10 (II) Weavers

10 (II)

Weavers

This felt like something out of a horror novel, and was yet another thing the bestiary didn’t mention. He was beginning to think that the Yellowstone Republic really didn’t do very much to learn the abilities of monsters. The gaps in knowledge were becoming appalling.

“Yeah, okay,” Shiv said. “But why? You all attacked me. What did I even do?”

“Walked… in territory…”

Shiv stared at the spider. “That’s felling it? You’re all trying to kill me for walking on your lawn?”

“Yes…” the mind weaver hissed.

“Well, you’re a tainted asshole, and I’ll see you again soon.” Shiv briefly considered killing himself using his Biomancy as he was already on the verge of death, but decided that was quitter’s talk. He’d die good and hard every time to get more skills, but also because he wanted to make every death count.

There was something poignant and horrific about the experience that he sort of enjoyed. It was something no one else could do.

As he clutched the fire weaver’s crystal staff, he felt his mind clear unnaturally, even against the pain, and his field condensed. It didn’t expand, but it felt like he could channel more of his intent within the existing area of effect. Shiv couldn’t help but blink. No wonder mages liked their weird staffs so much. This was an immediate boost to his power. Guess that’s why they called them focus crystals.

“Well,” Shiv said. One of his ears fell off from the flame, and a cluster of tumors grew over it. “Let’s get bloody, then.”

He charged the armored weavers in front of the mind-spider. He wanted to see how many of them he could get through before he fell. Unlike the other weavers, these ones were disciplined and waited for him to come. They pulled out blades that resembled huge chunks of iron on a stick rather than actual swords, and prepared themselves.

In response, the Deathless used his new staff to aid his still-aching mind as he tore at their fingers and joints with his Biomancy.

The first armored weaver gave a silent cry of surprise as its weapon toppled out of its hands. He targeted the others with mixed success. The second armored weaver had a Magical Resistance Skill—Shiv hit the third and fourth, pulping the insides of their skulls. The last also felt like hitting a solid wall—so Shiv adapted. Instead of trying to kill them directly using his Biomancy, Shiv seized the two weavers he had just killed and launched them at the fifth armored weaver with a cry of effort. Both of the dead weavers crashed hard against the last of their number. Spots formed in his vision, but Shiv kept going. He punted the first weaver as hard as he could and sent it sprawling toward the second weaver—the only armored one still standing.

It swatted the first weaver aside with its weapon and flew toward Shiv with an explosive flap of its membranous wings. It was fast. Faster than him—but not by that much. It swung its great blade—so Shiv stepped closer and smacked it down by the hilt, parrying it into the ground. The weapon got stuck there, and Shiv punched the weaver in the chest—only to break his knuckles on the protective shell they were wearing.

“Damn—” was all Shiv got out before the weaver speared its stinger into his chest. He tried dodging, but his body gave out on him. He found solace in the fact that he would have managed to catch the stinger if he wasn’t so close to death. But he could still take this one with him. He slammed his Biomancy field against their resistance, and the weaver jerked in silent pain even as it injected paralytic venom into his body.

Shiv groaned as he sagged over on the stinger. He was faintly aware of the fifth armored weaver pushing the two he threw at it off the top of its body. The mind weaver, meanwhile, was watching him intently. So were all the others.

As Shiv’s mana field smashed once more against the second weaver’s resistance, he felt it finally break, and reached inside its flesh. He was still clinging to the staff, somehow. Time to make this thing’s death ugly.

Or he would have if some felling asshole didn’t blast him with a spell of its own. A bright and pale pattern formed around the mind weaver as it channeled its intent against Shiv. Something that wasn't physical burst inside his skull, and he let out a choked cry as his consciousness flickered. It was like something was tearing into his mind, peeling at the very things that made him him. Shiv’s eyes rolled back up into his head as the mental attacks intensified.

Flashes of the mind weaver’s own thoughts bled over. “Break… scream… die… sell body back to the mothers…”

Shiv could feel his sense of self fracturing. He suffered a lot of things in his life, but this was something else altogether. It was like drowning inside himself. And it was a good thing he kept his grip on the staff too, because otherwise, he might not have had the focus required to use his Biomancy on himself.

Shiv compelled his mana field to squeeze. His head turned to paste. But as his physical body dropped dead, he found that his mind was still raw with pain.

Broken Moon that hurts! He glided toward the mind weaver, only to notice it was still staring at him. Not his corpse. Him. The place where his ghost was.

“What is this… Dead? But still here? How?” Its mind was alive with curiosity and interest. A terrible dread welled up inside Shiv. Not good. He couldn’t take any chances with this one—he might be Deathless, but his mind was still vulnerable.

Frankly, it might be the most vulnerable thing about him. Shiv imagined what a Deathless coma patient was like. The thought was an ugly one.

He unleashed his Biomancy on the mind weaver at the same time they directed a mind spell back at him. In the exchange, they traded wounds of differing severity.

