Day 29 Chapter 11
- Location
- Around here
[X] Plan: Pull An Army Out Your Ass
It's difficult to see Archer nodding his head in the dim light, but the glow of his sword is just enough to keep him in view. Medusa presses her hand against a nearby wall, holding it there for several seconds before she sends out another length of chain. Suddenly, the light from Archer's sword flares up illuminating a wider patch of terrain than it had before. Archer eyes go wide, and he whips his body around, looking for something. At the other end of the column, Medusa also whips her head around, shooting off a length of chain into the distance. This time, you hear it impact something, followed by an unpleasant scream. Not ear-shattering, but still loud, and followed by a weighted skittering.
"We've got company," Medusa says. "Definitely more than one: I sense movement coming from all around us."
"Can you tell us how many there are?"
Countless clusters of eyes shine in the darkness, and Medusa says "I don't know."
"Archer, what are our options to stop them from screaming if we can't see where their mouths are?"
"Hit them as hard and as fast as possible, hopefully before we go deaf," is Archer's unfortunate reply. "With the light being as bad as it is, there's not much I can do in the way of hitting them, unless…"
"Unless what?"
"Can you keep them distracted with your familiars? Make them think there's more of us than what they can see, and maybe trick them into being distracted by a meal. That'll give me time to see if I've got something."
"Okay." It's funny; you were almost thinking the same thing, except your idea involved having your familiars engage the spiders directly in combat. But either way, you're buying the rest of the team enough time to do something about the low visibility, and hopefully they'll be able to deal with the lack of light enough for you to freeze the spiders' mouths shut before you all go deaf.
Who are you kidding? That's way too many hopefullys. Still, you're already dead if you don't try anything, so here goes nothing. "Archer and I have an idea," you whisper to Matou Sakura. "Don't be alarmed; they're mine, not Sidonia's."
As Matou Sakura asks "Don't be alarmed at what?" you concentrate. The Grief in these tunnels is thick, choking. You'd suffocate in seconds if you tried to breathe in here without Archer's shroud protecting you. But it's perfect Grief to use for making familiars. Obviously, or else you wouldn't be in this mess to begin with. Now, if you can just harness it for your own purposes, and… Concentrate on your memories of Archer. Remember how his presence makes you feel, safe and warm in his arms. Remember all the times he was there for you at the start of this timeline, when it felt like no one else was.
Remember why you trust him to be your father…
*Pop*
Your little tin soldiers – you need to come up with better names for them, but that's a job for another time – appear at your side, drawn from the Grief in the air to your Inguz rune, and through it, through you, into the act of creation. Matou Sakura stares, and you see her mouth "I thought you could only make birds." "Get them," you say, as you send your familiars out into the tunnels. "Buy us some time."
In the darkness, lights flicker and shift, the spiders are moving. Too many eyes are still locked on you, but now you see eyes focus on the approaching treats. You look to Archer, and nod your head. "All right, what do we have?"
"I've got…" The glow from Archer's hand as he creates a sword from nothing lights up the tunnel, revealing your position in a cramped chamber with many branching passageways. The eyes are still set in darkness too far back to be reached, but it is better now. You can see- You can see one hanging right above your heads.
Your hands have to work fast, invoking Isa and flinging a handful of ice towards the spider as it pounces. Your ice misses, and the spider lands, cutting you and Archer off from Matou Sakura and Medusa. It stares at you, and you have no time to react before it pounces, pinning you to the ground. You grimace as your body passes through the choking cloud of miasma, and you force yourself to muffle your scream in Archer's shroud as the Grief at your back burns you. Stunned by the attack and in pain, you somehow manage to activate your Isa rune, coats the spider's forelimbs in ice and allowing you to slip from its grasp, but it brings its massive, bloated abdomen down, forcing you to duck and roll from side to side as it tries to sting you. Because of course a monstrous spider that breathes Grief and whose scream causes instant deafness would also have a stinger.
The spider only lets up its attack when Archer stabs it, and you feel the weight above your body lifted as Medusa flings it off of you. It opens its mouth, but this time, you're faster, silencing it with a bolt of ice from your fingers. You hear chittering in the distance as Archer and Medusa tear the spider to shreds; are the other spiders struggling with their fake prey, or are they watching the fight in disapproval?
