Heart thudding in his chest, Morgan stood rooted to his spot. Frank’s command for the teams to form up snapped Morgan from his trance and he stepped slowly into line with Erik. Karla, the small blonde tank in front of them. As his body started thrumming with adrenaline, his brain fog cleared. Morgan summoned Midnight Razor. Karla didn’t have any weapons, and she only wore a set of leather shoulder guards. Just as Morgan opened his mouth to say something to her, she finished whispering something, arching her back and throwing her arms out. There was a hazy shimmer and a ripping noise, and Karla was gone.
What replaced Karla was a vicious looking long bear like creature with a thick bushy tail and her shoulder guards as a leather collar. As tall as Morgan, the creature dropped onto all fours, coming up to his waist.
Sophia said as she identified the creature.
“Karla, take the big one. Bear, with me,” Frank bellowed, slamming the pommel of his sword to his shield.
::Threat Scan Complete - Invader - Apex Spider::
“Abby! Bring it down,” a harsh growl came from Karla’s form.
Arcs of lightning danced through the air, striking at the giant spider. The lightning revealed more of the lumbering dark shapes nestled among squirming cocoons in the stalactites.
“Holy hell!” Morgan exclaimed, heart skipping a beat. He wished now, more than ever, he had the buffs from Loner and Soloist.
Other than revealing the other enormous spiders on the ceiling, the lightning had little effect. It seemed to fizzle and be conducted through the web into the pillar. Erik threw his hammer up at the creature. It hit, staggering the spider which let out a chittering hiss. As the hammer fell back toward the group, there was a popping noise and it was back in Erik’s hands.
“Frank,” Karla growled. “More on the ceiling, and cocoons.”
“Got it,” Frank replied with a grunt as he slammed his shield into a spider, knocking it onto its back. As it flailed its spindly legs, the red-faced boy lunged forward with a spear, skewering it. “Try to hold until we can clean this up.”
Bear and his team were on the other side of Frank’s team, causing a whirlwind of chaos and destruction. One of them had a flame spear ability. It was devastating the small spiders, leaving twitching carapaces and popped abdomens.
The spider hit by Erik’s hammer descended with large fangs and legs outstretched. Karla leaped to intercept as it got close, slamming into its side and causing it to swing wide of the groups. It landed with a crash and scraping of hard chitin on the stones. Karla growled deep, thrashing her jaws back and forth on one of its thick legs.
Morgan lunged in, severing the distracted spider’s abdomen from its carapace with a wicked chop. Green viscous ichor splashed over him in a violent eruption, causing him to gag reflexively. The front half of the spider, unbalanced and dying, still squirmed and flailed its sharp tipped legs. One barbed foreleg slammed into Morgan’s leg. The barbed strike wasn’t able to pierce his hardened skin, but the force of the horse sized legs knocked him off his feet like he had been hit by a truck. Its thrashing was ended by a concussive blow from Erik’s hammer. Squashing the carapace and its soulless beady eyes into a soupy mess.
Their victory was short-lived as more and more large shapes descended.
“Rally to me,” Frank called. As the teams quickly collapsed into a group, Frank slammed his shield into the ground, causing a translucent bubble to surround them and distort the looming shapes of eight giant spiders and countless smaller ones. The bubble flickered as legs and fangs hammered into it.
“We have about forty-five more seconds until the unbreakable bubble drops,” Frank said. “Ideas?”
“Fire, good.” Bear grumbled.
“Lightning does almost nothing,” Abigail complained.
“Okay, fire. We need to get rid of the waves of smaller spiders to focus on the big ones.”
A short man from Bear’s team stepped forward with a small flame in his hand, getting close to the barrier.
“Anyone else have fire?” Frank asked. Everyone shook their heads. “Right,” Frank continued. “Then we need to point flame guy here towards them and protect him while he wipes out as many as possible.”
“I have ice,” one of Frank’s team said. “It might slow them.”
“Good idea, do that as much as you can.”
Then Frank started directing people into a wedge formation, supporting the fire and ice mages at the tip. Morgan and Frank were beside the fire mage in the front. The other two tanks took the other points of the triangle. The melee and the other mages crammed inside.
Sophia told him.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Five seconds,” Morgan echoed loudly. A calmness overtook him as he crouched.
The barrier popped out of existence, creating a stampede of chitin and scraping as the swarm closed in from every direction. The flame mage near Morgan exploded with heat, funnels of flame shooting from his outstretched hands. Behind him, cold arctic air swirled before large snowflake shapes began homing in on the enormous spiders, slamming into their carapaces, expanding into patches of thick rime.
Morgan blocked a large leg, then used One Hundred Cuts. Midnight Razor blurred as he struck out, slicing in tight, controlled slashes, mincing the small spiders in a cone in front of him, and severing two of the larger spider’s legs. The spider reared back behind the sward, hissing, after losing two of its legs. With a wave it started massing webbing on its spinnerets. The others in the group were struggling as well. The smaller spiders were thinning as they got slashed, crushed, and burned. But the larger spiders were more resilient and held back after the initial attack.
