Jane moved first.
Roots tore beneath the nearest loom, lifting a bundle of white eggs out of the silk.
At the same time, she grabbed her trinket.
The Ent appeared between the clutch and the incoming spells.
Its first movement was to raise an arm.
Mana bolts struck the wood hard enough to send splinters across the room.
They weren't aiming at us.
"They're attacking the eggs!" Jane yelled. "Protect them!"
Growth curled around the clutch, forming a thick wooden cradle.
A golden wall flashed beside Jane's head.
The lance that hit it shattered inches from her face.
These spiders knew how to cast.
And they knew it wouldn't take much.
Across the chamber, the First Daughter pulled herself free of the broken stone. Her injured leg dragged for a step before she started putting weight on it again.
She didn't look at the eggs.
She looked at Jane.
"Merlin!"
"I see her!"
A wave of force hit the First Daughter sideways, pushing her behind a row of looms.
She caught herself on the wall.
The smaller spiders didn't wait.
Three Carapace Guards charged straight at us, their armored bodies almost scraping together. Smaller spiders clung to their backs, spell circles already forming between their raised forelegs.
[Silverthread Weaver]
"Oh, fuck that."
Merlin drove the Guards into the floor.
I chained them there.
Their stop was abrupt enough to throw the Weavers off their backs and straight toward us.
Which apparently suited them just fine.
The spell circles stayed.
Fire.
Ice.
Something green and bubbling.
Merlin caught the spiders in midair, but that didn't stop them casting.
I formed a shield directly in front of the nearest circle.
Acid struck it and splashed back over the Weaver.
Its legs folded inward.
That one could deal with its own fucking spell.
Merlin threw the rest into the wall.
Behind us, Zach was building ice around Jane's wooden cradle. He left space between it and the eggs, layering the outside into a thick, sloped shell.
Sheral enclosed him in gold as another volley came through the doorway.
The Ent took a lumbering step forward.
One of the Guards had almost pulled free of my chains.
Almost.
The Ent's fist came down.
All three disappeared beneath it.
A fine spray hit the floor around its hand.
"What the fuck," Zach breathed.
Then he turned and sent a line of ice lances into the spiders coming through the entrance.
He wasn't waiting for clean killing shots.
A lance through a leg was good enough.
Through the side was better.
Moving with several feet of ice sticking out of you was a major pain in the ass, and right now we mostly needed them to stop moving toward the eggs.
The First Daughter climbed across the wall.
Merlin shoved a broken loom into her path.
She went over it.
Threads shot from her forelegs and caught the Ent across its shoulders.
More followed from the Weavers.
Dozens.
Then so many I stopped trying to count.
I caught a bundle with a chain and pulled, but others were already passing around its legs.
The Ent was too fucking big.
Everywhere we blocked, there was another piece of it they could reach.
Jane sent it forward.
It tore a loom out of the floor and dragged two Guards with it.
Then the cocoon lit red.
Fire ran through the strands.
The smell of burning wood filled the chamber.
Jane's face tightened.
"Get it off him!"
Merlin caught the silk around its shoulders.
I started pulling at the bindings around its knees.
Then the temperature dropped.
Hard.
My next breath hurt.
Frost spread over my sleeve before I even turned toward Zach.
He stood beside the eggs with both hands braced around his staff.
A spell circle was spreading beneath his boots.
"Oh, come on…"
Gold closed around me.
Then Merlin.
Then Jane.
[Greater Mass Blessing of Protection]
"You have to say something, nimrod!" Sheral shouted.
Zach didn't answer.
He was too busy holding the spell together.
Across the room, the silk started freezing.
Strands snapped beneath the weight of the spiders hanging from them. A Weaver fell from the ceiling and broke a leg on the floor.
The red glow around the Ent dimmed.
Merlin ripped the brittle cocoon open.
What stepped out barely looked like Jane's summon anymore.
