Chapter 13: Kill it with fire

Several not-so-wee hours deep into the wee hours of the morning, we are still hauling sacks of people goop down and out of the inn. It would have taken far less time but someone won’t allow me to just huck the sacks out of a 2nd floor window. The sun has finally deigned to rise, though it is more sun-light as there is no true sun in this place, and we are on the last steps now.

We work in silence now as Mato saws branches with the serrated edge of his knife, and I diligently arrange the wood around the piles of sacks, leaving air gaps and creating a large pyre. Mato would frequently glance up, jumping in with uninvited corrections to my assembly, but now just stares off into the woods. His sight is better than mine, so I let him keep watch for spiders.

With the pyre done, I ask for Mato’s help, and he grabs the legs of the only body still solid— the goth barbarian, still wrapped in sheets— and we lay her at the top.

Packing the kindling and dousing it with the lantern oil from the root cellar, Mato speaks up.

“I need to get a look at something. You’re free to light it once it’s set. I’d recommend standin’ back a good ways. Make sure you’ve got everything you want packed up. It’d be nice if this was a smoke signal for any other folks around here, but we might have to head out immediately.”

“What do you mean by that? Why would we have to leave immediately” I ask.

“We might not.” He replies as he walks back towards the inn.

“That doesn’t answer my question!” I yell at his back.

What an incredibly ominous thing to say.

Giving a sardonic salute to the sacks, accompanied by a “So long, and thanks for the gold.” I fire off a [Firebolt] into the oil-soaked kindling. The sudden thwoom of fire that erupts and quickly overtakes the pyre has me shielding my face and backing up towards the inn.

I stare into the fire for a while, not thinking about anything in particular and just… decompressing for the first time in a while, when my shoulder is quickly grabbed by Mato. Hard.

“We need to go. Now.”

He starts jogging off before he explains.

I quickly run up to keep pace, but Mato is a fast motherfucker for an old and chubby dude. I blame [Lightfooted].

Huffing and puffing, I speak between breaths. “Hey, my guy, I'd love to be in the loop on what we're running from.”

Mato looks over his shoulder back to me, the butt of his slung crossbow and the flopping hood from his shawl occasionally blocking his grim expression.

"Somethin's been comin’ towards us all morning. I got a— watch your step.”

We jump over a nest in the ground.

“I got a skill last night. [Basic Tracking]. Been noticin’ more all day. Weird smells, flutterin’ birds, and the real kicker; these woods don't got a single spider in ‘em— b’sides the nests of babies.”

Now that he points it out, I notice their absence too.

He continues “I've been watching from the 2nd floor windows. The treetops some two miles distant were shaking up a storm, moving generally in our direction. As soon as you lit that fire, that ‘generally’ became a ‘specifically’ and it started comin’ at us a whole lot faster. Odd bit is it’s due south, so we're headed deeper.”

I'm taking his word on the tracking, he would know. But my stomach sinks as I jump to conclusions on what giant thing could be coming after us. My mouth dries, and I can feel the words on the tip of my tongue, but don't know their order.

“Uh, hey M– Mato. Have you ever— ya see in video games— ...how much do you know about bees?”

That non sequitur takes Mato by surprise enough that he slows.

“A bit… why?” he asks, cautiously and visibly dreading my answer.

“Well, ya gave the analogy the other day that the spiders were acting more like a beehive, and, in video games, whenever there's a den of insects there is usually a queen, much like a beehive.”

Mato's expression doesn't change, hanging onto my words, but I see his pupils slowly widen.

“But, well, unlike a beehive, the queens are usually… more capable— I don’t know why I’m dancing around this subject. Mato, I think a giant fuck off spider queen is chasing us and we have to kill it to get to the 3rd floor.”

Mato seems to stew on this for a moment, but his only response is a redoubling of his speed, which he shortly has to slow when he looks back and sees me sucking in breath like a drowning man and realizes that I can’t keep up with him.

It becomes obvious very quickly that outrunning it isn't a sustainable option. So, out of breathless desperation, I have a very bad idea.

***

The forest’s brush is disturbed, webs are trampled through, and ground nests are broken open and promptly ignored as Mato and I haul every single ounce of ass we can muster.

The forward scouts have reached us. Jumping spiders leap from the ground or trees while spinning spiders attempt to cut us off. Hordes of the infant spiders spill forth from the ground and are outpaced quickly. The injuries we’ve sustained are few bites and mostly burns, either from [Firebolt]s to quickly remove any webbing slowing us down, or from… more severe sources. By now, I’ve lit two makeshift torches that we carry as we run.

