Ashley swam.
She swam, chased by the terror of memory. Of spiders coating her, filling her mouth and ears. Attacking her where she felt the safest. In her small bed back on the farm.
Ashley dove into the embrace of the water to shed the feel of their spindly legs on her arms, and chest.
When she resurfaced, she screamed her terror to the world but still felt them prancing across her eyelids and filling her hair.
Ashley squeezed her eyes shut and swam. Beating the water with everything she had to escape the crawling. It was all that she could see and feel. Every thought was of them. Covering her again. Their biting fangs, many eyes, bulbous bodies, and their many hairy legs.
Ashley screamed and swam for her life.
An indeterminate amount of time later she painfully smashed her hand into the stone of a dry section of the tunnel.
"Freya, protect me," she begged between choked breaths, as she clawed at the ledge, working to pull her sloshing waterlogged form from the water onto the short dry section of the tunnel. She flopped about until she was on her back looking back the way she’d come; still half in the water.
Nothing. No spiders. Nothing but water and a bare tunnel.
Her breath hitched with sharp relief.
"Freya, protect me. I choose Skuld's Skildi," she said in a half cough as she clawed herself fully out of the water and stood shakily looking back towards where she knew the others were, again.
She‘d dropped her spear in her haste and now fumbled at her waist to free her mace. The firm weight in her hand helped to focus her mind as the new magic flowed into her and the prompt flicked into her vision.
She reduced the window to check for spiders again. Nothing.
She gave it a quick read.
Skuld’s Skildi (Fate's Shield): Rank 1
Passive:
1: Improve your physical and mental reaction times by 10 x Agility(mod) x Perception (mod) x Faith(mod) milliseconds. [Current 80 milliseconds] The effect will only trigger during or immediately before combat situations and no more than once every 10 minutes to a max of Perception (mod) x Rank times a day. The effect lasts Agility(mod) x perception(mod) x Rank seconds. Max 30 seconds. [Current 8 seconds].
You’re able to better utilize all your innate athletic abilities while the effect is active.
2: All physical blows received by the body, or equipment worn or held by the skill-holder, reflect an additional (Rank x Faith (mod)%) of their force. [Current 1%] This effect stacks with all similar abilities.
Uh, what? Ashley wondered, confused by the detailed prompt.
You don’t need me to protect you from this, child. Ashley heard Freya's whisper-thin voice like a knife cutting the muddled mud of her mind in twain with its brief touch. With the voice came a shred of calming peace upon which Ashley latched with all her willpower.
Taking her shield from her back she settled it in front of her and looked around again. Still nothing. Why is it so quiet? She started to curse herself for being a coward when not even the sound of splashing could be heard from the others.
Then the fur at the nape of her neck stood with electric suddenness followed by a new thrill of dread.
Then it started, with the sound of raindrops hitting the water.
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Chess kicked her feet in a steady rhythm, trying her best to keep herself upright in the tepid water with her arms occupied with her spear.
The thrashing mass that was Mikel and his horde of dodgeball-sized spiders bore down on her and Lynn with the inevitability of a freight train, and it took all her will to stay in her position and not turn to flee after her daughter.
It didn’t come. The thrashing came to a sudden ear-splitting silence mere feet in front of her.
“What?” Chess asked, confused. “What happened?”
“Wait for it,” Lynn said flatly. The sound of her grip tightening on her spear clear in the unnatural silence.
“Screeeeeeeee.”
The high-pitched sound was accompanied by the aqua-blue glow of Lynn’s stone held forward as the Muskrat surfaced. It cast the room in horrible shadows behind him as one of the large spiders struggled feebly in his large buck teeth for a moment before stilling.
He let the body go to bob gently near the surface before diving again slipping between two spiders that dropped from above.
Chess had to shake herself from her stun and reraise her spear to fend off the spider that had turned to attack her after the muskratkin disappeared below. Her foe skittered deftly across the surface, easily dodging her first and second stabs with her spear before the head of another spear exploded from its bulbous body, stopping only inches short of her face.
