“When you said ‘Giant Spider Web,’” Daisy commented, “I had pictured something considerably smaller…”

  We stood outside the car park at a small business park. There were a few small single-storey office buildings, a cafeteria, an open shutter revealing the lifting jack of a repair garage, and, near the back, the reason we had come here. It had an obelisk-shaped tower built on top of a short, squat building. At various intervals of the tower, platforms had been built for a mixture of satellite dishes and antennas of different sizes and shapes. A broken sign was half hanging from the top of the base building, declaring its name, ‘Delta Comm Hub’. Near the top of the tower, there was a huge spiderweb, going from the top of the tower down two of the platforms, creating a cone of dense web.

  “Do you think it was spun by a single huge spider or a lot of smaller ones?” I asked, trying to work out how big that thing was. There was at least seven metres between platforms.

  “Lots of small ones,” Sam said, and then pointed at all the small patches of webs dotted around the site. Now I was looking for them it was clear there was a spider infestation here.

  “Does anyone suffer from arachnophobia?” Voice asked.

  “Ask me again in an hour…” Kelsey responded.

  “You said this place was full of wild beasts?” I asked Kelsey.

  “Yeah… I saw a swarm of rats enter that cafeteria… It’s why I gave this place a wide berth… there’s a lot more of those white balls than I remember…” her voice trailing off, as she came to the same conclusion I had started coming to when I looked at the football-sized orbs that seemed to be dotted around the entrances to the buildings.

  I threw a at one of the white balls from the road; it instantly ignited and created a short-lived blue blaze. The ball collapsed into a small pile of white bones.

  “Movement in the cafeteria and that building,” Kelsey said, pointing to the one nearest my target.

  “Throw another at that one just inside the doorway,” Voice said, pointing at the cafeteria. I nodded, located the one he was talking about and let fly.

  The hit the web ball. It exploded like the first one. Nearby webs were close enough to also ignite and with a whoosh, a flicker of flame shot through the building. It spread from web to web, creating a cascading ripple of fire. It grew in intensity. Then just as quickly as it started, it was gone.

  The whoosh was replaced by a series of squeaks and spiders, each the size of a rat, came swarming out of the place, blue flames flickering over their torsos, as they panicked around the car park.

  One of the spiders came in our direction. Kelsey raised her bow and loosed an arrow at it. The arrow pierced its face and buried deep into its torso with an audible thud. Its legs curled up around its dying body. The other spiders turned in our direction and scurried towards us.

  Several died from the burning, their bodies simply curling up. Voice shifted forward to intercept. Sam drew his pistols and took aim. Kelsey plinked an arrow, and I started laying in with .

  Still, several got to Voice. He swung his shield, bashing away four of them in that swing, but two more got through and started climbing his legs. Kelsey’s arrow took one out, Sam managed to get the other, but Voice’s health bar had gone green. They had gotten a bite in.

  Sam and Kelsey had the ones near Voice covered, so I turned my attention to the ones still coming out of the cafe. I switched to my Storm Battlestaff and dropped a in their path. It took a couple of them out, but somehow felt less effective than my Inferno spells.

  It managed to take the pressure off, and we soon had the swarm vanquished.

  Voice had lost half his health, and even Sam had taken a couple of bites before our combined power took out the remaining spiders.

  Once recovered, we looked at another building.

  “Kelsey, can you try your flame arrow on that building?” Voice said, pointing at the other building we had seen movement in.

  An arrow, flickering with a red aura, shot across the car park and buried itself in one of the balls of webbing just inside the doorway. Like with my , it ignited into a rapidly expanding blast of whooshing flame, which quickly spread through the building. We didn’t pause when the spiders started swarming out this time, but instead hit them the moment they got in range.

  There were enough of them that, despite our efforts, a few managed to get to us.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “Looks like fire is our most effective weapon,” Voice said, as we sat on the other side of the road, recovering. “El, I was going to poke your brain about this later. Think you might be able to teach us Burning Touch?”

  “Not sure,” I honestly replied. “I can try and talk you through the instructions…”

  “...and then the final hand sign is this…”

  “...it’s more kal-las and less kal-vas…”

  “...like this?” Voice asked as his weapon glowed red briefly and he lashed out at the hastily constructed dummy we had been using for target practice.

