“No, absolutely not. Versai, slow her down. Rikka, set traps behind us. Miyuki, pick me up and run to the Temple. Everyone, we are falling back to the Temple. Right now.”
I didn’t try to whisper or anything. A bat-spider-wolf-monster thing is going to have hearing beyond all human comprehension. Besides, there were only so many places we could run to, now that it had broken cover. I had already turned and ran the second I saw the huge net headed my way.
Funny thing- If I have stats, I don’t know what they are or where to find them. But I don’t get tired, my hands don’t shake, and I can stab like a sewing machine in a sweatshop. So why can’t my legs move as fast as my hand?
And since combat is a terrible time to test new theories, I’d have Miyuki ready to haul me away.
The spiderweb was coming in plenty fast. I resolved to move faster. Head way forward, arms trailing behind, Naruto Run- GO!
It takes a moment. It really does take some time to convince your body that muscles and nerve activation time aren’t the restrictions they used to be. That some other force has set arbitrary limits on your capability, limits I have yet to discover. So I put my head down, and moved. Then moved. My feet hammered at the forest floor, slowly getting faster and faster.
I wasn’t as fast as speed hacking Versai. But I was moving a lot faster than I ever managed in my old life. The spiderweb hit the ground like gossamer landing on a blade of grass. I wasn’t under it, and neither were my people.
“Quick as a bunny. Run, run, run! Let’s make this last a long time.” The Dyn Hunllef still sounded like the Woodcutter’s Wife. Her spider legs were whipping out at Versai, pressing her back even as Versai was speeding up. From what I could see looking over my shoulder, she wasn’t faster than Versai, she just fought tactically.
The monster had eight spider legs and two human-ish hands to work with. She used them to limit Versai’s lines of attack, and to keep her on the defensive. Sooner or later, Versai would get through. Assuming she made absolutely no mistakes. And I wasn’t going to gamble on that. The Dyn Hunllef seemed like a specialist in forcing mistakes.
“Versai, fall back with us. Just keep her off our backs as best you can!” I yelled. Nobody’s gotten to ‘her’ before. She probably knows every nook and cranny of the mountain, every angle, but she hasn’t lived it. Hasn’t really been schemed at by people that knew what ‘she’ was.
And, you know, not by people outright abusing the game system. Because if she had, she would be dead.
“I don’t know why you think the Temple can save you. It’s the ghost of a ghost. A remnant of a person who is, definitionally, in Hell. But I am right here. I am right here behind you. You can run all you want. Run as fast as you can. I love a chase.”
The last sentence scraped down my spine, a claw running from the base of my skull and trailing down to just behind my heart. She was enjoying this. We weren’t even trying to fight her. We were running. Trying to find somewhere safe. She was the hunter in the night. The monster. And we? Were prey.
I sure felt like prey. Wasn’t like the Temple was close. The woods were very dark. The pine forest felt stifling, the swaying needles in their millions combined to deafen our hearing, their crunch underfoot would tell even a blind hunter where we were. We couldn’t know what was hiding in the moonless night. All we knew was that it couldn’t be friendly.
The horror grew slowly. The boughs whipped us as we ran past. The clash of steel on chitten. The monster’s laughter bouncing off the trees. She didn’t try to net us again. I think she was worried about it hanging up on the tree branches. Either that or she really did just want us to run. To catch us in her web just before we reached the ‘safety’ of the Temple. To torture us, violate us, dissolve us from the inside out and drink us up as we hung, helpless, watched by the protecting saint of this mountain.
“He can’t save you. No one can save you.” She didn’t have to speak. I knew what she was thinking.
I forced myself to keep moving. Terror was as much one of her weapons as her claws and fangs. These maps were made to be beaten and conquered. It was just a matter of figuring out what order to do things in, and how to use all the resources available.
I wasn’t at all sure I got the order right. A smarter plan would have been to make sure Mrs. Hungry and her daughter were on hand and… reliable. But this would do. It would have to do. I hoped. My ability to think and plan was slowly being squeezed out of me by the monster rushing behind me.
Miyuki didn’t scoop me up. Apparently, I was moving fast enough for her.
There was a crash, and a shrill scream. “YOU!”
Ah. Rikka had been busy. I chanced a look backward. The monster had run into a pit trap, which didn’t do much that I could see, but it did slow ‘her’ down just long enough to get hit by a falling tree. Not a very big tree, but it was enough to tangle ‘her’ up in its whippy branches. Maybe thirty seconds, or as long as a minute. Maybe not a minute. The monster was big, strong, and spider-shaped. Moving a tree wasn’t that big a problem. Thirty seconds. Maybe just twenty five. Whatever I could get. I’d take every step I could.
