Chapter Eleven: Kindergarten: Day One
Clackhissis had known that Cushing was a lower level than she was but had been of the frame of mind that it made it easier for him to get killed in battle and for her to complete the quest herself. Now that she had seen his true heart, she no longer thought of him as a disposable asset. Tes, too, had proven to be somewhat useful and had shown a hint of potential that Clackhissis would not have believed was in her had the spider not witnessed the mongrel killing the Icthyoid’s hired spellcaster with her own eyes.
Of the two, Tes was definitely the weaker. Clackhissis could tell she was not a head-to-head fighter and was better off striking from the shadows. In that regard, at least, she could identify with the small canid. Tes was a lurker, a backstabber. She lacked the strength and vitality to openly confront opponents, so she would need to hone her techniques to be swift and certain, retreating after each strike. Her use of poison was also something that would need to be focused upon as well. Poison, when properly used, could take the wind out of the most enduring opponent, and she needed every advantage she could get.
Clackhissis already had a fighting style in mind for the kobold. Tes was an ambush attacker, but once the initial attack was over, she was exposed. If the attack didn’t kill her opponent outright, she was doomed. She didn’t have the raw power to go head-to-head with bigger and stronger opponents. So, she needed to harry them until her poison did its work.
Tes’s style of fighting would be to make her opponents overextend themselves, an arm here or a leg there, where she would then quickly slash them, stacking her poison blow after blow until her foe slowed down enough for her to perform a coup de grâce. That meant that she needed to work on her speed and her agility. She would never be able to cross swords with an opponent and survive. Of that, Clackhissis had little doubt.
There was a pack of dire wolves that she had stumbled upon during her hunt for the pair’s breakfast. Originally, she had planned to bypass them altogether, but now she felt that they would be an excellent opportunity to gather some much-needed experience for the pair.
She gave them time enough to gather their things and scrub all signs that the camp had been there. She knew that if they weren’t already being pursued, they soon would be, and she did not want to provide even the slightest hint of their presence. Cushing was ahead of her in at least one regard; he’d dug out a pit for the fire, and now he filled it in with dirt. Though only a foot deep, it was easy enough to cover their tracks by making their fire sign vanish. Tes and the man scoured the camp for any trace evidence they might have left behind, and when they were satisfied, they moved out.
That was another thing that Clackhissis respected about Tes. The kobold left no hint of her presence behind. There were no bits of bone or refuse. She even policed her errant strands of hair. A solitary kobold was a prey animal. The only time they posed a threat was when they were coming at you en masse, and even then, the threat level they presented was low. Because of this, her people had learned to hide their presence.
Clackhissis led them for over an hour before she rediscovered evidence of the wolves. There were seven of them, so far as she could tell, but she didn’t trust her senses so much anymore. Her vibrational sensitivity was off for some reason and was not as reliable as it had been. That was a worry for another time, however, as they needed to generate experience for both the man and the mongrel. She would have them group up, but she would stay out of it and only intercede if it looked like they had bitten off more than they could chew. She might even web a few of them down and keep them from attacking the pair, but she didn’t know how the gods might view her actions. Would they, she wondered, consider it cheating and hold back some experience? It was possible. She would wait and see what happened when they encountered the animals.
She followed their trail for an hour, Tes and Cushing in tow behind her, and only paused when she saw the kobold’s ears perk up like she was listening to something of interest. She wriggled her furry nose, sniffed the air, and suddenly pinned her ears back, and a low growl rumbled from her throat.
“What is it?” Clackhissis was careful to speak in the human tongue so that the little one would understand her, even though it was difficult for her to do so.
“I hears barking, snarling, screaming. Big barks but feebles screams. They has sumfin cornered.”
Clackhissis would have smiled if she could. A predator was never less dangerous than when it was focused on other prey. Being in a pack, the dire wolves would not be concerned with outsiders coming for them. They would be one hundred percent focused on their potential food source. Making sure that it did not escape and waiting for it to drop its defenses long enough for an opening to perform a fatal strike. They would be harrying their quarry, an unrelenting wall of fangs and claws. She could not have asked for a better opportunity than this. If luck truly smiled upon them, then they might even get to kill the wolves’ prey.