An advance of black-purple bodies from the darkness, ravenously chittering their mandibles, as the shredded remains of your familiars hang from their teeth and forelimbs, provides you with the answer. "All right people, look alive," Archer says, readying his jagged black sword in one hand, and a glowing white-gold sword in the other. "Sakura, if she can get it off without hitting either of us, feel free to have Medusa go crazy."
"Right."
Your hands are quick, invoking Isa and splashing ice across the mouth of the spider nearest to your position. Quick as a flash, Archer carves into it, while you ready Inguz and draw more of the surrounding Grief to you, shaping it in your mind and sending the creations of your thoughts marching towards the remaining spiders. Their tiny weapons are like toothpicks against the carapaces of the monstrous creatures, but it buys you enough time to turn around so you can direct your focus to the next spider, the one Medusa is currently brawling with.
Your ice splashes across its mouth just as Medusa drives her foot into the spider's head, using the dagger in her hand – are you sure that's a dagger? It looks more like a giant railroad spike, or maybe a sewing needle – to tear a massive chunk from the spider's face before falling back. She moves with the grace and agility of a serpent, slipping in and out of the spider's strikes as it lashes at her with its forelimbs. Medusa sends out a length of chain, wrapping it around the spider's limbs, immobilising them before she lunges forward into another crushing blow to the spider's head.
Another spider, one which neither you nor Medusa managed to catch, lands a blow across the front of her face. A splash of blood mars the side of the tunnel wall, and it looks as though Medusa was blinded in the strike. Her eyes are closed, but despite the pain you imagine she'd be in from being blinded, her strikes retain the same precision as before. Only then, when nobody else is in her line of sight, do her eyes flash open-
Immediately, the spider is turned to stone, and Medusa plants a single, powerful kick clean through the body of the frozen spider, shattering it. She turns, closing her eyes again as she shouts "Get out of the way!" to you and Archer, her warning cry punctuated by a grunt as she is immediately torn into battle with another giant spider as it lunges at her from the shadows.
Lacking any better options, you hit the ground, seething through your teeth as the move forces you through the cloud of miasma and into contact with the Grief-stained floor. You close your eyes and hold Archer's shroud tight against your face, and invoke the Isa rune, blasting in the direction of the last spider you remember seeing before hitting the ground.
Suddenly, you feel a gust of wind wash over you, and the miasma is washed away. You see Archer embed his jagged black sword deep into the head of the spider he had been fighting, and as he scoops you up under his now-free arm, you see flickering spirits of pale green passing over the waist-high cloud. Everywhere they pass, the spirits blow away the Grief, and "Catch-!"
Archer tosses you towards Matou Sakura as a spider takes him from the side. She tries to catch you, but you right yourself as you fly, and prepare Isa as soon as you've landed. Ice washes underneath the spider's feet, causing it to slip as Archer drives his glowing white-gold sword into its head. It lashes out at him with its forelimbs, but faster than the spider can move, Archer has readied his short swords, and in such close ranges all the spider's attacks do is cost it its forelimbs. It recoils and scrabbles backwards, but you have ice ready, and gum its mouth up before it can scream.
"Rider! Do it now!"
Medusa tears her weapon free from the spider's head, trailing black sludge and an impaled eye as she kicks off her defeated foe. Her hair flies out of the way as she whips her head around, and her eyes snap open.
One by one, the spiders fall before her stony gaze. These things gave you so much trouble the first time you encountered them – just the thought of them is enough to give you chills as you envision yourself, trapped in their lair, completely devoid of any of your five senses – Medusa manages to snuff out with just a glance.
Her task complete, Medusa taps her foot against the floor thrice, turning her head around: her eyes closed, fortunately. "It's a shame these things are so ugly," she says, as she makes her way over to where her blindfold fell after being torn from her face. She picks it up, not caring at all for the blood – her own blood – staining it as she refastens it over her eyes. "They'd probably make interesting garden sculptures if they were a bit more presentable. At the very least, they'd be a conversation starter."
"Rider, that sounds a little-"
"Pardon me, master," Medusa says. "I got a little ahead of myself. You're right, these things would only be fitting statues for that old vampire's basement." Medusa brings her clenched fist down onto the side of the nearest spider's head, shattering it, but still leaving its headless body standing. "I'm sure he would love to have one of these repulsive creatures for his own."
Medusa wipes her hand of the Grief and plaster dust staining it, and approaches you. You're frozen as she places her hand on your shoulder, and only loosen up once she asks "Are you unharmed, little one?"
"I think so."
