A Soldier's Life - 151 -

Chapter 151

Spiders.  Of course, it would be spiders.  The room looked to have a high ceiling, maybe twenty feet.  The strands dominated the long room, making seeing to the other side difficult.  The webbing also created lots of shadows and corners for spiders to hide in.

Other than the sticky-looking webs vibrating slightly, I couldn’t see a single spider.  Mavieth also confirmed but had bad news with his observation, “I can not see any movement but the thickness of the strands,” he paused, “they have to be very large spiders.”  Shit, that didn’t even occur to me.  The glistening strands were as thick as my wrist.

“Maybe we should try the other corridor,” I offered to the goliath.

Maveith sucked on his teeth; his lips were still purple from the blueberries.  “This is the third room we have not entered.  Fourth, if you add the dark room,” he said slowly in consideration.  “We can not avoid every room, Eryk.  Spiders are not too difficult.”

“We will check the last corridor first,” I said as a compromise.  “Then try one of the rooms.”

We returned to the Y intersection and followed the other corridor.  Maveith immediately got excited as we approached the end of the corridor.  I was focused on the thick, black, oily pools scattered through a long wide room.  The reflecting river of light from the ceiling made the pools seem to move.  Maveith’s excitement was due to the gold statue at the room’s far end.  I don’t think the dungeon could have been more obvious that it was a trap.  My eyes focused on the statue, an elf wielding a sword.

The statue was gold, and there were no monsters in sight.  It would be easy to get close, move it into my dimensional space, and leave.  This was probably a safe room, too.  That made sense, as only a safe room would have a golden statue.  Maveith bumped me as he stepped past into the room.  My eyes looked up at the goliath to yell at him for trying to get to the statue first.  As soon as my focus left the statue, a fog lifted from my mind.

I grabbed the back of Maveith’s leather armor and yanked him hard, pulling him out of the room.  He had only made a single step inside, and I was fortunate he had not expected my yank.  Unfortunately, he stepped back onto my boot, which caused me to fall backward, followed by Mavieth.  Having a large, orderous goliath fall on top of you is unpleasant.

His weight knocked the air from me, and I was pressed into the floor uncomfortably.  “Maveith,” I grunted, “it is a trap.  The statue is affecting your mind!  Do not look at it!”

When Maveith removed his considerable weight from me, I focused on the chamber floor, healing my knee that had been strained from his weight.  The oil slicks on the floor were stretching toward us in amorphous limbs.  They reached the archway to the room and flattened against an invisible barrier, unable to leave.

“What the hell is that!” I said while scuttling back and standing.  I reminded Maveith, “Do not look at the statue.” If I had been alone, I might have walked into the room oblivious to the danger.

Maveith shielded his eyes to just look down at the roiling black ooze.  “I don’t know.  Maybe an ooze.  Never heard of a black ooze before.”  The black elastic mass gave up trying to pass into the corridor and returned to its puddle further in the chamber.  I counted seven of the creatures, and two had attacked Maveith as soon as he had entered.

I recalled my time in the sewers of Macha, “Are they the same thing as slimes?  We saw those in the sewers of Macha.”

Maveith shook his head, turning away from the room.  “Slimes are harmless in comparison to oozes.  Oozes move faster, and once they grapple you, they climb over your body and force themselves into every orifice on your body.  Then they digest you for the inside out.”

Imagining dying that way was not pleasant.  “I think we will not enter this room either.  Spider room?”  I asked the gray-skinned man, and he gave a curt nod.  We quickly returned to the last room.

Nothing had changed in the fifteen minutes we had been gone. We both stood there, and I considered all the rooms we had encountered so far. Every room was extremely dangerous for the unsuspecting dungeon delver. I was beginning to have doubts about our survivability. It only took one mistake, and it would be the end of us.

I took out an apple and tried to throw it into the room. When it passed the archway, it fell rapidly to the stone floor and rolled a few feet, touching an anchor point of one of the strands. All the strands vibrated slightly quicker before settling.

Maveith was staring at the apple. I explained, “You can not make attacks unless you are in the room, and the dungeon creatures can not leave the room. But do not hold me to that. I know very little about dungeons.”

“You have killed every dungeon creature you have fought,” Maveith said supportively. “I am glad it is you that I am trapped with.” I winced as trapped seemed like the correct word, and I felt guilty that I was thinking of Maveith as my taste tester for dungeon produce.

“I have been in a dungeon room once where the exit was sealed behind me, Maveith. I do not know if we should enter this room without knowing what we are facing,” I said.

I was wishing I still had that goblin. I did have another living creature in my dimensional storage, the elf griffon rider.  I knew she was still alive but on the brink of death. For the first time I thought about possibly healing her and trying to convince her to help. Of course, she was likely to try to kill me first, and then Maveith would also know how powerful my dimensional space was.

