Taking a moment to recover, we looked around at what was left of the room.
There was considerably less floor than when we entered.
"We need to keep moving," I said, collecting myself as I inspected our next options.
"Our mana, Tero," Sheral said.
"Jane, how's yours?"
She looked at me for a second.
"Bit over half."
"You'll center the next room then. Probably going to see the boss."
"…Whatever you say."
She pressed her hands against the stone at the edge of the pit.
Her center was one of the less ingenious ones, but it still worked.
She just summoned a large Ent.
In a team of five mages, having a tank that could physically stand between us and whatever wanted to eat us was ridiculously useful.
The downside was that she needed a minute or two to summon it.
Which was fine.
It was a big boy, and the time would be well spent.
Sheral started drinking a mana potion. Zach and Merlin followed suit.
I considered it, but I wanted to save mine for when I decided to center.
"You guys can hear them too, right?" Zach asked. "The skittering?"
He pointed toward the passage ahead.
"Yah…"
Something scraped against stone.
Then it stopped.
"Ain't no way you men are afraid of some spiders," Sheral said.
"Not the normal ones, but I have to draw a line somewhere, Sheral!"
"Can we not joke around right now?" Jane said.
She sounded more serious than I expected.
"…Yah. Sorry, Jane."
Sheral shrugged a little and finished her potion.
I watched thick roots work their way out of the stone.
They folded together, growing into legs, then a broad torso. Bark spread over the outside while smaller branches twisted into fingers.
By the time it pulled itself upright, its shoulders almost brushed the ceiling.
It was a hulking thing, though Jane had clearly kept it shorter than she could have.
In a cave, being massive wasn't particularly useful if you couldn't fit through the next door.
Still, it had weight.
And weight was power, especially when the thing carrying it wanted to hit something.
"You ready then?" I asked Jane.
She gave me half a glare before turning toward the passage.
The fuck did I do?
[Whisper from Merlin]
[What did you do to her?]
[Whisper to Merlin]
[I don't fucking know!]
Merlin gave me a quick look, then followed her.
"Fine then…" I muttered.
Sheral walked beside me while Zach brought up the rear.
The tunnel ahead ended in a sheet of webbing stretched between two rough walls. It looked hastily made, with loose strands hanging from the ceiling.
"Well. On your cue, Jane," Sheral said, raising her staff.
Jane pointed and the Ent wasted no time, charging head first into the webbing.
It hit the web wall hard enough to take some of the surrounding rock with it.
I waited for something to jump on its head, but that didn't come.
Instead, a massive concentration of Earth mana washed over me.
I stopped behind the broken entrance.
The Ent stood inside, waiting.
Nothing shot at it; nothing dropped from the ceiling; and nothing happened.
That wasn't right….
Merlin glanced at me, then lifted himself into the air.
I followed, both of us keeping our defenses ready as we moved past the Ent.
The room was small compared to the Pantry. Crystals grew from a raised patch of stone at the back, surrounded by old webbing and pale, broken shapes.
Eggs.
"…Okay," I said.
I spread my mana through the room, more carefully this time.
Along the walls. Behind the crystals. Into the cracks overhead.
It had its risks, but it confirmed what we were seeing.
There was nothing hiding in here.
"It's empty?" Merlin asked. "For real?"
"Yah. Let's get those crystals and…"
I looked for another passage.
There wasn't one.
The others came through behind us.
Zach crouched beside one of the eggs. Its shell had split into several thick pieces, with little mineral growths covering the inside.
"We didn't encounter any Earth spiders, did we?"
"Nuh uh," Sheral said.
She nudged another shell with her boot.
"They're still out there."
"Great."
"Guys," Jane said. "Big boy here takes a lot of mana."
The Ent had to turn sideways just to stop its shoulder scraping the wall.
"…Dispel him then," Merlin said. "We can't keep paying for him to stand here. There are four of those things somewhere."
"Huh? You know that how?"
"Four eggs, dipshit," Sheral said, laughing.
I looked down.
Four large eggs.
"…Yah, yah."
It was Jane. I couldn't think right around her.
That was becoming a problem.
She rested a hand against the Ent's side. Its branches loosened, the shape coming apart until the remaining roots sank back into the ground.
I watched it go.
A minute of summoning, all that mana, and it had broken a wall for us.
What a fucking waist.
"Well, anyway," I said. "Next room?"
"Lotta guessing from our leader," Zach said.
"Then yes. Let's move."
Merlin was already turning toward the entrance.
He stopped.
So did I.
The hole the Ent had made was gone.
Fresh stone filled it, uneven and still shedding little grains onto the floor.
"…We're sealed," Merlin said.
"Fuuuck," Zach breathed.
Jane looked at the crystals.
"They got us…we took the bait"
I listened.
The skittering was farther away now.
"Air?" I asked. "Are they trying to suffocate us?"
"I can handle the air for a while," Jane said. "Do you want him back?"
"No. Wait. I'm going to use Locate."
I pushed my mana toward the sealed entrance.
