Chapter 23
Chapter
Twenty-Three
The little demon Newt began to speak at an alarming rate, spouting excitedly about all he knew of cinderling spiders. It now made sense that a chatterbox like Newt would have invented the chatterboxes.
Ophidia and Valefour raised their hands and backed away, as if signaling that they were very much accustomed to the imp’s ramblings. By the look on both demons’ faces, Braiden could also tell that neither of them would be eager to accompany the party on this small expedition.
“There’s actually a cave just to the east of the obsidian forest,” Newt was saying, pointing somewhere beyond the charcoal-blackened trees. “What you really need to know about these things is that they have incredibly nasty bites. Watch out for those fangs.”
Braiden rubbed at his bare arms. Not once before had he considered the value of a suit of armor. He glanced at Valefour’s midnight armor with mild jealousy, then reminded himself it would only weigh him down anyway. Was Braiden even strong enough to carry the weight of a full suit on his body?
“Fortunately, I’m more or less impervious.” Newt rapped his knuckles against his skull, producing a metallic bonging sound. “Mother raised me right.”
The ring of messengers surrounding the campfire snickered again. One of them began to say something, but another one shushed it.
“So you can take us there,” Braiden said. “You’d be willing to escort us?”
“Of course,” Newt replied. “But you can’t count on those two. We’ve had our run-ins with cinderlings in the past. I don’t know if the word ‘traumatized’ quite covers how they feel about it.”
Ophidia crossed her arms and shuddered. Valefour looked up into the obsidian forest’s canopy, whistling innocently to himself.
“The second thing you need to know about cinderlings,” Newt continued, “is that they bleed fire.”
Braiden threw his hands up. “Great. Just great. So then how are we supposed to fight the damn things?”
“We will have to count on our wits and our abilities,” Augustin said. “You’ve shown your aptitude with restraining and disabling our enemies. Surely you can do the same for the spiders. Fight fire with fire, as it were — except it’s a matter of, er, string against string.”
The little demon chuckled. “So that’s what you can do, weaver. I suppose at this point it’s a question of who fires first.”
Elyssandra shook her head. “I’d love to accompany you,” she said, holding up her golden thorn, “but it appears that I’ll only be a liability if I spill any cinderling blood. That might be the end of it for us.”
Warren bowed his head solemnly. “I hope this won’t make you think less of me, but I too may not be of much use in this. I must admit, I was not too happy with the experience of having my fur singed. I would prefer not to have any more of it burned off.”
“Completely understandable,” Braiden said. “And I don’t think it would be a great idea for so many of us to approach the spiders in one huge group, anyway.”
He turned to Elder Bahul, knowing it was a foregone conclusion. The elder was already snoring, bathed in the strange, balmy warmth of the nearby campfire.
“And don’t think you can count on the chatterboxes,” Newt said. “I know I said to fight fire with fire, but they’ll be very much useless for this particular expedition.”
The chatterboxes sped toward him as one, spinning in a dizzying circle around his head. “Is that what you think? Oh, look at him — big man now, getting to show off, leading an expedition against these incinerating arachnids. Useless, are we? We’ll show you.”
Newt did not utter another word, only winking at Braiden. Apparently, reverse psychology worked just as well on intelligent artificial constructs as it did on impressionable humanoids.
“Then that’s it,” Augustin said, finally buttoning up his tunic again. “Just as well, in case of an accident — say, getting splashed in the fiery blood of a cinderling. If we’re all prepared to go soon, we can get this over sooner.”
“You’re going already?” Newt asked in surprise. “Well, I suppose it can’t be helped. I’m just as excited as the rest of you to see the Heirloom in action.”
“But what about me?” Bones asked. “Bones?”
“You’re coming along, of course,” Newt said. “In fact, you might say that you’re the most important member of this expedition.”
Bones stood with his legs wide apart, hands on his hips and his chest stuck out proudly, if only he had a chest.