“I will go first and draw out the spiders,” Maveith said, gripping the handle of his hammer tightly. Before I could change his mind, he entered the room, and nothing happened. The massive goliath slowly scanned the maze of webbing. We couldn’t see to the far side of the chamber. Maveith stepped forward and grasped the apple on the floor while remaining on alert. He tugged on it, and the skin of the apple peeled off, remaining on the sticky strand.

The network of strands started to dance. Maveith was frantically searching for the spiders, as was I. A loud snap and one of the strands lashed toward Maveith. He dodged to his right only to step into another.  It stuck to his arm, hampering his movement. The left wall started to move and quickly became recognizable as a massive gray spider, its body larger than a horse. The spider’s body shifted rapidly from the dark gray stone of the wall to an ominous black as it scuttled toward Maveith.

The spider seemed too big for this room as Maveith attempted to free himself. Clicking sounds as the spider’s legs cadenced on the stone drew my attention from scanning the rest of the room. I didn’t see any other movement and was hoping this was the only spider. I stepped into the room and removed the spider’s head before it could close to Maveith. I couldn’t risk Maveith getting poisoned and being incapacitated. My aether had bottomed out, but the spider’s resistance was not severe.

The spider collapsed, and blue viscous blood oozed out of its missing head. Maveith grunted, trying to free his arm, but he clearly noticed the dying spider that was just ten feet from him. The legs were twitching as it leaked a puddle on the floor. I used the elven runic dagger to cut Maveith free easily. He was clearly speechless from the demonstration of my power.

“Anything useful to harvest on the spider?” I asked the goliath casually.

“Eryk, did you? How can you?” He stuttered to find the words. I gave him time to puzzle everything and got to work.

I pulled the essence collecter out from the minimal pack I was carrying. I approached the spider to a dumbfounded Maveith and used the collecter. The dense, blue smoke rapidly formed a glossy black apex essence. Aether channeling. Maveith was still stunned, so I started looking for the reward chest. Of course, it was barely visible through the maze of criss-crossing webbing.

I used the elven dagger to cut away strands. When it contacted the strands, it reminded me of a hot knife touching plastic, easily burning through. The room was about thirty by sixty, and I was confused. Every dungeon room I had ever been in had something for the creature to eat. As I cleared this room to reach the chest, there was nothing but webbing.

The chest was large, three feet long, but still solid stone. Once again, I shattered it with the pommel of the dagger, eagerly anticipating the loot. I could see how the danger and lure of treasure could be appealing. A shiny, short sword sat among the silver coins. The hilt was designed in the image of a spider with the legs splaying out to make the guard, and all along the blade were little etchings of spiders. It looked like they had hatched at the hilt and run down both sides of the twenty-four inch blade.

“Twenty silver coins, Maveith, and a dungeon blade,” I stood and turned to face my companion, who was still processing what had just happened. “Maveith, is there anything we can harvest from the spider?” I repeated my question.

Maveith tore his eyes from me to look at it, “It is a gargantuan spider. Non-poisonous, so no venom sacs.” He stared back at it, realizing the fangs were gone with the head. “The spinnerets. But I am not familiar with harvesting them.” I shrugged. Delmar had harvested the spinnerets in my first dungeon. “Eryk, do you have void magic?” Maveith’s deep voice questioned me.

“Would that be a problem?” I asked, neither confirming nor denying. Void magic seemed to be what people thought my power came from after seeing it.

Maveith seemed to consider, “Void mages are regulated just as much as necromancers.” He stated, not answering my question. “I think all void mages in the Telhian Empire need to be in service to the Emperor.”

“Well, can you keep my secret?” I asked, still not offering him the complete truth.

“I am not Telhian,” the large man stated.

I nodded, thinking that was the best I was going to get from him. “I can only do this once,” I pointed at the spider. “It takes me about two hours to recover enough aether to do it again.” Maybe I was giving him too much information, but we were going to be fighting together for a time in this dungeon.

Maveith’s mind was still turning, “Is that how you killed the female manticore?” His eyes suddenly went wide, “And the wyvern!”  It had only taken Maveith minutes to piece everything together.

“Yes. Do you want this short sword?” I held up the spider-themed weapon. “What do you think the spider was eating to stay alive?”

Maveith’s focus gradually came back to the conversation, “Gargantum spiders can hibernate for years. If there are any egg sacs here, we should destroy them. This one was just an adolescent; they can get much larger after years of molting.”

We searched the room but didn’t find any egg sacs or molted exoskeletons. The room also had no exits. It looked like we were not going to solve the mystery of the spider chamber. I sent the spider blade to my dimensional space after Maveith declined it.

I was a little unhappy that Maveith appeared more wary about me as we left. “We should rest. We can head back to the safe room where we entered,” I suggested.

“We can stop and collect more blueberries,” Maveith nodded, licking his lips.

Two elven children were seated among the bushes as we approached the room. The shapeshifters had been revived. It had been over a day since we had killed them. “Maveith, I still need about an hour before I can do my trick again.”

The two elves walked to the entrance, the girl’s eyes narrowing at me accusatorily. “Looks like they are back to play again.”

I was completely taken off guard, “Wait, you remember us?”