Chapter 8: A Moron With A Stick

Calmly, carefully, the [Ranger] makes his way through the brush. One hand holding his crossbow, he pushes aside a branch, taking absolute care not to disturb the web in the tree.

His eyes swap between the canopies and the ground, searching for the crosshatch texture indicative of a hidden nest. His head turns as his ears stay primed for any rustling out of sync with his movements.

After another half mile or so of slow, tense hiking, he finally sees the webs becoming sparser and clustering farther apart. Having made it to the safer part of the forest, he lowers his guard slightly and begins keeping an eye out for a suitable place to set up camp.

It's as he's taken out his waterskin to take a swig, that he hears it. The “shik- kashik” of leaves being rustled, 50 feet distant. His waterskin spills on his legs as he immediately drops it to the ground and readies his crossbow. Scanning the trees around him, then the ground, he slowly, quietly begins stepping towards the source of the sound. His steps are careful, with millisecond glances at his feet to avoid stepping on twigs. Instinctually, he avoids trampling any flora.

Looking ahead and above, the canopy seems to break in a clearing. Gingerly, getting low but ready to run, he parts a high shrub with the riser of his crossbow, keeping it trained on where the shaking branches should be.

Standing in the clearing, instead of what he expected to see, is a young white man. Short, wearing tight and bunched black pants tucked into his high leather boots, and a tucked blue shirt with a deep and loose neckline. The [Ranger] sees a moron with a stick, poking the webs in one of the trees above him.

“Oh no.” Mato whispers.

He looks across the clearing, past the young man, and into the canopy beyond him. He sees them shake.

He makes the call.

“Run!” Mato yells, breaking through the bush and sprinting to close the 30 foot distance to the man.

The man yanks his stick free from the webs– which is impressive, those things are tough and sticky– and he quickly turns and wields the stick in one hand with the other ready to punch.

“Friendly! Now run!” Mato reassures, and pivots halfway through the clearing, churning up soil where his heel turns.

He starts running in a 90 degree turn, waving over his shoulder for the man to follow. Mato moves perpendicular to the clearing, not going deeper into the woods where the webbing is thicker, but not getting closer to the oncoming threat.

He hears a bush shoved out of the way, and looks over his shoulder to find the moron following him a good 10 feet back. Mato, between measured breaths, notices the eyepatch as the young man keeps his one eye swapping between the ground ahead of him and Mato himself. He's looking for something but not being careful of where he steps; traipsing over grasses and wildflowers, and snapping twigs. Mato's [Lightfooted] skill is keeping his steps relatively quiet even while running, but the other man is kicking up a racket. Mato recognizes it as someone not caring about noise, but looking for tripwires or landmines as they run. He thinks this is a trap.

The man's noisy blustering through the brush is muddying the sound of the movement in the canopy. Mato can't tell how close they are.

“What are we running from?” The young man asks.

“The web—” Mato's response is cut off by the snapping of a branch and a blur of brownish grey diving from the canopy. Mato quickly whips around, and fires a bolt directly into one of the leaping thing’s many eyes. The beast is too big to go down to one shot, so Mato uses his twice a day [Instantaneous Reload] skill, feeling the crossbow violently cock itself back, recoiling into his shoulder, and a bolt disappears from his pouch. He fires another shot that sinks deep into its large thorax.

Whether or not that managed to kill it, its sheer mass has it carry its momentum. The other man's fist seems to thrust forward and a lance of opalescent air fires out, but not before the beast's fall tackles him and takes him off his feet. The shot fires wide.

Mato unsheathes his hunting knife, and as the man interposes his stick between him and the massive fangs, Mato leaps over and stabs into the thing's head and yanks down its length, like gutting a fish.

Mato pulls the man from between the dead thing's now curling legs, and after a few heaving breaths, making sure neither of them are injured, he answers the earlier question.

“Spiders.”

***

My eye flicks between the man and the woods surrounding us, he had us stop in a seemingly random spot, and is now pacing around, inspecting things.

He's an older, slightly pudgy, Native American man. I'd guess in his 60s. His black hair is kept short, high and tight. I feel slightly racist for expecting a ponytail. As he does a small circuit of our position, I can see the way his brown, white, and dark green clothes move, looking to be hard cloth armor in a simple tunic and breeches style, as well as the small leather hiking bag on his back. There seems to be a hood to his small green shawl, but he keeps it down. Seemingly satisfied, he turns back to me, shouldering his crossbow with a strap. I grip my stick tighter, one hand behind me on the shortsword in my satchel, and feel the roots beneath the ground, ready for [Tripping Roots].

