[
[Stats][Magic][Inventory][Skills][Help]
Name: Tero
Inventory:
1x Frostbough Conductor Staff
1x Tidebound Leygate Staff
1x Frostbough Camping Kit
1x Frostbough Field Repair Roll
17x Snowheart Hunter's Stew
15x Clearbough Tea
20x Bluecap Mana Draught
20x Bluecap Mana Draught
20x Bluecap Mana Draught
20x Bluecap Mana Draught
10x Snowheart Mending Draught
10x Ironleaf Antitoxin
13x High Quality Mapping Parchment
1x High Quality Pen
1x Compass
]
[
[Stats][Magic][Inventory][Skills][Help]
Name: Merlin
Guild: The High Order
Rank: Magister
Level: 46
Class: Adventurer 10, Telekinetic Mage 10, Kinetic Adept 20, Kinetic Warden 6
Strength: 14+4
Body: 35+32
Agility: 12+8
Dexterity: 10+8
Intelligence: 120+124
Willpower: 32+42
Charisma: 12
Stat points: 0
]
"Hey, Tero. Time to get up!"
Sheral was beating on my tent.
"Mhm… Fine."
I slowly worked my way out from under the fur blanket and stretched.
The biggest problem with all this new gear was that it was too fucking comfortable.
It easily outdid anything I'd owned on Earth. Probably anything I could have afforded to own, too.
I pulled the blanket back over my legs for a moment.
"Tero."
"I'm getting up!"
Apparently she knew me a little too well.
Getting outside, I could see about fifteen other tents around the camp.
A few tents were still closed, and some people had apparently decided that having their own didn't mean they needed to sleep in it.
Fair enough.
Fighting and working this closely with people could turn romantic pretty quickly.
I decided that was enough thinking about other people's relationships for the morning.
Packing everything away took a while. The tent had come out of its bundle pretty easily, but getting it back into the same amount of space felt like a separate profession.
By the time I finished, most people had at least started.
"Good morning, Sheral. You sleep well?"
A yawn caught me halfway through.
"Good enough. No matter what pad I get, my back always hurts."
"Have you considered that it might be your age and not the pad?"
"Don't make me smack you."
She smacked my shoulder.
"The hell? You can't threaten me and do it!"
"I just did. How you gonna explain that?"
"I'm going to say you're a very rude woman."
She laughed, then glanced toward the fire.
"Since you decided to go to sleep instead of talking last night, I'll catch you up. Some people don't want to do Legendary for the next one."
"Yah… That's fair. What about us?"
"Jane came back over after you went to bed. Nobody's asked to change, but you should still ask them yourself."
"Great."
"You're our guildmaster, Tero."
"I know."
"Then suck it up, buttercup."
She patted my back and started walking.
Near the fire, Mara was trying to scrape something white off her boot with a tent peg.
Dorian sat beside her, holding a cup in both hands. Nessa was already packed, with her staff resting across her knees.
All three looked up when I approached.
"So," I said. "Sheral told me about the difficulty."
"We're dropping it," Mara said.
She scraped the boot again.
"I'd like to say Epic, but I want to hear everyone's answer once they've eaten."
"Okay."
Her eyes came up.
"Okay?"
"Yah. Go as low as you feel comfortable with."
She stopped scraping.
"Oh. I had a whole argument ready."
"I can disagree if you want."
"No, this is better."
Dorian smiled into his cup.
"We're thinking Elite," he said. "There were a few points yesterday where we were surviving because somebody else hadn't run out yet. I don't want that to be our whole plan."
"Fair."
"Vera wanted to apologize to you about it."
That felt a little worse.
"She doesn't need to."
"I told her."
Nessa leaned forward.
"We can do Legendary if we get somewhere to prepare. If the next place makes us keep moving, we'll have a problem."
"Sera's arrays?"
"Everyone's, really. Sera and Orin need time. Bram needs room. Elara needs us to stop finding new ways to get hurt."
"So what are you thinking?"
