Chapter 27: Chapter 27. Terrible combat.

Okay, start with a robber crab, sometimes referred to as a coconut crab, even though there’s another breed also referred to as a coconut crab. Those gigantic claws out front were downward-facing, shaped almost like shovel heads, and had a bulky, muscular frame.

Stretch it out a little, and then add a scorpion tail to the backside, only replacing the bulbous spike with something akin to a spearhead, capable of striking to the sides as easily as over the back.

And then inflate the whole thing to the size of a Honda Civic. The way the carapace was shaped was like a crab if the crab had been taking steroids most of its life and was photo-shopped with Arnold Schwarzenegger's body.

I guess it made sense. I mean, the weird physics part of my brain was screaming that an arthropod this big shouldn’t, couldn’t exist, and yet it clearly did. Invertebrates stayed small for a reason, mostly having to do with the way their lungs worked, and the fact that internal musculature was simply not that efficient as the size expanded, but here it was. Maybe not exactly a giant spider, but close enough to count.

Shiana had already sent three arrows into the thing by the time it threatened Cassie. Two of them had simply bounced off the top plate, and there appeared to be a bottom plate of armor as well, but one had stuck in the thin area between the two plates, where the mouth and legs were connected to the body.

I could see the point of the heavy spears. The tissue between the legs was soft and flexible, and a spear would be able to drive right between the legs, directly into the center of the thing, without exposing you to much more than the whipping tail. The tail was lightly armored, and could probably be stabbed and removed fairly easily compared to the body.

But we didn’t have any heavy spears.

Fortunately, it was not exactly spider-fast. The claws were extraordinarily heavy and slammed into Cassie’s shield as it kept trying to grab the metal. The pincers closed quickly enough, but the speed that it slapped them was more akin to Rik’s sword, and Cassie was able to keep it from getting a good grip.

The tail was another matter, striking out quickly, although it was clear that the tail was not long enough to actually strike things in front of it. A dangerous dagger it may be, but it was meant to protect the vulnerable sides and back of the creature, not protect its front. The whole thing was a mottled dark brown and gray, and I suppose if it were half submerged in the ground it would be difficult to distinguish from an oversize boulder.

But it was not submerged now. The one arrow that had stuck hadn’t penetrated very deeply, poking out from beside its eye stalk and seeming to not have impaired it at all. Rik was trying to ineffectually stab it with the squared-off tip of his buster sword, and Mae, behind us, said, “It has insect intelligence, it’s hard to get an illusion to stick.”

Fortunately, they seemed to be fairly solitary. If a second one had attacked us from behind, this would have been a nightmare with just one end. And there I was, with a tail attack that was almost useless against its armor and a knife that probably wouldn’t even have pissed it off.

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“Shiana… give me one of your arrows,” I said as I crouched against the side of the tunnel, avoiding my own team’s legs and trying to find a way to get behind the thing. I was worried because while it carried itself more than high enough for me to scoot underneath, it could just drop down and crush me if I did, and its legs seemed to fill the tunnel.

She dropped an arrow on the ground, grabbing another one and searching for a shot around the shieldlike claws and her own teammates.

Shiana was odd. She spoke pre-programmed lines, but when we were in a fight, she seemed to be taken over by something else, something smarter. Her reactions were more like a human, searching for a shot, looking for cover with quick flicks of her eyes, and dodging around obstacles. It was like she was two people, one social personality that was utterly artificial, and a second mind that controlled her body that was alive. Was she controlled by some kind of administrator or something in a fight, where artificial intelligence just couldn’t cut it?

I hated to mess with poison. I really did, but there didn’t seem to be many options. I still had several copper jars of the paralytic I had gotten from the workshop, but I had nightmares of getting the stuff on my hands and just falling over frozen.

I heard another metallic clank, like a wooden spoon getting bashed against a pot, as the creature struck Cassie’s shield again. Her hammer swung around, managing to catch the moveable part of the claw, the dactyl, away from the fused upper claw, the propodus. Unfortunately, while the grip of the claw was powerful and probably could snip off an arm, the broken claw was still a gigantic spade that could do enormous damage.

I carefully stoppered the copper vessel, which was a wide-mouthed can. Fortunately, it had been wide enough that I could dip the entire tip of the bronze arrowhead into the thick, gluey poison, tap it off against the inside of the can to keep it from dripping, and then offer it back to Shiana, holding it with both hands by the shaft as I held it up. “Poisoned arrow! Try to get it someplace it can penetrate!”

She nodded, having shot two more arrows, one of which deflected off of a claw and the other one was barely stuck between two of the legs. She actually carefully loaded the arrow avoiding touching the head, pulled back, and stated “[Archer’s Spotting] [Critical Shot] [Penetrating Shot].”

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