Toughness > 49

Physicality > 43

Reflexes > 37

Grappling Proficiency > 24

Striking Proficiency > 14

Parry > 11

Biomancy > 8

Unfortunately for the mind weaver, Shiv’s Biomancy was more than a bit stronger than it used to be.

While a wave of pacification slammed into his mind—making him wonder why he was fighting these weavers, and how it would be better to surrender himself to spiderfolk—Shiv’s attack also targeted the weaver’s mind in a more visceral way.

Shiv looked on blankly at the other weavers for a few beats as the mind weaver’s spell lingered. He was just happy to be around them. The mind weaver’s skull burst apart in a jet of white-gray ichor as the mess that was its brain went sailing somewhere unseen. Its crystal hat bounced off too.

Shiv giggled at the spiders in his Revenant form, marveling at their beauty and cuteness. They really were the best. Humans were terrible next to the weavers—barely worthy of being pets. Meanwhile, the other weavers reacted in sudden horror at the death of their mind mage.

They scrambled over its body, poking and examining, unaware of what the mind mage realized—that Shiv was still there among them.

Meanwhile, Shiv started having intrusive thoughts while coldness started to build inside him. He wondered why he was starting to think of the spiders as monsters, why he wanted to drain their vitality

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Shiv drove his hand into the body of the nearest weaver. It twisted in pain. He reached out to drain another next to it, but Shiv found that it didn’t really speed the resurrection process up much at all. What he drained was probably bottlenecked by his skill.

Regardless, there were a bunch of very spooked weavers looking around now, and more than a few were pointing to his newly forming shadow. Shiv cursed internally and started crushing as many vulnerable brains as he could.

He would love to stay and fight and grind, but the mind mage had him rattled. There was no way he was sticking around to find out if there was another mind weaver. He couldn’t level against them easily either. Biomancy could kill him. Pyromancy could kill him—frankly, a lot of magic could kill him.

Psychomancy? That didn’t kill him, but it definitely hurt like all the hells, and might just see him willingly enslaved. The thought of what the mind weaver just did disgusted Shiv. He’d rather experience true death than become a slave.

As skulls burst apart around Shiv, he finished draining vitality and resurrected. He picked up the weakened weaver he just drained and threw it at one of the few others that had Magical Resistance. As they crashed to the ground, Shiv started running for his spear and equipment. It took him a while to find his original corpse, and he battered the Magical Resistances of those along the way while dodging thrown weapons.

Shiv’s mind raced as he made a plan of escape. The damned spiders were wasps too, so they had wings. That meant he wasn’t going to easily outrun them. Thankfully, the mushrooms made flying straight a bit hard, but their Reflexes were still greater than his. He needed something to slow them down—or confuse them.

He reached Nomos’s spear first. Picking it off the ground, he thrust it upward and formed a sloping dome over his first corpse. It was like a sphere with a gap for him to run through, with all the weavers on the walled-off side. Meanwhile, he continued striking the weavers he could sense with his mana field. Those who broke, he crushed with impunity, straining his field over and over until it felt like his soul was starting to ache. Meanwhile, he heard them hammering against the carved barrier of ice. There was a sloped roof on top of him, so they couldn’t just drop from above either. That gave him a few seconds before they went around and tried to cut him off. He quickly created a sheet of ice to make it hard to stand.

As he started trying to sift through the burned remains of his previous body, partially fused to his equipment, Shiv realized he was being stupid and used his Biomancy on his corpse—it was still biomass, after all. With a final exertion of will, he managed to smear his body into paste. It was not quite the liquefaction the high vampire was capable of, but it worked well enough. Pulling his stuff that hadn't been incinerated away from the goop that once composed his body, Shiv did a quick check for his most essential items.

Kitchen knife! He equipped that again. Other daggers… Ah, right, Valor. The rest is next to the mushroom over there. This should be all.

He rushed out toward the opening he left for himself. Just then, two weavers came into view—and then slid out as they slipped across the ice. A few moments later, he heard their wings buzz as they flew back—only for Shiv to detonate his makeshift ice bunker. Their Toughness was too high for any of the small fragments to deal any harm, but Shiv jabbing them with his exhausted mana field added to the distraction. He melted the ice on the ground with the spear and started sprinting as fast as he could. Between his Physicality and Reflexes, he was moving faster than he ever thought possible, ripping up patches of soil with each step.

He caught sight of the fire weaver struggling to get up, and Shiv stabbed at it—sending a blade of ice through the weaver’s midriff. The spider fell into two twitching pieces as Shiv kept going, offering a half-hearted apology. “Sorry. You can kill me in the next life!”

But it wasn’t the spider that heard him. “Shiv! What’s happening? Are you alright?”

“Yeah, mostly. You were right, this place is horrible! I hate the weavers, I hate this place, and I really hate mind mages!”

“Ah, yes. Your first encounter with one? And you survived without being enthralled?”

