The doors ground open with enough noise to signal their emergence to every corner of Grefe, if not to Valen itself. It made for a sinking feeling in Vergil’s stomach. Part of him expected the creature to be right outside, waiting to be let in, like some monster of horror Experiences.

It wasn’t.

They walked onto the platform outside and the spiders went to work at lowering the bridge. Vergil walked to the edge and looked over the city and the strange forest, searching for any sign of the monster. None were visible. Thin wisps of smoke drifted above the canopy of trees in several places, but nothing more.

“Ludwig’s made a bumble of things,” Tallah observed. “Wonder if it’s got him. That’s going to make getting my mask back a pain in the arse.”

Some spiders lowered themselves to the platform, come from the city, and skittered over to the Oldest. A conversation happened, made up of a kind of dance and palp waving.

“The false mother’s hunter is prowling the feeding ground,” Luna translated. “It has the scent of the other human, but it has not captured it. It is… playing.”

“I would too, if I wore her boots,” Tallah said. “Leave me behind for dead? I would do worse than toy with him if I had a chance. Imbecile.”

“We’re going to save him, right?” Vergil asked.

Commotion erupted in the forest. A blast ripped trees and vegetation off the ground, raising an inferno. A keening wail went into the air, a sound resembling, to Vergil’s ears, a distorted fire alarm.

Rain followed, falling sharply from the ceiling. It originated among the crystal veins in tidy cones.

“Sprinklers?” he asked, eyes wide at the spectacle.

“Fire is forbidden in the feeding ground. Fire brings water and noise,” Luna answered.

“And now he’s sodden and hunted. Serves him right. Where is the chamber with the girl’s body, creat… Luna?” Tallah asked.

Luna spun on Vergil’s shoulder and aimed a leg at the far part of the forest. “There, among the tallest of the trees. We must cross the feeding grounds. Hunters will be agitated. It is dangerous now.”

Tallah laughed. “Right. He’ll head to the girl so we’ll head him off there. Hold on, you two.” Her feet lifted off the ground. So did Vergil’s and Sil’s.

“Be gentl—”

Sil’s words rose into a wail as Tallah launched them over the edge into the maw of the abyss.

Vergil whooped. They fell and air rushed by his ears in a roar before the sorceress pulled forward and the fall turned into a horizontal flight at insane speed. Rain water splashed their faces as they entered the downpour. The forest canopy slapped at his ankles as they dipped.

Tallah pulled them sideways sharply and Sil careened into his arms. He grabbed onto her as a huge brown spider leapt from the forest and narrowly missed them, it’s clawed legs closing on empty air.

In heartbeats they were across the entire green expanse, slowing as the wall came into view until they hung weightless above the forest’s crown. The rain was icy cold and its sound was the roar of a waterfall.

“Where, spider?” Tallah asked as she brought them closer to the ground, hidden among the leaves.

“Left,” it answered. “We are near. Guardians will be waiting.”

She set them down on the moss-covered forest floor, their arrival squelching. Vergil sank down to his ankles in the runny mud.

“Sword out,” Tallah ordered. “We’ve a fight ready for us.”

Even through the cold downpour, things moved in the underbrush. One of the strange deer-like creatures skidded to a halt paces away, regarded them with undulating tentacles, and bolted sideways. Mud splashed in its wake. It wasn’t trying to escape them.

A large brown spiders lumbered into view moments later. It too regarded them as it squeezed among the trees. Through the rain it looked much larger than Vergil remembered.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“It is uncertain,” Luna said. “Food or not food.”

“Convince it to be on its way,” Tallah said. She ignited twin fireballs, flames turning the downpour to steam.

“We cannot. We are food to it.”

“Really?” Vergil’s mouth dropped open. Spiders ate one another. Why? “Your species is weird, Luna.”

“It is not of We. It does not recognise We as of it.”

It sprang forward, a blur through the sizzling rain. Sil grabbed Vergil by the collar and yanked him back from the swipe of the spider’s front legs, their tips turned into hooked claws.

“Head in the fight, boy,” she growled. “Eyes on the monster. You’re supposed to be guarding me.” Her tone whipped him into action, all fear banished.

