KYLIE, CONTINUED.
"S is for…"
Gob stopped and pointed.
"SPIDA!"
There were webs. Thick webs. Fresh webs. The sort of webs that made most travellers turn around and find another way.
"we go dis way" Gob said, pointing at the webs.
"Gob, those are big webs." she warned him,
"Big webs are what incy wincy spiders make so they can catch you and eat you."
"wot 'insy winsy'?" he asked with a scowl.
"It means MASSIVE. It means that webs like those one's there in that passage are where humongous, nightmare-poison arachnids are lurking ready to impale you on their horror fangs, wrap you up in strangle threads and suck the life out of you gradually and painfully while their little spider babies creep all over your face."
"iz ony way to gobn town." he crossed his arms.
She sighed and rolled her eyes. Stubborn troll vibes were something she was going to have figure a way around. She'd been trying to let him fight his own fights so he could learn his own strengths and advance at a natural pace, and she had really been trying not to give him any indication of what she was capable of.
During the bat fights, she had stayed well out of buff range so he wasn't using their collective bonus and so she wasn't depriving him of any portion of his stat gains. She wanted him to progress quickly on his own merits, and didn't want to become a crutch. Or worse; a fairy godmother.
He had done a pretty good job of toughening up and rising to the challenge. He may not have had a lot of life experience, but what he had experienced was hardly cushy. His formative time in the troll den sounded like it had been harsh, and it had turned him into a ferocious fighter.
But she had a feeling, and she was rarely wrong about these things, that she would have to get involved this time. Spiders the size of tractors could be a bit of a challenge.
Kylie reflected on what she knew about cave spiders. She knew they started life as one of thousands of eggs spawned in an adult spiders egg sac. They hatched tiny as pinheads, and would be 'monitored' by an adult spider until they grew to a certain size, which happened surprisingly quickly.
The term 'monitored' was used because the only thing the adult spider really did was not eat the young spiders (or allow any other creature to), and when the young reached a certain size, ensure they left the web to become adult spiders themselves… somewhere else.
The adult didn't even need to feed them, as eating their siblings was how the young sustained themselves and how they accelerated their own growth so quickly: according to studies Gervais had shared with her, a spiderspawn who ate an equivalent sized spiderspawn increased it's own size by a third of the number of size pts it consumed, a massively efficient, if rather grim metabolism.
Although the growth potential slowed after the spiders became adults, it never stopped. Like trolls, there was no theoretical maximum size for a cave spider. They were usually just a product of the size of the tunnels they wanted to live comfortably in.
The tunnel they were in was big. That was what concerned Kylie the most. Gob was size 3, about half the size of an average human, and she estimated that the tunnels they were in now were large enough for a human to walk upright, plus a bit, and were about as wide as they were high. So really, any adult cave spiders in these tunnels were going to be 7's or 8's.
That was a big 'incy wincy' spider, and while spiders were territorial within their own web networks, it was rare to find a solitary web. Unlike trolls with their solitary dens and large domains, adult spiders spun their webs close to each other in places that attracted regular prey, as they preferred capturing over cannibalizing, once they had grown up. That meant you rarely met a lone spider.
"OK, Gob" she warned "we'll go through them. BUT, the moment you touch that web a big juicy spider is going to come looking for you. If you look like a threat, and you will, other spiders will come to help. They probably already know you're here just from your vibrations walking up the tunnel. Spiders bite with poisoned fangs on the front of their faces. The poison won't kill you, but it will paralyse you, so the spider can kill you. Slowly. You have to avoid those fangs. Their legs have sharp clawlike points, so try not to get under one, and they squirt sticky stuff out their butts, so try and stay in front of them… either of those things you can probably handle though, just avoid the fangs Ok? Oh and also they are FAST alright? So watch them. I'm pretty sure you'll still have initiative, but be careful. Got it?"
He nodded, "S iz from SPIDA!"
"Yes Gob, very good." She smiled despite herself, "But do you remember B? B is for DO NOT GET BITTEN".
He nodded again and pointed at himself proudly,
"i bite!"
Kylie shook her head as he stepped forward and slashed at the first webs with his pigiron clors. They stuck to him and he made a face, extracting his claws with some difficulty from the sticky threads. Nothing happened. So he swiped again, extracting the sticky webs a second time. Still nothing.
He made for a third strike, and then all spider hell broke loose.
It hadn't been obvious from their vantage point that they were at a tunnel intersection. The way the webs had been woven across the tunnel gave every appearance of the tunnel continuing straight on beyond the webs.
It was a tricky set up on behalf of the spiders, as in reality three webs had been setup at an intersection of the tunnels so that close behind the first web, to both the left and the right, multiple giant cave spiders sat perfectly positioned to pounce on unwary cave travellers.
