<We're still going in,> Ling Qi thought to Sixiang. <We can still get useful information, and I'm confident we can handle an attack that we're aware of. Relay everything to Xia Lin.>
Ling Qi glanced over toward the other girl then, in time to see her eyebrows rise slightly. Xia Lin's eyes flicked over to meet hers, but no more than that. She tapped the side of her helmet once, and a blank facemask shimmered into existence across her face. Any trace of emotion or personality vanished behind a veil of studious patience and professionalism.
That was well enough, Ling Qi would be doing the talking here. She began to walk toward the tunnel, and nudged Zhengui and Hanyi to be ready in her thoughts. Xia Lin fell in a step behind and to her side. As they walked, Ling Qi began to hum softly under her breath, letting a trickle of qi into her voice. Her senses followed the sound, the modified version of the Harmony of Dancing Winds technique joining Sixiang on the breeze to widen her sphere of awareness, slipping through the hair thin gaps in the webbing that would have caught her wisps.
The short journey down the tunnel was made in silence, save for the faint sound of metal shod feet pulling away from sticky threads. Ling Qi began to get a feel for the crumbling stonework that lay beyond the tangled webs. The chamber where the dead larger spider lay was the center of a suite of rooms, their walls long broken apart to create a larger chamber. There seemed to be a couple intact though.
Emerging into the main chamber, Ling Qi put on a smile and looked up to where four large brown spiders now hung. Their forms bristled with sharp brown hairs that quivered with every motion in the air. The other two had crept off somewhere, the webbing still distorted her senses where it lay thick, and it was taking time to decipher the movements within the narrow funnel tunnels that crisscrossed outside. Ling Qi brought her hands together and bowed, smiling as she bowed in the center of the chamber. "Greetings, honorable matriarchs. This envoy apologizes for the somewhat rude intrusion into your home."
Through the wisp still bobbing unseen in the room, Ling Qi watched them, the faint rustling of limbs and the fluctuations in their qi. The largest spider, crouched in the webs directly ahead of her, rubbed its two front limbs together, fangs quivering as it emitted a dry voice. "Your apology is accepted, but only this once," haughtiness, pride, self assurance, these Ling Qi read in the creature. No indication that it was speaking for another. "What brings you before us."
Ling Qi grew more confident that there was no hidden higher realm lurking about. The echoes of her humming continued to whisper through the webs, and she found two of the spiders creeping close to the entrance, likely to close off retreat. "We seek passage through the lands of your kin above-"
"Not kin," whispered a smaller spider to her right. Its whispery voice was joined by a sussurruss of others, angry and low. One of the larger spiders legs drummed on the webbing.
"Those above have betrayed the true-clan, they are not kin," The largest spider said.
"My apologies again," Ling Qi said obsequiously. She even meant it, after all, it was rude of her to conflate the spiders above with these, so crudely intending to betray hospitality. "Nevertheless, the mighty working of illusions above bars our path. Might I be able to convince you to lower its protection for a time while we pass?"
There was a rustling among the gathered spiders, and Ling Qi caught a little of the communication moving through vibrating webs. In the end, communication was an expression of qi between individuals, and her arts had taught her to read them regardless of medium. They were aware of the illusion formations, and perhaps how to turn it off.
"The true-clan may be willing to bargain for this service," the largest spider whispered, crawling a meter or two further down. Optimal range for a technique? Above, Ling Qi finally tracked down the other two spiders which she knew to be hidden, they were of a size with the one she spoke too, and they were directly above, weaving a technique between them, an entrapping web that would leave them vulnerable to the others.
Through Sixiang, she relayed the positions of all the hidden spiders to Xia Lin. Xia Lin remained as still as a statue of steel. "I see, and what might we do for the true-clan in exchange?" Ling Qi asked, finally straightening up.
"News," whispered one spider. Again, the word was repeated throughout the swarm again and again.
"Yes," whispered the larger spider. "Have the traitors been driven from the great Heavenly Pillar?"
Ling Qi smile was bright indeed as she nodded. She had heard enough, both from her liege and the history books and people to qualify the last generation of the Hui as such. "Though it seems the fight is ongoing."
That sent a thrill through them, whispering in the webs. She felt the vibrations murmuring of 'the Return' with almost religious intensity. The two far above weaving their trap paused just a moment, and she heard the whisper of something, a name or a title. 'Lord Scribbler?' That was a little concerning. All of the larger spiders were female.
...Was there actually a surviving Hui about? She wondered at the name, but spirits often referred to humans in odd ways. "May I ask, honored matriarchs, what you are doing so far in the south? I was not informed of your presence before beginning my own expedition."
"We wait, and watch," the larger spider whispered, fangs rubbing coarsely against one another. "Until the time comes. Many were weak, many disloyal. Not we, never we."
The spiders in the rear were now just above the exit, waiting at hidden tunnels to strike. Those above were finishing their weave. Time was growing short. "...Are there humans among you yet?"
"Lesser-kin, like you envoy, fled their duty, joined the cloud riders, the lord remains," the spider said smugly.