Tallah’s opening salvo caught the spider head on with twin booms of detonation. It barely flinched on impact, dashing through the flames to snap and swipe at them. Its carapace looked as thick as armour plating.

“There is easier prey in the forest.” Vergil dove under the long reach of a claw. He rolled through the mud, came up to the beast’s side, and brought the sword around in a flashing arc. Its edge clanged off the armour without even leaving a scratch.

Tallah loosed fireflies, peppering it with popping blasts. She aimed for the eyes and was rewarded with bursts of ichor. It showered Vergil in bits of cornea. A myriad other eyes opened up across its body and the creature roared its deep thrum.

It ducked down, pulled back, and sprang on Vergil, opening impossible jaws filled with finger-thick fangs. A human head would’ve fit neatly inside.

Vergil screamed as the spider bore down, too fast to dodge again.

It stopped midway through the rush. Legs pumped, threw mud and leaves, dug deep scores in the earth. Jaws snapped with hollow, useless thunks.

Tallah had it!

She floated just behind it, arms outstretched as if holding the creature by invisible reins. Its front legs lifted off the ground, squirming uselessly paces away from Vergil. With a heave, Tallah rose higher and the beast slid backwards, rising as well to expose a black, soft abdomen.

Vergil charged in among the flurry of claws. He reversed his blade, led in with the pointy end, and drove it into the space between the spider’s segments, adding all his weight into the stab.

Hot, stinking ichor squirted over his hands and the spider screamed a low, pained roar of anguish, less noise and more mental assault. None of the eloquence of its smaller cousins, just a beast’s bellow of pain and anger.

Vergil braced a foot against the joint of a lower leg and wrenched the sword sideways, shoulder muscles burning with the effort as he cut along the separating line. Tallah lifted it vertical and tipped it back with a splash of mud. Vergil stabbed down again, plunging the sword through gaps in the armour, again and again as the spider tried to buck him off.

A whistle from above had him jumping clear of the squirming mass. Stumbling, he ran beyond its thrashing range.

He glanced at Tallah through the rain. Before the spider rolled over, she brought her hands together against her chest and pulled outward as if meaning to rip her coat open.

Instead, the spider roared. It went from low thrum to keening, echoing wail, real sounds mixing in with the mental assault. Its legs flailed in panic, splashed in the churning mud, knocked over the willowy trees. Its wail only increased in volume and its limb outstretched and trembled.

Finally, it ripped in two right across the segment Vergil had wounded. Ichor and pale organs erupted out of it, spilling in a great, horrifying mess that oozed out of its body. Its legs still shivered and twitched as rain sizzled on the exposed viscera.

Something like an yellow heart spilled out of the top cavity, throbbed three more times, and finally stilled.

Several paces away from the scene, Tallah landed heavily and swayed on her feet. She let out a long breath. “That took some strain.” She bent down, hands to knees, and breathed with relief.

Vergil shook white gore off his blade, skirted around the cooling corpse, and went to stand near the sorceress.

“Is it dead?”

Legs still twitched and curled inward, the creature tried hopelessly to turn over. It let out a soft, rasping mewling as it expired.

Tallah’s arm shot out as Vergil took one more step closer, and he felt himself rammed in the ribs as if hit by one of Valen’s carts. Air burst out of his chest as the rest of him sailed through the air and landed badly, sword thrown clear out of his hand.

* Up. Up. Move yer arse!

* Fight’s found ya.

Through the loud thunder of his own heartbeat hammering against his eardrums, and the confusion of the moment, he heard Sil crying out his name. He had no idea how he came back to his feet, head spinning, eyes unfocused.

Through the haze of rain, he saw the sorceress next to the corpse. Red blood spattered the white entrails.

Tallah’s outstretched arm ended just above the elbow. White bone shone amid a sea of red blood that squirted in time with the sorceress’s heartbeat.

“Such a pity. I wanted that one dead,” a familiar voice crooned from the canopy of the trees.

“The false mother’s hunter is come.” Luna’s voice came to him tiny and afraid. It had clung on to him through the entire fight so far. “All is lost.”