My words proving immediately prophetic, the spider arched up and pointed its spinneret at us. A viscous white mass flew towards me and the casters. We were fucked. Stephanie might have been able to dodge, but Claudia wouldn’t be able to continue channeling and safely move. I leaped forward into the oncoming webs with as much strength as I could, hoping that my momentum would eat away some of the web’s. Hitting the web was like hitting a gelatinous wall, but I was successful, if only barely. Unfortunately, that also meant I anchored to the ground and tangled up in a sticky glob of webs.

  “Burn it down,” I shouted. Stephanie rushed to me and started pulling at some of the fibers of the webs to disentangle me. “It’s fine. Do you have flint?” She nodded and rushed through her things, trying to pull her flint from her bag. “Just spark it with your knife on the webs. It should catch—OH FUCK HOT.” The pain was intense, but the worst was over in a flash—a very bright, very hot, flash. Just as quickly as the pain came, Stephanie’s healing magic entered my body and started to soothe the pain away. Thankfully, my clothing didn’t catch, so I only had 2nd degree burns on my hands and in a couple of places on my face. I doubted any of it would scar once she was done with the healing.

  As I was being healed, Claudia finished her preparations and let loose a massive stream of flame that slowly tightened and condensed into a hotter and brighter flame. We had to shield our eyes, and my raw skin didn’t care much for the additional heat, but it slowed the spider down. “Bill! We’re up!” I picked my sword up off the ground from the ashes of the webs and held it by the blade for a mordhau. I dashed off towards the same spot Claudia hit with her ice earlier and was currently bathing in her fire stream.

  Seeing my approach, Claudia shifted the stream of flames to the face of the spider. Bill and I arrived at roughly the same moment, with him leading me by several paces. He swung down hard with both hands on his warhammer, the shield nowhere in sight. He bounced off, but I would swear I had a faint crack. Or it was just my wishful thinking. I stepped in behind and, with an overhead swing, brought the crossguard down where his warhammer hit only a moment before—and it sank into the chitin. I ripped it back out, flipped the sword back to hold it from the hilt again, and thrust deeply up into the hole I created.

  “Jack lookout!” A leg caught me in the side and sent me flying several feet before I hit the ground and rolled to a stop. I dropped my sword somewhere during the tumble, but pulled myself up to my knees and tried to shake the cobwebs from my head after that hit. I could feel the mana around me tremble ominously. I didn’t think; I just dove to the left and rolled.

  “Jack!”

  “Shoot it again,” I yelled back. I was on my feet now, and I definitely had the attention of the spider. Four, or five maybe, of its eyes stared me down. It was preparing to lunge at me again, mouth first, probably, and me without a weapon or a shield. I started strafing slowly, trying to keep my weight balanced so I could react and move quickly and not be caught flatfooted. It dove. I dove. I dodged the fangs, but I crashed into its stupid face, barely hanging onto the knife I managed to lodge into an eye. It tried to buck me off, but it couldn’t get enough leverage with its movements to shake my hold of the knife loose. The knife was another story, and I felt it slipping further and further out. Rather than risk being flung, I braced my feet against its face and pushed off. As soon as I landed, I felt that same ominous tremble coming from my left, so I dove forward and to the right. One of the forelegs crashed down from the left where I was. When I popped back up, I saw the light of Claudia’s firestream glinting off something on the ground. I ran through its legs to what I hoped was my sword.

  Guided by the faint tremblings I felt in the mana, I continued my diving and weaving, finally reaching my sword. Bill managed to get its attention back during my scramble for my weapon. I picked my sword up, spun around, and charged back towards the wound I gave it last time. Claudia was still firing bursts of her condensed firestream to superheat and dry out the spider’s chitin, making it brittle enough for us to puncture in other places—a fact Bill was taking advantage of with the pick end of his warhammer.

  I reached my initial hole and aimed the apex of my cut to hit it. The blade caught and tore into the chitin, viscous fluids leaking onto the ground. I jumped backwards to dodge a leg, then stepped back in for another cut. Bill, the spider, and I danced like this for 5 minutes with Claudia continuing to harry it with her flames, and Stephanie keeping us refreshed, and eventually the spider wobbled and dropped to the ground.

  “Is it dead?” Stephanie asked.

  “It is now,” Bill said with the thuds of his hammer on the spider’s head punctuating each word. The legs slowly drew in where possible.

  Just like its smaller non-magical cousins, I suppose.

  I sat on the ground, leaning up against its abdomen. “I fucking hate spiders. So, so gods damned much,” I said.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “Why are you leaning against it, then?”

  “Because fuck her. Or him. It. It’s dead. This is the equivalent of me expressing my supreme manliness and placing my foot on its dead body, or something idk. But fuck this thing.” Stephanie’s musical giggle broke me from my closed-eye reverie, and slowly all of us laughed. It was one of those exhausted fits of laughter, a mixture of disbelief and relief.

  “This big bitch was easily peak orange,” said Bill. “Well done us. I almost called for a retreat a couple of times there.”

