“We’re taking a loss, the Soul Gems would be worth a ton more,” I spat back to him. “Plus we’ve still got to feed the Vulture Commander, and it’ll want a second Spider, too!”
Red muttered a number about ‘Commander-class Soul Remnants’, and the Mick turned green and began to curse under his breath. Another number was associated with ‘Warrior-class Soul Remnants’, and I think he started to turn purple.
Everyone looked at the thousands of dead Spiders behind us as I skimmed away, and swore quietly.
“Cheer up,” I told them quietly, flicking up my Darts. “A few hundred more, and the Vulture’s flock will be all paid up. Then we can start burning them down, while I pick off the Commanders we need to pay. I’m seeing nine Commanders, so that leaves potentially five for us... enough for a single seven-set, with the two I killed earlier.
The thought of a Tier Six set of Stars made them sit up attentively, despite themselves. “That means we have to get to them before they get killed,” Driver Sam pointed out.
“What are we waiting around for, then?” the Mick called out urgently. “Let’s get the Beasts their meal and head for the bastards!”
The Disks stayed in formation as we lined up and headed for the rest of the Swarm under eager Wind Trail propulsion!
------
The defensive wall over there was pounding away, bright lights of Conjoined spells sweeping away the weaker Spiders, while other areas were overwhelmed as the Spiders breached the walls, only to be shot down by forces on the other side. It was pretty plain that these men had been drilled in how to fight the Spiders, as they retreated in good order or they didn’t retreat at all, screaming as they were overwhelmed by the Swarm.
They also attracted the Swarm’s attention, so a good chunk of it was drawn here to try to overcome the Human spellcasters within the place, which was the whole point.
The Spiders really weren’t expecting to deal with an attack force coming in behind them, especially the Commanders, and especially not one that could strike them down from a thousand feet away. I cut our path through the Spiders in reserve, while the Commander there had a couple thousand turn and come at us. Their bristle barrage was pretty intense, but this time it was the Vultures who came down, sending out windblades and vortexes to mess up the Spiders’ numbers, and Chained Dartrays were disposing of twoscore and more of them at a time.
In minutes I was in range of the second Commander, who was weaving a massive Web of force that was taking and diluting the ranged attacks of the Vultures, breaking apart the congealed air of the windblades while allowing the piercing bristles to still go forth. It didn’t like it much when the Shardrays slammed into it and blew off half its legs instantly, boiling and freezing it from within.
Coordination of the Spiders dropped precipitously, and the ethereal Webbing barrier naturally collapsed. As Spiders were blown in all directions and cut apart, I finished slicing apart its personal guard as the Vulture descended, tearing open the abdomen of the Commander Tarantula to start its own feast.
“I’m going to start burning these bastards down now, alright?” I called out to the Vulture, but like I thought, it had definitely heard the Bat and wasn’t going to be satisfied with getting anything less than another big one for itself. I rolled my eyes at the guys, who just sighed, but they grinned nonetheless as the misting unwhite fire finally popped up around my Darts.
I waited as the Vultures dropped down the dozens of Warrior-heads on us, although the men’s enthusiasm had waned. They’d be lucky to get a hundredth of the value of the Soul Eggs they might have recovered off those Warriors, and they were going to need a lot of them!
“Let’s go,” I said shortly. Now girt with four kinds of flame, my Dartrays began to speed out, and a new kind of harvest erupted in the back of the Spider Swarm.
Overkill was the key here, as that burned down the corpses faster and got us our Soul Crystals. Thus, I stuck with the Rays instead of Chaining the Darts themselves, the little bit of extra edge worth it for the time it saved us. Hit by a Ray, a Servant would burn down in a minute or less, while a Dart might take five minutes or more to do the job, or perhaps have to shoot something twice. It wasn’t worth the delay, as we had to keep moving to keep our harvest going.
Happily, the other Commander Spiders did notice us and sent more Spiders our way, enabling us to build up a heaping field of Tarantulas burning down into white ash, which also relieved some of the pressure on the defenders in the fort.
I saw exactly one full Mage tossing stuff inside there, a massive area Fire spell Red called a Skyflame Funeral. It polished off a couple acres of Spiders inside the fort all at one time, giving the soldiers there some relief and breathing room. The Commanders getting closer to the walls and preparing to rip them down hesitated on seeing the display, as such spells could harm them, unlike most of the fusillades being laid down by the defenders, and especially so while the Ward was weakening them.
“Colonel Harrison,” the Mick grunted on seeing the green-tinged flames. “See the splash area? He’s got a Verdant Fire Seed, increases the splash and persistence of his flames in the area they hit. Anything coming into the area of his flames for several minutes is gonna prompt an eruption of the fire slumbering in the ash.”
I watched a few Spiders scuttle into the smoking area, and promptly shoots of green-tinged flame shot out of the ground like little geysers, burning right through the Servants and charring the Warriors badly. It was effectively a wall laying flat on the ground, a killing zone the Spiders could only cross by covering it in bodies.
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“Impressive,” I acknowledged, sliding in and out as Spiders came at us in waves, circling the back of the Swarm towards the next Commander and generating swathes of dead Spiders. None of the dead got out of range of my TK before they burned down, and glittering Crystals were constantly flowing into my Pocket as the Spiders burned away.
The areas of ethermist from the dead Spiders wasn’t dangerous to the living ones, but the creeping, heavy strands of fog off the carcasses still unsettled the arachnids, and they tended to avoid the areas unless ordered into it. Waves of Spiders would come at us; I’d kite backwards and kill them, then advance into the killzone, reaching out to kill more of them and get in range of their bodies as they fell apart and the Soul Crystals condensed inside them.
