The spider vanished, teleporting into the hallway his friends had ran down, and Corvayne started running as fast as he could, feeling a little light headed from losing blood. The spider had cut enough muscle that his right arm was out of commission. He could fight one handed with a spear, but it was awkward at best. He tried not to trip as he put his spear away and drew his fire-breathing dagger and he slowed to a jog, his muscles complaining about sprinting and fighting non stop the last few minutes.

Corvayne saw two lumps ahead, and he prepared himself to see two of his friends dead, throats slashed. He got closer and was instantly relived to see they were tumor zombies that had been cut down since they had passed that way. He entered the large spiral chamber up and saw his friends all alive and well, if not looking confused. He figured it out when he saw the spider teleport from the top of the ramp down by him, and make a weird hand motion towards itself, then pop forward to look back.

“Sort of like a dog.” He muttered as the spider ignored Hari who was inching around it. It made a sort of stomping dance while facing Gary and the girl supporting him, but didn't move to attack them, rather teleporting behind Corvayne when he stopped and prodding him with a palm.

“I get it! I get it. Going.”

Corvayne spoke as he started jogging up the slope. “It wants me to follow. Stay together, get back to the truck. If I don't come back...”

Wick slapped him on the shoulder as he passed. “Don't give us that bullshit!”

Corvayne slowed to say something back but the spider appeared behind Wick and gently picked her up and put her off to the side of the ramp, then it took Corvayne's hands and tugged him to follow. The thing's hand was warmer than he expected, it's hands sort of like a dog's padded paw rather than carapace. After a few steps it let go to blink ahead.

Corvayne let his boots help him run but to his annoyance he found the spider still moved faster than him, blazing a trail up and slowing or teleporting back down the ramp to keep prodding him.

It reached the stream spilling from the tunnel and actually didn't seem to like the water too much, slapping it's legs with black energy and running along the ceiling instead of the floor, all the while being surprisingly quiet.

“Is that gravity magic?”

The thing didn't respond, and Corvayne heard sloshing ahead. Far too many feet unless the entire team had left the Truck to come aid him. No, definitely not right. He could see something glowing green mixed in the the blue light spilling from the water logged intersection.

The sword bug above him had slowed and was readying it's weapon.

He was about to cry out for it to wait but he saw it wasn't his crew ahead. They were using torches lit with green fire, and there was something wrong about the way they moved. Corvayne gripped his dagger. Perhaps there WAS a necromancer afoot after all? He snapped to attention as the men started falling apart, the dark shadow of the monster he had been following twirling.

Closer to the commotion, he noticed the men were not crying out, or talking besides to grunt a little as they swung their weapons or died. He also saw something glowing in their foreheads. He had to shield his eyes when one of them started spewing green fire out of his mouth at the spider. The monster was too fast and the bandit ended up hitting his friends instead. Another flung a green energy net that the monster vanished out of the path from, the net hitting another bandit then sliding right through the man, causing the bandit to fall apart. Corvayne was trying to decide friend or foe when one of the swarthy men turned to him and started breathing a cone of green fire down the tunnel.

As the flames neared Corvayne used [Cross-Skill: Flows-Like-Water] and for some reason felt extra liquid, maybe from having water right there. A moment later he appeared next to the man and knocked him to the ground with the back of his spear.

“Kill him! He's with the little bitch!” A bandit with a mask snarled. The spider had popped up on the ceiling to avoid a flaming skull that was trying to home in on it, so that left Corvayne with ten men spread out in the intersection of tunnels. One of them tried to hit him with an energy whip, and Corvayne had seen it shear rock so he shrugged and moved around the man and used [Backstab], killing him then with some footwork moving back into the dark of a tunnel.

There was another burst of fire, nearly scorching Corvayne as he rolled through water away from the green flames. He could see that the bandit had killed two of his allies, their burnt bodies falling to the ground.

The spider dropped then, landing on two feet and standing head and shoulders taller than the men. Corvayne should say, it looked like a humanoid warrior then, falling into a spin that left a trail of flower petals then using [Sheath-The-Life] to kill the remaining bandits, bodies falling into the stream.

He heard Wick coming up behind him, panting from sprinting. “What the hell is going on? Who did she just kill?”

“I don't know, these guys were trying to kill me too!” Corvayne called back.

The Spider didn't wait for him or Wick, teleporting towards the light of the exit.

“Why are we helping the spider?”

“It spared me, possibly you too. Also, it knows my people's moves. It might be a cursed villager.” Corvayne held up his arm. “You wouldn't be able to fix this with that spell, would you?”

Wick mumbled something. “No, you took too long. It has a limit of a few minutes.”

Corvayne shrugged and popped open a water bottle Mister I had mixed a potion into. It didn't fix his arm but helped with the dizziness.

“I'm going to keep tabs on it. Go to the truck, allright Wick?”

