“It would be a bad idea to fight both of them, but if the Snake wins, the Spiders leave and it crawls off to digest a big meal,” the Mick debated. “Sure, make it an offer.”
I poked my head over the lip of the ridge. “Hey, you. Yeah, you, Elder Rattler. I can see you, I know you’re down there.”
There was just the faintest shimmering and puffs of dust from the gully below us. The guys watching all swore when they saw it.
“I know you’re hiding because you don’t want the Vultures to see you. I also know you want to eat that Spider over there. That’s great, because we want those Spiders to go away. If you’re willing to help us, we’re willing to help you.
“If you can get that Spider to show itself, we’ll kill it for you, but you need to drive off the other Spiders. I’ll even throw in making a cave you can hang out in to digest the thing until nightfall, and I’ll make sure that Vulture up in the sky goes away so it doesn’t relay word to the others.
“Have we got a deal? We have no trouble with you and will leave you alone if you do the same.”
Everyone held their breath a long moment, and then the ground seemed to twitch and rattle under their fingertips.
“She agrees.” I pushed back down the slope. “Okay, I’m going to pop a couple of Spiders over that way, bring down the Vulture, feed it, and have it fly away so the Snake can act without bringing down flocks of hungry Birds. It was probably waiting for nightfall to move, not wanting to attract a Commander-class Raptor down.
“I should be back in half an hour or so. You’re all still in range of Sound, so if you need me, just say something, I’ll be listening.”
They blinked as they realized I could hear everything they said. The Mick just smirked. “Yeah, that’s right, be careful what you say about her ass and everything else, guys,” he said, as some of them went beet red. “Just think of her as your very smart, very powerful, much better educated little sister, and I think we’ll all get along well.”
“That Whisker effect is just too damn cute,” Big John bemoaned, to the coughing agreements of the others.
I just smiled, brought up some Darts as my Detects painted the nearest camouflaged Spiders waiting nearby to be killed, and skimmed along above the ground as I closed in on them.
------
Everyone watched the gorged and very content Vulture fly off. It was a Servant, and getting the chance to stuff itself on the flesh of a Warrior-class Spider was a godsend. It had eaten until it could barely fly, and was flapping off awkwardly to go digest its meal, which might even lead to an evolution, or at least an improvement.
“Alright,” I Told the hidden Snake below. “The Vulture is gone, you should be safe from above.” I was slowly drawing power in around Noble, aiming it from my shoulder like a bazooka. The guys watched the double rings of my Shards replicate themselves into a second set circling around Noble, the crystalline head of my Staff glimmering and ready. “Call it out, and I’ll pop it so hard it’ll be reeling and half-dead before you even get started.”
The ground rattled, the ground of the gully below swam and grew, and then the concealed snake below flowed into sight seamlessly. Everyone swallowed as she raised her head thirty feet off the ground, her body easily as thick as I was tall, the end of her tail covered in a dozen gleaming golden rings that began to clash on one another loudly.
I immediately put up a Sound Bubble to ward off the ear-splitting sound that was actually causing fractures in some of the rocks around it, it didn’t interrupt my waiting spell. The guys’ faces were still a little pale from her Aura, but my own Heavenbound and Word-boosted Aura of Valor was beating the Fear effect back.
“Golden-Ring Rattler, Commander-class,” Red hissed, staring at the black and brown-scaled creature, diamonds of gold accenting its scale pattern here and there. “Their territory is a hundred miles northeast. This one’s quite the opportunist, coming in here.”
The echoes of her rattle pounded off the stones, making them vibrate with the power as the Snake’s hiss spread through the air. I watched the nearest Spiders immediately scuttle away as her Aura flared out, while the Commander Black-banded Azurite Tarantula immediately tensed and rose to its feet at the incoming challenge.
With deceptive grace and speed, the Spider was suddenly atop the hill-line there, quickly enough to make all of us tense. This wasn’t something driven into a Wardfield or shepherding a horde of lesser Spiders in a pell-mell charge into Human lands. That thing could definitely move!
“It should rise in a challenge, wait for it...” Red breathed, as the great Rattler began to slowly undulate forward, the metallic clangor of her Rattle not stopping as she did so.
The semi-trailer-sized Spider crept forward in response, its two forward legs, the spikes on them hooked and gleaming with cruel power, rising high into the sky in challenge and readiness to strike.
It launched its first bristle-barrage just as I let the Twinned Split Shardray go.
It made a great target of itself, and its instincts were completely on the Rattler that was just out of range, not looking for a sniper three hundred yards past it.
All four Rays drove into its thorax, burning holes into it even as the middle of its body was instantly sheathed in an inch of frost.
The bristle volley it was going to discharge hissed out, stones and earth cracking and splitting as the lethal spikes drove into them, but very few got anywhere near the Rattler, whose scales took them all without too much problem as she lunged forward with extremely dangerous speed.