“Which way?”
Tes pointed a shaky claw towards the northeast, and Clackhissis took off like her abdomen was on fire. Cushing followed, and she noted, had very wisely not drawn his sword. It was an impressive sight, but it would also alert the wolves of their presence. The kobold brought up the rear with a half-hearted gait, but Clackhissis didn’t notice as she was focused on the wolves. Now, even she could hear them, and it was evident they had treed something. The wolves had encircled a large oak and were all staring upwards. Every other second, one of the wolves would leap upwards and snap its jaws together with a mighty clacking of teeth. The others would howl or bark; some growled and pawed at the tree.
She could not see what they had cornered, but the spider did count seven dire wolves, so her skills were not all that out of place. That was some small comfort. She considered how they would proceed when a voice called out from the oak.
“Help. Please help me!” The voice was that of a young male. It was tainted by a strange accent and tonal quality that told her immediately that the owner was not human. The voice was deep but simultaneously carried the confidence and terror of a teenager. A youth who was confident he was going to live forever until he’d been confronted with impending death. The terror carried within was undeniable. She realized it was also a clarion call to action for Cushing.
“Wait,” the Game Warden screamed as he ran towards the wolves. “Do not hurt him.” He was talking to the wolves.
Clackhissis could not believe that he was pleading with the canines to spare the boy rather than just tearing into them. The wolf closest to the Game Warden turned its head, jaws flecked with saliva, to see what was making such a clamor behind it. Clackhissis could see that the beast was about to spin around and latch its jaws around Cushing’s throat.
Before she could tell Cushing what to do, the man had launched himself from behind her, drawn his sword, and severed the rear right leg of the dire wolf that had been eying him in one swing. The animal dropped from the unexpected attack with a yelp. The cry of pain drew the attention of its nearby brother, who also turned its head to see the cause of the commotion, and before it knew what was happening, Cushing’s sword of fire cleaved the creature’s muzzle in twain. A spray of blood arced upwards alongside the weapon as it set the wolf’s face ablaze. Fur ignited, and the stench of burning hair filled the air.
“Please, don’t make me hurt you any more than I already have,” Cushing pleaded with the wolves while he mounted a rather impressive offense against them. “I really don’t want to hurt any of you!”
Clackhissis was electrified; with just two strokes, the man had crippled two enemies in as many seconds. She didn’t understand why he wanted to parlay with them but pushed that question away as he entered the truly deadly part of the contest he’d just unwittingly enrolled himself into. The real test was upon him as the other five wolves turned their complete and now utterly undivided attention to him. Cushing, unperturbed by the focus shifting his way, twirled his sword in his hand so the blade pointed behind him. He then began twirling the sword in a figure-eight arc so that it went from left to right and then back again over and over until it looked like he was shielded by a wall of fire.
The wolves backed away slowly, accompanied by whines and whimpers, moving further and further back until a rock the size of a man’s fist flew into the side of one of the slower-moving wolves. The action caused them to startle and then bolt back into the distance. As they fled, howls rang out in the air, leaving the trio alone. Tes stepped forward with a sling dangling from her hand and a smile on her face.
Cushing backed away from the two wolves that were still alive and writhing in pain on the ground. He put his sword away and yelled up into the tree.
“Whoever you are, don’t come down yet. We have still more wolves to deal with.”
“As you say,” came the reply. Cushing turned to the spider with a grim look on his face. It was obvious he was going to ask something of her, and there was no question that she would not like the request.
“Clackhissis, can you knock these creatures out with your venom? Stun them or something? I don’t want them suffering any longer than needs be.”
“I can do better than that,” she replied, thankful that he hadn’t asked her for something foolish, “I could just drain them to death, but then you will not get any experience for your work, and you need to level as quickly as possible.”
“I don’t want to kill them. Please, do your thing so they’ll be asleep for a few hours.”
