Chapter 63: Chapter 63

<Born Nihilist> calculated something in the back of my head for me. Judging from the number of footsteps, there were either three arachnids at best, or twelve bipeds at worst. For the first time in my life, I was hoping for spiders. 

What kind of messed up situation has you hoping for spiders? 

This was life or death. There was no time to be coy. 

“Get ready to cast slow and use the doorway as a chokepoint.” I shouted, glancing behind me to make sure Jinny was still good to go. Her mouth had firmed in determination, and the golden light of the spell already glowed at the tip of her wand. 

”Cover me.” I communicated to Talia, tagging the <Suggestion> with urgency. She didn’t hesitate, shielding me with her body as I went to work. My hands were shaking as I groped in the dark, looking for the invisible monster that Jinny had just accidentally flattened. My fingers tightened over a thin piece of carapace that resembled a neck. I hauled the creature upward, awkwardly and tried to cling on while it squirmed in my grip, <Blade of Woe> held in my off-hand, looking for anything that resembled a weak point. 

Its body lit up. It had an oddly oblong body, a rotund and bloated abdomen, followed by the long neck and strangely shaped head. The worst part was the arms. Two massive, scythe-like appendages that sent a chill down my spine. And its entire body was highlighted in gray. 

”There are too many for me to protect you,” Talia snarled. “Move!” 

The skittering from the outer chamber was growing louder. I dropped it immediately, drawing back as the noise of something—probably one of the scythed appendages— sliced through the air where I’d just been standing.

I darted back into the narrow passage, back pressed to the outside wall. 

“What was that?” Jinny asked. 

“No weak points. Hopefully, they’re stupid. That’s the only way we’re going to survive this.” 

“How do you know?” 

“Just trust me.” 

Intuiting what I intended, Talia pinned the downed bug. She grunted in pain. Long red slash marks appeared, marring her coat. Her growling grew more fierce, and she whipped the creature in her jaws around. 

The skittering grew closer still. 

“Now?” Jinny asked. 

“Not yet,” I said through gritted teeth. It was possible to see their footsteps—they were moving quickly, and every time their legs touched the ground there was a small puff of dust. But it was minuscule. Entirely too easy to miss. 

A pebble rolled at the entryway, less than a foot away from us. 

“Now!” I yelled. Talia released the bug and skittered back into the entryway, just in time. 

A flurry of golden sparks emitted from Jinny’s wand. They filled up the entire entryway, in a kaleidoscope explosion of would-be stars. Seconds later, the sparks were disturbed as the first bug stopped, locomotion suspended by the spell. The sparks continued to dance as more bugs ran into the halted ones, making vague outlines. 

I pulled my crossbow, the mechanism whirring as I plugged bolt after bolt into the suspended bugs, making sure every outline had at least one. 

“It’s not going to hold much longer!” Jinny warned. 

I finished with the twelfth bolt, unsure if I’d gotten them all. Still, the majority were tagged now with a bolt around center mass, making them infinitely easier to track. “Do you have anything big that won’t blow back on us?” 

“Depends,” Jinny hesitated, her eyes glazing over as she looked at her spell list. “Are we trying to create space or kill them?” 

The latter was tempting. It was a group of fast-moving enemies, all bunched up together. If we got lucky with something—fire was always a decent bet against bugs—it would mean taking them out in one fell swoop. But if we didn’t get lucky, it meant we were seconds away from being trapped in a kill zone with a legion of invisible bugs that were also on fire.

“Create space,” I said. 

It surprised me that Jinny didn’t wait for the sparks to fade. The tip of her wand radiated with a white glow. She cast it repeatedly into the slow, a small ball of incandescent energy that repeatedly expanded outward towards the trapped bugs. 

”That is… a significant display of power.” Talia whispered in my mind. 

“Just be glad she’s on our side.”

Jinny kept going. Perspiration dripped from her forehead, and from her arm. She keeled forward for a second and grabbed her chest, a sweat-drenched bang sticking to her forehead. Despite her obvious discomfort, she raised the wand again. 

I stopped her, reaching out to pull her wrist down. 

“What?” She wobbled, disoriented. 

“Save your strength. We’re going to need it in a second. To get up there.” I looked to the stairways. It was a long run, and unless I was entirely wrong, the bugs were just slightly slower than a human running at a full sprint. No matter how high your Agility was, that was going to suck. 

“Oh.” Jinny placed her back against the wall and gasped, pulling a small green leaf from her inventory and a pill from her pocket, placing them both under her tongue. 

I assumed the leaf was something for stamina, but the pill was a question mark. 

The golden sparks faded away, and it was like a cannon went off. An explosion of air, followed by whistling, bookended by a crunchy staccato cacophony of carapace bodies hitting the far wall. 