A long spike punched into a mushroom beside Shiv as he snatched up his supply satchel. He could hear a lot of angry buzzing behind him. He started throwing up walls of ice as he ran, hoping that some of the weavers might smash into the obstacles. “Yeah, while they were focused on blowing my mind metaphorically, I did it literally.”

Valor chuckled. “It seems they were more unprepared to meet a Biomancer, new to the skill and magic though you might be. Well done.”

Shiv blinked at that. He liked hearing that. He almost never heard that. Georges’s admission that Shiv was cut out to be a chef was practically the only other time in Shiv’s life when someone offered him a full, genuine compliment. Shiv quite liked hearing compliments. He wanted more. “Thanks. I think I did pretty good myself.” He grunted, barely avoiding a fall as he stumbled from a blunt object impacting his right shoulder. He looked behind and saw two weavers closing on him. One of them apparently threw its hammer at him.

The Deathless’s mana field felt recovered a bit from the earlier strain, but he wasn’t going to be ripping anyone in half anytime soon or smashing through resistances. He constructed a few more ice barriers—but these weavers were quick and twisted through the air, dodging the coming blockades expertly. Shiv would’ve been impressed if they weren’t trying so hard to kill him.

“Have you escaped them yet?”

“Not quite. They’re pretty persistent.”

“That is… not surprising. You murdered their Deepseer. Their mind mage. Mind mages are just below Diviners in the weavers’ social hierarchy, be they feral or accepted by the Weaveresses. This nest of ferals likely will never forgive you for the transgression, and devote all they have to killing you. Even if it means their own extinction.”

“Look at me making lifelong enemies in record time,” Shiv growled. The buzzing of the weavers’ wings was right behind him. He couldn’t afford to get bogged down in another brawl. Time to try something weird. Shiv launched another slab of ice into the air—and frowned, the construct smaller than he expected. It seemed that the spear’s field could be overstrained too, even without being attached to a person. Still, he continued with his plan. He pulled it back toward the weavers but turned it to water as they dodged. One of them cried out as some of the wetness hit it in the face—and then it crashed into the base of a mushroom. The other one stopped its pursuit as well—going back for its comrade. That surprised Shiv. He expected these creatures to behave like—well, monsters. Lesser vampires didn’t really care if their ilk died.

But the weavers… They could think. He knew they could feel from a bit of mental spillover when the mind mage was trying to break his consciousness. Shiv almost felt a little bad about all the spiders he killed—up until he remembered they attacked him first for a terrible reason and brutally murdered him without cause a few times.

He kept running, looking behind every now and again to see distant shapes moving between the mushrooms. The buzzing was starting to draw a bit closer, but as Shiv looked back ahead, he discovered another problem: He was running out of land. At some point, the small forest of massive mushrooms ended, and he found himself staring at an approaching cliff.

“Ah, shit,” Shiv muttered. “Not good.”

“What?”

“Cliff. They can fly. I can’t. Hope I survive the drop.”

“Wait, Shiv—”

But there was no time, and nowhere else to go. Shiv leaped as hard as he could, and he shot into the air—far higher than he wanted. He regretted the act since he didn’t want to experience that much of a drop, but it was too late to do anything now. Or was it? He held tight to his spear. His own mana field felt more refreshed. Maybe he could fly. A lot of magic was moving or manipulating a certain thing, anyway. His body was biological. Biology was a thing he could move. So was ice.

He gripped himself using his field and tried to soar through the air. He immediately regretted that. Incredible pain and discomfort passed through him. Apparently, the concept of biology didn’t have that much to do with flying, so his intent shaped a spell that ended up ripping his flesh from his bones. Chunks of meat did go flying—just not all of him. And not altogether. This was how Shiv learned that the smaller organs and bits of his body pulled easier than others when he exerted Biomancy in haste. He cried out in pain and stopped. “Stupid idea! Very stupid!”

He tried with his spear, forging a platform beneath him. However, he slipped right off when he tried to use it as some kind of mystical transport—because it was, after all, felling ice.

In retrospect, flying was a lot harder than the aero magi made it seem. There were a lot of mechanics involved. Things Shiv needed to learn.

“Shiv. What is happening?” Valor asked.

“So. I didn’t quite manage to figure out how to fly. That requires more practice. Falling right now.” Shiv shifted his body and looked down. A mossy mountain face greeted him, and far below, he saw what looked to be a deep-blue river rushing through more bioluminescent vegetation. He couldn’t see any weavers down there yet, so that was something at least. “I see a river below, so I’m going to try to aim for that to blunt my fall.”

“Shiv… When you’re falling at high speeds, water can be as hard as a solid surface.”

Shiv blinked. “It can?”

“Yes.”

Shiv shrugged helplessly. “Well, Valor, if I bounce off the water, I might be able to solve my other worry.”

“What other worry?”

“I can’t swim.”

“Ah. Oh, no.”

“Don’t worry,” Shiv said, comforting himself more than the dagger. “I got a lot of Toughness.” And might be about to get even more in a minute.