Crash and Burn
As the guards of Alteep charged forward, Gregor hung back with his father to survey the initial situation. He noticed Logan and Amar shadowing him, but his attention was on his father, and the battlefield.
The horde mother thankfully remained in the rear after creating the breach, instead allowing her dread spawn to rush the defenders down. So far, the guardsmen were managing to hold against the horde, due to the already injured state of the wolf-sized abominations. Still, the horde was growing before their very eyes as more and more spiderlings hatched and joined the fray. Unless the horde mother was destroyed, their defenses would not hold forever.
“We need a plan to destroy the behemoth.” Grenneth said from next to him.
“I concur, unless it's removed I can’t fathom how we emerge from this.”
“How can we defeat something so large? Getting within range to attack pushes beyond bravery into something more foolish.” Amar queried from Gregor’s left.
It was one of the same problems that Gregor had just been considering. On top of that, he didn’t really think that his sword would be able to inflict meaningful damage on something of that size. A pit slowly started to open up in his stomach. Taking down such a creature felt impossible.
“We use fire.” Logan spoke up, standing slightly apart from the Alteep natives.
“I’m not sure if you realized, Logan, but it did not seem that averse to flame.” Gregor was sure Amar’s slightly incredulous face was a mirror of his own, but that didn’t seem to dissuade Logan in the slightest.
“The chemical fire didn’t seem to take too well to the thicker carapace that beast has, true. But I’m looking at a huge bunch of kindling right now, and I bet once the flames catch, they’ll burn all night.” Logan said while staring intently at the horde mother.
Gregor followed his gaze to the egg sac webbed to the creature's hideous back. A plan had started to form in his head, but he needed to confirm some things first.
“Logan, that spider from earlier… Can you repeat that?”
“Yes, but for something that big I think I’ll need more time. People will have to defend me while we are pretty close to that thing.”
“Then Amar, do you think there's enough grass left to pin one of the horde mother’s legs?”
“Ahhh, just maybe, but we’ll have to be fast, before the flames burn any more.”
“Alright, then here’s what we have to do…”
This time, they would follow Gregor’s plan.
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Grenneth, Gregor’s father, had decided to lead the guards, so it was the same trio as before who would carry out the plan. Now that the enemies had the front door open, they had left their flanks unprotected, so the three of them managed to sneak around the right side of the caustic flames and wrap around the horde mother.
That didn’t mean they were in the clear, as a veritable army of spiderlings was now crawling from their mother’s back. Unlike their older kin, they were still a pale, almost translucent off-white color, only broken up by their beady eyes staring manifold at their foes.
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However, fighting against a number of smaller foes was a problem that Gregor had a solution to. With a slash, and immediate counter swing, Gregor created an air pressure that blasted their opponents away using what Logan would have assumed was a Blessing, if he couldn’t see that Gregor was using no such thing.
“Was that… just physical strength?”
“Yes.”
Holy shit that’s impressive. I wonder what he benches.
Running forward, the rag tag group crashed into the rest of the spiderlings, Logan letting Amar and Gregor do most of the heavy lifting. While they had regrouped, Logan had picked up a sword, but he was most definitely still an amateur, despite his weeks of practice.
Still, between his two partners, they had it covered, crushing or killing multiple enemies with every attack. Logan still wondered why Amar had the Bear Claw, as he didn’t think it was an Ability, but most of the nuances were lost to him, as Jeremiah himself didn’t know many distinctions. Now wasn’t the time to think about such things regardless.
Instead Logan focused on the rapidly approaching horde mother, and more specifically, their target. In order to spray down the egg sac and ignite it, Logan would have to be within 10 feet to be accurate. Therefore, the plan called for them to take one of the eight different skyways leading up to their goal.
As another wave of spiderlings crawled down the appendage through slaloms of long thick bristle hairs, Logan thought they had their work cut out for them.
