Chapter 52
Day 11 since entering the gnomes’ warren… (continued)
The paladin light was the only thing keeping back the spider from directly killing us.
And now Vira was slipping away from consciousness.
I had to do something fast!
It was winking out and dimming quickly while I was trying to slow it down. Where before it had been throwing off a radius of light of almost ten feet all around, now it was shrinking by the second; the gnomes were trying to compensate by becoming more defensively grounded but this was a champion spider not a normal giant spider.
What if...
Nine feet, eight feet, and growing dimmer by the second…
How do I keep it going if Vira is unconscious?
What if I…?
I had to try to keep it going!
I grabbed her hand quickly and tried to throw out mana into the paladin light to feed it, as if I was doing with a heal spell, but tried to change my mana flow to adjust to hers where my mana was hitting her wrist and artificially going into her hand. At first my mana felt reckless and like too much water pouring out. But then I began to adjust it, changing it to a small spark of mana left my hand as I held Vira’s with our fingers interlocked; it was difficult but after a couple of wild fluctuations I was able to simulate it to close to what she had. I kept it going as a trickle, but I had to also keep it so it was so low in power that I could sustain it.
Strangely the paladin light pulsed weakly, while the gnomes were trying to hack at the spider in a berserk frenzy. It wasn’t a good pulse but like a desperate attempt to stay alive like a dying man.
I’d stopped it when the light was at a two foot radius. If I’d been any slower it would have definitely have crashed permanently. Even the spider hesitated now as I tried to regrow the lost protective distance of the holy light. It wasn’t sure what new devilry we were trying to trick it with. But it only hesitated for a few seconds. I wished I could get a better grip on it, but if I messed around too much the light would surely go out.
Further I’d even adjusted the brightness to a bit better than Vira’s!
“No way!” the gnome lieutenant next to me gasped. “How’d you do that?!”
“It’s working!” another said.
“********* **** ***********!”
“*************************.”
The paladin’s light stayed breathing, though it was like a half burned out light bulb threatening to die. I had a lot of trouble keeping it steady and wanted to fix the flickering but couldn’t. The gnomes covered me because I couldn’t even look up, things were so fragile.
I started sweating and trying to not dwell on the pain in my body and while still holding up Vira. A gnome was helping me by taking the other side of her while we kept her from falling. The other gnomes made a protective circle around us. Even if I could keep the holy light going, because I was feeding into her mana system, if she was bumped or jerked around wrong our effort would be in vain.
But the radius of the paladin holy light was smaller than the real paladin doing it after I’d managed to stabilize it. I had managed to grow it out a bit from where I’d stopped it from falling but it wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be. Where it was a ten foot radius, now it was about just over half of that and the gnomes were trying to stay within the edges where the spider was afraid to do. It was suddenly a very crowded and pathetic looking circle.
They pointed their spears to account for being easier targets. It was a yes you can bite me but you’ll get hurt trying type of formation.
“Is there a position we can fall back too, to gain more reinforcements?” I asked.
“No lad, we have to stay. Behind this tunnel it branches off into the youngling’s nursery,” the lieutenant said with a desperate pleading look. “We can’t leave, even if we have to die here.”
Oh fudge…that was bad. There was no way they’d retreat if that was the case. So it meant either win or die. I didn’t like those kinds of odds. If I ran away with them in this position too they’d never trust humans again either.
I felt so trapped.
Crap!
The spider tried to lunge again and a gnome was only able to block because the guy next to him put his shield in behind the others.
The block worked, just barely. The spider’s strength was still ferocious like a wild bull’s might be. It reminded me of seeing a rodeo clown fight a bull in a rodeo that I’d seen once on TV; except we were all rodeo clowns in a way. It certainly was just as terrifying.
But then the spider tried to swipe again to knock the shields away. Some pole arm strikes met the spider’s leg and kept it from killing the two gnomes with shields. But then it swung around and poked its sharp leg into a gnome’s eye and penetrated the brain killing it instantly.
The gnomes were barely holding together their resistance.
Then more crossbow bolts hit the spider from behind puncturing its abdomen. But the crossbow bolts were too small and very little power, only making it bleed a little. The spider whirred about now facing assassins in the dark and the main group in front.
“How did this one get so strong?!” the lieutenant gnome gasped.