The Spider wanted to retreat, but its legs weren’t working properly, bleeding air pressure and unable to support its weight fully. It tried to crawl backwards, but that wasn’t going to evade the Rattler, whose jaws opened wide and fangs as long as I was tall unfolded from her gaping maw.
The Sound Bubble around us held away the crack as the Rattler’s fangs punched through the Spider’s head, but we all twitched regardless. The weighty body of the big Snake wrapped around the Spider with deceptive speed, rolling it over on its back as its legs began to fold under automatic tension, and she held on patiently as the Spider squealed and twitched.
The poison did its work pretty quickly, however. It took less than a minute for the Spider to stop moving entirely, paralyzed completely.
“Be right back,” I muttered, and Dimension Doored over there, coming in above and behind the massive Snake.
One of her slit-pupiled eyes rolled over to look at me, and considered her position. Her tail straightened up, golden rings gleaming, and she whipped her rattle solidly against the stone of the hillside behind her.
The fearsome vibrations traveled through the ground for some distance, and the stiffened Spiders all jumped in terror as the sound of the rattle traveled right up and into their bodies.
I turned slowly in midair, watching the Vermin vacate themselves from the area with great speed, and nodded.
I lowered down and tapped Noble against the stone of the hillside, spending Earth Mana this time. The sandstone peeled smoothly out of the way in a roughly round tunnel ten feet across, flowing backwards in a smooth cave two hundred feet long.
“This should be big enough to fit you and digest your meal, without allowing anything past you,” I told the Snake.
She regarded me, the hole in the stone, and rapped her rattle near it, doubtless reading the vibrations there. With a hiss, she unwound herself from the Spider, keeping her fangs buried in the Spider’s head, and lithely and sinuously, she inserted her tail into the cave.
We all watched her back into the cave, and then somehow draw the Spider in after her. Watching the body that was easily a hundred feet across with its legs fully out get drawn into that relatively small opening slowly and inexorably was one of those experiences that have to be seen to really appreciate.
“Fuuuuuck,” was the general consensus of the men after watching it happen.
“Let’s go,” I told them, pointing, and in a minute they were riding Driver Sam’s Earth Wave along the ridge in my direction.
------
“I never asked, do you have a proper company name?” I asked them, stopping in front of a narrow cave that wouldn’t have admitted anything but the smallest Tarantula, or maybe a swarm of newborn Spiders.
There were indications of Fire, Ice, and Lightning Magic doing their thing in the area, and at least fifty feet of the tunnel had been split open and dug into the stone. There were a few scattered dead Spiders in the area, being busily worked on by Shale-Shell Ants we were keeping a sharp eye on.
“The KIA Hunters,” the Mick replied immediately, and I gave him a sidelong glance, wondering at his story.
“Good enough. I can hear breathing and heartbeats below, at least six of them.” All their fists clenched, and they looked at one another excitedly. “I’m going to announce us.”
I cleared my throat. “This is Fae with the KIA Hunters, headed by Captain Mick. We’re looking for survivors of the scouting mission sent out by Colonel Harrison from Fort Montgomery. Please respond if you can.”
“Oh God Almighty!” a woman’s voice promptly blurted out from below, faithfully reproduced above by me. “We’re saved!”
“Quiet!” someone with liquid in their lungs coughed. “This is Lieutenant Jefferson! What’s the situation like up top?”
“The Spiders have been momentarily chased off, but they might be coming back,” the Mick interjected flatly, and I conveyed his voice down to them. “Can you make it out of there? It looks like a damn tight fit!”
“It kept us alive, Captain,” the lieutenant wheezed back. “I’m afraid we are in bad shape. The spikes on some of those bastards are barbed and poisonous. I don’t know if the wounded here can make it back up there under their own power.”
The Mick looked at me, and I just shrugged. “If you can hold down the entry, I can make it down there, sure.”
The Mick just snapped his fingers. In seconds the ground began to shift and change as Walls of earth and stone rose around us. “Go get ’em, Miss Fae,” he said grimly, and I just nodded.
Shaping an easy circle into the narrow cave, which had been repeatedly blasted and fused by Fire Magic, and crusted with the ash of a lot of small Spiders and Ants, I followed it and the echoes of the Sound Magic along its winding path, down into the ground. I saw the marks of claws that looked like giant Rats and Ants, indicating this was not a safe retreat, but the best they could do under the circumstances.
They were a good four hundred feet in and a hundred feet down, giving themselves lots of space to defend and hear things coming. Several other cracks did feed into this one, and I heard scuttling down them as I passed by, promptly Flaming the crevasses to devour the Ants ready to sweep out of them and over me as they felt my Earth Magic at work. I sealed the cracks off, but that was nothing that would stop them for long.
A Light bouncing off the stone ahead indicated I was getting closer, even while my eyes were going in all directions hearing the scuttling of insectile legs through the stone all around. This was right in the middle of an Ant nest, but they seemed to have sealed off the openings here, sometimes repeatedly, and I could smell the char of roasted insect carapaces.