“Quit messing about and sing!” Lynn admonished. “Charm them!”
Chess gulped and nodded before clearing her throat.
Looking down she saw Mikel casting frantic shadows from his foes as he fought the spiders below. He moved with a languid grace as he swam between them and the lines they used to propel themselves under the surface. She watched him dart in and grab one of the larger spiders in his teeth then use a small knife to split its carapace below its head before letting it go to move on to the next. Kicking off its body to change his direction slightly.
She looked up and saw the short respite was over. Nearly a dozen spiders were gliding across the surface toward her and Lynn.
She gulped again and thought. Hard. Before singing “Blue da ba dee,” when nothing else would come to her muddled mind. Thankfully the lyrics popped into her vision, and she started to belt the words out while swinging wildly at any spiders that got close.
To her immense relief, the spell took, and she sang and fought for all she was worth as multiple foes resisted the spell at once. It took all of her focus to push against the resistance while treading water, and she lost track of the larger fight for a time.
A soft jerk on her leg was her only warning before she was dragged under. She only got half a breath before her head was pulled below. She lost the spell and frantically looked for the spider that had caught her, finding it and a mate pulling on a thin line of spider silk that was tied about her ankle. Their combined weight was enough to draw her under.
Bringing her spear around and down against the pull of the water, she sawed at the line, parting it with a few strokes of its razor-sharp end.
The buoyancy of her armor hadn’t let her sink more than a head below the surface against the pull of the spider thread, and when she cut it, she popped into the air, only to be dragged under again as a large weight attached itself to her legs. Looking down she discovered her two foes clamped to her legs and moving up.
Then things got worse when the spiders switched places dragging her legs together with new lines of silk. Oh, fuck me!
She opened her mouth in protest, getting a mouthful of water for her efforts before she started batting at her foes with her spear. Every blow was weakened by the drag of the water, but she managed to build up wounds on them by cutting with the razor-sharp edge before she managed to hook it in a joint and remove a leg from the one on the left.
Then in a blur of approaching light and thrashing legs, the one on her right leg was stripped from her. She flailed at the water with her spear and lashed legs, managing to surface for a half breath before the weight of yet another spider drew her back down.
Fuck! Don't panic, don't panic, she admonished herself when it started to build.
Swinging her spear back down she waited for her new foe to pull its body upwards before driving her spear at its bulbous thorax. This time the blow was true, and her spear sunk in, making it scramble futilely against her armor in its death throes.
Again she twisted her body in an effort to reach the surface while clawing with her free hand, ignoring the spider still clamped to her leg. She surfaced spitting out water and gasping before taking a large breath and holding it, letting the spider drag her back below.
Again she batted at her foe with her spear, doing more damage with drawing cuts against its joints than with her stabs. An eternity later, she was free of the spider’s weight and crawled towards the surface, drawing breath into her aching lungs.
She was forced to let herself sink again so that she could cut the strands still binding her legs together.
“Chess! Charm!” Lynn caught her attention when she regained her breath. “Before they regroup!”
She was grateful to hear the kin-woman’s demand as it refocused her and launched back into her song.
“Keep it up! They are fighting each other!” Lynn yelled with evident relish.
Chess nodded wearily and started the song for a second time. The effort of treading water and singing while fending off the occasional spider was quickly tiring her after the spell spent under the water.
Then, one by one, the foes resisting her spell started falling, easing the headache that had started to form in the back of her skull.
Eventually, she had to suppress giggles as the absurdity of singing this song while fighting big spiders hit, and the resistance they provided fell, inundating her with spikes of pleasant relief.
“Good. You're good,” Lynn said from right in front of her, and Chess realized she’d closed her eyes at some point when she didn’t have to bat spiders off of her anymore.
She let her arms smack into the water and lay back to float on her back and stare at the roof of the cavern that was now cast in muted shadows from Lynn’s stone in the muskrat-kin’s hand. I should’ve sung from my back! she realized after floating for a minute.
