That’s a lot of spiders.

5/1 afternoon

We ran, trying to stick together. Unfortunately, running through a forest in deep fog is a good way to trip yourself up. None of us went sprawling, but it slowed us down enough that we started to hear a rustling behind us. I glanced back, dumb I know, and I caught hints of movement in the mists. A lot of it. We were headed towards the only place we knew about where we might get help: the outpost. We weren’t going to make it.

Noktog was hanging from Drusilla’s side like a mountain climber, throwing fire back at our pursuers. I don’t think it was doing too much, but it probably helped a bit. “Let us know if they are getting too close!” I shouted at him. If things turn into a brawl, we can’t start by being driven into the ground face first.

We couldn’t get away. The spiders were too fast and persistent for us to be allowed to escape. When Noktog gave the word, I started yelling orders. “Tessa. You attack first. I’ll heal you. Darcell, protect Drusilla.” I couldn’t see her face, she was quite reasonably wearing her helmet, but Tessa turned around with her shield upraised and drew her sword. The wave of spiders crashed into and over her.

Tessa managed to keep her footing, and swung her blade in a frenzy. Darcell ran to intercept any spiders trying to move to attack us in the back, and Drusilla and I just tried to keep the two up front active and dangerous. There were so many of them that we were overrun within thirty seconds. When we were, I surprised myself by summoning one of the guards’ swords from my inventory and slicing with it.

It just seemed like the right thing to do, the same way that it just felt right to ward off the spiders with sweeping strikes from the staff I was still holding in my off hand. We must have killed enough spiders to get the mission finished, and I intended to make full use of my new talent for sword and torch fightingThe skill download felt very similar to my talents, but far more focused. I didn’t really know the theory or logic behind this fighting style, but all the moves came to me like it was a dance I knew by heart. Even things not directly related to the sword and torch part of fighting sprang to mind. Most notably dodging and watching my flanks.

Once the fighting started, I summoned a shield for each of us. From the gnoll fight I knew that a shield meant at least a few seconds of attacking with impunity. Between the spiders that hadn’t felt like pursuing us all this way and the ones we managed to kill in those critical first few moments where the shield protected us, we were down to being only outnumbered two to one.

Drusilla went down first. She’d dropped her immolation spells and switched over to curses of pain once she was in melee, but she just wasn’t very good at holding off an enemy within arms reach. Once she’d been knocked down and bitten several times, they went ahead and started wrapping her in webs as she struggled. Resistance to the paralyzing venom wasn’t much of a boon when you were being pumped with enough of it to kill a dragon. Noktog had tried to distract the spiders and managed to kill one, bringing them down to nine, but it turns out that he was very much not immune to poison, and he was abruptly banished as he was used as a paralyzed chew toy.

Darcell had lunged after them, taking a grazing scratch from one of her spider’s forelegs, but managed to quickly dispatch both of the beasts trying to drag Drusilla off. Down to seven. Unfortunately, in doing so she had exposed her back to one of the spiders who knocked her down and bit deeply into her shoulder, causing her to drop her mace. I threw a renew at her, but she was now at a severe disadvantage, swinging her knife wildly. She managed to keep two of them at bay for a bit, mostly because they were still having irregular spasms from Drusilla’s curse, and managed to cleave through the head of one of them, before she was cocooned.

Tessa and I had almost unconsciously moved towards one another, and were watching one another’s backs. In general, she was far more capable of taking risks than I was due to her armor, but having someone making sure she wouldn’t get flanked too badly was all the help she needed. Most of my job was staying standing and keeping renew active on everyone else while Tessa systematically slaughtered the spiders. When I saw Darcell being dragged off, I threw up a tiny shield on myself and smote the spider in question, crushing its abdomen and pushing me close to the danger zone. I’d judged correctly though, I was still totally lucid; I just wouldn’t be casting again.

Tessa was close enough to invulnerable in her armor that she only really flinched once, when a spider managed to get her with a bite on her mail covered inner thigh. It didn’t break the skin or inject venom, but she favored her other leg after that until renew was able to do its work over around ten seconds.

We, mostly Tessa, just ground down the remaining spiders. In the end, it was just the two of us standing, surrounded by our two disabled comrades and around twenty dead spiders.

Once we were sure the fight was over, I was quite surprised when Tessa ripped off her helmet and grabbed me for a kiss. It was a hell of a kiss, and in better circumstances I’d have been happy to receive it, but we had two men down. I firmly pushed Tessa away, and her glassy eyed look of lust gave way to overwhelming shame. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me.” What came over her was my tendency to set everything to its max setting in the necklaces. I’d need to dial that down for this command, or she’d jump me every time she pulled out a chair for me. Which would be fun the first couple times, and then rapidly old hat.

