Ice splintered upwards with a crystalline tinkle, glowing in the dark and illuminating the wriggling bodies skewered by their tips. Around them, more bulbous shapes — furred and fat with rows of dark eyes reflecting the glacial light — streamed forth like a tide. Having become more used to the flow of this place, Sláine focused on one and thought, I want to know more.

[ Inspect ] -> [ Spider ]

[ Chasm Jumper ~ Servant of the Weaving Dark. The structure of their rear legs allows them to cross large distances with a leap, while they use their long front limbs to capture their prey. HELLO I AM ALREADY CALLING IN MORE BACK-UP PLEASE RUN SLÁINE THERE ARE WORSE THINGS THAT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU THAN DYING. ]

This was punctuated by an ‘oh fuck no’ from Red, and she was yanked backward by the already fleeing woman.

This was… not what Sláine had expected Red to be so afraid of, and she stumbled after her in the gloom. “…Spiders? Really?”

“You BITCH they have too many legs, okay?”

Fair enough, Sláine supposed, and she wasn’t here to gatekeep people’s phobias.

Eyes adjusted enough to the dim scraps of light to at least see silhouettes, Sláine was able to react when something from the corner of her eye flung itself forward. Shaking herself free of Red’s grip, Sláine gripped her halberd with both hands and jabbed forward. The spike at its tip slammed through the spider’s sternum, and biceps straining, she swung the creature at another spider descending from above.

“[ Reckless Spin ]!“

She felt herself perform the revolution, the skewered spider functioning something like a bat as it thunked into its brethren before striking the wall with a wet, pulpy crunch. She arced her blade down then, splitting another down the midsection and splattering its innards over the floor.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck—!” Sláine heard from behind, and then, thin and reedy, “Look away!” She pivoted her body just in time to avoid being blinded by a sharp burst of light, though bright spots still fuzzed over her vision. She heard the crackle of ice and the fierce sizzle of steaming water, and when she whipped herself back around to look, she saw a field of sodden, half-charred arachnids.

[ Blinding Light ] to stun them, Sláine assumed, and an [ Ice Wall ] to contain the following [ Fire Blast ]. It’d worked well.

But even though Sláine could deal with the monsters too close for Red to safely fry, she could see the shapes of more descending from the webbing above. Pulling back her weapon with a schluck, Sláine stumbled backwards towards Red and shouted, “Lead the way!”

Red bolted off into the dark, and Sláine followed after her the best she could.

You know, Sláine idly thought, stumbling through the pitch black corridor after the fevered sound of Red’s footsteps, I wonder if one of those powers a Protocol can grant is dark vision.

How would she even figure it out, what possible [ Skills ] would be available to her? Was there a way to check? Would she have to ask? Perhaps being a bit more curious about the potential aid the human’s System could offer her would have stopped occurrences like her slamming into a wall at a full-tilt run. Her halberd clattered to the floor, and fumbling, Sláine crouched to pick it up.

“Shit, sorry!” she heard from right near her, and felt fingers enclose her own and guide her to the handle of her weapon. Another hand grabbed onto hers, and Red tugged her to her feet.

“I’m so sorry, I, I don’t have torches because I never need them and —“

From the sounds Sláine could hear behind them, she knew Red didn’t have time for a guilt-ridden breakdown. She squeezed the woman’s hand, her grip tight and reaffirming, and said, “Keep going. We’ll get through this, Red, just warn me when turns are coming up.”

“R—Right!”

It was so strange to hear Red like this. It was, in a way, quite interesting, though there was something underneath that continual dull fog masking Sláine's emotions that… didn’t feel great about it. Huh.

Weird.

Their joined hands made running at full-tilt awkward, but at least Sláine didn’t run into any more walls. Before each junction, Red warned her with a soft left or right, and they had to slow even more for Sláine to properly navigate the turn. It really would be more efficient if Red just left her behind, leaving Sláine to go all-out against the horde following them.

Such is life, she supposed, just as Red stopped short and said, “There’s another cavern up ahead.”