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Hacking through the horde of spiderlings, the trio finally reached the area directly around the behemoth horde mother. This portion of the plan was Amar’s responsibility as she had to use Root to stabilize the leg while they traversed upwards.
In a massive casting, all of the remaining prairie grass answered her call and corded itself into heavy knots. The cords just seemed to keep growing longer and longer until Logan was sure that it extended well beyond the length of the grass.
“Hurry, the grass won’t hold it forever, I’ve had to overtax it!” Amar shouted over the chaos of the battlefield.
The trio rushed up to the leg, with Gregor taking point. Once they reached the base, they realized there was a slight issue with their plan. Although the leg was large enough to support all three of them, the carapace itself was too slick to climb up. They stood there, momentarily stumped, until Logan had a gross idea.
While slashing through another descending spiderling, Logan reached a foot out experimentally. Instead of stepping directly onto the outer shell, Logan stepped instead on the branch-thick hairs protruding from the oversized appendage. It bent under his weight, but its tensile strength was enough to hold him, and Logan took another step upwards.
“Come on.”
The other two followed Logan up their makeshift steps, ascending while all the while clearing the path of newly hatched threats. Logan considered feeling sorry for the babies, but one and all they had attacked humans on sight, seconds after birth, so it was easily muted.
When they reached the next segment of the leg, Amar lost control of the plant life, and the leg began to move again. Luckily, they had reached a segment that was more level, so all the shaking managed to accomplish was decrease the oncoming spiderling population.
Then they reached the top of the behemoth's back. The egg sac was right in front of them, held in place by the horde mother’s deformed second set of legs. This had gone a lot smoother than Logan had thought it would. He looked over at Gregor and gave a single nod. It had been a good plan, better than Logan could have crafted.
Now came Logan’s turn.
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Standing in a spot between the extra legs of the horde mother to avoid getting squashed, Logan once again turned into a human flamethrower. Spraying his incendiary secretion, Logan lined the side of the egg sac with caustic flames. He dumped as much as he could, but his reserves of the mixture ran low after only a couple seconds.
The three stood there for a couple seconds, not to cherish the dying shrieks of the unhatched spiderlings, but to see if the flames would take hold. After waiting in anticipation, they realized that although they were indeed spreading, it would take far too long.
“We need to rotate around this thing and douse it in more flames. Are you up for more, Logan?”
“Looks like I don’t have a choice. Let’s hurry up before we get cooked too.”
The trio started making their way around the edge of the horde mother’s back, but it was slow going. The bulk of the space was taken by the deformed legs and their precious cargo, leaving the three attackers to skirt the perimeter, and shimmy around tight spots.
The whole time there was no break from the press of spiderlings. If anything, more and more seemed to emerge from their eggs, as they sensed the impending doom of the fire. Unluckily for them, Gregor was there.
His blade was in constant movement, zipping from one target to the next like a hornet ripping through the air. The spiderlings might as well have burned to death, for all their misguided escape attempts worked out. Bisected spideling corpses were so plentiful they had begun to pile up between the bristle-like hairs in stacks, as if the horde mother was using her own offspring as decorations.
Through it all, they managed to wrap around the back of the behemoth abomination, starting fires on the web sac in four other locations. The horde mother had begun to let out a caterwauling wail and seizures ran through its enormous body. From the heat Logan himself was experiencing, he thought it was being cooked alive, with too high an internal body temperature. The job was done, now they just needed to get to safety.
“Alright, what’s the exit plan?” Logan asked.
“I uhhh, may not have gotten that far.” Gregor replied, somehow managing to sound sheepish despite the layers of spider entrails covering him.
“I got it, don’t worry boys.” Amar grabbed both of their shoulders, and pulled them off the edge. As they fell, Logan felt the supple cords of plantlife grab them, and relaxed. Then Logan looked up, and the tension came flooding back. The horde mother was collapsing, right on top of them. There was time enough for Logan to hear a successive symphony of ringing notes through the air, before he, Amar, and Gregor were all buried.
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End of Act I