------
It was about fifteen or twenty minutes of this later, turning a whole swathe of the landscape white with over a thousand dead Spiders, that I heard a screech up above, and the Commander Bat, his belly looking a little distended, shrieked at me from up above.
“The glutton is back,” I muttered to the others, who sighed as my Darts lost their whiteness. “Okay, this will be quick.” I pulled out a full flight of Shards as I charged ahead, juiced them nicely, and since the Spiders weren’t going to burn down, Chained the lot of them.
Hundreds of streaking shafts of light connected a whole bunch of Spiders in our way as I charged us ahead, opening up a path through the Swarm in a heartbeat. The Commander saw us coming and a barrage of bristle-spikes rose to greet us, but hurricane-force Winds in front of us threw it all aside.
Unaffected by the Winds, the bristle-missiles, or the Web the Commander Spider was weaving, my Shardray drove out and speared its thorax, multi-hued fires blazed through the center of its body, and five of its legs blew right off it as it fell heavily, while convulsing Warriors tumbled every which way from the Chains coming off it.
I could see that the other Bats were much too full to come and scavenge, so I expeditiously re-blasted all the dead Warriors and set them on vivus. The Commander Bat’s descent and wings blew the Spiders away from the dead Commander, so there was no chance of the vivus setting it on fire, and I zipped around the Commander, chopping the head in two, extracting the eyes, mandibles, and leg-tips, all the while shooting down the Spiders who couldn’t muster themselves enough to charge the Commander Bat and its suppressive Aura.
It would scream at them and pop them like jelly donuts if they tried, so, not a dumb play. However, the vestigial commands to attack everything caught them and paralyzed them, which meant they made sitting ducks for me as I slowly cruised around the feasting Bat, which was scooping Spider goo into its fanged maw with obvious relish.
Spiders burned down with supernatural speed around us, Soul Crystals zipped over and were deposited, and I headed for the next Commander, knowing the Vulture would be flapping over for its second helping.
------
“That one’s a Great Commander,” I told the men, watching as the last of the big Spiders pulled the Swarm away from the fort, and instead hurtled down the road towards the inner areas of Human territory.
The fastest of the Human troops were racing after it, but only the Adepts could possibly keep the pace, the rest rapidly falling behind in exhaustion.
I was single-shotting now, the Spiders exploding into white dust, fetching the Soul Crystal from each one in mid-air. Small squads of Earth and Wind Mages were combining efforts to bring their few Fire-Casters and even fewer Lightning-Casters along to do their things, while the Light and Ice Casters just stayed behind on defense.
I was doing more work than all of the local troops put together, but that was nothing new. Watching me explode Spiders bigger than cattle into white dust with loud and showy woompfs was definitely getting their attention, however.
A stocky, dark-skinned fellow in olive combat fatigues rode an Earth Wave over to us, clearly moving far faster and more easily than the others. He had an officer’s leaves on his collar as he came up quickly alongside our Disk Train, noted the mounds of Spider heads still atop the Disks, and tried to disguise how impressed he was as he rode in closer. “Captain Mick!” he called out in wary greeting, scanning the party and finding no one missing, he settled on the newest and very out-of-place addition. “We thought you were dead!”
I noted his Brown to Red-Purple Aura and frowned slightly, keeping with my task as I listened in.
The Mick’s reply was sardonic at the forced concern in the other’s voice. “That bunch you sent out stirred up the Swarm, Colonel, and we ran straight into it. They trashed our truck and we were basically running for our lives when the young lady here popped up and pulled our asses out of the fire. Colonel Harrison, meet Lady Fae. Lady Fae, Colonel Harrison of the United States Army.”
“Colonel,” I replied absently, blasting a Warrior to powder. They died a bit more slowly than the Servants, you could actually watch them crumbling down from back to front as the multi-hued flames blew through them, so I had to shoot them a bit further away and harvest their Crystal Egg as we passed them by.
I shifted to the side abruptly. Red had completely ignored everything else going on, his eyes on the mass of the big guy ahead. His hand rose, as did Glenn’s, howling Winds buttressing the angled wall of Light in the air.
The Colonel swore and threw up his hand to make an Earthen shield as the meter-long bristles from the Commander Tarantula came hurtling in. Diverted by the Wind, they bounced off the Light Shield at an angle, still shattering it with their impacts, while the shocked Colonel found himself looking down three of the metallic spikes, one gleaming less than six inches from his nose!
“Pay attention!” I scolded him in a clipped voice. “This isn’t a social event!”
The Colonel’s mouth worked for a moment as a gesture from him sent his shield wall of hardened sand off to the side. He didn’t notice that I snatched up all of those longer bristle-spikes, sliding them under the Disks and into my Pocket in a very large stack gained from pulling scores of the things off every dead Commander in turn. I was sure I could find a use for them.
The bristles were harder than steel and very sharp. They were also launched with enough force to punch right through Glenn’s Light shield if they hit it square on.
“You’re the one who took out the Commanders?” the Colonel asked with hesitant respect, especially given I hadn’t let up on any of my killing.
“Is there a problem with that, Colonel?” I asked tersely. “If you want to schedule a fact-finding mission, do it after the fighting is over!”
My irritation with his bad timing of questions finally dawned on him. “Apologies, miss, I just needed to confirm this was indeed the Mick’s Hunter Team.”
“We never laid eyes on your team, their last base, or any of their equipment, Colonel,” the Mick said laconically, his eyes also not on the officer, picking up something from how I had instantly become irritated with the man. “You wanna take a ride out there, you can tell exactly how far we got when you find our ride chopped apart a couple miles into the hills.”