She didn't sense anything below, maybe one of the sealed chambers? Ling Qi felt some worry, they did have escape talismans. Calling her and Xia Lin lesser-kin, did they just mean not full blooded Hui? She was just going to ignore the nonsense about imperials even renegades joining the cloud tribes, more likely they had just fled and died or hidden themselves in the province.
More importantly the fading echoes of her song revealed the flows of energy beyond the obscuring webs, the formation aboves foundations lay here, in the one chamber still fully intact.
Regardless the time was coming. "I see, thank you for your time, matriarch," Ling Qi said politely. "Might I ask that you disable the illusion for a day then?"
"Worry not envoy," crooned the spider. "Your illusion is coming to an end."
All around them, beautiful colors began to shift and dance along the webbings string, hypnotic and soporific and from the ceiling drifted a gentle web of wonderful dreams, falling upon them with the weight of exhaustion. As one, three spiders crouched and prepared to leap down, fangs wet with venom as the fourth and largest wove her limbs in a dance that spread venomous power through the others fangs.
"Rude."
Ling Qi rose from the net of dream webbing as if it were no more than air, no longer smiling. Beneath her formed the solid shell of Zhengui, already aglow with volcanic light, and beside her was Hanyi, smiling viciously. Caught in mid-leap, the three spiders screeched in unison as she played the howl of a blizzard on her flute.
Behind her, the lump of webbing where Xia Lin had stood blazed with pitiless radiance before ripping apart, the thicker structural webbing beneath shattering and leaving a ragged hole where she had stood. A comet of white light roared through the air, and the largest of the spiders screamed as a radiant blade cracked open her chitinous abdomen and severed the strings of power that radiated from her, causing the hypnotic colors and venomous qi shrouding the others to fade.
Two spiders hung behind them in confusion, weaving a net to prevent a flight that wasn't coming.
Ling Qi smiled as her domain weapon finished forming, and The Mist flooded out, drowning the hundreds of lesser spiders in further confusion as she focused on the three frostbitten spiders scrambling back onto their webs in front of her. From her flute came the Spring's End and the Echoes of Winter, the air around her cooling frighteningly fast as Hanyi sang along, webbing cracking as the moisture in it froze and expanded.
The damage to the web chamber grew worse as Zhengui rumbled angrily beneath her and winters chill met volcanic heat, transforming cold mist into scalding steam as a ring of magma erupted from below. Spiders shrieked in their hundreds as silk withered, melted and caught fire.
Above, Xia Lin zipped past, leaving a blinding trail as her boots stamped down on the first spiders face, and launched her upward to pierce the ceiling and the belly of one of the spiders above, severing another web of enhancing energies before it could finish forming.
But their enemies were already beginning to regain their bearings. Three spiders leapt over the roiling ring of magma, skittering of webs of qi through the air and seeming to blink from one place to the next as they circled and closed in on her. Ling Qi and Hanyi vanished before their fangs could find purchase, leaving a trail of shadows and snowflakes as they reappeared in midair, Hanyi dangling from her back.
It left the spiders skittering across Zhengui's broad and expanding back as he took advantage of the growing space in the ruined chamber. A flicker of silver zipped past in the corner of her vision, and Ling Qi saw one of the two rearguard spiders squeal as a short arming sword buried itself in the creatures face, and radiant energy crackled through its spirit, causing its whole body to seize and convulse.
Ling Qi swooped forward, toward the recovering spider matriarch, and Hanyi leapt off of her back with a laugh as she passed over Zhengui, grasping onto one of the three spiders there. Her Singing Blade shot toward the second with the melancholy wail of a lost child, and Zhen's fangs pierced the third. Behind her, song became silence, drowning the sounds of battle. Ling Qi instead played the song of an advancing glacier as she bore down on the matriarch, and the force of her Qi punched the beast through the gray and sagging webbing, weakened by flame and radiance.
Following through, Ling Qi emerged among shattered walls and dark stone to face the hissing spider matriarch, whose sword like limbs sliced through the air, leaving ripples where they passed through Ling Qi's form. Webs of illusion and sleep wove around her, but she passed through their net as if they were not there, and the echo of the glacier mashed the spider against the stone wall again, cracking carapace further.
Ling Qi alighted upon the creatures bleeding back and sang of hoarfrost, and ichor froze as lethal cold crept into the beasts wounded body. Behind her, radiance washed out, lightning the expansive cave as Xia Lin erupted from the sagging cocoon of webbing with a spider impaled, wriggling on the end of her blade, she spun her weapon twice over her head and flung the creature off with a thunderous boom, followed shortly after by a wet splat of impact on the caves far wall.
Ling Qi looked down at the struggling spider with a touch of pity. They could not have known that Ling Qi and it seemed, Xia Lin so perfectly countered their abilities. Even now, the spider below her was confused and shocked, barely able to understand how swiftly things had gone against her. Ling Qi felt the gathered power in her lungs, the silence that would spill forth with just a little push.
She sang, and the spider matriarch grew still.
AN: Man fights have a way of being longer than intended, don't they?
