Running back and gaining distance, I freak out as the spider breaks out of it's egg.
My fingers curl against the string of my bow and pull it, the arrow appears with a tap. Releasing it the arrow hits the spider, killing it before it fully escapes the egg.
"Shit!"
Angel yells from where she's standing. Along with a scream from Timi.
Turning my head, I see that the spider is trying to bite at Angel, but she just barely manages to get out of the way, but another spider is on Timi and she's unable to get away.
Pulling my string once more, with a tap of my sigil, the bow appears and I release.
The spider dies just above Timi's body, slumping just as its heavy body lands on her chest.
A screech is heard, quieter than the Red-Crowned Spider, but a high pitch.
Looking back to John and Rosa, they both have a spider problem going on, and John is slowly getting more and more free from the spider webbing, and as Rosa helps him out.
The spider green is still on John, giving his skin a green color instead of a white color.
Chittering from behind me, three spiders break out of their eggs. Goop spilling as the egg is opened.
Pulling my bow and releasing, I expected myself to hit the spider as per usual, but instead my arrow misses it.
The spider jumped sticking to the side of the wall. At a higher angle and at another angle at which I have to pay attention to.
My fingers rush to my bow string pulling and making a arrow appear at the arrow hold. Right as I move to pull the string the other spider at the ground begins to move toward me.
I switch my target and release the string.
The arrow misses the target by a smidge.
"Damnit."
My fingers feel shaky.
Turning my body, to run away, I feel a heaviness in my chest. As soon as my foot pushes off the ground, I feel the shaking in my body.
'IM SCARED.'
The spider behind me still scurries after me, its eight legs stabbing against the ground giving it a fearful sound as it gets closer.
Another screech from a spider, but I'm focused on mine.
A heavy smash, something completely shattered something as I see shards of cement fly up, sword cutting air as I hear the sound of it against the air, and unintelligible sound of whispering is heard.
My head turns from the ground to looks behind me, the spider is closer, it opens its mouth. The same effect happens, a popping sound and the crackle of its mouth is loud enough to hear.
Stopping my body and pulling the bowstring, I relax and release as the arrow appears, killing it.
"Just have to breathe."
The spider that was on the wall, screeches as more spiders crawl out of the webs, not even in webbings.
My bow pulls and releases at every spider it can go against, making me feel a heavy sense of urgency as the spiders get faster and faster.
My body shivers as it does so.
"Lazuli!"
Angel's voice call for me from behind.
Turning my body, I feel it tense.
Now beside Angel.
"Yes?!"
I turn my body to continue shooting arrows at the spiders, every single one, hitting, or jumping to a wall.
"Watch Timi! She's weak right now! No Soul Energy!"
Angel rushes past me with letting me speak and grabs her mace, turning my head to where she was, I see a giant crater like hole, with a spider in it and a fist indent in the head of that same spider.
Turning for a second I see Timi speaking in an unknown language and nothing more.
When I turned my body, I also see many more spiders in the direction she was facing, her eyes are closed giving me no warning.
With a pull and release, my bows continue hitting spiders, killing again and again and again.
My body gets so scared, because it feels like no matter what, the spiders aren't dying, but instead growing more in numbers as we kill them.
Continuing to pull and release.
'Kill one, two more appears.'
My heart stops for a second.
My fingers feel a sting, not a string that I've felt in three full years, the pull and release of the strings are getting to me.
"Timi, can you do that same spell again?!"
The words jump out of my mouth.
Looking at me now, instead of eyes closed and probably praying.
"No, I need Soul Energy."
"How much?"
"Atleast a huge amount!"
My eye patch goes up as if knowing what I'd need to do.
It catches Timi's attention.
Looking down at her, the color of her aura shining for me to see, but it's dulled. A spider screeches, then jumps at her, as she's unaware of the danger it is as it jumps to her.
With a quick pull and release the spider slumps to the ground and slides next to Timi.
The aura of the spider is black, not insanely black, but enough to know that the beast in inherently a monster to people.
Turning my face, looking at Angel, my eye feels a sting, then a bit more, it catches the aura of John, and then Rosa's flamboyant pink aura.
