Zeke’s fingers tightened around the haft of his mace, the worn leather of the grip squeaking from the pressure. As he glared into the cave, his face remained impassive, betraying nothing of his rage.

Abby’s fingers settled onto his arm, and she asked, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he grunted, his eyes never wavering from the cocooned bodies within the dark cave. Hundreds of wrapped bundles of spider silk hung from the ceiling, their size evidence enough of what they were. Zeke couldn’t see to the back of the cave, but he suspected that it went on for quite some distance.

“Should we…should we cut them loose?” Abby asked. Though her voice was little more than a whisper, it sounded like a shout in Zeke’s ears.

Zeke shook his head, saying, “I…I don’t know. What would we do with them? I can’t fit that many in my spatial storage, and I can’t dig through rock. Can’t burn them, either. A fire would attract the rest of the drachnids. Maybe when this is all done…”

He let the sentence trail off into nothing. The cave full of bodies was a clear parallel of what he’d seen in the troll caverns, and there was a part of him that wanted to react the same way he had before. A rampage would certainly make him feel a little better in the short term. Or at least give him something on which to focus so he didn’t have to think about the fate of the people in those cocoons. However, he knew from experience that, in the long term, it wouldn’t do much good. Massacring the troll population hadn’t. In fact, the unthinking rampage had very nearly killed him, and more than once. Besides, he’d always intended to kill the drachnids. He just couldn’t let the emotions sweep him into doing something stupid. So, he restrained his rage, forcing it aside so he could look at things as logically as possible.

But looking at those silk-wrapped bodies, it was difficult. Very, very difficult.

It would’ve been different if the creatures were unthinking monsters. But according to Abby, other tribes of drachnids managed to coexist with humans, even trading with them on occasion. So, it wasn’t some animalistic instinct that propelled them to raid those caravans. They were the actions of sapient, albeit primitive, creatures.

Finally, Zeke strode forward into the darkness, touching each bundled corpse along the way. With a thought, he looted every one of them, stripping them of valuables as well as the silk that had been used to bind them. Naked, desiccated corpses fell to the ground, thudding with a finality that echoed in Zeke’s mind. It wasn’t dignified, but it was expedient.

As he moved from corpse to corpse, Zeke said, “We’ll put them in a pile, then burn them on the way out. Once we’ve finished the drachnids.”

Abby didn’t verbalize a response. Instead, as Zeke looted the corpses, she set about the arduous task of gathering and stacking the bodies. Meanwhile, the normally rambunctious and playful Pudge was subdued, his shoulders drooping as he followed along behind Zeke.

Memory. Mother. Loss.

The interjection cut through Zeke’s determination, not because of the thought itself. Rather, it was the emotion that came with it. The sense of loss that came from Pudge was nearly overwhelming, and it once again reminded Zeke that his companion was only a child, little more than an infant, that had lost his only family. In the face of that, Zeke considered himself a poor substitute.

Pausing in his gruesome task, Zeke knelt down to ruffle the bear cub’s fur. “It’s okay, buddy,” he whispered. “I’m here for you.”

Pudge. Here. For you.

As the thought brushed against him, Zeke felt an outpouring of unconditional loyalty and love. And though he knew part of it was due to the soul bond, he also knew that the bear had cast him as a surrogate mother-figure. Or protector. The emotions were strange and tangled, and Zeke was in no position to try to unwind them. But he was thankful for the bear cub’s support.

“Thanks, buddy,” he muttered, pulling the bear cub closer. Then, he stood and continued through the cave. His first inclination was to try to divorce himself from the gruesome task, to retreat within his own mind and let the numbness take over. It would’ve been easier, certainly. But he thought he owed it to these people, nameless strangers though they were, to at least acknowledge them, to grieve their loss, and to push ahead.

Once he’d finished looting, he’d counted over four-hundred bodies. And though there was little tangible evidence, he was certain that plenty more had already been consumed by the drachnids. Task completed, he began gathering the drained corpses by putting them into his spatial storage. It wasn’t big enough to hold them all, but it was better than trying to carry them by hand.

It took them about an hour to gather the corpses into a neat pile near the front of the cave. Half-rotted and drained of all their fluid, they took up far less space than Zeke would’ve expected, but the pile of stacked corpses was still intimidatingly large. He, Abby, and Pudge stood there, staring at them for a long moment, just staring at the results of their labor. Through the soul bond, Zeke could feel his own feelings echoed in Pudge’s emotions – longing, sadness, and loss.

