Niko awoke, feeling stuffy, humid, but at the very least warm. Fuzziness that didn’t belong to his own feathers ruffled against his face, and he resisted the urge to sneeze as a virtual wall of said fuzz moved.

Reassessing his surroundings at that, Niko realized that he’d apparently dozed off at some point. The floodwaters had continued for hours, albeit at a tepid flow after the initial wild rush that had proved to be so terrifying. Now, though, he didn’t hear the tell tale noises, and had also realized he was sharing the space with two creatures that he wasn’t sure the identity of.

Common logic told him that monsters wouldn’t share the space with him, according to everyone they were mindlessly aggressive towards other, non-monsters. Yet, Niko couldn’t take that completely at face value, due to his gifts from Alterra and Venris. The former being the will of the world, and the ladder often referred to as the father of monsters. Whether that meant he might be able to bend the rules, he wasn’t sure, but they weren’t hostile with Skye, either, so…

Niko decided against trying to ask them. Neither of the creatures seemed to display the level of advanced sapience that would allow them to converse freely. Obviously, they were intelligent enough, otherwise he doubted they would have helped with the situation they now found themselves in, but Niko didn’t know where that necessarily would place them.

“Sounds like we can open it up.” Skye commented, stretching out. Of the lot of them, the humanoid unironically had the most space to work with. The arachnid and mammal – Niko briefly entertained the idea of naming them – watched as she put her hands on the wooden seal in front of them. With a flex of essence, she began retracting the wood, a much slower affair than what they’d been forced to do before, but simultaneously much quieter.

The Phorus noticed neither of the beasts beside him make a move to expedite the process, likewise perhaps content with not drawing additional attention to themselves. After a minute, the wall opened outwards, bark peeling away in two parts, cleanly.

The arachnid was the first one to clamber out, tentatively touching four long, fuzzy antennae to the outside world with curls of essence running through them. Niko didn’t know what the pattern was, but he assumed that it was sensory in nature. He looked through the essence around them, seeing nothing nearby that should cause them concern, but he did notice that there were still bodies of essence higher up the tree from them.

Long, fuzzy legs extricated the many-eyed arachnid, and seemingly with relief, it spun around to look into the hovel, giving a flurry of its pedipalps in what Niko hoped was joyous celebration. Skye chuckled at the display, reaching out and casually flipping out over the lip of the wood, handholds seemingly forming for her easily.

“Handy,” Niko dryly noted, “Must be nice.”

“Had plenty of time to connect to the tree.” Skye explained with a shrug, “C’mon, it looks like the higher tier stuff is still higher up the trunk.”

Niko nodded, having to be much more careful on trying to descend the tree. Oddly, the spider watched him, seemingly nervously as he did so. Niko wondered if it realized his plight, and was waiting to see if he needed help.

‘At least it doesn’t look like a black widow, or something,’ Niko did his best not to superimpose the image of a much less adorable looking spider atop his new acquaintance. He had no idea why it was still hanging around, but considering all of the higher tier creatures hanging above them, a little safety in numbers never hurt anyone.

The long hooked claws of the mammalian creature appeared over the lip of the hole next, followed swiftly by its head. Instead of coming down with its head pointing up, the creature simply crawled out and stretched, head pointing downwards at the rest of the group. It grunted at them, a sound that seemed the closest they were going to get to a farewell, before it turned and began sauntering away, scuttling down the tree trunk a distance before giving a wide leap and flaring its arms. Skin expanded, and Niko watched as the thing glided off into the misty, dark air of the under canopy.

“See ya, I guess,” Niko trilled out, shaking his head, “Not much for goodbyes.”

“What about this one?” Skye gestured to the still waiting spider that shuffled on many legs, giving Niko the distinct impression of anxiousness. It seemed to adjust itself, lending two of its larger eyes to looking upwards at the rest of the tree, and Niko followed the gaze.

If he had to guess, at least half of the tier three creatures must have been swept away, given the current lack of glowing moss and other plants up about thirty meters overhead. The only beasts and monsters that yet remained were obscured by a heavy fog, but Niko could see through it, and saw that they, too, were beginning to move.

“We should get going,” He worriedly stated, “Don’t wanna find out how long this little ceasefire lasts firsthand.”

The trio quickly moved down the trunk, with the spider leading the way. It paused every now and then, as if to say ‘follow me’ to the pair, before scuttling a little bit faster. If anything, it even seemed to be a touch frustrated with their slow climbing speed. Amused, Niko pushed a little bit faster, with Skye having a much easier time of moving than he did on the way down.

After a few minutes, they reached the forest floor, and Niko couldn’t help but startle at the sheer difference he saw there. Before the flood, plant life was abundant, but now the area was devastated. Patches of lucky life remained, but Niko could tell that soon enough the bioluminescent show would return. Essence surged through the environment, pushing the boundaries of tier four and saturating everything. He basked in the sensation, before an irritable clicking entered his ears

“Yeah, yeah, we’re coming,” blase, Skye muttered, “Impatient big spider, isn’t he?”

Niko snorted at that, but didn’t comment. The beast's behavior – he assumed it was a beast and not a true monster, at this point – was curious, and while he and Skye needed to find a way to the surface, he had a feeling that following the arachnid was a good idea.

They moved through the tangle of roots, pools of water slowly vanishing into the soil and the titanwoods, each keeping a weather-eye on the trees overhead. Others like them were filtering down, and a few times Niko and the other two had to stop and wait. Thimurge, in greater numbers than Niko and Skye had seen in the lit canopy layer, crawled over one another downwards. Some few of them noticed the trio, hissing at them and clacking mandibles, but going on their way shortly thereafter.