My eyes feel an even bigger sting, slowly I turn my head. Knowing that what I've done is important, and something I haven't done since I was six years old.
Moving close to Timi, I put my hand on her shoulder and the sting that I felt in my eye slowly begins to dissipate. Instead to be replaced with the feeling of the relaxation in a way.
My body slumps a bit.
I force myself to steel myself and the sting disappears completely and Timi's dimmed aura grows brighter. She begins to move her body around.
"What'd you do?!"
Timi asks in surprise.
"It doesn't matter just please hurry with that spell."
Timi nods to me.
Angel comes back to us, standing right beside me, tall as a tree.
"How's she even standing right now?"
My eye patch snaps shut.
Turning my head to Angel for a second, her body is covered in green blood of the spiders.
"They're easy to take care of, but…"
I turn and shoot an arrow to slow the ones coming from infront of Timi, while she is preparing the spell.
"There is too many to simply kill them all!"
Angel finishes my sentence as she swings her mace at another spider, killing it and letting its head cave in.
John and Rosa, rush to our side, both of their swords in hand.
"What's happening?"
Spiders grow plentiful and with in range of us.
John and Rosa slash at every spider that tries to gain distance toward us, and I shoot at any spider that I can.
With fear in each of my pulls and releases.
I feel like shitting myself.
"Just buy some time for Timi to do the spell!"
Rosa and John, along with Angel all push forward towards the spiders, cutting and slashing at any spider, or Angel smashing them.
The spiders manage to break through John on his side, making me turn to see it get very close to a unaware Timi as she has her eyes close speaking in that unknown language.
My fingers pull and release, killing the spider and making it spray green blood onto the ground below her feet.
Small shards of ice begin to form from around her body, making the air around her look cold.
The ice slowly grows in diameter and in distance of the her, making it go higher and higher.
John flashes around the room as he cuts at any spider, his speed is undoubtedly incredibly fast, reminding slightly of another.
Rosa, sword cuts into every spider with zero ease, as the blood of the spider spits into the next one.
Angel sends down her mace with immense strength that it's frightening. Almost every strike from her so far has left a small crater into the ground. It's like she's a walking explosion.
"Timi hurry?"
Rosa say, her voice concerned.
More spiders appear, soon even with the amount of strength pushed from the group altogether, it's not enough when the spiders are almost endless.
Soon we are all pushed back into Timi. As we continue to simultaneously attack, trying to dent the forces of horrible red spiders. One jumps above the rest and toward the entire group. One shot to its beak and it falls to the floor, the other spiders crawling on it like it's not one of its own brethren.
"Timi!"
Rosa scream once more, with much fear.
Timi's eye springs open.
One massive ice shard slams into the ground in front of me. Killing massive amounts of spiders, making green blood stain the ice, that it looks like it's green instead of blue.
Then another ice shard.
It slams, making us turn our face to look at the ice. And again, we turn, and again.
The room slowly has fast descending ice, every single one of them, breaking into the ground with a stab, leaving the massive chunk outside and killing waves of spiders that would have surely killed us if not for the fact that she was here.
The room has ice on every corner of the room.
So giant, so beautiful as the green blood, mixes with the color of the icey cold exterior, and shows its hue mixing underneath.
'It's beautiful… I might be insane…'
The sounds of chittering dissipates as the spiders die out, the blood covering the surface of the arena, while the ice shards impale the ground along with the spiders.
John and Rosa drop to the ground with a massive breathe of air released and Angel puts her hands to her side as she puffs out her chest, letting out a great laugh.
"Young girl. All the rewards from the should go to you."
Timi stops chanting in the unknown language and slowly drops. I grab her before she falls and hold her up.
"You okay?"
I ask.
She nods, with a smile that practically says; Just tired.
Lowering her down to the ground, I smile at her.
"Thank goodness."
The ice all around us disappeared with a show of theatrical intensity, like the ice explodes leaving behind its own excess of ice, letting it fall to the ground before dissolving.
Angel looks at Timi.
"Are you sure you're not a Silver ranked Hunter?"
She says as she comes to Timi's side.
She laughs from the ground.