She lay there a moment simply letting her chest rise and fall as she regained her breath before looking around to get her bearings. Mikel looked busy, swimming about with long strands of spider silk that he used to tie the dead floating spiders too. He was tying each line to one that hung from the ceiling.
Swim skill reevaluated. +6
“Thank Freya they weren’t venomous,” Chess observed, at a loss for what to say or do at the moment. She idly noticed faint lines of blood floating off the skunkkin’s body in numerous places. The observation made her aware of the many sharp aches that covered her legs around the joints in her armor.
“Yeah,” Lynn said from where her waterlogged form floated beside her. “Yeah, we wouldn’t’ve stood a chance.”
“Ashley?” Chess asked, wondering how the skunkkin could still float when covered by wet fur while still carrying her pack. Regardless of how much buoyancy the wood armor gave.
“Ashley,” Lynn agreed with a sigh before turning over in the water. “I hope she didn’t run too far.”
Chess matched her, and they swam back the way they’d come, leaving the muskratkin to his busy work.
----------------------------------------
The soft patter of rain hitting the surface of the pool was replaced by a more distinct plinking sound and Ashley swung her head about looking for a source.
Finding none, her heart rose into her throat, but she refused to lose herself to the terror again. Instead, she stepped back to put the wall behind her and tightened her grip on her mace while bringing her shield close so the weight rested more on the straps over her shoulder.
Again she looked both ways down the tunnel. The edge of both respective pools was well within the globe of radiance given off by her armor but nothing had entered it. She looked at the ceiling, again finding nothing, letting her draw an easier breath.
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The sound continued to grow more numerous before cutting out entirely. The reassuring weight of the weapon in her hand let her fight off the raging butterflies in her stomach as she strained her eyes looking for spiders.
Nothing.
“Come on!” she yelled as sweat started to break out on her quickly drying forehead and threatened to run into her eyes. She wiped at it with an armored forearm to little effect.
She closed her eyes a moment to take a few calming breaths.
When she opened them, spiders were everywhere
Ashley squeaked as her throat constricted in terror, but the spiders didn’t give her the time to be lost in her fear. They attacked from every possible angle at once. Dropping from the ceiling on lines, climbing along the wall, charging straight along the floor, and even a few jumping from the walls opposite. All trailing thin lines of silk.
Hugging her shield close, Ashley pressed her back into the wall and raised her mace. She swung it with all her might at the spider that dropped from the ceiling on a swinging diaphanous strand. Her mace intersected its swing with impeccable precision, batting the insect clear across the tunnel to smack into the top of the opposite wall with thorax-crushing force.
“Ha!”
A hungry thrill arose in her belly from the blow, and she brought her weapon back around to remove another spider that was now climbing her left leg, plowing it into the body of the one on her right. Both bodies crunched under the weight of her weapon, and she split her mouth in a feral grin—only to be covered in spiders, each one poking and prodding for an opening. Fangs screeched off her armor, and she felt the odd burn where they got through some of the joints.
She covered her face with her shield and took it all for a while before her mind started working. They can't get through? she thought.
Then the mass of her foes and sticky strands started weighing her down, and she felt her legs being drawn together. If not for the wall holding her back she would've slipped and been buried instantly. As it was it took all of her efforts to push off with her half-bound legs and launch herself forward. Her mass alone crushed a pair, and she took the opportunity to roll to her left, breaking a few legs before she scrambled to her feet. Her movements had scattered the spiders back a few feet giving her a brief moment to reset herself against the wall—gore-covered shield firmly before her.
"You can do this, Ash," she told herself while stomping her feet to free them from the loose strands of silk and swinging her mace about wildly to keep the arachnids back, landing a few glancing blows in the process.
With the next rush, she let them cover her before trying and succeeding with the same technique: falling onto her face before rolling over to do more damage. This time she got to her feet quick enough to slam her weapon into the bodies of two foes, splitting their bulbous carapaces.
Then she went nuts. First, she simply fell on her foes until the tactic forced them back then rushed to one side and then the other, swinging hard at any that got in range. This forced them to the upper walls and ceiling where they were out of her reach.
