7. Chapter 7 #2
“I thought I was the one going to the end of the earth with you,” she quipped, not acknowledging her feelings, although she knew I could sense them.
I opened my mouth to tell her it seemed as if we were doomed to chase each other in circles around the desert, when a noise at the very edge of my awareness halted me. Keera frowned at me, her expression barely visible in the muted starlight. Perhaps this was one of my imaginings.
She reached out to rest a hand on my forearm, and the sound came again. This time, I recognized the dull clatter in the distance. Keera’s eyes widened as she heard it too, and acid rose to burn the back of my throat.
“Bone spider!” I no longer kept my voice low, jumping to my feet and raising my blade in front of me.
I scanned the horizon, my head whipping this way and that as I squinted into the darkness for its misshapen form.
The blackness was nearly impenetrable, and I feared sound was the only warning I would get.
Keera lunged back to her sleeping mat, quickly groping about for her weapons and rousing the others.
The sounds of metal and rustling told me they woke easily, ready for battle at a moment’s notice, all of them practiced warriors.
We would need such skills against a bone spider in the dark.
Stars exploded behind my eyes as something hard and fleshy smacked me in the face without warning, knocking me to the ground. My breath rushed out of me all at once as my back hit the ground and I threw my sword out in front of me, trying to keep it between myself and the monster.
My vision faded from white to black as I struggled to sit up. I expected a flurry of attacks from the bone spider’s many limbs to follow, but none came. The bone spider had attacked once but retreated before I could strike back, leaving the white-hot burn of adrenaline in my veins nowhere to go.
Keera appeared at my side, helping me up with a hand on my shoulder. I sensed the others at my back, all waiting with their swords drawn. The silence stretched taut like a bowstring as we all held our breath.
Elion shouted, and I whirled around just in time to see the dim silhouette of him fall to his knees.
I didn’t take more than one step forward before Keera shrieked, and I whipped back around.
A skeletal hand reached out of the darkness, bits of flesh quivering where they hung from the bone as it grabbed Keera’s braid and tried to haul her backward.
I lunged, slashing downwards viciously and severing the limb at the elbow. It fell to the ground with a thud, and an inhuman hiss of pain split the silent night only to be drowned out by a shout from Aderyn as she too was attacked.
It was not one bone spider but many, and they had us surrounded in the dark. Where before they had been mindless and uncoordinated, now they seemed to hunt as a synchronized force, seeking to take our limbs from us to grow their own wretched forms.
We all closed in on the horses in the middle of the circle made by the five of us as there came a lull in the attacks, keeping our backs to each other and our weapons up.
The clattering that had first alerted me to their presence now grew louder, coming in from all sides. It was as if the monsters had now abandoned stealth and reveled in our fear.
“Fire,” I said loud enough to be heard over the bone-chilling sound. “Flames are their weakness.”
I grimaced as I spoke, knowing the lack of campfire had made us easy prey. At least Keera, Dhara, and I could summon our own flames. Dread pooled in my belly for the other two.
I had no more time to think about it as the clattering crescendoed to a deafening pitch, and a form hurtled out of the darkness. I threw my hand up, palm first, just in time to catch the hulking mass of the bone spider with a gout of flame.
The sudden flash of light illuminated it in all its horror, twisted limbs all fused together around a central mass, writhing and slashing.
Another charged at Keera, and she responded with fire of her own.
The smell of charred flesh filled the air, but the bone spider only skittered back momentarily before lunging again.
Behind me, the horses screamed in fear, and the sounds of the others in their own battles raged.
I could not spare them any aid, as limbs flew at me from every direction.
Fists and feet and hooves and claws all lashed out, and I tried to parry them all, but there were too many.
These spiders must be larger—have harvested more limbs—than the ones I had faced before, for they kept attacking even in the face of my blade and my fire, as if they had endless supplies of stolen flesh.
Even worse, the chattering that had grown in my head in anticipation of violence had not settled into the focused rage of battle I was accustomed to and instead swelled in a nauseating wave that shredded my focus.
As I shot another gout of flame from my left hand, a paw tipped with wicked claws ducked under the blade in my right hand and slashed at my leg. It buckled and I fell to one knee hard enough to bite my tongue. Copper filled my mouth.
The bone spider launched its full bulk at me before I could struggle back to my feet.
The scent of rotting flesh closed in around me as an enormous weight crushed me into the earth.
My muscles screamed as I struggled and thrashed, but I was pinned.
Grasping hands and bony fingers wrapped around my limbs.
They pulled at them, and my mind turned to chattering chaos at the thought that the spider would steal them for itself.
I fought to suck in air, but the focused rage that normally overcame me in battle was nowhere to be found. Just the screaming of unrestrained magic. I opened my mouth to scream alongside it with my last breath.
Instead of sound, fire poured out of my lips, shocking me from the haze of desperation.
Heat clawed at my throat and burned my eyes, but the hold on my arms and legs loosened.
I let the flames continue to spew from my mouth, and the weight of the monster lifted off me as it twisted and convulsed in agony.
Where before my fire had been scorching the limbs on the periphery of its form, this attack had struck straight at its core as it crushed me beneath it.
The spider’s many limbs shivered and contorted in its death throes, and I tore my gaze away from the sickening sight as I scrabbled to my feet, looking for Keera.