Re: Butterfly (Reincarnated as a Butterfly)

Adon reformed his radar version of Telepathy again, this time taking care to make it as far-reaching and unobtrusive as possible.

And he held the field in check for a few seconds, thinking.

If this crazy idea he had in his head was correct, the spider might be looking down, directly at the party, at this very moment.

If it's really up there, I have to confirm it without letting it know that I know. It can control what everyone sees, so having the element of surprise if we get the chance to attack will be essential.

He braced himself and then extended his telepathic tendrils with the subtlest reach he could muster. If Adon's normal Telepathy was a handshake, his psychic scream hit like a gut punch, and his subtlest, least probing Telepathy landed as a light touch, then this was the most feather-soft caress of an extended string of lifetimes. The gentlest thing Adon had ever done.

His reach rose like the wind, it brushed ever so lightly against the place where the artificial sun stood, and then Adon was pulling back, slowly, gently, with the same calm energy that he had employed when he extended the telepathic field in the first place.

The butterfly was shaking slightly. He had felt something there. He had no doubt that he had sensed an unfamiliar, alien mind. Adon could not put his finger perfectly on what it was, naturally—it was a thing he had never had contact with before—but he knew. Of course he knew.

It was the one organism he had encountered on this floor that did not feel like any of the others. Adon sensed this through the briefest and gentlest of touches. A cold, invertebrate but calculating and sophisticated mind. Unfeeling, perhaps, but far from unthinking.

Along came a spider.

He completely reined in his Telepathy back to its normal range again before he allowed himself to think of anything else, just in case this monster's peculiar abilities might allow it to somehow pick up what he was thinking. The spider creature had been such a perfect counter to the group's collective abilities so far that he found that idea conceivable.

Then he turned his body to face back toward the party again.

How do I tell them? Adon questioned. And who do I tell?

The obvious answer that presented itself to him was to address Rosslyn first, but Adon took a few extra minutes to think about whether that was truly the best idea, or just something his biased heart wanted him to do.

He could still sense that Rosslyn felt she had been let down, abandoned by Adon, in some difficult to define but clear way—even if a part of her thought that his departure had been justified with good reasons, and even though she was temperamentally inclined to praise him for his "independence" in following what he wanted.

Happily, as he thought the situation through, Adon's bias and actual logic seemed to coincide. Not only was Rosslyn the person who he felt a desire to speak to, she was also the person most likely to listen to him, and she was also able to get things done offensively that might help eliminate the threat.

Adon was tempted to bring Goldie and Samson back closer to the group before he started talking to the Princess about this, but he knew he had left them in the safest place he could devise. There was a risk that when fighting broke out, some of the Dessian knights would still perceive the mystic beasts as enemies. If Adon was engaging in combat with the spider, as he surely would be since only he could counter its stealth, he would not be able to protect his friends from their ostensible allies.

So that settles that, he thought, still a little uneasy.

Adon fluttered over to Rosslyn, made his telepathic field as small as he could, and landed softly on her shoulder.

She reacted in a fraction of a second, half-drawing her sword before he managed to get his message to her.

It's me, please act naturally, he sent.

The Princess had managed to move aggressively against the possibility of a threat without changing her facial expression from its previously neutral cast. She now turned that to her advantage. She continued drawing her sword and began cleaning it, performing some sort of maintenance routine that Adon vaguely recalled her doing before during downtime.

Her face had taken on a pensive look, as if she was lost in thought and cleaning the sword to keep her hands busy or perhaps to try to stave off intrusive ideas.

I was beginning to think that you were not coming back, Rosslyn admitted.

No, I just needed to know the correct answer to what was going on, Adon replied, trying not to be insulted.

Rosslyn gave the smallest nod as she continued in her work, and muttered under her breath, "So?"

What do you know? she added in her mind. Illusions, you said before, right?

There's a creature that's completely hidden, Adon sent. Illusion magic is probably what it's using, unless there's some other kind of ability that makes people see what you want them to see. The monster seems to be positioned behind the fake sun. I sensed an unfamiliar consciousness there.

Truly? Rosslyn thought. We have been right under its nose this entire time?

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It definitely moves around some, especially when it's hunting us, but I'm guessing it goes back up there periodically, Adon replied. Otherwise it would make the most sense for it to be down here right now, to take advantage of the window of opportunity while I was absent. The artificial sun was a great place to hide. I naturally didn't try to fly close to it or scan it telepathically until I realized I was looking for a monster that was using illusions to hide in plain sight. Once you know that's what's been going on, it makes sense that it would stay in the place where it can see literally everything going on except what's underground. For the things that happen underground, the monster seems to have a relationship with those ants—probably some form of telepathic communication—and the ants will know just about everything happening underground.

A nearly perfect surveillance system, like the dungeon core itself might have, Rosslyn observed. What sort of monster do you think this is?

