Deep within the overgrown remnants of a lost city, so worn down by time that only a few buildings had more than broken walls so covered by vegetation as to be unrecognizable as edifice, a crimson-scaled kobold carried a halberd over her shoulder as she tracked down her quarry. Just under three feet tall, Isa Bloodscale would have appeared almost comical to the unobservant human: a small reptile person wearing an expression of concentration as she climbed through the overgrowth, wielding a weapon that spoke of a soldier or fierce warrior. Humans had a tendency to underestimate entities that were smaller than they were – to the annoyance of many a gnome, who were similarly-sized to kobolds. Most would miss the fact that this kobold was musclebound and would ignore the irregular patterns of pink and black on her scales, telltale signs that she was far stronger than most of her kind and was capable of using magic.
Isa Bloodscale was fairly young, having reached the recognized age of maturity among kobolds only two years prior. Kobolds were a very short-lived race, aging thrice as quickly as humans, so though she was but seven years old, she was of equivalent age to a human of twenty-one years. Many suitors who had recognized her strength had attempted to court her, but she had turned them all down, setting her sights on something higher: evolution. Many of the monstrous races had limits to how powerful they could grow, unlike humans and their ilk, but upon reaching those limits it was possible – though rare – to evolve into a higher order of monster, obtaining new strength, and importantly, longer lifespan. Isa wanted to live forever, or as close to it as possible, so she intended to awaken the potential of her bloodline and evolve as many times as it took to become a dragon.
Though she knew she had not yet reached her limits as a kobold, she was already the most powerful member of her tribe, capable of using second circle spells and second tier combat arts. Like spells were divided into circles, combat arts, which utilized qi rather than mana, were divided into tiers. While a combat art of a given tier was less powerful than a spell of the same level, qi regenerated much more quickly than mana, allowing the practitioner to use arts more frequently than spells: ten minutes of rest (as opposed to eight hours) was all that was needed to replenish one’s ability to use arts.
Isa reached the top of a hill, that was actually a small house that had been so overrun by plants and filled in with dirt as to be unrecognizable, and stopped. Unlike most kobolds, she didn’t hunt with stealth or traps, but she still fell silent as she observed the giant spiders feasting on the panther, deciding how to proceed. There were three of them, all standing about three tall, roughly eighty feet away, their black exoskeletons shining in the sun. She’d never heard of spiders taking down a panther, so she assumed that something else had done the job and they had come in as scavengers. She salivated a little at the thought of fighting whatever had killed the panther, as it was sure to be strong.
Well, first I have to kill the spiders. They’re the reason I’m out here, after all, she thought. I’ve never fought three at once before. I should make some preparations.
“Enhance Scales,” she cast. Her scales briefly shimmered and sparked as they become far tougher than their natural state, which was already tougher than that of most kobolds, which in turn was tougher than the weak skin of humans; at this point, they were as strong as steel, rendering her practically armor-clad. She wasn’t done, however.
“Armor of Blood.”
Nothing visibly changed, but within her body her very blood underwent a transformation. The second circle spell would turn her very blood into an additional layer of armor if she became injured – the more wounded she became, the stronger the armor. She probably wouldn’t need it… but once she entered Berserk Mode, she lost the ability to disengage if things got dangerous, so it was better to be safe when making preparations. And at first blood, she would enter Berserk Mode, as she always did.
She grinned, showing off all of her pointy teeth, and gripped her halberd in both hands, then shifted her stance. Trickles of blood oozed from her clawed hands and ran up the haft of her weapon until they reached the head, where they multiplied and spread until the steel was coated completely in red. “Oi! Dumbass spiders! Come and get me!”
The spiders twitched at the sound of her voice, then turned toward her. After a second of hesitation, they sprinted toward her. She waited a couple seconds, then rushed to meet the one in the center. “Wrath Strike!” she called out in glee, announcing her combat arts as she always did. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but she thought it was cool – and against intelligent opponents (which the spiders were not), a way to assert dominance. Her halberd’s axe head came down on the spider and split it in two, the insides sizzling and burning as the blood coating her weapon acted as a corrosive acid.
Her yellow eyes lit up gold and her grin became feral as she entered Berserk Mode. An aura of red mist surrounded her. It thrashed like a living thing, striking out and slamming a pseudopod-like section into one of the other spiders, cracking its exoskeleton badly. Both spiders lunged at her, but their fangs failed to penetrate her scales, and she didn’t even flinch at the mandibles so close to her face. Instead, she released the halberd with one hand and jammed her claws in the injured spider’s face, casting, “Corrosive Claw!”
