[X] Plan: Gunk The Mouth, Shoot The Legs
You find yourself almost regretting it, asking Matou Sakura about where her love for Emiya Shirou came from, when you see a sneer falls over her face, and in a cold tone she adds "But I bet Sister would know. She'd know all about Senpai's body~ They haven't even seen each other in a whole year, too-!"
"Master-" Medusa shushes Matou Sakura, placing a hand on her shoulder. Immediately, Matou Sakura goes silent; so do you and Archer. "Something is coming. I can feel it."
You don't notice it at first. At first, nothing about the sewer tunnel seems any more off than it was seconds before; the foul stink in the air and the sticky strands of black Grief coating the walls notwithstanding, nothing else strikes you as odd or unusual about the situation. But as your team edges closer to the corner, it comes on; a thin wisp of miasma rolls in from around the corner, gliding just above the water in the sewer trench.
Archer doesn't even need to say "Look alive, people, we've got company." You've known all along what you were walking into. Medusa raises her hand up, shushing Archer, and at this time you ready an arrow on your bow. String drawn back taut, you wait, holding this position as the miasma glides in low, just above your ankles where you stand. You see the water in the sewer trench move, vibrating just slightly enough. They are coming.
You smell it before you see it. A thick cloud of miasma bursts in from around the corner, choking your lungs and obscuring your vision. Unable to hold, you loose your arrow, and hear it hit the far wall, splashing ice across the surface. "Rider!" Matou Sakura calls out.
"Of course, master."
You quickly apply a Grief Seed to your Soul Gem as you feel the miasma setting in your bones, and you ready another arrow despite the difficulty. You can barely make out Medusa's shape in the thick cloud, but- "Incoming!"
A bolt of red streaks past you, bursting through the far wall and dispelling the thick cloud of miasma with its passing. When the dust from the shattered wall clears, you can breathe again; but your breath is stolen away the moment you spot the shape hanging from the ceiling. A thick bloated bag, distended, covered in hard bone-white shapes resembling human skulls. Eight lengthy, claw-tipped legs scrabble against the ceiling, backpedalling as the monstrous spider loses the element of surprise. Its eight eyes, glowing red, fixate themselves onto each of the four of you, and you draw back your bow as soon as you see the thing's mouth opening.
You never give it the chance to scream. You loose your arrow and its marks a solid hit, splashing ice all over the monster's mouth. Its forelimbs scrabble and claw at the thick coat of ice covering its jaws, and it attempts to retreat, crawling backwards against the ceiling in an attempt to get out of range. "Aim for the legs!" somebody calls out. "Don't let it get away!"
It isn't until Medusa springs into action, until you see her whipping a length of chain around the spider's leg and dragging it down from the ceiling, that you realise you were the one who called out. With the spider pinned, Medusa springs her entire body forward, slamming into the spider's head with a powerful kick. She pulls away as the spider lashes out at her with its other, still-mobile legs, trailing the length of chain as she soars backwards to her master.
The spider struggles to rise to its feet, but a solid yank of the chain from Medusa causes it to stumble as she drags it forward. The spider struggles against Medusa, but the muscles of her arm flex, and she pulls back, harder, and the spider once again falls to its feet. The pores on the underside of its abdomen ripple, and another thick cloud of noxious Grief is expelled. You try to draw back on your bowstring, but double over choking before you can manage it successfully.
Suddenly, a warm, dark object falls over your face, momentarily obscuring your vision. It's Archer: he's shed the shroud from his shoulders and draped it across your mouth and nose like a mask, and he stands in front of you, his own bow drawn back. His fingers dance as they release the arrow in their grasp, and it tears into the spider's head upon impact, sending it reeling. Medusa is send rocketing towads the spider as Archer's arrow knocks it back, and before the spider can even react to the damage it's been dealt, Medusa plants her foot deep into the head injury. The spider cracks the ground as it falls under the force of Medusa's kick, and when she pulls back, its limbs shift their focus, from scrabbling at the ice that covers its mouth, to the gaping crevice which Archer's arrow has carved across its brow.
"How's that?" Archer wastes no time in readying another arrow as soon as Medusa has cleared his range. "Can you breathe now?"
"Yeah. It's not going to be easy working my bow while also trying to keep this held against my face, but at least I can breathe now." You press the shroud closer to your face, letting its magical warding properties keep further Grief from entering your airways; and totally not because the scent of your father makes you feel safe. Nope. Not at all why.
"Just hit it with whatever you can manage, then."
Well, that's easy enough to manage. There's plenty of water available to you, so as you trace the Isa rune with your free hand, it hardly takes any effort on your part to send a column of ice shooting up from the sewage trench and directly into the spider's side. Your pillar smashes into the spider, pushing it against the wall and enveloping its legs in a thick sheet of ice. "Hit it!" you shout through your telepathic connection with Archer, almost loud enough for Matou Sakura and Medusa to have heard you.