  “Just like that,” I confirmed with a smile.

  “And the system is recognising it!” he grinned. I opened my HUD and was pleasantly surprised to see I also had a notification.

  ‘You taught someone a new spell for the first time, wisdom point gained’

  “Is it worth trying to learn Fire Weapon as well?” Sam asked as he and Kelsey managed to get their heads around my spell.

  ‘You found a way to explain a new spell school to another without using a system resource. Intelligence increased’

  “It would give us options…” agreed Voice. “Do you think you can explain the spell?” he asked Kelsey.

  “I can try!” she agreed.

  Sam was the first to get his head around her explanation; it was closer to his frozen blade in execution than my Ice Blade spell.

  I got the spell shortly before Voice. It was interesting to see my Inferno Battlestaff flickering more intently for the duration of the enhancement spell.

  “Do they stack?” I asked, staring at my staff’s more intense flickering.

  Voice gave me a go-ahead wave. “Try,” he said.

  I cast through the staff and then thrust it into the propped-up log.

  Then I had to hop back as the whole thing ignited into a burning inferno.

  “Well…”

  We got another log, and this time Sam tried. It ignited, but not to the same extent.

  “The few ranks of resonance that big a difference?” he asked.

  “The staff also enhances…” Voice said.

  “And the gloves give me spell pen…” I said, wiggling my fingers as an explanation.

  “We are going to need to go in,” I said as we stared at the buildings again.

  “We could ignite more of the webs,” suggested Kelsey.

  “We can, but we also need to start clearing out the buildings. I don’t fancy leaving any of them with potential hostiles in them when we go into the tower.” Voice confirmed.

  Voice approached the first door and carefully looked around the entrance. With exaggerated care, with his fingers counted down four, three, two, one…

  A shot from his hand and into the cafe. He ducked back as we heard another whoosh from inside. The rest of us readied our weapons and waited.

  Nothing.

  Voice ducked in.

  “Clear!” Voice called out.

  Sam and I carefully moved over to join him.

  Kelsey was tasked with overwatch. Daisy was on heal standby. They were both keeping enough distance to be able to give us warning if they saw any movement from the more distant buildings.

  The inside of the cafe was a charred mess. A thin acrid smell, like burnt hair, hung in the air. What little light was coming through the soot-stained windows and dirty skylight was giving the place a dingy feel. There were smaller spiders curled up everywhere from where the fire had torn through their homes. Piles of rat bones helped to enhance the morbid feeling.

  “Well… that definitely confirms what happened to Kelsey’s rat swarm…” I said as I used my staff to knock over another of the piles.

  Voice had made his way over to the Kitchen shutter. Checked that Sam and I were ready. Then used his shield to lift the handle up and jumped backwards out of the line of sight.

  The old shutter rumbled upwards, revealing the thick, dirty mess of webs which had filled the kitchen.

  “Burn it!” Voice said as he backed up towards us.

  “Maybe we should…” Sam started, a little too late, my was already in flight.

  I’m pretty sure time slowed down. There was only about five metres from where I stood to where the webs started up, and my , while not as fast as, say, an arrow from Kelsey’s bow, aren’t slow. I had time to look at Sam, look back at the webs, and then, as one, the pair of us ran for it.

  Voice wasn’t slow off the mark either.

  Those webs went up with a bright flash, and the concussive wave knocked the three of us off our feet as we got blasted out of the doors and out into the sun.

  “Incoming!” Kelsey screamed.

  I rolled to my feet and looked around for a target. There was a spider the size of a cat coming out of the other building. Kelsey’s first arrow knocked it back a step, but its carapace was tough enough that the arrow failed to penetrate.

  Too close for , I shot a at it. It actually dodged the spell, but the one behind it wasn’t so lucky.

  Shit, there are two of them.

  “Incoming!” Voice called out. There had been another one in the kitchen. It was stalking out of the door of the cafe, seemingly unaffected by the flames rippling across its abdomen.

  Ok, make that three.

  “These seem tougher,” I called out.