1.14

Harold was glad.

A strange notion, he knew, in these long, unending tunnels of ceaseless war. But the human mind is first and foremost adaptable, malleable.

Their column marched, every so often encountering a stray combatant, that had veered from the main fights and was never able to find its way. These they slew, and Harold was... glad for the opportunity.

Onwards, trudging across a room of nightmares made manifest. A brood chamber, filled with hatching eggs. Calling the force to a halt, Harold and Amber peeked around the corner at the room.

Every so often, a small spider, maybe a quarter the size of a normal spiderling, would make its way out of the room, scuttling down the corridor in the opposite direction.

Larger ones came out every so often as well. Caretaker variants, if Harold was any judge. They lacked the large fangs that made combat with the broods such a daunting prospect. In their place, a shorter, blunted maw had sprouted. In their jaws they almost always carried a smaller broodling, perhaps too large for the room, but too small to make a trek to the next stage by themselves.

At least, that was where Harold assumed they were going. They could just as easily have been headed towards a mess hall, to be used as rations.

Every few minutes, the room would eject another small spiderling.

[Level 1 Black Widow Spiderling]

…

[Level 1 Black Widow Spiderling]

…

[Level 1 Black Widow Spiderling]

They were new troops for the front, then. Harold tapped Amber on the shoulder, drawing a line across his neck with his thumb. They had to die.

She nodded, looking more than a little sick. ‘Maybe it’s because they look closer to the spiders from Earth?’

Channeling the fireball with her staff, an orb of intense heat began to form just in front of the orb adorning the staff.

Harold backed up in surprise, not because the fireball, but rather because a full quarter of the observable flames were white, swirling unendingly within the orb containing them.

Amber looked up from her concentration, but did not break the channeling of the attack. Seeing his almost fearful look, she whispered. “It’s the [Pyromancer] title I got, it increases fire affinity.”

The orb grew brighter and brighter, until it outshone even the green gems lining the walls, providing light. It blazed to an enraptured crowd, the Fang spiderlings lining the tunnel behind them even having stopped their chittering and scuttling to stare at the beautiful orb.

Amber turned the corner, took aim, and let the orb fly, quickly ducking back behind the bend as the birthing room received the full brunt of her entire mana pool.

She nearly collapsed in his arms, the mark of mana exhaustion and the sheer amount of force she had used to utterly burn away any sentient being still alive in the room.

Leaving her to rest along a wall with the rest of the Fang spiderlings to watch over her, Harold took two Fangs and Rocky’s golem to take a look at what remained of what looked to be a birthing chamber.

The room emanated heat. To be expected, though little comfort for Harold and the several that followed him. The room was smaller than he had anticipated, though that wasn’t totally unexpected either. Peering around the corner, they had only really been able to see a small part of the room before deciding to blow it to bits.

The shape of the room still remained though, though the majority of eggs were little more than cinders at this point. The luckier spiders had been killed immediately, the unlucky… well, Harold could see their corpses, charred black and still on fire.

The room was fairly standard, though with three small burrows that dug deeper into the ground and into the wall. These, Harold surmised, were where the egg laying members of the brood would stay, protected from most conventional assaults by the members guarding the cave, in such a position that they could only be killed after all available defenders had been overrun.

Unfortunately for them, the fire poured into the room had had no qualms about charring absolutely everything in sight, with no consideration for proper targeting.

Bending down to examine the remains of what had once been an egg, he found nothing but ashes. ‘Looks like this room won’t be producing anything else anytime soon.’

Then, like a bolt of lightning, the ramifications of the thought struck him. He stood up immediately. “Shit. We have to follow the spiderlings to where they were going, or someone’s going to figure out what happened and send someone to investigate.”

Dashing out of the room, he quickly asked Rocky to translate, commanding the column to follow him as fast as possible, leaving five of the spiderlings to guard Amber as she recovered.

The rest followed him as he rushed down the corridor. Running with his heater shield, Harold was forced to hold it away from his front, lest he trip on a rock and slow the entire group down. He kept it to the side as he ran, bringing his war hammer down with his right whenever they came across an unsuspecting Black Widow spiderling, scuttling towards their collective destination.

Gesturing for the spiders to stay put at a corner, he crept towards another open room. The spiderlings they had encountered seemed to all have been heading towards the opening, and he watched as several other tunnels fed the level 1 spiderlings into the room.

Unlike the previous one Amber had burned out, this room only took spiders in. In ten minutes of watching the room, waiting for a sign of what the room’s purpose might be, it seemed as though it was just a room for the developing spiderlings to stay.

He held his position until the newest group of spiderlings made their way into the room before moving closer to the room as well.

Angling his head to try and see a small sliver of the room, he observed several spiderlings feasting on the flesh of something. The meat itself seemed black, perhaps the flesh of the other broods, perhaps their own dead. Who was he to say?

