The Power of Ten, Book Five: Versatile Wizardry

I was leaving tons of Spider corpses behind, breaking out in vivus as the unwhite flames did their jobs on the dead. The Wolves had bristle-patches from the hair-spikes embedded in their hides by the hundreds each by now, but didn’t even seem to notice them as they continued to rampage about the Commanders who were really shredding the Spiders all about them.

The zipping Chains of my Darts blew Spiders clambering on the Wolves off of them, which the Wolves noticed and appreciated despite themselves. It kept any of the Spiders from getting to sensitive positions, and none of the Spiders really seemed able to get through the barklike hide of the Wolves. When they tried, they frequently just triggered an eruption of thorns into their jaws which foiled the attempt regardless, and often proved fatal to them.

I could see why these Wolves had been so nasty to the Shadows, tough as they were...

Violent as it was, and as much havoc as it wreaked, the Wolves weren’t held captive by the Summoning Spell for long. I felt the magic sustaining it wane, the Caster either running out of juice or lapsing concentration. Another door opened in the air, this one focusing the world’s pressure on the Wolves, shoving them towards it and back to their home realm. The extra Spiders and whatnot that had glommed onto them passed harmlessly through the silver door and fell to the ground as the Wolves were forced out of the Mortal Plane and back to the Beast Realm.

Which left me naturally all alone there, still in the middle of goddamn horde of mutant Spiders!

I didn’t dare gain much altitude, or I’d have literally hundreds of bristles shot more powerfully than crossbow bolts converging on me from every direction, and I didn’t have a foot of spiritually-enhanced barkhide to take the hits. I stuck to the ground, let the Chains find auto-targets, and flew away from the violent display behind me that was drawing their attention, trying to swing wide of the Spiders and their targets.

I got off a Detect Vermin III with a point of Mana, which promptly painted the whole area around me for a hundred yards with extreme precision (and farther away with somewhat less) as to where these Spiders were. So forewarned, I could also aim and clear a path for myself much more deftly, which was the real need here.

A Commander-class Spider, one of the semi-trailer-sized ones, raised its front four legs waaaaay up in the air, making scrabbling motions, and I felt as much as saw the Webbing start to materialize in the air, trying to trip me up and trap me, wrapping me up for the lesser Spiders to take down.

It even had a dimensional component to it, shutting down Blink. Nasty effective!

It still didn’t much like it when the dual Shardrays bored into the meeting point of its thorax and blew the back half of its body clean off. The dome of Webbing that was starting to gather suddenly froze, then abruptly dissipated as the massive Spider quivered and then collapsed in on itself, curling up and tucking in its legs in the classic arachnid death pose.

The surrounding Spiders all quivered and fell back in shock when I managed to do that. I had to remember that they might be dumb, but if they were Magical Beasts, they had at least some level of intelligence.

That gave me time to Cast an Invisibility spell, spending a point of Mana to conceal body heat, vibrational movement, and all sounds I was emitting at the same time.

With that done, I could rise into the air without being shot at, and so escape this tide of Spiders. Sure, they could try to inundate the air if they could guess the right area, and the range of their attacks was at least that of a good bow, but they didn’t know where I was or what I was doing, so there was no reason for them to do that.

I still didn’t want to gain much height, because Devilsight was lighting up the night here, and showing me that there were a bunch of predators up above swooping around and having a fun time picking off Spiders.

There were dozens of Bats larger than hang gliders flying around with great speed, and they and their sonar were definitely tracking the Spiders below as a nice big walking dinner buffet. They would occasionally swoop down, pluck up a hapless Spider from above, and retreat to the sky as they deftly avoided any bristles launched their way, or guided Winds shifted them aside.

Once airborne, they would calmly pull off the spider’s legs with their jaws, rapidly killing it, and then proceed to tear open its abdomen and eat the stuff inside.

There were literally dozens of the things up above me, flocking to the buffet laid out below them and having a rad time feasting on the smaller Spiders.

I watched one get targeted by the Webbing efforts of a Commander, and simply scream at the manifesting Web and the one making it. The Spider wobbled and fell back as its concentration was shattered, and the Bat flew off with another squirming Spider in its clawed feet, gaining altitude so he could tear it open and have a feast.

Them being up there was another good reason for me not to gain much altitude, although I was currently invisible to their Sonar, too, at least if they weren’t paying too much attention to empty spots in their scans.

Since I wasn’t being targeted, I could take a tangential course and get out of the way of the rolling swarm of Spiders, and so that’s what I did.

The damn things were scuttling along plenty fast, however, and didn’t seem to be getting tired, despite being mostly heavy exoskeletons at this point. I vectored out of their path, aiming for the edge of the swarm and getting out of its way. I just didn’t have the defenses to stay and fight here, only snipe from the edges.

I was a bit surprised to see that the people fighting over there were doing the same thing!

It turned out they weren’t the targets of the Spiders, but they were in the way, and the Spiders were plenty happy to attack them and try to bring them down. The group was definitely trying to stay out of the way of the Commander Spiders, but they looked to have attracted one’s attention.

I looked back along my kill path, and the vivic fires burning over the Commander I’d killed, all blue-furred, black-banded mass of it. The Bats were kind of circling around the abdomen I’d popped off of it, but didn’t want to risk the odd white fires eating away at it and all the other dead Spiders and breaking their carcasses down with remarkable speed.

