“Every traveller has a home of his own, and he learns to appreciate it the more from his wandering.”
Charles Dickens
Namir had called it. Our journey back to the Thorpe was interrupted repeatedly by various critters keen to claim our meat and bones. The four giants handled most of the fighting, glad for the extra warning I could provide. But I was always ready to help if needed now that they knew about my magic. It made me realise how lucky we had been when we landed on the endless ice to only be troubled by the smallest foes, the wolves and bears. Their magical evolutions were relatively tame in comparison to others.
Now, when we passed them by, hares, wolves, and bears were left alone, provided they did not attack us, and with Namir scouting our route, we could avoid or pass through the fringes of their territories. He only returned from ranging to check with Bjorn that he was still going in the right direction. By and large, he was.
Bjorn had taken to carrying me directly in a sling across his chest now that our sledge had been destroyed. Nyx nestled on my front, but he said he could not feel the extra weight at all, and with the resistance to ice and cold combined, it was no longer so painful or life-threatening to be out from under the furs which we left within the giant spatial vault.
Nyx had even had some of the elixir herself to aid her in surviving the arctic temperatures. She flew for small stretches but always returned to the warmth of my embrace. The giants had refused to allow her to stay inside the vault while we travelled for fear of what she might do unsupervised for an entire day. Despite her enthusiasm to stay inside and the challenge of catching her, we dragged her out before the day began, and the vault was sealed once more.
Still, it wasn’t long before we encountered something other than Wyrms.
It was a nest of spiders.
“Hold,” I said. The Giants used to me sensing things in advance instantly held still in preparation.
“What do you sense?” Eryk asked anxiously; the last clew of Ice Wyrms had taken a bite out of his thigh. The giants had been suitably impressed by my ability to heal. Another string to my bow Ragnar had commented. But Erik, in particular, was a little more cautious afterwards now that he had been blooded.
“A nest of spiders,” I answered. “Namir’s height down under the snowbank over there.” I pointed out the small rise we were passing to the left.
“You never cease to impress.” Bjorn grinned. “How many?”
“Hundreds.” And there were. Hundreds of the little blighters were crawling all over one another under the ice. I’d stopped us as soon as I noticed them as I wasn’t sure what they were going to do next.
“Good, good.” Bjorn unexpectedly added
“Good?” I asked, failing to see what was so special about this fact. If they could see what I could, I doubt he would have been so happy.
“Well, if there are still hundreds left, they won’t have gotten too big yet. The spiderlings eat one another and rise in levels, poison, magic and skills if left long enough for them to cannibalise the rest of them.”
I inspected the spiderlings, ‘Artic Wolf Spyder,’ I could sense and saw that most of them were around Level 1, 2, or 3. As I watched, one attacked and killed the other, jumping in levels from 3 to 4 before it settled down to eat the spoils of victory. If one killed and ate all of them, I could see how it might quickly jump up in the size of the threat it posed to the Thorpe.
“I don’t know.” Ragnar disagreed. “I prefer killing one higher levelled Ice Spyder from a distance rather than tackling a heaving mass of them. Their bites are not nice.”
“Bites?” I quizzed before being interrupted.
“That’s just because you prefer to kill everything from a distance.” Ivar countered before answering my question. “Ice poison, it freezes your blood as it spreads. Your muscles will cut themselves open, provided it doesn’t get you in a vein. Gruesome little blighters despite their size.”
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Bjorn interrupted the horror story, “Ah, but you're forgetting our secret weapon here, Kai.”
“What me?” I had no desire to get bitten at all. I think I was beginning to agree with Ragnar on this one.
“Well, just like the Ice Wyrms, Ice Spyders despise heat; if we crack the nest open and you blast it with fire, they will be a quick, clean problem to solve.” He smiled.
“Can they swim?” I asked. Let’s not crack the nest open at all but boil them alive.
“Never seen one swim before.” Bjorn pondered.
“I’d rather not allow them to bite anyone,” I explained, shuddering. (Reminded of my first encounter with a spider.)