The cinderling raiding party took some time to regroup and discuss, each disclosing what abilities they could bring to the table. Braiden found it somewhat awkward, almost like bragging, how he had to talk about his own talents.
Still, it was important information to share, especially for the sake of strategy.
Newt and the chatterboxes made for durable distractions, their metallic bodies resistant to spider bites.
Braiden could entangle while Augustin focused on blowing the arachnids away.
And with his ribs properly strung, Bones could contribute his horrible music, perhaps to terrify or enrage the cinderling spiders.
They took some time to eat and rebuild their energy by the fire, too. The flames had a uniquely calming property to them, their heat more akin to bright summer sunlight than a crackling blaze.
The demons eagerly shared what food they’d gathered from the burning meadow. Nuts picked from the bushes were already lightly toasted, warm as if only just pulled out of the oven. The berries burst with the brightness of sunshine, hot and sweet on the tongue.
None of the food actually burned Braiden’s mouth like he’d feared. Still, he and his friends, perhaps wisely, politely chose to skip the offers of steaming-hot beverages from the bubbling pool.
Braiden entrusted the Heirloom to Elyssandra and Warren. It would be the very worst for the thing to be destroyed by cinderling fire now that they’d come this far. They weren’t even anywhere close to finishing paying for it.
The trek to the cinderling cave was short, almost disappointingly so. It took a quick trudge through the obsidian forest, followed by a sharp turn once they’d emerged into a clearing, exactly as Newt had said.
Now, this cave mouth? This cave mouth meant business.
Natural stalactites fell from the roof like the fangs of a gaping beast, droplets of suspicious liquid dripping from their sharp tips like amber venom.
Very atmospheric, much better than the Weathervale dungeon’s main entrance. Braiden highly approved.
He did, however, disapprove of the fact that the entrance wasn’t plastered over with layers of cinderling cobweb. A small part of him had hoped that that would be the case — they could just tug on huge handfuls of the stuff and run, hoping for the best. But no such luck.
One of the messengers led the way, producing a tuft of flame big enough to act as torchlight, illuminating the cavern’s entrance. The absence of animal litter and discarded bones was an encouraging sign.
Perhaps the cinderlings had a more exotic diet — or perhaps they preferred to consume their prey deeper in their lair. Come to think of it, Braiden hadn’t seen any of the local fauna. He imagined birds with flaming feathers, or deer with antlers tipped in little fires, as lovely as candelabras.
But they ran into their first cinderling not far into the cave, and there was Braiden’s first brush with the local fauna. It hadn’t noticed them yet, waiting on its glowing orange cobweb on the far wall. Its carapace had the color and texture of dulled bronze, reminding Braiden of segmented armor.
He couldn’t say whether it was actually as durable as forged metal, but the way Newt had warned them against drawing cinderling blood suggested that the metallic armor held up in appearance only.
Little sparks of flame ran up and down the lengths of cinderling silk, prettier than even the rarest yarns and fibers that Braiden had ever seen.
He wondered what magics he could render from the silk with the weaving way, then reminded himself that they still needed to deal with the work of actually harvesting the stuff without ending up as a cinderling snack.
“Now, here’s our problem,” Newt whispered. “The cobwebs are over there, and we’re over here. And there’s no getting that cinderling to move unless we somehow distract it. Any takers?”
“Oh, no,” one of the chatterboxes said. “We’re not falling for that trick again. You can use us for torchlight, but that’s it.”
Newt rolled his eyes. “Fine. The rest of you go ahead and light up the place. It won’t make a difference to the cinderling, anyway. It can see in the dark.”
One by one the chatterboxes turned themselves into tinderboxes, spreading out through the cavern. As the last messenger lit up like a lantern, all seven of them froze in place. Braiden felt his muscles seizing, too.
The cinderling wasn’t alone. Positioned at various distances around the cobweb and all through the depth of the cavern were more cinderlings — bigger cinderlings. The first one they’d encountered must have been a juvenile.