A spider. Adon explained about the webbing that he and Samson had noticed stuck to Goldie's exoskeleton after she shed her skin.

I see. Rosslyn gave another small nod. It sounds like you and your friends fully solved the mystery. Did you think of a solution yet, or is that where I come in?

That's where you come in, Adon sent. I detected the monster, but I doubt I could fight it and have a prayer of winning. It seems to be a boss monster, and it was killing knights two at a time each time it attacked us. That tells me that it's probably out of my league on a physical level, at least on my own.

That's sensible, Rosslyn thought with a note of relief in her inner voice. I have a couple of immediate ideas about how to deal with it. We could—

Is this a plan that uses my help directly? Adon asked, interrupting.

No, she thought. I just want you to keep tabs on the creature, make certain that it does not wander off.

All right, he replied. I think it's best if you just enact your plan and don't tell me about it. This thing has some kind of Telepathy, and I can only guess whether or not it can hear us now. I've tried to keep the range of my Telepathy very short at the moment, but I don't know if it can read your thoughts as easily as I can—or maybe better than I can.

Rosslyn nodded. Minimal thought, minimal communication, just action. Got it. You just let me know if the creature moves.

Adon sent an affirmative thought and then flapped his wings, floating up off of her shoulder, back into the air, moving slowly closer to where the spider presumably had its web. He kept his telepathic radius small, but slowly and subtly expanded it, again going for the light touch he had applied earlier. He would want to know if his target moved, but he emphatically did not want to even get close to touching his target with Telepathy until Rosslyn was in place to make whatever move she intended to make.

He kept his eyes peeled for that move below him, which was easy enough considering that he did not need to look toward the artificial sun at all. Whatever was happening up above him, it was a safe bet that Adon would not be able to see it through the powerful illusions that the monster continued to cast over the entire floor.

Rosslyn was gathering up a handful of her remaining knights. Adon did not know why she chose the ones she picked, but they gathered near the cliff's edge with Rosslyn, each moving with their baggage as if she had told them to camp out in a different spot than they had planned previously. Then they all opened their bags, and Adon knew why Rosslyn had chosen this particular group of knights.

Every single one of the handful of knights drew a ranged weapon of some sort. Mostly bows and arrows, but one knight carried a bunch of throwing daggers, and another had a pair of javelins.

Adon felt a surge of confidence. This would work. The monster was about to get the surprise of its life. He extended his telepathic network all the way up to the ceiling again, trying to be delicate about it but also rushing to get a lock on the creature's location.

As his power reached the ceiling, Adon saw the knights below him all preparing their weapons to be shot or hurled. They were infusing mana into weapons and aiming across the canyon, as if they were about to shoot over that gap at something that Adon could not see.

Someone down below murmured something conspicuously loudly about "Target practice" that Adon supposed was meant to explain what they were doing. But for Adon, they were equally loudly proclaiming their intention to do something else via their thoughts. Most of these people did not have the training that Rosslyn had gone through, to suppress their thoughts in case they happened to encounter a mind-reading monster.

And Adon felt the monster above him beginning to move.

Clearly, it was not fooled by the verbal trickery. The creature could sense something was amiss.

The cold mind of the monster was quiet and slippery to Adon's telepathic touch, almost evasive. But it was unmistakably, slowly but surely, changing its position behind the artificial sun. It had not moved out from behind the space the glowing orb occupied yet, but something had set its alarm bells off. It had overheard a thought or simply an aggressive intention, and it was about to slip away to safety.

Adon quickly connected to his mental magic.

Then he did several things in very short succession, fueled by the burst of speed that mental magic always gave his cognitive processes.

He shouted a telepathic warning down to the knights and Rosslyn: It knows what you're doing! Go now!

Then he locked onto the creature's location, and at almost the same moment that he found exactly where it was, he connected telepathically. This was not like his normal telepathic communications, which were the mental equivalent of a handshake. This was more like opening a conversation with a gut punch.

He felt the creature flinch slightly under his surprise attack. For a key moment, it froze.

Adon sensed that the projectiles were released at the same time. That seemed to light a fire under the creature, and it broke its paralysis in an instant.

Then the butterfly followed up with the most brutal psychic scream he had ever unleashed.

You stay right there!!! he shouted as loudly as he could, trying to infuse the force of a hammer blow behind the words.

As almost always seemed to be the case when something was struck by his psychic scream for the first time, the monster seemed to have inadequate defenses to resist the initial impact. Even this creature, which surely had Telepathy itself, crumpled against the ceiling as if a physical force had struck it.

For a few key moments, it was mentally and physically paralyzed.

The projectiles that hurtled toward it drew closer and closer to impact, but at the same time, something amazing and terrible happened.

Adon seemed to have shattered whatever focus was required to hold the illusions the monster had woven together. The entirety of the level changed its appearance before his eyes in an instant.

Oh, Goddess… What is this?