Due to the consequences of our actions, the spiders are less so chasing us and we are less so running from them; instead, we are all united in the common goal of trying to stay ahead of the raging inferno of a forest fire “we” started.

Not purely my fault, though I’ll be the first to admit that I got a little excited about the shiny new spell, but if the damned spiders didn’t cover an entire wooden forest with spiderwebs, ya know, the things known for their flammability?— then we wouldn’t be in this mess.

I’m half expecting a barrel of crude oil to be around the next tree.

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm avoiding blame as this has gotten quite a bit out of hand and I feel a little guilty about the burns on Mato but, in my defense, what do people say when there's a big-ass spider?

Kill it with fire.

So yeah, that was the plan. Hopefully this forest fire actually does kill the spider queen– which we have yet to even see, thankfully– I really don't want another repeat of the flaming undead viking incident.

Mato stares off into the oncoming forest, using [Basic Tracking] and [Eagle-eyed] to scout ahead, so he stumbles when his foot slams into a ground nest. [Lightfooted] saves him from falling too hard, but regardless his feet are tangled in webbing. We've practiced this enough that before his third step I’m already singeing his calf with the torch.

After his eyes open from the wince and gritted teeth of pain, he quickly unslings his crossbow and fires off a shot into the tree-line ahead of us, where a spinner spider then falls from the canopy and I have to jump over its dead body as we run.

Heaving breaths, shaking canopy, incessant footfalls and the herculean grunt of Mato reloading his crossbow with one incredibly bruised hand and the click of his last crossbow bolt are the only sounds for one eternal second before Mato coughs and yells to me.

“Left!” He yells, taking a sharp 45 degree turn. I follow.

“I saw a glimpse of cobblestone ‘bout a half mile through the treeline! Might be a building!” He continues.

“You— you—” I wheeze between breaths.

I barely have the wherewithal to muse if doing more cardio in life would have even helped in the afterlife.

“You don't— even know— if it's— a building?!” I finish, having to fall behind briefly as I throw a magical haymaker of a [Magic Missile] into an oncoming jumping spider.

Mato runs back to me in two strides, then suckerpunches a spider leaping towards my back before coughing and shouting as he drags me back to running.

“I know stone doesn't burn! Now run!”

I try to do as he asks, I really do, and three quarters of the way through that half mile I'm drinking down a disgusting health potion that still tastes of people goop just to try and fix the burning in my lungs. It would have worked, if my slow pace and our new oblique angle to the runaway wildfire didn't mean that the healing potion had to triage and prioritize the new and growing burns as the flames begin to lick at my legs and the back of my head like a pack of hungry dogs.

By the time my boiling nerve endings and I stop harmonizing our screams and finally begin to feel again, we're already slung over Mato's shoulder.

“Boy, you're gonna give me flashbacks. Just keep ‘em off us.” he says, his voice finally showing signs of windedness.

Slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, I realize what bliss it was to be facing away from the oncoming spider horde and ever growing inferno. Fear screams within me, like a child that knows something the adults don't, but its voice is lost in the sea of screams and firing neurons as my brain works overtime to keep us alive.

From this position, with his shoulder slamming into my gut and his crossbow occasionally slapping my face, [Magic Missile] just isn't feasible, so I begin pouring water on a grease fire and throw strategic [Firebolt]s at any spiders that look like they're gaining on us. There's too many to kill them all.

“How the hell are you so damn athletic?” I yell to Mato.

“I ran 4 miles every day ‘round a trail at my park when I still could. I like to run ‘n hike ‘n whatnot.” He replies, a tinge of focused fear in his voice that he seems to be desperately avoiding.

“Then how the hell are you still pudgy?”

“Ha!” His laugh shoves his shoulder into my gut and nearly knocks the wind out of me. “I like food a lot more! Now hold on!”

I shift my weight to peek where we're headed, just in time to see him rotate to shoulder charge a wooden door. Unfortunately, the shoulder he uses to bash open the door is currently occupied.

By me.

I feel something pop inside me as all the air leaves my lungs with a silent oof.

Thankfully, I think as I go toppling ass over teakettle and Mato tosses me to the floor with a “sorry,” Thankfully my alchemical ingredients must be stored in smash-resistant bottles or something.

Mato slams the wooden door shut behind us.