They must have, because several things happen in unison. For the first, Medusa pulls back on her length of chair, tearing it, a large chunk of ice, and a part of the spider's leg with it. Second, you see swords appear in a ring above the spider's head. Third, you see glowing spheres of blue – a very dirty, muddy, almost green-brown-blue, but still blue – rise from the sewage water and join in line with the swords, forming into elongated needles.
Fourth, the attacks or Archer and Matou Sakura strike their target; and again; and again. The spider, trapped by your ice and unable to move, is helpless as Archer and Matou Sakura continuously impact its body with swords and needles made from the spirits of sewer water. That's a disturbing thought that you have no desire to dwell on. Would you get sick if one of them were to puncture you?
Finally, as the last barrage finds its mark, the spider's body disintegrates, melting into an ichor of Grief which drips onto the floor. You hand Archer his shroud back, and step carefully over the puddle of Grief and the pillar of ice which looms over it as you continue your advance. "I am sure there are more of those things than just the one." Medusa yanks on her length of chain, drawing its limp form back to wherever it came from. A pointed shape, like a dagger or a needle, flickers in her hand for a moment, the source of the chain weapon, before vanishing into nothingness as well. "We should not let our guard slip. The commotion will have alerted them to our presence."
Short swords form themselves in Archer's hands as he moves with a defensive step, and slivers of concrete tear themselves from the wall as Matou Sakura forms them into the shapes of earthen spirit needles. You ready your bow, and let the Isa rune rest on your hand as you finger the bow-string, ready. You advance, slowly; Medusa takes the lead, with Archer and Matou Sakura doing their best to guard you front and back.
As you venture deeper into the sewer's tunnels, the strands of Grief on the walls grow thicker, heavier, sagging from their perches less like a spider's web, and more like thick ropes or vines. Archer has to duck to avoid the highest-hanging strands, while you have to duck to avoid the lowest-hanging ones; and was that a human skeleton strung up against the wall? Miasma draws around your ankles, and Archer once again removes the shroud from his shoulders and hands it to you.
"We need you alive more than we need you fighting," he thinks to you. "If I have to go home to your mom ad tell her you hoked to death on spider gas, she'll kill me."
"If I choke to death on spider gas, I think we'll have bigger problems than mom yelling at you."
Archer's smile is faint in the dim light given off by Matou Sakura's spirit flames, but you don't need to see it in order to feel its warmth. You press his shroud closer to your face, and continue to advance, the miasma slowly rising higher on your leg with each passing meter.
*Splash*
The party stops, and Medusa whips her head back and forth, searching for the source of the noise. Several seconds pass before she shakes her head, motioning for you to continue onward, until-
*Splash*
There it is again. Again, Medusa stops, but this time her head tilts straight down. You take a step in place, and- *Splash* There's a puddle of water along the walkway, and ahead of you, you can see that the strands of Grief have grown so thick that they've dammed up the flow of sewer water. Water stains the edge of the walkways and dribbles over the webbing in a gentle trickle, and occasional random junk bobs against the black webbing, coming to a rest on either side of the channel. That's definitely another human skeleton strung up against the wall, isn't it?
Medusa turns her head back towards her master, who nods her own head, the two never speaking a single word to each other out loud. With her master's apparent blessing, Medusa approaches the dam, staring out into the nothingness with eyes that cannot see, in darkness that no eyes can see through. After several seconds, Medusa returns, and gives her report. "Beyond the dam, there's a tunnel that drops down about… Thirty, maybe thirty-five meters. I'm not sure what lies at the bottom, but I imagine it's probably more spiders."
Medusa looks to you, making a gesture with her head that all but screams to you "Well?"
"We haven't found any Evil Nuts so far," you say. Hijiri Kanna made no guarantee that any of the Evil Nuts she had planted in the sewers hadn't yet hatched, so the fact that you haven't found any could just as easily mean that there are no more unhatched Evil Nuts to be found in this part of the sewer. "But if we're being honest, if there were any they're probably down there."
You haven't found any Evil Nuts. But you have found the spider's lair.
What should you do?
[ ] Turn back and continue your search in another part of the sewers
[ ] Head down the tunnel and continue your search
-[ ] Fall back if you don't manage to find any Evil Nuts within a certain timeframe (set your timeframe)
-[ ] Keep looking even if you don't find any Evil Nuts; you can still get rid of any spiders you find
[ ] Fall back
-[ ] Regroup with the other teams and report your failure to find any Evil Nuts
-[ ] Make a plan to come back and continue searching with reinforcements
-[ ] Forget the search; come back with reinforcements and just smoke the tunnel out
[ ] Other (write-in)
