Chapter 18 - Dark and Crispy

  Sure enough, long before I started seeing daylight, I was starting to see webs on the walls. At first there were just a few, a wisp of web tacked to a wall here and there. Soon enough I ran into my first fully-wrapped dead thing, though. It was a ratkin, near as I could tell, and it was completely sheathed in webbing, and very obviously dead. I left it be and kept moving, but I pulled my ‘anti-spider surprise’ from my pocket to have it ready. I had to be getting close.

  Then I turned a corner and the passage was almost completely blocked by web. There was still a narrow path down the middle, almost like the spider had graciously allowed a passage for those who needed to sneak by. I knew it had to be anything but, of course. If I want into that tunnel, I was going to have a hell of a time getting back out.

  The spider would be in there somewhere, waiting for me. It would yank on a line and I’d end up stuck. Then a quick dash forward and it would have me in biting range. I didn’t know if my Natural Armor and Stamina would be enough to handle a giant spider or not. A lot would depend on the creature’s rank, and I wouldn’t know that until I saw it.

  Above me, the ceiling was utterly hidden in webs as well. I couldn’t remember how high the ceiling was in this spot; I’d been through the Kendall train station a hundred times, but I’d never paid all that much attention to the architecture. For all I knew, the thing was up there, waiting for me.

  It was time to pull out my secret weapon. What’s one of the best ways to handle an overabundance of spider webs?

  “One spider flambé, coming right up,” I muttered as I stripped the cap from my last road flare.

  It took me a few tries to get it to strike, but once I did, the flare was burning nice and bright. I held it up to the nearest web, a little thing that was attached to a wall all by itself. The wisp went up in seconds, burning away.

  “Definitely flammable.” That was what I needed to know. I shoved the fire into the densely packed webs ahead of me and they ignited like they’d been soaked in gasoline.

  In seconds the hall was filled with roaring flames which shot upward along the walls. Turns out there was a lot more height to this passage than I’d remembered. It was full of webs all the way up, too. I danced back a couple of steps as the fire roared, spreading uncontrolled through the entire network of webbing.

  There was a shriek from somewhere inside the flames, and then something enormous, black, and smoking landed on the ground in front of me.

  If I hadn’t taken a step back, the spider would have landed right on top of me. As it was, it dropped down right were I had been standing. I reacted without thinking, punching forward with the hand that still held my road flare. The flames glinted off too many eyes as my fist crunched into the thing’s face. It let out another screeching noise, something like nails on a chalkboard, and lunged at me, mandibles clacking in my face as I dodged back, waving the flames to keep it away from me.

  It swept out with a foreleg, knocking my feet out from under me. I went tumbling back down the stairs. Cracked my head on at least one step as I fell and landed on my back with a huff of forced-out air.

  It jumped at me, closing the distance in seconds. Still dazed, all I could do was hold the flare out in front of me. I’d lost my spear somewhere during my tumble, but the fire from the flare scorched the spider, forcing her to scuttle sideways. She raced up the wall away from the flare. There were no webs here, so she could move about without fear of the fire raging just a little up the stairs from where we fought.

  Not ideal. I needed to take her down. If she escaped, the ratkin might not give me Amanda’s body. Part of me wasn’t thrilled with the deal I’d made; the part that was still raging with anger at losing her wanted them all dead. I was still trying to listen to my better angels, though. Squashing a spider seemed less morally fraught than slaughtering an entire tribe of ratkin.

  “My spear!” I spotted it a few steps above me and rolled to grab it. My head was already clearing, Stamina helping me to recover from the head injury I’d taken when I fell.

  I reached out and grabbed the spear, then used the butt end to lever myself back to a standing position. The spider was all the way up the wall now. She transferred to the ceiling and scuttled upward. The fire I’d set in her webs was already fading out. What could burn, had. What remained were a few wisps of spider silk and a whole lot of shadows.

  Shadows where she could hide, evade me, escape entirely.

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  Now that I had a better look at her, I knew she was only tier four herself. I’d been worried she might be even bigger. Did monsters rank up? She’d definitely caught some ratkin in her webs. It wouldn’t shock me if she’d caught a few people, too. If the monsters could collect crystals the same as humans, then the more a creature like this killed, the stronger it would get.

  Let this monster live, and it would kill countless more people. I couldn’t let that happen. There was only one weapon I had that might reach it. I hefted the spear, took careful aim, and let it sail through the air toward the creature.

  I’d never been into track and field, so my javelin tossing experience was functionally non-existent. On the other hand, I was stronger than any human had ever been, pre-Event, and my Agility was good enough to make an Olympic gymnast cry. I didn’t know how to use all of that yet intellectually—but my gut said that I’d gained enough of an intuitive sense of these powers that I could make it work.

  That’s what I was hoping when I hurled the spear at the spider, anyway.