“I thought… monsters were supposed to just attack?” Niko quietly asked Skye.

Skye shook her head slowly, “They are… but there are quirks to every ecosystem, so…”

Nodding, Niko guessed that was as good an explanation as any other. This place was special, the woods themselves, the sheer quality of essence, and even the way essence moved. Niko wondered if another of Alterra’s Titans were here, but even with how potent the essence felt, it was still a far cry from what he’d felt in Vol’s territory.

It took them another few minutes for them to come to an outcropping of sturdy stone, one of the few formations of such that Niko had seen. The spider chittered excitedly next to them, and walked up to the base of the stones. He wasn’t sure what the thing was doing, up until it put four of its limbs up against the ceiling of a depression, pulling on the stone and twisting as it did so. With a grinding sound, stone moved, a seam that Niko hadn’t seen at all even with his superior vision becoming apparent as it did so.

Niko gave a low whistle at that, “That’s a sneaky entrance if ever I saw one. Seems like it’d be safe from flooding, too.”

The spider pulled the cap down, a strand of webbing that looked like a tightly braided rope connected to its center from the other side. Eagerly, the spider tapped the opening with its antennae, before vanishing into the hole.

Skye and Niko followed, giving the other a shrug as the sounds of the insect continued inside. Niko hopped up first, deciding that if the spider was trying to lull them into a false sense of security, he’d be better suited to tanking the surprise attack.

“Whoa…” Niko breathed as he clambered over the edge, eyes wide in surprise at what he was seeing, “I didn’t see that coming.”

“What is it?” Skye asked after, already climbing up past him. She came up short, “Whoa.”

An expansive, carved lair of stone lay before them. Rather than roughly done, intricate arcs that, while wild, seemed to follow some loose pattern, giving the whole inside a feel of an ancient structure. Recessions were built into the walls, ridges and grooves made from sharp limbs leaving textures in the stone, and looking more like decorations than byproducts of digging. But even beyond that, there was a warm, golden light that suffused the large chamber, coming from a hanging bouquet of plants, cradled in web strands along the ceiling. Vines of the material were nestled into carven crevices in other locations, lending to the warm light elsewhere, with a pool of water down in the middle of the entire room.

The basin – as that was the only thing Niko could think of upon seeing it – was set in the center, dug down to give an easy supply of water. More than that, though, were the many other rivulets and channels that led to other pools of water. Several plants grew in plots of soil, clearly having been placed with intent, and were heavy with fat, vibrantly colored fruits.

And then came the wealth of other objects, arranged along pathways in the room, but leaving clear lanes to wander through. Fine stones, ore, and what appeared to be crafts of sapient make dotted the area, some of which came in the form of actual wealth, in gold coins and ingots. Weapons and armors, albeit of a much lower quality, also sat around, and Niko felt briefly uneasy that perhaps the insect was responsible for their lack of wielders.

Up until it sauntered up to one of its plants and ripped a fruit off, its pedipalps holding it while its fangs pierced the flesh. It slowly drank the juices, and Niko tried to ignore the nightmare sight of another set of mandibles tearing pieces off as it dried out fully, stuffing it into the parts of its mouth that Niko couldn’t see very well through the fuzz.

‘Note to self, just because it can drink through its fangs doesn’t mean a creature doesn’t also have a fully functioning mouth for regular eating.’ Niko decidedly averted his attention to the rest of the room. Eating habits aside, Niko didn’t see the thing as terribly driven to aggression, but that still left the question of where all of this stuff came from.

“The ore and stuff is older,” Skye whispered, “But the gear is new. Does it like hoarding?”

It was then that the spider tore off two more fruit, wiggling happily as it approached the pair. Skye received her fruit with a perplexed expression, no less than Niko’s, and the spider chittered contentedly as it moved back away from them and to its other devices. It fussily moved objects, half of which were only moved by centimeters – a twist here, a straightening there – until the collector was satisfied with where they were.

“Good fruit.” Skye nodded, having taken a bite out of it without Niko even noticing, “Heavy with essence, too. Doesn’t seem toxic.”

Niko clucked, before taking a bite of his own fruit. Followed rapidly by more, until only a single stone of a seed remained, roughly the size of Skye’s fist. He was about to set the seed down when he paused, looking at the spider and then to its home with helplessness.

The spider happened to notice, and tilted its body, before gesturing with its pedipalps to a wall. Niko followed the gesture with his eyes, seeing a pile of other seeds in a well concealed leaf-and-web hammock.

“Guess it saves the seeds.” Niko nodded, delicately maneuvering past piles of objects in an attempt to not knock everything over. As he did, Skye tossed her own seed over his head, landing it perfectly in the hammock.

He smirked at that, shaking his head before dropping his own seed in. Niko turned, about to congratulate Skye when he realized that she was frowning heavily, glaring at something.

“What is it?” Niko tilted his head, coming back to where she was.

“Well, I think I know where all of this stuff came from…” Skye answered, pointing directly at a pile.

Niko missed what she was meaning, his eyes combing over various arms and armors, before he saw the fabric. It was well made, and while the colors were a simple beige and black, it didn’t stand out amongst the rest of what was laying there. If it wasn’t for Skye pointing it out, he would have glided right past it, looking quite at home amidst the loot horde.

“Bant’s arse,” Niko muttered, “More cultist stuff?”

The Phorus and half-elf glared at the flag bearing Bant’s symbolism, and then back to the many present sets of equipment.

Then they heard a sharp, repetitive knocking sound in the distance, and their host spider’s movement froze.