Chapter 28 #2
Your Strength has risen from 16 to 17
Grave Concordat rose to the occasion, and a second later, even as the giant corpse toppled to the ground, a jet-black Servitor of equal size and power appeared by Harald’s side.
Harald turned slowly to look at the remaining enemies over his shoulder, and smiled.
* * *
To Harald’s delight, Eclavistra’s Endowment expanded the number of Shadow Servitors he could bind to his Cosmos. Thus, when he’d finished resting and absorbing the nine Aurora Veils he’d harvested from the dead, he set forth with Shadowpaw, the Gauntlet Golem, and his three new thralls in tow.
The large, tower-shield bearing warrior was called a Rootwarden. The slender, vine-throwing fellow a Briarthorn, and the tall one, appropriately enough, the Canopy.
The little army ranged deeper into Level 36.
Shadowpaw returned shortly after being sent forth to scout with an eager expression in his dark gaze. Tact forced him to issue a low wuff instead of the boisterous bark he clearly yearned to loose, and after jittering from side to side for a moment, he turned and darted back the way he’d come.
Harald followed. He was whole of body, completely healed by the Aurora Veils, and marching with the golem and three leaf warriors by his side made him feel a sense of quiet lethality that he’d not enjoyed before.
Shadowpaw had found another gigantic spider.
This one was hidden somewhere up along the height of a ruined tower that rose from a cracked plain of shattered flagstones. Its base was practically a palace of ruined arches, ledges, and balconies, and the tower itself faded into the bright chartreuse light high above.
Shadowpaw came to a stop, nose inches from a strand of gold that webbed a fallen plinth to a nearby outcrop, then wagged his tail and looked back at Harald.
“Good boy,” murmured Harald, and scritched the mastiff behind the ears. Shadowpaw made a joyous chuffing sound.
The spider wasn’t in view, but there were numerous titanic alcoves embedded in the tower in which it could be hiding.
“What should our approach be?” Harald gazed around the open plain of buckled stone. It was ringed by a huge gallery of columns to one side and rose in folds of collapsed buildings on the other. The spider, no doubt, would just drop from above to crush its prey.
No sense in climbing the tower. The amount of golden webbing would take ages to avoid, and they’d not be able to match its mobility.
“Here we go,” said Harald, rotating his shoulders and then bouncing a few times on the balls of his feet.
The movements were reflexive; his shadow-infused body felt supple and ready for violence at all times.
“Golem, you take point and trigger the strand. Leaf warriors…” Harald eyed the three ebon additions to his force.
They stared back at him enigmatically. “You guys do your thing. Shadowpaw, move out wide, then come into ambush from the side. Ready? Begin.”
The Gauntlet Golem had healed during its time in his Cosmos, and strode forward confidently to the strand, a blazing sword in each fist. Instead of slashing at the webbing, it summoned an explosion of rock beneath the plinth, causing it to rear and roll, tearing the golden strand apart as it crashed down onto its side.
“Nice,” said Harald. “Subtle. Love it.”
The golem looked back at him and shrugged.
Movement high above.
The spider emerged, huge green articulated legs drawing its grotesque bulbous body out of the shadows with unseeming delicacy. It peered down at them from some fifty yards and then drew back.
“Come on!” shouted Harald. “I’m right here!”
The webbing that shrouded the rocks and broken walls around the palace base flared gold, and mummified warriors rose all around them, jagged spasms of green fire forming their blades.
“Seriously?” Harald glared at the distant spider. “You’re not coming down to fight? You’re going to waste our time?”
The Rootwarden positioned his tower shield, hunched his shoulders, and rooted. The Canopy raised his burning hands and saplings burst out all around them, but this time without any of the oppressive atmosphere from before.
The golem and the Briarthorn moved to engage the mummified attackers who came charging in nimbly. Somewhere, Shadowpaw let out a happy bark as he leaped to engage one.
Harald propped his blade over one shoulder and eyed the distant spider. It drew back a little more into the alcove, looking, despite its immense size, a little chagrined.
The golem was devastating. It hurled arc of white fire after arc and stomped the ground to cause eruption after eruption under the sprinting mummies.
The Briarthorn stayed close to Harald and intercepted those who managed to get past the golem, and for what felt like an age it remained thus, the mummified corpses piling up, with the foes dealing no damage to any of Harald’s team.
The spider drew even farther back into the vast alcove so that now it was just a shadowed curve with gleaming hints of eyes.
