Alphonse sheathed his sword and glared at Luce, “took you long enough.”

Luce raised their bow at him and fired.

Hiro let out a short scream... that cut off when he saw the Light arrow sail past Alphonse’s head, thudding into the spider’s body, “this isn’t over yet!”

The hard shell of the spider’s body cracked and out spilled Darkness. Luce fired more arrows as a spider made of pure Darkness slowly formed above the carapace.

Alphonse turned around to face it and stumbled back, his hand on his hilt, “great, another fucking Darkness monster, what the hell am I supposed to do?”

“Get out of the way,” Luce answered, firing another arrow that sliced through Alphonse’s hair and struck the Darkness spider.

“Motherfucker! You were missing every shot earlier and now you think you can shoot that close to my head?!”

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“Alphonse! Duck!” Hiro shouted. Alphonse dived to the ground as Hiro threw a strong Light spell at the spider but it was not a spell that was meant to be thrown and it fizzled out before it could reach the monster. “Fuck!” Hiro shouted with the same urgency and panic he had called out Alphonse’s name with. His knees shook and almost buckled.

Luce pulled the string back farther than it was ever gone and held it there, The spider ignored the boys and turned directly towards Luce. It reared back to spit its strange venom again and Luce’s Light arrow became two, then three. At the same time that the spider spit its venom, Luce released their arrows. Unlike the original spider’s purple goop, this spider spat a black cloud of pure Darkness. Luce’s arrows went straight through it and pierced the Dark beast. It screeched out and started to disintegrate. However, its spit didn’t disappear.

“Luce!” At the last second, Hiro threw a force field up around Luce, using the last of his energy. Vision going black he collapsed to the ground.

*

Out of the spider crawled... another spider, this one made of pure Darkness. Before the Gold Coin guild trio could react, the spider slashed one of its legs across Mo’s back sending them sprawling to the ground. Their face-plate fell off, revealing their empty helmet.

Alyss swung her whip and it went right through the spider’s body, “Are you friggin’ kidding me?!”