“Sam.” Thatch said, and though his voice was quiet, it carried over the snow. I could see the web now that it had shifted with Thatch’s touch. “I’m going to need you to help get me out of here quickly.”

I plunged my hand into my coat, looking for the Ghost Knife.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know but I really, really, really doubt that it’s going to notice I’m here, let me out and then apologize for the inconvenience. Do you have something sharp?”

I pulled the Ghost Knife out of my coat and took a few hesitant steps towards the web, my eyes darting from pillar to pillar.

“Now, please.” He said sharply. I took a deep breath and began using my knife to cut the strands. Now that I was closer, I noticed that there was a chill emanating from the strands that my winter gear couldn’t abate. My fingers were quickly going numb. I had a sinking feeling I knew what had spun this. Fortunately, the ghost knife cut the strands with a surprising ease. All I had to do was apply a little pressure and the threads came apart. I was trying to be careful about it, but we must have been making enough of a disturbance that the webs occupant finally noticed us.

It was, as I’d feared, one of those enormous spiders we’d seen during the snowstorm. An elemental, First Mate had called them.

It was bigger than I remembered, at least thrice my size, but maybe it just seemed bigger now that it was probably going to kill and eat me. It’s body was ice, polished and smooth. The sun reflected off of it’s perfect ice blue abdomen and blinded me briefly. It’s long, thin legs were like icicles. It’s head was angular and featureless, except for a pair of mandibles that were systematically clicking together like a metronome.

It wasn’t moving fast, at first. Maybe it was just surveying the scene, maybe in my surprise and fright I jostled the web too much. Whatever the reason, a few moments after it revealed itself, it suddenly launched itself in a scuttling sprint towards Thatch and I. It was exactly like one of those nature documentaries where the camera man sat for countless hours watching spider webs all for that perfect shot when the spider immediately leaps onto the insect that bumbled its way into their web. I grabbed Thatch, abandoning my attempts at trying to cut the webs, and pulled.

Whatever this stuff was made out of, however, wasn’t going to be pulled apart by a scrawny little human, even damaged as it was, and I had to leap backwards as the Elemental reached Thatch and sank its teeth into his shoulder. It then immediately began webbing up my crewmate.

“Thatch!”

“I-It’s alright!” He said, “There’s nothing in me to poison! But it’s an elemental, it’s going to start drawing heat from me, I think!” I hesitated for a second, what the heck was I supposed to do here? Should I turn and get the others? But they were at least a twenty minute walk away. I didn’t know how you killed a Patchwork, but I was certain that this thing could do it if I gave it the few minutes it would take to get the others.

I skirted in a semicircle, not wanting to get too close to the thing. Busy with Thatch, I ran towards the spiderweb and ungloved my hand. I was running on low power, but I had a bit of a shock left in me. I didn’t know what the spider web was made out of but it seemed like ice, and ice was made out of water, and water was a good conductor, right? Maybe I could shock the creature off of Thatch, like I shocked the tendril off of Quiver.

I put my hand against the web and discharged whatever energy I could safely spare. I turned to look at the spider's reaction, but it didn’t even flinch. Thatch, too, despite being caught up in the web, seemed totally fine. So either this wasn’t an ice web, or ice wasn’t as good a conductor as water. I had no idea which. It’s not what I remembered learning about in science class.

“What a waste.” I grunted to myself, gripping the Ghost Knife.

The elemental finished wrapping Thatch, my crew mate no longer visible underneath the threads the spider had been spinning around him. The more I watched it, the more certain I was that it’s similarity with a spider was only a little more than superficial, like it was imitating a spider, or someone had crafted it like that to appear like it was. The thread from its abdomen simply unspooled inorganically, like there was some sort of mechanism inside spinning the web out with little effort on the part of the spider. Then it curled itself over Thatch and the temperature suddenly began to drop all around me, and rapidly. I felt a sort of tug in the direction of the spider, like a warm wind emanating from me. That’s what Thatch had said, ‘Drawing heat’. How much heat did a Patchwork have to give?

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I didn’t know, but the thing seemed distracted, so I took a running start towards it, knife out. Even through my coat I could feel the cold intensifying as I approached. The spider seemed to be shivering itself, a tremble that sent its abdomen shaking, a spray of white frost emanating from it in a cloud. But everytime it did that, the temperature dropped a little more. The elemental, however, didn’t seem to notice me, or even care that I was there.