It confirmed his suspicions that this room held the newly born Black Widow brood, growing in preparation for their turn on the frontlines.

Silently walking back to the spot where he had left his allies, he asked Rocky to quietly convey his plan.

“Wait Harold signal. Attack room”

In all fairness, it wasn’t much of anything, but with the abilities he had on hand, there wasn’t really much planning to be done.

The lead Fang bobbed its head.

The column began edging towards the room after the next group of Black Widows entered. He nodded to Rocky.

“FIGHT”

The rock’s voice boomed, louder and more pervasive than even the ever-present skittering that the brood nest emitted.

Dozens of screeches rose in answer, and the Fang spiderlings joined Harold as he stormed through the doorway.

The spiderlings inside stood no chance. The principal guards of the room were several brood tenders, each of them ranging from levels four through seven. It seemed as though the broodlings bred for war had already been sent to the frontlines, only the dregs having been left behind to guard the vital breeding chambers that fueled the brood’s war machine.

Or so Harold thought as he easily smashed through the first Black Widow that attempted to hold him back. Accustomed to fighting the level ten through twelve spiderlings on the frontlines, the force of his hammer shattered the carapace of the much weaker brood tender.

The level one Black Widow spiderlings were smaller than even the weakest Fang spiderling among his allies, so when his torrent met theirs, it was the enemy who took the brunt of the death toll.

There were no small holding chambers for egg-laying spiders in this room. No, the much larger expanse housed only the newly born broodlings and their caretakers, easy pickings for the relatively high-leveled members of Harold’s attack force.

It was a field of blood and gore. As far as he could tell, there were few to no casualties among his… men? Spiders? Anyway, the room had been scoured clear of any survivors, and Harold began leading his forces through the tunnels to attack the other Black Widow egg chambers.

#####

A wave of mental anguish rolled over him at once, nearly bowling him over with the force of its psychic scream.

Clutching his head, Harold was reduced to a fetal position as he clawed at his skull, trying to make the shockwaves cease.

His allies were similarly incapacitated, the majority of the Fang spiderlings had simply dropped to the floor, their spindly legs shaking too much to support their weight. Others took to screeching in pain, trying in vain to remain upright, even as their bodies betrayed their determination.

Then, instead of the slow relenting that he had been expecting, an immediate feeling of calm washed over him. Shakily getting up, he turned to see Rocky atop his summoned golem, perplexed, staring at him with the same tilted head he had seen when the little rock had first gained consciousness.

‘Holy shit. Rocky’s the one who’s been giving off that aura this entire time?’ He thought back to when he was still under the effects of the Black Widow venom. That feeling of peace that had washed over him for a time, before being torn away by something unknown to him. That feeling came from the little rock in front of him? I made sense, didn’t it-

No. No time, he was getting sidetracked. That wave of mental torture could only have been produced by one of the brood mothers, and having destroyed so many Black Widow egg chambers, Harold had a pretty good idea as to which one was currently angry.

They had to regroup with Amber and move somewhere else, anywhere else, for if the anger that the brood mother possessed was shared by her children, these tunnels would soon be filled by the Black Widow brood, intent on vengeance.

The column reorganized, Harold bringing Rocky around to each and every incapacited spider, allowing them to get back on their feet and follow up, staying within Rocky’s aura. He didn’t know why it worked, but it was their best way out right now.

No longer did they move in the orderly line that Harold had asked for at the start of their little expedition. Now, they moved along, as clumped as possible, with Rocky’s golem leading the way.

They made it back, though the tunnels had seen a considerable increase in Black Widow brood presence in the short while since Harold had been gone.

Amber was clutching her head, surrounded by five incapacitated spiderlings. It took a bit longer for Rocky’s aura to work on them, however.

Harold theorized that it was because they had been subjected to the mental torture for much longer than he had, though it wasn’t long before they too, were back on their feet.

“Now the question is,” Amber began. “Whether we go to the source of this mental wailing, and kill the Black Widow brood mother, or if we go back and reinforce the Fangs currently fighting.

It only took a moment for Harold to convey the question to Rocky, who in turn asked the remaining Fang spiderlings.

The deliberation took less time than even Harold expected, and the lead Fang pointed towards the entrance, back where they had come.

“You want to go back?” Harold asked, questioningly. The brood had never shown an interest in retreating before.

Rocky asked his question without prompting this time, and Harold noted that the rock seemed to be getting smarter all the time. Though that, like the aura, was a problem for another day.

His thoughts were interrupted by the screeching hiss of the lead Fang as it violently shook its head.

Rocky translated. “Go back to cavern. Get spiderlings. Come back, kill bad mother.”

Amber nodded in agreement. “It makes sense that we should pull the group of spiderlings we left behind. If we kill the Black Widow brood mother, we probably won’t need to worry about their brood being a unified threat anyway. “

He took her at her word. Maybe getting to the surface wasn’t such a faraway prospect after all.