Then they got smart. Using lines of silk, they created sticky trip-lines everywhere. Hitting them with her mace only fouled it up, and she had to pull to free it, giving her foes a chance to get on her back again.
With her mace free, she took two quick steps backward and fell. Using her foes as a landing mat before scrambling up again.
It didn't take them long to corral her, and she found herself back against the wall watching.
It took two glacial minutes, in which the spider continued making an intricate and thick maze of lines, for her to realize all of her wounds were superficial. Her worst injury was self-inflicted from hitting her shin when she missed her target at some point.
Her entire body ached, and the spiders were relentless. At some point, the terror had passed and the respite wasn't doing her any favors.
Words echoing about the tunnel gave her courage.
"Think Ash, think," she said, holding the mace limp in her hand.
That's when the spiders tried rushing her again. This time they used their web to move unpredictably, and most of Ashley's blows missed.
Worse, they were starting to drape her in downy thin lines.
Then, just as they were about to bury her with their bodies again, she knew what her next move could be, and she embraced it.
She dove forwards, tucking her head and rolling over her shoulder into an opening magically presented and perfectly predicted, somehow flowing between the silk and foes alike.
She pivoted on her toes, slamming shield first into the momentarily disarrayed mass of spiders. Crushing and snapping many legs and bodies as she forced them into the tunnel wall that had protected her back a moment before with all the force she could muster from her legs.
For the next frantic few seconds, every swing, backswing, elbow, or stomp caught a foe in a devastating blow no matter how they moved. Then, as suddenly as it started, it ended, and she was left with a bare handful of spiders and exhaustion. Most of which were injured in one way or another.
“Holy crap!” she said. Then she caught movement close by and raised her leg.
“Take that!” she roared as she stomped on the leg of a limping spider before crushing its body under the heavy head of her weapon.
“And that!” She smashed in the thorax of another, the blow landing between its black beady eyes as it rushed her.
With that, she faced three. Collectively, the insects backed away before skittering along their web to escape.
“Oh no, you don’t!” she snarled before rushing the nearest, crushing its legs against the wall before turning to whip her mace around at the one retreating overhead, clipping its abdomen and wrapping it in the web it was using to escape. It kicked futilely for a second before she gave it another blow to still it.
The last had almost escaped her reach, and she barely restrained herself from throwing her weapon at the beast. Only the voice of her father in her head prevented the action.
Instead, she ran a dozen steps, ducking and weaving around webs before jumping and swinging overhead. She missed the spider but caught the silk it was using to propel itself toward the ceiling. The silk clung to her mace, dragging the spider towards the floor as Ashley’s weight pulled the line from the ceiling.
Ashley landed awkwardly slipping on dismembered spider limbs and webs, falling to her knees. The spider again made for the wall, and Ashley clambered to her feet. She made it a few steps before tripping again, but it was enough, and she landed on the spider, splattering it on the floor with her breastplate.
“Gah,” Ashley groaned as she extracted herself from the mess and leveraged herself to her feet.
She looked about herself then up at the ceiling. All she found were dead spiders, webs, and twitching limbs.
"Eww," she said as she took in her gore and silk-covered form.
Then it hit her.
“I did IT!” she crowed then she started giggling. The giggling quickly turned to laughter, which became so hard her stomach ached and she couldn’t draw a proper breath.
Her vision started darkening, and she even lost consciousness for a moment during the fit.
When she finally had control again, she found herself flat on her back, lying amongst the scattered remains of her foes.
When she took a tentative look about, again the giggles threatened, and she forced her eyes shut, trying to center herself. She concentrated on her breathing as Lynn had taught her: in through the nose, out through the mouth. She repeated this for a minute before her heart started to calm its thundering gallop.
“I did it!” she reaffirmed, before climbing back to her feet.
She bent, letting her shield fall to the floor after a full minute of peace, and put her hands on her knees. She took two deep breaths before forcing herself to pace, remembering other more recent lessons from Lynn.
