He’d taken Riyan’s advice to heart and spent all of yesterday analyzing its behavior from afar. He’d learned that its eyesight was poor, allowing him to sneak up on the thing with relative ease. The spider preferred to go after small prey, mostly—the kinds of tiny rodents and critters that called the boughs of the great Godhollows their home. Occasionally, it went after baby birds caught in their nests. That made Vir sad.
Its tyranny would end today. Vir High Jumped to the next higher bough that ran parallel to the one he’d been traveling on. From here, he had a perfect line of sight to the spider. He’d prepared the ambush site in advance, so all he had to do now was execute the plan.
Vir waited patiently for an hour, silent, as all good predators ought to be, before the spider finally came into view on the bough below him. Too far for an ordinary person to jump, but not too far for Vir.
He waited for the right timing to charge Leap, bringing blood higher up his legs to pull prana from the bough. Too soon, and he’d be forced to activate the ability before the spider entered his kill zone. Too late, and he’d lose the window of opportunity.
His timing was perfect. Firing off the ability right as he kicked off of the limb, he shot forth. Not on an intercept course with the spider, but on a course that sent him above the arachnid.
Chakram in hand and with Prana Vision highlighting the spider’s heart in white and gray, he aimed from midair, and threw.
The deadly disk sailed silently through the air. The spider had no chance. It saw neither Vir nor the disk before the chakram sliced open its chitin.
The exoskeleton may as well have been made of butter. The chakram penetrated deep into its shell, ending the critter in moments.
Vir somersaulted midair and landed on his toes, just a pace in front of the beast. A flawless kill.
He looked upon the corpse with pride. For the first time ever, everything had gone according to plan.
Maybe I’ll even get home in time to use the grotto!
Eager to wrap up his time in the forest, Vir sliced off the arachnid’s head before recovering his chakram. Knowing Riyan, he’d be wanting proof of the kill, so as disgusting as it was, Vir threw the beast’s head into his rucksack and headed to his camp.
About halfway back, he stopped to take a quick water break.
That was when he heard the chittering. Faint, at first, but which grew progressively louder. It seemed to come…
From where I killed the spider…
He saw nothing when he stared in the direction he’d come, but he took no risks. Unwilling to linger any longer, he picked up his pace, arriving back at his bough camp in minutes.
Vir moved efficiently, stuffing his thick blanket into the rucksack, along with some food he’d removed to keep the pack light during his hunt, carefully keeping the food isolated from the spider head at the bottom.
It was after he’d cinched the last pack strap that he froze.
Something felt off. He couldn’t quite place it, but the hair on the back of his neck stood up and goosebumps rippled across his body.
The chittering that had grown progressively louder had stopped.
Vir turned slowly around… and came face to face with a dozen spiders. All identical to the one he’d just killed.
He burst into motion before he’d even processed the danger. Leap activated, blasting him into the air onto a parallel bough, some ten paces below. He turned back, only to find the spiders jumping one after another, effortlessly pursuing him.
Vir tore into a mad dash. He’d almost forgotten what it felt like to have his heart pump so fast. To be driven by primal, instinctive fear.
Yet despite his predicament, he forced his mind to remain calm, constantly eyeing new branches to High Jump or Leap to.
His pursuers proved far more agile than he’d guessed. They had no issues keeping up, and in fact, they were steadily gaining on him. Riyan might’ve been able to outpace them with consecutive Leaps, but each Talent took Vir a good ten seconds to prime up here on these boughs.
Of course, the answer to his predicament was both obvious and tempting—seek the ground. The only reason he hadn’t was on account of Riyan’s warnings.
As he ran along his current bough to the trunk of a massive Godhollow, he knew he had to change his tactics. The spiders had chased him to a part of the forest that was unfamiliar to him, which concerned him greatly.
Vir turned and launched another chakram at the spiders. This time, he used a vertical grip, sending the chakram ripping through the air with deadly speed. The arachnids dodged, but being clustered so closely atop the bough, they had little room to escape. His disk cleaved through one, killing it instantly.
Unfortunately, the rest paid their fallen brother no heed. Without pausing, they relentlessly swarmed him.
Vir had seen what their pincers could do. He wasn’t foolish enough to allow them to enter melee range.
He dove for the Godhollow’s trunk. Luckily, these ancient trees had plenty of handholds, allowing him to creep down.
Unluckily, climbing down was even harder than climbing up, and the worst part was he was constantly looking down, a incessant reminder of the incredible hazard he was taking. A fall from here was a death sentence.
His pace was glacial. The spiders—if they could follow him on a vertical surface—would be on top of him in no time.
He’d taken a gamble… And it paid off.
The oversized white spiders all halted at the root of the bough, eyeing him with their black compound eyes.
Vir heaved a great breath before continuing the long descent to ground level at a slower pace.
He never imagined he’d be so happy to see dirt again. Cathartic relief flooded his body, but then he remembered Riyan’s warning. The forest floor was not safe.
Vir walked cautiously, alert for any sign of predators, but he saw none.
Once he’d put some distance between himself and those spiders, he planned to ascend another Godhollow. Hopefully, it would be enough to throw his pursuers off his trail.
He halted. Dread coursed through his veins as an epiphany dawned on him.
Riyan had mentioned a single beast. Not a dozen of them.
That meant…
A large drop of goopy water splat upon the ground beside him.
Odd, he thought. The sky was clear just a moment ago. Here in the Godshollow, it took a real squall for any precipitation to penetrate the thick canopy.
Drip.
Another one fell, this time to his left. He looked at the liquid, only to realize it wasn’t water. It was… thick. Almost like syrup.
Vir’s blood ran cold. Slowly, hesitatingly, he looked up…
And found a network of sturdy cobwebs that stretched from tree to tree. Camouflaged by a mat of leaves, which is why he never saw them from above.
Standing upon them, poised right above him, thirty paces in the sky, was an eight-legged arachnid, easily five times the size of the ones he’d dispatched. Surrounding it were a dozen of its smaller brethren.
This must’ve been the beast Riyan wanted him to hunt.
And he’d walked right into its trap.
The Clutch Rachna hissed and fell upon him. Along with every one of its clutchlings. A coordinated attack.
All the color drained from Vir’s face.
Some dreams really did come true. Especially nightmares.
49CLUTCH RACHNA
Vir threw himself into a roll, barely avoiding the massive spider’s bladed limb as it impaled the dirt. Green liquid oozed out, sizzling. The putrid stench made Vir gag.