Despite writhing on the sticky stone floor and doing my best impression of a dying fish, adrenaline and a busted brain have me still looking around to figure out where we are.

I can't say I'm too familiar with medieval architecture, but judging by the webbed wine casks, various cleaning implements, wooden carts, and the webbed cocoon with a feather duster still sticking out of it, this room looks to be a servant entrance. A juvenile spinner spider still tends to the sack, and I pitifully reach out to slap Mato's ankle to point it out to him.

With the spider quickly gutted and me coming back to my feet, Mato opens his mouth to assess.

“Alrig—”

It seems the tangled, flammable web of fate has other plans, as his words are cut off by the sound of a jumping spider slamming into the wooden door we broke the lock to get in through.

My hands move to begin firing another spell, but my wrist is grabbed by Mato as he drags me back and pulls me through another doorway before slamming it in the leaping spider's gross fangy face and we watch the door bulge from the impact.

A breath, and we turn to see just which fire we hopped out of the frying pan into.

We stare down a long stone hallway, filled with— whoever could have guessed?— spiders.

A long groan of exasperated and beleaguered rage escapes my throat as Mato and I reluctantly take a fighting stance. I pull my shortsword this time, and say to the spiders

“Trust me here, it's in everyone's best interest if you all die quickly.”

The spiders disagree.

***

Deep rhythmic breaths are interrupted by the sharp intake that accompanies pain as we lean against a barred door and apply healing potions to our wounds. We've found some small respite in what was previously a locked room atop a tall stone spiral staircase.

Relatively untouched, there are racks of spears, bows, and crossbows with full quivers of bolts in the room. Mato has helped himself to the bolts and is slowly counting them as I dab pour a potion into a bite on his shirtless, liverspotted back. We sit in a sealed room with killing slits in the sides of the walls, a ladder leading to a hatch in the roof, and another barred door across from us. It seems we've made it to the battlements— or whatever the flat bit on the walls of castles that archers shoot from is called. Above would be a tower, ahead would be more walls.

We can hear the growing roar of wildfire to our left, and I dread to peek at the false world outside, to choose to face either the burning bridges I leave behind or to know what obstacles, inconveniences, and foes bar the path I've chosen.

A spindly leg of a spider poking me in the butt from the crack at the foot of the door has me jump up and forces me to move.

Laying down by the left wall on the stone floor– incidentally, not slate– I lay my head on its left side and peer through one of the killing slits archers would aim down at a besieging army with. I watch the distant forest burn, and those flames slowly crawl across the canopy. The forest is immense, Mato would perhaps see better but, it would take days for it to overtake all of it, and perhaps by then it might rain in this place.

Mato puts his shirt, shawl, and crossbow back on as he watches me stand back up and lay down instead on the right. I hear him follow, and grunt like the old man he is as he lays down beside me.

Looking now towards the castle’s interior courtyard, I can make out and identify some things. The webbing covering the battlements and the walls surrounding this interior keep, for instance.

What I can't identify are the strange, thin and black spires and buttresses attaching to the walls. Or whatever kind of solid black stone lines the courtyard floor. It's not slate. I know slate now. This ain’t it.

Quietly, I hear Mato whisper from beside me. I turn to him, and am puzzled as I watch his mouth move disjuncted from the words he's speaking. I hear his voice in perfect English but still with his accent, except every few words he says something I don't recognize and his lips are perfectly in sync with what he says.

“Wakan Tanka,

whose voice I hear in the winds,

and whose breath gives life to all the world.

Hear me. I need your strength and wisdom…”

I am loath to interrupt him, sacrosanct as his words seem, but for the fear, the absolute terror he says them with. I have to ask.

“What is it, Mato?” My tone has an unintended impatience to it, as anticipatory as I am.

“You were right son, there's a queen. But it wasn't chasing us. We ran right to it.”

Like a hidden eye painting, or an optical illusion, where once you see it, you can't unsee it, my sight shifts. The colossal black spires and buttresses? Legs. And that black stone floor is no floor at all, but a section of body so large I can't see its edges from the small slit in the wall. I should have guessed, as we must've ascended at least 4 stories of stairs, but the walls only raise 20 feet above the “floor” of the interior yard.

I take this all in as I do geometry in my head to estimate the size of what must be a 50 foot diameter thorax, and 100 foot long legs. Does the square cube law just not exist in this place? Or does magic just carry all that weight?

My eye locks to Mato's, and he watches understanding sink its way into me. But, the most important thing I can think to ask is:

“Then what the hell was chasing us?”