Green-tinged blood shot out of her claws and injected into the spider, melting its face and burning through its insides. She pulled her hand out, grabbed the halberd, and blocked another bite from the remaining spider with her arms, her red aura smacking that spider and rendering it off balance for her follow-up thrust, which finished it off.
The aura disappeared and her eyes returned to normal. She planted her halberd firmly in the ground and leaned on it for support; it always took her a minute to catch her breath after exiting Berserk Mode.
“That was so easy as to not be any fun at all,” she complained. Once she had recovered, she walked down the hill to investigate the great cat’s corpse, hoping to find clues about its killer. What she saw gave her pause.
Bite marks from the spiders… but there’s even BIGGER bite marks from another, larger spider? And it looks like it’s enormous – bigger than the panther by far. Whatever kind of spider this is, it’s not something the tribe has encountered before. Where did it come from? And can I kill it?
She heard a repetitive thumping noise and looked up. Her eyes went wide with excitement and fear at the sight of a truly enormous spider the size of an elephant – not that she had ever seen an elephant. She had never seen any creature as big as this spider. It turned around and aimed its spinnerets at her, giving her almost no time to realize what was about to happen. Webbing shot out, exploding and tangling around her, fixing her in place.
I might have bitten off more than I can chew, she thought worriedly as the spider turned back around and slowly stalked toward her. I can tell just from the tension that I’m unlikely to break the webbing quickly enough to avoid dying, but I bet I can burn it away with my blood magic.
“Caustic Blood!”
Blood exploded out from between her scales in a fine mist, surrounding her in a cloud of red. When the cloud dispersed a second later, web was in tatters, no longer intact enough to obstruct her movements. But the spider was close – too close. It lunged forward, its gigantic fangs punching through her reinforced scales and injecting copious amounts of venom. Her eyes began to glow and the red aura surrounded her as her body fought off the poison; blood sprayed from her wounds and coated her scales, hardening like a shell when the spider’s fangs pulled out. In the moment it began to pull back its head, she cried out, “Bloody Counter!” and swung her halberd with incredible speed, shearing through its exoskeleton and dealing a heavy blow to its face. It shrieked in pain.
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She chased after the retreating head to get close enough to strike its body. “Armor Piercer!” she shouted, thrusting up at its abdomen. Her halberd broke through the exoskeleton as though it were made of tissue, not just the spear tip but the axe head also sinking into the spider’s body, delivering the burning blood on her weapon to its insides and making it shriek again. Her aura whipped around and slammed into the spider, bouncing off its exterior. It scuttled back a step and bent down to bite Isa’s head off.
She twisted, whirling her halberd as she tried to dodge out of the way. Fangs broke through her blood armor but glanced off her armor-like scales, knocking her slightly to the side. Off balance, she failed to line up her follow-up strike correctly, and the axe head deflected off the spider’s exoskeleton. Raising its body up, it lowered its head and chomped into her once again, leaving two new holes in her body. More blood covered her, increasing her defenses, but the additional influx of venom overwhelmed her body’s resistances, weakening and slowing her. She staggered.
Her aura thrashed as though enraged and launched itself upward, smashing into the spider’s split open face. The spider shrieked one final time, twitched, and collapsed, its legs tucking in as it rolled over, barely missing Isa.
Movement in her periphery caught Isa’s attention as two more of the smaller variety of spider rushed at her from the side, one behind the other. She coughed, then grinned as she turned to face them. The one in front bounced off her blood armor when it tried to bite her, and she retaliated with a flourish, a shout of “Pierce Through!”, and a sudden thrust that struck through both spiders. Her aura finished the first one off; she stepped forward and cut the second one’s head off completely, then walked over to the gigantic spider and hacked at its head a couple times to make sure it was dead.
Only then did she let herself fall out of Berserk Mode.
She dropped to the ground, panting.
Dragonfire! Isa cursed in the privacy of her own mind, unable to muster the strength to say it aloud. That was really close! Another bite from that thing and I’d have been a goner. I’m way tougher than the typical kobold – I could take hits that would fell a whole squad of normies – but just three bites from that spider would have been death for me. I’m just lucky the thing has paralytic and weakening venom rather than deadly venom. The poison’s run its course now – or rather, my body’s natural defenses have fought it off – but I’m still significantly weakened. I need to head back to the warren.
“But where did that spider come from?” she wondered aloud once she had rested for a couple minutes. “I’ve never even heard of spiders getting that big. I hope its not an omen… Maybe I should trace its trail? But I need to recover, and that’ll take a few days.” She frowned. “Hrm…”
She shrugged. “Oh well. I guess I’ll just heal up and do it. I never got where I am today by playing it safe.” She cupped one clawed hand a few inches under her chin. “Healing Blood,” she cast. A marble-sized bead of blood welled up from her palm. Her lizardlike tongue snaked out and licked it up. Her injuries started to heal. A second casting of the spell healed her further, and a third left her almost completely unharmed, save for a few sore spots. There was no sign she had ever been bitten by the spider.