Half its head was gone. One arm dragged uselessly, shedding charcoal with every movement.
It still put itself between the spiders and the eggs.
Then the First Daughter hit it.
Her forelegs punched into the burned wood.
The Ent staggered.
Jane raised her staff, but before she could do anything, its chest split.
Roots spilled across the floor.
"Shit."
Green light spread beneath my feet.
A little shoot had grown inside Sheral's bubble, and the sting in my fingers started easing.
Jane was healing us.
At the same time, thicker roots were gathering behind her.
Another Ent.
Two spells at once, while she kept glancing at the eggs.
It was risky, but as long as her bubble held…
The Guards changed direction.
Three went around the ruined summon.
Straight toward Jane.
The first hit her barrier with its whole body.
Gold flashed.
Then a Weaver's shot struck the same place.
And another.
They were going to crack it.
"No."
I expanded my mana.
It was something I knew was dangerous.
Putting that much of myself into the room meant giving everything in it a chance to reach back.
But I could feel the Guards.
Feel the mana moving inside them.
And I was better.
I had to be.
I pushed past the edges of their bodies and pulled.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then something pulled back.
My stomach clenched.
It wasn't like lifting something too heavy. It felt like somebody had grabbed a part of me I wasn't supposed to be able to feel.
If I lost this, I wasn't getting bitten.
I was getting taken apart.
I narrowed the spell.
Just the Guards.
Just the three about to break through Jane's defense.
Then I pulled harder.
One stopped moving.
Its legs stayed planted against the gold while its body slowly lowered.
The next twisted toward me.
I felt the resistance give.
Mana rushed into me.
But it wasn't just mana.
Something held together inside it.
Something that struggled to stay together as I dragged it through the connection.
I could have stopped.
For a fraction of a second, I knew that.
Then it came apart.
The relief was immediate.
My thoughts cleared. The strain behind my eyes vanished. Mana filled the places I had emptied and kept coming.
The third Guard fell.
I took a breath.
God.
It felt good.
Jane's barrier stopped flickering.
Behind her, the new Ent's shoulders started taking shape.
It worked.
I reached for the next spider.
Then I saw Sheral.
She was staring at me.
Her mouth had opened a little.
Not surprise.
I knew what surprise looked like on her.
This was something else.
My mana drew closer to my body.
I cast a chain.
Then another.
A Guard running toward us got pulled sideways into a Weaver. Merlin caught them both and slammed them into the floor.
Zach dropped his cold spell and started throwing lances again.
I kept casting.
Chains from the walls.
Chains from the floor.
Anything moving forward got tied to something trying to cast behind it.
It worked.
We were doing fine.
I just needed Sheral to stop looking at me like that.
A golden panel caught an ice lance beside her.
She turned to block it.
Then looked back.
Fuck.
I wanted to explain.
I didn't even know what I was going to explain.
The Guard hit me from behind.
Pain tore through my thigh, and my knee struck the floor.
At almost the same moment, silk caught Sheral across the shoulder.
She jerked sideways.
More wrapped around her staff.
"Watch what you're doing!" Zach shouted.
A thin blade of ice cut through the threads nearest her neck.
Merlin pulled the rest apart.
I was still on the floor.
The Guard's jaws worked against my leg, trying to find a better hold.
Another came around my other side.
Too close.
All of it was too fucking close.
I formed a fist of mana beneath the first Guard.
Then I gave it far more than it needed.
The impact ripped it off me and threw it into the ceiling.
Stone cracked around its shell.
It stayed there.
I chained the second one to the floor.
Then added more chains.
And more.
I stopped when I heard it crack under the pressure.
Behind Jane, the new Ent finally stood.
Its arm swept across the entrance, knocking spiders into the wall while Merlin dragged Sheral back toward us.
The First Daughter dropped from above.
The Ent caught her.
Wood bent beneath the impact.
Jane staggered.
I could see more spiders behind them.
More spell circles.
More silk.