I tried to ignore it and focus on feeding the paladin light fed but it was hard. I had to intertwine my fingers with Vira’s almost like a dance step and then use the other gnome to move her with us. I could see them sweating in fear like we were all in a volcanic sauna.
Slowly the gnomes got more organized and a few others began to pour in from adjoining caverns to reinforce us. But they were scared of getting to the front line were we were.
The spider hissed as more bolts peppered it, but its frontal defense was still too good.
It tried to kill more gnomes and we barely fought it off. It continued in this stale mate for a good twenty minutes while I fed the paladin light. It was twenty minutes of hell thinking I could die any minute. The gnomes seemed to realize their survival meant, mine and Vira’s though.
I was getting tired. My stamina was low too. Was this how you felt when you were really low on power? My power was bleeding away slowly. How long could I keep this up?
“I can’t keep this up forever,” I croaked feeling the pain of my wounds.
It was actually impossible to have done this. I shouldn’t be able to do a cross mana feed like this. Would there be some kind of consequences for it I wondered? It certainly wasn’t normal. I’m just lucky that I had a similar element as she had, or there was no way it would have worked.
Vira’s chin was hitting her chest while she was slumped into her prone state. She was still out cold, while the gnome was now back up and fighting. I tried to keep her with me and at times the movement of troops around us made that extremely difficult, like dancing with a wild bull or a sea of waves.
“Try something with fire?” I suggested.
“That’s a good idea,” the lieutenant chirped and ordered something in Gnomish to the others.
The gnomes didn’t have any fire near here because it was an air vent tunnel that was supposed to bring in fresh air to the other parts of the warren. We were forced to buy time for several minutes of furious blocks, parries, and pole arm thrusts.
But then the spider killed another gnome, spraying us all with his blood as it stabbed him in the neck. That was its weakness to it seemed. The smell of the blood had inflamed the spider to madness and it wouldn’t release the gnome’s body.
There ended up being a tuck of war between the gnome guards and the spider as both sides tried to keep the dead gnome. Back and forth the body stretched unnaturally for several minutes till the gnomes fell on their backs as the spider got the body. There was no way they could have won against its strength in the first place. But they did manage to gouge it once or twice with their pole arms.
It jumped on the body after winning it, pouncing to savage the dead gnome’s jugulars and slurp at the warm juice inside greedily like a crack whore making a score of the life time. It was feeding so greedily it didn’t see the lieutenant throw a javelin that his the spider square in one of its eyes.
Was it normal for them to be this hungry?
It was a terrible wound that made the cavern full of the spider’s shrieks. Still it fought back with vengeance intending to take all of us out before it died itself. Still for some reason though the javelin had gone into the head, it didn’t puncture the brain either so the spider was still fighting strong.
We tried harder while the rabid spider cried out like a wounded child might have been hoping for pity. It still tried to snap at us and even snapped two pole arms in half right after that, as if they were made from weak brittle twigs.
The gnomes were shocked, since it was supposed to be well crafted dwarven weapons. Was the spider really just that strong or were they sold the throw away weapons?
“Wow, this one just won’t die,” the lieutenant said.
But then suddenly the spider was madly trying to ram the wall to get away as a bottle of oil was thrown at it. It was now soaked in flammable oil. If we could somehow ignite it, we’d have a chance. But I was also worried that fire might not do much to them.
Did it know the danger of the oil? By itself the oil didn’t mean much until someone lit up.
“Get down!” someone cried out and then a torch was thrown igniting the spider instantly. Its dying cries were horrifically loud, echoing in the tunnels.
We tried to get back away from the intense heat that was sending waves of terror at our faces as it burned to death trying to leave the tunnel. It only ended up colliding with the wall that much more, since it was blinded by its eyes being melted by the severe heat.
Fire is a terrible way to go even for your worst enemies.
Giant spiders have a scream similar to baby piglets or bats combined it seems. It was eerie. Still I felt no pity. It was them or us.
The paladin light continued, as I kept it going still. How would I know how many spiders were here?
“Scouts check the tunnel ahead and report back,” someone said.
I tapped Vira’s face. She wasn’t waking up. But we needed her Paladin light. We couldn’t move very well with me trying to do an artificial jump start on it either.