In spite of her every instinct screaming that she was going against nature itself, she complied. The first wolf, the one with its leg severed, squirmed on the ground. It snapped its jaws reflexively at whatever came near it, but Clackhissis just used her leg to pin it to the ground and then injected it with just her venom. She held it in place for a three-count before it finally stopped moving. As she moved over the one that was struggling to breathe, Cushing went to the first animal. She repeated the process, and the second wolf drifted into a dreamless state.
She turned to see the Game Warden holding the forcibly amputated limb back in place as his hands began to glow. She wondered what he was doing before realizing he was healing the dire wolf! Satisfied that the limb had been reattached, he stood and walked over to the one whose face he’d split in half. Once more, he bent over and laid his hands on the monster, and she watched as the wolf’s face stitched itself back together. When he was done, the canine bore a wicked scar but would live to fight and bite another day.
“What did you do?” Clackhissis had even realized that the words had come from her mouth and had looked over at the kobold before it hit her that she had been the one to say them.
“I am a Game Warden of Kaali, the god of monsters,” he emphasized, “And I swore never to slay a monster unless my life was in danger. A game warden’s job is to protect his charges.” He stood up from the slumbering giant’s body and pointed a finger, “You are a hunter. I get it. These guys look like easy prey, but they were looking for a meal the same way you do. You go head to head with them, then you get to eat them, but I … I don't kill monsters unless I absolutely have to.” Then, he cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted back at the tree, “OK, you can come down now.”
There was a flurry of activity as limbs snapped and small branches fell to the ground. A few grunts and groans later, a brutish humanoid dropped to the ground. Despite his massive size, the boy was just a kid, was red, a deep devil red, his hair toned a stygian-hued black, and he bore the faintest trace of a beginner’s mustache on his upper lip. He was a teen, but he also was built like a battleship. He was nothing but big guns and had a chest that looked large enough to have a life-sized tattoo of an anchor etched into it. His mitts were massive things that would make a full-grown grizzly’s paws look like they belonged to a chihuahua. His muscles had developed muscles of their own, Cushing muttered to her in spider-speak, relaying his thoughts upon seeing him.
All Clackhissis thought was, Ah, a young Ogre male. He hadn’t been as impressive to her as he had to Cushing. Honestly, the human tended to exaggerate things to such a degree that she tended to take all of his thoughts with a drop of blood.
The youth stepped forward and bowed to Cushing, then her, and finally to Tes, who had somehow managed to find herself behind the spider. He was dressed in light garb. He wore no armor, nor did he carry a weapon of any kind. She noted that he didn’t even have a pack for clothing or even a bedroll. His clothes were threadbare, and the boots that came up to his knees were worn nearly flat at the heels. He was ragged, his clothing ripped and torn, and he looked exhausted. Clackhissis could not help but wonder how delicious he might taste. She was willing to bet that he would be most filling and would probably last her for no less than two or three feedings. She regretted not forcing the manling to kill all of the wolves because she would have loved to have put this young Ogre into a storage web. Her stomach rumbled at the thought, and all three of them, her companions and the Ogre, turned their eyes to her.
Tes ran over to the Game Warden, and the Ogre looked back up into the tree, glanced at her, and shook his head. Climbing the tree might have worked with wolves, but it wouldn’t even slow her down.
“My name is Hyde,” he said in a deep, acromegaly-toned voice, “And I am most appreciative of your help.”
^
The bugs were brutal. Au Puch had never been bitten by such a variety of insects in his life. He had battled mosquitos, fleas, sandflies, and sweat bees back on Earth, but the bugs in this land put them all to shame. He was covered in itchy bumps and welts, and the more he sweated, the more they came for him. He wasn’t overly concerned; each bite showed up as a temporary status ailment that barely amounted to anything more than an annoyance, but that didn’t make him hate it any less. He told himself that they were mere annoyances, but the truth was that he was itching more than he had in his whole life and in areas that he’d never had to worry about. Worse yet, he was bleeding from more locations on his body from nothing more than simple insect attacks than he had in any of his battles since arriving in Ravenkist.