  My sharpened iron bar whistled through the air as it flew, then clipped the creature in the back of its abdomen. It screeched again and fell, the weight of the spear stabbing into it forcing it from the ceiling. The spider crashed into the ground with a crunching sound, but it wasn’t dead yet. It pivoted in place, hesitating only a moment, like it was trying to figure out what to do. Then she turned back toward me and raced my way, all her legs pounding the stairs. My spear banged against cement block walls as she scurried forward.

  “Let’s do this!” I said, rushing in to meet her.

  I had the flare in my left hand, my right curled into a fist, and we collided. The flare set some of her hairs alight, and she dodged toward my right side, trying to avoid it. That movement just carried her straight into my right fist, though, which struck hard enough to crack her carapace.

  She backed away from me, trying to flee up the wall again, but I just grabbed onto my spear and jerked it hard, ripping open an even wider section of the spider’s bulbous body. Gummy liquid gushed out from the awful wound. The spider screeched again, twisting as it tried to bite me again, but the spear held it pinned.

  I yanked the spear out with a quick motion and then stabbed the spider in the head. Its body gave one last spasm of movement, then collapsed.

  “Holy shit, that wasn’t the easiest fight,” I said aloud.

  It wasn’t the hardest, either. And that was a tier four monster, not the little tier ones I’d been fighting so far. I whipped the spear back out of the dead arachnid, still holding it at the ready, just in case. But it wasn’t moving. I was pretty certain it was dead.

  I reached out to tap the creature and a tier four Agility crystal appeared in my hand. It sank into my palm and merged with the other, ranking another spot to tier five. Holy shit, was I fast now!

  Magical Stones

  Point 1: Clear Stone (Tier 5) - Strength

  Point 1, Second Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 5) - Stamina

  Point 1, Second Ring: Clear Stone (Tier 4) - Strength

  +

  Point 2: Clear Stone (Tier 4) - Stamina

  +

  Point 3: Grey Stone (Tier 5) - Natural Armor

  Point 3, Outer Ring: Grey Stone (Tier 4) - Natural Armor

  +

  Point 4: Clear Stone (Tier 5) - Agility

  Point 4, Second Ring: Empty

  +

  Point 5: Clear Stone (Tier 3) - Strength

  Spare Stones

  Agility x3, Natural Armor x2, Stamina x3, Strength x2

  I bounced up onto the nearest wall, then rebounded off it to the other wall. Bouncing back and forth like that, I went up a good twenty feet. Still moving from wall to wall in each bound, I went up the steps higher, then dropped to the next landing.

  “I am now the best parkour guy in Boston!” I cheered. Hell, maybe the best in the world! It didn’t make up for all the horrible things I’d seen since this started, but…it was something.

  I’d always been the sort of guy to find joy where I could, even when things were awful. I knew deep down that I was masking a lot of feelings, and I was probably going to pay for that later, but if this kept me moving forward, that was good enough for today.

  Right after my probably too-loud cheer—I was still in monster land, and ought to work on remembering that—I heard a voice from somewhere further up the stairs. “Help!”

  The cry sounded weak. I rushed up the steps. Were there survivors? People who’d been caught by the spider who were still alive?

  I passed the area where I’d burned out all the webs. There were the crispy remains of a couple more ratkin and what I felt pretty sure was a human in the mess left by the fire, but none of them had still been alive when I set the flames. There wasn’t that much left of them.

  I figured anyone caught by the spider would have been killed quickly by the poison, which is why I was surprised to hear someone calling for help, but I kept moving and found another set of steps leading up to the surface, also covered with webbing. Those webs hadn’t been connected to the others, so they hadn’t burned, and sure enough, I spotted a man caught in the upper edge.

  “Oh, thank god,” he called out. “Can you help me? I’m totally stuck, and I don’t want to see whatever made all this.”

  “The spider’s dead,” I told him. He was tier three! Impressive. That made him the strongest human I’d seen, not including myself. I held the flare carefully. I didn’t want to risk just lighting this whole thing up. If he was too wrapped up and I set the webs on fire, it could kill him, too.

  “You killed the spider? Damn. That’s good work. My name’s Alex,” he said. “I’d shake your hand, but I think that might have to wait until you get me out of this mess.”

  “Doing what I can,” I said. I eyeballed the whole thing and made the call. “I can’t get through this mass of webs to reach you, but I don’t think you’re too entangled. You think if I set it on fire, you can back out quickly enough once the flames reach you?”

  “If that’s what we’ve got, I’m willing to try,” he replied. “I’ll pull back from the web as hard as I can.”

  “Okay. Ready?” I leaned in, crossing mental fingers as I hoped this was going to work.

  “Yeah. Do it!”

  I touched the fire to the webs, and they burst instantly into flames.