“All right, you coward.” Harald moved forward, kicking his way through the golden webbing despite the icy drains it inflicted upon him. “Let’s see if we can’t force your hand.”
He made for the densest knot of golden filaments, his team moving with him, and when he gauged himself perfectly positioned, unleashed a Tenebral Surge.
Skulls screamed forth, trailing ebon smoke, and tore the web apart. A moment later, as the Surge dissipated, a huge gaping hole was left in the spider’s webbing.
From high above came the distant sound of a hiss. Harald chose to interpret it as a furious one.
He strode and Surged wherever he could find more webbing. Soon there was little more than tatters left to cloak parts of the broken palace base.
Shadowpaw let out a frenzied bark.
Harald looked up and froze. The gigantic spider was right there, dropping on him like a plummeting stone, so vast that its bulk darkened the sky.
The golem flung an arc of white fire from a few yards away even as thorned vines erupted around Harald and yanked him back.
The spider landed lightly where he’d been a moment ago, momentum carrying its huge body low to the ground, and then it scuttled forward, pedipalps raised in a fighting stance.
Spores latched to its form. Harald’s Tyrant’s Halo caused its golden filigree to blaze bright. Great jagged spumes of rock burst upward from beneath it, tripping its legs and rocking it aside. Shadowpaw came loping in from the side.
Then the spider was on him.
Harald let out a defiant cry as the spider fell upon him like a cresting wave and unleashed a Tenebral Surge right into its face.
Skulls rushed forth in a jet-black burst of blazing mist, and the spider’s pounce wavered.
Thorned vines wrapped around three of its legs, binding them together. An arc of white fire flew forth to cut a fourth cleanly off, while spores began clustering around the spider’s eyes.
Harald lunged forward, a Demonic Edge preceding his attack. The broad band of demonic fire slashed deep into the spider’s face and, a moment later, he hewed through a pedipalp as the golem came crashing into it from the side.
The spider tried to leap away, but its vine-bound legs failed it even as the Canopy’s oppressive aura made it sluggish.
Shadowpaw leaped in from the other flank, soaring high enough to hit its globular abdomen and there scrabble for purchase as he fought to climb his way up.
The spider keened and lunged forth at Harald again.
It manifested enough speed to slam its twin fangs into Harald’s chest, despite his best attempt to twist away, and the vicious points dug deep.
He felt a brief flare of fire in his muscles as it injected something into him, but then listed dramatically to one side as the golem cut through all three vine-bound legs.
Green light began to pulse from Harald’s wounds, healing them over swiftly.
Shadowpaw tried to latch his huge saurian jaws around the spider’s head, but it was too big. Instead, the mastiff just punctured half of its eyes.
More thorned vines burst forth to bind the remaining pedipalp to the next closest leg.
The massive spider jerked backward, scrambling with its remaining three legs, but it was no good.
It wasn’t going anywhere.
Harald hefted the Dawnblade, eyed the panicking monster coldly, and waded in to begin the butchery.
* * *
“Honestly, darling, this adventure is as quixotic as my own ill-advised jaunt in Flutic,” drawled Vic, hefting his new pack and gazing about the mist-haunted landscape of the 36th Dungeon Level.
“The less you mention that ‘jaunt,’” said Nessa acidly, “the better it’ll go for you.”
“But why?” Vic’s eyes opened in mock affront. “Haven’t I already apologized enough? I have. I said sorry, Nessa. How many times do I need to get on my knees for something as petty as nearly delivering all of Flutic on a tray to Eclavistra?”
Sam ignored Nessa’s caustic response to instead purse her lips and try to understand the sheer scale of what lay before them.
The walls were numbingly huge, the terrain a maze of collapsed rocks and shattered buildings.
Even the very air felt wrong, making her feel breathless and her chest tight just from being here.
“I think we should focus on the mission at hand,” she said, and despite speaking softly, her two bickering companions broke off to look at her.
“Exeros said Harald arrived here earlier today. That means he’s been alone on the 36th Level for, I don’t know, half a day?
” She turned to consider her friends, expression probably as bleak as her heart. “We can’t waste time.”
“We’re not wasting time,” sniffed Vic, tapping The Point Artifact on one shoulder. “We’re settling into our traditional roles so that we may better function as a team. I make cutting but undeniable statements of fact while Nessa groans and wishes the world were other than it is.”