I looked at my mana.
It was above what should have been full.
I checked again.
Still there.
Whatever I had taken hadn't stopped when I ran out of room for it.
Better than a potion.
Better than every potion I had ever…
I raised my staff.
Magic Missile.
The same spell I had been using almost since the beginning.
I had spent so much time working on it that each bolt only cost me a single mana now.
So I made a hundred.
Then another hundred.
The first wave hit the spiders around the entrance.
The next went higher, following the Weavers trying to climb above the Ent.
Blue-white light filled the room.
The first missiles broke legs.
The ones behind them struck the exposed bodies.
I didn't wait to see what died.
I kept casting.
Through the leylines along the walls.
From above the broken looms.
Anywhere I could get a clear angle that didn't pass through my friends.
A Weaver formed a shield.
The first few missiles broke against it.
The next few broke through.
I laughed.
Just once.
The sound barely reached me beneath the impacts.
The First Daughter pushed against Jane's Ent.
I turned the next wave toward her.
Missiles struck her damaged foreleg, then the joint above it.
Hundreds and hundreds of them.
The Ent tightened its grip.
Merlin shoved her body sideways.
Zach put a lance into the exposed gap beneath her head.
I sent more missiles after it.
So many that I couldn't see the wound anymore.
Stone chipped behind her.
The silk holding the nearest loom snapped.
Everything was glowing.
I didn't have to make a better spell.
I didn't have to find some brilliant answer.
I could just keep going.
And that felt…
My eyes caught Sheral again.
I stopped forming the next wave.
The missiles already in flight kept hitting.
Then those sounds stopped too.
My mana had fallen back to around half.
I had cast over ten thousand.
More than I should have been able to afford.
The First Daughter hung in the Ent's grip.
One leg moved against its arm.
Then went still.
Nobody spoke.
I could hear ice cracking.
Little pieces of wood settling.
My own breathing.
A surviving spider dragged itself out from beneath a broken loom.
I felt for it.
The movement was almost automatic.
Reach.
Pull.
Feel that again.
I cut the connection before it touched.
No.
My hand was shaking around the staff.
I had consumed them.
Not drained them.
Not taken some spare mana they weren't going to need.
Souls.
And for a moment, all I had cared about was how good it felt.
Jane checked the eggs.
Zach looked from the First Daughter to me.
Merlin was still holding his hand up, watching the entrances.
Sheral walked toward me.
"I'm sorry."
"...Huh?" Zach said.
Sheral stopped a few feet away.
"Tero…"
"I had to. They were going to break through."
Jane looked up.
I couldn't look at her.
"It was essential."
"Tero."
There wasn't any anger in the way she said it.
I almost wished there was.
"I'm sorry."
She looked down at the three Guards.
Then back at me.
I waited for her to say something.
Tell me what I had done.
Tell me it was okay.
Anything.
Instead, she came closer and wrapped her arms around me.
Carefully, because I was still kneeling on a bleeding leg.
I leaned into her.
She didn't say it was okay.
I held on anyway.
[First Daughter's Heartspool]
[Requires Level 45]
[Slot: Trinket]
[+30 Intelligence, +20 Willpower, +10 Body]
[A slender ivory spindle wound with silver silk. Five loose threads drift toward nearby sources of mana, their tips glowing faintly.]
[Active — Shared Thread]
[Connect the wearer and up to four willing allies within 20 meters through a web of silver mana threads. Each participant may transfer their own mana to another connected participant at a rate of up to 200 Mana per second.]
[Transfers are voluntary and cannot exceed the recipient's maximum mana. Each participant controls when they give mana and may leave the connection at any time.]
[Threads break if a participant moves beyond 20 meters of the wearer or the connecting strand is severed. Broken connections cannot be restored during the same activation.]
[Activation Cost: 200 Mana]
[Activation Cooldown: 5 minutes]
[Duration: 1 minute]
["What one could no longer carry, the others held."]