Soon the rest come beside her, John patting her leg in an older brotherly way.
"Good job. I don't doubt you'll be a fine Hunter one day."
She smiles at him.
"Thank you."
Her voice weak, but that's mostly because she's tired:
"Are you all okay?"
She says, as if we're the ones that had to make the entirety of our Soul Energy run out twice.
Rosa lets out a chuckle.
"We're going to be fine."
She says as Rosa pats her head and looks down to her, adjusting her glasses a bit.
"And you?"
"Tired."
As she says that she lets out a yawn.
"I can see that."
Rosa says.
"Anyway, let's get out of here."
Getting up and kneeling down getting ready to carry Timi.
A sound of stretching breaks through the calming air. Then ripping, then… as if hell itself was coming over, chittering, louder than before.
A huge drop of gooey liquid lands a good distance away from us, the drops falls from the ceiling, and jumps up like a raindrop.
"What the hell?"
The chittering gets louder.
Timi is the first to look up.
Her eyes widen with fear, then Rosa seeing her face, follows the line of sight.
"Take her and run."
Rosa say to John. As his hand is nearly about to go under her.
My face shoots up, about the same time as John.
A screeching sound breaks through the room.
And what we see is the spider that covered itself in a cocoon. Begin to break out, spilling small amounts of goop out of the webbings.
John grabs Timi and before he's even allowed to leave the spider drop by our side.
Exiting the cocoon without a hesitant moment, the beak now replaced with a chelicerae. Making it more intimidating, the body grew bigger by about a good diameter, making it as big as an apartment building to nearly double that.
The leg that was crushed now not and the exoskeleton for the spider no longer red, now the same color as stone, gray. The crown for the spider, looking like a real crown above its head.
"It's a Crowned Queen…"
Angel say with fear in her tone as she looks at the spider.
The chelicerae for the spider parts a bit, and between it is a hole, around the hole is where there is many small teeth are at, making a vibrating pattern, left then right, then left, then right, back and forth, like a razor.
"Angel! Lazuli!"
John calls from my left, making me turn my head as he runs to the exit.
"RUN!"
Rosa is already infront of both Angel and I.
The spider spits out something from its mouth.
Unaware of it, Angel rushes to me and grabs me, stopping the acid from hitting me, the acid acts differently, slowly melting into the ground compared to its earlier way of it burning into the ground without a stop.
"We need to…"
Soly off at the entrance of the room, the doors spread wide for her.
She has a bow in hand, a beautiful, bow, covered in flowers that are three petals at the bottom and one at the top, that connects all the way, in a gray metallic exterior, he arrow tipped bright in a pink and blue color. Not just aura wise, but in pink and blue and somehow, it manages to look amazing.
The hood that Sply usually wore now taken off.
She pulls the string for her bow and the arrow shoots through the air, aimed directly at the head of the spider.
'That's not going to…'
As if the head was butter or something, the arrow split right through the head.
Making it explode with the color of the blood blackened.
And as its head fall a crown, covered in a sort of metal hits the ground in the black blood.
We all pause to look at Soly for a moment, then she lowers the bow and it turns into a necklace, the same necklace that she always wears around her neck.
She reaches around the back of her neck and reattached the back making it latch to her neck once more.
The group looks to Sply, then the dead spider as its body falls and hits the ground with a loud THUD.
Back to Sply.
~~~
"Julia. What did you find down there?"
Masque asks Julia as a flame of light, in the color of blood is in her hand.
"The protector is dead."
The short girl with a bald head and an upside down cross says.
"Right through the middle a hole."
The other two metallic robe and hulking man looks at Julia as she comes out of the tunnel and holds a bracer that is also missing metal from its hull.
"What did it?"
The hulking figure says in a really deep voice.
"What did it? Damn! When will you stop talking like that?!"
Julia says, rage baiting him.
The hulking figure ignored her advance.
"Unsure, but I have a good idea who did it."
"Who..?"
The metallic robe wearing man, asks, not a name for who did it, but how she knows it's a who and not a what.
"Yes, who. The kid we saw. The one with the eye."
Masque says.
"Julia, get the armor, we're see what it saw before it was rendered incompetent."