Iron Blooded

“I can’t bloody see anything in this mist,” hissed Kato as he waved his naked blade through the fog in a futile attempt to clear it.

It was thick, and visibility was low.

From where we crouched behind a fallen boulder I could barely make out the spot where the Mule was tethered. From thirty feet away one of the soldiers knelt on a small outcropping of rock. He had pressed his back to the wall of the ravine, and was fiddling with a black ball of tar.

Seth had a death grip on his spear. He kept looking around fearfully at every sound, eyes wide.

“It's the Brood Mother, isn't it? What if she sees the ambush coming and gets behind us?” He whispered, wetting his lips with his tongue.

“She can’t fucking see us shes blind.”

“Oh.. Yeah.”

As we watched and waited the Mule began to grow more restless. She snorted, dancing from foot to foot and sending the echoing click of hooves bouncing off the walls.

This is what we had wanted.

There was nothing, no movement or sound. Then I spotted something. It was subtle, a slight swirl of fog halfway down the ravine that signaled some sort of motion. I caught sight of the shadow of something dark but just as quickly it disappeared.

“Give the signal,” I whispered.

“What? I don’t see anything”

“Give the damn signal.” I said, more urgently. Kato turned and made several hand motions. I had learned minutes earlier that they meant.

‘Threat ahead, eyes forward.’ Or some sort of variation of the two.

Gills signaled back his understanding and ran in a crouch towards the lone archer on the ridge. The man glanced down and nodded his head. From the ground he picked up an arrow covered in black tar and placed it on his bow.

The string let out a soft creak as he bent it back to his ear. Gills fussed with the flint and steel, letting off sparks.

A pair of hairy giant legs appeared out of the fog behind the Mule. Then another set.

The soundlessness of the Brood Mother’s movements made goose flesh erupt down my arms. She was a quiet hunter and yet she was large enough that she could have filled up my bedroom back on earth with no room to spare.

It was an eerie thought.

My HUD flashed and a level notification popped up.

Cave Spider Brood Mother, Level 28

The Mule seemed oblivious to the spider. She still shook her head nervously and snorted, dancing from foot to foot. The Spider managed to draw within fifteen feet of her before we made out move.

Gills cut his hand through the air and moments later a bowstring twanged. The arrow, which had been lit moments ago flew through the air. It struck the line of tar that had been carefully poured across the stone and flames bloomed.

The Brood Mother reacted quickly, drawing back and stamping her enormous legs to put out the flames now licking at her hairs. The smell of burning spider hair made me gag.

The mist swirled and flowed around the flames and then, to everyones suprise - it caught fire.

I dove behind the boulder, snatching Seth by the collar of his tunic and dragging him with me. The blast sucked the oxygen from the air with a strange pop. Then a roar. Gills sprinted backwards, diving for cover behind an outcrop of rock. When he came up, his eyebrows were smoking.

“Go for her eyes!” he wheezed, flapping a hand through the haze. "Arrows and spears. Now!”

The ten of us recovered quickly.

We rushed the Brood Mother who had now sank back, huddled against the far wall of the ravine. Her body was smoking and I saw one of her legs had been blown off. It lay several feet away - a charred husk the size of a log.

“Hold formation!” shouted Draxus, raising his own heavy shield. The brood mother hissed, her body vibrating as she spit venom at us.

“Don’t let it touch you!”

I ducked as the venom whistled past us, leaving a trail that smelled of sulfur. Where it struck the rocks began to bubble like lava.

Acid. Delightful. Without a spear I was forced to hang back as the other prodded at the beast, forcing her backwards. It seemed like she was retreating until I realized she had braced her back legs on the wall.

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“Lookout!” I called but she had already struck. Draxus was knocked off his feet as she lunged, forward with pincers bared. The Brood Mother Bared down on him, slamming a heavy leg down on his shield to pin him in place. He scrabbled for his spear but it had rolled out of reach. Draxus bared his teeth in a snarl as he faced down death.

With a roar I ran forward, sweeping my sword back and forth through the air near the Brood Mothers face.

She lashed out at me with a foreleg and I was knocked to the ground. My helmet clanged like a gong as it hit stone, my vision vibrating.

I rose unsteadily to my knees and managed to stab the leg before she could withdraw it. Green spider blood burst forth and the Brood Mother retreated, hissing angrily.

I rose to my feet and reached out a hand to Draxus, which he took.

“Thanks,” he said, breathing hard. “I owe you one, Blackbriar."

Gills ran buy us followed closely by Seth. With Gills Legendary spear they managed to wound the Monster. Four of her six eyes had been gouged, and several of her legs had been hacked off.

With a shriek she turned and tried to clamber up the stone wall of the ravine and out of harms way.

“Oh no you don't.” Kato flung a grappling hook and I watched as the metal tines bit into the flesh of her thorax.

Draxus and Seth grasped unto the rope and heaved with all their strength. The Brood mother lost her footing halfway up and tumbled back to the ground with a shuddering thud.