“Do you want to make camp?” asked Abby, her voice soft. “Or do you want to keep going?”

Zeke glanced outside the cave, noting that there was still plenty of daylight left. They’d been hunting drachnid within the ravine for almost a week, and in that time, they’d killed more than two-hundred of the spider-human hybrids. Most had come in pairs, but on two occasions, they’d been forced into a pitched battle with more than a dozen of the creatures. Those had been much more difficult than Zeke cared to admit, primarily due to the drachnid’s poison. He could easily handle a handful of the poisoned spikes they shot, but any more and they’d begin to affect him. Numbness would come first, then a sluggishness to his movements, and finally, full paralysis. Only a few days before, he’d been reduced to a mostly immobile pincushion, and it was only due to Abby’s rapid-fire bow shots that they had managed to survive.

“I think we should move on for a couple of hours,” he said. “I don’t want to camp near here.”

Abby pointedly didn’t disagree, and the pair, along with Pudge, quickly left the cave. Outside, the ravine was nearly a mile wide, and in that space were giant pillars of rock that jutted toward the sky. In addition to the drachnids, Nightweb Ravine was also home to a species of spiders about the size of Zeke’s hand; they were fuzzy analogues of tarantulas, though unlike their earthbound counterparts, they were incredibly venomous, traveled in packs of a hundred or more, and moved with ridiculous speed. In only a few seconds, they could swarm their unlucky prey and inject them with a potent necrotic poison that, without powerful vitality and endurance to combat it, could rot a creature alive.

For Zeke, a swarm of nightweb spiders was merely painful, but for Abby, whose constitution wasn’t nearly as robust, the spiders could prove deadly. Curiously, Pudge wasn’t affected at all by the venom, and he quite enjoyed playing with the deadly swarms of spiders.

There were other, less numerous creatures that made their homes within the ravine – six-foot lizards, a species of snake that was so well camouflaged that it was largely invisible until it struck, and whirling rock dervishes that mostly kept to themselves, to name a few – but the drachnids and the nightweb spiders had driven all but the hardiest competition away.

As they made their way up the ravine, Zeke and Abby ambushed a pair of drachnids, quickly dispatching them with practiced ease. So long as there weren’t more than a few of them, the monsters stood no chance. And even if Zeke and Abby were grossly outnumbered, they’d proven that they could come out on top – though, the cost in pain and recovery time was usually significant.

Once they’d hiked for almost two hours, they decided that they’d gotten far enough away from the corpses that they could make camp. So, as Zeke summoned the hut, and Abby went scouting to make sure that they weren’t near one of the caves where the drachnids made their homes.

As Zeke looked at the hut, he shook his head, marveling at the changes. Its footprint had grown by about three feet, as far as he could tell, and the thatched roof had been replaced by crude shingles. In addition, the stone from which the walls had been constructed had morphed from simple, grey rock to something much lighter. It was almost white, with subtle pink veins running through it.

But more importantly, it had come with in-person access to his spatial storage.

He stepped into the hut and quickly found the trapdoor in the center of the single room. Opening it, he climbed down the ladder and saw the physical representation of his spatial storage. The cellar was of a size with the rest of the hut, which meant that the storage had grown right alongside it. Still, the evidence of their efforts in Nightweb Ravine were evident from the piles of loot inside.

In one corner, there were beast cores – small, marble-sized chunks of jagged rock that flickered with untapped power. In another, there were the drachnid eyes, which appeared to be faceted gemstones that reflected a rainbow of colors. Beside the eyes was a pile of drachnid fangs, the proof of their efforts. On the other side of the room were various pieces of equipment. Most were old and rotted – useless, as far as Zeke was concerned, but Abby claimed that skilled artisans could make use of them. And that meant that they weren’t worthless. And finally, there were the miscellaneous pieces of monsters. Piles of spider legs, a few snakeskins, a handful of scorpion pincers, and a wide variety of other pieces were all arranged into their own, neat piles. Thankfully, his looting skill automatically sorted everything; otherwise, he’d have had to do it by hand – a task that seemed not only tedious but incredibly time-consuming.

After inspecting everything, Zeke climbed the ladder back to the ground floor of the hut and found that Abby had returned. She raised an eyebrow, saying, “Like a dragon with his hoard.”

“What?” Zeke asked, confused.

“Dragons,” she said. “You know, they’re famous for coveting their hoards? Haven’t you ever heard of Smaug?”