“The things have poor eyesight, and worse hearing. They hunt by vibration so, don't move much, keep quiet, and don't speak by any webs and we'll be fine.” His voice is tired, but assured and amicable.

“Name's Mato, Mato Holt. Sorry for the scare.”

He extends his hand to shake, and– keeping my eye on his other hand in case he pulls the knife– I take it. I stifle a yelp when his calloused grip nearly shatters my hand.

“You just get here?” He asks, returning to his pacing, gathering wood. I realize the sun is setting somewhere through the canopy. If there even is a sun in this liminal space between afterlifes.

“Yeah. My tutorial was a bit of a doozy. You been here long?” I ask.

“Just a day or two. I had a decent time with my introduction. Trackin' and killin' some massive wolf on a mountain side. Familiar ground. I'm a ranger. I mean, I'm a [Ranger] now, but I was a park ranger before.”

“[Mage]. I got a crypt. Zombies, some little flying lizards, and a vampire.” I replied.

Mato seems friendly enough, perhaps feeling an obligation to help me coming from his park ranger background. I doubt he's trying to kill me, especially since I'm likely to be the first person he's seen since he died. I can play the father figure angle, stay clueless and then break off when we finish this floor. The old guy shouldn't really have a reason to turn on me here– it's not like there's any cops– but I'll have to be careful if we come across anything valuable.

“Magic. Hmm.” Mato says. I expect there to be more, but he just looks contemplative as he gathers firewood.

Coming back close, he rolls a few rocks into a circle, and uses the end of one of the logs to dig a small divot and begins clearing brush from around the makeshift firepit by hand. He speaks.

“Whelp, s'far as I can tell there's a few subspecies of spider in these parts. The jumping spiders, which you got a good look at. Damn things are the size of a twin bed. Then there's the web-spinnin’ types, and smaller, ground nesting types. The buried ones might be their babies. They've got little trapdoor nests dug into the ground, you can notice em by the way the soil n' leaves have been piled back over em. I'll point one out next time we see one.” He looks back up at me, either seeing if I'm following or gauging my reaction. I twist my mouth slightly into a small disgusted wince to meet his expectations.

“Odd thing is,” he continues, “The bugs are acting more like a beehive than spiders. Each spider has a job and they work together, when spiders are usually solitary creatures.”

A disturbing idea, not least of all because of the implication that there might be a ‘Queen’. And if I know my luck, and if all the clichés of this place so far are any indication, then that's what I'll have to kill to move on.

I watch Mato as he starts the fire, then I let the flames build. I take out and eat one of the rations from my bag, looking like a wheaty pemmican, and take a swig from my waterskin to wash it down. Mato sits down with his own ration, and begins looking for something before swearing quietly.

“Looks like I left my waterskin when I ran in to save you. Can I get a bit from yours?”

I sigh, and hand it over.

“Thanks. We can get mine in the morning. There should be a river nearby we can boil and refill from. Also a decent idea to follow it deeper. Spiders don't like water much.”

I let an awkward silence linger, keeping an ear to the woods around us as I pretend to stare into the fire, watching Mato through the flames. He seems comfortable enough in the quiet, but something nags at him as he keeps glancing at me.

Quietly, he asks. “You really as young as you look?”

“Whaddya mean?” I ask.

“Well,” he responds, “I was 83 when I died. Lung cancer. I blame Vietnam. But I look like I'm 60, and feel like I'm 30.”

Curious. “Why do ya think that is?” I ask.

“Why are we in a forest full of giant spiders while tryin’ to become Gods? I can't pretend to know, but I got theories.”

“They say no matter your age, ya just feel like a teenager that got older. That was true for a good while, but I became a grandfather in my 60s, and got real comfortable at my park. Became practically a landmark. Til the day I died I still felt I was 60, just with my body givin’ up on me.”

His voice gets softer again. “So, are ya actually that young, or just feel it?”

Fascinating theory, and seems supported by what I know of my [One-eyed] skill, where having one eye became such a part of me that my very soul has it. I consider this for a second before replying.

“I'm 23.”

“Hm.” He says. His eyes soften and he looks at me with a bit of pity, tempered by that understanding shared by those that have died. “I’m sorry to hear that, son. What got ya?”

My expression darkens.

“Friendly fire.”