“Go, now!” I yelled, and sprinted towards the left stairwell. Jinny was directly behind me, Talia bounding forward at my side. 

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Talia deviated towards a floating bolt. She’d learned from her previous encounter, and dove low instead of high, her teeth sinking into an invisible appendage and yanking brutally to the side, like a dog playing tug-of-war. The bolt collapsed to the ground. 

I caught a glimpse of several others, skittering our way. If we were on flat ground, there might have been a chance to outrun them. But the way up was treacherous, and it was a safe guess that whatever survival instinct they were working with was weaker than ours. 

I stopped just before the first step, pushing Jinny in front of me. “Any chance you have Feather Fall? Or something analogous?” 

“Nope! Watch your step!” She charged up the spiral staircase, using one hand to steady herself on the pillar. I raised an eyebrow. It was a high-stress situation, yes, but her total absence of hesitation was insane. I mentally flipped the switch on the <Operator’s Belt> and felt my whole body grow lighter. It probably wasn’t enough to save me if I fell, but at the very least it might make it easier to ascend the stairs. 

I took them two at a time at first, then after a near stumble forced myself to switch to one, my thighs and calves burning as the metal steps clanged under my feet, countless vibrations coming from the bugs climbing below. 

It was a guesstimate, as I had no way to know for sure, but I doubted we were more than halfway up. If nothing changed, they were going to overtake us on the stairs at the worst possible time. I turned around and looked to my summon. 

”You can use Suggestion, right? Help me turn them on each other.”

“They’re too instinct-driven, it will not work.” Talia’s mental voice snapped back. 

“Try images, rather than direct thoughts. The ones in front first.”

I sent her the idea of what I wanted. Talia stopped and snarled, then whirled around, her back feet balancing precariously on the stairs at an awkward angle. 

Unsurprisingly, it was difficult, using <Suggestion> on something I couldn’t see. The crossbow bolts in their mid-sections provided a focal point, but there was a certain feedback I was lacking. I reached out to the bugs behind, rather than the ones closest, letting Talia handle them. 

I sent them an image of three bodies, two human, one canine, utterly picked free of flesh by the time they arrived, tagged with hunger. Some of them resisted, but enough bought into the manipulation that it didn’t matter. 

Talia sent a similar image to the ones in front, only reversed, with the bugs now ravenously pushing at the back climbing over them and getting at us first. 

A chorus of shrieking followed as several bolts at the front rotated in place, and the bugs began to scuffle. 

Deciding it was worth the risk, I took the stairs two at a time, arriving at the top. Thankfully, the platform itself appeared to be empty. There was no sign of anything visible, or additional footsteps that I could detect. 

Talia ran by me, tackling a particularly enterprising bug that realized there were two sets of stairs. I watched as the bolt plummeted from the high platform, disappearing out of sight. 

“Keep watch on that side.” I commanded, and she positioned herself at the pinnacle of the opposite stairway. 

Jinny had already reached the center of the platform and stood near the edge, her face pale. 

“Where’s the exit!” I yelled. A bolt leapt at me from three steps below, knocking me down. It hit far harder than I’d expected, and would have flung me clear off the platform if I hadn’t managed to catch myself. I toggled <Operator’s Belt> off, and found it infinitely easier to get leverage. 

I threw the bug off the stairway and aimed a kick at another rising bolt, sending it crashing into the others. 

Jinny was pointing across a vast expanse of open air to the other side. “An endless void once considered. I think there are two invisible paths. Or one, rather, with two possibilities” 

I drove my heel at another bolt, feeling more than a little alarmed as it appeared to fall out of the bug as it plummeted. 

This isn’t sustainable.

“Then what’s the problem? Poke it and see if it’s there.” 

“I tried that. I also tried throwing some debris onto it, poking it with my toe, everything short of taking a jump.” 

My mind raced. “Then we’ll lure one of the bugs up.” 

”How exactly?” Talia said. 

“Thought about that. If we let one up, I think that’s it. And with the way debris won’t even stick, I don’t think the bugs would. There are no buttons, no tells. Just two invisible bridges. Maybe if we had time, we could figure it out,” Jinny said.

“There’s got to be a way.” I felt my heart sink. Talia yelped from across the platform. More of them had started migrating to her stairway. An invisible blade slashed against my leg, sending me to one knee. I placed both hands on the floor. 

“There is. Just like flipping a coin.” 

The most important aspect of test taking is to pick an answer and move on.

“Don’t!”

“If this doesn’t go my way, tell Nick I’m sorry. And I wish I’d gotten to know you better.” Jinny gave me a perfect smile, as if she was relaxing on a beach far away, as if everything was going to be fine. 

And then she stepped off the platform. 

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