After far more up and down than Tric would have liked, they arrive at the cave where Ash fought a spider in the past. The hillside here has a scattering of snow under the pines, and their feet crunch some as they near the entrance. Ash has warned Tric and Heppa that he cannot guarantee only one spider will be here, but they are resolute in continuing with their plan. Ash’s preferred approach is to shoot when possible or use a sword when it is not. That works fine for Heppa, but not so much for Tric, whose weapons are a composite bow made by Mhaev, a knife forged by Serces, and willow knuckle dusters carved by Nasir. He assures Ash he will be fine, and his brother takes him at his word, trusting that he knows how to use the tools he has chosen to carry.
Ash and Heppa, bows ready, slip silently inside, getting in position along the right side of the cavernous room. The other side has webbing stretched across the walls and some openings. Tric eases part of the deer carcass from Butterbell’s back, intending to set it out as a lure for the monstrous spider, but the pieces unexpectedly fall apart. He glares at Mate, accusing the magpie of pecking away at all the connective tissue, but their ambush is already underway, so he does not dawdle. Ash might be content to sit for five hours until the perfect shot presents itself, but Tric wants to get this done while there is still light.
Needing to attract their prey and now having no easy bait to use, he remembers what Heppa suggested earlier about using vibrations to attract spiders. Ash was adamant during their planning discussions that no one get too close to the enormous webs, so Tric steps just within the cave mouth. From there, he shoots a few arrows at the sticky strands stretched over the nearby opening of a side tunnel, firing them at an angle to just disturb the web, not cut it down.
Heppa hears the skittering approach of way more than eight legs. Ash did warn us there could be more than one, she reflects when she sees how many foes they face. But more spiders just means more venom sacs. Maybe I can make poison for his arrows in addition to the antivenom. That could help with the yeti. As spiders begin clattering out of the side tunnel where the webbing is, Ash lets fly a multitude of shots before Heppa even looses her first arrow. Two of the spiders are skewered by his arrows and stop moving where they are pinned to the floor. Well that explains how he operates alone out here so much, Heppa thinks, firing her own shots and dropping one of the creatures herself. They all have dark brown bodies with no missing light brown legs, unlike the one Ash got too close to in the past.
One solitary spider makes it through the hail of arrows out to the center of the main chamber. It charges toward the closest elf, Tric. A few weeks ago he might have tried just punching it, but he has since come to realize he is actually quite good at archery. He fires arrows at it while backing away from the leftmost side tunnel to join his companions, forming up an elvish line on the right side of the cavern. His shots lame it, and then when he is out of Heppa’s line of fire, her arrows take it down.
Wondering why Ash has stopped firing at spiders, Heppa turns to her right and sees her cousin looking down a different side tunnel. With his hood and tattoos, she cannot see much of his face, but what she can is blanched paler than usual. Ash looses a few arrows in that direction and then hastily draws his sword rather than another arrow. Heppa hears the slap of bare flesh against stone and then some thing emerges, striking at Ash with three long claws on each hand. She has never seen anything quite this disgusting before. It looks somewhat like an elf or human, at least in general shape and size, but it is excessively bloated. Bone spurs and bulbous sacs poke out of the distended flesh at odd angles. Its huge mouth gapes wide open, showing its extremely sharp teeth as it slobbers and gargles at Ash. The creature is accompanied by a horrible stench… and two friends. Heppa screams in fright, falling back from her position towards the center of the chamber.
“What is that thing?!” Tric yells, bringing his bow to bear on the new arrivals. “It’s not a corpse. I know a corpse when I see one. That’s not a corpse!” One of the creatures has several of Ash’s arrows already sticking out of it, so Tric targets that one, hoping to take it down before it reaches his brother. With squishing thunks, his arrows sink deeply into the gross monstrosity. The creature is bulky, but it does not seem to have any extra toughness beyond its layers of rotting flesh. One of Tric’s shots hits it in the leg, and it stumbles as it lurches toward him. Even though it is magically animated, it still requires those muscles to move, which is reassuring, in a way. The creature swipes at Tric repeatedly with its massive, filthy claws, and one nasty hit tears through Tric’s sleeve, leaving searing gashes across his arm.
Ash is not a screamer himself, but the creatures scare him just as much as it sounds like they do his relatives. His hands shake from more than just the rain of blows coming at him. One swing of the powerful claws strikes his sword hard enough to jar it out of his grip. In a move of desperation, Ash interposes his bow between himself and the monster. A few more blows later, the bow also goes flying, spinning off in a different direction. Ash dives for his sword, rolling back up to his feet with it in his hand in time to parry the next set of swipes. The final creature comes at him as well, and overwhelmed by the onslaught, Ash inadvertently lets a few strikes slip through his guard. The claws catch him across the leg and arm, leaving trails of burning pain behind as they rip through his skin.