Kylie had been right, they were fast. Very fast.
She had also been right about inititive though. Gob still had priority.
x5 multiplier is SO huge, she thought, I still can't believe it!
taka-taka-taka-taka-taka-taka
The two side-lurking spiders attacked together, springing from their concealed webs, one after the other from each hidden side tunnel, their chitinous claws takka-takking with a fast staccato across the stone floor.
They were both 8 pointers: taller than an adult human standing upright, but bulky, with massive bloated black abdomens and body's hung disconcertingly between long evil looking multi jointed legs. Their heads hung down near to the ground, each with multiple red featureless eyes. Their fangs clacked and drooled as they darted towards him at an incredible speed that seemed all the more unreal considering their massive size. Gob saw the left side one first, his back to the other, and without any hesitation whatsoever,
Stchack!
bashed it right in the face with a pigiron clor. The spider's head collapsed in on itself, and the whole thing simply stopped dead in its tracks and contracted with an expiring
hisssssssssssssss
into a crumpled up ball of black legs and body, white puss like ichor glugging from the hole where it's head had been.
Ca#e spider killed.
"i reed da werds kylz!!" Gob called to her excitedly, pointing at the magical blue shapes that had just appeared.
"GOB, BEHIND YOU!" she yelled back in warning. But Gob couldn't do much to stop the second spider from pouncing on him from behind. It sank its fangs deep into his back between his shoulder blades with a
Pthisk!
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A precise strike which it then retracted quickly and made to scuttle backwards to observe the result of its injection from a safer distance.
Although surprised and clearly hurt by the rear attack, Gob twisted around quickly and flung out his clawed hand, catching a thick leg before it was out of reach. The leg was made of a hard but shiny chitin that even his upgraded claws wouldn't be able to penetrate just from grabbing, but he managed to keep his grip and was dragged backwards with the spider as it tried to retreat.
The creature, clearly unused to this style of tenacious counter attack seemed to panic, and instinctively climbed up around the tunnel wall to the ceiling, constantly flicking the leg Gob was stubbornly hanging on to, causing him to bounce up and down. Kylie smirked, but then thought, reprimanding herself,
Don't laugh, he might be in trouble!
Gob hung on tightly as he was dragged through the sticky web, bouncing up the wall and then dangling from the ceiling as the monster kicked and hissed and clacked its fangs.
The spider didn't seem to have any close combat moves, so when it appeared that the poison bite wasn't going to immobilise this prey as it usually would have by now, it didn't seem to know what to do. When the kicking didn't work, it started battering and stabbing Gob with some of its other legs, using five to cling to the ceiling and two to try and smack him off the eighth leg, or impale him.
Kylie, watching from the tunnel was still trying not to laugh. While she was ready to jump in of she needed to, the spider battle had taken on a more and more comical appearance, and now she couldn't help it.
"HANG ON GOB!" She called by way of support, chuckling.
She wasn't sure how Gob was feeling about this one.
The little git! she thought. She was surprised the poison hadn't kicked in yet. It would though. He must be fighting it with his regen.
Gob was still clinging to the spiders leg, bleeding from some stab wounds even as it gave up on trying to kick him off, and dropped again to the tunnel floor, scuttling back down the side passage it had initially emerged from, and dragging him around the corner of the tunnel out of sight of Kylie.
Though she couldn't see it happening, she heard from where she watched,
taka-taka-taka-taka-taka-taka
Scrabble, scrabble
Hissssssssssss! Clak clak clak!
GRRRRROOOAAAARRRR!!!
taka-taka-taka-taka-taka-taka
Scrabble, scrabble, CRUNCH!
Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
GROOOOAAR!
Clak clak cla—
STCHAK! CRUNCH! CHOMP! Munch, munch!
Ca#e spider killed.
Gob reappeared from around the corner. Sticky web strands hung off him, his front and head were covered in white spider gore mixed with dribbles of black troll blood, and he was crunching down on a chunk of spider. With a wide dopey grin on his face, he held it up for her.
"B iz from i BITE!" he said proudly. She laughed.
He then promptly fell down face first to the floor, completely paralyzed.
That was when the third spider, cleverly concealed just beyond the web on the tunnel ceiling straight ahead, unfolded itself slowly and menacingly, not in any sort of a rush now.
"Clever girl!" Kylie said to her as it approached Gobs paralyzed body, "But now it's the fairies turn…"
Crackle, Crackle, ZAP!
A bright blue bolt of electricity shot out of Kylie's finger, hitting the spider full in the face and throwing it backwards down the tunnel. It smashed into the stone wall, crumpling up with an expiring
hisssssssssssssss
laying still, curled up in a folded heap.
