life—I couldn’t believe she would really send her children here, to do this. I still don’t understand. What was the purpose? How does it help her or the wasp colony?
Hot anger swelled up within him. Especially since they’ll all die here!
As he drew close to the web, Adon took in more details of the scene. On the ground by the web’s edge, there lay a pile of at least a half dozen dead wasps amidst bits of off white chunks of debris that he did not easily recognize.
He instantly felt a little better.
Goldie and Red had clearly been busy before he arrived. There was something gratifying in seeing that his friends were far from helpless.
A horrible guilt had been boiling up inside him at the thought that he had left the two spiders here undefended. He needed the reminder that they were predators too. Somewhere within the web, his friends were still fighting, but they had already defeated more than the number of wasps that he had seen hovering in the air.
They might have been able to win this one without me, he thought with a touch of pride. Goldie has gotten stronger since I met her. Red probably has, too. I just don’t know how he invests his Evolution Points, since we haven’t really been able to talk.
He leaped forward, hurling his body up into the web. He did not want his friends to fight alone for a single moment longer.
As he set foot inside of Goldie’s web, he was immediately greeted by the sight of another thirteen wasps. Some of these were not yet dead. The handful of live ones wriggled and writhed weakly, but they were stuck fast to the web. At a glance, they almost looked as if they had embedded themselves into the silk. The material around their bodies looked thicker and more tightly wound than the rest of the web in general.
But he did not examine them beyond a single glance. There was no time.
Adon jumped over the captured wasps, moving roughly, damaging the web substantially with each touch of his feet as he went. It was impossible for him to worry about the spiders’ home when they were in danger, and he could not instantly remember which threads were sticky and which were not.
He raced up the side of the web toward where he could now see Goldie, locked in a struggle with the six wasps that remained free.
As Adon drew closer, he could tell something was very wrong. His friend was barely moving, just clinging to the web, her back legs entangled—apparently deliberately—with both sticky and nonstick threads. And he could see why.
The wasps were trying to drag her off, alternately grabbing and pulling at her front with their legs and jabbing her in the back with their stingers. He could see the marks that repeated stings had left on the parts of her body that were not blocked from view by the wasps.
The rage in Adon burst into flame.
He lunged across the rest of the distance keeping him and the fighting bugs apart, and he instantly joined the fray. He grabbed the first wasp he touched with his mandibles and forelimbs and ripped it in half.
Like the flick of a switch, the wasps’ attention switched instantly to him. Three of the remaining five stopped attacking Goldie and threw themselves at Adon—which was just what he wanted. He tore into another wasp with his mandibles and chopped it in two with a single ferocious bite. The other two began stinging him, and Adon did nothing to defend against it.
What little Mana he had needed to be saved for healing Goldie and Red—as soon as he found out where Red was. Adon had not seen the smaller spider at all.
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Instead of defending, he simply continued the attack. He tore the head off one of the wasps assailing him, shot silk at one of the other’s wings, causing it to fly out of control and careen down into the web, and then jumped on his last remaining attacker and struck it with his right forelimb and second limb.
The two-legged punch knocked that wasp out of the air and into the web, where its wings quickly became enmeshed in the golden spider silk.
Finally, Adon turned back to Goldie. He saw nothing but an empty spider web strewn with chunks of off white debris.
What?
Then his simple eyes detected movement overhead.
Damn it!
Adon hurled himself straight up, ripping chunks of spider silk free along with his body as he did so.
He reached eye level with the wasps, and they began desperately vibrating their wings faster, trying to move away. The two insects had Goldie clutched tightly in their limbs, gripping her around her midsection. They were trying to capture her for some reason.
Probably planning to eat her, just like everything in this garden.
You can’t have her, he thought.
Adon twisted his lower body into position so that he could throw silk at the wasps, and before they could get more than another few inches away, he had landed an anchoring thread on Goldie’s midsection.
Then he was falling through the air, and he felt the thread grow taut behind him.
And he noticed the wasps and Goldie falling along with him.
He turned his body to look up and saw that in addition to sticking to Goldie’s body, he had also tangled one of the wasp’s wings in his thread. The other one apparently was not strong enough to carry the heavy load of a spider, a very large caterpillar, and another wasp with its wings.
It’s over, Adon thought.
A moment later, all four of them struck the spider web, rocking the whole structure with their weight.
Despite the damage Adon had done earlier, somehow it held.
As he shook his head and prepared to kill the wasps, he saw they were bound up in the web just like all the other surviving insects. His body instinctively relaxed slightly. All the enemies were dealt with.
Then he sprang into action again. This time, he rushed to where Goldie had fallen. She had landed on her back, but she was unmoving, not even trying to fix her position or make certain that she was safe.
She must have been stung too many times.
He reached touch range with his friend and instantly drew upon his connection to healing magic. He could do it by sheer instinct now, he dimly recognized, without even thinking of the dark place from which he drew the knowledge. Green energy flowed from Adon’s body into Goldie’s, seeking out her hurts and mending them.
Please please please please please, Goddess, he prayed. I don’t know if it bothers you when people ask you for things, but I promise I won’t ask you for anything else in this life. Please please please just help my friends.
As he concentrated on healing Goldie and on willing those thoughts to reach the Goddess—not by telepathic means but simply by hoping that the ruler of the universe was always listening—Adon turned his head and took in more of his surroundings.
There was not much to see in the direction he was facing, toward the edge of the web. He could not even see the pile of wasps he had passed on his way up here.
But he wanted an answer to the mystery of what had happened to Red. Had other wasps already carried him away? Perhaps killed him, perhaps taken him for their Queen to eat—which would undoubtedly have been the order while Regina was still alive? Would Adon need to embark on a rescue mission?
Unfortunately, Adon did not see any clues as to what had happened to Goldie’s mate. The web was a mess, he saw, but that was no mystery. Adon had done most of the damage to it himself, with the rough steps he took trying to reach Goldie.
Hopefully she would be able to repair her home once she recovered, or they could simply move somewhere else. The garden seemed even less safe now than it had before he’d come to his friends’ rescue. Somehow he had imagined he had wiped out nearly all of the Red Slayer Spider Wasp colony, yet around twenty had survived to attack Goldie and Red.
Are there still more of them out there? Or some worse predator I haven’t even seen yet?
His focus returned to the present problem.
Where in the Goddess’s name is Red? I know he would never abandon Goldie and her eggs in a situation like this—
His mind jolted to a sudden stop.
The eggs!
Adon suddenly remembered what Goldie’s eggs looked like. His memory was essentially perfect in this life, like a hard drive he could search at will. Now the images appeared as pictures in his mind. Stiff, small, pearl-like spheres. Off white color. Glued to leaves that were webbed together to conceal them. With that context, he realized that he had seen broken pieces of the eggs.
Some chunks of egg were strewn about the top part of the web, though at the time, Adon had hardly noticed them because that was where the wasps and Goldie were struggling.
And some chunks were scattered around the bodies of those wasps.
None of the eggs he had seen were intact.
Oh, no. Are there any eggs left?
Suddenly a shudder of motion in front of him pulled his mind back to the present. As he looked for Red and examined the events of the fight, he had continued healing Goldie.
Now her legs were moving, and it seemed to him that she had regained consciousness and was trying instinctively to right her flipped position.
Though her movements were quite weak, Adon felt a powerful surge of relief. At least he would not be left completely alone, no matter what had happened to the eggs and Red. If the two of them were the only survivors of the attack, he and Goldie could mourn their losses together.
Thank you, Goddess…
Adon activated Telepathy.
Goldie, are you all right?