"Epic. Then we find out what the place actually does."
I nodded.
Part of me still wanted all four groups to come out with Legendary clears.
Matching gear. Matching achievements. Twenty people nobody could dismiss.
But that was easy to want while somebody else was doing the dying part.
"Just get through," I said. "We still need everyone for the raid."
Mara finally pried the little lump of silk off her boot.
"There. Two problems solved."
"Was I one of them?"
"You were the cleaner one."
"Lovely."
By the time everyone finished packing, the fire had burned down to a low orange glow.
I stood before the webbed-over door of the mage tower and looked back at my four teammates.
"Legendary again, right? We're sure?"
"Yah, of course," Zach said. "You saw that drop, right? Shit was BIS for Jane."
Best in slot.
A term that worked a little better when you had a catalog of every item that existed.
Which would actually be a pretty fun thing to make.
Probably a massive pain in the ass, but still.
"No doubt," Merlin said. "Instant big tree is a pretty good upgrade."
"It is," Jane said.
Her hand briefly touched the stone pendant beneath her collar.
Then she looked at me.
"I'm good with Legendary."
I nodded, trying not to put more meaning into the answer than was there.
"Sheral?"
"I heard you the first time. I'm ready."
"Okay. Let's do this again…"
I stepped through the entrance.
Immediately, I was on edge.
Webs ran everywhere.
That wasn't new, but the mana moving through them was.
It passed beneath my boots in thin, overlapping streams. Up the walls. Across the ceiling. Through knots of silk so dense I couldn't see what they were attached to.
Ahead stood an empty chamber with passages branching away in several directions.
Ambush points.
Obviously.
I started extending a leyline along the wall, keeping it close enough to pull back if anything—
"Please."
I stopped.
The voice was faint.
It hadn't come through my ears.
"Come."
My leyline had brushed one of the strands.
I pulled it away.
Silence.
"Tero?" Merlin asked.
I touched the strand again.
"I don't have much time."
The words didn't sound English. They didn't sound like anything I knew.
But somehow I understood them.
"Can you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"A voice."
Merlin's expression tightened.
"Not the time, man."
"I'm serious."
Golden light passed over me.
[Blessing of Clarity]
Sheral stepped closer.
"Still hearing it?"
I waited.
"Please."
"…Yah."
"What's it saying?"
"It wants me to come to it."
Nobody looked particularly excited about that.
"Of course it does," Zach muttered.
I followed the strand with my eyes.
The mana moving through it was uneven. A heavy pulse, then almost nothing. Then another pulse arriving from several directions at once.
It felt wrong.
Or maybe just unfamiliar.
I didn't know enough to tell the difference.
"I think it's coming through the web."
"Could be a trap," Merlin said.
"Yah."
I stepped into the chamber.
The spiders were waiting on both sides.
Pale bodies pressed against the walls. Long legs hooked into the silk overhead.
One stood almost directly above the entrance.
My shield came up before I finished looking at it.
But nothing attacked.
A spider to my left lowered one leg.
Stopped.
Lifted it again.
Farther along the wall, another pulled against its own webbing hard enough to make the strands shake.
"Guys," Zach said quietly.
"I see them."
They were watching us.
Every single one.
But something was holding them back.
"Quickly," the voice whispered.
I started moving.
Merlin caught my shoulder.
"Stay beside me."
You best believe I wasn't going to argue.
We crossed the chamber together, Sheral close behind us while Jane and Zach watched the walls.
A spider's jaws opened as we passed.
Then closed.
I could hear its legs scraping against the stone.
"Left."
The voice broke apart for a moment.
"False wall."
The next room looked like a loom hall.
Frames stood in long rows, some upright, others collapsed beneath the weight of their own silk. White thread hung between them in loose sheets.
Everything looked abandoned.
Everything except the spiders.
"Merlin. That wall."
I pointed with my staff.
He looked at the wall, then at me.
"You sure?"
"No."
"Love that."
He raised his hand.
"Everyone back a bit."