“If there are hundreds, I doubt they’d have the strength to penetrate your skin. Especially if they are still under level 10, and if there are hundreds, they’d have to be; otherwise, they would have broken out of the nest by now.” Bjorn tried to reassure me, but after listening to Ivar, I would not take any chances.
I unstrapped myself from Bjorn and stepped into the air until I had a good angle down at the nest before releasing my mana in a wave of heat. It was a little harder from a distance, but I employed the same sequence of magic that I had against the wyrms we had encountered. Starting with boil I reduced the nest to a boiling bubbling pit of death. This was followed by a blast of fire that chargrilled any spiders smart enough to use their sibling as boats to jump to safety.
I could feel a rush of experience as the mini-monsters died in droves.
I kept it up until I could no longer sense any alive.
“Perfect.” Bjorn smiled as I returned to the ground. “Time for lunch, anyone?”
“What you can eat them?” I asked a little appalled. Though I had got over my disgust early with the Wyrms I suppose it shouldn’t have surprised me.
“Waste not, want not. They are actually surprisingly tasty if tiny mouthfuls.” Ivar continued as he fished out a little net to scoop them out of the boiling pothole.
“Remind me a little of shrimp.” Added Ragnar. “Besides, you have already cooked them.” As he sat down alongside Ivar.
“What about the poison?” I asked, slowly losing my position.
“Denatured by the heat,” Bjorn replied, joining the circle with Eryk.
Even Namir returned for the impromptu feast, and after watching everyone eat one, I tried one, and to my surprise, they were very much like shrimp.
“No cores?” I asked, expecting at least one or two.
“At this size, they haven’t grown big enough to develop them. As I said, the spiderlings are cannibalistic by nature. By the time the nest had eaten itself down to tens of them, then you might have found a few cores, but the spiders would have likely broken their way out from the nest and spread.”
“Why are there so many?” I asked, surprised by the number of beasts we seemed to come across as we trekked in toward the Thorpe.
“Spiderlings? A way for one or two of them to evolve into a stronger magical beast. Even if it is a lousy survival rate for the individual spiderlings, it is better for the species.” He answered a question but not the one I was driving at.
“No, not spiderlings in particular. But the more magical beasts we encounter, the closer we get to your Thorpe.” I redirected.
“Ah, yes . . .” He paused before answering, “They are drawn to it.” He answered yet did not quite explain.
“Drawn to what?” I asked.
“The Light of the Lodestar.” He replied.
“The Thorpe has a church?” I asked, surprised. Bishop Bailie had never mentioned the Giants in his teachings about the church's laity. It seemed predominantly a human-centric religion.
“Not like humans, no.” He answered. “Or at least we do not deify it in the same manner, but we have a shard of the Lodestar, and they are drawn to it even if they don’t know it. The closer you get to the Thorpe, the more magical beasts you will likely find.” He explained his answer in greater detail.
“So no church then.” I clarified.
“No. Actually, we use it as a lure in the centre of the Thorpe. Metal-tipped spikes surround it to prevent the beasts from reaching it. Though sometimes it pulls in beasts, we would rather it didn’t like the Lodestone Wyrm. That was a disaster. Still, they stopped it before it became a calamity, so it was not a complete failure.” Eryk joined the conversation.
“How so? I asked Eryk.
But Bjorn answered, “Just like how the Shard allows us to improve. The same goes for the magical beasts. It offers them evolutions based on their history and experience. I dread to think what a Tier 5 Lodestone Wyrm might have been able to become had it reached it.” He shuddered in remembered dread.
“They evolve?” That sounded somewhat alarming, imagining the Ice Wyrms as something more dangerous.
“Up tiers, new species, or skills. It can shift the balance of power instantly.” He continued. “That’s why our job to track and clear out the endless ice is so important. A good hunter means the warrior is never needed.”
The church had failed to mention that in their lessons to children. Only that beasts were drawn to them; our duty was to protect them. It was essential to protect them if that was what happened when they reached them.
We ate until we could eat no longer, and the remainder of the spiderlings were bagged up to take home.
“Nearly there now,” Bjorn added as we set off once more. “If we push it a little we should get there before dark.”
And so we did.