After a few treks, the first spent cutting lines with the big knife Chess had made her, from one pool to the other, with only her mace in hand, she bent to retrieve her shield from where it lay.
With the thrill of combat fading further, her body aches intensified, and a headache started to form at the base of her skull. It was all she could do to continue pacing and keep up her vigilance.
Freya, please don’t let them return, she begged.
Her mind drifted to the fight, then to her mad dive. Where did that come from? Then she remembered her new skill and brought the window up again. I’ll need Lynn to explain this to me, she decided, still not entirely clear on the ability. She knew it was powerful from what had happened.
That’s when she remembered her companions. She peered down the tunnel and listened.
There! Now that she was listening for it she could hear Chess’s clear voice echoing throughout the tunnel. She was singing something very repetitive in that strange language of hers.
A surge of relief flowed through her with the discovery, and she slumped against the tunnel wall, her exhaustion getting the better of her. Her everything hurt, and a small trickle of blood was threatening to run into her eye.
She listened as the others' fight ended and then to Lynn and Chess talking as they drew near.
“Note to self: when the little bugger gets excited, brace for a fight,” Chess’s voice floated closer, accompanied by the soft splashing of her and Lynn swimming.
“I wish he could understand us so I could properly reprimand him,” Lynn complained.
“Maybe he thought we would handle it better?” Chess reasoned.
“Don’t. Don’t try to justify his actions. Any way you look at it, it was reckless,” Lynn said.
“Fine,” Chess sighed loudly. “Just, it’s not like he owes us anything.”
“If he hadn’t saved me a few times, I would’ve entertained the thought he did it to get rid of or weaken us,” Lynn said. “No, it was just reckless idiocy. I fear he may be younger than we thought.”
Ashley missed what the Skunk-kin woman said next, more quietly, but she could guess.
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"We'll have to do something about this fear of yours. Can’t have a guardian t... Oh!" Lynn started when they found Ashley waiting with her feet hanging over the edge of the closest stretch of dry tunnel, and she leveraged herself out of the deep pool.
Ashley had her back to the wall, holding her legs tight against her chest. She looked up at the skunk-kin woman blankly for a long second before looking back at the pile of dead spiders and limp silk she’d left scattered about behind her.
“Yeah, I agree. Oh!” Chess said, joining Lynn in taking in the carnage. “I think she killed more by herself than we did together.”
“Yeah,” Lynn said softly, tilting her head and studying Ashley’s face a moment before moving past to kick at the still-twitching spiders. She sunk her spear into a few as Chess watched.
Chess plopped down beside her daughter and pulled the girl into a wet side hug.
“You okay?” she whispered into her triangular ear.
“Umm, hmm.” Ashley nodded, her helm scraping against her breastplate.
“Well, if you ever want to talk about it...” Chess said.
Ashley repeated her nod. “I lost my spear,” she confessed.
“We’ll get it back,” Chess reassured her, tightening her arm for a second.
The pair remained quiet for a time until they saw their newest companion broach the radiance of Ashley’s armor. The muskrat was making slow progress, tugging a large clump of spiders and his bundle of sticks in his wake from a finger-thick strand of the white line.
When he finally pulled himself from the water, Chess and Ashley got up and helped him drag his load onto the dry section of the tunnel. Chess was curious about what he planned to do with his new burden. He already had a significant load with the branches and heads he carried before.
Mikel surprised her further when he grabbed another line that he’d tied to the group of spiders and started hauling on it. When its burden came into view Chess was shocked by the small writhing mass of small white perch-sized fish that filled a diaphanous spider-silk net.
“Fishing spiders?” Chess wondered as she helped him drag the mass away from the edge.
“Looks like it,” Ashley agreed.
Mikel tilted his head before dismissing them with a shrug, indicating they should drag the fishnet further away from the shore. When they had it closer to the middle of the small section of land he used his knifepoint to dig at a tangled knot where the surprisingly thick strands of silk met. He made short work of the mess before laying out the entire jumble in a large circle; kicking the odd spider corpse aside to make room.