“It’s fine. Fights can get the blood rushing. But we need to check those two.” I quickly walked over to my motionless retainers, used another renewal spell to stop the bleeding, and carefully used my sword to get their mouths free. It was probably going to take a while to get them fully out and their clothes might be ruined, but we would figure it out. Once I was sure they could breathe and put them into my inventory for safe keeping, I quickly checked the new minor mission. I was starting to think that those would be the best way for me to neatly sidestep Blackrock and Roll.

Getting the Watchman’s AttentionCapture Watcher Cutford. He patrols the roads between Duskwood and the crossroads camp.Reward: instant capture of Watcher Hutchins

Shit. A two for one deal would be great normally, but I’m looking for mission tickets and I don’t have any methods of capture that take less than a few days. Pass.

He Should Probably LeaveSteal the sword belonging to Lars, the refugee living near the bend in the Nazferiti river.Reward: 1 credit

That’s more like it. Quick, easy, and pointlessly rude. Whatever, I could drop another sword near him or something afterwards. I don’t want this random guy to die. I also noticed that Abercrombie had an update, indicating that he was wearing jewelry, 167 hours to capture of course, and had passed his first breakpoint. Fuck yeah. Auffrey was only an hour short of capture, too.

I clapped my hands and turned to Tessa. “Alright. Let’s get back to the house. I have more work to do before the night is over, so I’ll need you to keep an eye on them.” We proceeded to haul ass back to Raven Hill as expeditiously as possible.

When we got back, we found that someone had stolen our leftover spider legs. I absolutely did not have time to deal with that right now. “Hey, Tessa. I have some armor I bought secondhand. Think you could help me put it on?” It was a bit hilarious watching her staring at a set of dented Stormwind military grade armor that was almost certainly stolen, but she didn’t want to be rude so instead of asking questions she helped me put it on. Much like Drusilla’s dress, it wasn’t too hard to shift my body to fit the armor perfectly, like it had been tailored specifically for me. Plus, watching Tessa’s face getting flushed as she helped me put on the suit was adorable too.

I let Drusilla and Darcell out and laid them on the bed as gently as I could. Their eyes were following me, but the rest of their bodies were completely slack. I knew they would recover, but damn that didn’t look fun. “You all will stay here. I might stay out later than normal, but as long as you stay here I can get back easily. Got it?” I received a grudging nod of confirmation.

••••••••••

I took a few spider legs with me to Abercrombie’s shack, once again getting into character as my own servant. I held the onyx pendant, figuring that the old man would demand it when he saw it.

He came up from the basement, all smiles as always. He looked a bit silly with the emerald studded leather collar, but I had a suspicion that he wouldn’t be keeping his current aesthetic for long. “Hello, stranger. What brings you here?”

“This, sir,” I summoned the orb from my inventory and held it up. His eyes locked on it, and he went under quickly enough.“Now, are you listening?” I spoke a bit more firmly. If the catalog description was to be believed, he’d be more receptive to my orders now, “as if you had significant authority over them which they respect and/or fear.”

“Yes. I am.” His tone seemed grudging. Ah well. That would pass as well. We moved inside to his little table with two chairs.

“This necklace is very important, Abercrombie.” He nodded dumbly. “It will heal Eliza. These jewels I have brought you will make you both stronger. You can already feel it, can’t you?” He furrowed his brow, but didn’t backtalk me. “Tell me you can feel it, Abercrombie.”

“I can feel it.”

“Tell me you can sense it’s power. List all the ways you want it to help you, all the ways it will help you.” I didn’t know if this would help, but I figured it couldn’t hurt.

“It’s a powerful gem. It will make me stronger. It will let Eliza see the sun again. It will help her laugh again. It will end the pain and let us be a family again.” Oof. Ok. That’s a bit heavy.

“It’s because of all that that you need to make sure that Eliza wears this as soon as possible. It will do the job far better than any other plan you can even imagine. There will be no drawbacks; if they appear to be having effects you don’t like, you can safely ignore them. Repeat after me, these necklaces will solve all your problems. Keep repeating it to yourself until something wakes you up.” I selected his necklace and put an alarm on it for around 8 o’clock, and left him staring at the orb. I had absolutely no idea if mantras would have any effect, but I figured that they couldn’t hurt.

“These necklaces will solve all my problems, these necklaces will solve all my problems, these necklaces will solve all my problems…”

With a smile, I casually gave him his first forbiddence “Disrespecting Erich Bismark” was paired with pain. Mostly I just wanted to see how it would work. With that, I started jogging north, looking for a river and some refugees.