Wick nodded and Corvayne ran out of the exit. As he stepped onto the balcony he heard gunfire and what sounded like the din of battle. If there were gun shots they were almost certainly his friends firing at something. He scrambled down the rocks and around a bend on the high ground and saw that their truck had moved to block the top of a ramp up a cliff-side, and an army of men in dark colors were mounting both horse and running charges at the choke point. The truck was also being pelted by arrows and had bits of green fire sticking to it, and Corvayne could see three masked men and a clump of archers pelting the truck from a high point amongst The Source's tendrils of broken walls.

Corvayne moved to a boulder and activated his cape. As he was plotting his route, one of the masked figures raised an arm.

“Halt!”

Like clockwork the men stopped. Corvayne could see little hints of green fire on all them, and they didn't seem to mind the machine gun still killing ones who had been charging. They turned, the mist of red still blowing open their ranks. The man in the mask didn't seem to care either, and only after whoever was firing in the truck stopped did the man speak again.

“My GOOD friends! We need not waste so many useful lives. Help us capture The Wizard, and we will invite you into the fold!”

The turret stopped for a moment, and Grunt flipped open a hatch and mimed holding a hand to his ear.

“We know your contraption will run out of magic before I run out of men. We are all humans!”

Grunt folded his arms.

The man in the mask put a hand up to the mask as if to look at him, then put a fist in front of his mouth before speaking again. “You need not be skeptical, my half ogre friend. Our elites are treated well, not like the rabble here.”

Grunt mimed thinking, then flipped the bandit off, closing the hatch and Corvayne could see the gun bob and click as another box of ammo was slotted into the weapon.

“Fine. Kill them all!”

The Masked figure lobbed a green fireball at the truck, and Corvayne started moving as the insane mob started running into the grinder. He saw a shiny globe fly out and hit the fireball, bursting it before it got to the truck. He saw the dust flying up a moment before the shockwave hit him. Whatever the spell was, he wasn't sure even The Juggernaut could take a direct hit. The figures on the hill fell over, then got back up and started charging up the ramp. Moments later the machine gun started drilling through them, the sound almost like firecrackers as it swept a wave of death through the men mindlessly throwing their lives away. Even if they got to the top, the Truck had been parked like a literal wall across the passable terrain. The only wild card here were the wizards.

The spider appeared near him, tapping his shoulder. It had switched back to it's small six legged form.

“Yeah?” Corvayne looked over at it. The spider pointed at the mage, who was channeling another spell.

Corvayne thought about it. “I would think Mister I would just-”

There was the retort of a big rifle and the masked man's head flew off. “He would just do that.” Corvayne gestured.

The spider tapped him and pointed back at the spot, using one of it's padded fingers to push his chin to pay attention to the scene. From his rock, Corvayne could see one of the archers run up to the head, grab the blood splattered mask, and put it on then fly back into formation and start casting spells.

The figure even started laughing. “Death cannot stop me, small minded Artifacers!”

Corvayne mimed pulling a mask off and throwing it away. The spider mimed it as well, then shivered it's body back to it's wings, then blinked down the path to the lower scrub as the sound of battle continued. Watching the spider he could see it's skin change color and it seemed to be able to run flattened in a sort of cockroach configuration. Corvayne did his best to move low and quiet, passing the first gap in the black stone walls and dusty yellow grass, circling around to get behind the formation.

The spider moved first, darting out and leaping into the air, dropping two daggers into a mage. Corvayne moved after them, watching as both figures dropped to the ground. The spider grabbed the mask and gestured, hissed, then ran, trying the gesture a few times as a fireball exploded behind it. Corvayne tried to lighten his gravity to leap at a man and felt something block it as a mage pointed a ring at the spider and fired a white energy net at them. It hit the bug but didn't stop it, just slowed it as it started dragging the mage slowly behind it, legs changing into four as it turned into what looked like a rhino as it stomped and pushed.

Corvayne could see they were turning to focus fire at the spider, and had a moment where he had to really decide between bandit-cultists and the spider. They had both attacked his friends, though the spider had stopped.

Looking at the masks... the bandit mages looked like The Magus's mask, which tipped the scales. Corvayne whipped a [Cross-Skill: Whirling Axe] at the flying mage who was pinning the spider, activating the dagger as he did and creating a spinning disk of fire. It blasted right through the flying wizard, slicing him apart and breaking the spell in the ring. Almost instantly Corvayne had to dive away from a dozen arrows as the archers retaliated. There was a hint of something sloshing again inside of him. Maybe he was started to feel what they called the 'high of battle'?

He scrambled back to cover and saw that the Spider had darted around a wall and was struggling with the mask, using two hands to try to hold it steady. It then put it up to it's mouth and with a buzz ate or ground it down, spitting out a little green ember that whined as it extinguished itself on the sand.