Without delay we rushed in to finish the job. I hacked off two of her legs and managed to stab her in the belly before her legs curled. We continued to hack and stab until the system message declared her dead.

“Fuck me,” said Kato, leaning on his sword. “That was almost a perfect ambush.”

“Almost,” Gills was wiping at the remnants of his eyebrows with a piece of cloth he dampened with his canteen.

"It didn't occur to me that the mist might be flammable."

Draxus and I took one look at him and started laughing.

“Yeah yeah,” he mumbled, stalking past. The singed remnants of his eyebrows somewhat dampened the impact of the dark scowl he cast our way.

Instead he strode back to the Mule who was making frightened noises in it’s throat.

“There there Bessy,” he said, patting her neck. “It’s all done now, you’re safe.”

Kato scoffed.

“Do my ears deceive me? I thought you hated the poor animal. Could have sworn I heard you talking to Draxus about whether or not she might make better dinner than a pack animal. Now you're calling her Bessy."

“Things change.” Saids Gills.

***

Havesting the spider turned out to be hard work.

Spider Hide, it seemed, wasn’t worth anything tangible.

Instead we harvested the Brood Mother’s acidic venom and her spider silk. She had dropped several items of note and they were distributed among us based on who had earned the killing blows.

I was given an amulet of minor poison resistance which I draped around my neck. It was an item of good quality, and would provide a resistance to most Monster based venoms and poisons. All in all, not a bad deal.

By the time we were finished with the harvest we stunk of burned spider hair and sweat. I found myself missing the hot showers of earth now more than ever.

Bessy, as the mule had now come to be called, was carrying saddlebags bulging with Monster Materials. She looked somewhat comical with a pair of giant spider mandables tied to her back with rope.

Gills had mostly recovered from his bad mood and gone back to giving orders. I even saw him occasionally sneak a handful of wild berries from his inventory and feed them to Bessy.

I checked on my own inventory and noticed a new slot. I now had four slots which I used to store my helmet, coin, and food. What’s more, the battle with the Brood Mother had been enough of the boost I needed to level up.

Class: soldier

Rank: Foot soldier, 3rd Auxilary

Level: 13

Strength: 11%

Vitality: 9%

Damage: 11%

Endurance: 9%

Agility: 11%

My base stats weren’t exactly where I wanted them to be, but they had doubled since I’d joined the Army. I also knew there were things about this leveling system that I didn’t fully understand.

“What are traits,” I asked Kato as we walked along the Ravine.

I could see Gills balding head as he scouted ahead some thirty paces.

“I heard Gills mention something about a Horsemanship trait.”

Kato nodded.

“You’re getting to the level where you’ll have to start considering things like that. Traits are attributes you can choose that shape what your class becomes. Most of us hit a ceiling at level 30, but we can still grind chosen traits to Mastery if we want to grow.”

I grunted.

“What traits do you have?”

“I chose Swordsmanship, and Precision. Bit of an unorthodox combination but you’d be surprised how often it comes in handy.”

He grinned.

“What about Giller?”

Kato bit the inside of his cheek thoughtfully.

“I know he has a Leadership trait, and he likely has spearmanship or pole arms. Leadership came the most naturally to him though. Some days I wish that he was our Captain.”

I couldn’t help but agree.

“Why is he a Corporal? I mean.. Isn’t he a bit… old for the job?”

Kato laughed.

“He’s only thirty five and as far as I know he joined the Army later in life then most. But yes, it is generally odd. Gills used to be a First Sergeant back in the day. But the new Captain doesn’t like him much, as I imagine you’ve surmised.”

“He got demoted.”

Kato nodded. “The Captain may be a fool but he’s not a man you want to get on the wrong side of. He has contacts that hold some military influence. We may be able to get around his authority from time to time, but technically he’s still the Captain.”

A Captain that was responsible for the degrading of quality of the 3rd Auxilliary. I was beginning to wonder if it might not have been deliberate.

“Did you know Captain Evander?” I asked as we walked. Kato chuckled.

“Oh aye. He was the only one that could beat me at dice. Sly bastard.”

I smiled.

“What was he like?”

“He was… hard to read.” Kato switched his pack to the other shoulder. Then sighed.

“He kept his thoughts to himself," He clarified. "though he never saw himself as above the rest of us. He cared about morale, and about the way his soldiers were treated. He was also an impressive fighter. I was sad the day he died.”

He lapsed into thoughtful silence and my own thoughts swam to the forefront of my mind. Without meaning to I kept picturing Jarvis’s face. His eyes bleeding and sightless, his mouth gaping wide as spiders poured from his throat.

Revulsion and guilt fought for a place inside my chest. The guilt was not because I believed there was anything I could have done for him - there likely hadn’t been. But because of the relief I’d felt upon realizing that he was no longer a threat to my continued existence.

Maybe I was becoming ruthless. Maybe, in this new world, I had to be.

Was that really such a bad a thing?