Zeke shrugged. The name sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it. So, he said, “No. Is that a dragon in this world or something?”

Abby laughed, and Zeke felt his cheeks redden in embarrassment. “You seriously never read the Hobbit?” she asked. “Or Lord of the Rings?”

He shook his head, saying, “I never really had the chance to read. I was too busy.”

She quirked a half smile, saying, “With what?”

Zeke wanted nothing more than to leave his old life in the past. It didn’t matter, now. None of it did. Even before he’d died, he’d tried to move forward. Unsuccessfully, sure, but he had recognized that dwelling in the past was a bad idea. Of course, spending two years with no company but his own had pulled a lot of that back to the surface.

“Baseball,” he said. “I was…I don’t know…I was good. Like, getting drafted good. And baseball’s not like a lot of sports, you know? It’s not just athletic ability. A great athlete could step onto a football field and be pretty good, despite his inexperience. But baseball? You can’t cut corners. The only way to be good is practice. Hours and hours of practice. So, that’s what I did instead of reading books. Or watching movies. I practiced.”

He went on, almost as if, once he’d begun, he couldn’t keep it down. He told Abby about his schedule, where he’d get up, go to school, and as soon as he got out, he’d head down to a hitting lesson. Then a catching lesson. A workout. Every single day, he’d work on baseball until well into the night. Then, when he got home, he’d do what homework he could and go to bed, only to repeat it the next day.

“That sounds exhausting,” Abby said. “My cousin was like that. She was a figure skater. But she didn’t even go to school. Instead, she had a tutor. The rest of the time, she was practicing.”

Zeke shrugged. “It wasn’t really that bad, honestly,” he said. And it hadn’t been. He had always loved baseball, and even more, he loved the results he got. There was something to be said for seeing the tangible results of all your hard work. But what he left unsaid was the way his father had treated him. The yelling. The screaming. The insults. The occasional beatings. The overwhelming feeling that, regardless of how well he did, it would never be enough. The certainty that his father only cared inasmuch as he could live vicariously through him. “I never really knew anything else, so you get used to it.”

Abby shook her head. “I guess,” she said, pulling some rations from her seemingly bottomless satchel. It was just dried meat and some sort of hard bread, but it was filling enough. She tossed him a couple of pieces, saying, “How long do you want to stay down here?”

“Until the job’s done,” Zeke answered, tearing a chunk of dried meat with his teeth. “I want to kill the queen, at least. And as many of these monsters as we can. Like I said before, I think there might be a quest if we do it.”

Abby sighed. She clearly didn’t have his bloodlust, but she couldn’t keep the anticipation from affecting her expression. After all, Zeke’s way had clearly netted results so far, and she obviously wanted to reap some of those same rewards.

“Fine,” she said. “But we’re going to have to think about food pretty soon. My rations won’t last forever.”

Zeke nodded, saying, “We’ll figure something out. I think those snakes are edible. Maybe we can find more of those. And I bet the scorpion pincers aren’t much different from lobster claws. We should be fine, so long as you’re not a squeamish eater.”

Abby made a gagging noise.

Zeke tossed a piece of dried meat to Pudge, saying, “You should’ve seen the sorts of things I ate in the troll caves. Mostly these blue mushrooms that I’m pretty sure were kind of poisonous, but there were also these wall-crawling, octopus-monkey things. Their tentacles kind of tasted like fish. But slimier.”

“Octopus-monkey…things?” asked Abby.

“Like chimps, but instead of legs, they have tentacles,” he said. “The tentacles had these hooks they used to latch onto walls, so they’d drop down on you without any warning. Oh, and they were mildly poisonous, too. God, I hated those things. Believe me, you’ve never been as scared as when you wake up to a bunch of tentacles wrapping around your face…”

“I think…I think I’ll take your word for it,” she said. “But I’m not eating spiders. Or drachnids. I just want to make that abundantly clear.”

Zeke shrugged. “You’d be surprised what you’d eat if you’re hungry enough,” he said. “Plus, those octopus things gave a pretty good boost to regeneration. Not as good as the flying fish, but…well, when your guts are spilling out, you take what you can get. Anyway, those lizards and snakes are decently high-leveled. I bet they’re good for that kind of thing. So, keep an eye out when you’re scouting. Might just save our lives.”

And with that, Zeke leaned against the wall, closing his eyes. However, as he tried to sleep, all he saw was a pile of desiccated corpses.