“It was a baby,” Bones hissed. “Oh, gods, that thing is their baby. The rest of them will eat us up in one gulp.”
“Don’t exaggerate,” Braiden said, forcing bravery into his voice. “Now, here. Let’s string your ribs up nice and solid so you can play for the nice spiders.”
Braiden wove his fingers to and fro, extracting the finest threads out of thin air, much like a spider makes it silk. He helped Bones to wrap them around his torso, turning the skeleton into a makeshift musical instrument once more.
They really needed to get him his own lute or lyre soon. It would be hell on their ears, but at least they wouldn’t be leaving their party’s bard so defenseless.
“Friend Bones,” Augustin said, still so polite despite the imminent danger. “Do you have a spell to put these creatures to sleep in your repertoire? Some sort of magical lullaby, perhaps?”
“That’s a great idea,” Newt said. “Maybe move closer to the cinderlings so they can all hear you. As close to the spiders as you dare.”
Bones thumbed at himself confidently, his belly a glowing golden cat’s cradle. “Consider it done.”
He strode into the center of the cavern with all the swagger of an armored warrior twice his size.
He looked around the cave, gauging his distance from every spider, then positioned his fingers over his ribcage.
With neither lungs nor throat nor lips, Bones inhaled a great gasp of air and prepared to sing.
A long strand of fiery silk thwipped out of the darkness, then another, and then another, encasing Bones in a loose cocoon of cinderling string anchored from every direction.
“Ow!” Bones screamed. “My tibia!”
The skeleton yelped and yowled, dancing like a marionette as he struggled in his restraints. As one, the cinderlings shrieked and chittered, skittering toward the center of the cavern on their spiny bronze-colored legs.
The cavern exploded into chaos, all of the raiding party’s carefully laid strategy thrown out the window.
Augustin loosed a furious gale down the cavern, funneled through the mouth of the cave. The wind made it so Braiden could barely aim his entangling threads. He cursed as he conjured a heavy macramé net instead, yelling over the howling wind for Augustin to stop.
But the cinderlings were barely stalled by the wizard’s winds, issuing high-pitched screeches and clouds of steaming vapor from their backs. Were they too heavy to be thrown off the ground and their cobwebs?
The chatterboxes sprang into action instead, defying their previous promise to stay out of the fight and using their bodies as sentient cannonballs. Every ram against the cinderlings stunned them or knocked them on their backs.
In the confusion, Newt scurried between the angry cinderlings and the tangles of spider silk and Braiden’s threads.
With hardened focus and fast hands he gathered the cobwebs straight from the walls, then ran back again, launching himself from the ground straight toward Bones’s suspended body.
The impact ripped the skeleton free of his sticky restraints, and together they raced out through the cave mouth.
Braiden didn’t wait for further instruction. He grabbed Augustin’s hand and sprinted for the exit. The chatterboxes lingered long enough to bully the cinderlings for a few more moments before flying out of the cavern themselves, cackling maniacally the whole while.
Not one of them stopped running until they’d penetrated deep into the obsidian forest. Newt stared hard between the trees, the glowing cinderling silk still clutched in his hands, then heaved a sigh of relief.
“The coast is clear. Looks like the cinderlings didn’t care enough to give chase. It’s not like we took anything of value from them.”
Braiden shook his head at Augustin, casting an accusing glare. “Maybe next time warn us before you buffet our enemies with wind in an enclosed space?”
Augustin shrugged. “I’m sorry. I panicked.”
Bones brushed the last remaining strands of cinderling silk from his body. Braiden had expected to find his bones at least singed and charred, but they showed no sign of damage, still gleaming ivory white.
“You used me as bait!” Bones cried, pointing in Newt’s face. “You set me up!”
“For success,” Newt said, wagging a finger.
It was always nice to see Bones make new friends.