I don’t know how long it took to run to the Temple. The woods were so dark. The fear clawed at me. Pulled apart time like shreds of nerves and muscles. We didn’t get tired. Our lungs didn’t burn. Sweat didn’t blind us. Fear had to do all the heavy lifting on its own.
“I’m going to make it last. You know I can make it last forever. Trapped in this endless moment. I won’t let you die. Won’t let any of you die. I’ll string you up and play with you, then heal you, then play some more, then heal you. You will remember entire lifetimes. I promise you. With enough pain, you will remember entire lifetimes where you were safe and loved. Then you will remember how you lost it all. Over and over. I will find out what hurts you the most, in every way. And you will live it forever.”
Her words came out like a litany. Like an endless Buddhist chant. She promised torture of both body and mind. Her inflection landed all over her words, like a fly darting around the room. Like her voice was also a monster, looking for things to eat or places to lay eggs. Places that it could infect with maggots of terror.
“We are eating every world. Your world. Maybe it has already been eaten. How would you know? All your suffering, all your terror, those are our foods. We eat your flesh to hurt you and to make more of ourselves, but it is knowing you are in pain that fills our souls with light. Knowing that every instant of your existence is shame and agony. That, for you, there is neither joy, nor pleasure, not peace in existence. All those things are ours. All those things are reserved for us. You are the instrument of our pleasure. Our life’s calling is heard in your screams, in your begging. When you cry for mercy.”
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There was a shuddering, twitching feeling, wet and organic, in her voice. She loved this. There was nowhere she would rather be, nothing she would rather be doing.
“Oh, you are going to make me so happy! I can see the thoughts skittering in your mind, the little bits and pieces of you scrabbling for a way out. You think you are so smart. Not like the others. You are going to be the one who figures it all out. Who escapes. Maybe you want to rescue your little playthings. Do you imagine yourself with them, happy, at home? Do you play the sorts of games that make them scream and squeal with joy? I will make them scream. I will make them squeal like little piggies. You will watch every moment. You will feel every moment. You will help me hurt them. Over and over. Never allowing them to escape into death. Forever.”
There was a ragged, panting edge to her words now. “They never understand. The look in their eyes as you betray them. They never understand. Never expect it. Each time it’s fresh and sharp. The one person in the entire universe who is worth their total loyalty, and you will betray them. You will trade hours of agony for them, for minutes of less pain for yourself. You will resent them. You will believe that you only suffer because they need someone to lead them. They forced you to be in this world. They tricked you into caring. They lied to you about protecting you, that they cared about you. It was all to get you here. To drag you down into the pain with them.”
She laughed, a happy sound. Louder and louder, winding through the dark forest.
“One day. Well, not a day. Some time in the eternal night of your existence, you will come to thank me. To appreciate me. You will be grateful that you can serve me. You will agree that all your agony and suffering are good for no other reason than I want it. You will reach a strange plateau- I have seen it before. You will reach a strange plateau where you still suffer, but the fear leaves you and it becomes a sort of joy. There will be a satisfaction to watching me bite off your fingers. You will smile as you rip clumps of hair off your doll’s heads. That is when you will be truly broken. And then I will heal you.”
The laughter kept getting louder, it was deafening now, it was like she was screaming in my ear.
“I will heal you. I will guide your mind back to where it is now. I will make you remember why this should scare you. Why your suffering is a tragedy. I will make it all awful again, but you will remember the comfort being broken brought you. You will be scared of being broken again, knowing it will happen more easily the next time. I will play with you this way, until I decide it will be more pleasurable to torture you into forgetting. I will make you seal your own memories, so you forget breaking over and over. I will make you believe your nightmare has just begun. And we will do it all again. I swear I will never get bored. I promise you. I will never accidentally kill any of you. You will live forever, here, with me. In the dark.”
Rikka was doing her best, but deadfalls and pit traps don’t work very well on giant spider monsters. Versai was doing her part too, dashing in to try and hack off a leg, but she couldn’t get the rhythm right. The monster was eerily practiced. She always seemed to put a tree between herself and Versai, or took a shot at a slower Awakened, making Versai defend instead of attacking.
“No fighting back allowed,” she seemed to be saying. Not even pretend hitting from you lost kittens.”
Were we lost? Did it take this long to get to the Temple? There were no landmarks in the dark woods, barely a trail to follow. We could be going around in circles and I’d never know.
“Doesn’t this feel familiar? Have you done this before? Have we done this before? Is this another one of my little games, letting you run and run only to catch you again? I love to run and hunt. You hate to be hunted. Ah! Everything looks the same, doesn’t it? Every tree is the same in these dark woods. And you are running towards a temple to a monster that traps and eats people. Like a spider. Like a murderer. That’s your hope. That’s your confidence- the shrine of a cannibal ghost. Can you imagine how terrible it would be if that was a fake rumor I spread? That the shrine could protect people from ghosts, and demons? Protect them from monsters?”