Getting it through solid stone still took effort.
Too much of my life had been spent understanding solid objects as, well, solid. Convincing myself that my mana didn't need to care was harder than it should have been.
But it went through, expanding farther and farther until movement touched the edge of my awareness.
Several smaller shapes surrounding something much bigger.
All heading away from us.
"They're leaving," I said. "Big ass spider and four guards."
Merlin turned toward me.
"Can they actually leave?"
"Apparently!"
"Shit," Sheral said.
I stared at the stone.
Part of me wanted to say that a win was a win.
If the boss wanted to fuck off, who was I to stop her?
Then I thought about the next dungeon.
And the four Earth spiders she'd be bringing with her.
"Get us out."
Merlin planted his feet.
I extended a leyline through the stone and out toward the moving shapes.
Then I used something I had been calling Chain Bomb.
It was barely its own spell. Mostly a way of casting a little over a hundred short chains from the same point, all reaching in different directions.
Very useful when I couldn't see exactly what I was trying to catch.
Very unpleasant for my mana.
The chains went tight.
Several snapped almost immediately.
Merlin's blast hit the wall.
Stone shot into the passage, and he was through the opening before the dust settled.
I followed him out.
The boss was halfway down the corridor, moving toward the deeper parts of the dungeon.
[Brood Matron]
[Level: 40]
[Epic]
There was nothing fair about the version of her we were fighting.
Her body nearly filled the passage. Dark plates of stone covered sections of her abdomen, with silk stretched between them like ugly white seams.
Four smaller spiders surrounded her.
Earth moved beneath their feet.
My surviving chains dragged behind them, some caught around legs, others holding little pieces of broken armor.
Jane came through beside Zach.
Ice spread across the ground ahead of the Matron while roots pushed up farther along, blocking the narrow passage she was trying to reach.
She stopped.
I sent another pair of chains at her.
One caught a joint.
The other struck a dark plate and scattered into mana.
I tried again.
Same result.
"She has spell resistance!"
Or her shell did, at least.
It wasn't just hard to break. My magic struggled to hold against it at all.
Merlin stopped forming whatever he had been preparing.
Beside him, Zach raised his staff.
A massive lance of ice grew above it.
Merlin looked up.
Then he took hold of the lance with his magic and launched it.
"Fuck yah…" I muttered under my breath..
The sound cracked through the passage.
The Matron lurched sideways as the ice punched through her mineral coating and buried itself in her abdomen.
Stone fragments bounced across the floor.
It hadn't gone all the way through, but half of a massive ice lance sticking out of her was still a pretty good result.
The three nearest guards turned.
The ground rolled beneath them.
One launched itself at Merlin so fast I barely had time to follow it.
A spell circle flashed around his staff, and the spider slowed; But that was about all it did.
Its stone-covered body kept coming.
Gold flared in front of Merlin.
The impact made Sheral stagger, but the barrier held long enough to keep the spider's legs out of his chest.
"Godsend!" Merlin yelled.
"Expensive one!" Sheral snapped back.
Merlin caught the guard before it landed and slammed it into the wall.
Its shell cracked.
He hit it against the stone again.
The other two went for Jane and Zach.
Zach froze the moving earth beneath the first, breaking up the wave carrying it. Jane's roots caught the second around its body and dragged it sideways into its companion.
They struggled against each other, legs digging into the ice.
This was where we spent our mana.
The boss fight.
I could be annoyed about the cost later.
The fourth guard stayed beside the Matron.
It pressed its front legs against her damaged armor.
Stone crawled from the floor, up its limbs, and over the wound around the lance.
"She's healing!" I shouted.
"The shell," Jane said. "Look at the shell!"
She was right.
The hole underneath hadn't closed.
The guard was trying to cover it.
"Crack that bitch!"
Jane drove her staff forward.
Roots erupted beside the Matron, twisting into a thick shoulder and a single massive wooden arm.
No whole Ent this time.
Just the bit she needed.
The fist hit the end of the lance like she was driving a nail.
The Matron screamed and lurched away from the guard repairing her, and their connection broke.
At the same time, the ground beneath Jane softened; her boot sank; then her whole leg.
One of the trapped guards had stopped trying to pull itself free and It's forelegs were pressed flat against the floor.
"Jane!"
I wrapped a chain around her waist and hauled her backward.
She came free with a gasp, though it came at the cost of her construct.
Sheral dropped a barrier around the two rooted guards, forcing their bodies closer together.
Zach formed two narrow drills of ice, and Merlin held them against the exposed gaps behind the spiders' armored heads.
The scraping sound was fucking awful.
I looked away long enough to catch the guard Merlin had thrown into the wall.
It was trying to stand, but there wasent a chance in hell i'd let it.
Forming a chain I yank its damaged shell open.
Zach is quick to send a lance my way to finish the job.
The fourth guard hurried toward the Matron again.
Jane caught it with the remains of her roots.
It tried to drag the growth along with it, but I anchored a chain behind its body.
For a second it hung between the two.