  “No lie, if it weren’t one huge spider and instead tens of large ones, I would have pushed for us to get out of the cave and pop a flare,” I responded.

  Bill snorted, “You and me both.”

  I took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly, “Alright, let’s extract the fangs and venom glands at the very least. I don’t have the tools to extract the silk without it sticking to everything, but if anyone else does, I’m willing to try.” A round of head shakes was the answer. “Alright, just the fangs and glands then.”

  ?

  *****

  “Killing a peak ‘orange’ beasty while you’re ‘red’ is a pretty good feat, cacciolo. I know I asked during your story earlier, but red is the initial stage, C for us, right?”

  “Yeah, that resonance you showed me for “C” mana matched red mana. Sounded the same, too.” At that, both Chiara and Fiametta turned to look at me briefly before turning back to keep their eyes on the path.

  “We’re here. We should be seeing—-there they are,” Fiametta said and waved her hand overhead. Faster than I could track, a woman in full plate appeared next to Fiametta.

  “Capitana Fiametta,” said the newcomer.

  “Sergenta Giulia, at ease. The principessa sent us to escort Signor Wright. He’s the one who came through the godsway and is from the city that… crashed.”

  “Sergenta,” I started, but was interrupted by a sharp intake of breath by the sergenta.

  “You brought a man here, Capitana? It is not safe!”

  “Excuse me, but I’ll be fine. More importantly—”

  “I don’t think you understand, , but we’re next to of the .” That got a reaction from Fiametta.

  “Any sightings of undead?”

  “Negative, Capitana.”

  “Fiametta, my fiancée. Please.” Fiametta turned to me, her expression hidden behind her helmet. I held her gaze, I think, for several seconds before she sighed.

  “Sergenta, we’re looking for a woman with darker blonde hair; she’d be wearing a blue dress with a white underskirt, both likely tattered. She’s a D mage with a specialization in healing, so it’s likely she could have survived the impact and healed herself. Any other distinguishing features, Signor Wright?”

  “She has a birthmark on her inner left thigh, but that’s unlikely to be visible.”

  The sergenta thought briefly before shaking her head. “No, we haven’t seen anyone matching that description yet.” Just as she finished, a red flare shot into the air, exploded, crackled, and released a cloud of red colored smoke.

  “Danger. Capitana, do we have your assistance?”

  “No, I need—”

  “Yes, you have our assistance.”

  “Signor Wright!”

  “My fiancée is still out there! Possibly dying!” I screamed at her. “I’m not leaving until I see a body.” I dug my heels into the horse and urged her forward towards the smoke signal.

  “Follow him!”

  All around us was rubble from the island. It proved to be uneven footing for the horse, so I hopped off and channeled mana through my reaction and toughness tattoos, then shaped the strength and speed spell manually and pushed all the excess mana I had into it. Stephanie was close. I could feel it. I had to save her from whatever was at that smoke signal. I climbed over the debris of a fallen building and jumped down into a clearing where two women in full plate were fighting several I-don’t-know-whats. Some kind of undead was all I could be sure of. They had more dexterity than a standard zombie. In fact, if someone told me they fought with the same weapon skill they had in life, I’d believe it.

  “Coming in on your right,” I said as I flanked one of the Risen. I summoned my sword from my ring, and in a rising slash from behind it, took its three quarters of its head. Fiametta, Chiara, and Orsa were right behind, taking up positions around me.

  “Status report,” Fiammetta barked.

  “Yes, Capitana, we were just ambushed while checking what looked to be an administrative building,” said one of the women while pointing to an adventurer’s guild branch building—the rubble of one, anyway.

  “Alright, we’ll help clear this out and continue a push into the heart of the debris.”

  Orsa dashed off by herself to engage the enemies. If a wild beast were given armor and a sword, I’d say it could do a pretty good Orsa impression. She was incredible to behold. Just steel, mana, and ferocity. Fiametta moved to engage the new Risen I had moved on to. Chiara was close by, flinging stone lances at the heads of the Risen as they clambered over the debris into our clearing.

  “Capitana,” Giulia started, “If we stay like this, we’ll quickly get overrun.”

  “Get behind me,” was all the reply Fiametta gave as she moved from the window’s guard to the woman’s guard. I could feel a huge surge of mana and then the familiar resonance of the cleave spell being activated, though it was slightly different. Fiametta swung her sword, and like harvesting wheat, she cut. The entire wave of Risen that had entered the clearing was bisected, and for the first time since I met her, I felt genuinely anxious about the situation I found myself in. The density and purity of mana used in that spell were something from a blue core. The sublime violence in its reverberations was less a threat and more a promise that I was so far out of my depth the water pressure would crush me before I could swim to the surface. And this was one of many captains of the royal guards. I couldn’t help but wonder, ‘How strong is the Principessa?’ Fiametta did a small flourish after the bodies fell to the ground.

  “We move forward.” She marched on, and I quickly trailed behind her.