From the stench of the grave and the stitched-up appearance of the flesh, Heppa concludes these must be some new form of undead, which makes this a perfect opportunity to test a concoction she worked on during some of her free afternoons in Wesmere Forest. Inspired by Fenowin’s airborne attack that toppled Kachen, Heppa has devised a powder that should be harmless to elves but interfere with the dark energies that animate undead. Bow still clutched in her left hand, she digs the bottle out of her bag with her right and hurls it at the wall near Ash and his two attackers. It shatters, sending the powder out in puff. The closest creature seems more upset by the glass shards than the smoky haze from the alchemical preparation, though. Interesting. Looks like that’s going to need more experimentation, Heppa thinks, considering this a learning experience.
“That burns!” Tric cries, glancing down at his already inflamed new wounds. Mate flaps overhead, out of the reach of the monsters but unsure how to help. Tric backs away from the grotesque pincushion coming at him, but rather than reaching immediately for another arrow, he fishes out the dwarvish fly he found the other day. He throws it in his mouth, barely chewing at all before he swallows. The numbing begins to kick in almost immediately, though the angry red streaks of infection remain. Tric resumes peppering the creature with arrows, continuing until it collapses in a foul heap. He has fallen back far enough that it lands on one of the dead spiders. The burn from the cuts, that is bad—one definitely needs to be wary of these creatures—but Tric has just proven to himself that they can be defeated. “Just get enough arrows in there!” he encourages his companions.
That is easier said than done for Ash, who does not know what has become of his bow and is frantically batting away two sets of claws with his sword. The blade bears new nicks from all the parrying dulling its fine edge. And now an unsettling voice drifts down the tunnel that the creatures came from. “Are you eating, my pretties?” it asks. “Did you find some lunch?”
Oh no! Heppa thinks, wondering if a dark mage of some kind has been drawn by her screams.
This is not my day, Ash groans internally, as another set of claws gets behind his guard.
This is good news! Tric cheers to himself. A person I can manipulate!
Tric and Ash are bleeding from numerous cuts, but Ash seems worse off, given that two creatures are swatting at him. Heppa steps toward her cousins, intending to coax healing fae energy at them, but to her shock, she cannot grab a hold of it. Maybe I breathed in more dapper inkcap spores than I thought, she worries. This is the first time she has tried any serious casting since her discovery in the ravine a few days ago. Fenowin might be right that it could cut us off from our magic.
Fire coursing through his veins from all the injury he has taken, Ash lands a devastating hit on one of the creatures in front of him. The thought of retreating without his bow is painful, but he knows he is in bad shape. Ash risks a glance around and is relieved to see that it has landed just behind him. He kicks it up into the air and snatches it with his left hand, then starts to run for the mouth of the cave. Ash is not used to fighting alongside other people, but he has the presence of mind to announce to Tric and Heppa, who are closer to the middle of the cave than he is, “We need to cut our losses and get out of here.”
Tric seizes the opportunity for a clearer shot at the creatures who had been right on top of Ash, and fires off a few arrows at them as he backs toward the exit. “Give Ash the last ‘shroom!” Tric calls up to Mate. “If he goes down, you know what to do.” The magpie swoops in and snatches the last remaining dwarvish fly from Tric’s bag, then looks for an opportunity to deliver it. Tric’s shots ring true, thunking into the monster that Ash hobbled, but it still lunges toward the flagging avenger. Although Ash’s desperate parry saves him, the sword is knocked from his weakening grip and skitters away again. He has almost reached Heppa’s position, but the creatures ignore her, driven by the smell of his blood. It costs him his bow, but he knocks the uninjured monster away from them, sending it stumbling over the body of the one Tric felled. Rather than push itself back up, it falls on that corpse to gorge itself on the rotting pile of flesh.
“Sounds quite tasty! I hope you’re enjoying your little snack there!” the disturbing voice calls from out of sight.
Giving up on magical contributions for now, Heppa shoots carefully at the damaged creature swiping at Ash. It recoils from the hit, and Mate swoops in to take advantage of the opening. With the mushroom delivered and Ash actively chewing it, the magpie flees the cave. Heppa quickly darts down to the ground, scooping up the bow that landed near her. “I’ve got your bow,” she calls to Ash, urging him to continue the retreat. Tric lays down cover fire, enabling Ash to make it outside and Heppa to scoop up his fallen sword, as well. It is a shame about the spiders, since the elves’ whole reason for coming here was to get some of the venom, but Heppa supposes they can come back later for that. With her arms full of weapons, she certainly cannot lug one on her own. And Anador’s sons are so poorly off right now that there is no reason for her to risk disturbing that remaining creature’s meal. Or to face whoever is just a little ways down that tunnel.