The spider that knocked you over didn't manage to puncture you with its stinger before Archer and Medusa knocked it off you. "I am glad to hear that," she says, turning her blindfolded gaze from you towards Archer. "These things are repugnant," she says to him. "I do not know how you could have put up with letting them roam your city for as long as you have."
"Believe me, it's not by choice," Archer replies. "We've tried to deal with them whenever we come across a nest, but the problem is there's just too many of them. I don't even know if this was the last one, or if there's even more holed up somewhere else in the sewers. It'd take a massive sweep to clear them all out, and that would take days we don't have right now."
"What if you used her familiars?" Medusa asks, gesturing with her head to you. "With enough of them, could you not scour these caverns more effectively than you could with just your own team?"
"While you're right, it would be easier to search these caverns for more spiders with my familiars, there's two problems," you say. "First, at the moment I can only control so many of them at once, and it would require more of them than that to search every passageway and tunnel down here. Second, it's so dark that without proper illumination, any visual feed I connected them to would just display darkness. I wouldn't even be able to tell if everything were clear, or if they'd been eaten by whatever they found. At the moment, manual searching like this is the best option we've got…"
Medusa stares out at the blackness of the cavern. Even with Archer's sword giving off its light, anything past the barren clearing you find yourselves in is still bathed in darkness. "If we were going to continue our search, we should get on with it. These caverns remind me too much of those underneath the Shapeless Isle…" Medusa's hand finds its way to her side, and she says "They bring back old memories…" as she grits her teeth. "I can still feel the sting of Perseus's sword as he murdered me…" Medusa draws her hand back; there's blood, and more than that staining her hand as well. "I guess it wasn't just my memories, after all…"
"Rider, you're hurt!" Matou Sakura cries. "Let me take a look at it."
Medusa acquiesces to her master, and stays motionless as Matou Sakura looks over her side. It's not terrible, just a few long scrapes across her side. But they're already turning black…
"When did that happens?"
Medusa looks to Archer, as though the answer to his question were obvious. "One of the spiders must have scraped me with their claws when we were fighting," she says. "It hurts, but I'll be fine." Medusa turns her attention from Archer to you, and she asks "You are the leader of this expedition, are you not? [ ] Should we keep going and see if there are more of those things, or should we turn back and assume our task is complete?"
It's difficult to see Archer nodding his head in the dim light, but the glow of his sword is just enough to keep him in view. Medusa presses her hand against a nearby wall, holding it there for several seconds before she sends out another length of chain. Suddenly, the light from Archer's sword flares up illuminating a wider patch of terrain than it had before. Archer eyes go wide, and he whips his body around, looking for something. At the other end of the column, Medusa also whips her head around, shooting off a length of chain into the distance. This time, you hear it impact something, followed by an unpleasant scream. Not ear-shattering, but still loud, and followed by a weighted skittering.
"We've got company," Medusa says. "Definitely more than one: I sense movement coming from all around us."
"Can you tell us how many there are?"
Countless clusters of eyes shine in the darkness, and Medusa says "I don't know."
"Archer, what are our options to stop them from screaming if we can't see where their mouths are?"
"Hit them as hard and as fast as possible, hopefully before we go deaf," is Archer's unfortunate reply. "With the light being as bad as it is, there's not much I can do in the way of hitting them, unless…"
"Unless what?"
"Can you keep them distracted with your familiars? Make them think there's more of us than what they can see, and maybe trick them into being distracted by a meal. That'll give me time to see if I've got something."
"Okay." It's funny; you were almost thinking the same thing, except your idea involved having your familiars engage the spiders directly in combat. But either way, you're buying the rest of the team enough time to do something about the low visibility, and hopefully they'll be able to deal with the lack of light enough for you to freeze the spiders' mouths shut before you all go deaf.
Who are you kidding? That's way too many hopefullys. Still, you're already dead if you don't try anything, so here goes nothing. "Archer and I have an idea," you whisper to Matou Sakura. "Don't be alarmed; they're mine, not Sidonia's."
As Matou Sakura asks "Don't be alarmed at what?" you concentrate. The Grief in these tunnels is thick, choking. You'd suffocate in seconds if you tried to breathe in here without Archer's shroud protecting you. But it's perfect Grief to use for making familiars. Obviously, or else you wouldn't be in this mess to begin with. Now, if you can just harness it for your own purposes, and… Concentrate on your memories of Archer. Remember how his presence makes you feel, safe and warm in his arms. Remember all the times he was there for you at the start of this timeline, when it felt like no one else was.