“You’ve done this before,” Chess observed, earning herself another glance from the muskrat-kin. He returned to his task, laying each fish out in a line after smashing it with the hilt of his small bone knife.
“You should heal yourself, then your mother,” Lynn said when she’d finished her task. “We’ll loot the spider's Pyths once you’re done. Remember, check each cut first and sew where needed," Lynn added handing Ashley her small sewing kit.
As though the mere mention of her injuries was the catalyst, every one of Chess’s wounds made themselves known. She groaned in agreement a burning ache radiated from behind her knees and butt where the spiders had found purchase through and under her armor.
Ashley smiled checking both their wounds before the glow of her spell filled her hands.
Chess sighed when the radiance faded taking her aches and pains with it but leaving a hollow feeling in her belly and a lightness to her head. She summoned her vault and helped herself to a handful of sweet berries, passing some to Ashley at the same time.
“Thanks, kiddo,” Chess said, and Ashley’s smile deepened as she worked her spell on herself.
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“That’s strange. I’ve never heard of spiders giving these Pyth’s, other than the swathing silk and inventory,” Ashley said as she and Lynn started looting.
“Inventory?” Chess perked up looking over where Lynn was dragging spider corpses to Ashley before tossing them in a pile to the side.
“Let us finish first,” Lynn admonished.
Mikel plopped down beside Chess and took up a spider leg, using his large buck teeth to crack its shell in half before sticking one end to his real mouth and audibly sucking out the meat inside with obvious relish.
He offered the other end to Chess who shook her head. “I don’t fancy raw spider meat,” she said.
He tilted his head and shrugged clearly enjoying his meal.
Lynn stopped by, took the offered morsel, and matched the Muskrat in sucking out the interior.
“It’s not bad, a lot like lobster, but you’re right to be hesitant. I don’t think this would be good for your delicate stomach raw. Ashley might be able to stomach it,” Lynn said, holding out a small piece to the girl.
“Raw meat usually makes me sick,” Ashley shook her head but turned her head to the line of fish laid out.
Mikel had taken up another leg and cracked it for the pair.
“I could really use something other than berries,” Chess admitted, eyeing Lynn and Mikel as they ate more spider legs. “Any idea how we can cook it? I’m not sure a fire is a good idea down here,” Chess asked.
“Not without perhaps returning to the chute,” Lynn said.
“Sushi it is,” Chess sighed and pulled out a chunk of wood. She formed a cutting board from some hardwood before making a long whisper-thin knife from one of her ironwood arrows. Sticking her fingers into the eyes of one of the fish she flopped it onto her board and deftly cut in behind its gills then down either side of its dorsal fin with the tip; working her way in over the ribs.
It looks like a perch, so I'll try that technique first, Chess thought, getting to work.
She picked the liver and heart out of the mess and cut out the tiny cheeks. I need the nutrients, she thought. Hesitating before plopping the small piece of cheek meat in her mouth. Immediately her mouth filled with saliva and she groaned at the explosion of flavor induced endorphins. That’s way better than I expected. I just hope I don’t get sick from some unknown parasite.
“What?” she asked when she noticed Lynn watching her.
“You just continue to surprise me with what you do know,” Lynn said.
Chess shrugged. “I like fishing, and Gramps always insisted I had to gut my own catch,” she explained as she plopped another fish down and deftly filleted it.
“I do wish we would’ve known there were fish in here earlier.” She was actually surprised by how fast she was managing the task. Her hands obeyed her better here than they ever did on Earth.
“Wait!” Chess snapped her fingers. “Ceviche! We have really sour berries. Maybe? They are very perchlike.” Chess opened her vault to pull out one of the pails of sour berries with a smile forming on her face. “I wonder if that seaweed is edible?” She trailed off in thought. I need to stock up on vegetables and fruit seeds as soon as possible. Freya, I hope lemons exist somewhere close, and avocados. Please Freya, let something like them exist!