As their eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness, the faint glimmer that Eany had mentioned appeared to all up ahead. It was not a natural, warm glow like sunlight or fire, but pale and colorless, gleaming dully off of grey stone. It was barely enough to cut through the dark and certainly not enough to see by, but Kwanai moved confidently through the motionless group without misjudging a step. His glowing eyes appeared briefly as he turned around, then blinked out.
His voice broke the silence, whispering eerily in the blackness. A moment later, a faint glow – like that of his eyes but larger – appeared in his outstretched hand. It flickered and took a shape like fire, but there was no source or heat and it seemed not to reflect like normal light. The baleful yellow-green glow illuminated Kwanai's sharp features and the rocks directly around him, but there was no ambiance to it, no spreading light beyond where it first fell.
“Quietly,” he warned, and took the lead.
The dull light up ahead seeped into the tunnel from what appeared to be a natural cavern. Kwanai stopped at the end of the tunnel to wait for them, muffling his light between his hands like a caught moth.
“The hunter has good instincts,” he said as they came up beside him, no hint of his usual reluctance tainting the compliment. Before them, below them, and above them stretched a huge cave full of rocks and deep fissures, a forest of stalagmites and stalactites decorating ceiling and floor. The light came from occasional glowing threads stretched between rocks, gleaming with an unnatural pale light.
Their tunnel ended almost halfway up the cave wall, and was only one of many openings where similar tunnels spilled out into the massive cavern. At first, there didn't appear to be any movement, but as their eyes adjusted to the new light, Eany saw something crawling out of one of those other tunnels, vanishing down the side of the wall. Metcenzerin spotted a dark shadow passing along the silver threads, slowly and silently. He shivered.
“Giant spiders?” Eany suggested finally aloud, though very quietly. Daerth, who had been hanging back well behind the others the whole time, sighed and slid down to sit against the tunnel wall.
“My head hurts...”
“They appear in legend, old house-wife stories,” Metcenzerin reported gravely. “It would make sense...”
“No,” insisted Daerth, shaking his head even as he winced at the pain. “Spiders are small. They live in holes, not in giant caves with magical glowing spider webs.”
“It could be anything, really. This is Teru we're talking about; he could have created altogether unique monsters just for us to face.”
“Spider.”
The Stitchdoctor's voice was matter-of-fact and steady, eased by the whispering, but Daerth was the only one who'd heard his quietest voice. Metcenzerin jumped. He whirled around, thinking someone had come up behind them, and as he turned the end of his lute hit the wall.
The musical thrum echoed. They all froze except the Stitchdoctor, who calmly pointed past them all to a small spider hanging down, silhouetted against the tunnel opening.
The movement below, already barely visible, stopped altogether. Too late, Metcenzerin raised his hand to still his vibrating lute strings, and dead silence crept back over them.
Eany moved first, reaching out to crush the tiny spider between her fingers. “We are going to have to go down there,” she whispered, valiantly pretending nothing had happened. “How?”
“Rope?”
“Very clever, Metcenzerin. Now how are we going to get our injured companion down there with a rope?”
“You don't have to be snappy. It is a perfectly acceptable suggestion.”
“Stop talking. Anyone else have any thoughts?”
“Can't climb. Rip open wound... fall.”
“Leave the hunter here and come back if time and opportunity permits.”
“Go back? Whatever lives down there, I don't want to meet it on a good day, much less when my head feels like it wants to fall off...”
“There is no point in turning back, Daerth. This is where Teru is pointing, and we have to follow it through to the end. I'm not going to leave anyone behind in a pplace like this either – what is wrong with you? – so we are just going to have to tie some ropes together, make some kind of--”
Kwanai made the sharp hissing sound he only made when startled and pulled back away from the tunnel opening, and barely a heartbeat later a long, black leg curled down from the top edge right over Eany's head. She didn't wait for any more of whatever it was to appear, but hastily pushed Metcenzerin out of her way and swung her greatsword in a wide, powerful arc. The leg fell, severed, to the cave floor far below and the creature to whom it had belonged screeched shrilly in anger and pain.
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“I don't have room!” exclaimed Eany, but their chance to choose their battleground was gone. More legs appeared, clung to the walls and ceiling, and a huge, hairless spider scurried over the upper lip of the opening and into their tunnel.
No.
Metcenzerin's next move was pure reaction; he didn't realize he'd moved until the knife was leaving his fingers. It struck the nearest cluster of glittering black eyes before he had even finished thinking how very much he hated everything about the situation.
The giant spider jittered horribly, then Eany thrust her sword straight up into the monster's chitinous black body. When it fell, legs all curling in on itself, the group jumped away to hug the walls or get out of the way. Eany, weighed down by her armor, was just slightly too slow, too close to the edge of the tunnel. The momentum of the spider threw her off balance and her foot slipped over the edge.