Gnats swarmed around him, obstructing his vision. That was a status ailment. He’d received the Vision Impaired by five percent Debuff since the pests had first found him, and they showed no indication that they were going to leave soon. Fleas had infested himself and each of his men when they had trodden through some exceptionally high grass, and they could only be removed, so his HUD informed him by washing. They had yet to find a river, stream, lake, or pond to perform that action in.
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They also provided the distraction status ailment. Au Puch had to hand it to the Devs, who knew fleas only itched in cartoons. In real life, they caused small localized bites that were painful enough to be noticed and possibly divert your attention from something important. Thus, he and his men also carried the Distraction status ailment of five percent. It wasn’t much, but with all the minor status ailments stacking and not alleviating over time due to the constant barrage of insects, there was a fifteen percent chance that they would overlook a trail or miss the approach of an enemy until it was too late.
He took a deep breath and inhaled several of the gnats by accident. They flew right up his nose and lodged there. He could not get them out by forcibly breathing out his nose, so he had to press a finger to the opposite nostril and blow them out with his mucous. Au Puch was disgusted. He hated insects, bugs, and arachnids. Killing a spider was not a bother, but dealing with these incessantly never-ending thousand paper cuts the bugs were producing was driving him beyond a state of insanity. He would rather face one giant beast than a thousand infinitesimal ones like he did. His men were miserable, and there was no place for them to break. Stopping now would not assuage the problem, and it would only escalate it.
He considered lighting the fields and forest on fire. The flames and smoke would drive off the insects, but it wouldn’t help him in the long run. All he would do was alert his quarry that they were coming. He was just irritated and wanted to kill something. Killing always calmed him.
His hand reflexively flew to the back of his neck the second that he felt the bite happening, and he drew it back to see it covered with his blood. His blood. He had killed the mosquito, but not before it drained what looked like a pint of sweet sanguine fluid from his neck. He was exaggerating, of course, but that was how it felt. The little vampires were picking him apart piece by piece, and there wasn’t much he could do about it.
He turned his thoughts towards his quarry. He and his men were undoubtedly following their trail, but his scouts could only find the barest traces of the human and the kobold. He sincerely doubted they could ever track the spider on her own. She went places the scouts couldn’t and was wise enough not to blaze a trail they would notice. In this instance, he saw her power as a predator. You would never see her coming or know where she had gone when the attack ended. It was the other two that astounded him. Once more, Cushing was proving to be a formidable outdoorsman. He had expected the kobold to be hard to track; she lived to hide and keep her presence unknown from others, but the Game Warden was keeping pace with an expert in the art of not being found.
Thus far, all they had managed to find was a heel print from his boot here and there. The kobold left small tufts of fur, but they were minimal, and if his people weren’t so skilled and had been actively seeking such things, they would never have found them. His only succor came when he thought of Cushing having to endure the same gauntlet of insects he was running. One way or another, they would meet, and he would repay the spider for leading him into such an apocalyptic insect-filled nightmare land. He would nick the man with shallow wounds and bleed him one drop at a time as he was bleeding now. He would make sure they all suffered for the indignities he endured this day. They would all agonize under his supervision, first Cushing and then the Spider. He would have his men deal with the kobold; she was less than nothing to one such as him. She was beneath his notice. Kobolds were the least dangerous creatures he could think of in the field of monsters.
^
Hyde wore little more than tatters. Clackhissis did not understand the concept of clothing unless it was armor, and she at least understood the martial importance of wearing that kind of protection. Even she, however, was astute enough in the ways of the bipeds to realize that the boy who had just fallen from the tree was covered in what could barely be called rags.