The blast tore through the stone.
Dust rolled over the nearest looms.
Something huge moved behind it.
[First Daughter]
[Level: 45]
[Legendary]
She was massive.
Thin, long-legged, and white enough that Sheral's light almost hurt to look at against her shell.
One foreleg dragged across the floor.
The others were folded tightly beneath her body, holding her low in the broken chamber.
I raised my staff.
Then she looked at me.
Not at the movement.
At me.
I knew that look.
I had seen it in Merlin's eyes. In Sheral's. In the people at the beastman village.
"You…"
Zach stopped beside me.
"She's real?"
Nobody answered him.
One of her legs jerked toward us.
Merlin's hand came up.
But before he cast, she drove the limb down into the stone beside herself.
It cracked.
She held it there, shaking.
"Stay… there."
Jane stepped past my shoulder.
"Are you hurt?"
"Jane," Merlin said.
"I'm not going under her."
Green light gathered around her staff.
A thin root crossed the floor toward the First Daughter.
The spider watched it approach.
Then, slowly, she lifted another leg out of its path.
I couldn't stop looking at it.
Jane's healing reached her.
The First Daughter made a sound that pulled every muscle in my back tight.
Jane immediately cut the spell.
"Did that hurt? Tell me what happened."
"I am dying."
Her voice came through the silk beneath us.
This time everyone reacted.
Sheral moved beside Jane.
"Where? Is it your body?"
"We are all dying."
Several threads snapped overhead.
Behind us, a spider dropped from the ceiling.
Zach turned.
Ice formed around his staff, but the spider only struck the ground and stayed there, its legs pulling in different directions.
"My children…"
The First Daughter's jaws worked.
"No. No, stay."
The fallen spider went still.
Merlin glanced between them.
"She's holding them."
"How long?" Sheral asked.
The First Daughter didn't answer.
I pushed a little more mana into the strand.
For a moment, something pressed back.
Too many movements.
The same movement.
A leg rising in places I couldn't see.
I ripped the connection away before I understood what I was feeling.
"Visions," she said.
Her body shuddered.
"Splits. We are not one."
Splits.
Layers?
I looked at the threads running out of the chamber.
"How many?" I asked. "How many of you are there?"
"Tero," Sheral said.
"My mind…"
The First Daughter dragged her trapped leg out of the stone.
Then forced it back down.
"Mother is gone."
Jane moved closer.
"What do we need to do?"
The spider's eyes followed her.
For a moment her whole body stopped shaking.
"Below."
Jane looked down.
"The looms. White eggs."
I glanced back toward the hall.
"Take them."
A sharp crack sounded from the First Daughter's foreleg.
She had driven it so far into the floor that the shell was splitting.
"Before they wake."
"Okay," Jane said quickly. "We can do that. What about you?"
The spider's eyes shifted toward me.
Then past me.
Then back.
"Please."
"We heard you," Sheral said. "We're going to help them."
"Don't let…"
Her leg came free.
Merlin pulled Jane backward.
The limb struck the place where she had been standing.
Stone burst across the floor.
Sheral's barrier caught the fragments.
The First Daughter recoiled.
For a second I thought she was going to apologize.
I don't know why.
Maybe because she looked like she wanted to.
"Children…"
The word barely came through.
Behind us, Zach took a step closer.
"The little ones are moving."
I could hear them.
Feet finding the floor.
Bodies pulling free of the walls.
Every direction we had walked past.
Jane raised her staff again.
"Wait. Stay with us."
The First Daughter's eyes found her.
The same woman she had moved her leg for.
The same woman trying to help her.
Then something changed.
I couldn't have explained it if someone gave me a year.
The eyes were still there. Still watching. Still intelligent enough to follow Jane's movement and the glow of her spell.
But the person looking through them was gone.
The mana in the web stopped stuttering.
Every strand pulled tight.
The First Daughter rose.
Behind us, the spiders started coming.
She was gone.
What remained was the boss of this dungeon.
And every mob we hadn't killed.