Remember why you trust him to be your father…
*Pop*
Your little tin soldiers – you need to come up with better names for them, but that's a job for another time – appear at your side, drawn from the Grief in the air to your Inguz rune, and through it, through you, into the act of creation. Matou Sakura stares, and you see her mouth "I thought you could only make birds." "Get them," you say, as you send your familiars out into the tunnels. "Buy us some time."
In the darkness, lights flicker and shift, the spiders are moving. Too many eyes are still locked on you, but now you see eyes focus on the approaching treats. You look to Archer, and nod your head. "All right, what do we have?"
"I've got…" The glow from Archer's hand as he creates a sword from nothing lights up the tunnel, revealing your position in a cramped chamber with many branching passageways. The eyes are still set in darkness too far back to be reached, but it is better now. You can see- You can see one hanging right above your heads.
Your hands have to work fast, invoking Isa and flinging a handful of ice towards the spider as it pounces. Your ice misses, and the spider lands, cutting you and Archer off from Matou Sakura and Medusa. It stares at you, and you have no time to react before it pounces, pinning you to the ground. You grimace as your body passes through the choking cloud of miasma, and you force yourself to muffle your scream in Archer's shroud as the Grief at your back burns you. Stunned by the attack and in pain, you somehow manage to activate your Isa rune, coats the spider's forelimbs in ice and allowing you to slip from its grasp, but it brings its massive, bloated abdomen down, forcing you to duck and roll from side to side as it tries to sting you. Because of course a monstrous spider that breathes Grief and whose scream causes instant deafness would also have a stinger.
The spider only lets up its attack when Archer stabs it, and you feel the weight above your body lifted as Medusa flings it off of you. It opens its mouth, but this time, you're faster, silencing it with a bolt of ice from your fingers. You hear chittering in the distance as Archer and Medusa tear the spider to shreds; are the other spiders struggling with their fake prey, or are they watching the fight in disapproval?
An advance of black-purple bodies from the darkness, ravenously chittering their mandibles, as the shredded remains of your familiars hang from their teeth and forelimbs, provides you with the answer. "All right people, look alive," Archer says, readying his jagged black sword in one hand, and a glowing white-gold sword in the other. "Sakura, if she can get it off without hitting either of us, feel free to have Medusa go crazy."
"Right."
Your hands are quick, invoking Isa and splashing ice across the mouth of the spider nearest to your position. Quick as a flash, Archer carves into it, while you ready Inguz and draw more of the surrounding Grief to you, shaping it in your mind and sending the creations of your thoughts marching towards the remaining spiders. Their tiny weapons are like toothpicks against the carapaces of the monstrous creatures, but it buys you enough time to turn around so you can direct your focus to the next spider, the one Medusa is currently brawling with.
Your ice splashes across its mouth just as Medusa drives her foot into the spider's head, using the dagger in her hand – are you sure that's a dagger? It looks more like a giant railroad spike, or maybe a sewing needle – to tear a massive chunk from the spider's face before falling back. She moves with the grace and agility of a serpent, slipping in and out of the spider's strikes as it lashes at her with its forelimbs. Medusa sends out a length of chain, wrapping it around the spider's limbs, immobilising them before she lunges forward into another crushing blow to the spider's head.
Another spider, one which neither you nor Medusa managed to catch, lands a blow across the front of her face. A splash of blood mars the side of the tunnel wall, and it looks as though Medusa was blinded in the strike. Her eyes are closed, but despite the pain you imagine she'd be in from being blinded, her strikes retain the same precision as before. Only then, when nobody else is in her line of sight, do her eyes flash open-
Immediately, the spider is turned to stone, and Medusa plants a single, powerful kick clean through the body of the frozen spider, shattering it. She turns, closing her eyes again as she shouts "Get out of the way!" to you and Archer, her warning cry punctuated by a grunt as she is immediately torn into battle with another giant spider as it lunges at her from the shadows.
Lacking any better options, you hit the ground, seething through your teeth as the move forces you through the cloud of miasma and into contact with the Grief-stained floor. You close your eyes and hold Archer's shroud tight against your face, and invoke the Isa rune, blasting in the direction of the last spider you remember seeing before hitting the ground.