I grit my teeth, dadged around one of its long limbs and thrust the dagger into the side of its head. My blade sank into the ice with a ‘chunk’ sound, and I twisted and tried to push it in even deeper. My heart sped up, and I was naive enough to feel a moment of triumph. And then the thing turned and bit me.

The dagger didn’t bother it at all, that much was clear. Now that I was closer, I could see that the blue ice that it was made out of was only semi-opaque. If you tried, you could see through it, out to the other side. There wasn’t a hint of organs or any other biological feature that a normal creature would need to stay alive. It’s head was no different. There wasn’t a brain for me to stab.

So it turned, and it’s eyes, just icy indents in it’s head, stared at me unseeing. Then it sank its fangs into my right shoulder.

It was kind of like getting an IV. The fangs were thin, sharp and fine. I barely felt the bite itself. I could feel something cold run into my veins from the point of puncture, however. Only instead of the vague cold of an IV, it was a full on burning freeze.

My right arm almost immediately ceased functioning. I lost my grip on the knife and pushed myself away, stumbling onto my ass and trying to strangle a scream while pushing myself further back with my feet. It felt like my shoulder was on fire with cold, and the agonizing ice was spreading to other parts of my body.

The spider, apparently, didn’t like getting stabbed despite having no internal bits to cut. It left Thatch in his cocoon and touched down on the snow and earth. It was only then I did something I realized I should have done at first.

“HELP!”

As if agitated by the noise it scuttled at me straight on, and I lashed out with my foot and caught it in the head, right on its mandibles, which shattered under my boot like glass. It reared back, but not because I’d hurt it, I think. It seemed more surprised than anything.

Then it pushed it’s head into the snow. I got to my feet and hesitated. Should I run, or try to grab the knife that was still sticking out of the creatures head? I didn’t have a chance to do either, as a second later it pulled its head back out of the snow, its fangs whole again, my knife gone from its head, glinting in the snow below it, the damage it had done erased as if it had never been. It came at me again, it long thin legs puncturing the snow as it moved, leaving barely a trace.

I back peddled, even though I realized the was no way I was fast enough to get away from this thing. My shoulder was in utter agony and so was most of my arm. It was hard to move my fingers, and though I couldn’t see it under my coat, the flesh around the initial wound felt hard and brittle as well as cold.

I hit me like a frozen truck, but I managed to turn my body at the last second so that it’s head couldn’t bury itself in my organs. The elementals body still hit me, and ice is hard. My chest hit the part of it’s abdomen next to its head, and the force of the blow made my head come down and crack against the ice it was made of. I felt a flash of sharp, cold pain as I received, I was sure, a concussion. The spider stopped, and I was thrown several feet backwards. I scrabbled in the snow like an upended turtle, my hand pushing into the snow and slicing itself on the corpse of a frozen spiney lobster. My mind was functioning like it had been dropped in a blender and then poured back into my head, and the slowly spreading pain in by shoulder and now chest wasn’t making things easier. Maybe that was why, when I realized I was near the base of the pillar again, I chose to crawl towards the globule slug thing that I’d been specifically warned away from. After all, if it was that dangerous, maybe it would be a danger to the elemental too.

I found it just as the spider scuttled back over to me, with my scrambled brain, lame arm and multiple lacerations. It seemed to deem me sufficiently incapacitated to begin trying to web me up, because suddenly a less disgusting than I’d expected strand of cold threat attached itself to my boot from its spinneret? Icerett? But it was too late. I had found it, having moved not at all from the open spot in the snow I’d made. I grabbed the thing with my gloved hand, and tossed it up at the spider. It burst before it even reached it, exploding into a fine grey dust that expanded in every direction between us, independent of the strong wind blowing up the hill face. The reaction was immediate. It felt like I was drowning. I inhaled, but no matter how much air I took in, my body wouldn’t process it, wouldn’t turn it into something that would keep me alive. Deep, deep down there was a vague worry that this had only hurt me, that this creature might not need to breath, but that part of me buried under my sudden screaming desire to breath needn’t have worried. Whatever this was, it sent the elemental reeling as well. I could hear a high, ululating screech unlike a sound ice or a spider would ever make. And then everything went black, though I wasn’t unconscious, I was still stuck, trying to breath and failing while the world faded to nothing. At a certain point I remember trying to smash my head against the stone underneath the snow. To force myself unconscious, to get away from the pain, but it didn’t work.