“Right then,” she said, standing up. Her blood armor cracked and fell off, the spell’s duration ending. “Time to see what hole the terror spider crawled out of. Terror spider. I think I’ll use that name. It’s fitting, since this thing could easily wipe out most of the fighting force of the village. I’m glad I found it instead of it finding us.”
The trail wasn’t very hard to follow, given the spider’s bulk. There were a few more of the regular big spiders along the trail, but even though she had no more energy reserves to enter Berserk Mode and didn’t want to injure herself to cast spells (since every time she cast a first circle or greater spell, as a blood mage, she had to power it with a small amount of her blood), she had no trouble handling them, as they only came one at a time. After several hours, she found what she at first took to be some sort of sinkhole, until she realized that she was looking at the interior of an underground building missing its top. The trail led straight to it.
“Well, I always knew that my homeland used to be some sort of ancient settlement based on the occasional half-destroyed stone building not completely covered up by plants, but… I never thought it was something that had buildings this big,” she said. She conjured three small orbs of light and sent them into the hole. “That’s almost as big as the warren’s meeting hall, and I’m pretty sure that’s not the whole building. Lemme get a vine to climb down inside…”
A few minutes later, she had the vines ready and tied onto a nearby tree. She sat down to meditate and recover her qi so that she would be able to use her combat arts to their fullest extent. Slowly breathing in and out, she focused on the sounds of nature around her and relaxed, slipping into a trancelike state, remaining just aware enough of her immediate surroundings to rouse if she was approached by another creature. Fortunately, in the ten minutes she meditated, that didn’t happen, and the young kobold woman was ready to go exploring, full of vim and vigor once more.
The vine swayed as she climbed down into the ancient structure, surrounded by a trio of lights. The room exposed to the surface was completely empty, but there was a large, partially broken stairwell leading further underground.
It doesn’t really LOOK big enough for that spider, but there’s nowhere else the spider could have come from, Isa thought. Down I go… carefully.
The stairwell opened up into another large room. While this one was also mostly empty, in addition to stairs going further down, it had two walls with blue runes of some kind on them.
Are those magical? She silently activated the zeroth circle spell “Mage Sight.”
Isa’s eyes glowed gold, and in her sight, the runes glowed a bright blue, currents flowing through them. She had only seen a handful of magical items in her life, the sacred artifacts of the tribe, but she knew what the glow of magic under Mage Sight looked like. Frowning, she inspected the runes. The flow through them was different, as was the shade, compared to the sacred artifacts. In fact… the placement of the runes is odd, too. Like they’re creating some kind of arched border.
A human would have recognized the shape as a doorway, albeit one with the interior space filled by wall rather than a visible door, but Isa had never seen a door before and was unfamiliar with the concept. The only reason she knew what buildings were – and thus could tell that the ruined structures she had seen (including the one she was in) were buildings – was the sacred wall-painting that depicted the history of her tribe and its lofty origins. She was neither a historian nor a religious woman, so she hadn’t actually studied her people’s lore, but she was at least familiar enough with it to understand what the painting depicted, including the ancient city they supposedly ruled and its various constituent parts. Still, the idea of a door was foreign to her, so unlike a human, she had no idea what the shape of the runes signified.
She swept her gaze around the room until it landed on something else glowing… an iron ring with a disk on it. Upon picking it up, she noticed that it had another rune etched into it, though this one wasn’t painted like the ones on the walls. The flow of magic in the ring seems like it might be connected to the ones on the walls… but I’m not sure. I can see magic with this spell, but I can’t actually interpret it, since I’ve never had anyone to teach me. Well, I can always come back here later to experiment; for now I should head home if I want to get back before nightfall. Regardless of what this ring does, it must be important; it’s magical and found in an ancient ruin. It’s a worthwhile treasure for one day’s work.
Isa exited the ruin, climbed up the vine, and retraced her steps to the site of her earlier battle. As she approached, however, she slowed, eyes widening in alarm. There was movement around the gigantic spider, and it wasn’t of the animal variety. There were people here – and they weren’t kobolds. One was tall, twice her height, and had both a bow and a pair of short swords. Another was shorter by nearly two feet, with a massive amount of hair on their face; they had a large axe on their back. A third was slender, even taller than the first, with a protruding chest and long head hair, and they carried a staff. The fourth was about her height, with large eyes, ears, and nose, accompanied by a panther. The fifth and final person was about the same height as the first, with strange-colored hair and a naked blade at their side.
What do I do now?!