Then Merlin shoved it onto its back.
Zach didn't waste the opening.
Four.
That was all four.
The Matron turned toward us.
The broken end of the ice lance still stuck out of her side.
Her legs slipped once on Zach's ice.
Then she caught the stone beneath it.
She came straight at Merlin.
Webbing burst around her.
Sheral blocked the first shot.
A second tore through the weakened edge of her barrier.
Then white filled the passage.
Something hit my chest.
I left the floor, struck the wall, and lost the breath I had been about to use for a warning.
Silk stretched across my coat and pinned my left arm against my side.
Across from me, Zach hit the stone almost as hard.
Jane got one hand in front of herself before another sheet caught her.
Merlin was still standing in the middle of the passage.
Waiting.
The Matron lowered her body, but he lifted himself out of the way at the last possible second.
I expected her to turn.
She didn't.
She kept going.
Behind where Merlin had been standing, thick white strands ran across a cracked stone support.
I had seen them when we came through.
I hadn't thought anything of them.
The Matron hit it with everything she had left.
The support broke.
Her body folded against the stone, and an experience notification chimed.
Then a louder sound swallowed it, as the ceiling shifted.
For a second I could see the whole upper seam of the passage moving.
"She's dropping it!" Sheral shouted.
Jane's roots pushed between my coat and the wall.
The silk stretched.
Zach sent frost crawling through it from the other side.
I pulled.
The frozen strands cracked, and my arm came free.
Merlin tore the remaining webbing away from us with one sharp movement.
A boulder hit the floor where Jane had been pinned, and we all started running.
Merlin caught a broad slab falling from the ceiling and forced it flat above us.
"Under me!"
More stone struck it.
His feet scraped backward.
I sent chains across the passage, catching broken sections of ceiling and fastening them to whatever still looked solid.
Most only bought us a second.
A second was enough to get underneath.
Jane grew roots through the cracks. Zach froze them into place, binding stone to wood while Sheral kept a small shield angled against the fragments coming through.
Nothing we made lasted long.
Behind us, supports broke one after another.
The Matron hadn't just found a wall to run into.
They'd prepared this.
Of course they had.
We followed the passage toward her abandoned nesting chamber.
Pale light shone from the exit beyond it.
I could see where we needed to go.
I just couldn't see much floor that wasn't being covered in falling fucking rocks.
A boulder landed ahead of us.
I chained it to the wall and pulled it sideways.
Another landed behind it.
My mana dropped again.
I really should have drunk that potion.
"Move!" Merlin shouted.
The slab above him dipped.
He pushed it back up, face tight with the effort.
A portal would have solved quite a few problems.
I didn't have the mana left to open one wide enough for this.
I had chains.
That was going to have to be enough.
We stumbled into the nesting chamber.
Broken eggs and empty webbing covered the floor. Whatever fight the Matron had originally prepared here didn't matter anymore.
The exit stood on the far side.
The stone around its frame held still while the rest of the room shook.
Merlin made it three more steps.
"Can't—"
The slab dropped.
He shoved it sideways with the last of his hold.
We scattered as it hit, the impact throwing dust and fragments across the room.
Something struck Sheral's shoulder.
Her coat flashed.
Jane caught her before she fell.
The ceiling above them split.
I attached five chains to the stone around the exit.
One around each of us.
I didn't have time to explain.
I pulled, and my feet left the ground.
The chain tightened around my torso, snapping me forward hard enough to make my vision darken at the edges.
Stone passed beneath me.
Then the doorway.
Then I hit the floor on the other side and slid.
Four more impacts followed.
The crash behind us was so loud I felt it through the ground.
For a while, all I could hear was ringing.
Then the system added its own.
[Dungeon Cleared: Spider Queen's Abode]
[Difficulty: Legendary]
[First-Clear Reward Secured]
[Legendary Item: Matron's Cradle]
[Access Unlocked: Spider Queen's Sanctuary]
I stared at the messages.
Then I counted.
Merlin was on his back.
Zach lay beside him, coughing into his sleeve.
Jane was kneeling next to Sheral.
And I was here.
We had gotten out.
[Matron's Cradle]
[Intermediate (4) | Legendary Quality]
[Requires Level 40]
[Slot: Trinket]
[+28 Intelligence, +18 Willpower, +10 Body]
[A hollow stone pendant suspended on braided, mineralized silk. Something warm moves beneath its amber surface.]
[Active — Cradlebound]
[Store one fully formed creature you personally summoned by maintaining contact with it for five uninterrupted seconds.]
[The stored summon becomes dormant, requiring no upkeep. Its remaining duration is paused. Injuries and spent abilities are preserved; storage does not heal or refresh it.]
[Reactivate to release the summon instantly into an unoccupied space within five metres. Its normal duration and upkeep resume upon release.]
[Release Cost: 100 Mana]
[Release Cooldown: 10 Minutes]
[Capacity: One summon]
[The summon must fit within the chosen space. Its original summoning cost is not refunded.]
["A mother's first spell is a place to keep them safe."]