Suddenly, you feel a gust of wind wash over you, and the miasma is washed away. You see Archer embed his jagged black sword deep into the head of the spider he had been fighting, and as he scoops you up under his now-free arm, you see flickering spirits of pale green passing over the waist-high cloud. Everywhere they pass, the spirits blow away the Grief, and "Catch-!"
Archer tosses you towards Matou Sakura as a spider takes him from the side. She tries to catch you, but you right yourself as you fly, and prepare Isa as soon as you've landed. Ice washes underneath the spider's feet, causing it to slip as Archer drives his glowing white-gold sword into its head. It lashes out at him with its forelimbs, but faster than the spider can move, Archer has readied his short swords, and in such close ranges all the spider's attacks do is cost it its forelimbs. It recoils and scrabbles backwards, but you have ice ready, and gum its mouth up before it can scream.
"Rider! Do it now!"
Medusa tears her weapon free from the spider's head, trailing black sludge and an impaled eye as she kicks off her defeated foe. Her hair flies out of the way as she whips her head around, and her eyes snap open.
One by one, the spiders fall before her stony gaze. These things gave you so much trouble the first time you encountered them – just the thought of them is enough to give you chills as you envision yourself, trapped in their lair, completely devoid of any of your five senses – Medusa manages to snuff out with just a glance.
Her task complete, Medusa taps her foot against the floor thrice, turning her head around: her eyes closed, fortunately. "It's a shame these things are so ugly," she says, as she makes her way over to where her blindfold fell after being torn from her face. She picks it up, not caring at all for the blood – her own blood – staining it as she refastens it over her eyes. "They'd probably make interesting garden sculptures if they were a bit more presentable. At the very least, they'd be a conversation starter."
"Rider, that sounds a little-"
"Pardon me, master," Medusa says. "I got a little ahead of myself. You're right, these things would only be fitting statues for that old vampire's basement." Medusa brings her clenched fist down onto the side of the nearest spider's head, shattering it, but still leaving its headless body standing. "I'm sure he would love to have one of these repulsive creatures for his own."
Medusa wipes her hand of the Grief and plaster dust staining it, and approaches you. You're frozen as she places her hand on your shoulder, and only loosen up once she asks "Are you unharmed, little one?"
"I think so."
The spider that knocked you over didn't manage to puncture you with its stinger before Archer and Medusa knocked it off you. "I am glad to hear that," she says, turning her blindfolded gaze from you towards Archer. "These things are repugnant," she says to him. "I do not know how you could have put up with letting them roam your city for as long as you have."
"Believe me, it's not by choice," Archer replies. "We've tried to deal with them whenever we come across a nest, but the problem is there's just too many of them. I don't even know if this was the last one, or if there's even more holed up somewhere else in the sewers. It'd take a massive sweep to clear them all out, and that would take days we don't have right now."
"What if you used her familiars?" Medusa asks, gesturing with her head to you. "With enough of them, could you not scour these caverns more effectively than you could with just your own team?"
"While you're right, it would be easier to search these caverns for more spiders with my familiars, there's two problems," you say. "First, at the moment I can only control so many of them at once, and it would require more of them than that to search every passageway and tunnel down here. Second, it's so dark that without proper illumination, any visual feed I connected them to would just display darkness. I wouldn't even be able to tell if everything were clear, or if they'd been eaten by whatever they found. At the moment, manual searching like this is the best option we've got…"
Medusa stares out at the blackness of the cavern. Even with Archer's sword giving off its light, anything past the barren clearing you find yourselves in is still bathed in darkness. "If we were going to continue our search, we should get on with it. These caverns remind me too much of those underneath the Shapeless Isle…" Medusa's hand finds its way to her side, and she says "They bring back old memories…" as she grits her teeth. "I can still feel the sting of Perseus's sword as he murdered me…" Medusa draws her hand back; there's blood, and more than that staining her hand as well. "I guess it wasn't just my memories, after all…"
"Rider, you're hurt!" Matou Sakura cries. "Let me take a look at it."
Medusa acquiesces to her master, and stays motionless as Matou Sakura looks over her side. It's not terrible, just a few long scrapes across her side. But they're already turning black…
"When did that happens?"
Medusa looks to Archer, as though the answer to his question were obvious. "One of the spiders must have scraped me with their claws when we were fighting," she says. "It hurts, but I'll be fine." Medusa turns her attention from Archer to you, and she asks "You are the leader of this expedition, are you not? [ ] Should we keep going and see if there are more of those things, or should we turn back and assume our task is complete?"