Kylie held her hands out in front of her and with concentration, began to manifest a small blue flame between her palms. With some slight twists of her wrists the flame started spinning in a vertical spiral like a tiny blue tornado.
She pulled her outstretched hands apart slightly and the spinning flame swelled a little.
She stuck out her tongue as she focused, concentrating intensely on the little column.
She pulled her hands apart slightly further and willed it to expand, and it did.
She willed it to spin faster, and it did.
With a deep breath, she tensed her whole body and then with a
aaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!
the little fairy threw her arms wide.
What looked like a tornado storm of pulsating blue electrical fire swelled and spun and twisted in front of her, growing larger and larger until it filled the height and width of the tunnel and radiated a powerful white hot heat.
The giant pillar of flame pulsed and wobbled unstably side to side, but she held it there forcibly with her will until gradually it spun into a tight, compact vertical spire.
She breathed out in relief, and then with a flick of her hands she threw it down the tunnel ahead of her.
It burst through the intricate web system, melting the sticky strands and incinerating more spiders further down the tunnel, hissing, spitting and crackling as it went.
She left Gob where he was and followed the pillar of flame as it went, scrunching her nose up at the acrid smell of charred spider husks and the sticky sweetness from the melted web goo.
It was a long web system, and she was partly glad Gob wasnt awake to see it, she was pretty sure he would have insisted on battling each spider one at a time… they might have been here for days!
She looted the incinerated spiders as she passed them, zapping their loot direct to inventory, bypassing the messy business with the rummaging around.
Loot:
1xgold
1xgold
1xincinerated spinneret
4xsilver
1xrecalcitrant thimble
1xorichalcum
1xreplenishment pill
2xgold
1xbucket of perpetually iced water
4xroughcut diamonds
1xincinerated chitinous ingrown toenail
2xquestionable credit notes
1xfemur
1xtome of spheraxial theory
1xsodden birdfeather
5xgold
When she finally got to the other end of the webs and the tunnel looked clear beyond, she dispelled the flame, which sputtered and then fizzled out of existence. She was proud of that one, she'd been working on it consistently and in secret for quite some time now.
Her electrical skill Zap! was a pretty standard one for fairies, and she had perfected it quickly and advanced it well with Gervais' help.
But in her own time, such as it was, she'd started to dabble with the relationship between electricity and air, her two affinities, and added some falling with a third: fire.
Fire wasn't usually associated with electricity, or Bright Magic, and so she'd kind of kept it secret from her master… she wasn't sure why. It just seemed… personal. And possibly unsanctioned.
Anyway, she had first discovered that she could start small fires from zapping flammable objects continuously, while she was bored. For a while she only did it for fun or to pass the time when Gervais was off somewhere else and didn't need her.
She'd realised eventually though, that she had developed the ability to light non-flammable objects on fire… that had been a surprise.
Then she'd figured out she could bring her air affinity into the skill somehow, though she still didn't understand how, and set air on fire! The air burned with an intense blue and white flame, and with more and more focused practice, she was getting excited about it now, she had discovered how to light tiny air fires, large air fires, and even how to use the air around the burning air to spin the flames into stable shapes. It got progressively harder as the flame got larger, but she began to get better and bigger fires every time she tried.
She'd then even figured out how to surround an object with burning air and not burn the object… until or if she wanted to, and as soon as she realised that, she had received a notification that she had accomplished her own first manifestation of a Magical Blessing.
She had been so excited, but at the same time so frustrated! She was advancing in ways she could never have dreamed of in her old life, and yet she was still just as stuck as before.
She didn't tell Gervais. Of course he could always see her stats and what she was doing if he wanted to, but he wasn't an overly controlling Master, and as far as she knew didn't seem to care, and especially recently had left her more and more to her own devices. In fact sometimes she wondered why he had even summoned a familiar at all… the first real 'task' he had ever set for her seemed to be this one: to send her away.
Her bluefire blessing was truly hers though. She cherished it. She understood why Mages often worked on improving their skills in secret. Their development felt like… something very personal. Her bluefire was something that was… just hers. Maybe that was why now it felt so good to use it for Gob, to give something back to the little troll who had given her so much without even realising it… just by being… Gob.
She flew back to him up the now spider-defested tunnel. She'd found, weirdly, a bucket of iced water amongst the loot, so she pulled it out of inventory and tipped it over him.
Waaaaaagh!
He exclaimed, jerking up groggily. She grabbed him by his arm and pulled him to his feet. He was hardly conscious, and she knew this would all be a blur to him when his head eventually cleared. She dragged him stumbling down the tunnel. He would wake up properly in a while, dazed and confused from the venom, and she could just wave it off as a 'well done for killing the spiders'.
He did pretty well even to get two though, considering, she thought.
I wasn't sure he'd get any of them…