But I was recognizing things. I knew that big rock with the pine tree behind it. We were coming up on the Temple now. The temple was surrounded by a big clearing. She would net us. No two ways about it. She would net us the instant we could.
“Versai, stall her as best you can. Buy us a few seconds then fall back! Everyone! Scatter when you reach the clearing, then converge in the temple. Miyuki- SHOOT HER AS SOON AS YOU HAVE A CLEAR SHOT!”
“That won’t stop me. It didn’t the last time you tried. Nothing can stop me in this place. Don’t you see? I’m the hidden radiance of the mountain. I AM the Hidden Moon. And I am always hungry.”
We hit the clearing and, bless them, my summons scattered. Rache was already inside the temple and looking out. Rikka was franticly waving for me to go to one side of a particular patch of grass, but she, too, was moving like a horrible sadistic monster was chasing her. They all were. I didn’t see Miyuki, but I could hear Versai going to work. Rakim was the one I most worried about.
Rakim wasn’t, in any way, quick on her feet. I honestly didn’t know if she kept up with the rest of us while we ran. In an odd way, I hope she didn’t. She’s a Four Star. She has enough sense to keep back and ambush.
God, I hope she has enough sense.
I tore up the grass, running a zig zag towards the temple. No need to make her shot easy. I risked a look back. She had bulled her way through Versai and was into the clearing now. She was looking right at me now. She was smiling at me now. There was something moving and shifting inside her. Something is coming. A web? A spit of poison? Thousands of tiny spiders? I tried to squeeze every scrap of strength out of my legs. Every tiny bit of speed that there was.
Some remnant of my ancient ape ancestors screamed at me. I dodged down and left. I could feel something barely miss my right shoulder. I could feel the wind of its passing hissing against my neck. One more step to the left, then cut back to the right and towards the door. There was something sticking out of the grass. A long dart, tied to silk rope. A harpoon of bone and silk.
“VERMIN!”
“Oh you will PAY for that!” The CLANG was enormously loud. I was only thirty feet from the door. Twenty. Ten.
And then there was Mrs. Hungry standing in the doorway. She had a long hook in one hand.
“STOP HIM!”
Mrs. Hungry nodded and raised the hook.
“You are being very weird right now!” It was all I could think to yell. “That is very rude!”
It seemed to throw her. “It is?”
I dove past her. It was either maybe dying at her hands or definitely dying to the monster. I chose maybe.
“It is. The monster only wants you to suffer. I want you to be fulfilled. To, literally, feel full.”
“Oh. That makes sense. Mrs. Hungry nodded. She had ignored Rache.
“Where is Yoko?”
“Around.”
“DAMN YOU! YOU AND YOUR “DAUGHTER” WILL HURT FOR DELAYING MY HUNT!”
Oof. Something was pissing her off. I chanced a look out the door. Versai had gotten her down with her Ult, and from the look of things, hacked off the rope with the harpoon on the end of it. Since it came from the inside of the Monster, I’m guessing that more than stung. She was keeping her distracted too- she had gotten on the monster’s back and was doing her best to stab a hole clean through her.
Unfortunately for Versai, the monster wasn't dumb. She lept straight up and twisted in the air, flipping her huge body around and dumping off Versai. It looked like the monster was going to land right on top of her. Miyuki had other ideas.
Her arrow came from behind. I didn’t see where it hit, but I can guess. A muffled whistling noise started. Horribly loud. Horribly loud, but still muffled. Coming from behind the ugly beast.
The scream of outrage was the best thing I had heard in ages. The monster spun and spun, trying to catch her own tail and rip out the arrow.
It was a start. But we were no closer to killing the beast.
Rikka came jogging into the temple. She had a quick look around, and frowned. “There is no more incense.”
I looked over. She was right.
“Is now really the time?”
“Yes. Whenever you come, you have to make an offering.”
Ah, that had ‘hidden rule’ written all over it.
“Mrs. Hungry, could you call over your daughter please?”
“Yes.”
The screams intensified. The beast was getting closer to the temple. “Will you please call her over?!”
“No. I’m hungry.”
Ah. Well. That’s not good.
“I’m hungry. I need to eat. Do you have food?”
“I… do not.”
“I’m hungry. You should feed me. I’m hungry. You should feed me since you have so much meat.”
“The monster out there has more meat. Way more. And she’s already injured, and she’s all alone. I have friends. People that will hurt you if you try to take my meat. My meat’s not worth it.”
Mrs. Hungry spun her hook, thinking. Weighing me. Weighing the odds. A silent god looking down on us both.