A ball of sticky webbing flew over Morgan’s head as he sliced smaller spiders. It hit Abigail, sticking and wrapping around her arm and waist as it landed, and then she wobbled into a girl from the circus team, and they were both stuck together. Morgan drew his wakizashi, handing it to Abigail’s free hand. He then had to refocus as the smaller spiders pushed into his opening. Another ball of webbing came in from the other side, landing on the head of the woman attached to Abigail. Her muffled scream raised the tension of everyone.
Abigail tried in vain to saw at the webbing with the dagger. It just got stuck in the sticky strands as well. The apex spiders fell back as the swarm diminished. They grouped around a larger, more heavily carapaced spider, flinging balls of webbing at the group. Two of the spiders were quickly creating a wall of web between the group and the other spiders. A man from Bear’s team rushed the webbing, breaking formation. He charged forward with a wicked, curved scimitar.
“Don’t break formation,” Frank called out. But the man either ignored or didn’t understand the command. Ten feet in front of the webbing there was a blur, and the man disappeared. A large patch of the ground was wobbling where he had been, his sword stuck out between a thin disc of dirt-covered silk and the ground. The sword hung there for a split second before falling, and the opening disappeared completely.
“In the ground,” Erik yelled. “There is one in the fucking ground.”
“We need to do something,” Karla growled as she got hit with a ball of webbing. It rebounded and slid off the fur on her side, collapsing into a glob on the ground. The others were not so lucky. Half of the group was hindered by a sticky mass somewhere on their bodies. Two of the group were out of the fight completely as they struggled in the binding webs.
::Current population 13/15::
The notification popped up. Morgan realized the man in the trapdoor was dead.
he begged Sophia.
Nodding, Morgan scanned the area. He had to avoid the trapdoor spider, or spiders, and bypass the webbing the apex spiders were weaving. Their small wall had almost been completed. There were holes that periodically issued sticky balls of webbing. They had walled themselves into an alcove formed on the side of a broken stalactite. Karla and Frank were deflecting the balls as best they could.
Struck with an idea. Morgan said, “I am gonna move, cover this space,” and then he rocketed into the air over the wall of webbing. He swung, hacking huge chunks of stone from the stalactite. It shuddered as the frail structure was disturbed. Sensing the danger, the apex spiders began clawing at the web wall they had been constructing. With two more heaving swings, Morgan had carved a small alcove into the stalactite about ten feet above the one the spiders were in. Cramming himself into the space, Morgan massively increased his weight, crushing his bones and muscles as he wedged himself against the ground.
There was a thunderous cracking sound as the stalactite broke, shattering into jagged, brittle dust. Morgan, barely conscious from the pain of his increased weight, reversed the effect as the small mountain collapsed below him. He slammed upward into the surface, wincing as his bones and muscles knitted back together. The area below him was shrouded in thick clouds of choking dust. After a few seconds, he coughed up a few mouthfuls of blood, blinking rapidly as the dust cloud billowed up into his face.
As he recovered, he could hear shouts and cries from below. The dust made it impossible to see what was happening, but the cries were of shock and fear, not pain. Lowering himself through the impenetrable cloud, he closed his eyes. Using blind sense, he could tell when he was close to the ground. And that there was a trapdoor spider directly below where he was drifting down.
Readying Midnight Razor, he extended his arm and tapped on the cover of the compact hole the spider was in. With a flash, the spider extended, reaching outward with strong pincers. Even expecting the strike, Morgan was shocked at its speed and almost didn’t strike in time. But his downward thrust caught the spider as it retracted back into the hole, causing it to rip the razor-sharp sword through its own carapace and brain as it tried to collapse back into its burrow.
The rest of the group had quieted down. As the dust settled, they were scraping the now dusty and much less sticky webbing from each other. Morgan couldn’t sense any other trapdoors, but he could only sense out ten feet. As he rejoined the group, they were somber, and grime streaked their sweaty and bloody faces.
“What about the cocoons?” Karla asked, back in her thin, girly form. “What if there are people in them?”
The fire mage tossed one of his glowing lights high into the air. Thankfully, there were no more spiders, but there were eight large cocoons that moved eerily in the faint light.
“If you are ready, I can go up and see what is in them,” Morgan offered.
Assessing the group, Frank nodded, adjusting the shield strapped to his bad arm and gripping his sword tightly.
“Form up, be ready for something to drop,” Frank said.
Morgan floated up, cautiously examining the cocoon closest to him. It was bulbous and squirmed unnaturally. He felt squeamish as he sliced at the side of the silk. The cut widened suddenly as soon as the webbing was pierced. A gush of putrid mucus with some small translucent spiderlings flooded out. The next cocoon reacted similarly, but in this one, a thin man with black streaks from two giant holes in his stomach tumbled out. Morgan caught him before he had fallen to the ground and set him next to the group. Frank checked his pulse.
“Slow and weak, but he has a pulse.”
Ansley stepped forward, placing her hand on the man’s chest. “Let me see what I can do. I didn’t spend all my points on healing for nothing.” A shimmer of glowing light encased her hand, and the black, puckered wounds on the man’s stomach slowly sealed, and the streaks faded. The man weakly opened his eyes, whispering something in a dry, choked gasp.
::Current population 14/15::