He was bruised and swathed in various cuts, scrapes, and abrasions to the point that his blood scent called out to her hunter’s heart. It was no wonder he had attracted the wolves as beaten and bloody as he was. He might as well have climbed up on a ridge and rang what Cushing referred to as a dinner bell. She could see that he had a large gash across his chest that ran from his left shoulder to his right hip. It was just shallow enough not to be life-threatening but deep enough to bleed endless gouts of blood and fill him with pain with each and every motion that he made. His face, too, was a collage of cuts and welts. His lantern-like jaw, so square and powerful, looked like macerated flesh that had fallen from her mandibles. Despite his broad shoulders and massive arms, he appeared to be as weak as Tes on her best day. Sometimes, worn muscles didn’t have the strength they implied, no matter how big.
The Ogre boy was dehydrated, and the spider doubted that he had eaten anything of substance for some time. Clackhissis instinctively knew that this boy, for that was indeed what he was, was not like Cushing. He was no Gamer. That told her that he was in serious trouble. No one entered an area like this alone without gear unless they were running from something. Whatever it was that was after him wasn’t the wolves. No, they were incidental predators, simple opportunists that came across his path by chance. He was being followed by something far bigger and more dangerous than a pack of hungry curs.
Naturally, Cushing was already at the boy’s side and offering him a hand up. Once more, that human had managed to confuse her. He had attacked the dire wolves without hesitation but had not tried to kill them. He had been more focused on getting to the unknown victim than he was accruing experience. She couldn’t let this pass, but at the same time, she did not want to scold him in front of the child. He did not need embarrassment in addition to her admonishment. She decided that she would wait to say something. Now that the young Ogre had introduced himself, she had to decide what she wanted to do about him.
“I am most appreciative of your help,” the ogre teen said with a throat that sounded sore from screaming and lack of fluids. She could see he was unsteady on his feet and about to fall over where he stood. Neither Cushing nor Tes could hold his weight, so she took a few steps forward and placed her two front legs under his arms. Clackhissis did not do this from the kindness of her heart; she knew that her companions would not be able to get the youngling back on his feet.
The boy’s eyes widened as he was expecting something in the vein of an attack, but the moment he saw that she was keeping him from face-planting himself, he gave up on struggling. She leaned towards Cushing enough for him to recognize that she was speaking to him.
“Give him some water, but only a small amount. Too much will make him sick.”
The Game Warden nodded and reached into his pack for his canteen. She noted that he rarely used his inventory and briefly wondered why that was. Cushing barely acted like a Gamer. A real Gamer would have killed the wolves and thought nothing of it. A typical Gamer would have used their inventory rather than carrying items on their person. She watched as he offered the vessel to the young Ogre and chirted when he only swallowed a mouthful of the liquid. Only then did she realize that she had spoken to Cushing in her language. The boy was not stupid and knew his limitations. His ogrish-sized paw returned the canteen to Cushing and rose to wipe the sweat from his knitted brow. The boy looked exhausted and as loathe as she was to do so, Clackhissis called camp. She knew that Cushing, with his bleeding heart, would insist on stopping to help the boy. A wise predator picks her battles carefully.
“Tes,” she commanded, “stay with the boy.” Whom she then gently lowered to sit beneath the tree; he plopped onto his rump and leaned back to catch his breath. “Cushing, come with me.” He nodded silently, threw a side-eye at the Ogre, and followed without question. When they were one hundred yards from the site of the attack, he stepped in front of her and held up a hand.
“I know what you’re going to say, but I’m not going to apologize.” His face was firm and implacable. He was resolute in his belief that he had done nothing wrong.
“Why didn’t you kill the wolves? You need the experience. Badly,” Clackhissis emphasized. She kept herself calm and was not accusatory. It was a struggle to maintain civility, but she knew she could not berate the human without him resenting her. They needed to bond. It was such a struggle to keep her composure. She was not the one who should have been responsible for building a team. Spiders weren’t known for their familial ties. Technically, it should have fallen to Cushing to give the team meaning, but she was the leader, so she had to sow seeds of contentment despite her nature.
He sighed and winced as he turned his face skyward. The man held his breath for a ten beat and then exhaled. He was having difficulty expressing himself. As she had become wont to do at times like these, she waved her pedipalps in a “go on” motion, and he followed her lead.