“Oh so that's how you kill it?” Corvayne said, not expecting an answer. He then popped out from cover and blasted a wave of fire at a pair of archers trying to get around the rock. One of them had already retrieved the mask he had knocked down. The other mage flung a fireball at him and Corvayne used [Cross-Skill: Flows-Like-Water] and slid past it, moving into melee with the archers. He stabbed two then used Juxtapose on one inhaling, pushing him to blow a cone on fire out at the other bandits while Corvayne started the dagger ablaze and used [Cross-Skill: Circle of Death], twirling out another wave of his own fire that at least knocked the mass of men over, sending a few tumbling into the stream bed.

Corvayne didn't have time to follow up, as he saw a wall of green fire falling onto him. Stinging pain rolled over him and there was a hiss as his armor summoning a bubble a moment before the hose of high power fire completely fried him. It might have saved him, but he could feel himself burning under the armor, which was now oven hot and full of scalding wet air. He was also nearly blinded by the sudden billowing cloud of steam, but so were the archers near him. Corvayne felt the sloshing feeling in himself grow and he leaned into it, opening his eyes and moving over to an archer and trying to apply gravity to lighten them.

His gravity power failed, but he didn't slow, the sloshing making his muscles bulge and as he moved his damaged arm knit itself back into peak form just as he got his hands on the man's shirt then fling the wounded bandit at a hazy dot he was sure was the floating mage. The man flew like a rocket and slammed into the mage while flying onwards, both of them twisting like dolls with their strings cut as they arced and plummeted.

Corvayne watched the mage hit the ground and saw the spider dart around his troops then bury it's knives into him. With a foot it pinned the mask down and chewed it apart. There was a shot, and the last mage dropped to the ground, his neck a mess. Corvayne saw the head start to roll towards him and put his hand between his face and the figure as the severed head flew to him like a loadstone. Corvayne saw the mask's glowing green fire between his fingers and could feel it trying to get at his face, pressing into his hand like ten thousand pounds of weight.

For a moment Corvayne felt his arms tire, and there was crack as one of his fingers broke from the force pushing at it. Even his shadow hands were bracing him. He grunted in pain, it hurt all over and he could hear the dead man's lips moving under the mask.

“Give yourself to me. Give yourself to us.”

The sloshing feeling grew and Corvayne used both hands and grapsed the mask and slammed it into the ground, flicking the head off as the mask was now writhing and bucking, trying to get him to slip up so it could get to his face. Another finger broke but the sloshing was stronger and Corvayne embraced it as it crested, a wave inside him.

“No... way... you're... taking... me.”

Corvayne didn't have the buzzsaw teeth that the spider did, so he pushed his shadow hands onto the mask and then started twisting it with his hands, fingers that it had broken cracking as they mended in a moment. Corvayne ignored the gore that had stuck to it when it's previous owner's head fell away, his whole being on holding and twisting the mountain of power in the artifact.

There was a crack then and Corvayne snapped the mask into two then smashed the pieces together before they could slip through his hands, the entire mask shivering for a moment before he crushed it, shattered against itself into a little ball of shards. When he let the pile of grit in his hands fall, he laughed a little. His hands were dusty but whole.

In fact Corvayne felt great everywhere. His arms itched a little, but he couldn't believe how fast they healed. His burns were gone, the skin already replacing itself as the old skin and blisters just dissolved. On top of that, despite using a few cross skills and onging blood loss, he felt more awake than ever. He looked around for the next fight, and saw the entire army was falling over, twitching, the green fire winking out both where bolts of fire had landed and in the holes the bandit-cultists had drilled into their skulls. Even the horses were collapsing.

He saw the spider coming up to him and Corvayne offered a it a hand to high five. The spider held it's hand up, and waved it in a circle near his, then moved gracefully around him to go use four limbs to pick up the mask shards and inspect them, then grind them down. Corvayne stepped away to let it do it's thing, heading back towards the truck while picking his way through a near carpet of both dead bodies and catatonic bandits. The rolling feeling left him twitchy and he kept waiting for everyone laying down to stand up so he could fight again.

He put his dagger away and pulled out his spear, flowing through a few exercises, only stopping when he considered that that they had won already and he was acting a little odd. He slowed and looked for an intact bandit in the carpet of them laying around.

Flipping a relatively bloodless body over, Corvayne could see the man was breathing but unresponsive to any stimulus, including a fairly hard kick to the ribs. Some of Corvayne's energy faded as his arms and burns started to itch. The entire battlefield reeked of death, unwashed men, and burnt flesh. His heat from fighting and running was turning to a cold layer of sweat, and he started thinking about the fact that he had killed more than a few people just now. He didn't throw up this time, if only because he kept his head up and kept walking, trying not to trip on bodies.

Corvayne had to slow down as he made his way towards the truck just because there were piles of the dead. He made sure to call out before he stepped into the turret's killing field.

“It's me!”

Grunt's head popped up from the top of the truck and he smiled and nodded, then frowned and pointed at Corvayne.

“What?”

Grunt pointed at his own arms frantically, and Corvayne looked down.

He saw gleaming shards starting to erupt from his skin, itching as the rolling feeling inside of him seemed to push them out. Then, he felt something bursting in him and he manged to gurgle “HELP!” before everything went dark.