A pinprick of blue flashed, catching against the dark material of Red’s glove for a moment before spiraling off into the distance. A moment later and it erupted, casting that familiar blue glow over the surroundings and lighting up the cavern. Sláine immediately saw why Red had deigned to give her something to navigate by rather than just dragging her forward — she could see, from her place in the hallway, that the floor dropped into a sharp cliff-face a few feet into the room and the path instead seemed to stretch on to the left and right around a giant hole.

“What if it’s a dead end?” Sláine asked, releasing Red’s hand so she could properly brandish her halberd.

“It — depends on the layout. I’ll figure something out.”

“Did you use one of your [ Ice Wall ] cubes earlier?”

“Yeah,” Red replied, quick and terse, and Sláine nodded.

“Block off this passage with it if it’s safe, then. That’ll slow them down.”

“Then I wouldn’t have any more left.”

“Better to get what advantages we can now then regret not using it later.”

“Fine,” Red muttered as they reached the entrance, summoning a cube with a brief burst of light and setting it on the ground.

It was a tall chamber, or at least, the spires of ice reached a fair way up and their illumination still couldn’t piece the dark enough to reveal the ceiling. Peering over the edge was no more helpful, as it was swathed in darkness, but she didn’t hear anything in the overwhelming press of black around them. Sláine carefully maneuvered herself around the ice spears, peering down the left-most path while Red took the right. She certainly didn’t see anything in the path tucked up against the wall, though it was precariously thin, easy to trip off the side with one mis-step.

She did, however, hear the scrape of insect legs against stone, and before she could react, the doorway was filled with a gleaming, glacial wall. There was a thunk and a crackle as something made a rough impact on the other side.

“Sláine, this way,” Red called, reaching out her hand towards her and beckoning towards the right. “Aria is trying to map our progress, and they’re saying that other path probably loops back around to where we’ve been.”

“Handy,” she replied, weaving around the ice spires towards Red. “Any news on an exit, yet?”

Curious about Aria might have to say, Sláine hit [ Inspect ] -> [ Ice Wall ]

[ A wall of ice currently holding at bay so many spiders sorry Sláine I can’t talk to both of you at once and everyone else and oh no someone’s yelling at me in ANOTHER query oh please could you all just wait your turn I am not well-developed enough to handle this kind of system overload and it’s going to be my fault if the two of you die or get taken and cut open and turned into Bosses no no no wait this is still transmitting shit sorry ]

…Well. Probably best to leave the System to their panic attack, then. Who knew a giant floating rock could have a responsibility complex?

“Not yet, we just have to keep moving at stay ahead of those things for now. I see another pathway not too far ahead. Be careful; we really don’t want to fall any deeper.”

Sláine nodded and squeezed Red’s hand again. She owed Red quite a few more flowers for this stunt; she couldn’t imagine how unpleasant it was to be running around in pitch-dark tunnels while being chased by something you were terrified of, even if that thing did feel silly to Sláine.

As they shuffled around the thin path though, this was immediately challenged, and Sláine had no idea how she hadn’t noticed a shape that large crawling up from the depths of the pit, even if it was wreathed in shadows. Shouldn’t she have heard it? She’d heard the other monsters — maybe the sound had been disguised by the rhythmic sound of bashing as they threw their bodies against the wall of ice blocking them off?

It certainly made noise now as it leaped up to block their path, a voluminous abdomen attached to the upper half of curved, humanoid body towering over them. At least, Sláine thought it could be called a humanoid, though that made it sound a lot less grotesque than the thing really was. Its body was furred, the multiple arms sprouted out of its torso rhythmically moving in a hypnotic, impossible dance, and the black depths of its glossy, protruding eyes swallowed up the world as it leaned forward.

“Hello, my lovely daughter,” the loathsome thing hissed, a smile permeating her voice through the sound of her legs rhythmically scuttling. “It’s so good to see you again!”

Oh, Sláine thought distantly, underneath the sound of Red screaming and wildly flinging her fist directly into its face. Maybe that’s why she’s afraid of spiders.

>> Meet Red's mother