“I know this is difficult, hell, it’s probably impossible for you to understand, but I didn’t come here to kill monsters. Just the opposite, in fact. I’m not just a Game Warden,” he paused and looked up to the left, “Well, technically, I am at the moment, but I want to become something more. There is a path that I can follow that will open up other avenues for me, and I can’t get there just by killing monsters.” He waved his hand outward in an expansive gesture, “This world is not the kill-or-be-killed place you think it is. I get how you see things. I really do, but I have more than two options. I can also live and let live. I can heal and help.” He placed his hand on his sword and gripped the hilt tightly.
“This sword was only my first step into my true class. I had to earn it to prove I was worthy to start a path no other gamer has followed. Dragon’s Breath is so much more than that, but it was only a stepping stone towards something bigger.”
“Dragon’s Breath? That is your sword’s name?” The spider had not heard him refer to his sword by that title before and wondered why bipeds felt the need to name their weapons.
“Erm,” he said with a shrug, “I guess so. I hadn’t considered naming it until now, and that just sort of blurted out of me.”
“Blurted out?” Clackhissis had no idea of what he’d meant with that phrase.
“Sort of like verbal vomit. You don’t know it’s coming until it shoots out of your mouth.”
Clackhissis bobbed up and down in understanding. “Ah, we larger spiders do not vomit. We inject our prey with our venom and then drain the juices via our fangs. Sometimes, we chew up parts of the desiccated corpses before discarding them. Still, my smaller, less intelligent cousins will vomit stomach acid over their prey and use their chelicera to feed.” She paused, deep in thought, and said, “You seem to blurt quite often. Is it a medical condition of your people or just you?”
Cushing grew pale at her comparison of eating habits between spiders, so she decided not to go into further detail. She could always provide more minutiae about how spiders feed later. For now, though, she wanted to hear what he had to say.
“Yeah, not so much, although my mother would tell you that I suffer from verbal diarrhea, a type of contagious Tourette’s Syndrome,” he said slowly, pausing only when he realized what he’d just said to the spider, “I’m fine medically, and that stuff about how you eat is never leaving my head. So thanks for that.” He wiped the sweat from his brow that wasn’t there and continued his conversation, “Anyway, I do get experience from doing what I do. I got notifications that I had received three hundred experience points each time I healed one of those wolves. I got five hundred points for settling things without a death and two hundred for chasing them off.”
“You mean,” she clicked, “That you get no experience from killing monsters?” He could hear the confusion in her voice.
“No,” he shook his head. “I do get experience if I am defending myself or others I am grouped with, but I get more for not killing.” He removed his helm, put it under his arm, and wiped the sweat from his brow. “I was terrified when I rushed ahead of you, but it is something I had to do. Every time I prove that I care about a non-gamer or the races they can belong to, I get one step closer to unlocking my true potential. It’s a lot like tumblers in a lock. I have to move so many of them before a door opens and I unlock my true class. All I know is that I’ll possibly become something called a Vindicator. Might be something else,” he shrugged’ “Who knows?”
“Vindicator? That sounds like it is affiliated with the Adventurer’s Guild. The one that kills creatures like Tes and me.”
“Adventurer’s Guild? No, no, no,” he waved his hands back and forth in a stop-now motion. “This is way older than that crew of Bozos. From what I can tell, there hasn’t been a Vindicator for a long time, and if I don’t get my crap together, it will be a hell of a lot longer before another one makes an appearance.”
“What does a Vindicator do?” Clackhissis’s tone was suspicious and highly dubious.
“As a Vindicator, I would defend monster rights and prove that they can be just as good or bad as the humanoid races like Nyteguants, dwarves, elves, and Ents.” Clackhissis bobbed up and down approvingly. “I am to redeem monsters so they are as accepted as every other race in Ravankist. Dark Elves aren’t considered monsters but are far more evil than goblins.”