Metcenzerin lunged at her, grabbing her flailing hand as she tried to latch onto anything she could use to catch her fall. Her weight, and the weight of her armor, knocked him off his feet, too, but he didn't go over with her.
He squeaked in pain, her tight metal grip crushing his fingers, then her free hand grabbed the ledge and slightly lessened the weight on him. She began to pull herself up.
Beneath her, the nest had awoken.
It was almost impossible to see anything in the deep cervices and rock-shadowed darkness at the bottom of the cavern, but they could see movement. A glint of a reflection vanishing, a shadow momentarily blocking out the light. They were on the walls, too. Even more obvious, the movement created sound. The chit-clic tapping of hard legs echoing off of stone could be heard clearly, and for only a handful of moving shadows, there were hundreds of echoes.
Then, Kwanai released his marsh-light. He tossed it past Metcenzerin into the open cavern, and with a shouted phrase he slammed his staff down onto the ground. The flash was blinding, and even after it was gone it left the afterimage of crawling, vine-y tendrils burned into the watchers' eyes.
“Three on the walls,” gasped Eany as she hauled herself over the edge, and then the enemies were upon them.
Metcenzerin grabbed his second knife and the dagger he had still never returned to Kwanai, one in each hand, as multiple creeping spiders crawled over the edges of their tunnel. It is times like these that I wish I carried a very large hammer.
There was barely room to move. Eany didn't even try to rise, but grabbed one of the spiders and dragged it down to her level for a severe hand-to-mandible pummeling. Kwanai lashed out with his staff, but without enough room he kept accidentally hitting the low ceiling. The Stitchdoctor darted in beneath the plaguemancer's arm, suddenly armed with a nasty-looking saw-edged knife, and hacked at the nearest spider with an enthusiasm rivaling Eany's. For all Metcenzerin's mental bemoaning at the necessity to get close up and personal with the shiny, black monsters, he and the Stitchdoctor had the best flexibility in the narrow, cramped space because of their tiny weapons.
Eany rolled over, hurling a smashed spider carcass off over the edge, then promptly shrieked as two more crawled over her to get into the tunnel, the smaller one right across her chestplate. She grabbed it, its mandibles vainly attempting to get a grip on her armor, and chucked it bodily after the last corpse.
The bigger of the two was the biggest spider yet, its long legs barely fitting in the tunnel. It charged over Eany sideways, using the walls as much as the floor, and chittered at them angrily. A familiar sickly green glow seeped from its eyes.
“More behind us.”
Daerth's warning didn't do Metcenzerin any good; he didn't dare take his eyes off the plague-y monster in front of him. The Stitchdoctor wasn't remotely phased by the size of the creature – he just gripped his hack-knife tighter and charged right in, though he was barely taller then the thing.
What has gotten into him? But there wasn't time to hesitate, so Metcenzerin gritted his teeth and followed suit.
Kwanai's chanting resumed, and to Metcenzerin it seemed he was practically spitting syllables, chewing them like shards of glass. Perhaps it was his own vivid imagination's fault, but just listening to it made the musician's teeth hurt, and a taste like blood filled his mouth.
The Stitchdoctor hit the ground hard, pinned beneath the big spider's legs. The knives barely scratched the thick black armor, and more, smaller spiders scurried in along the ceiling. Metcenzerin gave up trying to fight the big one and kept his eyes up, wary of having one of those monsters jump down on his shoulders... but the big one refused to be ignored.
“Guys!”
The big spider began to convulse. The smaller spiders had to rush out of the way to avoid the flailing limbs; the Stitchdoctor barely rolled out from under it before it crushed him; and Eany was forced back towards the edge as it slowly retreated. The sickly glow emitting from it grew more intense and the bitter taste in the humans mouths grew sharp enough to hurt. The spider's shrieks of agony filled the air, then its glowing eyes began to wink out.
Kwanai's magic had reached breaking point.
The spider threw itself backwards in a frenzy of pain, catching Eany where she had no room to avoid it. With a scream and a screech, both went over the edge. Metcenzerin ran to help, but they had already fallen into the darkness. All he could see was a violent glow of marsh magic below as it tore through the black shadow of its victim from below.
“Eany!”
His desperate cry echoed deep into the cavern, but he heard no response. Perhaps she did respond, but over the clamor behind him, screeching skittering spiders and Kwanai's twisted speech and smacking staff, he could hear nothing more then his own pounding heartbeat.
We have to get down there.
He turned, eyes darting to find a rock to anchor a rope to, and realized that Daerth was gone.