- The Cave -

The Centipede was difficult to get a hold of, figuratively speaking. I wouldn’t really be holding anything any time soon, considering my lack of hands. No, I just wasn’t able to get a good look at it. It always kept to the edges of my influence, feeding only on insects and roots straying deep into the soil or rocky crevices. As I had accidentally done with the snails, I was able to steer my creatures by manipulating the magical auras they projected to sense their environments, as long as I had raised them using my own mana. Using that, I tried to coax the Centipede out, laying trails of snails and bugs. The infuriating thing was that it worked, but not entirely. It always took the first ones, but shortly before it was deep enough within my influence for me to examine its makings, it turned about. Almost as if it could feel my attention perhaps.

While I experimented around like that and absentmindedly raised bugs and snails to replace the ones I spent, the crystal spiders had claimed still more victims. Another young salamander and a handful of frogs. And I couldn’t even strike back. The spiders were difficult to direct. Their senses relied on spreading their aura into the ground rather than the air around them to feel for tremors. But though I understood the general theory of it, this kind of perception was far too alien for me to really replicate. And even when one of the packs accidentally stumbled onto a hunting crystal spider, they didn’t attack. They probed and prodded, but they didn’t get aggressive the way they did when another spider pack crossed into their territory. It was likely the crystalline nature that was throwing them off like all the others. It didn’t sound like anything they knew, didn’t smell like it, my denizens just didn’t know what to do about them, and I had no idea how to teach them.

Well, as my teachers had taught me, magic was one’s ability to enforce their will on the world, so maybe I should just try and force it again.

Wait, teachers?

There was something there, at the edge of my memory once more. I’d been trained for something, taught by many teachers about subjects such as the god’s commands, magic and the order of the natural world. The dying screams of another lizard tore me out of my memories though. There’d be time for introspection once I had dealt with that.

The last time I had forced an issue like this, it had created my crystal nemesis and knocked me out for who knew how long. But, well, this was far less rigid an issue, wasn’t it? And now that I knew what to look out for, I could stop when I felt my magic being drained too much.

So, I focused on the pack of spiders closest to the spider clutching yet another lizard in it’s jaws. I willed them to understand my directions, imagining them storming off and hunting their crystal counterpart. I vividly pictured them pursuing and tearing into the crystal spider, and tried to put those pictures into their minds. Surprisingly, it worked. At least with the younger spiders that I had raised myself. They seemed to understand the orders I was sending them, and it didn’t even cost me any magic, as far as I could tell. Looking more closely, I did the same again, and apparently the order simply made my magic that was already inside of them stir and transmit my intent… somehow.

But be that as it may, I could study the specifics of it later. Now I watched the spiders storm off. Their eight legs thrummed in a complex pattern as they carried their shining, black bodies gracefully through long, purple grass, over root and branch and then through the ashes of my mistake. Anward to the enemy, who still held in its clutches the croaking not-yet-corpse of the lizard. They surrounded the crystal spider, as if they were hunting normally. The crystal spider didn’t react, simply carrying its prey further.

Then, the first spider struck. Lunging out from behind, almost faster than I could follow. It catapulted itself forward, fangs ready to plunge into flesh. But there was no flesh to be found. Instead, the fangs simply slid off of the smooth crystal, leaving barely a scratch. The spider retreated, thrumming its legs against the ground, apparently communicating something to its fellows. The crystal spider still didn’t react. It either didn’t feel threatened or its limited intelligence didn’t have any response for being attacked.

The circle moved with it, following, scuttling to keep the same distance. The constant thrumming of legs filled the air with fine ash and dust. Another one lunged, striking from the side this time. It bit into a joint, trying to tear through the narrow part. Again, the fangs didn’t leave the slightest mark, but it kept biting and tearing, trying to break rather than cut the leg.

This time the construct reacted. Letting go of the lizard, it struck at it’s attacker, but that only led to another spider lunging from the other side to grab another leg and restrain its movements. I’d seen the same tactics applied to others of their kind, and it seemed like they were working just as well against this facsimile.

Trapped, the construct now couldn’t reach either of its assailants and the rest of the throng could now safely approach to restrain the other legs. And then they began to pull. It didn’t have much effect. The crystal was simply too sturdy. I sent them instructions to lever rather than pull, bending them backwards, counter to how they were supposed to bend. I hoped that might crack them, but I didn’t even know how the crystals were moving in the first place. It was all one solid piece and thus shouldn’t have been able to move at all.

But, it seemed to work. One spider bent a leg way over the construct’s back and then, snap, off it went. Immediately, a wave of foreign magic hit my senses, scrambling my awareness. The Crystal’s magic. It had a certain quality, sharp and bright like shards of glass. But it dissipated, overwhelmed by my own aura it quickly lost the Crystal’s claim and then slowly floated towards my own core to be claimed again.