Mollified, Clackhissis considered his words. He was still a hatchling, but he had great potential, even more than she had suspected, and now she felt obligated to help him succeed on his quest; he could complete his mission while working on the group’s goals. It never hurt having a purpose, and she could see that he was sincere in his beliefs and desires to aid the “monsters” of this world. She also felt that he needed a little encouragement for his actions. Mammals often coddled their children with hugs and kind words. She believed that he was more of a child than a man and would need kind words to bolster his heart.
“Cushing, you fought well regardless of why you did what you did. You saved that boy and proved to me, once more, that you are a skilled warrior.” He winced when she said that. He might consider himself to be a competent fighter, but in no way did he think he deserved to be called skilled. In spite of his misgivings, he could not bring himself to tell the spider the truth; he basically bumbled his way through fights.
He hadn’t meant to dismember limbs or snouts. He had been trying to deliver a flesh wound to each animal as a warning. He really did not want to hurt such creatures, so why would he sever limbs? As a spider, she would never see that. In her eyes, it was okay to severely injure a foe so they couldn’t hurt you later if you weren’t going to kill them. He supposed that when it came to spider logic, maiming was all well and good.
“Look, Clackhissis, that was the first time since I met you that I acted on instinct and did what I felt was right. From the moment we met up until ten minutes ago, I have been treading on quicksand around you. I feel like I am never meeting your standards and that I am not good enough to be a part of this team, but after our fight in the dungeon, I realized what I was doing and vowed to stop it there and then.” He put his helm on his head and made a determined face, “My magic may not be martial in nature at the moment,” he stressed, “But soon, I will expand my capabilities and become an asset to our squad.”
Stunned, Clackhissis placed her right foreleg on his shoulder as she had seen manlings do when they comforted one another. She realized that she had made him feel inadequate and incapable, and in doing so, he felt that he had become just that. Her lack of respect for the bipedal races had tainted her vision. She could not conceive of a Wild human or Ogre being as good as a spider before now, but her companions had proven that they were more than what they seemed, even little Tes. She wondered, had the kobold picked up on her latent hostility? Probably. That would explain why she still looked like she thought that Clackhissis would eat her at any moment. She would have to remedy that as well.
“You are, and have been, a boon to our cause, Cushing,” she chittered softly. “I clearly haven’t been the leader you’ve needed up to this point. What say you? Shall we begin anew? We are all in this together,” she chirped but firmly added, “But I am still the leader.”
Cushing laughed. It was a vibrant, roughly lyrical sound that filled the area, and for the first time, she did not worry that he might attract beasts; instead, she joined him and so became the first spider in Ravenkist to laugh with joy and not malice, and she liked the feeling. They made a jubilant noise for several minutes and then paused to catch their breath. When they had finished, they headed back to the tree, where Tes waited patiently.
“Well, Charlotte, what do you think we should do with the boy?”
“I have not had a meal of any substance in several days. He would make a fine repast for me,” she hissed coldly.
Cushing stopped in his tracks and stared at her. His mouth struggled to form words, but his tongue could not seem to be able to do more than swell up like it had been stung. His eyes flicked from the distant Ogre back to her more than a dozen times in a handful of moments.
She could not hold it in any longer and chirped a spidery bellow that had never been heard before. The legs on the left side of her body curled up beneath her, and she fell to the ground with a chortling chitter.
“Are you serious?” the Game Warden asked. “Did you just make a joke?”
“Come along, Wilbert,” she said as she got up, her long legs quickly leaving the dumbfounded healer behind. His voice was thick and deep, tinged with some hurt that she had just gotten him, as he retorted in a hushed tone, “It’s Wilbur, not Wilbert, and I’m not a pig!”
She continued as if she hadn’t heard him, but she did not get too far ahead of him as there were still things in the area that could strike before he could move. She did not need to let him know that, though. Then she heard him one final time.
“Y’know,” he said as snarkily as possible, “The only thing I like about traveling with you is that there are never any bugs around!” She couldn’t help but let out one tiny chirp of laughter at that but made sure that her body gave no indication of her laughter.