Prudent in the face of the unknown. But one of the big black-banded blue things was bearing down on the fleeing humans, and I could only sigh despite myself.

I focused a Detect Alignment, and came up with no Evil, at least. There were only glimmers of Good, but it was fairly obvious they had a tight camaraderie and teamwork among themselves, working together like oiled machines to keep the Spiders from running them over as they retreated.

A brawny guy with dark hair and a mustache was using Earth Magic to form a moving combat zone on the ground, a modified Earth Ripple effect he must have spent a lot of time on to perfect enough to carry the rest of them. Like a big moving wave of Earth, he was urgently shifting them off the course of the Spiders, trying to both stay ahead of them and move outside the edge of the massive swarm’s advance at the same time. His eyes were constantly looking around, his face flushed as he stayed murderously intent on his task, knowing that if he failed, they all would be overrun in short order.

The rest of the men were bringing out their spells in series, overlapping defenses and offenses to both buy time and remove threats and obstacles. The larger Spiders which were hard for them to kill were simply obstructed, forced to scramble over obstacles or divert to one side or the other into other Spiders, sometimes causing rolling balls of colliding Spiders to tumble around as they were entangled.

That wasn’t working with the Commander, however, who was bearing down on them quickly, smashing through barriers of Ice and Earth instead of having to go over them, probably seeking to get into range where it could jump on top of them and break the Earth Wave from the big guy,. Then it would be all over and they’d die in short order.

I sighed as I swooped over that way. I’d need the cover of their defenses if I was going to help them, otherwise I was simply going to have to run.

I kept an eye on the Commander as it closed in on the humans, whose spells were having little to no effect on it, while the other Spiders simply got out of its way. That was good for me, as it meant fewer of them in shooting range.

I saw the tensing of its legs, and let go a Valence of Split Shardrays.

It was faster than I thought, and I caught it just as it was tensing to leap. The Rays sliced into its thorax, lit off inside it, and superheated internal fluids actually blew off three of its tree-trunk-sized legs as it convulsed. The massive body got into the air, but was jerked sideways by the tension of the legs abruptly lessening as it lost pressure in its abdomen, and the Commander went sprawling to the left and behind the humans in a spray of sand and a half-dozen cacti getting flattened by the impact.

That naturally earned me some attention, especially when the Shardrays split and zipped around to the Tarantulas nearest their master, impaling four dozen more of them and sending them tumbling in burning little fluffed balls of blue and black.

The humans were startled when I flew around behind and above them, and the rain of bristle-missiles that descended on the bespectacled blond guy’s Light shield impacted it like a carpet of death.

My Darts came up, and I let the two of them flit out as another Shardray, finding one of the archer Tarantulas and spitting it with Holy Banefire, the Chain reaving off to feed two dozen more Servants to the land.

I was basically right above the men now, glancing up to see very interested Bats circling in my direction. All the ones in the sky were at least Warrior-class, and just because we were killing Spiders didn’t mean they were friends.

“Where the fuck did you come from, girl?!” a shorter, stockier guy with dark hair swore, hurling more of the purple Lightning out there in a whirling wall of death. Dozens of Spiders went tumbling and sprawling, blasted and burned, but the swarm behind kept coming on regardless of the twitching corpses of those ahead.

“Spatial rift!” I replied with only a moment of hesitation, watching the Fire-user, a tall and lanky man with a head completely covered in vivid red burn scars, lay down a low rolling inferno that caught dozens of Spiders, setting them alight and warding off those behind from the optimal vector the Earth Wave-user was taking. The Flames he used were supernaturally bright and sticky, clinging to the Tarantulas mercilessly instead of going out under magical pressure, and seemed to be fanned by the Spiders running along instead of being put out. “Also, completely lost! Where the heck am I?”

That seemed to amuse them all. “Up shit creek without a paddle, girl!” the bespectacled Light-user stated, letting his completely peppered Shield Wall fall just in time to put another one up and start intercepting more hair-spikes. “It looks like they really like you!”

“The feeling is bloody mutual!” Another Spellwarped set of Dartrays shot out, Chained their way through over a dozen Spiders, and relieved pressure from the left, helping the chunky short fellow there using Earth redirect some of the walls of dirt he was putting up, forcing breaks in the scuttling swarm pursuing us. “I can’t fly away because of the damn Bats overhead, either!”

“They’re fucking with the Winds, so neither can any of us!” the slender guy with the prominent Adam’s apple reported, raising precise walls of Ice to interfere with the Tarantulas to the right between the fields of Fire and slow them down.

“Be glad the fucktards ain’t screaming at us, happy to let us do their killing for ‘em!” the leader snarled, more Lightning gathering to him in dancing balls of violet force, waiting as more racing Tarantulas gathered together behind us, eager killers uncaring of the slain spiders in front of them.

I shot out another Shardray, Chained it between a score of them, and gave him a narrower, longer alley to fill with a leaping array of ball lightning that punched holes in the Spiders and sent superheated steam squealing out from them. Even if they didn’t die, their legs lost pressure, and they stumbled and fell helplessly.

“What the Hell kind of magic is that?” the leader asked, looking up at me. “Silver eyes? You’re a Void Magic user?!” Despite themselves, the men couldn’t help but glance at me in amazement.

“Came out of a spatial rift...” I repeated slowly for their benefit.