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As the magic left the body, it slowly ceased struggling until it stopped moving at all. Victory, and not a single injury on my side. I’d call that a complete success.

With their task done, the spiders ambled about aimlessly. Some of them kept prodding the broken construct, maybe expecting to find something edible for their efforts, but when that failed, they turned about to return to the rest of their pack.

By now there were four packs in the cave, each with about a dozen individuals. It would have been more, but due to the cave’s devastated population, most of the young spiders I had raised hadn’t been able to find anything to eat and started turning on each other. On the upside, it seemed that the slugs and bugs, at least the ones I had raised, were now developing faster than the original ones. Some of them were now in the third, some even fourth generations since I originally started working on them, so perhaps my repeated use of magic had caused some lasting changes.

The lizards still were an issue, though. They required far too much food to quickly raise to adulthood, and the few adults I did have were slow to mate again. I could maintain a subtle working on the young ones, increasing their growth at a more moderate pace, but then I couldn't maintain any other workings in the meantime. By now I was pretty much constantly working on one batch of eggs or another. Raising new slugs and busy, helping moths hatch or tadpoles hatch or raising another clutch of spiders. The latter were very fruitful, as it turned out. They were near constantly producing eggs. As it turned out, they were only carrying them when there wasn't any alternative food source around. Normally they seemed to lay them in the remains of their huts after having fed. This meant there was much less food available though, so instead of dozens, only a hand full of spiders emerged from those clutches. Still, at the rate they were laying them in dead bugs and slugs I'd be able to assemble an army soon.

Though I'd probably have to fix the lizard problem before then, or else they'd be hunted into extinction. Perhaps if I focused my working on only one or two individuals, they might be able to find enough food to grow into adulthood. Then I could use them as a breeding pair and repeat the process until they develop the same lasting changes as the other species.

So, I did as I planned and set to breeding lizards. The process was easy enough to only need a fraction of my attention, so as the male and female I had selected started gorging themselves on everything around them, I set to improving my arsenal.

Now that I could control my spiders, I sent them instructions to destroy the crystal constructs on sight. I made sure they understood, by guiding a pack towards one of them without specific instructions to attack and seeing what happened. As intended, they attacked as soon as they recognized the construct for what it was, though I still didn't know how exactly they did. Maybe it's steps sounded differently than that of a normal spider.

I watched them score another victory, I sent the same command to all other spiders and immediately removed it from the group I was currently following. I'd need them for another task.

The centipede was still circling my aura without ever truly entering it. It was infuriating, like a mosquito constantly circling when you were trying to fall asleep. Always just out of reach or suddenly gone when I almost had it.

But no longer. I set my chosen pack up in a wide circle on a chunk of dry land and laid another line of lures. Bugs, directed to dig in at regular intervals, forming a line leading into the centre of the circle. All of them were at a depth the centipede was usually comfortable staying at.

Then I waited. The centipede came soon enough, after I set out a few more lures between it and my trap. This time it followed the lie to it's conclusion, and when it was at the centre of my circle, I told the spiders to dig down. They weren't particularly good at it, but they were fast enough to reach solid stone before the centipede could escape. It was now surrounded by a trench of open air. Open air saturated with my magic.

I told them to tunnel toward the centipede.

As my aura spread into the soil, flowing into the tunnels my spiders dug and further from there. The centipede seemed to notice the density of my influence increase, but it’s only way out was down into solid rock. I channelled power into my spiders, quickening their movements. My other working, the one focussed on the lizards, fizzled out with my attention so wholly devoured, but I could pick that up again later.

It was a close race, between the centipede cutting its escape into solid rock and my spiders tunnelling ever closer towards it. The spider’s legs weren’t made to shovel around earth, but they had many and the ground was loose. Meanwhile the centipede began to writhe and contort the closer they went. It was starting to falter, its progress slowing and then halting completely. By the time my spiders reached it, it stopped moving at all.

It died. That much was evident when I first looked into its body. It was completely still, not even the miniscule creatures that normally flourished in guts and innards were completely inert. The one thing still happening inside it was the magic. There was a violent clash there, between my magic and the unclaimed magic that had been in its body. My magic was converting the natural one, and in doing so it was damaging everything around it. There were a million breaks in the creature’s nervous system, a million tiny burns and tears in its flesh. Fluids were leaking and intermingling where I was quite sure they shouldn’t, and the creature was starting to digest itself from the stomach outwards.

So this is why it has avoided my aura so far. Did that mean anything from the outside would die if it entered my aura? That would be an unfortunate effect I’d have to learn how to deal with. Especially if I ever wanted to see any other people again. Gods, it would be nice to have someone to talk to at some point.

But again, my brooding was disturbed. Near the edge of the Crystals domain, I could feel a large amount of mana being released. Larger than usual from a crystal spider. As I turned my attention there, I didn’t see a defeated construct though. Instead I was greeted by the sight of a whole pack of crystal constructs standing over the gorey remains of a spider pack.